The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Take Less. Do More.: Surprising Life Lessons in Generosity, Gratitude, and Curiosity from an Ultralight Backpacker by Glen Van Peski

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Take Less. Do More.: Surprising Life Lessons in Generosity, Gratitude, and Curiosity from an Ultralight Backpacker by Glen Van Peski https://www.amazon.com/Take-Less-More-Surprising-Generosity/dp/1637632894/ Gossamergear.com In this personal journey, ultra-light backpacker and sought-after speaker Glen Van Peski shares the life lessons he has learned through years of lightening his pack and helping others. Adventures provide the richness and texture to a life well lived. So remain open. Keep saying yes to life’s opportunities. Glen Van Peski helped revolutionize backpacking by creating ultralight equipment, which allows people to take less so they can do more in the wilderness. During decades of championing ultralight backpacking, Glen became aware that “take less, do more” is more than just a hiking slogan. As he reduced his pack weight, he realized that the lessons learned applied to all areas of life. Now he wants to share the lessons he learned to help others live full and vibrant lives—lives characterized by purpose, meaning, and joy. In this book, you will discover transformative life lessons, which may go against the grain of popular thought but have been proven to change lives for the better. You’ll learn that: Often the best strategy for achieving goals comes from subtracting rather than adding. When your first instinct is generosity, the long-term dividends will be greater than if you strive to gain your own advantage. Revising the stories you tell yourself about situations will reframe your life and increase gratitude. By investing creatively in relationships, you will generate more joy in your life. Making friends with failure will cause you to grow and improve. take less. do more. It’s a revolutionary idea that will transform your life and free your soul to find your purpose—and maybe a little bit of adventure too. About the author Glen Van Peski is known by the trail name “Legend” for his legendary contributions to the backpacking community. A native Californian, Van Peski grew up in the western outdoors, and when his oldest son joined Scouts, he led the Troop’s backpacking program. Through those experiences, he became intrigued by lightweight backpacking. He started sewing his own gear and eventually started his own company, manufacturing ultralight backpacking equipment. Glen and his company Gossamer Gear have been featured in Backpacker, Outside, and National Geographic Adventure magazines, and the New York Times. Van Peski is an internationally sought-after speaker known for his inspiring, humorous, information-packed presentations. He has hiked most of the Pacific Crest Trail, has wandered the backcountry in Japan and Europe, and bikepacked on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. He lives in Bend, Oregon with Francie, his wife of over forty years, and is the father to two grown sons.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, that makes official. Welcome to the big show. For 16 years, over 2,000 episodes, we bring you the smartest people in the world.

The CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, all of the greatest stories that people bring from their book writing and their lives and their journeys and everything else. They bring it right to you and serve it up on this platter we like to call the Chris Voss Show Podcast. Today, we have an amazing young man on the show. Glenn Van Pesky joins us on the show. His newest book was out April 16, 2024, and it is entitled, Take Less, Do More. Surprising Life Lessons in Generosity, Gratitude, and Curiosity from an Ultra Light Backpacker. So we're going to be talking about his insights in his

new book and getting to know him a little bit better and some of the other things he works on including his company it's let's get the name popped up here gossamer gossamer gear you can check that out we'll get a plug in here for the dot com here in a second but he is a retired civil engineer who accidentally started a ultraralight backpacking gear company. Besides an avid ultralight backpacker and bike racer, bike packer in the U.S. and abroad, he's an entrepreneur, author, speaker, philanthropist, and dishwasher. That's what I'm doing right now at the house. He recently wrote Take Less, Do More.

And he realized that the lessons that he learned over 50 years of lightening his pack weight has also had applications to living a more fulfilling off-the-trail life. Welcome to the show. How are you, Glenn? Doing great. Thanks for having me. Awesome, Sauce.

Thanks for coming. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Best place is probably my name, glennvanpesky.com. I've got all sorts of videos, tips, information about the book. And then I'm also on, that'll have all my links for Instagram, Twitter, et cetera. So give us the 30,000 overview. What's in your new book?

