← Young and Profiting with Hala Taha
Young and Profiting with Hala Taha
Colin O'Brady: The Mindset That Lets You Conquer the Impossible | Mental Health | YAPClassic
01:11:30
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- [00:03]
A
Yeah, fam. I have really exciting news. After almost eight years of running this podcast, I finally was nominated for an I heart podcast award which is like the Grammys of podcasting. I'm heading up against the diary of the CEO acquired, Earn your leisure and all these amazing shows for the best business and finance podcast. If you love young and profiting and you love this show and you want me to win, the best way to help me is to write me a five star review on Apple Podcasts I and also to subscribe to my YouTube channel and engage on our videos. I also was nominated for an Indie pack award. It's the first ever independent podcast and creator awards that's also happening in a couple weeks. And I was nominated for the best business and entrepreneurship podcast. I'm competing against Iced Coffee Hour and a number of awesome shows. And again, if you want to help me win these awards, please Write me a five star review on Apple Podcasts and follow our YouTube channel and engage on our videos. I appreciate any support. If you guys have been to my free webinars. If you learn from the podcasts and you guys know that I never ask you for anything, this is the one time I'm asking you guys to support the show by writing us a review or engaging on our YouTube channel. I hope to take home these wins and thanks again for supporting the show.
- [01:18]
B
Sometimes our biggest setbacks and our biggest hardships, buried underneath of the stress and the anxiety and the fear and the pain of those moments. Our gold.
- [01:27]
A
Hey young and profiters. Earlier this week, behavioral expert Neriel blew our minds talking about how our beliefs literally determine what we achieve. The story you tell yourself that shapes everything. So for today's YAP classic, I'm bringing it back to an episode that shows what happens when somebody truly believes that the impossible is possible. Our guest today is Colin O', Brady, a 10 time world record breaking explorer and the first person in history to cross Antarctica solo. The unsupported and completely human powered pretty insane right now. Here's the wildest part. Before any of that, Colin was told he might never walk normally again after a devastating accident. But he didn't buy it. Instead he built what he calls a possible mindset and rewrote his entire story. Yap gang. This episode will challenge the limits you think you have and inspire you to conquer your own personal Everest. Let's get into it. Hey Colin. Welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
- [02:25]
B
Thanks for having me here. It's great to be here with you.
- [02:28]
A
I am very excited for this conversation. So Colin, we always like to start from the beginning. And before you became an entrepreneur, the mindset expert that you are, and professional athlete, you spent your childhood exploring the mountains of the Pacific Northwest and cultivated a passion for adventure in the outdoors. So tell us about your upbringing and how your mother first instilled a growth mindset in you.
- [02:51]
B
Well, I came into this world in a somewhat untraditional way. My parents were young when they had me in the early 20s, but I was actually born at home on a hippie commune in Olympia, Washington, on a futon. And my mom invited like 30 of her friends over to like hang out and celebrate the birth. I think it was a bunch of hippies hanging out on this organic farm, basically. And my mom played Bob Marley Redemption song for you familiar with that song on repeat throughout my birth. So a very untraditional way to enter the world. But it was great. It was a great way to grow up. We moved from Olympia, Washington when I was super young. So I grew up in Portland, Oregon, still in the Pacific Northwest, and didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid. But big dreams and certainly with the things I've achieved in my life now, people ask my mom, don't you get worried? He walks across Antarctica by himself. He's climbed Everest twice. He must be worried as a mother. And she kind of always smiles with this coy smile, saying, well, careful what you wish for. When you tell their kid from day one they can achieve anything they set their mind. And then in the context of entrepreneurship, actually is interesting in my, in my childhood is when I was about 13 years old, my parents were involved in the health food kind of natural foods movement. This is like in the late 80s, early 90s, before the words like sustainable and organic and things like that were commonplace. Like they were like part of this kind of hippie counterculture, bringing that into the more of the mainstream. And they worked at grocery stores, you know, from store clerks, et cetera. And then when I was a young teenager, they decided to open their own, their own store, which ultimately to you know, to this day was very successful chain of natural foods grocery stores in the Pacific Northwest called New Seasons Market. They didn't have any of that success when I was a kid, but what I did have when I was a kid was a front door seat to like Entrepreneurship 101. Like my dinner table conversation. I was 13, 14. Is my parents, like looking at this sales forecast, should we do this marketing plan, like a bootstrap business born out of our kitchen table? And so that Definitely throughout my life. And the, you know, entrepreneurial success I've had over time, from being a founder to an exited founder, et cetera, is definitely a result of that observation as a kid.
- [05:00]
A
I love that. What a wild and different and unique upbringing. No wonder you're so much different than most of us. You know, we were just talking offline and you've never really had a real job. You had a real job for like six months. We'll get into that. But you've just led such a unique journey. So let's talk about something that you talk about in your first book. You talk about Impossible first. We just kind of mentioned how you had this unique mindset and you actually completed the world's first solo, unsupported, completely human powered crossing of Antarctica. It was pretty much what people thought was an impossible feat. And you said you only achieved this impossible feat because you had a possible mindset. So I think we've all heard of growth mindset before. That's something that's common. But a possible mindset for my listeners, I think is something new. And we're going to go deeper on this later on in the interview. But for now, what is a possible mindset? I think you've coined that phrase. What does that mean to you?
