The Rich Roll Podcast - Jason Caldwell On Rowing Oceans, High-Performance Team Building, Experiential Leadership & Chasing The Impossible

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Adventure begins when things start to go wrong. So stop looking for the shortcut. Embrace the difficult journey ahead. Few embody this ethos better than today’s guest Jason Caldwell. An extraordinary adventure athlete and beautiful beast of a human, Jason holds 11 world records set across 5 continents and 3 oceans, including a 320-mile unassisted traverse of the Namib desert (the longest desert trek across Namibia), captaining the fastest team to row across the Atlantic Ocean unsupported, and most recently, victory in the Great Pacific Race as captain of the fastest team to ever row from San Francisco to Hawaii, a feat Jason and his 3 teammates accomplished in just 30 days 7 hours, smashing the previous world record by an astonishing 9 days. In addition, Jason is the CEO of Latitude 35, an experiential leadership and high-performance team building consulting company. He’s a widely sought-after public speaker on the Fortune 500 circuit and has taught at some of the country’s leading business schools, including Wharton, Columbia, Berkeley & West Point. This is a conversation about what is required to tackle and accomplish audacious goals. It’s about cultivating resilience, perseverance, and risk-taking. It’s about honing the willingness to fail, leveraging drive, and celebrating humility. It’s also about ‘healthy quits’—the importance of knowing how, when and why sometimes it’s crucial to just call it a day. But more than anything, this conversation is about the critical nature of team building. It’s about leadership through experience. Why success is never a solo affair. And how to get the best out those in your orbit. If you’re into wild stories of adventure this one’s for you. But you don’t have to be the slightest bit athletic to gain significant value out of what Jason shares today. To read more click here. You can also watch listen to our exchange on YouTube. My hope is that this conversation inspires you to reevaluate your limits, find power in your community and invest more in adventure. Needless to say, Jason has lived a wild life. This conversation nearly passed 2.5 hours—and I feel like we only scratched the surface. Peace + Plants, Rich

We hear this cliche all the time that life is short, right? We always say life is short. I don't actually believe that life is short, or at least I don't think we actually believe it. I mean, whether life is long or short, I guess, just depends on what you compare it to. You know, if you compare it to a giant redwood, it's short. But if you compare it to like a fly, it's long, whatever it is. But what do we believe? And I think most people, to include myself at times, we believe life is long.

It's actually so long, in fact, that we put off these things, right? We always want to take piano lessons, but we'll do it next year when my life isn't as busy. We do all these different things. I'm going to patch things up with my mom or my dad. I haven't talked in a while. I'll do it next week. I'll make the call next week, next month, whatever it is. And we put things off because we honestly believe we have more time. And the reality is, is that that is exactly what keeps us from doing these things, is that we always think we've got more time. So if I'm talking about at the most basic level, when we start to attempt these things,

we should honestly have a deep-seated belief that life is finite, it's short and it's fleeting, in which case we will start to act now. We need to start by how we think about time and how we think about how we spend our time, because as we all know, weeks become months, become years, and all of a sudden that's how we spend our lives. And I'm fearful that I'm not going to be able to get these things done because I'm running out of time. And that helps me, you know, and I hope that helps other people as well. The Rich Roll Podcast.

What is happening, population of Podcastlandia? Today's guest is a beautiful beast of a human, an extraordinary adventure athlete who goes by the name Jason Caldwell and also happens to hold about a dozen world records set across five continents, including a 320-mile unassisted traverse of the Namib Desert,

the longest desert trek across Namibia. He's also captained the fastest team to row across the Atlantic unsupported. And most recently he achieved victory in the Great Pacific Race, which was an event in which he captained the fastest team to ever row the Pacific from San Francisco to

Hawaii. A feat Jason and his three teammates accomplished in just 30 days and seven hours, absolutely smashing the previous world record by an astonishing nine days. In addition, Jason is the CEO of Latitude 35, which is an experiential leadership and high-performance team-building consulting company. He's also a widely sought-after public speaker on the Fortune 500 circuit and has taught at some of the country's leading business schools like Wharton, Columbia, Berkeley, and West Point. A couple of things to toss in before we plumb the ocean depths, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that

quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal

designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from Thank you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help,

go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources

adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read

reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Jason Caldwell. So, I don't know what to tell you.

I mean, this guy's done a ton of cool shit. We went for like two and a half hours and I feel like we only scratched the surface. But what we did do was talk adventure, of course, and what is required to tackle and accomplish audacious goals. Things like resilience, perseverance, risk, the willingness to fail, the importance of drive, humility,

all with a very intentional and particular focus on something that I think is too often overlooked in the equation around success, which is the critical nature of team building, of cultivating community, and the why behind the emotional drive to express human potential and ultimately bring out the best in others. If you're into wild stories of adventure, then this one is definitely your jam, but you don't have to be the slightest bit athletic to get a ton of value of what Jason shares today. So waste another moment, we will not.

This is me and Jason Caldwell doing the thing. Nice to meet you, man. Thanks for doing this. Oh, yeah, it's a pleasure. This is an honor for me, so thank you. Lots to unpack here. Before we get into anything though, man, I gotta know how the it's a pleasure. This is an honor for me, so thank you. Lots to unpack here. Before we get into anything though, man, I gotta know how the body's healing up.

How are you feeling? You look like you put some weight back on, so I trust that it's all going well. Yeah, I'll take that as a compliment, but yeah. What are we like five weeks since I, six weeks since I did it, so I'm largely better. First week is nasty, because you're learning to walk again.

You've lost 20 plus pounds. And then you put the weight back on, then the hands hurt, tons of tendonitis. So that was probably the last thing to like come back. But other than that, I started training, working out last two weeks, that's been good. I still have a little bit of numbness in some of my fingers. Like if I do that, I can still feel that go down

just from just constant pulling. But you have that every time, right? It comes back. Yeah, well, for the most part, the couple of these fingers are taking a little while. So 20 pounds you lost. I think you lost 40 pounds on the Atlantic row, right? Yeah, I think I lost more than that on this one.

They had me stepping on a scale at the beginning that was in kilos and another one in Hawaii that was in pounds, so I'm not really sure. But I would say like probably it was probably closer to 30, but definitely not as much as the Atlantic. Do you do like blood work and stuff to figure out where you're at specifically before and after? Yeah, I have. And we did on this one. In fact, we were working with a company that was want us to do blood work and take blood samples the whole way, the whole way through. So they could analyze it afterwards because when are they gonna get a chance to kind of analyze the blood composition

of this type of endurance adventure. But the thing is we couldn't get blood out of our fingers out there. And I'm not even sure what this is, is either like massive dehydration, but I'd prick my finger. I'm sitting in a little tiny cabin, like rocking back and forth.

I'm like squeak, I can't get a- No bloods coming out. One little drop, which wasn't enough. And so I don't think I'm too happy. Yeah, I mean, just trying to wrap my head around what goes into an endeavor like this is mind blowing. As I mentioned to you before the podcast started, I watched a documentary this morning

and I thought I had a sense for the kind of challenges that you would face and have to endure. Just being wet all the time and the sleep deprivation and just what it's like to be on that boat. But to see all the footage that you had, and this was chronicling your Atlantic adventures, but just all the sores on your hands and the sores on the feet and what happens to the seat and how much your ass is hurt.

Like, it just sounds so awful. You're describing it well. It's unbelievable, you know? And I can't remember which teammate of yours, like you showing how his hands turned into claws and you would pry your fingers open and then they would just close again, no matter what you would do.

And the numbness that you get in your fingers and the fact that like, after this, you truly can't walk. Like there's a lot of, I think it's you where your calves look like, your legs look like sticks. Yeah. So your lats are huge, your shoulders are huge, your chest muscles kind of atrophy, it all goes away. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you've nailed it.

It's just, you've become so singular. So you train for a year or two for this thing and you train all parts of your body and you're doing cross-dressing, swimming and trail running on top of all the rowing. But then in the end, it's pushing with your legs and pulling with your back. So the chest goes, the calves go,

you take three steps to your rowing seat every two hours and then three steps back to the cabin after that. And that's it. So then you just lose the ability to walk. So, I mean, like most endurance sports, they ruin your body. I mean, it's not a healthy thing to do. You get healthy so that you can go ahead

and let yourself get broken down and rebuild yourself back up. What are the biggest differences between rowing the Atlantic versus rowing the Pacific? Yeah, this has been something I've been thinking a lot about. I mean, right off the bat, the Pacific seemed more violent. The water's colder, the highs were higher, the lows were lower.

So that first week in the Pacific was just coming off of the continental shelf was just brutal. Yeah, we should just say you started in San Francisco and you end up in Waikiki basically. Exactly. And it's like 2100 nautical miles, something like that. 24. 24, okay.

Give me those extra 300. Yeah, all right, man. Yeah, so it just seems a lot more violent, like the sea was moodier. And then the second thing that was obvious, and I'm rowing with two of my teammates that row in the Atlantic as well. So we all had a good comparison

and it was just constantly changes. The Atlantic is consistent. I mean, as consistent as an ocean can be. Sometimes you'd get good weather in the Atlantic for three, four days at a time, where it's just that same consistency. You've got nice little swells that you're surfing down. You've got good winds, you know,

and you've got kind of the same sea state. And the Pacific was like every two hours, it seemed to change. It was like, in some ways it was nice because if you had bad weather, it's like, well, hey, wait two hours, it'll change. It might get worse, might get better, but at least it'll be different.

So that was the Pacific. It was just, it was r worse, might get better, but at least it'll be different. So that was the Pacific, it was just, it was rougher, more violent, less consistent. So I think that that was what was apparent to all of us kind of as we started rowing. It's interesting to hear you say that because in watching the documentary, which chronicles your two Atlantic crossings,

it doesn't look like the Atlantic is consistent. Looks like it's throwing everything at you all at the same time where it's constantly shifting. Yeah, and it's all relative. There's not really anything, such thing as consistency in the ocean. I mean, you're in this huge body of water and you're pretty sure that at that point,

you're personifying the ocean. I mean, you're giving it human characteristics because it seems like it's out to get you. So whenever you get too comfortable, it changes it up on you. And we certainly had our fair share of that in both the Atlantic crossings you saw on the dock, but the Pacific was just,

it was just this idea of, we have this world record that we're trying to break. We've got a teammate that's never done an ocean before, but even with that, we've got seven ocean crossings between three of us in there. And that's by far the most experienced team. So you've got this idea where there's nothing that we haven't seen.

And so the Pacific will be different, but it won't be dramatically different. We won't be shocked by anything. And that was wrong. We were absolutely shocked by stuff out there. Well, there's so many threads to pull here. There's the endurance piece, there's the training piece. Like there's the mindset piece.

How do you get your head around doing something like this? There's all the experience that you bring to bear to put yourself in good stead to accomplish your goals. And there's the leadership piece and the teamwork piece, which I think is really interesting here as somebody who's really an individual athlete. I mean, there is no such thing as individual sports. Like anybody who's performing at a high level,

even in an individual sport has a team that supports them. But there's something very unique and specific to the sport of rowing that I have really learned to appreciate just in diving into your story and how crucial that combination of skill experience and camaraderie comes to play in terms of dictating whether you're going to be successful or not. 100%. Yeah. I mean, I'm looking forward to talking about the team aspect of this and, you know, we'll go off your lead, but, you know, the interdependency of rowing, I don't think there's anything quite like it, at least that I've experienced is this idea that

there's no all-star, you know, there's no LeBron James on the team. When you cross the finish line, whether you're doing, you know, collegiate elite level sprint rowing, which is 2000 meters, or you're rowing across an ocean, thousands of miles. You don't cross that finish line. People aren't saying like, oh, it was that guy that did it. You know, I mean, you're giving up that individualism and that's what rowing does is you're choosing to give up that.

And that's not an easy thing to do for type A personalities and highly competitive people. I feel like you perhaps understood that intellectually before your first Atlantic crossing, but there was a lot of pride and hubris in how you put that team together and where your head was at in terms of what you thought would happen and unfold.

So talk a little bit about what went into that first Atlantic. We're gonna go back and tell your whole backstory, but that idea of like waltzing into this crazy race, but putting together essentially what was an all-star team of like the best rowers that you could find and just thinking, well, these guys are the best. Like we're gonna crush this thing,

even though we might be missing an experience piece. Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing when I'm hearing you kind of frame it like that, my mind automatically goes to this idea that half the race, you're not rowing. So you're rowing two hours on, two hours off, 24 hours a day throughout the entire crossing. And let me just stop you right there. Sorry to interrupt. No, that's all right.

Why do you arrive at this two hours on, two hours off? How did you figure out that that's the best recipe? Yeah, this is the golden rule that people are trying to upend all the time. Every new team that wants to be competitive and thinks they've got it figured out tries to change it, including myself, a number of times. And you just go back to two hours on.

Because, so let's take going longer. Let's say you do three hours on, three hours off. You gotta make it consistent. You're gonna have to spend the same amount of time off is on so yeah that's extra time off but that third hour is just so unproductive as a rower i mean even as a an elite rower you know and highly trained after two hours you're just not putting a lot behind the oars there's just there's just not a lot of purchase there and yeah you're getting more more time resting but it's just not a lot of purchase there. And yeah, you're getting more time resting, but it's just, it's such an unproductive third hour.

So what you make up for in the extra sleep doesn't pay off in terms of forward momentum behind the oars. No, I think there's also a lot of diminishing returns even for the rest piece. People think three hours is not a lot and two hours is just ridiculous, but two hours is enough if you do it right.

So- Doesn't sound like enough. I know it does not, we'll get into that. But the third hour is not good. So then if you went the other direction, you said, let's do like an hour on an hour off. Okay, well, there's the obvious thing that you're only getting an hour of rest, which that's just not enough to even get some kind of sleep.

Cause there's other things, you're not just getting off the oars and then falling right to sleep. You've gotta cook food, you've gotta drink water You got to take care of your body. You've got to take care of the boat. But also that's just more shifting. That's more rotation. So you're doing on a two hours on, two hours off, you're doing essentially six shifts changes over throughout day yourself. And if you double that, it's just more time where people aren't rowing. And yeah, over one day, that's not a lot of time.

But if you're adding an extra like three minutes of shift times six shifts times 30 days, it adds up. Yeah. So you're talking about trying to find that happy medium and two hours, I mean, yeah, you can play around with different things. You can go, maybe you can go an hour and a half, maybe you can go two and a half hours,

but there's something to be said for consistency out there too. And your body gets into this, your body can go two and a half hours, but there's something to be said for consistency out there too. And your body gets into this, your body gets almost crate trained a little bit. Like a puppy is like, puppy hates its crate. Just like you'll hate to go inside that small little cabin when you're seasick, but by day seven, you're looking forward to it.

Right. It's a place of safety, you fall asleep quickly. Yeah, the body and the mind kind of figure out, okay, this is the program. Exactly. Now I'm locked in, let's just keep doing this one thing. Exactly, so you kind of figure out, okay, this is the program. Exactly. Now I'm locked in. Let's just keep doing this one thing. Exactly, so you start to find out that like

two hours of sleep is, or call it an hour and 40 minutes by the time you get down, you feel like you can actually get some rest there. And that's what you come to expect. So we'll get back to the team building piece, but just so people understand, these transoceanic rows are four man crews. So it's you and three dudes.

You're on a boat where essentially at each end, there are cabins, two people row at a time, two people are off. And I've heard you talk about how actually the time off is more challenging than when you're rowing. And I suspect that's because when you're rowing, that's all you're doing. You're just doing this one thing.