A new book as I, so I'm an ultralight backpacker. I'm going out with very little weight. And as I worked, I'm an ultralight backpacker. I'm going out with very little weight. And as I worked, I'm an engineer, obviously. So as I work to lower that weight, I realized like some of these lessons have broader applications. And so the book is taking some of the applications from ultralight backpacking and applying them to the rest of life. Wow. Now, what's different with ultralight backpacking as opposed to normal backpacking, I guess? So, ultralight backpackers talk about base pack weight. And so, that's basically everything in your pack except food and water because that varies with the trip depending on where you're going, how long you're going.

And so, when I go out on a trip, all my gear, so pack, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, cooking gear, extra clothes, first aid, tent, everything weighs under five pounds typically. Holy crap. That's a lot of stuff to get under five pounds. It is. So I've been working at it for a long time. Yeah. You know, I do the same thing in dating and relationships. I try and keep my backpack light so nothing weighs me down. I don't know what that means, but that's probably why I haven't been married. So maybe that explains some things that are, I'm just badly damaged as a person, which is also true. My audience right now of 16 years is going, yeah, he's really,

it's really bad. Anyway, guys. So tell us a little bit about your upbringing. How did you accidentally start your own business? And what were some of the influences you grew up? I grew up in Southern California. That'll do it. Yeah, that'll do it. I grew up there, too, so I'm in there with you. Yeah, I grew up, you know, it was the 60s. And then, you know, having a happy life outside,

luckily before the interweb was connected, was invented. We had to go out and play and get dirty and break legs and things like that. But then- Were they your legs or other people's legs? It sounds like a mom thing. Yeah, as long as there was fun involved. Yeah, as long as there was a story to be had. Sure.

And that ended abruptly when I was in fourth grade. My parents got divorced and my mom piled us three kids two cats three dogs and six mice there's like the fucking ark yeah pretty much into a dodge van in february and drove to western massachusetts oh wow land of snow and ice so yeah that was a little bit of a shock which was more traumatic the your mom moving, or just moving to a cold climate? The climate was a shocker. Yeah. I mean, you know, we were lucky.

Life kind of went on. My mom could, you know, spend time bringing us up. And so I graduated high school, rode my bicycle back to the western end of the country. Oh, did you? 4,200 miles. Wow. And then, you know, went to school, got a degree in engineering, got a master's in business, almost died in a plane crash,

found a beautiful woman and talked her into marrying me. Still married, had some kids, built a career, retired, moved to Bend, wrote a book. For some reason, for some people, the plane crashes being in a marriage and then divorcing. So there's that. That's my divorce jokes, folks. That's all I got. They're not all good, folks. They're not all good jokes. You know, I was joking about you moving to the colder climate because I did that when I was a kid in SoCal and our teens, our parents moved us from, you know, going to the beach every other day in SoCal to Utah. And I was like, what are these things called, coats?

I don't know. What's a coat? Why is it so gosh darn cold here? And so yeah, we went through that whole journey. I still hate Utah, but for a lot of other reasons on top of that. Anyway, so how do you accidentally start your company? You've got a company, Gossamer Gear. gossamer gear my mom thought every kid should leave home knowing how to cook bake and so good for her yeah she just considered

sewing a basic life skill that everyone ought to know so when our oldest son Brian joined Boy Scouts you know all the gear was super heavy. And I thought, I can make something better. That's the problem about engineers, we always think we can make something better. So since I knew how to sew, I started sewing. And I sewed a pack and then sewed another pack. And finally about the fourth pack, I had it where I liked it and I put the plans on the internet so anyone could download it and make it for free.

But people kept asking me, I don't know how to sew. Can you make one? I'm working long hours at an engineering company. No, I can't make you one. It's not my fault if my mom didn't teach you how to sew or your mom didn't teach you how to sew. Your mom didn't teach you how to sew. But finally, I felt sorry for him. And so I thought I should get a few made to help these poor idiots out that don't know how to sew. So I got some fabric, found a guy.