- [06:00]
B
Yeah, so it's literally how I, my, my book that came out a few years ago about my solo and arter crossing called the Impossible First. I'll tell a little bit more about that. But this, this phrase, this phrase, a possible mindset. It's actually the first page of my new book, the 12 Hour Walk. And it's something that I have a prescription to. Basically, in one day, I think you can shift from a mindset of limiting beliefs to a mindset of a possible mindset. The way I define that is a possible mindset is an empowered way of thinking that unlocks a life of limitless possibilities. And to be clear, I'm a big fan of Carol Dweck, I'm a big fan of growth mindset. Growth mindset is a core component of possible mindset. Possible mindset is just a little bit further encompassing. It also encompasses intuition, it encompasses the way you nurture and cultivate community around you, et cetera. But the entire book, my new book, the Twelve Hour Walk, is really how we all have this power inside of us to unlock limitless possibilities. Um, you know the name of my other book, the Impossible first, as well as my actual project when I was crossing Antarctica, I named it that. I literally called my project the Impossible First. I was Attempting to do something that no one in history had ever done before. People had tried it before me. You know, very tragically, people had literally died trying this project. And the project was to be the first person across Antarctica solo. But as you mentioned, unsupported. That means no resupplies of food or fuel. So I was dragging a 375 pound sled behind me the entire time with all the food and supplies I would need. Because no resupplies then unaided, means no kites, no dogs, no nothing else propelling me. It's just me, mano a mano. Thousand miles ended up taking me 54 days. I was on my last bite of food. I didn't have nearly enough supplies with me because I couldn't carry it all, obviously, to make that crossing. And because of that, people said, hey, this project is impossible. Some of the best people in the world have attempted this. People have died trying this. This is impossible. And I named my project the Impossible First. Not as like a wink of, oh, I'm going to call it the impossible first to show everyone to prove this wrong. To say, like, this might be impossible, but I'm willing to try. I am willing to open up the possibilities of them being wrong. Or maybe you're proving them wrong. Because I believe, like, when we dare to dream greatly, when we set massively audacious goals, we either succeed in amazing. That's wonderful. Or maybe we fall a little bit short of that. But in daring to dream Greatly, we got 90% of the way there. We succeeded immensely in doing so. The actual. So I always say, you either win or you learn. There's no failure. So it's like, that's the ethos that I've, you know, I sit here with 10 world records. You know, I sit here having had successful business ventures and stuff like that, but that's been built on the backside of failures, learnings over time, et cetera. And my new book, the 12 Hour Walk, one of the core components of that is breaking down that limiting belief, that fear of failure. So many people don't even start, hey, that goal's impossible. That summit's too high. Everest is too far. What's my Everest? It's too far. I'm never going to get there. So they don't even start the process. And that to me, that is the ultimate failure. Trying something, putting your heart and soul into it, starting that business, iterating, pivoting, shifting, evolving, and then maybe not getting the exact end goal you want. Amazing. You learned a million things and you're going to apply that to the next thing that you get after.
- [09:19]
A
Oh my gosh, I love this. And I can hear the enthusiasm and passion from you. And we had a guest that really reminds me of yourself. Wim Hof was on recently. He's the Iceman. And he also is just like so enthusiastic. He also does these crazy challenges that everybody thinks is impossible. And he has like a deeper purpose. His purpose is he wants people to release their, their beliefs about what is possible with the brain and, and how we can control our bodies and what's possible for humans. And I have to imagine that you have some deeper purpose. It wasn't just you trying to prove that you can do something. What was like the real drive behind all of your excursions so far?
- [10:02]
B
Yeah, absolutely. No, I. You have to have a. Why? I don't think the. There's the external gratification of, you know, I'm the first or I did this. You know, it is really, is really anything. I mean, it' enough to maybe get you out the door, but it's not enough on day 35 when you're starving in Antarctica to keep putting one foot in front of the other. You know, for me, it's been a cultivating a passion in twofold. You know, one is to push my own body and mind. But in a way, you know, I love telling stories, I love sharing stories. That's why I love writing books and other film and TV and media projects that I've done. Because. And I imagine that's why you have this podcast. Like are other people's stories have the ability to inspire, to ignite, to have this ripple effect? That's why I love consuming podcasts. That's why I love reading books, right? Because other people's stories, other people's learning, because there's so much to be gained from that. And so for me, you know, part of my mission is to do this for myself, but the bigger mission is to inspire others. I have a nonprofit that's really focused on kids and kids health. You know, kind of. I asked them this question, you know, what's your Everest? I asked these, you know, eight, nine, ten year old kids to raise their hand in assembly. What's your. You know, Colin, my Mount Everest is to make sure that the snow leopards are off the endangered species list. Or calling my Mount Everest to be the first person in my family to graduate from college. You're sitting there in Jersey City. I'm guessing you don't actually want to walk across Antarctica solo or actually climb Mount Everest. But look at what you're doing. You've got this podcast. You're crushing it. So many people are listening and inspired by your message because that's your Everest to do this. And so a big part of that is inspiring others. And ultimately my new book, the twelve Hour Walk, at its core is just that, my first book, and I'm proud of it. New York Times bestseller of the impossible. First is my story. It's a memoir of my life and that expedition. I'm incredibly proud of the story in there. But in the 12 hour walk, I share these adventure stories. I share them. Edge of your seat, thrilling stories. But I also turn the narration back on the reader. I say, I'm not the hero of this story. You are the hero of this story. This book is written for you to unlock your best life. I'm going to share some learnings, some failures, some ups and downs to my life in a way that's going to ignite your brain, excite you. But it's about you overcoming the limiting beliefs, you know, the limiting beliefs that many of us have. I don't have enough money. I don't have enough time. What if I fail? What if people criticize me? I break down all those limiting beliefs and show how you can actually shift to that possible mindset and begin to unlock your best life. And so that's definitely one of my deepest purposes and something that brings me
- [12:30]
A
great joy, that is exceptional. And your book is super actionable. I can't wait to get into the steps that we should take to take this 12 hour walk that's going to help us reduce and release our limiting beliefs. But let's talk about overcoming the impossible. We are on this topic. And from my understanding and from my research, I learned that you went through a really big setback in your 20s. You graduated from Yale. Super impressive. And before you went off on your career, you decided you take a backpack and your surfboard and explore the world. And you ended up traveling to Thailand where you suffered a very severe injury that almost left you unable to walk again. In fact, the doctors put a limiting belief in, in your head. They you probably are never going to walk normal again. And you were severely burned. And so I'd love to hear that story. I'd love to understand what mentally you were going through at the time and how you ended up moving forward. Maybe learn more about your support system during that time and how you ended up competing in your first ever triathlon just eight months later.
- [13:31]
B
Yeah. So, you know, you know, as you said, I Just graduated from college, didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid growing up. Actually painted houses every single summer to kind of pay for books and things like that. But I said to myself, I always wanted to have an adventure. I always wanted to travel a little bit, see a bit of the world. And I didn't have the opportunity when I was young as a kid growing up. And so I said I had this economics degree from Yale, I was a swimmer there. Most of my friends I graduated from college, 2006 were headed off to Wall Street. This is pre 2008 credit crisis and the financial meltdown. And that seemed like the way to be, you know, big salary, secure future, all this sort of stuff. But there was something intuitively inside of me saying like, nah, like do something else first. You know, if you want to go back to that, you can, but do something else first. And so I had again, shoestring, budget, backpack, surfboard, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hitchhiking through countries, sleeping on couches, meeting random people. But it was an incredible experience to be out in the world. I actually ultimately met my now wife in Fiji on the beginning of that trip. And the only reason I was in Fiji was because I bought the world's cheapest student ticket and that I was trying to get to New Zealand. They were like, well, there's a 10 day layover on your ticket in Fiji. Like, it was just like, it was like, you have to stop here for this period of time. I was like, all right, cool, I'll check that out. So, you know, letting the fate kind of dictate a little bit. But as you said, I, you know, I found myself in Thailand, you know, many months into this, this adventure. And you know, maybe because I was 22 and didn't have a fully four prefrontal cortex, I'm not sure, but I saw some guys jumping a flaming jump rope, literally a kerosene soaked jump rope. And I thought, gee, that looks. So I jumped that rope and in an instant, my life changed. It literally lit my body. They sprayed kerosene across my body, lit my body on fire to my neck. Survival mode kicked in when I needed it most. I jumped into the ocean to extinguish the flames. But not before about 25% of my body was severely burned and I was in remote and rural Thailand. There was no ambulance ride. I had a moped ride down a dirt path to a run room nursing station. And I was on an island, so I couldn't get to a big city or anything like That I had eight, eight surgeries over the next week. There was a cat running around my bed in the icu. I mean, it was a bad place to be.