It's almost a relief. All I have to do is row back and forth. But when you're not rowing, you gotta take care of yourself. You gotta mend all your wounds. You gotta feed yourself. You gotta repair the boat or take care of whatever mechanical situations

you're dealing with. You gotta get the rest. There's a lot of stuff to keep track of. So there's a mental toll to all of that. Yeah, exactly. I think that's when you're rowing, that's what you train for to row. And so there's something, like you said,

it's kind of a relief to know, okay, I'm on the oars for the next two hours. This is something I know. There's a lot of unknown when you're off the oars and you're having to do things like feed yourself and take care of your body and anything that responsibility is on the boat. But then things come up, you know, you get off course,

something breaks, something's not working. And then all of a sudden, the time that you were supposed to be sleeping is now being used to fix something. And that's the other thing is that you might, that might be a rest, but that's only if everything's going right. The guys that are on the oars are on the oars.

They row, they're propelling the boat. So their only job is to move the boat in the right direction. So anything that comes up on the boat during your off shift is your responsibility. And, you know, going back to that idea of this first row where maybe I thought it was gonna be a little easier than it was. And I think that was what I neglected. And I see a lot of teams going into the first time, they don't think about the off shifts. And I encourage people to spend a lot of time thinking about the off shifts because it's not just those responsibilities that I was just talking about, but mentally, you're looking at that clock. mentally, you're looking at that clock. Okay, I've got an hour and 15 minutes.

Now I've got an hour and 30 minutes. Now I've got 47 minutes left. And oh my gosh, I'm not falling asleep right now. And then you're thinking about that. So then you're not falling asleep even longer. And all of a sudden you're looking out that little cabin window and it's pouring down rain and they look miserable.

And you're 20 minutes away from being out there yourself doing it. And all of a sudden it seems like you can't even finish the next two hour shift, let alone the next 20 days. And that kind of emotional toll and mental anguish associated with it is, that's a pretty powerful demotivator if you haven't like spent time

kind of thinking about that in preparation. How religious are you about the two hours on, two hours off? There's gotta be moments where somebody's sick or somebody's not feeling it, or you just know, you know, so-and-so is a little bit weaker today than yesterday. Do you make adjustments

and kind of read off everybody's energy so that it's a little bit more fluid than rigid? Or do you just, nope, two hours, you're up? It's very rigid on our team. I mean, not every team is like this. Some teams are just trying to get across, and that's an admirable goal just to do that. But if you're trying to win a race, set a national record,

maybe even set a world record, you have to be that strict. Now, that being said, we have, in all of our rows, have had sick teammates that can't quite get over the seasickness right away or injury, in which case we decided as a team that we're going to take some shifts. And that happened in this last row. And it's absolutely the right thing to do. So then you are making changes and I'm going to row an extra hour. So I'm going to do a three-hour shift and then someone else is going to come on. But outside of those things, it is a strict two on, two off. And it really is strict. So if I'm rowing and i've got like three minutes left until my shift i better see that light in that cabin go on if not i'm gonna give a little

knock on it real quick because he's got to get ready to go and if you think about this way this is an interesting stat my last row was third took us 30 days to cross san francisco to hawaii if your teammate was late just two hours or or sorry, two minutes to your shift, if you had to row just two minutes of his shift, every shift, which doesn't seem like a lot, by the end of 30 days, you'll have rowed an extra six hours. That's a half a day of rowing

that you would have taken from your teammate just because he's just taking a little more time to put his shoes on. So that's fortunately for our team, we treat it with respect that it deserves. And when that time comes up, that person's ready to go. Right, right, right, right. All right, so the first time you attempt to do one of these,

I never know what year it is cause the Atlantic road takes place over the year. So is it 2015, 16? They call it 2015 cause we start that time. But yeah, it was 2015, 16. Right, so- Or as my wife likes to say, by the way, three weeks after we got married.

Yeah, I know, right? In the documentary, you get married and then you just fly to the Canary Islands to like go do this thing. We did go on a honeymoon. She has no idea what is, you know, she's in store for with this. No, she's got her own story.

That's for sure. Good God. But you spend two years getting ready for this thing, right? Like studying the maps and trying to figure out what the strategy is and most importantly, recruiting a team. Yeah. So talk a little bit about that process

and how that's evolved based on what you've learned doing this. Yeah, so the first part is the recruitment. I mean, you can imagine it's a pretty shallow pool to try to find people that, A, are willing to do this crazy endeavor and spend a month plus out and away from everything they know.

But then B, the two years of training and prepping for this thing. So I wrote for a boat club, Vesper Boat Club in Philadelphia after college, an elite team training for Olympics. Legendary club. Yeah, I mean, it was an honor to be there. And I spent three plus years there,

being at six foot four, 200 plus pounds, the shortest and lightest guy on the team. And so I was a little guy for three years. I had that complex for a while. When I got home, guys didn't like that I was jumping on their backs. I thought that my smaller friends could hold me up. But so when I was recruiting,

I wanted to be at once again, kind of the smaller guy on the team. I wanted to get some of these big, strong guys, but I really couldn't find. Those guys just, they graduated and gone on, started careers, started families. So the opportunity- Like Goldman Sachs and stuff.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, all the Ivy Leaguers. I was like the little state schooler there. But yeah, they're all, the opportunity cost had just risen too much since we left Vesper. So I was desperate to find those types of individuals. And I got one of them,

a guy that wrote at a different club, but a very good club, Nick. He was a big, strong athlete, but the rest, Tom and Greg, who I recruited as well, on paper weren't those athletes. But I think one of the things I learned about what these other rows after that is there's just a difference

between the best guys and the right guys. And I was so obsessed with always getting the best guys. On paper, it had to be big, tall, strong, good 2K scores. How fast you can roll 2,000 meters on a rowing machine. Shit doesn't matter out there. What you need is somebody who's selfless, who's thinking about everybody else a little bit more than they're thinking about themselves.

And those types of process-oriented people, this is stuff I just didn't know in the first race. Right, and there wasn't a lot of ocean experience with these guys. Like on paper, they had amazing CVs and were super accomplished rowers on the collegiate circuit or what have you, but really didn't have any experience at a race like this.

And it's in the documentary, it's Angus. He's kind of like, yeah, we'll see how this goes, right? He's on the British team. He's kind of like, yeah, we'll see how this goes. He's on the British team. He's kind of casting a glance over at your team gone. Yeah, they're talking a big game, but we'll see what happens when we're out there. Him being this like sort of master rower who has all of this ocean experience at the time.

Yeah, exactly. We had zero ocean rowing experience. Now that's not unheard of for any of these teams. I mean, most people have never had done an ocean row, but people like Angus not unheard of for any of these teams. I mean, most people have never had done an ocean row, but people like Angus who have grown up at the sea, he had actually done a row. He rode the Indian before that. So we were rowing against a guy who's put the team together and has ocean rowing experience. But yeah, I mean, he was looking at our team and saying, yep, they can row in flat water, great conditions for short distances really, really well. But this is the antithesis of that.

And so, yeah, just this kind of naivete that we went in and just thinking like, well, it's just like a flat water row. We just have to do it for a longer period of time was detrimental. Yeah, you soon found out. I mean, in pretty short shrift, things went sideways. Yeah, so the first thing that happened was, not even a day out from the Canary Islands

where the race starts, we've got 3000 miles of open ocean to go and we've got a teammate, Nick, my biggest, strongest teammate that's getting sick and seasick and we're all feeling it for sure. And it just genetically, everyone deals with it differently, but he was just getting absolutely rattled by it.

And he was not just getting ill, but as he described it, it was like someone was squeezing every angle of his head and then shaking his head. So he was disoriented and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And we had by day five or so, we had this teammate that not only wasn't rowing, but was very, very ill.

So we had that issue. And then we had another issue with Greg, who just didn't want to be there anymore. And, you know, that was kind of the mental prep that I was talking about. Just he was not willing to make the crossing. And, you know, to his credit, he was rowing his make the crossing. And to his credit, he was rowing his shifts all the way through. So when we had to get an evacuation where Nick is being evacuated a week into this row,

Greg saw the opportunity to also leave and took it. So even though he was healthy, he's like, I'm outta here. Yeah, exactly. This is not going good. Yep, so he was scared and it's scary out there and and he was he he saw this opportunity because we're at this point we're anchoring so so we're not we're not even moving we're anchoring for two days waiting for the sailboat to basically cover the distance that we had covered over the last week to come up to us it It's gonna take them two days.

So we're anchoring 600 miles off the coast of Africa, watching the last two days. We know the boats are just getting further and further away from us, knowing that I know I'm staying. So, you know. Right, but this idea going into it that you're aiming to win, you're aiming to break the world record

and suddenly you're in close to last place, anchored, you know, two guys getting carried off your boat onto a safety sailboat. I mean, the scene in the documentary of getting those guys off the boat and onto the sailboat was unbelievable. It was much more harrowing than I would have thought like that would be.

Yeah, it was dramatic. I mean, we've got two guys that are leaving, but you've got a sailboat that's, you know, five times the size of our little rowboat trying to, you know, collect two people, one of which can barely even move his arms. He's so sick from the sea, the open sea. So, you know, we're having to drop them in

with their life jackets on, but like, and they have to pull them in with a rope. And at one point we lost the guy who was sick. He couldn't hold on Nick. And he was just drifting out there. And as you probably saw on the doc, he was interviewed afterwards and said, that was the only time in his life he's ever been scared.

And you saw him fighting back those tears as he's watching the film for the first time. So he's just bringing them right back to where it was. And this is, as I've said many times before, it's one of the most tenacious athletes I've ever met. I mean, this guy was nails. And just broke him. Just broke him.

I mean, that's what the ocean does. So suddenly your four man boat turns into a two man boat. And then you and Tom decide like, all right, well, we're gonna just keep going. Just the two of us. Yeah, it was not as easy as we're just gonna keep going. Tom took some convincing. I knew I wasn't gonna leave

and Tom's one of my closest friends. He was in our wedding. This is a guy I've worked with for years. And my last pick on the team, by the way, because you saw from the dog, he's not a big guy and he's tall, but he's skinny, has trouble putting on weight and muscle. And by the end of the thing,

he looks like a marathon runner. Yeah, he does. And he's just, I mean, he couldn't lose any more weight than he had already lost. I mean, it was starting to get really like kind of, that's why he's having back problems by the end of it and stuff. I think it was just, I mean,

I think that that row was eating into like his muscle and tendons and stuff. But he wasn't sure he wanted to stay right away, but he finally got convinced. And so, he stayed on and once the evacuation, I just have this vivid memory of just seeing that boat sailing off literally into the horizon, heading to the Verde Islands.

And we're just, and they're getting smaller and we're just bobbing, we haven't started running. We're just, the boat's just bobbing up and down. And we're seriously trying to figure out like, what is our, like, what is our strategy here? We're 2,400 miles away from the finish. We're in a boat made for four or five people. Now gonna be rowed by two.

Yeah, and your goals are out the window. So you need something else to kind of anchor your focus. Yeah, yeah, what was that motivator? And I think we had a conversation about it. So you need something else to kind of anchor your focus. Yeah, what was that motivator? And I think we had a conversation about it. And I think what we decided was to prove everyone wrong because there were people that said like, we have a responsibility to get off the boat as well,

because this can't be done with just two people. Like they said, this boat's meant for four or five people. This is irresponsible. And you're putting other competitors at risk because if you do need a second rescue, that means resources diverted away from somebody else's boat. Exactly. If they needed help.

Yep, if one of the safety boats is closest, they're gonna have to divert their route to get to us, which could strand other boats. Also maritime law requires that any other vessel out there, even if it's a big shipping freighter that has the ability to rescue us and is close, must divert their route to come. And so there were people saying,

it's inevitable that that's gonna happen. So you're gonna waste time and resources and money from somebody. So it was going to just, you're going to waste time and resources and money from somebody. So it was irresponsible for us to stay on. I never once saw it that way. And I mean, when you choose a life of adventure and endurance rowing, you're constantly going to have to convince people that what you do is not irresponsible and selfish, even though to a certain extent it is. But that's my big, that's my big argument. So it was what is going to get us through because one of the things that, and this is, we're talking about lessons

learned from this first crossing is one of the ones I learned is that glory kind of takes you to that start line. The thought of doing something that no one else has done and you get these pats on the back when people hear that you're going gonna do this and you've got sponsorship that's behind you and a charity that's behind you and all of a sudden you're feeling pretty good about yourself, but that glory will not get you to the finish. When you were bobbing up and down in a boat

with just you and one other guy, 600 miles off the coast of Africa with 2,400 miles to go, those pats on the back and all that stuff, that is not what's gonna get you across. And we spent too much time kind of soaking that in and not enough time trying to understand what gets somebody across an extremely difficult distance, such as an ocean. And what I found out is it's shame. It is being more afraid of letting down your teammate who's in the boat, your family, who's rooting for you,

your charity, your sponsors, your friends, your family, your community, being more afraid of letting them down than you are of the elements, than you are of dying, than you are of being scared of getting drenched that night. And that shame is what gets, what got us through. It was, and what I call later,

it's because shame is not a great word to be using because it's that kind of leveraging of human emotion. And that's what we did. We leveraged each other's human emotion in a way that we were more afraid of letting each other down than we were of the elements. Yeah. At the same time, you also had to find a way

to be of mutual support to each other, right? So you have this experience where you're rowing and Tom's like, what do you want for breakfast, right? Like that was, that feels like it was sort of an inflection point in terms of how you guys were gonna interrelate to each other and support each other, but even more broadly, a lesson in regards to kind of teamwork

and leadership generally. Yeah, it was a huge point that we didn't notice then. It wasn't until afterwards that we realized how pivotal that moment was because we're, we had been rowing with for about five or six days by ourselves and we're still doing two hours on, two hours off by the way, but instead of being with somebody on deck, you're by yourself.

So you're rowing two hours while the other guy's getting some sleep in one of the cabins and then you're rotating. So there's all this kind of solitude. I mean, just think about five days of, we're chatting with each other every two hours, just in passing, you know? And so we get pounded by this storm. It's just, it's just relentless.

And this is where you start to think that the ocean's out to get you. And so for three days, we just get pounded by this storm. And I'm going to be honest with you, like at the end of the third day, I just, I want to quit. I do. I want to quit. And I'm mad that I allowed us to stay out there. And I feel guilty for convincing Tom to stay out there because he's not doing well. And that's where we have this kind of, without hope or agenda, this breakfast moment where he's about to come on his shift.

It's like, I have like the 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. shift and he's about to come on that shift and get ready at eight. And instead of like coming on, he just asked me like what I'd want for breakfast. And I remember like at that moment, being upset with them for asking such an insensitive question because up to this point, kind of the guy that was coming on shift

would kind of offer the words of encouragement, empathy. And you know, that's what I was living for. I'm at my lowest moment, probably my whole life at this moment is my lowest. I'm thinking the dark thoughts of wishing I could quit. And I wonder if there's a boat close enough. And that's what I'm thinking. I can't get those thoughts out of my head.

And he asked what I want for breakfast. And I kind of just play along with it a little bit and just tell him what my favorite freeze dried meal, which is the chicken risotto. And he says, well, I like the spaghetti bolognese. And we're having this conversation. He says, you want me to make you some coffee? And I'm like, yeah, sure.

He's like, do you want me to put that powdered hazelnut creamer? And I love that stuff. So I said, yeah, sure. And he makes a deal. This is the deal he makes me. He says, if you row an extra 10 minutes, like I'll make some food for you. And I'm aware at this point,

this is 10 minutes of his shift. Yeah. Very aware. You're vulnerable. Yeah, and I'm like a little bit like. And I'm aware at this point, this is 10 minutes of his shift. Very aware. You're vulnerable. Yeah, and I'm like a little bit like, where's he going with this? But I hate making the food and he knows that. I don't like to do the jet boil. I'd rather put the muscle into the oars

and he'd rather cook than row. So I make the deal and sure enough, after some time, he says, I got some food for you. And we turn around and I stop rowing. And again, we don't even, we're not trying to, this isn't planned, but I pull the oars in and we just have that breakfast together.