Actually, it was a bunch of Cambodians in an abandoned basement of an abandoned bowling alley in Seattle. Really? And I told him, he said, minimum order is 100 packs. And I go, yeah, I only need about 25. And then people will stop bothering me. So we settled on 50 I figured they'd be in my garage for the next five or ten years but I'd eventually get rid of them and our son put together a little website and I had 86 orders before I even got my first shipment oh my gosh wow that is stumbling right into it isn't it it's accidentally yep yeah and you know

I was talking to a group of young man today yesterday in the gaming community and they were capping on you know some of the stuff they're having to learn in school and lessons they were having to learn and i and i i told them i says you know the funny thing about school is and a lot of stuff you're going to learn early in life is you don't really think you're ever going to need it, but life is long. And it's interesting how many things that we learn in life end up being maybe sometimes our saviors, maybe a moneymaker, you know, a career. You know, I told him about Steve Jobs' famous college speech that he gave where he talked about how he basically quit college, but he stayed and kept going to his typesetting class. And he was really interested in fonts

and all the stuff that surrounded that sort of area. He was just enthralled by that. When they launched the Mac, that was the big seller, was being able to write letters and use different fonts and typesetting. That was the whole reason to buy a Mac. So you could write business letters and proposals and marketing and all that stuff. And it turns out the one thing he really enjoyed in college that he was willing to learn was the thing. You just never know where life's going to take you.

Thanks, Mom, for teaching you to sew. Yeah, you just never know. And you probably, when you were young, did you sit there and go, oh, geez, mom, why that? Girls sew. Why do we need to sew? Was it task-oriented? No, I just figured it was a cool new way to create stuff. And if something was broken, you didn't have to wait for mom to get around to fixing it.

You could just grab the machine and do it yourself. You were a boomer, is that correct? You're a Gen Zer? Yeah, born in 58. You might have been on the cusp there where you're part of the Gen Xer. We had to do everything for ourselves. We had to suture our own wounds. When I was 12, I removed a spleen and sewed them back up from one of my friends.

That's what we did. I removed the spleen and fixed the soda back up from one of my friends. That's what we did. You just put the hose on them afterwards and cleaned up all the bacteria. Close enough. Yeah, we learned to do searches and turn against the Boy Scouts. Yeah, I saw a great rant the other day on where are all the broken limbs? How come there's no kids in casts anymore? When I was a kid, it was like everyone had something broken oh dude yeah it was it was like it was like you i i broke some i broke a leg just so i could fit in i was trying to keep up with the joneses you know i'm just kidding but

i think i tried but yeah it was one of those things so talk about the topic of your book the title says take less do more now this is what I say whenever anyone I'm dating tries to take my fries from me, and they should have ordered more. So it's Take Less, Order Your Own. But tell us what that title means for you, Take Less, Do More. Well, the backpacking application is, if you have a lighter pack, you can do more. You can do more miles, you can climb more peaks, you can explore greater areas if you only have three days off work before you have to go back and do your next show. So it allows you to do more by having less. You mean I can have days off on this show?

That'd be a negotiation you'd have to do with yourself. I don't know. Hey, somebody get an HR in here, damn it. I didn't know I could get days off. I'm tired of being chained to this desk anyway but that makes sense being an ultralight backpacker how what's the difference in is there a difference in weight between an ultralight backpacker and a just a normal backpacker or am i just making up jokes no there's there's people that will dive down that rabbit hole with you for sure you know know, most people, I think, consider a base pack weight of under 10 pounds to be lightweight. And then under 7 is like ultralight.

And some people call under 5 super ultralight. But, yeah. Yeah. Maybe you should do some work. You ever consider doing some work for the military? Because those rack packs are like 40 60 5 000 pounds yeah we're actually working on a i'm working on a couple of things in that area but you know they have other problems they have people shooting at them so that's yeah you gotta take that into account actually you kind of probably want 40 pounds

in the back to take those you know absorb that bullet sort of coming in on the other hand if you're only carrying 10 maybe you can hit the ground quicker and they'll miss you yeah do a little bit of that matrix dodging maybe yeah all the more reasons but yeah i know i know i've had some friends in the military and they've they've they haven't put their rack pack on me because they know i hit the ground but they'll like let me kind of feel the weight and i'm just like you do this for how long and i can't even hold the weight like that i would just crumple into a puddle if they if they held away i got good legs but my back is not that great yeah it's fun to be an old can you tease out some of the life lessons you learned that you you talk about the book maybe the best strategies

