Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - Running the Sahara, Raising Millions, and Finding Purpose in Prison | Charlie Engle

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

As Charlie Engle's teenage sons dropped him off at the gates of federal prison, he faced his lowest point. Sentenced to 21 months for mail fraud, he had lost his career, reputation, and freedom. Despite his history of overcoming addiction and running across the Sahara, this challenge was the hardest. Initially consumed by anger and fear, Charlie turned to running daily. He inspired fellow inmates, earning the nickname "Running Man" and forming a running group. In this episode, Charlie reveals the mindset shifts that turned his lowest point into triumph, rebuilding his life post-incarceration into one of influence. Charlie Engle is an ultramarathon runner, author, and motivational speaker. He is also known as the “Running Man” who ran 4,600 miles across the Sahara. He is also known for co-founding H2O Africa with Matt Damon, which later became Water.org. In this episode, Ilana and Charlie will discuss: - The pivotal moment that sparked his journey to sobriety - Embracing extreme ownership for personal growth - The incredible story behind the Sahara expedition - Staying motivated against all odds - Managing team dynamics in extreme situations - Life lessons from his time in federal prison - Leveraging vulnerability and resilience for success - Obsession as the key to success - Why passion trumps knowledge - The danger of staying in your bubble - Achieving big goals through consistent small steps - How to build unshakeable confidence  - And other topics…   Charlie Engle is an accomplished ultramarathon runner, author of Running Man, and motivational speaker known for his extraordinary endurance feats and inspiring life story. His remarkable journey of running across the Sahara Desert and overcoming addiction has been documented in the film, Running the Sahara, narrated and produced by Matt Damon. Besides his athletic achievements, Charlie co-founded H2O Africa, which later became Water.org, raising millions for clean water initiatives. He continues to inspire audiences worldwide through his speaking engagements, focusing on resilience, overcoming adversity, and the power of perseverance​. Connect with Charlie: Charlie’s Website: https://www.charlieengle.com/  Charlie’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlie-engle-3644676/  Resources Mentioned: Water.org: https://water.org/  Running the Sahara narrated by Matt Damon: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0481222/  Running Man: A Memoir: https://www.amazon.com/Running-Man-Memoir-Charlie-Engle/dp/1476785783 

I was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison. I recognized that I could mark every day off the calendar and make my life miserable, or I could just live in there and not worry about the rest of it. What happens to us isn't nearly as important as what we do about it. The only way to become successful at something is to have periods of obsession. How do you train your mind to be so strong, Charlie? I recognize that what I need to do is... Charlie Engle, known as the running man who ran across the Sahara 4,600 miles, 50 miles a day. That's two marathons, folks. Two marathon a day for 111 consecutive days. I can't even

fathom anything like this. And it's a Sahara raising $6 million for water.org. He's also an author, speaker in some of the biggest stages. And you, Charlie, you started from a very, very low point in your life. Can you tell us about this? That project, Running the Sahara, was really born out of a struggle I had with addiction. As somebody who struggled with drinking and drug addiction in my 20s, I spent those 10 years really just not being able to find a foothold. And I was always the top salesperson, and I had certain levels of success with everything I was doing, but I just wasn't happy and I wasn't finding what I wanted. And that spiral led me down some pretty dark paths. my first son, Brett, who sparked the big change that I needed to make. Because quite frankly,

I realized that I wasn't going to survive very long in his life. He was born when I was 29 years old. And I knew that nobody was coming to save me, as I like to put it. There's a lot of people out there that were ready to support me and ready to help me be successful. But I had to be the one to make the decision that things really needed to change. And once I made that decision, it doesn't mean the path was easy, but the path became much clearer. And I heard you talking about it in your keynotes. Tell us a little bit about that moment. There's a lot of people that are unhappy right now in their life. And unfortunately, it is phenomenal that we see some of them are addicted to drugs, drinking, just pure unhappy, whatever that is, binge watching for hours. What made you suddenly

decide that this is it? I can't go on like this. There was a moment for me where when my son was born, I had this brief time where I remember holding this tiny baby and feeling love for him and from him that, frankly, as an addict, I didn't think I was capable of or deserving of. And that really lightened something inside of me that made me want to live a different life. And so I proclaimed in that moment that I was going to quit and that that was going to be it. But I didn't know what else to do. I didn't really put any work behind it. And I think a lot of us make big proclamations. I'm going to lose weight. I'm going to get in shape. I'm going to be better to my spouse. I'm going to do all of these things at some future date when everything works out just perfectly. And anybody who's paying attention knows that that date never comes. It just doesn't ever happen. And so for a couple

of months, I was like dad of the year. I was at home and I showed up for my wife and I did all these amazing things. The problem is I hadn't dealt with the underlying reasons that I struggled with addiction to begin with. And so two months into my son's life, nothing happened. There wasn't a catalyst, but I found myself in the worst neighborhood in town, drinking and doing coke and just killing myself and destroying everything that I had built. This binge lasted about six days and it was a really, even for me at that point, it was a really terrible one. And I realized, you know, at the end of that binge that I needed to make a change. Partly I realized because I was handcuffed and I was on the ground with the police searching my car. And there's bullet holes in the

car that were put there by someone actually shooting at me. And I understood in that moment, as I said a minute ago, that nobody was coming to save me. I kept waiting, I think, for those years for somebody to force me to get sober. My boss, my wife, a friend, I feel like I wanted them to hold me down and force me to get sober. And that's just not the way it works. And in that moment, I just recognized that the decision to change my life was fully in my hands at that moment. And I did feel like it was a choice between life and death. And as I like to say, I chose running, which for some people might be the equivalent of death. But for me, I'd been a runner all the way back in high school. And even during my years of addiction, I would occasionally clean up and I

would get my act together. And during those times, I would use running as part of the tool to help me feel better mentally, feel better physically, get myself in a little bit better shape, then invariably I would feel better. I would decide, oh, you're fine. There's no problem here anymore. And the cycle would just start itself all over again. But in this instance, I made a commitment on that day, that final day, which was almost 32 years ago now. And I made a commitment that I was going to go to an AA meeting every single day for 30 days. And I think this is the way things start. I didn't commit to forever. I just said for 30 days, I'm going to go to an AA meeting and for 30 days,