- [15:49]
A
Oh my God.
- [15:50]
B
For this circumstance. And the physical pain was immense for sure. Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. But I will never forget the emotional pain of the moment. The doctor walks in, he looks me in the eyes and he says, hey, I hate to tell you this, but based on how badly your ligaments are burned, your ankles, your knees, et cetera, I don't think you're ever going to walk again. Normally. You're never going to regain full mobility and range of motion. And that was just devastating. I think that would be devastating for any person at any age. But you know, as a 22 year old kid who was like very in his body as an athlete and whatever, it was just like my identity was just like in an instant I made one mistake and like, boom. Like, who am I without, you know, this physical capacity that I've, you know, kind of depended on throughout my life. The, the heroine to this story, really, the turning point of the story is my incredible mother. You know, she shows up in Thailand, kind of finds me. It takes her four or five days to kind of track down. I'm in such a remote part of Thailand, it takes her a while to even find me. But she gets there in the hospital and I can only imagine as a mother what it's like. You know, she tells me now that she was crying in the hallways, pleading with the doctors for semblance of good news, not getting it, but she actually never showed me that fear at all. And this is, this is the crazy part of this story. Like, this is the turning point. This is the thing that changed my entire life. She instead came into my hospital room every single day with this huge smile on her face, this huge air of positivity, daring me to dream about the future, saying, look, you messed up. We're not going to sugarcoat this. This is a bad situation. I'm freaked out. But life isn't over. What do you want to do on the other side of this? And she kind of, you know, pushed me on that and pushed me on that, pushed me on that. And finally I closed my eyes and I said, I just visualized myself crossing the finish line of a triathlon. And again, turning point moment. She could have easily said, yeah. I said, set a goal and look towards the future. But like the legs and the bandages and the blood, like maybe something more realistic. Triathlon, probably not in your future. You know, but instead she didn't do that. She was like, actually great, you know what, let's start training right now. And she yells out to the doctor, she goes, hey, doc, hey doc, can you bring in some weights? And the doctor's looking, what are you talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My son's training for a triathlon now. So I have this picture of me, I'm lifting 10 pound dumbbells. There's this Thai doctor looking at me like this stupid American kid, never gonna walk normally, tell me he's training for a triathlon. This is ridiculous. But it was fixed in my mind. And definitely no way I would have had that without my mother's daily support. Not just in that moment. It was several months I was in the Thai hospital, flew back to Oregon where I was from. I was in a wheelchair, hadn't taken a single step. When I got home, she taught me how to walk again. One step at a time, but still competing, thinking about this triathlon. And then fast forward. I did want to get out of my parents basement and get on with my life and start my career. So as you mentioned, the one time I had a quote unquote real job, I took a commodities trading job in Chicago. Thought I'd work in the finance industry. And yeah, I was still banged up and bandaged up when I took that job. But I started my career. But I signed up for the Chicago Triathlon to honor this goal. And just 18 months after being burned in this fire, I started this triathlon, started the race, completed the race. You know, a mile of swimming, 25 miles of biking, 6.2 miles of running, I get to the finish line, I cross this finish line. I can't believe that I've overcome, you know, this big setback and kind of proven to myself that I can be able body and whole again. But to come out of complete and utter surprise, I didn't actually just finish the race. I actually won the entire Chicago draft ball, placing first out of nearly 5,000 other participants on the day. But the I don't share that story as saying, like, oh, I guess that just means I'm a superhuman athlete and I can do whatever the hell I want. Like, whatever. That's not the point at all. And that's not the way I feel about it. Where I feel about it is exactly. What we were talking about before is that I was living in a moment of fear, a moment of doubt, a moment of understandable, limiting beliefs. And as you said, the doctor put that limiting belief on me. You are never going to walk again. Normally, a doctor says, a diagnosis, you, it's very easy to just be like, yep, okay, like, that's, that's the deal.
- [19:58]
A
He's the expert, right?
- [20:00]
B
He's the expert. But in the end, my mother opened the door to what I now call very fondly, a possible mindset. She says, look, this is bad, but there's limitless possibilities on the other side of this. And so that lesson, that lesson, not the win, but what I realized is all of us as humans, not this is not just a story about me. This is a story about all 7 billion of us on the same planet, is that we have reservoirs of untapped potential to achieve extraordinary things in our life. But it all starts with our mindset. And then we can cultivate and flex and develop that muscle. I love to say the most important muscle any of us have is the six inches between our ears. And we can flex and develop that. And the 12 hour walk book is ultimately about how we can all do that and harness that power. The possibilities are limitless. And so it's weird to say, but sometimes our biggest setbacks and our biggest hardships, buried underneath of the stress and the anxiety and the fear and the pain of those moments are gold, are lessons. And I wouldn't be sitting here with 10 world records. You know, I wouldn't. You know, it's crazy to say, but like all of my world records, I used those legs. But the legs after they had been burned, not before they had been burned, after they had been burned. Because my mind was so much stronger on the other side.
- [21:17]
A
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So I actually got in trouble this year because I didn't even know that an old client that we barely worked with put out a lawsuit and they didn't notify me, and I ended up missing a court date and it cost me a lot of money. So you really need a registered agent that you trust that does a great job. And I've recently switched to Northwest registered agent, so this never happens again. Don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get. For free on Northwest registered agent, visit northwestregisteredagent.com yapfree that's yap free. And start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent@northwestregisteredagent.com Yep, free. Oh, my gosh. You're, like, hitting on all the things that I was, like, planning on hitting on. Like, it's. Everything that you're saying is pure gold. So there's a couple lessons that I see in this. First of all, I feel like a lot of people think that when they're going through a tough time, they need this huge support system. They want, like, 10 people around them supporting them. Really, if you have one person in your corner when the time is getting tough, then you are, like, really blessed. Like, you just need one person to help you if you're in a bad situation. And there's some people, unfortunately, who don't have one person. And what advice would you give to somebody if they didn't have somebody in their corner, the way that you had your mom? Because I do. I was thinking about this and I was going to say, you know, if you have one person, but there's some people who don't have anyone to help them when the time gets tough. So what would you say to that?