for achieving goals subtracting rather than adding or some of the other things that you talk about yeah some of the some of the lessons from the from the book that apply to to life you know one is is generosity when you have less gear when you're out there and everyone has a lot less gear you kind of rely on your fellow people more and so you're you're more willing to share and that's an important source of happiness that most people overlook is building building some generosity some intentional generosity into their lives in terms of curiosity you know it requires a lot of tinkering. When you tinker with your gear, you can figure out ways to do things better. And I'm always tinkering.

I have learned that my wife does not like to be tinkered with. Tinkered with? Yeah. My suggestions for improvement are not. I've learned after 42 years not to give her those suggestions. But yeah, in general, in life, if we, you know, it could be as simple as taking yourself less seriously. You just get a lot more out of life. Yeah, taking yourself less seriously.

I'm surprised that people, I think it's good for human nature to, you know, want to share stuff and all that good stuff. But yeah, if everyone's kind kind of light you kind of do you have to plan things out where you're like hey can you bring the milk and toast and you bring the i don't know the whatever you use when you go camping matches most of the time in the ultra light range everyone's pretty well self-contained because there's not much weight to be saved by you know you carry the 10 i carry the poles kind of thing because everyone's already super light but you do have to pay attention when you're going lightweight and i had a hike once a buddy and i were on the pacific crest trail for three or four days and and i know how much food i need because that's an area of that most people carry too much because you're just piling a bunch of food and you think i, I'm going to be hungry, and so you add more.

And I know I need 1.4 pounds a day. But somehow, I don't know, I forgot to carry the two or whatever on this particular trip, and suddenly I realized day two, wow, I do not have enough food. And so my buddy and I pooled our food and kind of split it up and got through the trip a little skinnier than we otherwise would have been. But, you know, we shared what we had. You know, it's one of those things that you gotta, you gotta, you know, learn how to be light. When I travel, I try and stay light. When I used to go to like South by Southwest, I used to always try and see how I could, you know, keep it down to as few as close as possible.

I think, I think one of the great things about being a man is you can pull that off you know you're just like i just need a change of underwear and a bar of soap i think something like that and yeah you just roll pretty much now my wife and i just gave a talk at rei here in bend and i was glad she joined me because we were talking on kind of adventure travel kind of like south by southwest would be adventure travel but we were talking on kind of adventure travel, kind of like South by Southwest would be adventure travel. But we were talking about, you know, overseas going to Europe for eight weeks. And I just carry one small bag and she carries one slightly larger bag, but still a carry on. And yeah, it's definitely harder for women because they're supposed to look good.

No one expects guys to look good. You know, it kind of takes the pressure off. Yeah. So tell us about your company that you accidentally started. It's called Gossamer Gear. Tell us about what you guys do over there. So we're looking basically to remove barriers to allow more people to enjoy the outside. And, you know, the weight of too much gear is a big thing to keep people from backpacking. So we're not geared to people like me, basically. In the early days, I just made what I wanted.

And if someone else wanted it, that was great. But that wasn't too many people. So now we make gear that's functionally equivalent to what you can walk into REI and buy, just lighter. So it'll look kind of like it and it'll perform like it, but it just will not make you carry so much weight. And then we'll be with you. We want to teach you how to lessen your pack load and walk you along and get you as light as you want to get. I'm still active in the company and tinkering. I just invented a 10 ounce tent a

couple of years ago for a bike packing trip. And whenever I come up with a new thing that I sewed up, I take it to the product team. And the first question is, okay, are there five other people besides Glenn who think this is a good idea? And oftentimes it's, yeah, probably not. But on this tent, it was a hard maybe. So we made a hundred of them and those flew off the shelf. So we had to make some more. So you just never know. You just never know.

