The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 573: Brent Underwood (Owner of Cerro Gordo) - Finding Your Purpose, Long Term Thinking, Seeking Awe, Making Your Mark, & Living In A Ghost Town

Episode Date: March 17, 2024

Read our book, The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/3uWB1pQ Full Show Notes at www.LearningLeader.com Notes: "If it can't be grown, it must be mined. It's a truth of human progress." The story of Burro Schmidt… He spent 38 years hand-digging a tunnel through a ½ mile of solid granite even though 19 years in, they built a road that made his tunnel obsolete. But he found his purpose and wanted to finish the job. Some may think that's crazy, but I admire people like that. Be Your Own Light - "I don't look for hope. I look for evidence." Seek Awe - Understand your smallness in the world and how it's all interconnected. Read the "Thank You Project" by AJ Jacobs. "We love to see people who have found their purpose." There are long-term consequences of short-term thinking. Robert Greene's advice to Brent - Combine your unique and different skill sets to find your purpose. Brent dedicated his book to his parents, Liz and Bill, and sister Laura. I appreciate Brent's outlook on life and permitting yourself to live a life of adventure and to think BIG. You can still wisely do this. Brent still works a day job with the Daily Stoic but is also taking a big swing at the same time. This is an option that is available for most of us. It's on us to take action and do it. I've known Brent for about a decade. In his previous role with Brass Check (that's Ryan Holiday's marketing company), one of his jobs was to get authors on podcasts. And I love how precise Brent was in his outreach. He never sent me an author unless he had done the work ahead of time to ensure they were a good fit for my show. I appreciate the care he puts into his work and has for a long time. "When I think back 4 years, before Cerro Gordo, life was pretty stable. I had a good job, a solid apartment, and friends. It felt like a life that I could have floated through forever. I just kept feeling like I was missing out on...something. Something to grab my attention and not let go. To avoid, as Thoreau said, a life of "quiet desperation." ⁣A lot has changed since then. Life certainly isn't comfortable. There were 3 feet of snow to shovel before I could get to the outhouse this morning. There have been fires, floods, and earthquakes. I've lost too much weight, friends, partners, money. A lot more. I wouldn't change a thing. I feel fulfilled in a way I never knew was possible. Building something real that I care about. Connected to my work, the world, the past. Meeting so many passionate people who care deeply about the same things. ⁣" Get To Work – JP Morgan said every man has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason… The siren song of Cerro Gordo, a desolate ghost town perched high above Death Valley, has seduced thousands since the 1800s, but few fell harder for it than Brent Underwood, who moved there in March of 2020, only to be immediately snowed in and trapped for weeks. It had once been the largest silver mine in California. Over $500 million worth of ore was pulled from the miles of tunnels below the town. Butch Cassidy, Mark Twain, and other infamous characters of the American West were rumored to have stayed there. Newspapers reported a murder a week. But that was over 150 years ago. Brent Underwood bet his life savings—and his life—on this majestic, hardscrabble town that had broken its fair share of ambitious men and women. What followed were fires, floods, earthquakes, and perhaps strangest, fame. Ghost Town Living tells the story of a man against the elements, a forgotten historic place against the modern world, and a dream against all odds—one that has captured millions of followers around the world. After graduating from Columbia University, Brent worked briefly for an investment bank in New York City. After one month, he quit and backpacked across Central and South America. Upon returning to New York, he founded a hostel in Brooklyn. In December 2014 Brent founded HK Austin, a hostel in Austin, Texas after staying in 150 hostels across 30 countries. For 2015, HK Austin was the highest-rated hostel in the United States. "I'm not going to call it a ghost town anymore. I'm going to call it home."

We all kind of dream of a life a little less ordinary. If it can't be grown, it must be mine. A western town where I could mix hospitality, marketing, and the passion for my childhood, this desire to give our all to something. There's like a lineage of people that are boldly living, going all in and leaning into to life, live that life of adventure a little bit more, to take those steps boldly into finding their passion. I want to see Serral Gortle come back to life.

It's called a ghost town. But it's not going to be called that anymore. What are you going to call it? I just like to call it home. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk through 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday.

You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right, you'll also receive the first two chapters of my new book, The Score That Matters for free if you text Hawk to 66866. Now, on to tonight's featured leader. Brent Underwood is the owner of Cerro Gordo, an original Boomtown Silver Mine, established in 1865. He is also the creator of Ghost Town Living, where he chronicle, his adventures on YouTube. Brent currently lives on the mountain above Death Valley with no

running water, seven cats, six goats, and at least one ghost. He's the author of the new book called Ghost Town Living, Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley. During this conversation we discuss the story of Burrough Schmidt and why he spent 38 years hand-digging a tunnel through a half mile of solid granite and what lessons we can draw from him. Then Brent shares why he decided to leave his comfortable living situation in Austin, Texas, and live full time in a ghost town on a mountain above Death Valley. Then we went deep on how to find your purpose and what it means to live out that purpose every single day. Ladies and gentlemen, this one is so good.