- [26:11]
B
I'm blessed. My mother's amazing. I have an incredible wife as well, who has been so supportive and has gotten me out of some tough spots. I've called her from the summit of Everest, the corner of my tent in Antarctica, crying and sobbing, and she's talked me off a cliff, quite literally. But, you know, it is a good question if you didn't have that person. What I would say is this, is that I think cultivating community is hugely important. I think the people, you've probably heard it said before, the Net product, the five people you spend the most time with. And the question is about not having anyone around you. What most people? I would say very, very most people in this day and age of they have connection to the Internet Right. They have connection to people that maybe are not. They're sharing physical space with, but maybe they're famous or they're not actually talking to or having a dialogue with. You know, I imagine most of your listeners have never sat down and actually talked to you, right? But here's the thing. The Internet, social media, all this stuff can be extremely toxic. We all know this. We all know the person on your Instagram feed that triggers you, that makes you feel bad or whatever. But the opposite is also true, right? Podcasts, the Internet, media, et cetera can be the other thing, which is. So if you're. If you are actually in a place where you are so alone right now that you don't have a single person to support you, first of all, get rid of all those people in your social media feed that are continuing to make you feel bad right now. Pull out your phone, unfollow. That will feel amazing. But then all of a sudden, fill up your brain with the access to, you know, this podcast, young and profiting you're listening to right now. The amazing. There are people that are sharing wisdom, advice, et cetera. And so that one person in your corner can be somebody that maybe you haven't even met. You know, I think about that as my. You know, I have mentors in my life who have been dead 100 years, but I've read their books that, you know, that they have profoundly impacted my life because their words are written down. And I've lasted the centuries or the decades. So that's what I would say to that person.
- [28:13]
A
I love that answer. Good answer, Colin. So the other big takeaway from this is that you used a big goal to get out of a rut. And I always do this every time I've ever failed in life. The way that I get out of being depressed. I've never had a bad health issue like that. But if I ever got, like, fired from a job or something, like, really devastating happened, the first thing I do is think of a new challenging project to basically distract myself with something positive. Learning something positive and just taking some positive action towards some new challenge, in my opinion, that is the best and fastest way to get out of a rut is to focus on something new, which you did with a triathlon. Right. And so I feel like those are all such great takeaways to your story. And, you know, you're just such an inspiring person. So let's get back into how you actually started making money doing this. Because, like we just talked about, you only had a job for, like, you know, a handful of months, a real corporate job. And then you started taking on these challenges. You know, you, you, you did one after the other. You started climbing mountains and Mount Everest and going through Drake's Passage and sailing. And how did you actually make money? Like, what's the business model behind that?
- [29:26]
B
No, it's a great question. So, you know, with the 12 hour walk, and again, I'm chomping at the bit to share the fuller message with you. I know we'll get to that. But it's good content. No, it's good context here, which is before writing this book. And we'll get to what it's all about. I said I want to help people unlock their best life. And people define that differently. Like people define what that looks like, right? That can be making a million dollars, that can be saving a million lives, that can be spending more quality time with my family, that can be traveling the world. There's no right answer to that question. Again, it gets back to that, what's your effort? It's your effort. It's not my Everest, it's your efforts. But the number one question, when I polled my audience, when I talk to people, what is standing in the way of you living your best life? The number one response was, I don't have enough money. I don't have enough money. Which if you reverse engineer that, it's basically people saying, if I had more money, I would be living my best life. Now, I could probably poke holes in that as well. But I have gone from a life of being a kid who didn't have very much money to now at this phase of my life, to having cultivated quite a bit of abundance, financial success. I had an eight figure exit with a business that I started a couple years ago. I've had that success in my life now and I've worked hard for it. A couple of things. One is, how did it actually start? Like in that moment, I actually, from my corporate job, win the Chicago Triathlon. I end up at a barbecue at this guy's house who's other commodities trader. He hears the story, wait, you weren't walking a year ago and now you won this trial? Like, this is crazy. Do you want to continue to focus on this? And he said, I would be your first sponsor if you wanted me to, if you wanted to pursue this. Now, what was clear, and he even said this to me, he goes, but you're on a bright path. Like you have this financial career, you have this education, et cetera. If you keep doing this for the next 30 years, like you're going to make money, you're going to do well for yourself, et cetera. And what I'm offering you is, you know, basically a few plane tickets, you can sleep on your friends couches around the world and, you know, eat some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Back to basically what I was traveling around, bumming around the world. But here's the difference. If you want to follow your heart, do it. And I went and quit my job on Monday. I literally walked into my office and quit my job that day, not exactly knowing how the business plan would work in the long run, but trusting that instinct, trusting that God. And I do get deeper into that in the book. Now, what that has turned into is I have figured out a way, and to me, this is what my best life looked like. This is not for everyone, right? Is how can I do the things that I love with a full heart, full of passion, and still create monetary success around that? Because I'm a big believer in economic solutions of things I think we can have. I can have the most impact. And my nonprofit is thriving at its highest level when I am also taking care of myself financially because then I have more energy, more freedom, more flexibility, et cetera, right? When I'm stuck in this mindset of scarcity, I can't have that impact on the world. So look, it's been iterative, but I'll tell you one story from the beginning, and I think this kind of sums it up in sort of the mindset essence of this, which I think people can apply, which is 2014. So I raised triathlon for about five or six years professionally, 25 countries, six continents. I don't save any money, but it's just enough to get by. But I, you know, I cultivate this passion for pushing my body, this curiosity, whatever. Then the fall of 2014, I'm on a mountaintop and I've got a diamond ring in my pocket. And I asked my longtime girlfriend, now wife, to marry me. And it's 2014. We're in our mid to late 20s at this point. And again, I love this idea of a possible mindset. I love the idea to dream big. And so in this moment of this turning point moment in our life, we kind of have this brainstorm on this mountaintop that says, what do you want to do? What do you want to do next? We're going to be together forever. What do you want our life to be like