Yeah, we used to review a lot of products, usually backpacks and different gear that way. And we had some backpacks that were sent to us that they weighed like 20 pounds just the backpack itself and you're just like this thing's a carry-on so i just carry it back when i when i when our oldest son brian got into scouts i went down to rei and said hey we're going for a weekend series what do we need and loaded us up. And my empty pack that they sold me, that I bought, weighed seven and a half pounds. And my pack I use today weighs eight ounces.

Oh, wow. So that's a big, big, big difference. Makes all the difference in the world. Now, we were joking before the show, you guys have a product called the crotch pot. We can have some fun with that. Tell us what the crotch pot is. The crotch pot is, you know, typically for backpackers, the traditional backpackers, you've got a canister stove and a pot and, you know, plate and bowl and all that kind of stuff. And that adds up pretty quickly.

So many ultralight hikers, you know, setting fastest known times or something like that, just go cold soak. You know, just soak something in a plastic bag and eat it cold Wow and so I thought maybe there's a something in the middle you know wouldn't be cold but you can find the middle body heat definitely in the middle is a crotch product yeah you know if you see you see those infrared images of the body human body you know they're like red and white and green and blue i mean the hottest area is always the crotch you know if you're like shivering in your sleeping bag at night and your hands are cold where do you put them you know you put them in

your crotch because that's warm so i thought maybe we could use this as a way to heat your dinner and so you can i guess inside it's fairly clean and protected from the outside junk yeah it's it's a pouch and then you know we recommend putting your food inside a plastic bag before you put it in the pouch okay it's a lot a lot less messy that way one of the early testing i just took a zploc and kind of flipped the top over, put it in my pants. And when I pulled it out, it broke and I almost ended up wearing my dinner, literally. Oh, that's not very good. No. Unless your dinner is kind of hot, but I don't know what that means. But this is hilarious. And imagine if people are climbing and walking, you know,

for hours at a time, you you know that whole area gets pretty warm up i know when i go to the gym that's you know that's the area that gets all hot from all the legs and arms and everything else but yeah it's like a central heater for me yeah so you're you're a perfect customer for the crotch pot definitely i'm just going to use it sitting around the house i'll just sit here on my podcast and just be eating chips and salsa as people are talking on the show. People are going, what are you doing? I'm just eating out of the crotch pot. Yeah, it's pretty funny. It just clips to the, I guess, the belt loops on the front of your pants, drops down there in the junk zone. You said that some women were using it in their bras? Yes, depending on women's size and

spacing and things like that. We have had reports of women using them in their bras. There was some talk of if you wanted a side dish, you could maybe hang it in your armpit. And we had big plans. I had big plans early on about, you know, visions of a crotch pot recipe of the month club and, you know, a Facebook group. But those really haven't gotten off the ground, so to speak. They haven't gotten off the ground yet. There's still time, though. Yeah.

There's still time. I'm just going to, you know, I do a lot of work here at the desk, sitting, and we do about two or three episodes a day of podcast interviews. You know, there's a lot of sitting. And so I could just be sitting here cooking a steak right now and, you know, getting more things done on a daily basis than, you know,

going and cooking in a pan. Like, why bother? You know, that's the office workers. That's something we haven't, that's a whole new market there. Hey, you know, I can make it so my employees don't have to go to lunch anymore. I'll be like, nope, we're banning lunch.

You're gonna have to work through lunch. If you want to eat something, just put your crotch pot on and cook whatever you want and eat at your desk. I think maybe we need a collab, a co-branded like the Chris Voss crotch pot. The Chris Voss crotch pot. It comes with the logo on it. I don't know. People that know me and my crotch might think it's up to something else.

So you've got a lot of cool products. Let's get a plug in. I don't want people coming away going, he just does one product called the crotch pot. What else do you have over there at the shop? We've got the new tent that I came up with, the 10-ounce tent that I needed for my bikepacking trip, the Whisper. That's there there we sell a wide variety of backpacks for different needs and we just came out with a pretty revolutionary revolutionary new swivel system so the the waist belt can like pivot so the whole pack doesn't

shake but you get solid load transfer so oh wow yeah we also have goodies it looks like it's got some oh there's some hip i'm looking at the mariposa 60 backpack looks like it's quite quite the support for your back and some foam and and then it's got side pockets i've never seen i don't think i've ever seen side pockets on the sides of the belt that goes around maybe i have i don't know yeah that's super handy for you know your phone or snacks or things like that. Yeah. Or where you keep your crotch pot food waiting to get cooked and stuff. Yeah.