Please enjoy my conversation with Brent Underwood. Brent, man, it's awesome to have you here on The Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Absolutely. Thanks for having, man. This is going to be fun. We were talking before that. Years ago, you were kind of the guy behind the guy. And now writing this book and going to live in a ghost town, which we'll get to later that it's been renamed by you, which I like the new name of your ghost town. But now you're not really the guy behind the guy anymore. How does it feel to be more of a main character in the story? Yeah, it's new. I guess it's the best way to describe it. Like you said, for my whole career, I was always kind of the guy behind the guy helping promote different things. And so it takes

some vulnerability. You know, I think that it's definitely, it's not comfortable by any means. I think very early on, I've purposely tried to put a little bit more me into the videos and stuff than I'd probably be comfortable doing. So it's definitely taken an adjustment. But I enjoy it. You know, I think that people are enjoying it. It's fun to have an outlet for creativity that I don't know that had before. And so it's been an amazing ride. I've really enjoyed it. Well, it's funny. I knew anytime I got an email from Brent Underwood, it was going to be somebody that I wanted to talk to. It was like your batting average was a thousand. And that is so rare because usually the people's batting average when they send you a potential guest, it's like

one out of 20. And yours, I think it was like, hey, hey, Brent, automatic. Let's just set it up. And I really appreciate that. I miss that. We don't have that anymore. But I fully understand why. Yeah, that was fun. I felt really fortunate. I've been able to work with just some amazing people, you know, all kind of stemming from working with Ryan Holiday back in the day. And so it was fun kind of like going back through our emails and seeing how many cool people that we've like put in touch with each other. And then now to be kind of on the other side of it has been, I don't know. It's a lot of fun. It's wild, man. So I remember hearing about the story of this place called Sarah Gordo, which was called a ghost town and hearing about some of the guys that have been on my podcast. and others that I've spoken with at certain events like Jason Gaynard's events, Mastermind Talks, that people are going to invest in this place and that you were kind of the leader of all of this. Can you share more about the origin story of this place where you currently are, by the way, without central heating, so you're bundled up because it's cold?

But can you share more about the origin of that and then maybe a little bit about why you wanted to be the lead man on it? Yeah. So at the time I was living in Austin, Texas, and I was running kind of like a bed and breakfast. It was in a Victorian mansion that was from the 1890s as well. So I really enjoyed the idea of history and hospitality. I think that staying in somewhere where you can get a little feel for the town more than like a white box marriott or something is very interesting. And so as I was looking for other projects, a friend of mine text me a link and it was like,

buy your own town for under a million bucks. Just some great headline, you know, that I was just immediately enthralled in. and I read about it and I didn't have nearly the money to buy it. It was listed for like $950,000 or something like that. And so I called my friends, you know, as you do. I was like, hey, you want to invest in a ghost town? If they start asking too many questions, hang up just a click, you know, there wasn't a lot of time for a lot of paperwork or anything.

And so, yeah, I was lucky enough to have worked a lot of, you know, successful people over the years. And so wrangled a few of them to go into this crazy dream with me. And I think early on, you know, the idea was primarily hospitality. The idea is we were going to get some cabin set up, you know, some camping and this would be a great hospitality thing, similar to what I was doing in Austin, just a little larger. And then obviously for myself, you know, being somebody that came from a marketing background and storytelling, it just seemed like this town was so rich in history and so rich in like threads to pull on

over the years that I just thought it could be a really interesting adventure. And, you know, early on that the idea or the business man plan at least was never to have the content arm of it. It's interesting even working in that space. We never saw it as a a place where somebody would come and set up a YouTube or something like that. That was a very much a function of the pandemic. When people started to socially distance, where are you going to go, I came out here with a camera and started making videos. Wow. And then you moved there, right, to live there. So March 2020, obviously a wild time in a lot of our lives. It's been four years now. We remember that kind of flipped our worlds upside down and you decide to move to the ghost town

and live there. What was your thought process going on at that time? The pandemic at all of us, you know, in our unique ways. And I think that everybody was aware that it was going to be an interesting time one way or the other. And so my bed and breakfast, I mentioned in Austin got shut down because of the pandemic. You couldn't have hospitality destinations open. And so what better place to socially distance and get away from it all, you know, than a town that's literally in the middle of nowhere. And I think beyond that, there was also just that desire for adventure. I think that living in Austin was very at the time comfortable in a way that I wasn't comfortable with, meaning, you know, I knew what most days were going to hold and the idea of some grand adventure,

you know, some life of adventure in an abandoned town just seemed very appealing. But the goal is never to live there full time. I thought, hey, I'd come out here for a month. I'd be like, well, that was a crazy one month of my life. Go back to Austin, have my regular life back, you know, and think back to the time I lived in the ghost town during the middle of the pandemic. But now, yeah, we're coming up on a three-year anniversary. of both the pandemic and might move out here. And so it's crazy.

When I think about it like that, that's like high school, you know, or that's college. That's four years, which is, I don't know, the life has just been kind of turned on its head since then. What made you want to stay? I think of a connection to the project that I hadn't felt with any other project. I think I was working in a job that I enjoyed a lot. I had the hospitality thing going. I was doing the marketing with a lot of different authors that I respected a lot. But nothing was grabbing my attention and just holding me there.

You know, nothing was, you know, now I thought that there was something more out there. You know, there's something could kind of like connect deeper. And the more I got here, I started researching the history and the time here. And I just felt like, oh, like, this is important, you know, and I kind of decided in my head, like, this is what I want to do. And so over that time, I started, you know, understanding the property more, which developed my residence with it more and just really committing myself that this is going to be the project. I think there's a lot of comfort and comfort and.

commitment, if we put it that way. For the long time, I was always looking at what's going to be the next project. What's going to be the next thing after this, the next thing after this? And I think that's like very prevalent, at least with my friends, where it's, hey, what am I doing after this? It's always kind of what's next, what's next. It's always, and it can be exhausting, at least for me, you know, for the first 10 years of my life, I was always, no matter how good a project was going, I was thinking, what's the next project going to be? But this is a project that I finally feel like I could be working out for the rest of my life. And I think that there's a lot of comfort and like calmness in that. And once I kind of realized that, I didn't really want to

go anywhere else. I kind of wanted to stay here and see that that dream through, I guess. Wow. So maybe go back to 2020 and then you could progress through to today. But what's like a typical day? Are other people with you? Are you by yourself a lot? What are you doing? I'm just fascinated to wonder what you do each day. Yeah, it transitioned during the time. I guess to set a little bit more context. The town's about three and a half hours outside of Los Angeles. It's about three and a hour of Las Vegas. It's about 400 acres in total. And when people think ghost towns, typically they think, you know, a flat desert and something like that, we're actually in the mountains. I'm up at 8,500 feet where I am right now. So it's the high desert. We don't have any trees, but it's very barren.