family? Let's just talk about it. So we have this super amazing brainstorm pulled all These high vibes. And I say, look, one of my childhood dreams has always been to climb Mount Everest, so I want to do that somehow. And I was like, in triathlon, I was like, I feel like I still want to push my body as an athlete, but maybe in a way that has larger impact on ourselves. And we get on this idea of there's this thing called the Explorer's Grand Slam. So that's to climb the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents, go to the north and South Pole, and that includes Mount Everest. And I say, what if I do that? But I set the world record for that. So instead, people usually do that over 10 years, but I was like, what if I do it nonstop over four months? You know, one mountain, next mountain, et cetera? And with the media exposure of that, it will allow us to have a platform around goals around health and wellness, and we can start this nonprofit and hopefully inspire tons of kids and have all this impact, this amazing conversation. Then we get back, we come literally down from that mountain and go back to our one bedroom apartment in Portland, Oregon, at a time in our life where we have a lot of very. No abundance, mostly scarcity in this moment in our life. And this is the moment where most good ideas die. I know there's a lot of entrepreneurs listening to this. Like, this is the moment. This is the moment when you're, like, having some beers with your buddy and you come up with this amazing business idea and you hash it out in the back of a napkin and all this sort of stuff, but you wake up a little hungover on Sunday morning, you're like, yeah, man, that business only works if we can raise $5 million and have funding from this massive PE firm or whatever that is, right? Or, you know, in less of a business context. You're like, you're out with your buddy, like, oh, we're going to run that marathon. We're going to train all year for it. We're going to do this, whatever. And you wake up, you're like, yeah, man. Like, I'm. I don't even want to go on a run today, let alone, like, for the next, like, six months, right? Jenna and I wake up in that moment, quite literally, like, this project, it turns out we map it out on a little spreadsheet. Like, it costs a half a million dollars straight up. That's not like making anything that's to go to Everest. That's to, like, the North Pole, the South Pole. The logistics, the just kind of infrastructure around this product says it's going to cost about a half million dollars. We've got ten grand to our name between the two of us at this point in our life. And like, that's it. So here is the lesson in this. There are two mindsets. One is a mindset of scarcity and one is a mindset of abundance. Right? The scarcity mindset, similar to a fixed mindset in a different context, says, Well, I have 10 grand and the thing I want to do costs 500 grand. I'm never going to be able to do this thing. And so therefore I'm just not going to do it. We could have easily gone that way. But again, that possible mindset, which means a catch all for all these different mindsets, but that says that mindset of abundance starts to go, wait a second, okay, I've got 10 grand right now, but what else do I have? What else do I have in my favor? Okay, I've got the Internet, I've got Google. I've got like a handful of friends that I can ask a few questions to. And it's a long story. Like, for the next 18 months, Jenna and I knocked on every single door, told people I'm climbing these mountains. Like, you haven't even climbed these mountains. I don't. It doesn't matter. I need a half million dollars. Trying to find sponsor, trying to find funding, trying to find this. And here's what happened. A thousand people said no to us. A thousand people, quite literally. Now it's getting to be two months before we're leaving for this thing. And we are still head up, being like, we're doing this. We've raised like 30, 40 grand. We still got like several hundred thousand dollars to go. And I'm getting nervous. I'll be honest. We've been working on this for a year and a half. We finally picked a date. Well, you got to leave on this departure date. Whatever. I get invited. Friend of mine says, hey, man, I know you're still trying to raise all that money. And you're like, well, short. Just as a piece of inspiration, there's this woman that I want you to meet. And I said, great. At this point, I was willing to talk to any, literally talk to anybody. I tried my pitch on a thousand people and it kept failing. I was like, maybe I'm doing it wrong. So he invites me to this spin class. He's like, I'm like a spin class at an LA Fitness. Like, I'm a professional athlete. I'm not going to go to like a group. I'm like, my ego's getting better. I don't know, group fitness class, like a, you know, LA fit. What are you talking about? He's like, no, no, just comment. And I'm like, fine, whatever. So I come to the spin class. I walk in, there's this woman, she's probably in her mid-50s. She's already hitting the spin bike hard. She's sweating like the class hasn't even started, but like, she's hitting it hard. And he goes, oh, my friend Angelo. He goes, hey, meet my friend Kathy. Kathy Collin. And he goes, she was a world record holder. And she just laughed. She goes, oh, my God. Bringing that up like a million years ago when she's like, when I was 19, I set the world record in the 5K. You know, this is literally 34, 30 plus years ago for her in her life. And I was like, oh, that's cool. And she goes, you know, Colin's trying to break a world record himself. Tell her about it. So it comes out at me. I said, look, trying to. This explorer's grand slam. I got this nonprofit, I want to inspire kids. Da da da, da da. And she's like, oh, cool, cool. That's awesome. Like, good luck with that. That spin class starts. I'm sitting there on the spin bike going, what the hell am I doing here, man? Like, this is like, what the heck am I doing here? And I get done with the spin class. I'm about to leave, you know, wiping myself down with the towel, whatever, wiping the bike down. And she goes, hey, Colin, I've been thinking about your thing. Come back over here. My husband loves this kind of stuff, you know, you should tell him about it. And she waves over to this guy across the room, Guy, salt and pepper hair, walks over. Hi. Hi, how are you? I shake his hand. She goes, tell him. And again, not pitching this guy nothing. I'm just giving like the 30 seconds before I walk out of spin class, give him the story. And he goes, wow, are you happen to be looking for sponsors for this? And obviously my ears perk up. I'm like, well, indeed I am. He goes, yeah, I think the company that I work for might actually be interested in something like this. And so I go, what company do you work for? And he goes, I work for Nike. And I'm in Portland, Oregon. Like, I mean, that's like the dream of all dreams. I think it's for most people, but I'm like, in Portland. That's where the Nike world headquarters are. Like, that's like the dream of all dream sponsorship I think for any, like, athlete or whatever, right? And I'm like, oh, my God, Great. Eight months before this, Jen and I had actually spent the $10,000, all the money we had, to build a website. That was our plan. We said, we at least have to have a good enough website. Let's spend all of our money on it. Because if we're going to try to raise this money, someone at some point is going to ask to see our website and it's going to have to look good. He literally says word for word to me. He goes, do you have a website or something? You should email it to me on Monday. And I'm like, yes, I do have a website. Can I get your contact information? He goes, yeah, no problem. He grabs Russell Smith. Jamaica, let me get a card for you. Pulls out a business card, hands it to me. I look down. Mark Parker CEO, Nike oh, my God.
- [39:47]
A
Chills.