And something really dramatic takes place. It's kind of like a subtle, but dramatic shift in kind of the mentality of the boat. We just hang out. We're just two buddies at that point, sharing stories of what's happened to us the last three nights, because we've been by ourselves

and we're kind of desperate to share with somebody. So we just kind of talk and all of a sudden, we could be at home, talking in one of our, on our living rooms or something like that. It's just, there was this comfort that washed over us. And from that, it was 30 minutes or whatever. And then we went back onto our shifts. But from that moment on for the next 41 days,

we always did breakfast. It was just something that we could look forward to. And again, didn't know it at the time, but looking back, it was just a way for us to kind of re-answer the question why we were doing this. It's like, had that glory idea at the beginning, that is not gonna get you through. You don't care anymore that people are excited for you to finish just not pulling you through but i sure as shit care

that the guy that's sitting 20 feet away from me is going through a tough time and if i could just row a little harder for him on this shift and he comes out and he sees that i put four miles in instead of three that'll make him happy and he'll want to do the same because he won't want to let me down so it was just this back and forth for the next 41 days of just trying to live up to the other person. And it was just, the ante just kept getting higher and higher.

And breakfast was a way to kind of realign ourselves every 24 hours. I mean, if you're just ships passing in the night and the only exchange that you have is when one's getting off the chair and the other one's getting in, you're not gonna be in sync. Like you've gotta be aligned emotionally

and check in with each other when you're working towards this goal, otherwise there's no way. I mean, the ship would quite literally capsize. Yeah, it's exactly what it was. And that kind of realignment was, and that breakfast was our way of just kind of realigning ourselves and kind of reminding ourselves of why we're doing this by looking someone else in the face that

you can see man the last 24 hours beat you to shit you can see it in his face you know he could see it in mine and i was so proud of him you know because tom is you know to this day he's my close friend we work together but i i just he had no business being out there. We worked together in an old company. One of the guys that worked there actually, our boss said, you should cut Tom from the team. He's not built for this. And I remember considering it

because the guy that was saying this, our boss was a former Olympian. He knew rowing. And I'm so glad I didn't, you know, because he on paper was not the right guy, but absolutely the right guy for this boat. And I just was so afraid to let him down. And I knew that he needed me to put the muscle in.

I did. And he was so afraid to let me down. He'd cook for me and he'd get bandages out for me when I had infection. He's like, cause I know you're not gonna take care of yourself, Jay, so let me help you do it. It's just this brotherhood. And it was quite frankly,

kind of one of the most amazing things that's ever happened to me. You end up passing a bunch of boats, you end up finishing, you go from almost last to 11th, right, you get 11th in that race, took you 51 days. But I feel like that was you getting a master's in what you needed to know to go back and have a more perfect attempt.

And it had nothing to do with how you trained for it. Like all the stuff that you would think like, okay, back to the drawing board. Like we need to change this. We need to change that. It was all about the emotional piece, right? Like extrapolating on that breakfast experience and the guy who was healthy, but got decided to leave.

Like you go back to the drawing board and you're like, I gotta solve this through a different lens. Yeah, and just even to take it once, take it a step back is that I didn't have no plans on doing the second time, even if I didn't win, I was, I thought this is a one and done type of thing. I mean, so few people have ever even attempted a second one. Most of those people are because they didn't finish

the first time, you know, they made it so many days, they had those people are because they didn't finish the first time. They made it so many days. They had to call out. They want to try to do it again. For us to finish was still a great thing, but I couldn't shake the sense of failure. I say this in the doc, but it's so true. I remember the juxtaposition between my emotional state

and Tom's emotional state as we were coming into the finish line, seeing everybody on the cliffs, seeing our families as we come in, as he was just, he was giddy. He was beside himself. He was so excited. And I did, I felt like I was acting to be as giddy as him. I did feel that way because I think I knew-

Meaning you didn't really feel that way. You felt like you had failed. Yeah. What was your interior experience? Yeah, I don't know if I had to define it as failure yet, although I did later and I still do today. As a captain, as a leader, I had failed that team. But at that moment, I just felt this idea,

like I felt like maybe I was only halfway done. I felt like that I was gonna have to do another one. And Tom, I knew was never going to do another one. And that was it for him. Yeah. He had nothing left to prove. I mean, you see the pictures of him, you know, that, um, but there, we both, we both entered for different reasons, you know, and he had proven everything he needed to prove to himself and to anybody else that doubted him, but I had something left to do. So, you know, that was what happened is stepping off as I didn't feel the closure.

Coming back for more, but first. Okay, back to the show. Well, let's spend a few minutes there and maybe this is a good time to like take it back a little bit because I'm interested in that internal drive that you had as somebody who had been successful as an athlete, but had never really had the victories that you sought.

Right, like it was always like you were the guy who came in second or had an opportunity to do something great, but something would happen and you wouldn't quite connect with it. So there's this kind of cauldron inside of you, the sense that you have something to express and yet kind of repeated frustrations with your ability to execute on that.

Yeah, as wall full of silver medals as I like to call it, that's really what I felt like I was to include where we are here in this story of finishing this first row. It's, you know, played baseball in high school, played in college, got injured. I was a left-handed pitcher and needed- But even before that, sorry to interrupt,

but like, let's take it back to your dad because I feel like your dad, your dad put some heat on you, right? Like this guy was expecting, you know, some exceptionalism out of you. Yeah, you know, my dad was, him and I were close and still are very, very close. And, but he was a guy that took you by your word

if you said you wanted to do something. If like, if you said you wanted to be a professional baseball player, he's like, even if you said you wanted to do something. If like, if you said you wanted to be a professional baseball player, he's like, even if you said it at seven years old, he wasn't placating you. He's like, okay, you said it now. Now we're gonna see what you're really made of. Thank goodness I didn't say I wanna be an astronaut

because I think he would have been putting me through it, that kind of training. But being a ball player himself growing up, this was his wheelhouse. And so it was, I felt as a child, constantly proving that I was doing what was necessary to be the best. And if I wasn't showing it on the ball field, then I wasn't doing it off the field to make it happen.

There's no such thing as a bad game. It was just ill-prepared. And so, yeah, there was a lot of pressure. And even going into college and playing, there was an expectation there. And I wasn't meeting those expectations. And even the injury, to be fair, to be very honest, and we're being honest here, is that it was probably,

there was a little relief you know there was a there was a relief when that injury happened and i could have gotten the surgery and believe me my dad wanted me to he says you get the surgery you take a year off you rehab and then you go back in yeah you have the tommy john elbow thing right just the torn tendon and it was like i remember him being so surprised when i said i need time to think about whether I'm gonna get this surgery. And, you know, cause we got the MRI results that day. And he says, no, there's nothing to think about. You get it and you pursue your dreams at all costs. And I, while I agree with that mentality, I just don't think I was in the right sport. I didn't know it at the time. And I was told I loved baseball and I was passionate about the sport, but I realized now

that I liked baseball, but I, when I got into rowing, I realized what love was. So you needed that, that backdoor exit. I did. And I took it, you know, and it, it, it, again, these are all things that you, you process later in life, you know, because when I hurt myself in baseball, I was in my mid twenties and I didn't know anything. But so how was dad when you said, I'm not getting the surgery? Yeah, he was not happy. And you know, we didn't talk for a little while too. Cause I remember specifically, you know,

it wasn't like a FU, FU and having a blowout. And I slammed the door and go back to college and never talked to him again. But it was just like, all of a sudden, you know, we just didn't pick up the phone to call each other. It wasn't as dramatic. It's just, because I remember, because I got a younger brother

and his birthday's in September. And I remember going home for that. This is the first year back, not playing baseball at Sonoma State. And I'd gotten into rowing since then because school started in August. I got recruited by the rowing coach. I'm loving it.

I'm finding I'm pretty good at it. And I remember going to that family birthday little pool party and telling my dad, like I got into rowing. And like, this is the first time I'm telling him this. So I knew we hadn't talked for a while and it took him a long time to get on board. But to his credit, he did. But I'll tell you what, he didn't know what was going on the first, little side note. He didn't know what was going on the first, a little side note, he didn't know what was going on the first regatta because first of all, my mom is always championing me

because I'm her only kid and she's annoyingly optimistic about everything. First of all, she's always late to everything. So she went from a sport that takes three hours to play to a sport that takes six minutes to complete. So she like missed my first three regattas, showed up too late, missed them. My dad, meanwhile, gets to a regatta

with my two little brothers. First time, this is that year, the first year. He's like, okay, Jason's in a new sport. We're gonna support him. This is his new thing. I appreciate that. And he gets there and he sees tents lining the river and free food on all of them.

So he's just sending my brothers to the ring or getting bagels. And he doesn't realize it until like some nice parents, like, oh, these are actually for all, this is actually for Cal Berkeley. What school does your kid go to? So no one said, oh, these are actually for all, these are, this is actually for like, this is for Cal Berkeley. What school does your kid go to? Sonoma State, oh, it's that one that's leaning against the rock over there.

Every tent's for a different. Yeah, he's just like, oh, great, free food. These are awesome. So, you know, I'm bringing my family into a new world. That's pretty funny, man. I just watched, I was on an airplane the other day and I watched Molly's game on the flight. Have you seen that?

Oh yeah, it's a great one. So I'm seeing a lot of parallels here a little bit. Yeah, yeah, of course. As she jumps into a new arena. Right, exactly. It takes all that fire and just applies it elsewhere. But you didn't, I mean, this happens your senior year in college, right? Yeah.

So you actually only row collegiately one year then. Well, I did. And then I got accepted to Vesper's summer program right after my first year of rowing. So how did that happen? Because only one year in a boat? Yeah, it was- When you're going up against dudes

that have been doing this for- Since I've been playing baseball as long as I've been playing ball. Yeah, so I mean, that's an interesting story because I've got a collegiate coach who's trying to build a program at a no name rowing school, Sonoma State. I mean, they hadn't even won a race when I come onto the team. This is hardly head of the Charles.

Yeah. This isn't Harvard versus Princeton. Sonoma State's a no-name rowing program, club sports, so it doesn't get hardly any funding. But this coach understands how to build teams. He's my first true mentor on how to build teams. And he went to every sport at Sonoma State and said, give me a list of the guys you cut, the guys that got injured, and I'm gonna go off those lists, talk to me about them, cause I'm looking for a specific thing. My name was on the baseball list, someone who got injured.

And he was looking for people that no longer were part of something greater than themselves, so to speak, and he was gonna go and offer them. He was saying, I'm not offering you. But also the people who are looking for what the next thing might be and had a bit of hunger. Exactly, and I made that list and he approached me in a weight room

and I was a little like concerned by how much he knew about me. But he convinced me to go to this, to rowing. And shortly thereafter, I started falling in love with the sport, but that was, he knew that he he just needed to put a bunch of special people together and let create an environment that they could win and all of a sudden guess what we started winning we didn't just give sonoma state their first win we gave them their first six and we

have a little special team just enough to gain some interest from some um you know boathouses back east vesper being one of the best if not the best elite rowing team in the country they just gotten a new coach mikhail bartman three-time olympic medal winner in three different olympics for the netherlands just retires at 40 after after winning his last medal in athens gets the job as the head coach moves from the netherlands to philadelphia now he's responsible for putting you know the next great team together in Athens, gets the job as the head coach, moves from the Netherlands to Philadelphia. Now he's responsible for putting the next great team together at Vesper. And they offer 12 to 16 spots max for that team. And my coach at Sonoma State, Mark, gotta give him credit. He's calling

every boathouse there. I mean, he's not even getting any calls back. I mean, Sonoma State's a no-name school. He's telling me, I got this one guy. You're gonna want him. You're gonna want him, but no one's biting. But McKeel calls back. And McKeel's interested in my baseball history. He thinks that, you know, if a guy that can play at this level,

maybe I can turn him into a rower. And what we didn't know, I found out later because McKeel becomes another mentor of mine and one of the greatest coaches I'll ever know, is he loves baseball. In the Netherlands, one time when he was in high school, some ex-US pro came and took batting practice on his field and he just fell in love with the sport. And so he said, let's give him a try. So I show up to this boathouse knocking on the door. First guy that answered the door, 6'7". I'm like, oh man, I am out of my league. And there was a moment I thought

about, maybe I should just duck and run. Like just not even go to this first practice. And Mikhail says, basically don't get too comfortable. Like, well, let's see what you can do. Basically, I spent that entire summer just getting my ass kicked up and down the Schuylkill river. He enters me in the toughest races in the single. So I'm in a single, just getting my ass kicked up and down the Schuylkill River. He enters me in the toughest races in the single. So I'm in a single, just getting my ass kicked, but I got better real fast. And so at the end of that summer, McKill said, look, you're not good enough

to make the year round team here, but let me go ahead and get you into Penn, which was two doors down, the Ivy League school. Let me just get you in there and then you can row at Penn next year and I can keep an eye on you. And then, let's try to get next year. Cause I think there's something here, but I told him like, if it's all the same to you, I'd like to go back to Sonoma and row with

my boys over there, which he thought was crazy, but he let me do it. And, uh, I went back to Sonoma enrolled as a geology master's program. So just to let you know, rich, I've got one year under my belt as a master's in geology, You know a little thing about rocks. Yeah, little rocks for jocks, you know? And so I was able to row another year of college there. So you did a year there and then you went back? Yeah, so I got a second year rowing at Sonoma, just staying eligible there just because I knew I needed,

I needed to get more, basically more strokes under my belt. So then I went back to Vesper the next year and made the year round team. Yeah. So what did you do during that year in Sonoma that allowed you to make that leap? Was it just more time in the boat

and experience and just the grind? It was that, but I was also, this is my journey into becoming a better leader. That first year at Sonoma, I had a chip on my shoulder. I was too good for this sport, kind of sometimes too good for these guys. I played baseball and I was an elite athlete and I'm getting to this sport and this is a

ragtag team of hand-me-down equipment and all this kind of stuff. And I made good friends with a couple of the guys, but for everybody else, it was just kind of like the mentality that my dad has was like, prove to me that you're worthy of being in this boat with me. When I get to Vesper for that one summer in between those two years at Sonoma, I realized that that is not the type, the type of leaders on Vesper were different guys. They were selfless guys. They weren't necessarily even the biggest and fastest guys that were well respected on that team. They were just these guys that everyone can count on. No matter what happened, when they were in the boat, the boat went faster.

It had nothing to do with how fast they could pull 2,000 meters on the rowing machine or how much they could bench press or leg press. It was just when Jaime went in the boat, the boat was faster. When you took him out of the boat, whoever you put in, it went slower. And I started to realize that there was this sense of when someone was in the boat that you respected, you wanted to pull harder for them.

They didn't have to pull harder. It's just the seven other guys in the boat that said, hey, Jaime's in this boat, we love this guy, and let's pull hard for him. And everybody, and that's the force multiplier of rowing is that you don't need to pull harder. You just need to leverage the human emotion of everyone else so that they pull harder.

But you also have to work like a single organism, right? There's like this heavy symbiosis that has to occur. So if somebody is way stronger than everyone else, that's great, but if the energy's off and you're not kind of congealed into this unit, it's not gonna work, right? I mean, I say that as somebody who knows very little about rowing, but it seems like that would be the case. Yeah, I mean, complete interdependency

and swinging together and this idea that when the boat, and that's what's great about rowing and is when you are rowing well together, the boat gets lighter, it gets easier. You can actually feel like you could row that way forever. And so that's what you're aiming for. Every rower is trying to feel that swing, that flow, that means that everybody is rowing together.

And so that was the second piece of it is that great rowers could assimilate to the rest of the team. They didn't force people to row like them. They gave up that individual ego for the collective ego and they rode like everybody else. Right. And so you don't hear of these great individual champions.

I think it harms the sport in terms of like mainstream visibility because we don't have big names that we can rally behind because it's such a team thing. But I think in the conversation around like great endurance athletes, like nobody's harder than rowers. Like these guys, you know, basically just destroy themselves.