But it's a town that hasn't had running water, even when it was a boom town back in the day. You know, in its heyday, this town had 4,000 residents at it, which is crazy to think about. and they pulled something like $500 million with a silver out of the hills. But it's a very harsh place. It's a very, like, difficult existence. And so when I first moved up here, there was no running water. There was no internet at all. There was barely Wi-Fi or there was barely cell phone service.

And so it was a very primitive living. It was kind of like I would describe it as camping indoors. And so that first, when I first arrived, you know, the first day I came, I didn't even make it all the way into town. My truck got stuck about a quarter mile before town in the snow. I walked into town and I think I just immediately had that adventure I was looking for. I was like, oh, this is like hard. And so the first six months, mostly alone, friends would come and visit often.

So I'd have friends coming and going when they could. But it was very like alone. But it was okay with that because I think during the pandemic, I eased my mind thinking my friends back in Austin aren't hanging out with each other anyways. And so the loneliness factor could kind of be shelved for a little bit. I was like, oh, I'm not that lonely because like nobody's really hanging out with anybody. Then I started figuring things out like how to get internet. up here, which originally was an AT&T hot spot. We used that to kind of like do what I could.

So the days, though, typically it would be like, wake up, look around the property. There's about 25 abandoned buildings here that are always in some type of state of disrepair. So they always need fixing, whether that's patching a roof, fixing a deck, doing this type of stuff. So that would be the first thing I would do in the day. After that, I would go back in. And I still work my job with Ryan. So I still do the marketing stuff. We primarily do daily stoic now. That's kind of the main focus of it all. And so I would check in if I could, if the internet was working that day and I was so fortunate, I'd check in on the day job for a while and then just go out and explore a little bit, whether that's going down into the mines, because there's 30 miles of mines underneath the

town. And I feel like there's a lot of history down there. And so I kind of sandwiched between physical labor, like touching things, building things with a hand, then kind of like online work and then back into the kind of physical work. And I found that to be a really nice balance for my days. So what's it like now that years have gone by. You've built some things up. I've seen the hotel that you're building. It looks like it's taken shape. You got to be proud of that because I know there's been some issues along the way. But what's it like for you today? Yeah, four years later, it's a lot more comfortable. I have running water. We truck it up on trucks, but I put in a storage shanks by running water. I have internet that works pretty well that we've developed. So these days,

we also get a lot of people that want to come up and help. And so it's not very much alone time at all anymore. We either have contractors here, volunteers here that are helping, you know, clean up the place and stuff like that. So it's typically waking up, checking in with a team that's up here. Right now, there's probably two other people up here, but it fluctuates between one and four full-time people up here. So it's kind of checking in with the team, what we're going to work on that day. Today we're working on putting a plow on one of the trucks for snow, because we got a lot of snow and we have a storm coming tomorrow that I need to be able to get off the mountain. And so now it's wake up, check in with a team, check at the different building

projects that I'm not really doing the projects myself anymore. It's more just managing the people that are. Coming back in, checking in on still the day job that I do. And then ideally towards the end of the night, filming videos. I put out a lot of stuff these days on YouTube and other places. So it's filming whatever I need to film and trying to get into that creative headspace towards the end of the day. It sounds expensive, though, as far as building stuff is expensive, right? And you've got to get people to come up there. Like, how are you funding all this? This is from the investors or how does it work? No. So it's all primarily. based upon, I'd say, three things right now. Number one is YouTube. You know, it's a brand integration.

So let's say this week is sponsored by X, Y, or Z. So that pays a lot of the bills, especially when a channel can get to scale. Merchandise. You know, we sell T-shirts. We sell different things like that, which is always helpful. And then occasionally we'll be able to do location fees. So let's say that the Discovery channel wants to shoot a ghost hunting video in an abandoned town. So they'll pay us, you know, X amount to come up and shoot for three days. And so I would say a lot of it from brand, probably like, 80%, 20% from the rest. And then if we come up short every month, I have to chip in from the day job. I still work that job to supplement the kind of funds when we need to. And my hope is right now we are about to finish the hotel. I mean, about to is relative. But hopefully this year we finish the hotel. And I hope that once that hospitality element comes online, then the property will stabilize itself

where I'm not having to chip in a little bit of money out of my day job every month. And that's kind of the current financial status of it all. Interesting. So let's say the workers in the hotel, will they live there or will they live down below and drive up? How will that work? Yeah, probably live here because the road to get here, the final road to arrive is an eight-mile dirt road that increases a mile in elevation to get here. So it's a pretty gnarly road.