I'm going to run. So I did those two things every single day for 30 days. And at the end of those 30 days, my life had actually gotten better measurably. I could tell the difference. People in my life could tell the difference. So I then committed to 90 days. I said, OK, I'm going to see if I can do this for 90 days. So I kept going. And at the end of 90 days, I didn't put any time restrictions on it any longer.

And before it was all done, though, I actually went three straight years without missing a single day. I went to a meeting every single day and I went for a run every single day. And my life changed completely. 180 degrees. I ran over 35 marathons during that period of time. And as I joke, because I obviously had that whole addiction thing under control, clearly I was still an obsessive person. Just on a different topic. Yeah, exactly. And what I like to remind people of, though, is if you're a successful person,

whatever your definition of that is, fill in the blank for yourself. The only way to become successful at something is to have periods of obsession. There have to be times where the only thing that you're thinking of first thing in the morning when your eyes open is this mission that you're on. And the last thing you're thinking of at night, but when your head hits the pillow, is this mission that you're on. It has to be that way, actually. That's the way it has to be. I'm not saying ignore your family, don't take a shower, whatever. But there needs to be times when you're just focused on the goal at the end,

and balance will come at a future date. And for me, I needed those three years to learn how to be a father, to learn how to be a runner, to learn how to actually survive. And, you know, in that way, I found my way to a brand new life. Incredible. So you somehow moved from basically that someday rational to massive extreme ownership at a level that is unheard of, right? And you're right because at the end of the day, we can only control ourselves. Nobody is there to save us. We eventually going to need to save ourself. I love that you said that you need to be obsessed. I think that is very, very true. Maybe you took it to an extreme. So the word obsessed, Charlie. So talk to us, how on earth does somebody wake up and decides to run? I mean,

the marathon is one thing. 35 is insane. But to try to tackle something like running the Sahara is like a whole different mental game. And we'll talk about it because you have other big aspirations that we'll talk about next. But how did that even happen, Charlie? The transition is surprisingly slow and steady. I don't think I realized it was happening. If I really dig into the details of it, and this is being super honest about the

genesis of it, a part of me felt about myself in those early years pretty badly. I didn't feel like I was a good person. I didn't feel like, you know, I thought I had done a poor job in my marriage. I wasn't a great dad. Like I had all these doubts about the person that I was. And so the first thing I needed to rebuild was that confidence. But in combination with that, to be honest, we all relate to suffering. I mean, the one thing we have in common as human beings is life is hard. Even for the most successful, quote unquote, happiest people I know, if you get them in a quiet moment with a little bit of vulnerability, they will admit that it's freaking hard because it's hard for everybody. There's fear and insecurity. And so part of my running

in those early years, especially was a combination of self punishment.unishment. I felt badly about myself, so I felt like I deserved to hurt. The other part of it was running the marathons, in particular in those early years. You know, I ran 35 marathons in 35 different states. I began to develop this relationship with the world. Today, I can actually sit here and say to you that I've run across 40 countries in my life, not just states, but countries. So I've seen all of these places all around the world, every continent in slow motion, as I like to say, because when you're on foot, you become part of the landscape. You meet the

people where they are. You aren't just driving past them in a car as a tourist on a bus or an airplane or something like that. You're at the ground level and you're really experiencing life. And so I found really, God, I just found so much inspiration in that for myself. And I wanted to share that with other people. I started running 50 milers. Then I started running 100 milers. Then I started entering these crazy races all around the world in Vietnam and Borneo and Tibet and Argentina and just all over the world. And these races were multi-day races where in 10 days

we would cover 500 miles or whatever it might be. And what I found in those places in particular was beauty in harsh landscapes, real beauty in people who had absolutely nothing compared to what we consider wealth. Yet, they were far and away the happiest people I've ever known. So many countries around the world fall into that category. And so what I fell in love with was cultural exploration. I get framed as a runner all the time. And yes, that is true, and an adventurer. But what I really care about is culture. You and I spent time together in South Africa, and we got to experience culture together in a way that I think is what we're

talking about here. That was one of many experiences that changed me. It reminded me of my own place in the world. And I think that's the biggest mistake most people make is they spend their time in their little bubble and they think that they're exploring the world because they go on vacation to Cancun or they go to the Philippines. That's not exploring the world. That's exploring safe little pockets of it where you're almost entirely in control all the time of the outcome and of the experience you're going to have. What I want and what I want to encourage other people

to do all the time is to leave that bubble and to, I don't mean to be unsafe, but to do things that really challenge you and to make you feel like, wow, I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to do this. There's no greater feeling than to feel like you're over your head and then you find a way through the hardship. That was a very long answer, but going all the way back to the beginning, the genesis of the running for me wasn't because I love to run. Running's hard. Running can suck. I love the freedom and the way it makes me feel a lot of times, but I also hate it. It's not like I'm bulletproof against running while the rest of the world dislikes it. I dislike it sometimes too,

but I love where running takes me. That's the important part. So you actually mentioned South Africa and it's true. Richard Branson has a beautiful quote that I love, the courageous don't live forever, but the cowards don't live at all, which is kind of what you're talking about. But talk to us again. Most of us, when we're thinking about, oh my God, running suck, we are talking about a mile or two. You're talking about running the Sahara 111 consecutive days, which most of us will not even survive physically. How did that project come about? And how did you get, I don't know, Matt Damon to, you know, like, how does that happen, Charlie?