Like you hear about cyclists and marathon runners, et cetera, and all of that, but like rowers are like the anonymous heroes in the endurance world who grind like no other athletes I've ever met. That's well said. I've been a rowing a lot longer than you have. And I haven't ever said it that well. I just feel like they don't get enough deserved

kind of attention and accolades for what goes into being great at that sport. But I also, I agree. And I also think that's what makes the sport so great. And there's a certain allure to that. And I think when you hear about great rowing teams, that's exactly how they're called. They're called the crew of 87 or, you know,

Vespers crew of 06 or whatever it is. It's not LeBron and Michael Jordan. Exactly, it's the crew. And that's the word is the crew, that's the noun. Rowing is the verb and crew is the noun. But there is something, if you can get over that individual kind of ego of it all, which by the way is very difficult to do.

If you can. Because you need ego, but it's the humility piece that like is the distinguishing factor to make a champion crew. And by the way, the people that will know who did it is the rest of the team, you know, because you're spending hours and hours and you know, thousands of meters rowing together, but you're also spending time on the docks, you know,

you're spending time together. I mean, Vesper was a work hard, play hard place. You know, we rode twice a day together. We had two practices a day, usually a weightlifting session in the middle. And Saturday night, because there's no practice on Sunday, that's the night you go out. Yeah, sure.

So you're going out, you know, with 10 other guys and you're taking care of each other. Philly's not an easy place. And when, you know, 12 big guys go into a bar or something like that that trouble ensues but it's it's the guys that take care of each other it's like a seal team six kind of vibe right yeah except for we're not as tough as those guys um but it is it is definitely that way it's this it's this idea you know there's this guy there's this guy at Vesper I know we're getting

a little on a little bit of a tangent but I think it's important there was this guy the first summer Vesper it's really what brought me to go to Sonoma the second year Don Wiper never forget him went to Dartmouth you know I'm there I'm a wide-eyed novice rower you know I'm pretty sure that these guys think why am I even on this team you know I'm you know they're not being nice to me but they're not you know they're not including me in a lot of stuff and I probably would have done same. But you weren't getting beat up by some wankle vi. No, no. In fact, I was usually the enforcer down the road. I was the guy doing all the rough housing if we got into trouble out there, as I'm sure we can, those stories are for another time.

But, you know, this guy, Don, he was the stroke seat of the top boat at Vesper. And he's not the biggest guy. He doesn't have the fastest 2K and no one can beat him. No one can beat him out of that spot. And the stroke seat, which is eight seat, that's like the quarterback of the team. That's the guy. You're largely considered to be the best rower on the boat. He's not the biggest guy, not the strongest guy. Doesn't come from the best school. Dartmouth's a good school, but in the Ivies, they get beat up by the Princeton, Harvard's and Yale's

and no one can beat them. And one day I just asked him like, how do you do it? I'm pretty certain this is my last summer, first and last summer at Vesper. Might as well get as much as I can out of this. I asked him one day and the wait room was like, how do you do it? Like, what are you doing to keep you there?

Now, one of the things is to find out who as an individual is faster in a rowing boat, you row two boats for a length of time called two minutes side by side. You measure the distance that they got from each other. You record that distance, the coaches will. Then you take one person from each boat, you swap them and you row them again the same distance.

And you see what the change was. That's how you find out how the individual is adding to the speed of the boat. And Don, and that's called seat racing. And Don would never lose a seat race, never. This guy, no matter who he was going against, he would always beat them. And I said like, how do you always win the seat races?

He says, oh, I just set the boat up. I barely row, let everyone else win for me. And that was when I started to understand this idea that if everybody that you're, of the boat you're going into loves, respects you, feels they owe you something, they will win the race for you. And that's what he was doing.

He was the guy that would row extra mileage at the end of practice because someone needed some extra work. Always be the guy spotting you at the gym, picking you up from the bars. If you were, you know, you're out a little late, not letting the coach know, all these kinds of stuff. He was a player's player, you know.

He earned that trust and that loyalty over time. And it was amazing. And that was measurable out on the water. That's an interesting thing. You can measure his loyalty by the distance he would put between his boat and the boat that was behind him that he just got out of. And that was my first little like insight into what it meant to be a real leader.

Yeah. So you're getting this master's in geology, but really what you're doing is you're getting this master's in geology, but really what you're doing is you're getting, it's sort of like I got a master's degree and everything I needed to know about team building and leadership while sitting on a rowboat. Exactly. That's exactly what I'm getting.

That's the title of your next book. Yeah. Right? So you go back to Vesper and what's the goal? Like the Olympics? Like what's the, you know? Yeah, I think everyone's goal going to a place like Vesper as an elite

is to make the national team or the Olympics or both. And so that's why you're there. I mean, if you're not there for that reason, you probably not gonna last very long. But you know, again, my second- Other than that, what is there? Because it's not like you're making any money doing this. You're out of college and this is your life.

Yeah, I mean, that is what it is. I think there's sometimes you'll see a guy who come from a pretty prestigious school and you'll think, well, this guy's serious. He's gonna be a force. And then he's just not that good. And you can realize that his heart's not in it. Maybe he just wants to continue to live in out the glory days of his collegiate rowing. And he he's just not that good. And you can realize that his heart's not in it. You know, maybe he's just wants to continue to live

in out the glory days of his collegiate rowing. And he doesn't make it that long. Coach will cut him fast because he just, it's the demand on your time and on your body is just too much to not have something like the Olympics or the national team in your sights. So yeah, we're all there. The guys that are on the year round team

are there for that reason. And it's a brotherhood. It's a fraternity at that point. And we're living in these, this old historic boathouse anyway, and that's where we're practicing every day. And so it's a fraternity. And so what the end game is, is that some of us will make it and some of us will not.

That's what's kind of interesting. So how does this play out for you? Well, I spent about three years there, you know, go from this obscure baseball player slash rower who probably shouldn't even be there, move my way up into the second boat and finally make my way into the first boat. And for me to do that.

I mean, that's some pretty incredible progression for somebody who's still pretty new to the sport. Yeah, thank you. A couple of years to go, you know, from a guy who, it's almost like they were doing a favor to let you kind of tag along to being in the number one boat. Yeah, no, that's, you know,

one of my prouder moments is making that team. And, you know, I worked hard to get there. And I think, you know, McKeel took a chance on me because by accepting me on that team and I worked hard to get there. And I think, Mikheil took a chance on me because by accepting me on that team, somebody else didn't get accepted. And that person had probably been rowing a lot longer than me, it's probably a lot faster than me on the water, but Mikheil saw something.

And I mean, I'm not gonna argue with that because I felt that first summer, I did not feel I deserved to be there, but the second summer I did, because I learned so much. And so I worked my way up over the next two and a half years to getting in that top boat. And I remember the frustration of my last summer there trying to get into that first boat. And McKeel was the coach of the women's team there too. And that year they had a women's lightweight double that was going to world championships.

So he was focusing on them a lot. And so he had another one of the coaches, collegiate coach running our day-to-day practices. He'd pop in a few times a week and run the practices. But for the most part, we had to answer to this guy. And I would be seat raced. I'd be switched. I'd win every one of my seat races.

And I'd still, when the lineups came up the next morning, I would not be in that top boat. And I was just getting pissed. And now I'm friends with these guys. I'm close with everybody. And at this particular summer, that's when they infuse it with the summer kids. These are kids that are still at universities, Princeton's, Harvard jails. And I'm beating this Princeton guy every time for this seat. And every time when the lineup comes in the next day, I'm not in the boat and he is. And I'd gotten close to McHugh over the last couple of years, but I was afraid to ask him, but I called on a favor. I went into his office. I said, I'm frustrated. I deserve to be in that top boat. I'm faster. The team knows I'm faster. The yearround guys all think you know they say you should be in that boat Jay and but I'm not in it I'm winning and I said I just like to see if I'm not asking for you to

put me in I'm asking for you to watch a seat race and I remember and saying he says I'm busy we'll see and it wasn't wasn't really the response I was looking for so I was like okay that made me and I then I felt bad but the next morning he's there and he comes to the morning workout. He says, all right, I'm gonna be running seat racing. And he says, so let's get out the boats. Here's the lineups we're going. So he's in the launch with the coach

that was coaching us that summer. And we go out there and you never know who's gonna get picked, but my name gets called. We row, we get switched. I win and he just pulls his little bull horn out and says, from now on, Jason's in the top boat, he won it. And I was probably one of the best days of my rowing career. And I went back to him and I just said, I appreciate that,

that you took the time. He said, I knew I was gonna do it, but I couldn't tell you cause I didn't wanna give you an advantage over your teammate to when you knew you were going to seat race that day. And he said, you deserved it. And I was able to make it there. But that was largely because the team that I'd spent the last two years with day in and day out had, I'd grown to love, they'd grown to love me.

And there was a palpable feeling when I got moved into the boat and those guys would look behind me at, let's go Jay right now. So then how far do you end up taking this? I take it, you know, when, when a couple of gold medals and nationals, a silver and a bronze, these kinds of things doing well, but didn't qualify for Beijing Olympic trials for 2008. I mean, some guys did on our team and I just wasn't one of those guys. How does the, how does the selection process work for the Olympics and

rowing? There's two ways to get selected in rowing. One is to make the national team. There's certain boats in the Olympics where the national team coach simply selects the crew that's gonna be in that boat. So it's called the selection boat. So you have to be on the national team. And like the men's eight, for instance,

is a selection boat. At least it was when I was there. I still think it is. In which case the national team coach will say, all instance, is a selection boat. At least it was when I was there. I still think it is. In which case the national team coach will say, all right, these are the eight guys that are going to the Olympics. Yeah, that's gotta be controversial because that's highly subjective, right? I think a lot of people wish that it was all the other way,

which is what's called the trials boat. So the rest of the other boats that aren't selection boats are trials. It's like the US Open, anybody can enter. You go to the open trials and you race. And if your team wins, your crew wins, you go. And at that point I was in, my best chance was in a men's double.

So I had myself and my teammate, Mike Ross, and we rode pretty much all summer together to try to be able to qualify, but we didn't qualify. We were, you know, it was gonna be a long shot at best anyway for us. Mike's a very good rower, came from Marietta, very good rowing school, incredibly gifted rower.

But, and we were so hot and cold all the time. Sometimes we'd win a race, you know, by a landslide. And other times we wouldn't even get out of the heat. So, you know, we just weren't able to qualify. And it's still like, to this day, I just, I think I just didn't have enough time. I'm still, you know, this is, this is my third year of rowing at this point.

You know, I mean, some people, I had the last Olympics. I wasn't, didn't even know what rowing was when people were in the last Olympics. So, right. So you get that far, but are you thinking, all right, I'm in it for the next four years for 2012 or are you gonna stick it out for that or how does that play out? Yeah, that was the crossroads

and I'm trying to make that decision and I put so much into it and not that I expected to go, I didn't. I was a long shot the entire time. Like it just, you know, I was small, I was inexperienced compared to these guys, but the thought of being another four years, you know, training in Philly, putting off my career, you know, it was just, it seemed too much.

And so I'm not sure if like 100%, I made the right decision, but my decision was to be done. So I retired. Right. So with that, it kind of goes back to how I opened this, which is you're this guy who has a lot of athletic talent. You've got a lot of drive. You've demonstrated, you know, extreme potential. You've had some success, but there's this sense of unfinished business, right? Like, so you can go become a civilian, but you're walking around sort of like a ticking time bomb because there's this thing inside of you

that is yearning to come out. Yeah, and it's just, you know, I moved back to California, you know, and that's what it is, is the restlessness begins to kind of set in and this permanent restlessness is just a hard thing to cope with. And I remember I'm not home for more than, I don't know, four or five months, then I decided to go travel.

So I leave, I'm pretty much traveling off and on for another year, going to Europe and all these other places and, you know, I just, I'm trying to find that thing. And in the end, I was trying to just settle down permanently, but I think it was just an intermission. Was there an awareness, like what is the relationship between like the hardcore national team, Olympic caliber rowers and this whole other culture

of ocean rowing? Cause those, yes, one's gonna feed the other, but they don't really intersect. I mean, they're very different disciplines, right? So is it looked down upon? Is it revered? Like, how does that interplay between those two cultures work?

I think they're actually just now starting to blend in more with open ocean rowing coming into the Olympics and becoming more of an international sport. So before- Is open ocean rowing in the Olympics? It's going to become an Olympic sport. Not trans ocean rowing, but open ocean rowing

where you're going distances in open ocean. And that's exciting for the sport. And that is now starting, you're starting to see a blend. So now you're starting to see flat water rowers or sprint rowers, collegiate and elite level rowers start to think about transitioning in to open ocean. When I started open ocean rowing, there was really no, we were the overlap.

But that was the big idea, right? Like here, I'm gonna take everything I know about athleticism and apply it to this world that needs an upgrade. Like we're gonna approach this from an elite athlete perspective versus like a salty seaworthy, rogue kind of veteran ocean row guy perspective.

Exactly. And so I would say at the time that I was starting to do ocean rowing and doing exactly what you said, I would say that each of the different practices look down on the other one. So I think flat water rowers, the world that I was coming from said, I would say that each of the different practices look down on the other one. So I think flat water rowers, the world that I was coming from said,

no, that's where you go when you don't make it. Or like, you're not, you're just gonna use the one skill that you have, which is endurance to try to win, but you're not gonna be able to put the skill into it. Well, the open ocean rower said the opposite. They said, where did rowing come from? Well, it came from open ocean. I mean, the first rowers were the Vikings.

Everyone thinks of traditional rowing as flat water rowing that we see in the Olympics. That's not what it was. What it was was big boats, rowing just great distances in the ocean. And then it was people faring. It's Viking ship. Yeah, exactly.

So the open ocean. And that's cute that you go to the Henley and like row on that flat water for like a couple minutes. Yeah, exactly. But when you really wanna understand what rowing is, like come on over here. That's exactly what it was. And we'll see what you really are made of.

So I'm all of a sudden, I've got my foot in both camps and I'm not being. But you had to sort of learn the hard way. Yeah, I mean. The ultimate truth where these salty dogs were coming from. Exactly, and so where they were spending a majority of their time saying,

look, these salty sailors, they knew how to read the ocean and weather patterns and they understood tides and they understood weather. They understood that world. They spent those two years of training, teaching themselves to be better rowers. Whereas this first row for us, we were these kind of elite level rowers that had to teach themselves

what it was like to be on an open ocean. How do you navigate? How do you do that in the middle of the night? Exactly, so you're dealing with- And under appreciating how crucial that was to the middle of the night? Exactly, so you're dealing with. And under appreciating how crucial that was to the success of the entire affair. Exactly, so when you've never done open ocean before you're thinking, okay, I row for two hours,

which I can do that. I've done that on the rowing machine plenty of times. And then I rest for two hours and that's nice. I remember, I'll tell you how naive I was. I'm a pretty avid reader. And I brought like seven books with me. I thought I was gonna be able to read on my off time. I was like, this will be great.

I'll row hard and then I'll just be in the cabin reading. Well, I didn't get one sentence in because first of all, the first week, you can't look at a book. You're so seasick, you're gonna throw up. I was like, this is the last thing you have time for is to read. This is how naive I was.

And I still have those books on my shelf and I love looking at them. They make me laugh because you got these nice books with these great bindings. And then you can see these ones that have just been introduced. Yeah, exactly. So they're all wrinkled up and stuff like that. But I didn't read them there. I read them when I got home. That's hilarious, man. Yeah. And also on top of that, on top of the navigation, it's like picking your route. Like

what's your line? Yeah. You're not going to go straight line, first of all. So there's two things with routing that you're going to have to deal with. One is the overall route, the 3000 mile crossing that you're gonna have to deal with. You can't go by way of the crow flies because you're gonna have to follow, you wanna follow the currents and the tides and when you get out and then the wind,

the prevailing winds. So that doesn't often mean straight line. It usually means some kind of a J shape. And then the other thing is when you're out there, you're constantly making changes to your route because you're avoiding storms. You have to go through storms. You have to go north of them, south of them. And you're not a sailboat or a motorboat that's going 15, 20 knots. If you're lucky, you're going three to four knots.