- [39:48]
B
I was just like, oh, my God. Now, what is the moral of this story? Is the moral of the story. Yeah, you just got super lucky. Like, good job. You met the freaking CEO of Nike in a spin class. I would argue that that is not the truth. My mom said to me, and I love this line, she goes, luck comes to those who are prepared. Luck comes to those who are prepared. The scarcity mindset 18 months earlier said, don't even try this for a day. The abundance mindset says, keep pushing, keep finding a way, keep knocking on the door, right? And we talked before, you know, you either succeed or you learn. Well, you could have said the thousand people that said no to me before that I failed. I failed a thousand times. But guess what? Every single one of those times, maybe my pitch got a little bit better. Maybe my confidence got a little bit more sharp. Maybe the way I articulated my idea was just a little more polished so that when the person who could quite literally change the fortune of my life was standing in front of me, it came out with authenticity and passion and right place, right time. But the essence of that is that abundance mindset, and the book actually breaks down even more specific steps. Is to your point, you set that big goal to get out of the rut, but then to actually get out of the rut, you have to keep chipping away at that goal every single day. The scarcity mindset says, yo, you've got 10 grand. You're never going to make 500 grand to do this thing. The abundance mindset says, build a website with your 10 grand and then go knock on a bunch of people's doors. Quite literally, and figuratively. And you know what, the universe might just conspire to make your dreams come true. So it's a much longer answer to you probably expected. And there's an even longer answer to how I've built all the pieces of business over time. But it's from that mindset and that's what any single person walking this planet can apply, that's for sure.
- [41:36]
A
Oh my gosh, I'm so thankful that you shared that story. I feel like that's a story that everybody needed to hear and I love that, you know, you showed up. That's also part of the battle. When you're trying to accomplish a goal, you need to show up. You can't expect things to fall in your lap. You went to that spin class even though you know it wasn't the most exciting thing to you. But your friend said, hey, there might be a little opportunity for you here. And you went out and you took it and you did your best and it led you on to this extraordinary life that you guys have. So what a great story. So let's, let's move on. Fast forward to 2019. In between all that, you've had lots of crazy excursions, you've written all about it. People can look up, look it up. But let's Fast forward to 2019. And at that point you attempted the world's first completely human powered ocean row across of Drake's Passage. And a year later, covet hit. And that really made all of your adventures come to a halt. And during the pandemic you decided that you were going to do something, you were going to take a 12 hour walk. So let's talk about that. Why did you think about taking a 12 hour walk? What inspired you to write your new book? And you know, why did you take such a long, long ass walk?
- [42:44]
B
Why did you take a long walk? And why am I inviting every person listening to this to take their own 12 hour walk? Well, look, I gotta go back in time a tiny bit, which is just a set of context, which is when I was walking across Antarctica for 54 days, 12 hours was my daily cadence. And there's a reason to that. Mostly because if I walked any less, I was quite literally going to run out of food. So I was burning 10,000 calories a day and I was eating anywhere between 5 to 7,000 a day, which means I was on a 3 plus thousand calorie deficit from day one. By the end, I was a bag of bones, ribs sticking out, hips protruding, frostbite on my face. You look at my Instagram, you see pictures. There's like black tape on my face. It is so brutal. Minus 40 degrees, minus 80, windchill regularly. But if I took even one day off, I had no hope of making it to the other side. So no matter how bad the weather, no how bad rough, the condition, I walked for 12 hours. Now, in that time, at some point, this felt like a terrible idea. But I also, before I left, I decided to delete all my music, all my podcasts, all my content, whatever, to actually spend the time alone in Antarctica in deep silence. Because I thought if I try to distract my brain, it might work for a while. But the ultimate depth of this experience was going to come from tapping into basically a flow state. This. This walking meditation of sorts. Now, there was many times when I thought, now that was the worst idea ever. I would love a podcast right now, or somebody to talk to me. Because being alone for 54 days in Antarctica, this place that's trying to kill you every minute, is a deep place to go in your mind. But ultimately, my thesis proved to be true, which was on the second half of that journey. As my body declined, as my physical ability started to decline, my mental acuity actually started to strengthen. I felt so tapped in. Not just of the competitive nature of becoming the first. And I was actually racing another guy out there, which is a whole other different story. That was a crazy battle happening out there, but I was pulling the sled and I tapped into day after day of flow. And what that actually led me to was way more than not, oh, hey, Colin, you're talking about purpose. I did it. I did it. I'm amazing. Put my name on the front page of the New York Times. I'm humbled by that exposure and all that sort of stuff, but that's not what it was about. What I got tapped into was fulfillment, purpose, gratitude, love, love of family, love of career, love of passion, love of building things, love of impact. Like, I felt just, like, squarely in my body, mind fulfilled. And I think most people, unfortunately, are walking through life pretty unfulfilled, pretty unhappy, wishing they had more, wishing they had something different, you know, kind of stuck in a rut, so to speak, in life at some time. But I thought, wow, I got to the other side of Antarctica and I figured it out. Like, I've hacked it. Like, I've got this. I can carry this with me, this inner strength now forever. And that was true for a few years. I'll be honest. You know, I had some big wins and some Successes and really generally woke up feeling pretty great. And then, as I think we all remember the spring of 2020, the world just comes to a crashing halt. And, you know, fortunately, I wasn't sick with COVID But reading the news every day, the fear, the uncertainty, the borders are closing. Stay in your house. This person might get sick. Worrying about my grandparents, worrying about my parents. You know, it's all the different factors in that moment. It just really disrupted my mental health in a really significant way. And I found myself. I was. My wife and I went and basically locked ourselves for the lockdown in a small house on the Oregon coast that my family has. Just me, me, my dog, and my wife in this little cabin, this tiny little town. And my wife looks over me one day and she's like. She's like, hey, you know, you don't seem like you're doing it. I'm like, I'm not. She goes, I mean, just throwing it out there. Like, you haven't changed out of your pajamas in, like, three or four days. You've just been sitting on the couch, like, doom scrolling the news on your phone and, like, reading these, like, intense headlines. Like, you know, she's just like, hey, like, just check it in, like. And I was like, no, you're right. I thought back, when's the last time that I felt, you know, somehow a little bit more connected in my mind, body and spiritual. I said, it's weird, but it was when I was walking across Antarctica alone, even though it was so hard, even though my body was so beat up, even though it was the depth of challenge and despair, sometimes I actually felt really lit up in that moment. So I said, I'm grasping at straws here. But I said to my wife, Jenna, I said, tomorrow morning, I'm going to wake up. I'm going to go for a walk, 12 hours, all day, just like I used to do in Antarctica. And she just kind of laughed. She's like, sure. Like, whatever. It's like one of the few things you can do during a lockdown is walk around by yourself. And so I walk outside. 