Yeah, yeah, no, it's a good story. And I will also say, not to dispute what you said, but I do believe that a lot of people do have limitations, or they think they have limitations. They are, of course, self-imposed limitations. And very few people actually push themselves to their maximum, and not just physically, physically, emotionally, in your relationships, mentally, in your education. And in education, I don't mean book learning. I'm talking about life. Most people stay in that safe middle ground where they occasionally blip up to try something maybe out of their comfort zone.

But that's pretty rare. And I think we tend to forget that we only get one shot at this and that saying no to things or not trying really hard things doesn't help us. It doesn't keep us safe. And in fact, it kind of does the opposite in a way. It sucks the life out of us. There should always be something on your calendar that you're looking ahead at going, oh my God, I don't know if I'm actually capable of doing that. Like if there's nothing in your life that you're questioning your ability to actually do it, you are definitely not trying hard enough. So for me, the Sahara came about because I refused to let it go.

I was in the Amazon jungle running across a big chunk of the Amazon doing a race with a couple hundred other people. And I was trying to win this race. And it was a seven-day stage race, like the Tour de France format, where you start every day, you finish that day, then you start again the next day. And in the middle of one of those stages at night, this guy I'd never met before blurts out this idea to me and he just said have you ever thought about running across the Sahara Desert because you know nobody's ever done that before I looked at him and I'm like well there's a damn good reason nobody's ever done it before it's a terrible idea but the fact is I like to say words said to us by a stranger can sometimes change the direction of your entire

life. And I couldn't stop thinking about it. It just stuck in my head. And when I got back to the U.S., I did some research and I found out that, in fact, no one had ever run across the Sahara before. Turns out for pretty good reason. But I started to just tell people that I was going to be the first person to run across the Sahara without any evidence, without any real knowledge or ability or anything else. I just started telling people I was going to do this thing. And most people told me I was out of my mind and that it was impossible and it was too hot. It was too dangerous.

You couldn't run thousands of miles across deep sand. It was just all impossible. And I admit, and it's probably the addict part of me, every time I heard that from somebody, I didn't dispute them or argue with them. But this little internal voice was like, OK, OK, I hear you. I hear that you think it's impossible and it's not going to be easy, but let's see what happens. This isn't like the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail out west. There's no book at Amazon or Barnes and Noble that you can buy to

tell you how to do it. But I just kept telling people that I was going to be the first person to do this thing. And I was the senior producer for a TV show at the time called Extreme Makeover Home Edition, which was a really big show in the US. Anyway, it was the number one show on TV for a few years. So my life had gotten a lot better after 12 or 13 years of sobriety. And I had some really weird Hollywood connections. And this friend of mine finally was like, look, if you'll shut up talking about the Sahara, I'll introduce you to a friend of mine that knows this director. That's how it works. And turns out the director was a guy named James Mall. And he wasn't just a director. He had won the Academy Award the previous year for the best

documentary film for a Steven Spielberg film and all of this. And I'm like, no way this guy is going to take this project. But I managed to go in and get a meeting with him. And I showed up late, of course, because that's always a good way to start a pitch meeting is to show up really late and have no idea what you're talking about. I had 30 minutes and I show up 20 minutes late and I like slide into his office and like, hey, Sahara Desert, native Twerigs, never been done before, my Everest. It was truly the world's worst pitch ever. But at the end of it, he stood up and he stuck out his hand and he's like, I'll do it. And I'm like, what do you hand and he's like, I'll do it.

And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, yeah, if you do this, I want to be there with cameras. And I think the lesson in that, that I always like to remind people is passion overcomes knowledge every single time. If you give a pitch that you feel in your heart and you can express that to another person and they understand. In this, it wasn't that complicated a pitch, but I didn't have any of the details. I just didn't do a good job. But what he felt was my desire to do it and my ability, I think, to actually pull this off.

A week later, he calls me. He's like, hey, I told you we need a production partner. And I just hung up with Matt Damon. And Matt would like to be the executive producer of this project. And he also wants to be the narrator. And he actually said to me, he's like, would that be OK with you? You got enough of a dose of my humor to know that this is true. I actually sat there for like five seconds, which is a long time, actually, if you're just trying to be quiet. And I just said, yeah, you know, James, I was really hoping for somebody better. But yeah, I guess if Matt Damon wants to do this, then that would be fine. He can do this

with us. And Hans Zimmer, not long after that, signed on to do the score for the project. And so to be clear, though, I always like to say that addicts are the best salespeople because you have to understand what's going on now. I have three Academy Award winners attached to a project about me running 5,000 miles across sand, really riveting stuff. I mean, there's only so much running you can watch or see. Nobody really cares after about five minutes of watching some dude run across the sand. So there had to be more to the story. So the other piece of it became water and a deep understanding that water, of course, as it is in much of the world, was the greatest need for the people in the Sahara Desert. You know, and I vowed that during this project, I would raise money for clean water.