So you're not going to be able to avoid storms. You're just going to try to get yourself in a position and not be in them for very long. you're not gonna be able to avoid storms. You're just gonna try to get yourself in a position and not be in them for very long. So you're having to make all these routing decisions and they don't have, we took classes on routing, basic routing, like how to read your GPS and how to like use the tools and instruments on your boat

to your advantage. But the only real way to learn is to be out there doing it. Yeah, there's no substitute for experience with that, right? Like being in the ocean and just having that tactile feel for like what's the right thing to do. Exactly.

And that's kind of like where, I feel like Angus is like the dude when it comes to this. Yeah. I mean, to this day, I would say, some people get mad at me this, I say he is the greatest ocean rower out there today in the world. I mean, he's proven it.

Right, so in your first Atlantic crossing, you saw what he was capable of and you're like, I need that guy on my team now. Well, his team, his boat, British boat wins that year, right? Do they set the record? No, they win the year, They won the race that year. So this is 2015-16, the same time Tom and I are out there.

They win the race. They set the course record but fall short of the world record by a day or something like that. How is there a difference between the course record and the world record? Because you don't have to enter this particular...

Atlantic Campaigns is the race and it's a fantastic race, well-organized. They do a fantastic job, but there's a lot of teams that don't wanna do the race. They don't wanna pay the entry fee. They push off. In fact, before Atlantic campaigns

became the organized event that it is today, that's how people were doing it. They were just going on their own. How long has that event been around? It's been around for a while. It's been around for a while. I think it was taken over by its current ownership. I wanna say like 10 years ago,

my gentleman named Carsten, great guy did such a fantastic, he's done so much for the sport and organizing at this. But I think this race has been going on since like 96. So, you know, you've got the course record, but then you've got the world record and the world record was at that point set by a team that went independent. Cause what they're doing is they're gonna wait

for that perfect set to come in. Right. And then they're gonna push off. They're not, they're not. They go when the weather is right, not when the gun goes off and race. Exactly. And the race for safety sake requires certain things,

which adds weight to the boat, you know, a life raft, which is essentially the weight of another human being. 60 days worth of food for five people. That's a lot of food. If you're not expecting to be, if you wanna try to break the world record, you don't think you're gonna be out there for 60 days.

So, but you have to carry that weight. You wanna be out there for half that. Exactly. You're carrying double the food that you're probably gonna need. Yeah, or even more because that's representing 5,000 calories per person per day. And for the first week, you're not consuming that much

cause you're seasick. You're sick. And no matter what you're getting seasick, everyone's getting seasick. Is there something that comes with experience where you get less seasick or you're able to dodge that? I think, yeah, I think with experience, you'll know how to handle it better and you'll know what your body needs to do to kind of, to kind of eliminate some of the

symptoms. The worst is going to be the first time you do it and you're just going to get, you're going to take it on the chin. You know, for me, I fortunately for me, I don't, I don't actually physically get ill. I'm very lucky, but I mean, the first five days I'm disoriented, I'm dizzy and I have no appetite. But one of the the first five days I'm disoriented, I'm dizzy, and I have no appetite. But one of the things I do is I like to starve it out. So it sounds weird, but like, I will try to eat as little as possible.

I'll have a lot of calories going into the thing, but like then I'll just eating dry food, a lot of dry stuff that just to keep the stomach feeling all right until it just clears and then I'll be starving. That seems dangerous though. You could get yourself into a crazy deficit. And my teammates have talked to me about that

and that's why I lose so much more weight than most of them. But I can play in that space pretty well. I know myself and I know I'm still, my energy levels there and I can, I've trained my body to burn that kind of slow burning, lean muscle mass for a long time instead of just that. So that fat goes quick, but then it's the lean muscle mass. So you go back to this race

and you put together a whole different team. We talked about Angus, but learning what you learned from the experience the year prior, walk me through kind of the process of wrapping your head around who are gonna be not necessarily the best people, but the right people. So you have that perfect recipe of experience and athleticism, but also this, you know,

kind of unified organism that we were talking about. Yeah, so, you know, I know I'm doing it again. Talk to my sponsors, they're in, they're excited. But I'm kind of left with like this blank canvas. I'm like sitting at my desk literally one day just being like, okay, where do I start? I want people like Tom. Tom's not in.

He's gonna be the land manager for it, but he'd done everything he needed to do. So, I want the people like Tom, but where am I gonna get those guys? And how am I gonna know? Because I thought I had more people like Tom, but where am I gonna get those guys? And how am I gonna know? Because I thought I had more people like that on the first boat. And to bring Angus up again,

Angus and I had become relatively close over the course of the last year because although we were competitors, he worked for the boat manufacturer that we bought our boat from. And just as two captains of two teams, we talked and got to know each other at the start line because you're there for two weeks. And just as two captains of two teams, we talked and got to know each other at the start line because you're there for two weeks. And

he calls me one day, you know, this is kind of as I'm kind of just sitting at my desk, you know, and he calls me one day and says, I hear you're putting together a new team. I said, yeah, I am. I'm going to do it again. And I had heard that he was going to do it. And he said, yeah, because some team was going to pay him like 30,000 pounds to like just literally skipper them across, just have that experience so they didn't have to learn it. I said, congrats. I told him, I said, congrats because you know,

that's, you don't make money in ocean rowing. So for you to be able to make that is like fantastic. And he says, well, if you haven't built your team, I'd be interested in rowing with you, which shocked me. I mean, I would love to have him on the team for all the reasons we've already talked about, but I don't have that kind of cash. I don't have that money to pay him. So I said, I don't have any money to pay you.

And he said, well, I'd be interested in just doing it for nothing. And I'm kind of balking ass as well. She is, if you've got somebody willing to do 30,000, like maybe you should take that. And he says this, he's lying. I'll never forget. He says, I'm more interested in making history

than I am in making money. To which I even say to this day, I said, and you must add that on a post-it note on your computer somewhere. So I'm like that, people don't come up with cool lines like that on the phone. Like this is like, but I knew at that moment, I think when he said that line, that this was the start of another Tom, a right guy. It was a bonus that he had the experience and that he

was the athlete that he was. But here we're talking about, we're at 50% of the right team right now. So we committed and started building from there. From there, he said, if I was putting this team together, I'd call a guy named Alex Simpson. And I kind of heard that name before. And he said, yeah, we rode together in the Indian Ocean because they had done the Indian Ocean before the Atlantic.

I said, why is he so special? I said, he's like, oh, he just shuts up in rows. I think I said, well, you might want to give a little more credit than that if you want to be on this team. But what he basically is saying is like, this is a guy that you've got a lot of type A personalities. You and I are going to be splitting this kind of skipper burden, so to speak, you know, this leadership burden. This is a guy who really is process oriented. He takes the strategy, the idea, the leadership that is not his own, but it kind of absorbs it as if it was and passes it down to the rest of the team. So I gave him a call. This guy's 10 years younger than me. And so I'm a little worried about his, you know, his young maturity kind of thing. But from that first phone call just wants to know, how are we gonna do in eight months

that the rest of the teams that we're going against are taking two years to prepare for? It was just process, process, process. And I understood what Angus was saying at that moment. Meanwhile, you're in California and they're both in Great Britain. This is something that we're having to discuss. How much time are we really gonna to be able to spend together?

Yeah. So I'm wanting to get another American. If we've got three guys here now, we've got two of them are in the UK and then I've got myself here in the US. And so I'm really trying to, having the same problems as the year before and trying to round out this team and being very, very careful.

And guy I wrote a Vesper with, Matt Brown, very intelligent guy on top of being a great row, rode at Yale, then rode at Oxford. So an intelligent guy. And by the way- But also like a beast. Yeah, also, yeah. Forgot to mention also like a ginormous human being

who can like bend an oar when he's putting it in the water. But I think the thing that really attracted me to him was that, and it sounds weird, he just lost at Olympic trials. So here we are, in the summer he didn't qualify, he went for the men's single. That's the toughest one, you're by yourself. And that's by the way, that's a trials boat. Anyone can enter that.

Rich, you could enter it next year and go and try to do the open mic and you'll have to get out of the heats. But he got all the way to finals, but didn't qualify. And I'm thinking to myself, this is it. He's lost right now. He's rudderless, no pun intended. He's trying to figure out like, what am I gonna do?

This has been my dream and now it's over. And he's probably at the same crossroads. Do I go another four years? But he's got a two-year-old at home. He's married with a two-year-old. I mean, so I was like, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna offer him this something else and that's what i did i called him and as he said to me he's like yeah you didn't have to finish the sentence i'm in and it wasn't that i'm in because i'm naive and i don't understand this stuff he had been following me and my race the year before and this guy was no stranger to hard work and no stranger to being

an underdog i mean mean, he came from nothing and built himself up to having a first rate education through working hard. So that was our team. And all of a sudden now we've got a team. Yeah, and taking everything that you had learned the year prior and these kind of lessons about teamwork and leadership

and what went wrong before and how to course correct that. Like how do you then approach this group of guys as a leader to get their heads around what you guys are gonna try to tackle also while you're all dispersed all over the place? Yeah, that was the big problem to solve for. And we've got very little time. And I just, I'm always harking back to this idea that Tom and I had.

I'm like, how do I recreate that like feeling that we had during those moments of breakfast without actually saying, okay, guys, we're gonna do this breakfast thing. Cause you can't, you can't, it has to be organic. And I'm just realizing that, you know, as nice as it was to have one other guy that you were kind of leveraging his human emotion, he in turn was doing that to you.

Wouldn't it be nice if it was for the whole boat? And then I really didn't stop there. I was thinking like, well, we should include our family members, like our wives and girlfriends and our extended family and our friends and our neighbors. I was like, if we created a community of people that once we got to the boat and we started rowing, we felt were relying on us, then that would be a strong motivator in there. And so that's what I did. I just basically started to create a community. So we rowed and we got bigger and stronger

and we rowed together, but we went out there, they came out our way and we just spent a lot of time together as a team. And it was rowing, but I, we went out there, they came out our way and we just spent a lot of time together as a team. And it was, it was rowing, but it was also dinners. It was drinks. It was meeting each other's wives and girlfriends and spending time with them. Um, you know, it was, it was brotherhood. It was fraternity at that point, building this community, this sense of community. And then it was, if anybody in our family group, our friend group, our neighbors wanted a job on this team, they wanted to be part of this team, we'd find something for them to do,

something that we needed done so that when they did it, they felt they were part of the narrative. So you go fast forward to, we're at the start line with, we're back at La Gomera, the start line a year later, and it feels different. It feels like there is a lot more riding on this. And I go back to that thing where glory gets you to the start line, but shame gets you through the finish. There was this idea of feeling that we had a lot of people that were looking up to us to do this, to finish the narrative that they were a part of. And that was a strong motivator and something again, that I was kind of learning in its entirety for the first time

that you've got people that are not saying, do this or else, but are saying that I'm part of this story. I'm passing the baton to you now, now it's up to you guys, finish this story, finish the unfinished business. The stakes were a lot higher. Yeah, yeah. It's not just about you and some kind of vainglorious thing. You've got a lot of people invested in this,

but for the right reasons. I'm sure everybody has their distinct respective why your job as a leader is to figure out how to take all of those whys and have them cohere to one kind of singular why that will unite yourself as a leader is to figure out how to take all of those whys and have them cohere to one kind of singular why that will unite yourself as a team so that when you meet those obstacles, which are a certainty and are going to come in many unpredictable ways, that you'll be able to tap into a different gear to support each other through it. Yeah, I think that one of the many leadership burdens

that you have as a captain is that you need to take everyone's individual wise and somehow convince them that by going through with the team, why that they will still be able to achieve their individual wise. And that's a tough thing to do. Look, Matt was doing it for a certain reason. Alex was doing it for another reason, Angus and myself, we all had different reasons

why we were there. But what I try to convince them all is that to go as fast as we can, for as long as we can, to go as hard, to give everything that we have out on that water, we'll simultaneously take care of all of our other singular objectives. And I think that's where that trust piece comes in as a leader is that people have to trust

that their individual objectives are gonna be taken care of if they buy into the team objective. That is a difficult thing to convince people of. Yeah, I would think so. And even probably more difficult in a corporate context. I mean, the principles are the same, right? Whether you're rowing a boat or you're leading a team at some corporation,

as the leader, you have to get everybody to buy into some kind of singular vision. And you're asking these people to give of themselves. So what is their why for doing that? And why should they trust you? And when things get difficult, how are they gonna kind of stick with you and not just bail and go get a job somewhere else?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of times, and as part of my job, I work with these corporations and teach this leadership. And one of the things that they say is that your stories are great and your examples are great, but I'm not rowing across an ocean.

I'm just doing this one single thing. I think when you're in a corporation, these corporate leaders, their burden is to make noble the effort that they are putting forth. And when you're asking, and this is something that I'm quite passionate about is that if you're asking someone to give all of themselves to something, then you are also asking them to be changed by that something. I mean, that's what happens.

That's what happened with Tom and I. And this is what I'm understanding is we're in that second row is, Tom and I are different people. We're not the same people that left the shores of La Gomera at the start line. We're just different because we gave all of ourselves to this endeavor and to each other.

We're just different and we talk about it all the time. And I'm also different than I was before I left for that second row because I gave all myself and so did the team. We're all just different people now, but that's not a casual thing to be asking someone to do because there's a lot of people out there that say, look, I just wanna come into work every day

and do a really good job and then leave and then forget about it and then come back and do the same thing the next day. And that's fine, by the way, like that's absolutely fine. Like if you're a part of, if you're trying to like create, like you said, like this idea of high performance and yeah, there's a lot of parallels between it.

Then that's what you're asking people to do. You're asking people to actually be changed by me. That's why love changes us, right? We give ourselves, all of ourselves to somebody and now we're different people because of it. We're in love. And you must first be able to answer that for yourself, you know, and be okay with that with yourself.

Am I okay with being changed by the thing we're about to do? Am I okay with being a different person when I come home? And then once you've done that, you need to be able to do that with yourself. Am I okay with being changed by the thing we're about to do? Am I okay with being a different person when I come home? And then once you've done that, you need to be able to do that with everybody else. People are going to resist that. Yeah. People are messy. People are messy. And that differentiator between just showing up and going through a certain routine versus the high performance version of that really boils down to that emotional piece,

understanding what motivates people, how they tick, finding a way to tap into that and engender that level of trust. And then doing the kind of unromantic community building, right? Like that's, and that's what you did that second time building that team. Like, how do we, you know, how do we create a community that is gonna be self-supporting in all the best ways?

Well, you have to put in the time, you have to invest the energy into doing that. Yeah, and that's the, like you said, that's the non-sexy stuff that the day to day, you know, 99% of all this stuff is not great. I mean, think about the row. Like the start is great because everyone's taking pictures

and pushing off. Why can't everyone just be wherever they live, train really hard, show up and we'll just crush this. Yeah, exactly. That would make my life a lot easier. Yeah, right. Still trying to figure out what that is,

but that's what you've got. I mean, you know, the start is great and the finish is great. And the middle is brutal and ruthless and uncomfortable and you wanna quit and you're getting into arguments with your teammates and stress levels high and the danger is high. But you're rowing a million and a half strokes, give or take.

I mean, there's a lot of mundaneness in that. Not unlike the corporate world where you're saying, oh, this is all great, but every day I just do this stuff. Like, you know, like what if I'm in procurement? Why does my job matter to the larger organization, the larger picture? The leader needs to prove that it does. That consistency piece.

My favorite part of the documentary is when you guys are pushing off for this second Atlantic row and it's Matt, right? He just, he just hits it hard. Like he's just going for it. Like in the first couple hours, you're like, bro, we're gonna be out here for like, you know, a month. Oh man.

Chill out, but it's that competitive. Like that's what he knows. He's yeah. And he was the guy who didn't have the ocean experience to realize like, hey man, you gotta like take it breezy. Yeah, he was taking it like a 2000 meter. And then he just face planted for like a week, right? And I'm having deja vu with Nick the year before.