20 minutes into this walk, my phone buzzes in my pocket and I instinctively reach down for it. Like, my buddies text message texting me, you know, I'm gonna text him back, whatever. And I look and I'm like, man, I just been like, doom scrolling the news, staring at social media, like, maybe I don't need my phone for this. Like, what? Like, and I just instinctively put my phone in airplane mode and keep walking. So I walk, I Walk down the Oregon coast. I take breaks, but I'm out there all day long, 12 hours alone. No music, no podcasts, nothing. Alone in my head. And I walk back in the front door of our house, my dog jumps up on me, and my wife says to me. She goes, you're back. And I'm like, yeah, I told you. I come back after 12 hours. And she's like, no, you're back. She knows me so well. She could just see, like, in my eyes that, like, the reset in my body, mind, spirit was instantaneously profound. I didn't even have to say anything. She's like, you're back. Oh, it's so good to see you in that way, in a more greater context than actually just being physically there. Right? And so I was like, yeah, I feel better than I felt in so long, stronger in my mind, reset, et cetera. I'm so glad I did that now. I thought, look, I'm the guy who walked across Antarctica solo. I'm the guy who've done all these ridiculous things physically, you know, tapped deep into my mind, all this kind of stuff. This is just me, like, hacking back into my own ability to do this. But it's Covid. And so all my friends and family members are calling me. They're having tough times. We're Zoom calling, we're FaceTiming. Everyone's, like, not doing well. Different people from different backgrounds. And I start telling people about this. I said, hey, look, look, I just did this thing. And a lot of people took me up on it. Young, old, fit, not so fit, doesn't matter. And I said, look, it doesn't matter if you go 1 mile or 50 miles. Take as many breaks as you want, but take the day, the 12 hours in silence to be outside. Before I knew it, dozens and dozens of people were trying this. And every single person that I knew to come back from that walk came back with that same, you're back lit up way this same, you know, and again, it looked different for different people. But I was stuck in this job that I was frustrated with, and now I have a way out of that, or, oh, I've been thinking about this goal. I'm actually going to apply myself towards it. Oh, wow. This business idea that I've kind of had in the back of my mind, had 12 hours to think about it, and now I'm jamming on my computer and my partner, and we're, like, going for it. Like, every single person I knew to take that walk had this shift, and I take this as far as my 77 year old mother in law, she did the 12 hour walk for her. That looked like walking one time around the block of her her neighborhood and it's sitting on her front porch for an hour. There's no right way to do it other than to take the day. What I have become extremely passionate about why I wrote the book the 12 Hour Walk in the book. There's rich storytelling in the book. You will be lit up with advice, adventure, how to overcome all of those common limiting beliefs. I don't have enough money. I don't have enough time. What if I fail? What if people criticize me? The common things that are holding us back that we've all dealt with in our own minds. Myself, the stories that I share in there are me showing you how I have been in all of those moments myself. But I figured out how to overcome them. But at its core is this call to action of the book. The book is an essential companion to the call to action. I encourage everyone to pick up a copy. I'm very proud of it. I think you're going to love it, it's going to change your life. But at its core is this simple call to action. The book is called the 12 Hour Walk. Invest one day, one day. Conquer your mind and unlock your best life. Because I have found by literally putting a date on your calendar, stepping out front your door, taking this 12 hour walk again, as many breaks as you want. If you're in a big city, it doesn't matter. Ambient city noise doesn't negate your silence. This is your silence. This is your commitment to not listen to music and podcasts and listen to your own thoughts. During this time, I have seen people shift radically from a mindset of limiting beliefs, a mindset of things that are holding back on the other side of this walk. By taking this moment to check in with yourself in this deep way. It is incredibly profound and I'm just passionate about sharing it. I say my next Everest is to inspire 10 million people to take this walk. And it's not because I don't get a dollar for every person that takes the walk. This is free, out your front door, wherever you live. But this is a powerful prescription and I'm so excited to share it with the world.
- [51:22]
A
Yeah, fam. Today's episode is sponsored by bitdefender, a global leader in cybersecurity. Now, running a small business means wearing a hundred hats at once. Sales, payroll, customers, taxes and scammers know that especially during tax season, cybercriminals are Sending fake audit requests, phony tax documents and emails that look painfully real just to grab access to your accounts while you're so busy doing a hundred other things. That's why I use Bitdefender Ultimate Small Business Security to keep my company safe. It protects every employee device, secures servers with customer data, and shields daily activities like email and web browsing, whether you're in the office or working from home. And the part that I think is really smart is their AI powered scam prevention. It's trained on real small business attack patterns, so it blocks phishing, fake websites and shady messages before they ever reach your team. Plus, you also get a password manager, unlimited VPN, and 24.7expert support in one simple dashboard. Big companies have security teams you don't. Bitdefender can help you fill that gap. Start protecting your business today with Bitdefender's Ultimate Small business security. Get 30% off your plan@bitdefender.com profiting that's bitdefender.com profiting for 30% off that's bitdefender.com Profiting hey, app fam, question for you. When somebody Googles you right now, are you proud of what they see? Or would you say ignore that it's under construction. For two years I've been there. At one point, our site didn't reflect the level we were operating at at all. It felt so outdated and every small update required way too much back and forth. That's why I love Framer. Framer lets you design and publish a premium professional website without writing a single line of code. It's fast and you can launch pages in minutes. You're in control, no waiting on developers, and the designs look modern, clean and polished on any device. Serious founders know your website is your first impression, so let's upgrade it together. Learn how you can get more out of your.com from a framer specialist or get started building for free today@framer.com profiting for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com profiting for 30 percent off framer.com profiting rules and restrictions apply. Young and Profits Let me ask you something. Have you ever missed an opportunity from a potential client and felt that drop in your stomach? I know I have. Far too many times. When my business first started scaling, calls were going to one person, texts were going to another, and opportunities kept flipping through the cracks. That's why we switched to quo. Spelled Q U O Quo gives your team one shared business number, like a shared inbox every call and text is in one place. Everyone sees the history. No more pointing fingers. And I thought you handled it going on. Plus the AI logs calls, summarizes them, and flags next steps so nothing ever gets missed. Growing teams everywhere are upgrading to systems like this because once you scale, your old setup just doesn't work anymore. If you're serious about building a real company, this is a foundational move. Make this a year where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo Q U O for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com profiting again. That's Q-U-O.com profiting quo no missed calls, no missed customers. I love this advice because I feel like it's sort of the same outcome of meditation. But meditation is really scary for people. And to me, meditation like, is boring. Right? Like, I'm an active entrepreneur. I have ADHD. Probably taking a 12 hour walk seems doable. You know what I mean? It seems like it's a little scary. I know you have to be completely alone. You, you gotta really unplug. But you can, like you said you could take as many breaks as you want. You don't have to necessarily go that far and you just have to set a day and you can potentially like really think through some limiting beliefs and, and overcome your avarice and figure out how you can accomplish your biggest goals. And having that alone time is so key and I feel like giving people that roadmap is so helpful. So I'd love to go over the six steps with you. You know, you talk about six steps to take a 12 hour walk and you need to prepare. The first three steps is all about preparing. The first step is to commit, the second is to record, and the third is to unplug. So I'd love for you to kind of just walk us through the first three steps and then I want to talk, take a moment to talk about some common limiting beliefs and then we can get to the next three steps.