And that day, I actually started something called H2O Africa. And, you know, I managed to raise about $6 million during this run and in the short time afterwards. And we recognized we were way over our heads. And so we joined forces with an already existing nonprofit and we created water.org. So I ran 5,000 miles across the Sahara. I ran two marathons, as you said, every single day for 111 consecutive days. Temperatures for the first half of those days was 130 degree ground temperatures every single day. It was unbelievable. We got lost in sandstorms and ran out of food and water. And we had all every issue that you could possibly imagine physically. But somehow we made it all the way across. And ultimately, today, Water.org has deployed more than $4 billion in the clean water space in these 15 years since the expedition. And, you know, I'm very proud of that. That's the true legacy of the project. The physical undertaking is kind of self-explanatory, but it's just another hard physical thing.

The real legacy is all those millions of people out there who've actually benefited from clean water, and they don't know who I am. They don't even know who Matt Damon is. They don't care. Their daily existence relies on the fact that they now have clean water. And that makes me really happy. You've got to go do the thing and then you can raise money on that if that works out.

But ultimately the person that you're trying to make better first is yourself. What you just said, Charlie, I think is really, really an important distinction because I think many, many times we live and I used to live like this for decades, with almost like an if-then-else. If I do this, then I will do this. If I will do this, then I can make this decision. Versus, no, I'm going to say yes to these things and then I will

figure out the how. Because honestly, that's what leadership is. That's what breaking barriers is. That's what you're able to do. But you you first say yes to opportunities. And then you get like, okay, now I need to figure out how on earth I'm going to do this. But let me ask you, because I watched the film a little bit and Running the Sahara is an incredible film. I teared up, I admit, and I don't tear easily. You guys went through injuries, through sickness, through endless struggles, and you were somehow able to keep on not only motivating yourself, Charlie, but motivating the team around you to keep on going, keep on the mission, all the way to Egypt. Let's go, right? So how did you manage to, again, you need to wake up every goddamn day and really wire

yourself to get up and do it again. And I'm sure it was painful. I'm sure it was hard. It's not even temperatures that any of us really know what to do. How, Charlie? Well, let's be honest. I was also a bit of an asshole a lot of times. So if you watch the film, I wasn't there to win a popularity contest. I told my teammates, there were three of us

running together the entire time, plus the whole crew that had to take care of us. And I told everyone before this thing started, I said, this is going to be the hardest thing any of us have ever done. And it's not unlike, and I think a lot of people listening to said, this is going to be the hardest thing any of us have ever done. And it's not unlike, and I think a lot of people listening to this, while you may not be able to relate to running that far, you can relate to starting a business. You can relate to starting a family even. Before it all begins, you got all the answers. There's going to be tough times, but we're going to get through it. Well, you don't realize how hard it's going to be until you get in it. But what I did tell everyone, and I knew this from experience, was there are going to be times you're going to want to quit. And you need

to tell me right now, if you want to quit, do I let you quit or do I stop you from quitting? And of course, everyone said, you stop me from quitting. Nobody thinks it's going to be them. You can't imagine, you know, at the beginning of something like this, that it's going to be you that wants to quit. But it's almost always somebody. And I had two teammates and other people I had to manage too. But one of my teammates, frankly, I yelled at him. And while I'm not necessarily proud of it, that's not a thing that I would normally want to do. But that was what he responded to. The other teammate, if I had yelled at him, he would have quit, quite frankly. He

wasn't equipped to be dealt with that way. And so I think that's the other thing. As a leader of whatever you're leading, you have to understand that your style needs to be adaptive. You need to be able to understand the person that you're talking to and what's going to motivate them. And for years, I've gotten what I consider to be hilarious mail, some of it hate mail from people who might see the movie. And they're like, I can't believe you would treat other people that way. I'm like, they signed up for this. This is what they wanted.

And if you ask them today, well, what's funny is I was getting ready to say, if you ask them today, they will credit me with the fact that they would not have completed it if I had not pushed them very hard. I know that to be true and they know it to be true. Time has a way of making people think that it was everything was their idea because that's just the way it works in business or in expeditions or whatever. But they definitely agree with the fact that someone on the team, and again, I'm going to use colorful language here. I think you'll forgive me. I don't care

what kind of team you're on. If you're the leader and this thing is really challenging, and no matter what is going on, you have to eventually look at your teammates on one of those hard days and say, shut the fuck up, put your shoes on, and let's go. We can talk about this later, but we're not going to solve it now. And the one thing we need to do is to keep moving forward. Keep on going. Yeah. And I think that that's the big lesson very often is people get caught up in micromanaging themselves. Nobody likes to be micromanaged. And what we end up doing more often than not is micromanaging themselves. Nobody likes to be micromanaged. And what we end up doing more often than not is micromanaging ourselves and our emotions. And can I do this? Can't I do this? And

instead of just realizing that we all live in tiny little moments and in our worst moments, what our brain does is take that moment, expand it out to eternity, and it tells us it's always going to suck just like this. I don't care if it's your marriage or your business or running a marathon or across the Sahara. Your brain is saying to you, you have to quit because this is unsustainable. You're never going to make it. And that's your brain's job is to try to stop you from doing this hard thing. And so our job is to get through those little moments and say, okay, I don't have to run

all the way across Libya. I just have to get to the end of today. I just have to get to the end of the day. And if at the end of the day, I still want to quit, I'll think about it. And maybe what I'll do is go to sleep instead. And if I wake up in the morning and I still want to quit, then maybe I'll think about it. But instead of proclamations, I'm going to leave my marriage. I'm going to quit my job. I'm going to stop the run. You know, we make these emotional decisions in those moments. And I really do. I believe that life is about getting past these really hard moments that we have. And if we can just do that

and learn the techniques of getting past those moments, we can get through anything. Sometimes we get into, this is where we decide whether we're going to go with the victim mentality or the victor mentality, right? And we need to decide. It's a decision, right? I'm going to choose one path and I'm going to take those small imperfect steps to go through this. Again, running the Sahara is a whole different level that I can't even fathom, but I can totally see how those translate. But share with us. And again, right after that, and there was a lot of that, right? But after that, you've been on some of the biggest stages in the world. You've talked with people that are huge role models to a lot of people that will be listening.