It's got like steep cliffs. And so we're building a little bit of like employee housing on the backside of the property because there's so much property where the property's almost split in half where there's a saddle in the middle of the property. And on the backside is 200 acres that overlook Death Valley National Park. And so we're building some kind of employee housing back there where they can have their separation from the main town so people aren't bothering them the whole time. I mean, it would definitely take a very unique, you know, person to be the person that's

working up in this town. But I think it's appealing to the right to the right demographic, you know. Getting into the book, I sent you note earlier today. Dude, this thing reads like a novel. Did you write this yourself or did you have a novelist help you? And it's really cool that you, obviously we all have editors, but this is all you. That's why I really, enjoyed reading the book because it's cool that it's true. And there's these awesome historical references and stories, but it does feel like a novel. And I say that that is obviously a huge compliment to you for writing it. But let's start with one of the stories that really captured me about this guy named William Burrough Schmidt. Okay. And this guy spent almost four decades,

40 years hand digging a tunnel through solid granite. This sounds insane. Can you share more about the story of this guy, Burrough Schmidt? Yeah. For me, he's become like a role model up here. And I think that he's just amazing. He has a mine that's just south of the town that I live in. And basically, all of his siblings had pneumonia back on the East Coast. And so doctors, as I did in the early 1800s were like, you need to move somewhere dry or else you're going to die as well. And so he moved out into the desert and he started mining gold. And for some reason, he would typically mine have to go around this mountain. And one day he just got upset with having to take his gold ore around this mountain. So he decided to kind of just go directly through the mountain. And so he

started just hand chipping at the mountain, you know, with a pickaxe and a bucket. And he would just slowly start working his way into this mountain by hand, which is just insane. We're talking about granite, like the hardest rock in the world. And so he started on this thing. And he started on this thing. He got 19 years into it. So like imagine two decades, just like 20 years of your life, just every day waking up and chipping it rock. And then they built a road basically around the mountain to make his whole tunnel useless, which I think is like an interesting perspective. And so he was like, I'm not stopping. I've gotten this far. And so he spent another 20 years chipping through this mountain to spend again, 39 years cutting his way through this mountain

to the other side. And what I think is interesting is like when he got done, he didn't ever put any of his oar through the mountain. He just kind of went back to his cabin, packed up his stuff and left. And so kind of the question of why is something that's very hotly debated, at least in this part of the desert. And so I think that for me, I think that he found his purpose. He found something that gave him meaning. And I think that you're able to like prescribe meaning to what you want. And many people would dismiss this as like a folly, something that's like impressive, but a waste of time, which I just don't really, I don't agree with that as someone who's up in the middle of nowhere we're trying to rebuild a town.

And so I walk through that. And I think that to myself, this is interesting. This is something that like a man did this by himself and it's still surviving 150 years later. And it just gives me that comfort in that commitment and that like permanence of like physical things that I think working online my whole life, I never could touch anything that I was working on. It was very intangible. It was always very out there.

And so yeah, a lot of people dismissed Barrow Schmidt back in the day. It's just this crazy guy that dug a tunnel. But here we are 120. 20 years later, still talking about him, still drawing inspiration from him. I think that sometimes these projects can be a little bit crazy, but to the right person, they can inspire the people to take that first bold step into some crazy project. And I think for me, living a very comfortable life in Austin to move into the middle of nowhere and basically spend all of my money trying to bring back a dead town, seems very crazy. But I think that for the right demographic, the right person,

I hope anyways, that they draw the inspiration that they want or the permission to go after their crazy project. And I feel that for Burrough Schmidt, it was comforting to see, hey, while in his moment, it seems crazy. This isn't the most useful thing maybe, but it's a testament to somebody's determination and what one man can do. And I use that to get me through the late nights here at Saragordo. And it's about finishing things that you start. I know you've read about that in your book. And I think that's inspiring that. He obviously chose a very hard project to start. halfway through, there was not necessarily a reason to keep going because of the road, thus not needing his tunnel.

But as you said, having the purpose of finishing what I started is important. And let's relate it back to you now, Brent, with purpose. Because I think I've had some really interesting conversation on this podcast over the past few weeks. Not all of them have been released yet. And one of the core topics that seems to come up, especially with people who've made a lot of money recently. is that on your purpose because money can't buy that. It's something that I think we need.

If we don't have it, I think it can be painful and hard and it's worth doing the work to understand what your purpose is and why you wake up to get after it each day. So I'm curious, what is your purpose? Yeah, at this point, I've come upon the purpose of bringing this town back to life to preserve it for future generations so they can draw the inspiration from it in a way that I do, learn the history, enjoy the natural beauty. And I think for the longest time, I was sitting in Austin in a very comfortable life, waiting for purpose to find me almost. And I think that a lot of my friends were doing the same. And I got up here after a while, I came to the realization that you have to decide your purpose, you know, and I think that like,

when you decide that, then everything just becomes more meaningful, even the day-to-day activities. Like, when I toil away for eight hours in the backcode digging dirt, it's not the best use of my time, but I can see how it fits into my purpose. And so I think that eventually it's again, the commitment thing where it's not going to be an abandoned mining town for everybody. I'm not saying that we should go buy a town, but you should think about what excites you and decide eventually. This is what I'm going to give my all to.

A lot of my friends at least are wait, wait, wait, what is my purpose? What is my purpose? Helping it comes to them. But I feel like the moment you kind of figure it out and decide and commit, then everything just becomes a lot more enjoyable. Like I said, even to Borough Schmidt, to go back to his talk story,

I can't imagine that the work itself was terribly physically enjoyable. He was chipping away at rock every day. But I imagine in his mind he wanted to see something through like me. I want to see Seragoro gore come back to life. And it's been hard. We've had earthquakes. We have fires. We've had floods.