I mean, he goes in so hard. And as he says, I was highly motivated. I'm like, I know you were, yeah, but you can't sustain that. In the most unsustainable way. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we're out here for over a month and he's going out.

I mean, he's drenched in sweat in the first three hours. I mean, he's eating this like pasta dish that just, I'm sitting here going, I'm eating a dry granola bar. I'm just, I'm waiting for it to hit me because the seasickness is gonna hit and it hits him and man, it knocks him flat on the ground and he is out five or six days and i'm i'm in i'm having deja vu from nick because he's doing the

exact same thing he's in the cabin yeah and i'll never forget you know we're taking shifts off of them and this is where you know i've got a chance to change the narrative here and i just i just remember we took shifts from him and uh you know we kept going in there and you know he was just lying face down and and I remember we had taken shifts I was like I gotta at least see if you can row and I'll just never forget he just looks up and I said can you do it and he just looks up and says we'll see and it was just like I mean this is this is a guy who gets into UCLA on academic merit finds out he can row, gets recruited by Yale after his first year,

then goes to Oxford as if it's not good enough for him. I mean, this guy just is a winner. And it sounds like he came from kind of a messed up childhood, right? Like it was a pretty rough situation. He had a rough situation. That's his story, not mine, but he had a bad. And he is, as he says,

I looked at teammates as obstacles that I had to crush. And I always just thought that was such an interesting way of looking at. That's his whole life was that the people that I was with were really just in my way and even teammates were obstacles. So no wonder he ends up as a single skull rower, right? But that doesn't work when you got four guys

who have to live with each other for a month plus in the open sea. But I think, to this day, I think maybe him getting sick was the best thing that could have happened for him and the team because he saw- He got humbled. Yep, exactly. And he saw what the team did.

We picked them up seamlessly. Myself, Angus, Alex. It wasn't a, just so you know, we're rolling your hours right now. None of that. I mean, he felt he was delirious. I mean, he woke up and he didn't realize how long he'd been out.

We got it. And by the way, stay in there. We got you still. And I think this was a game changer for him. I mean, when he got better and he did and he got stronger, but it took him a week plus. He felt he had to live up to a makeup for it. And he didn't, of course,

because that's not what teams are about, but he was so humbled and so appreciative that he became an animal out there. I mean, it was insane. And when we were chasing the world record and it was coming down to the hour, he was that differentiator. I mean, he was rowing four, six hours straight

without stopping. It was insane. Yeah, so you guys didn't have the most auspicious start, but you kind of find your groove, you get some good weather, you're throwing it down pretty hard, you got some storm. I mean, there's all kinds of shit that happened. Day 50, there's some crazy storm or a day, what day was that?

Day 30. It was right around day 30, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then you just throw the hammer down in these final days and you're just busting out like 80, 90 mile days to come in and eclipse the world record by a pretty good margin. Yeah, I mean, without giving too much away

with the dock and stuff, but I think the pinnacle of my athletic career came at that moment on day 30. We get knocked by this storm that shouldn't be there, pushes us backwards. We have to anchor for just a few hours. But when you're talking about, you know, barely being ahead of the world record, this matters.

And finally, the storm's kind of starting to pass. We're able to pull up the pair anchor, start rowing again. know at one point we were going 0.8 knots 0.8 knots that is you can crawl on your hands and knees at about that how many days did that go on for it was only ended up dropping anchor yeah it basically it started the day before on uh january 12th and it slowed us down, slowed us down until finally January 13th, which was Friday the 13th. I'm not superstitious until now. Now I am, but it hit us hard and that's when it just slows down. We couldn't make any forward progress. So we had to drop the anchor. So we went and get pushed back. We're only an anchor for a handful of hours, but it's enough because not only are we not going anywhere, but like we've been not going anywhere for about a day and a half now. So we start rowing,

I'm in the cabin and I'm having to do the math. You know, what has this storm, like what are the repercussions of this storm? What's it done to us? It ends up being really, really simple math. You know, I'm checking it over and over because I got, you get this kind of mental fog when you're out there because you just have such little stimulation, plus you're sleep deprived and malnourished and dehydrated. But it's really simple math. We've got basically almost exactly to the mile, 400 miles left to go and almost exactly to the hour, five days to do it.

So it becomes 80 mile days. We have to basically achieve 80 miles a day for the next five days. And then like, it'll be close if we do that. And just to put in perspective, 70 mile days is world record pace at that point. Like that was what would have done it. So like I'm in the cabin, I'm just, I'm upset. I'm starting to cry a little bit.

You know, I'm just, this isn't fair. We've worked too hard. These guys have worked too hard. And, you know, I kind of composed myself a little bit because I know they're waiting for me to come out there with the number. And I come out and, you know, I've got composed myself a little bit because I know they're waiting for me to come out there with the number. And I come out and, you know, I've got these three expectant faces looking at me and, you know, I tell them what I tell them.

And the responses were just so interesting. I'll never forget them. First of all, Matt, who, you know, seasick and kind of comes back roaring back. So to speak, he goes, oh my God, thank God. I thought you were gonna say a hundred. Like this guy was genuinely relieved that we only had to do 80 miles a day,

which is 10 miles above world record pace. Like he believed so much that this team was capable of it, that he was relieved that it was only 80. And then Alex, the young kid process oriented guy, he was just like, I'll do whatever it takes, skip. He called me skip all the time and said, I'll row every hour of the night if I have to meaning those were his worst nights he'd literally pass out in the

middle of his rowing shift because you'd be so tired just like black out sometimes and all of a sudden I'd feel heavy and I look back and he's like have to elbow him like you've got to get up he was just letting you know us know that he would row his worst hours if that's what it was taking like he was all in and then Angus you know he was he was just saying that this is what we did this is why we combined forces you know we wanted a chance at at history it's not like a great one but we've got one and it's ours and i thought damn if that isn't the best response of any three teammates you could ever have i mean that was when i knew that like i had done what we needed to do you know I came back because I failed as a leader with the first team and it's more more specifically with Greg you know the guy who left

who was healthy you know it's I always say it's easy to get down on Greg he left he abandoned us and believe me you don't want to say his name in front of my dad because my dad can't stand him but um in the end it it was my fault. I failed to get him to a place that he wanted to be like Tom. And I never could shake that. And so that's why I came back. And all of a sudden I've got three guys

that are willing to do whatever it takes in the next five days when we're already beat up. I mean, we're so beat up. And so I said, all right. So we row the first of that five days because we're not quite out of the storm. We row three people at a time instead of two, it's three, which means instead of two hours on two hours off, you've got two hours on 40 minutes of rest. And I'm thinking to myself, this is going to be a rough first day. And we do it for 24 straight

hours and we row 79 miles, which is good. Good, but you're behind. But yeah, for putting all that much effort into it, we're still one mile off of our pace. And I just think that I'm thinking to myself, I remember just as kind of like, we're starting the next official day, which I think we marked at 6 a.m.

was the next official day for us. I just remember thinking like, I don't know. I could see people taking their foot off the gas a little bit right now. Cause we're going to go back to two on two off, you know, we're going to go back to our normal shift patterns. I'm thinking to myself, you know, you couldn't get 80 with three dudes. How are you going to do it? Yeah. Maybe you'll just, yeah. A little bit off their foot off the gas gas. I mean, I'm thinking to myself, you know, I got to make sure I don't do that, you know, because now you're, now we're getting feeling a little defeated. Like, I don't think we've got it, you know, sure I don't do that. Because now we're feeling a little defeated.

Like I don't think we've got it. But I can tell you what I know for a fact that nobody did because on that second day we did 94 miles, which just, that's all that you needed to know is that we did 94 miles and the third was 92. So like five knots, what is that? It wasn't quite five, but it was like, yeah, it was. So four knots will get you a hundred roughly. And so we were like in the high threes all day long,

making quick shift changes. Like everything was, and the thing is nobody was talking about the world record. That's the thing is like, no one was saying like, all right right where are we on the world record pace like it just became about like each other you know it just became about cooking extra food for everybody hey what does everybody want i'm gonna cook five meals right now so that you've got some i'm gonna put it right next to your seat boom eat it i had this infected heel thing hurt so bad because it was it was so infected like even just barely touching it like really really like kind of sent like a pain up my leg. And I'm notorious for not taking care of my body

very well out there when I should. And Angus always yells at me for that. And he would do little subtle things like, hey, J, just when you get back in the cabin, I laid it out. You don't have to do anything. The gauze is there. The wrap is there, all you need to do is just simply take off the thing, clean it, wrap it and done. Like, you know, he would just, he was encouraging me to do what I needed to do to take care of my body. And that was what everybody was doing.

Nobody was talking about themselves. Oh, I'm so tired guys, I'm so beat up. I was all about how are you doing? And that was to this day, it's a pinnacle of my athletic career, that those five days. And I was, I honestly, no one's gonna believe this this but I didn't care anymore if we broke the world record I didn't we did we end up doing it but in that moment I'm thinking to myself this is it this is what this is what I was

trying so hard for you know I chased this like idea of the only time I'm gonna be accepted I'm gonna accept myself or I'm gonna be accepted as an elite athlete, a winner is if it's a gold medal, if it's a world record, you start to realize like, no one gives a shit. Like, it doesn't matter about that. What it matters is about is that when you step off that boat or when you cross that finish line, that you know that you led the team in the right way and that you gave everything that you had and they did as well because of all this stuff that we've been talking about. Yeah, yeah, that's beautifully put. So then with that experience and breaking the world record

and having this extraordinary kind of camaraderie with your teammates, like what do you make of that? Like how do you extrapolate upon that to communicate to the average person or somebody who's striving to achieve a goal or somebody who is a leader in their respective, you know, employment. I have a lot of thoughts around that,

but I'll take it to its most basic level. And I'll say by this, like, we hear this cliche all the time that life is short, right? We always say life is short, life is short. I don't the time that life is short, right? We always say life is short, life is short. I don't actually believe that life is short, or at least I don't think we actually believe it. I mean, whether life is long or short, I guess just depends on what you compare it to.

If you compare it to a giant redwood, it's short. But if you compare it to like a fly, it's long, whatever it is. But what do we believe? And I think most people, to include myself at times, we believe life is long. It's actually so long, in fact, that we put off these things, right? We always want to take piano lessons,

but we'll do it next year when my life isn't as busy. We do all these different things. I'm gonna patch things up with my mom or my dad. I haven't talked to in a while. I'll do it next week. I'll make the call next week, next month, whatever it is. And we put things off because we honestly believe we have more time. And the reality is,

is that that is exactly what keeps us from doing these things is, is that we always think we've got more time. And so if I'm talking about at the most basic level, when we start to attempt these things, we should honestly have a deep seated belief that life is finite, it's short and it's fleeting. And in which case we will start to act now. I think if we're talking about, we're starting to talk to the individual out there that's listening right now,

I'd say that we need to start by how we think about time and how we think about how we spend our time. Because as we all know, weeks become months become years. And all of a sudden that's how we spend our time. Because as we all know, weeks become months become years and all of a sudden that's how we spend our lives. And I think I'm afraid, I'm fearful that I'm not gonna be able to get these things done because I'm running out of time and that helps me. And I think, I hope that helps other people as well.

Yeah, that's amazing. Dude, we haven't even talked about Rowan the Pacific yet. What time is it? You're just a month out basically of doing the craziest thing you've done to date. So walk me through the process of getting enthusiastic about this challenge, this idea that perhaps even after setting this world record that you weren't done,

that there was this other challenge out there that you wanted to tackle and putting the team together, like the audience is gonna kill me if I don't ask you like how you train for all this stuff. So yeah, walk me up to this latest adventure and everything that went into it. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I've gotten all these new tools and lessons that you keep using the metaphor

that I'm basically getting a master's in leadership here. And so that's why I feel like, I feel like I just graduated after this Atlantic row with a master's and now I wanna go apply it. And that's really where the motivation from the Pacific came is I've seen this idea of leveraging each other's human emotions to build this community, to build all this trust,

all things we've been talking about it. I've seen how it works. And now I wanna just go ahead and leverage the hell out of it because I think that this is going to be- Like you find the lights have gone on. You finally got it. And now you could actually return and execute

at the highest level because you've got the skills, the experience, the endurance, you've met the obstacles, all of it. Yeah, and that's where we're at. So, I live in the San Francisco Bay area, the Pacific is my backyard. And so what better thing to have, to enter the race that leaves from your backyard

and goes to Hawaii. So, that's where the motivation comes from. I'm excited to build a new team. Why a new team though? Why not just get all these guys? Yeah. You got your guys. And, but those guys are, their, their whys are changing. Yeah. People are living their lives. How dare they? Yeah. I thought that was selfish too. I'm glad you think the same. Well, Matt, you know, I've never seen anyone have more closure than Matt. Matt after this row, and you know, the doc does a great job

of kind of showing this, but Matt has so much closure after this row, both athletically, his athletic career, but also his personal life. This idea of being able to really kind of close the loop on a lot of the things. He has no interest.

And believe me, I tried, but he's done. He's like, Jay, I'm done. I am done. He learned what he needed to learn. He's out. He got that closure. He had that experience. And now he can cut the ties and build a new life.

Yeah, exactly. On top of that. And that's exactly what he did. You know, they had another kid and they're living a new life. Yeah, exactly. On top of that. And that's exactly what he did. You know, they had another kid and they're living a happy life in Texas right now. So- But Angus. Well, Angus isn't going anywhere.

Holler at my boy. Yeah. He's my dude. Yeah, he's the best. He's, you know, this is his life. And for him, you know, his motivation is different. Again, this is for another time, but, you know, he is his life. And for him, you know, his motivation is different. Again, this is for another time, but, you know, he's more comfortable.

He's a guy who's always been more comfortable out at sea than he was indoors. You know, I mean, I like to come home. I love these things, but I also like to come home. You know, for me, it's, I wanna see my wife. I wanna see my son. You know, I wanna spend time with friends and family and go golfing and run my business. I wanna to see my son. I want to spend time with friends and family and go golfing and run my

business. I want to do these things. But Angus always seems tough to reenter. He always has a hard time coming back. And I think he's chasing something and that's for him to answer, not me, but he was ready. So he was in. So it was was me and him and now we're looking for two other guys and um you know one of his first teammates from the first time in the atlantic gus barton uh was in and uh he's a he's a personal trainer in london and a great athlete and has experience and then duncan roy was our our next guy who had rode the atlantic twice already as well and his big motivation was that he didn't really feel like he had the experience that he wanted to have in both those rows for different reasons. He was looking for an ultimate team experience. And so we had this team, but COVID,

you know, we're all sick of talking about COVID, but it precluded us from doing it in 2020, which was when we were supposed to do it. And so that comes and goes. And we now, you sit here, we built ourselves up. Gus has to has to bow out because him and his wife are planning on growing their growing their family and having a child which i totally understand so he can't be in for 2021 so we're looking for this fourth guy um and duncan we all put together a list of people that we'd be interested in and duncan had a couple guys um on his list and one of those guys we ended up taking which was which was Jordan Shuttleworth and um again no experience on the ocean so we're

talking about you always need one guy who has no ocean experience we just want to make sure that we make it just a little bit harder for ourselves you know so yeah he's a former royal marine big strong athletic individual um but no ocean rowing experience. And so, you know, here we are, here's our team coming into this year. Myself, Angus, who are, you know, who's at this point, my brother in adventure at this, you know, we've done so much together.