Talk to us a little bit about that, but there's also a hard moment that came after. So I want to hear both the good, but also the hard. Wow. Yeah. The Sahara is really kind of the, I would call it the linchpin to my life in a weird way. It's almost like everything before then was in fact leading up to that expedition. And I had done a lot of other hard races, hard expeditions. I've gotten sober. There were a lot of really equally important moments. If I hadn't gotten sober, none of that would have ever happened. And I probably wouldn't be sitting here now. So there's a lot of those

things. But the Sahara also put me on the map. And as we all know, being on the map, gosh, and this was 15 years ago, now it's even worse. Being on the map and being recognized and having an opinion and being a certain way publicly, what it does is it makes you a target. that we live in that the anonymity that is granted through computers and through online messaging boards and social media and all of that makes it really easy for people to just be mean and angry. And it's almost like a sport in a way, I think, for a lot of folks. And for me, one thing it did was to make running the Sahara made me, I guess the saying would be a big fish in a little pond. You know, my hometown in North Carolina was not tiny. It's a couple hundred thousand people.

There was a big premiere of the film at the local theater. I was in the newspapers. I was on the local news. I raised all this money for charity. I did all this. And what happened is one single person within that world there actually targeted me. And it was an IRS agent, just to be blunt. And he wasn't impressed by my run and he wasn't impressed by my charity work. And instead, he opened an investigation into my taxes.

And that investigation led nowhere because I paid my taxes. So, and there's memos to that effect. But this is at a particular time. This is 2009, 2010. So we've just kind of crested out of the mortgage meltdown, the financial meltdown of the world in a way. And the administration in the U.S. that was in power was actively looking for people to blame.

And I became one of these really weird and interesting little targets that I fit a particular profile. I had enough notoriety to be interesting, but I definitely didn't have enough money to defend myself. And I became the only person in the United States, and I mean the only one at the time, to be as a borrower, a home loan borrower. I was charged with overstating my income on a home loan application. And for that, I could get 20 years in federal prison. And typically, the federal government, the feds, they overcharge. This is a very common technique.

They overcharge in an attempt to get you to take a plea deal. 97% of people who are charged with a federal crime actually take a plea deal. 97% of people who are charged with a federal crime actually take a plea deal. They plead out because the risk, whether they're guilty or not, the risk of not doing so is that you will do a lot more time in prison if you're found guilty. But I didn't take a deal because I hadn't done what I was being accused of. That was my feeling. So I went to trial. And again, nobody goes to trial. Well, at trial, during trial, and this was an interesting point, my mortgage broker, just like a lot of other people have mortgage brokers, my mortgage broker gets on the stand. And this guy had been like a pizza delivery guy three weeks before he filled out the mortgage paperwork for this loan. And he admitted on the stand that he,

without my knowledge, filled out a loan application and he signed my name to it. That's all on the record. So he admits this. And so I think the natural tendency would be to think, okay, game over. That's done. This is over. On one hand, it's true. I was found not guilty of providing false information on a loan application because I didn't. I didn't do any of that. But I had been sent the closing package. When you buy a property, you get this big fat package of stuff from the attorney. I signed where all the red sticky notes are, and I sent it back to the closing attorney. That became mail fraud because that closing package included the forged loan application. And it didn't matter that I'm not the one that

filled it out. It didn't matter that I wasn't the one that signed it. Technically, the jury had no choice but to actually find me guilty of mail fraud. And I was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison in Beckley, West Virginia. And, you know, and I lost a million dollars in speaking gigs. You know, I was on the board of two nonprofits. So I got kicked off the boards of my own nonprofits. I basically was purged from my entire life. There wasn't really anything left of the life that I had at that point. And, you know, on Valentine's Day in 2011, my teenage boys dropped me off at the front gate of federal prison to start serving my 21-month sentence. And I went in there and I was angry and I was sad and I was scared a little bit. You know, and I realized really quickly, though, that none of that was going to serve me in there.

The first guy that I met in prison, by the way, was 62 or three year old African-American who had gotten a 25 year sentence for a couple of grams of crack cocaine, just some small thing, but he had had a couple of shoplifting charges before that. 25 years. So I'm in there feeling sorry for myself and how unfair my privileged life had been up to that point. And the first people that I'm meeting are people who actually knew the definition, the real definition of unfairness. And, you know, I had to do a reevaluation. And I understood that even in that circumstance, fair or unfair didn't matter anymore. It just didn't matter. I could argue about whether this was fair, whether this was just, but it didn't matter. I was going to be there for 21 months and I had to figure out

who I was going to be in that circumstance. And I did what I always do. I started to run. Honestly, I just started running around the recreation yard every single day. I was that kind of nutty dude that people made fun of. That's how I got my name running, man. There's some guy yelling at me across the recreation yard. It's like, you don't belong in prison. You belong in an insane asylum. What is wrong with you? You know, he started calling me running man. And that's how I got the name technically from the running. But it was from this one guy yelling that across the yard. And there's 500 men in this prison. And here's the