We've had everything that every rational. If I looked at Serogoto from any perspective financially, you know, psychologically, physically, like even staying healthy up here, it would be a wiser move to pack up and leave by many means. but I want to finish why I started. It gives me purpose. It gives me meaning. It gives me satisfaction that I never knew when I was working just in digital marketing

in Austin. And I think that's been a very beautiful thing to find here. And I think that one of the reasons probably why the videos that I make or anything like that resonate is because we love to see people that have found that. I think we're drawn to people that have found that and broadcast that in a very real way. And I do think that that's probably the main reason that the stuff that I've been able to put up has resonated with. with so many people is just because I think in real time, people were able to watch somebody

find their purpose over the past four years and just go all in on it. And that's a very unique thing. And I think that we're drawn to that. And so if you could find that, no matter what it's like, I watch a guy on TikTok, for instance, that just carves marble. And I do not care about marble at all. But this guy loves marble. And he's all in on just like carving marble. And you can see it in his eyes and the way he's like excited about whatever he's doing. And so I watch it. And I think that's kind of a similar thing with the town. 100% agree with purpose.

Let's say somebody's like mid-30s, married, kids, house, mortgage, car payments, you know, the whole deal. Good job. Don't love it. Okay? You know people like this. We all know people like this. Somebody listening is this exact person.

Right? So they have these set responsibilities that are the most important things in the world, right? family and they got to take care of them both at the be there financially all of it but they hear your story they're inspired and they're a little jealous and maybe envious even though you got hard living up there man at live i've seen the videos that it's tough but still a guy who's found his purpose and is aggressively getting after each day i love it you're 100% right i think that's why we watch and we want to just see where you're at the next day the next day however that person who's doing probably similar how you were in Austin, but they have a few more responsibilities

than you had. And they go, God, Brent, I want to find my purpose. I have this decent job that I don't hate, but I don't love. And I do it every day. It pays the bills and lets us go on a couple of vacations a year, which are nice. But that's kind of it. What about for that person? I know this is, I'm putting you in a tough position, but I love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or advice you'd give to that person. I think a couple things just for to get into it, I know that I'm in a very fortunate position to be able to pack up and move to the town. I don't think that's doable for everyone. But I think a big part of the story that I try not to get lost is like, I did keep my day job, you know. I think that the idea of, you know, I'm going to quit everything and go into my passion

is not one that's very prudent. I do think that like keeping that safety net there is very important. I still work at four years later, even after Serra Gordo is doing quite well. I keep that. But I think that, like, for me, what it came down to was thinking about what got me excited as a kid. It's because sometimes you could see basic. But when I was a kid, my grandfather lived with us and he would watch the show Gunsmoke just on repeat. He had dementia. So he wouldn't remember what he watched. So he just watched the same episode of Gunsmoke over and over and over and the American West and

the allure of these guys that were like shooting and having problems to solve and all this type of stuff. And I remember when I saw the listing for Serra Gordo, just all those memories came flooding back. And I was like, oh, yeah. I used to love Western stuff. I used to love building things with my hands with my dad and things like that. And it just sparked a memory within me. And then Robert Green, we both know, talks a lot about mastery and how mastery is when you're able to combine a bunch of different unique skill sets into your own one that nobody else can do.

And for me, I started thinking about what am I good at now. I went to school for real estate and finance. That's actually what my degree was in. But then I quickly transitioned into marketing. And then I was doing hospitality and the idea of a Western town where I could Nick's hospitality, marketing, and this kind of passion for my childhood just seemed like a very unique thing. And I think once you get that, it's diving in. And I know that seems very basic but I didn't have the residence of Cerro Gordo until I researched the history here and

understood what was around me. And I think for somebody that's in their own city, this isn't necessarily the exact way of purpose. Let's say you're walked by a park every single day. When you walk by that park for 30 years, but one day you decide to go home and you're like, you know what, I'm going to look up the history of that park. And you spend five minutes discovering the history. you're that park. The next time you walk by that park, that park's going to mean way more to you. You're going to have resonance. It's going to become like from black and white. It's going to become color to you because you now understand the context of that park and you, I feel a deeper connection to it. And so, knowing you go a little bit below surface level on any of the projects,

I think you can find what grabs and grips your attention. And so maybe if you're out there, keep the job. I'm not saying nobody should jump everything and get into something. But think about what excites you, know, what are things and try to scratch a little bit deeper under the surface of maybe things that you're like touching every day but aren't fully committing to, I think that's kind of a way to walk around it and figure out what you might be passionate about. Side hustles and or hobbies I think are so important. Austin Cleon, I know you know well, another guy from Austin. He's like, you don't have to sell it on Etsy, you know. Sometimes the passion, the side hustle doesn't need to be there financially, but it's something

you're deeply passionate about that you think about. I know a friend of mine who owns a business and it does really well. But he loves building stuff, like hands, sawing the wood, painting it, all like stuff. I'm not very good at that, but it's amazing. He sent me some of it. And he built these new stairs for his, from his garage to get into his house. And he's so proud of these stairs. Send me pictures of them. They look beautiful, but it's the meaning behind it. And I was like added on different small parts of his house. And I think that joy and that passion that he takes to that and makes him a better leader at his place of work because like I makes him alive. I'm a builder.

I build stuff. I'm attracted to people like that, that you could see that they are out there searching and then they find something and they just go after it with everything they have. Yeah, absolutely. It's like it's a light that gives off light that can ignite other lights. And for me, even circling all the way to Barrow Schmidt, like he was dedicated. Like it gets me fired up just thinking about him. And when I think about him and I think that there's like almost a lineage.

of these people that are just all in on whatever they're doing. And they, knowingly or not, I don't think Barrow Schmidt set out to inspire people by digging his whole. He just knew that he wanted to finish this thing. He set out to, but he did inspire people. And so I think there's like a lineage of people that are like, they're boldly living is the way I would think about it. There's like going all in and like leaning into life. And I think that those people just get people fired up.