And then Duncan, who I've never rowed with in a boat before in terms of a race, but have now spent a lot of time with and just absolutely loved. And then Jordan. Right, so I'm less familiar with Duncan and Jordan because they're not in the documentary because the documentary ends before the Pacific row,

but both military guys, which is interesting. Yeah. But also I trust come from some kind of competitive rowing background or just like ocean dudes. Duncan was ocean rowing. He'd done two ocean crossings already and really has fallen in love with it. And Jordan, no, no, no, no,

like really no nautical background. Right, he's just a bad-ass Marine commando who's tough as nails. Yeah. And it never rode in the ocean and you're like, that's our guy. Exactly, like I haven't learned my lesson. Well, it's just, it was,

we interviewed quite a few people to include people that had ocean rowing experience, but he just seemed, he just, he had that. I'll tell you what I loved about Jordan. I mean, there's a lot of things I love about Jordan, of course, especially now that we finished one together, we're like brothers. But the first thing he said when we got on our first

interview with him, you know, Zoom, of course, and he says, I'm nervous. Why are you nervous? What are you nervous about? He's like, I just want this so bad. I just thought that is a great, I like that, you know, that he there's already so much on it for him. And I asked him, I said,

do you remember the first thing you said? And he couldn't remember. And I just remember it came from the do you remember the first thing you said? And he couldn't remember. And I just remember it came from the heart. He was just, he looked nervous and I just loved that. It meant something to him. So interesting thing about Angus is, I looked into his background a little bit, in addition to being the youngest ever to row

the Indian Atlantic and Pacific, the guy has dealt with depression and ADHD and some, you know, he's got some dark chapters in his past that he had to kind of face and overcome. Yeah, and this has been, you know, something that we've constantly talked about. I mean, we, you know, we rode the Atlantic together, broke the world record.

Then a year later, we trekked across Namibia together. Something that we don't talk a lot about, but that was an incredible vacation, adventure. Certainly wasn't, yeah, it was anything but. He didn't actually complete that one because he got heat stroke and passed out and hit his head. And then after that, he went into a tough time and there was actually about a six month stint

where I couldn't get ahold of him. Most of his friends couldn't get ahold of him. And I'm in the US and he's in the UK. So I'd be calling him. I had Alex, our teammate from the Atlantic actually was trying so hard to get ahold of him and he wouldn't respond to any of us. So Alex somehow had one of his old credit cards started using it at the bars. He's like, well, if he's not going to answer my phone calls, I'm just going to start charging the hell out of this thing until he calls me pissed off. But as it turned out, which we learned is that

he was just, he was wrestling with a lot of tough thoughts and he struggled with depression. He's now in a much better situation. He's in a very healthy relationship with a wonderful woman. And, but it's not gone, you know, he still has to deal with it. And so it's, again, but it's not gone, you know, he still has to deal with it. And so, um, it's again, that's his story, but it's something that, you know, we've, we have to constantly talk about

because that's, that's going to affect the, that's going to affect us being out there. Yeah. I saw, uh, a piece, I think it was vice that you did, um, where it was kind of like a mini doc and it was you guys like getting ready for this race. And it feels like in this case, you guys were together more or were those just training partners that live out near you? Those were my training partners. I wish those were my teammates.

I mean, glad that my buddies helped out, but I mean, that's what happens is that, especially with COVID, we got together. I met Jordan face to face for the first time when he got to San Francisco. Oh, wow. Those I got to San Francisco. Wow. Those I've got San Francisco bear. I've got training buddies, Mike books at you.

I rode with in college. He goes out in the water with me and I got Kevin Grant who's collegiate football player. So I do the weights with him and I got swimming partners, trail running partners. So those guys helped me get in shape. I've got by committee, that's swimming partners, trail running partners. So those guys helped me get in shape. I've got by committee, that's great. But we didn't have any time to train together.

So we get to San Francisco, we got two weeks until this row starts here. This is this past May. Boat's not ready and not nearly as ready as we'd like it to be. We haven't even all really spent any time together. COVID's slowing everything down because even at this point, we're still struggling with stuff

and we're way, way over budget and underfunded. So, I mean, this is the team that should just be- So you as a guy who's taught at business schools and has all this wisdom about team building and leadership, you're breaking all your rules. Yeah, and again, we gotta say, I could sit here and give you a litany of excuses excuses hey well it's covid this and covid that and in the end it comes down to me in the end it is my fault so we're not ready we're not prepared we didn't raise enough

money for this thing we didn't get enough sponsorship well whatever this is my i i have this team and this boat and this race ahead of us. And those two weeks were not ideal to be fair. And as we led up to this row, and so May, instead of, I was gonna take them to a Giants game and we were gonna go and do all these fun things, take them to the city. They wanted to see a cable car and all these.

They didn't believe that it gets pulled by a cable. So I was gonna do all this stuff. We spent every single day, all day at the boat, getting it ready until literally the night before. And so here we are, just like you said, I've broken all the rules, but in that time was spent with each other and it was stressful, but it was together.

And there was a ton of trust and community building happening. And I remember like the night before my wife asking me how I was feeling, because it was a very stressful two weeks leading up. And I said, I can't wait till tomorrow morning. All I have to do is push off and all that's left is the suffering.

And that's how I felt. Like I truly felt that we were still where we needed to be. And all that was left is just do it. McKeel, just to bring it back to my Vesper coach there, three time, he used to always say say medals are earned in the off season. You simply just row the race to go pick them up. And I love the simplicity of that. Like simply just row the 2000 meters

because the medals are at the finish line. You just got to go pick them up. Whatever color you get is a result of what you did in the off season. And that's how I felt with this team. Like we had done the work. It was stressful, but we were ready. The boat was where it needs to be the team together where they need to be all we need to push off. Yeah, we did. Talk to me about the training. So you would think, I thought, I guess I should say that your training would be

you on a boat in the bay as much as possible, then you on a compu trainer, and then you in the weight room. But in that little mini doc that I watched, you were doing all kinds of interesting different stuff. A lot of kettle ball work, a lot of like calisthenic type, you know, hit type training where you're changing gears a lot, trying to confuse the body.

So walk me through, you know, the kind of philosophy and perspective and routine that you were doing to get ready? Yeah. So ideally the number one thing you could do to get yourself ready is to be in your boat with your team on the ocean rowing every day. As much as possible. Yeah. That's number one. Whenever you can do that, you do it. Multi-day rows, getting out there, sleeping on the boat, rowing in different conditions, that's the best, but that just doesn't happen. I mean, even on a non-COVID

year, it's hard to get the team together, but when we can, we do. Then you get down to rowing machine. So the erg, I mean, I'll sit on there and I do a lot of different training. Sometimes it'll be long, long, steady state pieces on that, where I'm just trying to keep my heart rate. And I do all heart rate training. So it's really based on where the heart rate is, not where the split is. Then we'll do interval work and strength work on the rowing machine. And then from there, lifting is a big deal. Rowing is a leg sport mostly. Most people think it's an upper body.

It's not. It's that you push off of a sliding seat. You don't pull. Pushing is most of it. So you're building that legs. You're building the core. And of course, the back and shoulders as well. So a lot of that.

But then you can't be too singular and just row. It's a lot of pressure on the back. So I do a lot of that, but then, you know, you can't be too singular and just row. It's a lot of pressure on the back. So I do a lot of cross training. And for me, cross training is, I like to do trail running because I enjoy it and I'm not, and it's hard for me. So I'm a big guy and swimming. Swimming has become a huge part of my training now

because it's that nice fluid motion and it's a lengthening thing for me. So it makes my back feel good. So I'm doing a combination of all that, but in a day-to-day, I'm getting up at 4.30. If this is what people wanna know, I'm getting up at 4.30 before my son and my wife are up. I'm doing a big row there.

That's an erg row, that's a rowing machine workout. That'll be a two-hour session depending on what the day looks like. And then I'm usually doing some kind of a midday, afternoon thing that'll be either in the weight room or be some kind of like park workout that we'll just bring all our medicine balls and stuff and we'll start to do stuff in the park.

And that'll be kind of more of a muscular endurance type of workout. And then usually on certain days, usually three days a week after I put my son to bed, he's down at 7.30, then I'll go for a night run, just something light, not pushing it, nothing like you do, Rich, but just getting out there, just trying to like break a sweat

and make it feel good. And then that's, so I'm doing two days, Monday through Saturday, and then two or three of those days, I'll put in a light run as well in the evenings and then Sunday I'll usually take off. Right, so what I didn't hear is you getting out on the water.

Well, usually we get to, but this time in the Pacific, there was almost no water time. First of all, our boat wasn't ready. And even getting out in a skull. Yeah, and I did a lot of that as well, but it's tough with a family. Yeah, it's time consuming. It's time consuming.

You gotta get to the water. And unload it. Exactly, so it's like, do I do that? Or do I get on the rowing machine, which is in my garage? And I got a little setup there and I can just get there and pound out. And you have the background and the experience like. Yeah, I wasn't as worried about the,

for me as the rowing portion of it in terms of the feel of the oars, that I've spent a lot of my adulthood dealing with and training for. So it was for me, it's just about sitting and getting bigger and stronger and fitter. Packing on the weight, putting on the muscle mass because that's gonna get eroded over time

and kind of becomes a fuel. Yeah, I mean, what happens is you start high that adrenaline, then you crash with the seasickness. And then after you get out of the seasickness, cause you come back up and you're probably at your highest point at that point, you feel the best, maybe five days into the row. And then it's a slow descent, slow and steady descent

as you lose the fat, which goes away quick, then you start burning into that muscle mass. And you start feeling those injuries, you get the stress fractured ribs, you got sores on your ass, you've got your hands, you've got- How do you get on top of those sores? Cause that's just nuts.

And all they're just being exposed to, they're just wet all the time, salt, everything. It's awful. I'm gonna be honest, it is the worst. So for that, you know, you hear that, that old proverb says, it's not the mountain in front of you, but the pebble in your shoe.

That's what ocean rowing is. It's not the distance that you're rowing that's so hard. It's the little things. And that's getting ahead of it real quick. So, you know, yeah, the minute you get started getting wet and you get hit by a wave, I mean, you might not be dry for another two days from that one single wave that hits you.

You're soaking wet and then it gets down to your butt and the salt is just grinding into your butt and then you get these sores and it's a combination of trying to dry them out but also keeping them so that they you know keeping them also like with some some lubricant basically so that they don't get worse so it's this fine balance between drying them out and you're on a 30 foot boat where are you drying you know there's no we don't have a bathroom on our boat. I mean, do you just have vats of anti-microbial like Neosporin type shit that you rub on your ass and on your feet and your hands all the time?

Yep, just like trying, you got your phone, trying to take a selfie to see where it is or just asking one of your buddies, dude, I need you to look at my ass. Yeah. I was like, oh God. And I saw on the Instagram, like sleeping naked cause you gotta- You're trying to air out. You gotta dry it out.

Yeah, yeah, you just, see, just, I mean, there's no shame on this boat. I mean, you can use your imagination, but I mean, you're asking guys to look at things that you can't see on your body. I need you to check this thing out, you know? And then, or a guy will see you like, you know, take down, drop down your shorts,

but like, dude, your ass looks awful, dude. You gotta fix that. I mean, just as a cyclist, like I can't imagine the saddle sore situation. Yeah, it's for me, it's one of the worst things. So I had that and like I had a bad ankle issue on this one that just, and it's just those little things that you're just trying to figure out.

You've got two hours to somehow make it better before you go out for another two hours and make it worse. So it's just this idea of like trying to figure that out. And then of course you're tired. All you really wanna do is just lie down and go to sleep, but you've got to stay up and fix those things. And that can be, that's one of those two hours of not rowing is tough.

So yeah, you've got stress fractured ribs. You've got salt sores on your ass. You've got tendinitis where your hands don't even straighten out. And you've got numbness in your hands. You've got blisters obviously that hopefully will callous up. And then you're just getting, you get headaches, you know, blisters, obviously that hopefully will callous up. And then, you know, you're just getting, you know, you get headaches, you get dizziness. It's just,

it's just, it's brutal out there. And how much clean water can the desalinator produce daily? It really depends on how much sunlight you're getting because you're, you know, everything's being powered by solar panels and how much you've had to use for other things but we keep those phones charged get those videos yeah exactly um yeah you got an auto an auto helm that's helping you keep your your your point and stuff like that you're but so is solar creating the energy for your navigation for everything right yeah it's all it's all, we got lithium ion batteries on this race, which is the first time we did, which ended up being great. But I would like having five liters of water per 24 hours for each individual is good, that's nice.

And think about it, it's not that much water. That's not that much. Plus you're using it also to make your food. You can't like use that for taking a shower. Yeah, it's not like we're just, we're not having water balloon fights, I don't know what they're throwing in. Yeah, it's not like we're just, we're not having water balloon fights. I don't know. Yeah, it's, that's the precious resource.

And a couple of times, I think we did three times on this last race, you need to wash the bottom of the boat. Actually, if you can believe it, barnacles build up on the bottom of the boat. You get a slime that gets there and then the barnacles stick to the slime. There's another interesting thing. You're in the middle of the ocean,

you jump in and you're just, you're swimming in the middle of the ocean. There's another interesting thing. You're in the middle of the ocean, you jump in and you're just, you're swimming in the middle of the ocean. It's an incredible experience that I always encourage all my teammates if they haven't done it before. Some don't want it like, hell no, I'm not going in there. But I always encourage if you're not too scared to do it.

And most people take you up on it. It's just an incredible feeling like, you know, tethered to the boat, but like you're just away from the boat. You're, you know, it's obviously gonna be in calm weather. I can do it during a storm and just to go underwater naked. And it feels so good. Yeah, so you're getting that kind of,

that's your closest thing to a shower. Just to- I mean, that's a religious experience. It is an unbelievably religious. It is so true. I mean, it is one of the most amazing things to know. You have 30,000 feet below you. I love to just, I do it every time.

I just like push off and just swim down and then just like do a 360 underwater. And just as far as the eye can see and the lights being funneled because it's so deep and you can just see it being squished in. It's amazing. I mean, as an adventure athlete, as an explorer, there's this, I mean, perhaps you're the only human being

that's ever been in that spot ever in the history of humanity. Yeah, I think that all the time. It's crazy. That's what we're all, that's what adventurers are trying to do. Has anyone other human's foot ever been where I'm standing on this terra firma?

And that's what we think about out there is you just, for a second, just have your own experience. Just the guys are joking around, you know, and everyone's, some guys are working and scrubbing the boat and stuff like that. And you can just have this one moment to yourself where like, and I always think like, I'm exactly where I need to be right now. And that is, again, if we're going to wrap this whole thing up, this is why we're doing it. I mean, we're doing things

like this to satiate this very human need to push further, to be somewhere that no one else has been, to get away and to be present. And there is nothing more to feel, to make you feel present than something like that experience. Yeah. So you get it done. You not only break the world record, you like demolish it by nine days, basically. Yeah.

From 39 days to 30 days. Yeah. It's insane. So the thing that you always were waiting for, this guy who is kind of in the shadows, always second place, never could quite execute on the dream. I mean, that's gotta be pretty gratifying. Yeah. I'm on the path to where I wanna be doing doing it the way that I want to do it,

but I'm not done. And I think right now it's about, as I said before, taking this relatively new knowledge, this master's degree, which I'm going to use by the way, because this is amazing. This is a great metaphor. Yeah. But now you're teetering into PhD territory, but there's a dissertation involved. So maybe that's what you're thinking about in terms of what's next. Yeah, and I think, I just love to see these tools going into action and them actually working.

It's just an amazing thing to see all this work that we've done. And you just see, you create an environment for these human beings to be amazing. And then they are, and you just, you sit there and you marvel at it because in the end, what I'm doing is I'm not proving to the world

that I'm just some great athlete. I'm as great as I can be, but I'm proving to the world that I'm a builder of teams. And that is why no matter what you see me do next, it'll be in a team atmosphere. Do you have a sense of what might be coming next? I definitely have a short list. Yeah, you're gonna get all caging on me now.

Well, come on. You know, what if someone does it for me? Yeah, that's right. No one listens to your podcast. I forgot about that. Also, I'll just say this. I'll say this. I think I'm largely done with oceans.