thing. People did make fun of me. I would do yoga by myself on the softball field, which is a really bad idea in federal prison. But after a couple of months when people realized, A, I wasn't going to stop, B, my life was actually better than theirs. I was happy. I was healthy. I'm journaling every day. I'm reading two books a week while I'm in there. I'm just thriving in this circumstance. The worst part about it is not being able to actually touch my kids. It's a year and a half of a lack of physical contact, of loving physical contact. But other than that, I recognized that I could mark every day off the calendar and make my life miserable, or I could just live in there and not

worry about the rest of it. And the strangest thing started to happen, and I always call it attraction rather than promotion. The same people who were making fun of me, because this is the way life works, started coming up to me in private and saying, hey, I've always wanted to do some running. Do you think you could help me do some running? And I started to help people and teach them how to run and how to lose weight. And by the time I left prison a year and a half later, I had a running group of 50 guys running with me every single day. 10 of them lost more than 100 pounds during the time I was in there with them. They had to do the hard work, but I was there to show them how and to encourage them. My very first sponsor in AA all those years ago taught me a saying, which is a simple

one. To keep it, you have to give it away. Whatever it is, if you're an artist or you can coach or you can write or you have money, whatever that is that you've accumulated, skill or assets or whatever, if you're not freely giving some of it away, some of your time or your assets away without an expectation of return, that's the key. It's like there's nothing in it for you other than the satisfaction of giving it. Then what do you have it for? And this was my opportunity in a

really difficult situation to actually help other people through their time. And the day I left, there were guys hugging me and there were tears. There were actual tears and people were like thanking me for what I did for them. And I said this a little while ago, I didn't do anything for them, I did it for me. By giving to them, I selfishly took care of myself because it allowed me to give something that I had to give. It was engaging.

I felt good about myself for helping other people and at the same time, it helped me. So when I got out of prison, I have a saying that I use all the time now. If you don't own your narrative, somebody else is going to. And so rather than shying away from telling this story or being embarrassed about going to prison or whatever, I just owned it. And I just said, this is what happened. This is what happened. I even want to take a quick step back. I'm getting deep into this now. I laid the groundwork for creating a life that made me vulnerable to what happened to

me. I didn't do anything illegal, but I was overextended financially like a lot of people at that time because it just seemed like if you had a pulse, you could get a loan on a house. And then when everything crashed, I didn't have a safety net. And so it wasn't illegal, but I put myself in a position of vulnerability. That was on me. So moving forward, I'm comfortable telling people about the story and just saying, look, this is what happened to me. I won't mention names here, but I've been hired by probably 10 of the top financial firms in the country to come into their companies and give

my talk, to tell my story. And they don't bring me in as like a cautionary tale. They bring me in because the story's kind of fascinating and weird and the fact that I'm willing to tell it all. And I'll also just say, man, I'm 61 years old at this point. I've got a lot left to do. And the least of my worries is what somebody else thinks about me. First of all, I recognize they're not thinking about me the vast majority of the time.

And when they do, it doesn't really matter what they're thinking. What they think of me is not my business, as my grandmother used to tell me. I just love that you see that because, again, in your memoir, Running Man, which is a beautiful book and a beautiful memoir, you talk about purpose and how that gives you something to live for and the reason to get up in the morning. And I assume that's a big part of what kept you going in those really hard moments because even just hearing your story, I get all goosebumps. Because you're right there, right after the Sahara, everything opens up. You have all these speaking opportunities, all these possibilities. Your world basically is right there at your

fingertips. And right there, you go from the highest, probably emotional place that you can be to one of the lowest place that you can be. But something lets you get up in the morning and some of it has to be that purpose or something that you live for. What is it for you, Charlie? Yeah, thank you for the kind words too. And you just sparked this. I've said this many times, but I mean,

it's easy to be optimistic when everything's going your way. But who are you when everything is gone? Hopefully it doesn't happen to anybody listening to this. But the fact of the matter is it will. You don't know who you are and what you're made of until everything is gone. You can try to imagine it. You can try to put yourself in that position mentally, but you can't imagine it until it happens. Sometimes it happens from tragedy. Somebody's got everything, but there's a tragic loss in the family. There's something unimaginable that happens. Sometimes it happens financially where everything is lost at one time. And for me, it really created this almost an opposite effect. It's hard for me to actually explain it, but the best way I could explain it is what it

did was create fertile ground. It's like it chopped down every single tree in my world and ground down the stumps and it just took away everything. But it also created this incredibly fertile ground to start over with. And that's what I did. I just started over. And I started telling my story when I was asked to. I got hired to a lot of times, which was great. Early on, some of that was just by friends who I think probably felt sorry for me. They're like, hey, come talk to my company. I'll pay you 10 grand. It was great. It was great. It sort of kept me afloat. And it allowed me to begin really developing this idea of, and you know what

I'd like to frame it as, Ilana, is vulnerability. Because I think the thing that's missing so often in this very highly charged competitive world that we live in is that people are afraid to be vulnerable, even if you're the boss. They're afraid to say that they don't have all the answers or they've made some mistakes or they don't know if they can do it or whatever that might be. And what I learned through this process is the more often I'm vulnerable and that I share the hard stuff and the things that I'm scared about or worried about, the more it invites other people to do the same. Then you're having a real conversation with someone. That's what actually drives me. I was that guy for a long time that if I went to a party with 10 people and nine of those

people in that room, we're all in a room together, nine of those people love me. I know it. But one person really just doesn't like me, maybe even hates me for whatever reason. Who do I end up spending my time focused on? The nine people that love me or the one person who hates me? I spent all my time trying to get the one person who doesn't like me to like me. You know what? You're not going to be friends with everybody.