And whether it was you said your friend who builds the stairs or Barrow Schmidt or anything like that, it's just exciting to be around those people and exciting to hear them like talk about what they like. In chapter two, J.P. Morgan said, every man has two reasons for doing anything. A good reason and the real reason. And I know we've hit on some of this, but when you think about a good reason and the real reason for you going there and now staying there, what was the good reason and what's the real reason?

Yeah, I think the good reason that I would tell people is we had a caretaker looking at for the town and he had to go home to be with his wife. I think the real reason is that I always... wasn't fully satisfied with what I was doing. I wanted to know what I was actually made of. You know, I knew that we all kind of dream of a life a little less ordinary, I think, and I was very much stuck in that where I feel like there had to have more and like, what am I actually made of? I think that's why we're drawn to things like Navy SEALs, like tough motor races. There's like this desire to give our all to something. And in today's

day and age, it just really captures people as well. And so for me, I was like, I live in a really nice apartment in a nice city. Is this really all I can do? And so I wanted to kind of test myself. So I think the real reason was to prove something to myself. But the reason I told everybody is that I need to fill in for the caretaker. What are the long-term consequences of short-term thinking? Yeah. When you do get that commitment and you do kind of feel that you can be working at a project forever, you start to think about your projects in longer timelines. When I'm building a building like, I keep looking at the window because I'm looking at the American hotel. And when think about that. I'm not thinking about, oh, let's get this finished so I can sell it and move

on an next next project. I'm thinking about 100 years from now with the orientation the way the deck is, like how will that impact the stay of the people that are here? And that takes some non-compromising. So for instance, it is cheaper probably to build the deck on the hotel in one specific way, and it would probably be totally fine to the people. But as I'm thinking about it in long-term consequences, I try to think about like everything, not what just will be good for my lifetime, but it will be good for the lifetime beyond that. And I think what strikes me the most here is beyond the hotel, if I look beyond the hotel,

there's the shadow of what was once a lake called Owens Lake. And Owens Lake is where Los Angeles gets its drinking water. I would say 95% of Los Angeles do not know where the drinking water comes from. And it comes from a lake out here that is once a compound time called Owens Lake. And so basically what happens is the weather comes off the ocean. It hits the Sierra Nevada, which is right out my window. it dumps all the water. The water goes into a river called Owens River. Owens River goes into Owens Lake. And so as Los Angeles was developing quicker, William Mahaland, who most things in Los Angeles

are named after these days, came out into the desert. He saw the lake that I'm not looking at. And he said, oh, there's our drinking water. And he constructed a aqueduct all the way back into Los Angeles to give them their drinking water. But by doing so, you know, Los Angeles was able to thrive, but the valley out here died in a lot of ways. It became the largest single producer of dust in the United States. It's still an area of the country where Los Angeles has to spend, I think it's close to a billion dollars a year trying to control the dust. And it really devastated the entire area in every way, like economically, spiritually, geographically out here. And so I live in the shadow of that. I look at Owens Lake every single day.

And so I try to think about while William Olin has celebrated and he's the reason that Los Angeles was able to become what it became. There are long-term consequences of that that I don't think that he was necessarily that thinking through. And so with everything out here, I try to think about what are the consequences, not just immediately, but again, generations from now and every project that we do. I think all leaders would, it would be beneficial to think that way, especially I just think playing the long game, this is a little bit of a tweak on what you're talking about, but playing the long game, building or at least attempting to build lifelong, mutually beneficial relationships, transformational relationships is so much more fulfilling

than a life full of a series of transactions. And I just sensed that from you that and ever since we started working together many years ago, it just never felt transactional. It always felt like this is just a good guy who actually vets people and cares about both them and me versus the rest of the people who used to do what you do, which was just Spray and pray, right? Just blast their email out with their clients. Hey, want to buy, want to buy, one, want to buy. That's just not, that's a transactional way of living versus a transformational way. And it feels like that's just the way you are. And I'm curious that I reach

here, but maybe this is part of it. Maybe it's not. You dedicated this book to your parents, Liz and Bill and your sister, Laura. Did you learn this from them, this kind of transformational style of deep, meaningful relationships? Or if not, I'm curious what you did learn from your and your sister, and that's why you wanted to dedicate this book to them? I think I learned a lot from them. I think my passion for Cerro Goroal comes from a passion for learning about the place. And both my parents are school teachers. They both taught in public schools in Florida.

And so they instilled me early on that love of scratching the itch, I guess is the way I would describe it, going down those rabbit holes and trying to understand the things. But then I also see, I saw the rewards of where my parents would be friends with their students from 20 years prior. My dad taught a guy that lived from Africa and he went and visited him and he would send him different. Like I remember he gave me like a rhino carving that would have on my desk and stuff. And so instead of just seeing them as another box to check and get out of their classroom door, I think that they all did a very good job of developing those larger relationships. And so I think that you and I talking right now is almost like a testament to that. We've known each other

almost going on 10 years and had it early on. I just been blasting anybody and everybody over to you. I don't think that we would have had the same type of relationship. Like, I would listen to your show a lot. And then I would get many people that weren't a fit. I wouldn't even bother bringing them to it. It's like, oh, no, I know this is a fit for Ryan. And so I'd spend a lot of time thinking, oh, I know that this is going to be a win. So like when you started the podcast with whenever my email came in, you know it was going to be hit,

that's like music to my ears because that's what I always hoped for. I'd hope that the email coming in would not be ignored that is like, oh, Ryan knows that I'm going to spend some time ahead of time to make sure this is going to be a fit. And I don't know, is this a good way of doing business? I think you're the only one who's done that, though. I work with some good people that help book the show. Don't get me wrong. Like PR people with authors and thought leaders.