Yeah, I think you should start that Facebook group. I think you should just launch it and just run with it, man. Make it a fad. Sometimes these trends, you've got to kind of force them a little bit. Could be fun. you know, make it a fad. You know, sometimes these trends, you got to kind of force them a little bit. I mean, if they made, if Pet Rock was a big splash, I mean, surely the crotch pot could be bigger, right? Yeah. I could use it during this winter, you know, when things are cold too. You just put it down there and help everything, whatever. I've got nothing. So I had a joke and I lost it somewhere on the crotch pot and I'm trying to find it in my head and I can't find it. It'll come back.

It'll probably, yeah. What else is there to know that we haven't maybe talked about what you're doing in costume or gear or with your book you know with the with the book there's all sorts of stories from life you know life lessons stories from my bike packing trip in 1976 and you know how that spurred practice of generosity in my life some of the things that that are most seem to be resonating with people in the book are two things actually watching the story you tell yourself about events and then the second one is creating being more intentional about generosity in your life ah and why is it important to be more generous and generosity? I don't know if you saw the book, Infectious Generosity by Chris Anderson, the head of

TED Talks. Anyway, it's a great book. I recommend it. And what they showed is that the happiness from being generous is roughly equivalent to the happiness of a doubling of salary. Oh, wow. So think how happy you'd be if your salary doubled. And think how happy you'd be if you gave me half of it.

But the happiness from being generous doesn't fade like the happiness from an increase in salary does. I think most people want to be generous, but you find your neighbor needs a new transmission and doesn't have any money, but your kid needs braces, so you don't really have a way to help out. So what we did many, many years ago, we started a separate checking account, and we put a set amount of all income into that account. And we started small and now it's gotten to a significant portion of our income. But that way, when we find out about needs, needs cross our paths, we have money to address those. And it doesn't come out of our budget because it's already out of our budget. That's pretty cool. You've got the backup there to do it and be involved in it.

That works out pretty well. Yeah. Like with COVID, our favorite men's group that hated a favorite coffee shop, and of course they closed down and it's tough to make money in a coffee shop, I'm sure. So I'm able to write a thousand dollar check and leave it in the tip jar. It doesn't make any difference to me because it's not in my budget. It's already money that's set aside to help other people. My wife had a friend whose son made some bad choices and ended up in prison and he died in prison. She didn't have money for a proper funeral. We're able to write a check for things like that. That's awesome. That's awesome. Thinking about the big picture there, taking care of other people is definitely something everybody needs to do and get some love there.

So as we go out, give people a final pitch on where they can get to know you better, websites to go to, and where to pick the book. Probably the best bet is my website, glennvanpesky.com. There's information on the book there, which I will mention just won a New York City Big Books Award as the winner in the personal growth category. So I feel like a second grader. I got all sorts of gold stickers I can stick on the covers now. Pretty excited. But I've got videos there. I've got gear lists.

If you're wondering what a five-pound base pack weight looks like, trip reports, press articles, you can sign up for my newsletter, check out past blogs, all sorts of good stuff. Awesome sauce, awesome sauce. It's been fun to have you on the show. Thank you very much for coming on. We really appreciate it, Glenn. Thanks for having me. And I'm gratified that now you know about the crotch pot, which you didn't before.

Order one today. Wherever crotches are available. Get me your mailing address and I will send you one. Sounds good. Order one today. Wherever crotches are available. Get me your mailing address and I will send you one. Sounds good. I'll send you one over on the emails. So thank you very much, Glenn, for coming on the show. Thanks for tuning in.

Order the book where refined books are sold. Take less, do more. Surprising life lessons in generosity, gratitude, and curiosity from an ultralight backpacker. Out April 16, 2024. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.