I am not everybody's cup of tea and other people, they're not all my cup of tea. So my life these days is about finding those people that I bond with, those people that I relate to, that we have similar goals. Not necessarily that we agree on everything, because I don't like that either. I don't want somebody to agree with me just because I'm saying it. Let's have a conversation. But I want to be challenged, but I also want to be surrounded by love. As hokey as that sounds, I want to spend the rest of my time traveling with people like you and going to places where there's love and there's friendship and there's that common bond of knowing that we really are

trying to do good things on the planet. And you can't fix everything. But if you can just focus on what's right in front of you, treat that person, whoever it is, the person waiting on you at the table or behind the cash register at the quick mart or your financial advisor, your therapist, whoever it is, whether they're on high on the hierarchy or way down here, they're all just the same. I don't have to think about it. I don't walk into some place and think, am I going to treat this person with respect? And am I going to be kind to them? I don't have to think about that. That's just the way I want to be. I want to be that person. And I'm not perfect in that regard, but I think that's what I'm striving for. And the adventures that I do and

the stories I like to tell, they're not about the adventure. They're about getting to the adventure. And they're about all the things that go wrong during the adventure. And how do you find your way past the hard moments? Because there's always a better athlete. There's always a smarter person. Okay, let's be real. There's nobody funnier than me. But other than that, just kidding. There's a lot of people funnier than me. But I think it's just about trying to be a decent human being and not making it so freaking complicated. But that's why we connected so well. And what you said, I think is super interesting because we do sometimes are so good at not hearing all the good things that people say, all the people that hates us, or one person that put a bad review on Reddit or whatever, like just one thing, and it would just spiral down. And one of the things that I love in your keynotes, you talk a lot about resilience. I think resilience and vulnerability, they go in

hand to some extent. And I think the beautiful thing is the reason why we got connected so well, I think is part of that vulnerability, your honesty, how humble you are. And on the other hand, insane and incredible. But you say something that I think I really love. The body can endure almost anything, but it's the mind that must be trained to keep going, which I think is relevant for entrepreneurship. It's true for leadership. It's true for everything we do. How do you train your mind to be so strong, Charlie? You nailed it right there. And I think that, honestly, addiction

recovery is what taught me. And I touched on it a little bit earlier, but it's getting through those hard moments. And the best way I can describe it is I've run a hundred miles or more a lot of time, dozens of times I've run that far. Not one time has it ever been easy. Not once have I ever gotten to the end of running a hundred miles and thought to myself, oh, well, that was easy. Like that was nothing. That's not the way it works. So invariably there's one or two or 10 times during that 100 miler where I'm thinking to myself, I can't possibly continue. This is just too hard. And what I've learned to do, and I think anybody can learn to do this, is when that moment comes, let's say it's at mile 61. When that moment comes and that my brain starts to tell me, look, you can't do this.

You have 39 miles left to run. There's no way possible you're going to do this. I'm just human. Like all those thoughts are going through my head. I recognize that what I need to do is get past that hard moment. And to do that, I need to eat a thousand calories. I need to drink some rehydration stuff. I might need to walk for a few minutes. I have the tools. And those same things apply in your business, in your marriage or your relationship. You know what to do. We all do.

There are certain steps that we take instead of exploding the whole thing. We know that we need to eat. We need to drink. We need to rest a little bit. We need to keep moving, but at a measured pace. And magically, the pain that was a 10 goes down to an 8, which doesn't seem like a huge difference. But when you're at a 10, an 8 is a huge difference. So in your business or in your marriage or whatever else, too, that is a massive difference. And you recognize when it drops to that 8. Okay, okay, I'm not going to die. This doesn't suck as bad as I thought it did just a minute ago and

I'm still not sure I can do this but why don't I just keep moving and see what happens and I really think that that is the key I actually am comfortable saying about myself I don't go do things expecting it to be easy and I also don't expect there to be unfair difficulty. But I just expect that anything that's worth doing is going to have a lot of challenges. And it's going to have some moments where, I mean, I'm in the middle of this now. I got a couple of businesses that I'm helping to launch. There are days when I wake up and don't tell anybody, but I wake up and I'm like going, I am so unqualified to be doing what I'm doing right now.

How could anybody be paying me to do this? And, you know, and the fact of the matter is I get up, I do my phone calls. I reach out to people. And throughout the day, I'm like, OK, all right, that worked out well. I made that deal. I built this thing. I got it done. Maybe I'm not so bad at this.