But it just seems like the vetting element doesn't exist really that much. And I'm curious, is that just because it's harder and it takes more time? Or what made you be the guy to say, no, I'm going to take this vetting part really serious. And I'm only going to introduce you to people that I'm pretty certain are a good fit. To the point to where I didn't even need for you. to ask if you thought they were a fit, I would just be like, book it, book it, right? And so that's just rare, man. Honestly, there's nobody else I work with that is like that now.

So I just love to hear more of your thought process behind that. Well, it was also like, it was representation of the person I was bringing to you, but it was also representation of me. I wanted to be somebody known as somebody that was thoughtful and deliberate and who I was bringing where. I think that's why I was fortunate enough to be able to work with so many great authors and leaders is because they knew that the character. was going to be there.

Kind of as a similar way, when somebody shows extensive passion for something, if somebody shows extensive care towards something, it's like just refreshing in a way. And I always tried to spend an insane amount of time understanding the environment I was working in. So in this case, understand the podcast that were out there and understanding what would make a good guess. And then understanding the authors I was working with and understanding, you know, how it would fit in in a good way.

And so it was just about wanting to be proud of my work, I think, at the end of the day. And I think that I was proud of the work that I was doing. I still am. And so that was kind of the origin of it, I guess. Well, it's much appreciated, man. I wish you could teach a class on it. And a lot of people could go to it. I think it would be super valuable.

But I think it's the harder way. And usually the harder way and creates better results. You had Michael Easter blurbering your book. I saw. And I love the comfort crisis and all of his work. I feel like you guys have to be good buddies because talking to you seem to be of the same ilk. What's your relationship like with him? Michael and I shared the same editor, actually, the publisher, so we were connecting that way.

But before that, I knew that the comfort crisis was just, it was like exactly the message I wanted to hear at the right time. That book came out when I was coming up here. And so I was just like, yes, that's kind of what I was pushing against in Austin. I was pushing against that comfort of a life that I could foresee what the next 40 years is going to be like, no matter what. And I think that out here was my way of, I wasn't going on a hunt necessarily my goal would go on or something like that.

But it was just in my own way, it was testing my skills and kind of bringing me to the similar kind of conclusions, I think that he did. If you were, it's maybe too personal, we can edit if we need to, like get married, have kids and stuff. Would you still live there? No, I think, you know, right now it's full time every day here just because it has to be. It's in a situation where things need to get done. I tried the managing this from afar before and it didn't work.

My goal right now is to finish the hotel. I think after the hotel is done, I could see myself departing for the winter each year. The winter is going to be pretty difficult up here, both like physically and mentally. And so I could see myself splitting time. I'd love to find somewhere either in the surrounding valley. Like there's towns along 395 called Lone Pine and Big Pine up near Mammoth Lakes, even. And I think I would split my time. I'm actually working on my pilot's license right now.

So in an ideal world, I could fly myself back to town, you know, when I need to and kind of split the time. Just because it's not sustainable, especially with a family, with kids, you know, or with even just like a normal world. But yeah, I think for now all, I always want to spend, let's say, at least four months a year here, hopefully for the rest of my life. But I think the rest of the months, I would like to split a little bit of time to have that balance a little bit better. That makes sense. One of the quotes from the book, if it can't be grown, it must be mined. It's a truth of human progress. What does that quote make you think of? It just made me appreciate everyday things because there's a quote that is a mining town, right? Mining is a build this, but there's a quote that says everything has to be

grown or mine. And originally you got to like push against that. like, well, that's not true. What about? And then you start thinking about it. I was like, oh, actually, that's pretty true. You know, the computer that we're on right now was mine in a certain way. And I've gone through the process of both growing things up here and mining things. And it just gave me the appreciation for everything. Like, there's a great book out there. It's A.J. Jacobs. It's called the Thank You Project, I believe. And A.J. was trying to thank every single person that went into his cup of coffee in the morning. And so at first, oh, that's easy. I'll just talk. to the barista, like, thank you.

But then it's like, no, well, who got the coffee beans there? Who roasted the coffee beans? Who were the farmers? And so before he knew it, he ended up thanking, like, I think a couple hundred people that were somehow involved with just creating its daily cup of coffee. And it's kind of like a gratitude process to like everything around me. And so I think that like for me, seeing how difficult life was up here and understanding like that everything is grown in our mind, no matter how packaged and kind of like far away

from that we get, it just, I don't know. It gives me a level of appreciation I didn't have living in kind of a busy city. You have the book, again, it's beautifully written, but there's parts, earth, water, fire, and air. And in the fire section, which chapter 10, you write about the importance of being your own light. What does it mean to be your own light? Yeah, I think it's stemming from, there's a quote from Buddha, and I believe on his deathbed, his followers came around him, and they were like, what are we going to do now that you're going to pass away? and he said, you have to be your own light, be your own inspiration, be your own kind of like self-starter

almost is the way I interpret it up here. And I think for the longest time when I was working on projects, it was like, oh, I'm looking to this for inspiration, I'm looking to that for inspiration, I'm looking to get me through. And then eventually it's like, now I kind of like look to myself. Ryan Holiday has a great quote. He's like, I don't look for hope. I look for evidence is what Ryan always says. And so I don't have to bank on hope. No, I have evidence that I can survive a difficult winter, that I can rebuild a building in the middle of nowhere, that I can bring a little bit of life back to a town. And so for me, that's kind of the same thing as figuring out and developing that self-sufficiency, I guess is another way to describe it. And that's been like a big part of being

up here. The last section, Air, and 13 and 14 are seeking awe and gratitude. And you've already mentioned a little bit about gratitude, AJ Jacobs project, which is awesome. I had him on the show talking about it. I remember, what does it mean and maybe the advice and the thread to pull from seeking awe and gratitude. Yeah, I think that awe is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days. Everything is awesome. Everything is all inspiring. And it's not if we're being fully honest.