I think I've, I don't think there's anything left for me out there. I mean, I would do some more interesting, maybe shorter crossings, but I think transatlantic, trans-Pacific ocean crossing is, I'm done with that. But I've been looking to other bodies of water,

big rivers, the world's biggest rivers and doing some of those and being able to do some more exploring, some more adventuring where, yeah, there's still a record to be had, a source to see type of crop, going down rivers and stuff, but also being able to explore terra firma at times,

being able to come onto land, just seeing a little bit more of the world through rivers. I'm not saying more than that for now. Yeah, no, I get it. I mean, I'm interested in kind of how your recent experience has or has not maybe impacted how you think about your why for yourself as an adventure athlete who now has, you know, made this stamp,

established yourself as somebody who can do amazing things, who is in a position to garner additional support and, you know, attention, et cetera. And I think of people in the tradition of this, like Lewis Pugh, who's like about to jump in freezing cold water and swim across these frigid, Icelandic or where is he? He's in Greenland, I'm sorry.

Which is even worse. Swimming in the coldest water there is, but his why is tied to a cause greater than himself. I mean, you're about team building and leadership and community building, et cetera. Not that that's not completely laudable, but his thing being like the environment and all of that. So I'm interested in kind of has your perspective

on what you like the sort of larger why behind what you're doing. Is that in flux? Are you locked in on that? Or how do you think about that? I think it's very inelegantly. No, I think about this stuff so much on why you were talking so elegantly, by the way,

I was also trying to think about how I kind of wrestle with that idea. And I'd say the first thing is, is that some of this is set in stone and it's becoming more and more stronger with me, my why. And that's a lot of the personal why. Things like doing this for my son, he'll be two in a week.

And he doesn't know what I do yet. He's only two, but he will start to in the next few years, start to slowly realize that his dad has done some incredible things. And it might sound a little cheesy, but for those parents out there, you know that your why becomes pretty strong for your kids.

And it's for him to be able to see that his dad does these things um so whatever he gets into that he's gonna know that you know he's got a chance he's got a shot that's just i'm so excited to be able to use that um as kind of a leverage for him as well and and uh i'm excited i'm that that this was my first row I've ever done my first adventure with him alive. That was tough, but also a motivator. I put him to bed the night before I left and he woke up the next day and I wasn't there.

And then I wasn't there for the next 30 days. Does that change your kind of risk analysis approach? I thought it would, but it it didn't and to be very honest and that sounds selfish and it is but i didn't i didn't feel myself feeling any more mortal out there than i than i have in the past just because i have a a boy um i thought it would i thought maybe i'd lose a little edge but i didn't in fact one of my teammates on this was he said he was worried and it was very honest of him to say that.

It was actually Jordan. Very, very awesome to say that, you know, he's a little worried that maybe I would bring that missing him out onto the water. And I had spent, you know, the year leading up to this road to make sure that I was emotionally ready to leave him. And I think it did me well, you know,

I didn't bring it in a sense that I was emotionally ready to leave him. And I think it did me well, you know, I didn't bring it in a sense that I made decisions or I had bad days because of that. I also was surprised that I, you know, I still felt as ready to take risks and take chances. Yeah, that's interesting. Maybe that will change. I don't know, maybe it will. Yeah, I mean, you know,

as somebody who's got kids that are older now, I'm aware of how that impacts like how I make decisions about where I invest my time. That's true. Risk analysis aside, I think as they get older and they become like, at some point they're like, oh, you're a real person. Yeah, yeah.

Because they develop enough, their brains mature a little bit and their personality comes out a little bit more robustly. And for me, like when they're really young, it's harder to have that kind of, not connection, but like understanding of them as like sentient human beings. And then when they get to a certain point, you're like,

oh wow, and I just remember a shift in how I thought about things. When was that? I can't remember. I mean, I'm old, so it was a long time ago, but I think maybe around, I think you got maybe another year and a half or so before that starts to percolate up.

That'll be interesting. Yeah, I mean, it's already there, but then it really kind of like gets to a different level. Yeah. And it changes the way that you kind of interrelate. Yeah, I mean, I fully expect for it to change and I'm surprised, I'm being very honest. Like it would have been easy for me to just sit here

and say, oh yeah, you know, family first. And it is family first, but when I was out there, I mean, we took some risks. We went through storms when we could have gone around and that's by the way, why we broke that nine days. We went through every single storm. We did not go around it. That was dangerous.

It was harder and beat us up more. And I never once thought like we shouldn't be doing this because our team goal was to go as fast as possible. And that was how you did it. But I can see what you're saying is that he's gonna start asking me questions. Like if my aunt twice removed says, why do you keep doing these things or something?

I'm pulling this as a fictional person at this point, but I get those questions. Like, why do you have to do another one? I don't hear that. But if my son asked me that, that would hit a lot harder, I think. But meanwhile, you've got this consultancy, this other business that you're running, Latitude 35.

So maybe a way that we can kind of round this out and conclude the conversation is with some thoughts about leadership and team building that you've learned as a result of working with corporations and teaching what you've learned to business schools. A big piece in this that I think distinguishes your approach from other people who do similar type stuff is that my sense is that it's extremely experience-based

and it's really all about kind of the emotional piece that we were talking about earlier. It's one thing to come in, stand on a stage and go, here are the 10 things you need to do to reorganize your team and motivate them. But truly all of that remains academic until you get a group of people out, you make them do something hard together

and have a sort of transformative experience that congeals them and weds them to each other in a way that information on its own just isn't going to accomplish. Yep, that's what our company's essentially been all about is that, you know, you hear, you know, the other competing companies that study show this about leadership and building teams and surveys show that,

but largely the people that are teaching this stuff from my experience have stood on the sidelines of building teams or even been part of teams their whole life. They've studied them, they've read the books and they've maybe even written some books on it, but they have not been out there and tested that. And when I started to, I've been doing this for over 15 years now,

started teaching leadership and how to build high performance teams. Yeah, I have my own process. We have our steps and whatever you want to call it, but it constantly changes. So every time that we add another row or another adventure, I'm constantly tweaking it because in the end, it's just a living document. There's no right way to build teams.

It's not the process, it's a process. But the most important element is that we're, I'm going out there, I'm building teams for different adventures. I'm using my process best I can, but I'm making mistakes, I'm making concessions that I'm telling people you shouldn't make, I'm making mistakes out there constantly, learning from them, and I'm bringing all that experience to our clients. They come with me with their business challenges and I'm gonna help consult them. But we also do, our most popular programs are our experiential programs where we take people rowing on a river

or sailing the British Virgin Islands. And we say, all right, we are gonna teach this by essentially putting together a team, just like I had to do and putting you out in a chaotic, a controlled chaotic environment. Debbie from marketing and like Joe from sales. Yeah.

You know, we, when we work with a lot of, you know, upper management and above it's, it's, you know, but these are people that are either maybe at the lowest level coming into for the first time leadership responsibilities. Maybe they've never really managed people all the way up to people that have been managing people for a long time, but are doing it a certain way their way, and maybe just need access to different perspectives. And all we're doing is creating an environment for those ideas and those experiences to happen. And we don't sit there and placate them and say, look how you rode well together and worked as a team. We actually dig, we're very academic. So half that experiences or that time with them

is spent in that experience. But the other half is a very academic deconstruction of that experience because that's essentially what I'm doing when I debrief my own adventures is, how can I, what mistakes did I make? How can I learn from those mistakes and move forward? And that's essentially what we're doing.

We're constantly being students. I mean, you're saying I'm almost at my PhD, which I appreciate, but I'm gonna try to go for another one. Yeah, and okay, since you're gonna go for another one, how do you think about communicating principles around things like discipline, consistency, motivation, inspiration, living your life purposeful and seeking your passion and terms that get thrown around a lot

kind of in the space of what you do. And I'm sure in the kind of keynote circuit speaker world, I think it's very confusing for a lot of people because those words are used cavalierly. So what do they mean to you? And where do you think people should focus their energies who are trying to kind of unlock something greater within themselves, but feel stymied or stuck

or just unsure about how to bring expression to that? I think, yeah, and I do a fair amount of keynote speeches and it's hard to connect with people on keynotes. You're on a stage and you're either telling a story or you're giving some examples and some anecdotes, but largely the best work that I have with people on those is afterwards when you're having dinner with them or you're talking off stage with them.

And then of our programs where we get to spend a little bit more time making some connections. And I think the first thing is like, is there a willingness to change? And I think the first thing is like, is there a willingness to change? And I think for a lot of people, a willingness to be a better leader or a better builder of teams comes from the idea that you're okay

with kind of exposing yourself and opening up your books to everybody else. Because I used to play with all these different definitions of leadership. And I thought, well, I'm in leadership, so I have to have this really complex definition. And now it's just one word, it's just trust. That's my definition.

So what's the definition of leadership? I say it's trust. In order to build trust with the people that you're leading and for them to build trust within themselves, like you have to open up your books and be vulnerable. Honesty, vulnerability. Exactly.

And I think, you know, I think one of the hardest things for us to do, even though we talk about a lot and talk about a cliche is talking about our failures. And so I spent a lot of time showing how much we can learn from our failures. And I think we just spent a lot of time doing that just now on this talk. And here's another cliche that drives me nuts

is that one where you hear, it's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up. And I find that to be a in this world. There's so much competition. People are smart. People are getting smarter, faster. They want to learn more. And I think we need to spend more time understanding how we got knocked down, talking about it, being vulnerable, being authentic with ourselves and with each other. So that when we do get back up, we're a tougher, harder, stronger, smarter target to knock down again because we need to be resilient. This resiliency piece is so important.

But if all we're doing is proving to people that we'll get back up, I mean, we're really not getting anywhere with that. So if people are looking how to like really be authentic leaders and how to kind of take on some of these challenges, I think it starts with this building the trust piece. And I think you can spend a lot of time working on that.

So how would you begin that? I think a lot of people, and the reason I asked that is, I think that I agree with you completely on the vulnerability piece. Like you cannot expect to engender trust if you're not willing to open up your books, to use your phraseology, to be honest, to admit where you went wrong.

I think a lot of people are intimidated to do that or scared to do that. It feels not safe, or it feels the kind of conventional wisdom around that would be if I do, if I do that, I'll appear weak. And that will be a cross purposes with the trust that I'm trying to engender. The truth is actually the opposite, but for somebody who's never engaged in that process, like, I guess you would have to say like, start small, but getting somebody off that ledge and into a mindset where they're comfortable sharing

on that level with people who are underneath them or their colleagues at work, or even at home in their relationships, I think is a tough road to hoe for many, many people. And it keeps us stuck. And it also imprisons us in our emotional states. It paralyzes us from the growth that we actually seek and aspire to.

Yeah, well, I think one of the things I've noticed about myself is the more I've accomplished and the more of these rows, the less macho I become. I feel that at first you feel the need, like you're saying to kind of beat your chest and to say, look at me, I'm on this pedestal. And the reason why you're down there and I'm up here is because I manage you, I lead you, I'm your boss.

And then it starts to become such a flat hierarchical structure. By the time you start to accomplish these things, you all start to become on the same level. And I think I've learned that a lot. I felt so much the need like at Sonoma State to show that I am bigger and stronger and you should be scared of me. And one time, one of my teammates says, the only reason people row hard for you is because they're scared of you,

not because they respect you. And that really hit me hard. And so I've been thinking about that. Which works in the short term, but not in the long term. Exactly. Yeah. It's the stick versus the carrot thing. So if people are looking for a way to start, as you said, a jumping off point, I'd start with storytelling. Start figuring out what kind of stories you can be telling. Don't forget about showing your failings for a second or deciding to say, oh, I'm gonna tell them

this is where I failed. This is gonna be a big thing. Forget about that. Just start storytelling, start a narrative. Every time I'm telling a story, giving a keynote speech, even if it's just with friends at a dinner or if it's on a stage in front of thousands of people,

I make sure that every sentence I'm saying is for the benefit of the person listening. Otherwise you're just bloviating and talking about something about yourself. But if you can have other people see themselves in the stories that you tell, you're on the road to starting those conversations that are gonna talk about the shortcomings.

And that's a way to wade in shallow because I'm not saying you to say, this is where I made a mistake. You're just telling a story. And that encourages people to be like, I think of this one time, you've given a fair amount of keynotes as well, but you talk to people off stage

and they wanna come in and shake your hand and share stuff with you. And I've never really identified or connected with the macho guys that come up to me and say, oh, I'm just like you. I hate losing. I never lose, which first of all, I lose all the time. So I don't identify with that, but I just feel like they missed the whole point. But one that happened a few years ago that always stuck with me and I'll never remember what her name was. And I can picture her though. And she wanted to share a story of her and her twin sister.

And they had stopped talking for years and years and moved away from each other. And they finally got reconnected and put their past away. And they decided they're gonna do a century bike ride together. And she told me the story she goes it's nothing she starts it's nothing like what you did but i had the whole time that you were talking i just kept thinking about what my sister and i did and we did it and it

started raining and we had to get off our bikes and walk and it took us forever but we finished it and she and at the end she said like i don't even know why i'm telling you this right now i just felt like i wanted to say that i said that, somewhere she's out there and she doesn't realize that this is affecting me this much because that's successful. I told the story that encouraged someone to think about their stories and then share their stories. And all of a sudden we're a bunch of people sharing stories and that then the vulnerabilities will come out.

But let's start with storytelling. Well, thanks for sharing your story with me today, man. My pleasure. Yeah, it was great. Thank you so much. How's your for sharing your story with me today, man. Oh, my pleasure. Yeah, it was great. Thank you so much. How's your dad? Is he good? He's good.

He's good with you now? Oh yeah. In fact, we're closer than ever. I only feel comfortable saying this in front of the couple of people that listen to your podcast because we are so close. In fact, we have a standing appointment to golf

on Mondays together. And also, he's even doing a little work with me now because he's kind of semi-retired. So he's even starting to work at lot 35 doing some stuff for me. So we're good. I appreciate you asking. Glad to hear it. That's awesome, man. Very cool. That's super inspiring what you shared today. Everything that you're about, I'm super into. There's so much to be learned from these experiences. And I think the more that you're about, I'm super into. There's so much to be learned from these experiences. And I think the more that you're able to share them and do it from that place of humility and vulnerability,

you become this transformative spark for so many people. So, win in your sales. And if there's anything I can do to support you, I'm here to do that. And I can't wait to see what you're gonna do next, man. Thanks, Rachel. I appreciate it. So, last thing, the documentary, Chasing, I got to see a final cut of it,

but what's the plan in terms of like it getting released? Like, where are we in terms, cause we talked a lot about it today. People are gonna be like, where do I see it? Well, the thing is, is it's so, Evan Hayes and Ace Productions over there, they have it out to market. They've had it out to market for a few months now.

They've gotten some good interest on it from a couple of big platforms as well as distribution distributors. I mean, like I'm waiting any day for them to say like they're gone. And in fact, some of the meetings I'm going to tomorrow are way to help nudge some of these platforms over. So I'm hoping that'll work, but he swears it'll get,

it's gonna get sold. He's never not sold this thing, but it should end up on one of the majors, but I've been waiting forever. Yeah, so basically just for those of you who are watching or listening, it's not out yet. As soon as it's out, I'll let everybody know. If you do strike a deal in the interim

between us recording this and when it goes up, I'll amend it and let everybody know in the show notes where they can find it. But in the meantime, it's a TBD situation. Yeah. And if people wanna connect with you and follow your journey and all of that, where's the best place to direct them?

Instagram's a great place for you to go. I handle it, Jason underscore T underscore Caldwell. Follow me there. Try to post pretty regularly. And then, you know, also on LinkedIn for any of the people that want to connect

on a professional level is a great way to find me. And I'm always kind of posting my thoughts and articles on there as well. Cool. And there's a Lat35 Instagram as well, right? There is, yeah.

And yeah. Lat35? Yeah, at Lat35. And well, right? There is, yeah. At Lat35? Yeah, at Lat35. And especially when we're about to do our next adventure, we have someone that does a great job keeping up with that. Yeah, cool. All right, man. Thanks for talking to me again.

Thanks, Rich. See you again soon. All right. All right. Peace. Bye. Bye. That's it for today.

Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the

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and AJ Akpodiete. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste. Thank you.