And I think it is always for most of us that never ending sort of push and pull of trying to strive for mastery, but also understanding that the moment we reach the place that we've been striving for, that place is no longer relevant to us. Before we even got there, we've moved on from that mentally. And we're already looking at the other goals. If you're a driven person, you're somebody that's already looking towards something else by the time you reach your goal. And so I think just recognizing that is a huge piece of the process. And I love that because again, you built some certainty in the uncertainty, which I think is a big portion of what's needed in leadership and

entrepreneurship. And you're right. Also that confidence, clarity, all of these come from action, not just thinking about it, dreaming about it, procrastinating. None of that is happening, right? It's all from the action. And another quote that I love that you share is that stop surviving and start thriving. And this is, I feel is such a big mantra in your life. And you also have some big goals. Will you share some of these big goals, Charlie? They're really crazy. Yeah, you know, I will. There's plenty left to do at this point. And you made me think of something I've already touched on, but I just have to say

this one thing. I think all of us have a tendency to kick the can down the road. We're going to wait until the stars align to lose the weight or to get in shape or to fix our relationship or to get a new job or whatever. And we think that magically through some process that's behind the curtain that we're going to wake up one day and all those things are going to be aligned. And now we can finally do the thing that we're meant to do. F that. There is no time but now. And I understand there's considerations. You can't just quit your job and go do this thing. But for me, my next big expedition is one that when I can pull all the pieces together, I will drop everything else going on in my life and I will go do this expedition. And during my lowest times when I was

in prison, you know, I had this idea that we're all on this sort of never ending roller coaster of low places and high points. And I thought to myself, what if I went literally from the lowest place on the planet to the highest? You know, is that possible? First of all, what would it look like? And I decided that through a lot of research that, yes, it was possible. And what the goal is going to be is for me to start at the Dead Sea, probably on the planet, come back up and start running across the Sahara Desert. And I'll run about 2,000 miles across the Arabian Desert, actually, from Jordan all the way to the tip of Oman. And at the tip of Oman, I'll get into a boat and I'm going to row about 1,000 miles across the Indian Ocean. And when I reach Mumbai, India, I'm going to get on a mountain bike and I'm going to ride

all the way across Nepal or all across India to Nepal and the base of Mount Everest. And from there, it's only like two or three miles, piece of cake. So just happens to be straight up. But it's basically, you know, it's this journey that we're all on. It's these low places in our lives and we strive for those high points. And look, the reality is most of us, me included, we spend the vast majority of our time more in this middle ground. And what I tell people is, though, don't just float by, you know, don't coast down the hills. Pedal the pedals a little bit faster.

Enjoy. Enjoy your life. Do things that make you happy, but really take advantage of the times when things are going well and maximize those times. And when things go poorly, when you have that setback, be grateful for it. I know it's difficult to be like, thank you for firing me or thank you for sending me to prison. I don't know if I ever said those words, but I will say that I actually reached a place though, where I was able to find gratitude in what happened to me and in actually going to prison. I felt like I understood what a lot of people in this country and countries around the world understand, you know, life isn't fair

always and good and bad things happen to everybody. And how we come out of it is completely up to us, no matter the level of unfairness. So I want this Dead Sea to Mount Everest expedition to be something that people can follow and that they can relate to. And if you reach out to me at some point, once I announced the timing of the trip, you're welcome to come along on part of it. I think there's a real opportunity for us to come together. Everybody always says that, you know, we need to do better as a world to be kinder and all of that.

And it's, I don't know, I don't see an end to the meanness these days. And I'm not sure that it can end until something sort of catastrophic happens. But I know that me, as my responsibility every day is to try to be kind to other people, to speak to them, to offer what I have to give if I have an opportunity to give it,

and to invite people to come along on this crazy, we're all on a crazy journey. The level of craziness is up to you. I love that, Charlie. I would totally raise my hand for the Nepal section, for sure. Maybe not the Everest, but the Nepal section.est you already have you're coming you're going to everest base camp for sure that is for sure i did it with my husband a few you know many years ago but love every single time to go back time to go back hey 50 next year let's go i'm in so all we need is some sponsors that will chime in and want to film this. And we already know that you're going to make it a reality because you're already crazy enough to do the Sahara. So now the only question

is who's jumps in, right, Charlie? That's it. Yeah. I mean, you know, when I have production partners and I have, you know, we're certainly part of the process is actively looking for support and for sponsors. And typically, just like it did for the Sahara, that came through a combination of some big sponsor partners and, you know, a few angels who loved what we were doing. And some of them even came along for small portions of the Sahara. And people want to go out and have extreme experiences. And I think that's a lot of fun. And I think the more people that hear about it

and can participate, the better. Incredible, incredible, Charlie. So I get all excited. I think the listeners will too. We always finish the podcast with one advice to younger self. So if you go back in time, what do you wish somebody would have told

you at a time when you needed it the most? I'm just going to, I do what I always do. I'm just going to say what popped into my head. I try to think too hard about that. That's what you're going to do. Let's go. I got this advice from a good friend of mine so long ago, long before I got sober even, and it was very simple. What happens to us isn't nearly as important as what we do about it. All of us tend to dwell on what happens to us. What happens to us? Is this good?

Is it bad? Is it fair? Is it unfair? All these things. Almost none of that matters. Good and bad things happen to all of us. And what happens to us isn't nearly as important as what we choose to do about it. What action do we take? Big actions, small actions, like what is it we're going to do about this thing that doesn't

necessarily remedy it right away or make it go away overnight, but just how do we respond? I mean, I think that's it. It's adaptation. That's what matters in our lives is adapting to the changing circumstances. And if you can't do that, if you try to bend the world to your will always, you're probably going to be fairly unhappy. That's just a guess. So important because again, the challenges will always be there. They're inevitable, but the suffering is a choice and that's where we need to choose who we are becoming based on it. So Charlie, it's been so fun seeing you and interviewing you and hearing your story and kind of live. And I'm sure all our listeners are so, so, so inspired by your story of keep on

raising your head and keep pushing and keep inspiring, keep doing great in the world, keep on the challenges. Like it's just such a beautiful story, Charlie. Thank you. It was really a pleasure. This is the best conversation I've had in a long time. So thanks for having me and letting me say a lot of really long, run-on sentences. So it was fun. I enjoyed it.