No matter, it's kind of a, it's like a throwaway response when somebody sends you something like, oh, that's awesome. But like awesome to me now is looking out and just being stopped in my tracks by these mountains that are 14,000 feet tall that just like actually take your breath away and tilt your head a little bit up towards them. And I think that doing that just reminds you of both two things, like one, your smallness in the world, the fact that these problems that you're obsessing with day over day are not going to kill you. They're not the most important things. You will get past them and then you shouldn't spend so much time stressing them.

But then also the interconnectedness is through it all, you know, how everything is interconnected in a very kind of beautiful way. And it's something that I didn't experience that much living in a city. I think that sometimes it requires a natural feature of some way to have that same level of awe-struck. Like for me, I'm very fortunate. I'm able to look over the Sierra Nevada, which is very awe-inspiring. And if I'm able to turn around the other way, I can look over Death Valley National Park, which is awe-inspiring in his own way, where there's just desert forever. And I think it's been probably the biggest change of my day-to-day life up here is being able to take a hike in the morning and stare at those and stare at the desert.

And there's many ways to inspire that similar level of awe. But I do think that it's very important to fit everything in that's going on in your life in its correct place. Such a good outlook. And I got to believe being out there at times with limited power, I know when it goes out at times or internet, that you have so much solitude and ability to get outside and appreciate your surroundings. And like you said, how it makes you feel to kind of be away from.

a city. What about like us? Do you think is part of your motivation to get people there to get to feel some of those same things that you feel? I don't think it necessarily has to be Serra Gordo. That's not necessarily my marching horse. I hope that in between the lines of the book, that people just have that almost permission or desire to live that life of adventure a little bit more to take those steps boldly into returning to their passion, to finding their passion, to going for that big project that always seemed a little bit too big. And then maybe within that, go look at a lake for a little bit, obviously with the awe section. But I think primarily the main thesis of it all is just to inspire those doers of towards the life of adventure towards those big

projects, just something that makes them fired up and feel alive. And again, it's not going to be in a man in town. It's not about Cerragona necessarily. my friend that lives in Austin that's been planning on doing a big project for the last 20 years and creates the spreadsheets and the PowerPoints and the decks and never really does it at the last minute. For some reason, there's 50 decks that are on the computer that I haven't been done. So I hope it's just that inspiration to go for it in a way that Broch Schmidt did in the way that I'm trying to here at Serogordo and just return to some of those feelings maybe that fired people up. At the beginning of this, I said it's called a ghost town.

it's not going to be called that anymore, but at least not by you. What are you going to call it? Yeah, I think that after a long time here, I just like to call it home. That's the conclusion I came to. It feels in a while where I was pinging around between cities that I didn't find a place to call home. But it's a sort of feel like that. It's a disservice to call to ghost town these days. I feel like it's very much alive. We have a lot of visitors, a lot of people helping out. And so it's exciting times up here. And I'm excited to be able to call at home. Brent, I'm so glad that we got to do this. It was awesome when I got that email from you that said like, hey, man, you know, you were very complimentary and kind.

And I know that's genuine as well as now, hey, I got this book. And I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. So I appreciate you sending to me. I highly, highly recommend it. As I said before, it's written like a beautiful novel, but it's all true and it's historical and also is inspirational. It's called Ghost Town Living, Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley. Brent, man, thanks so much for doing this band.

And I know we're going to continue our dialogue as we both progress. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. It has been just amazing to watch your show continue to progress. The guest just get better and better. The show get better and better. It's been awesome. Man, it's inspiring in my way, too.

And it's very fun that finally I feel like in a position to be on the show, which is also cool in my own way. So I've really enjoyed this. And I appreciate you having me out here. Oh, most definitely, man. Won't be the last time. Thanks so much, dude. Of course.

It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this eye-opening conversation with Brent Underwood. A few takeaways from my notes. I've known Brent for about a decade. And in his previous role with Brass Check, which is Ryan Holiday's marketing company, one of his jobs was to get authors on good podcast.

And I love how precise Brent was in his outreach. He never sent me an author unless he had done the work ahead of time to ensure they would be a good fit for my show. I really appreciate the care he puts into his work and have for a long time. And he's still doing it today in all of this additional roles, both with Ryan Holiday's company as well as what he's doing at Serro Gordo. Next, the story of Burrough Schmidt. He spent 38 years, almost four decades of his life, hand digging a tunnel through a half mile of solid. granite, even though 19 years in, they built a road that essentially made his tunnel obsolete. But he found purpose and he wanted to finish the job.

I fully expect there are some people who think that is crazy and stupid, but I admire people who find their purpose and finish the job. I also appreciate Brent's outlook on life and giving yourself permission to live a life of adventure and to think big. And you could still do this in a wise way. Brent still works a day job with the Daily Stoic, but is also taking a big swing at the exact same time. This is an option that is available for almost all of us, but it's on us to take action and do it. Once again, I'm going to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Brent Underwood. I think he'll

help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the show and you rated hopefully five stars and you write a thoughtful review and by doing all of that you are continually giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis and for that I will forever be grateful thank you so so much talk to you soon can't wait