- [56:05]
B
Yeah, for sure. So, so the first three steps is commit. Really? I mean, that's the big one, which is you're listening to this podcast right now and you're thinking to yourself, I always say the 12 hour walk journey actually starts right in this moment. The 12 hours of the walk is obviously very, the profound element of it. But this is actually the moment, the decision moment. You're being suggested this for the first idea and your mind might be going, well, maybe, maybe not. I have these limiting beliefs. What I found is actually this moment is actually where it starts because I am holding up a mirror to you just by suggesting this to you. People's brains do different things. They go, oh my God, amazing, I'm going to do it, I'm signing up now. Or oh my God, this is a terrible idea. Most people are in between. Well, I would do that if I didn't have such a busy life and the kids and the this, oh, I don't have enough time. Turns out that the limiting beliefs that people apply to the 12 hour walk when they're considering it are more often than not the same limiting beliefs that they're applying to on loop. To many, many, many, many, many different things that are holding them back in their own life. But by taking step one, by committing, you rewrite that. I call them limiting beliefs on purpose because they're beliefs, they're not limiting truth, they're not limiting facts, they're beliefs. Beliefs can be rewritten. By committing and taking step one, you're proving to yourself, yep, I had that limiting belief. I didn't have enough time. But you know what? Three Saturdays from now, I'm making the time. And so when that limiting belief comes up on the other side of your walk, after the fulfillment of the walk, you start to go, oh, I recognize these limiting beliefs. And sometimes when I push back against them, the outcome is positive. I can make that limiting belief voice quieter and quieter. So step one is huge. Commit, commit. You can pick a day on my website, 12 Hour Walk, come sign up that commitment. Even just writing that down and you're committing to it and I'm holding you accountable to it. That makes a difference. If you're looking for actually more participation. September 10th, I'm inviting Mass participation to walk. I'm walking that day. You're still walking from your front door. You're still walking by yourself. But there is a knowledge that there are lots of other people out there doing that in the same moment as you are. Step two, record. So this is meant for us to be able to have a little bit of something to look back on. And so I want you to set intentions. The book walks you through limiting beliefs. The book is essential companion because it opens up some ideas and some thought sortas around what you're working towards. But when you sit to your front door, you know, we all have these phones in our pocket, myself included. It's like, fine, let's use that for a second. Put your video camera on and this is a video for yourself. Hey, I'm doing this 12 hour walk. I'm a Little bit nervous. I've never done this before. God, I can't remember the time I was alone this long. But on the other side of this, I want to x similar to meet my mother in that hospital room saying, hey, what do you want to do when you get out of there? Set that intention, set that goal. Because more than anything, that ripple effect of your subconscious is extremely powerful. So you record that for yourself to look back on later. And then number three, very important, unplug. Unplug. You put your phone on airplane mode. Now, I have actually, funny enough created an app for the 12 hour walk. So you think that's hilarious. This whole thing is about unplugging and not having your phone. Why would somebody create a app for this? Well, here's why. Because most people are thinking themselves. But I need to Google Maps because I don't want to get lost. I need a timer of some kind that counts down the 12 hours so I can check. I'm saying, great, great. I've created an app for that. The app tracks you on your walk in airplane mode. The GPS works in airplane mode. You can see a line of where you walk. You can zoom in and out on Google Maps inside of the app. Great. So you no longer have that excuse. And it also has a clock. So I have created an app. You download, you unplug, you put it in airplane mode. You hit start, it starts tracking you. You shouldn't need to look at anything else. You don't have to check it on your social media that day. You don't need to take your phone out of airplane mode. But the unplugging nature is really phone in airplane mode. Put this tracking on just so you know where you're walking. And then, then you begin.
- [59:58]
A
I love that. So part of this whole 12 hour walk is to think of your Everest first. Right? So I'd love to take a moment to. We've, we've mentioned it a few times. What is an Everest exactly? Like, how do you define that to me?
- [60:13]
B
I define that as, as a big goal, you know, and again, I use that terminology. One, I'm an adventure explorer and I've climbed Everest twice. But it's because my childhood dream was literally to climb Mount Everest. And so I'm like, that, that was mine. But I don't expect that to be most other people's. I expect you to want to go freeze your butt off in the middle of Antarctica by yourself. That's probably not your hope, dream or goal of any kind. But what is your Everest? What is that goal, and I think, as you said, to have that goal is a hugely important sort of determining factor. You know, I've come. There's a little bit of departure from the question, but I think it's important here because I've come to think about life a little bit on this of a scale of 1 to 10. Now, 10 being our summit moments, 10, you summit your out effort, you make that achievement. It's the high high, or maybe it's not an achievement externally, but you have your first child or you fall in love. These are the peak moments of life. Tens, right? And ones are our lowest moment. Our lowest moment. I mean, just me being burning that fire, being told I would never walk again normally, a massive setback, you know, your company starts, goes bankrupt, whatever that is. Those are low moments. Like, those are terrible. No one really wants to experience those. But when I think back to all the tens that I've experienced in my life, I have realized that they're connected to the ones in that I didn't experience my tens in spite of my ones. I actually experienced my tens because of my ones. Now, most people in modern society unfortunately get caught in what I call the zone of comfortable complacency. The zone between four and six. Like you have a job, it's fine, you don't love it, you don't hate it, you go every day, but it's like five, five, five.
- [61:53]
A
This is genius.
- [61:54]
B
Or even dating somebody for a while, right? And like you've dated for a few years, you live together, it's not toxic, it's not abusive, it's not like a bad situation, like, you know, horrible thing, but you're just kind of coexisting, you're cohabiting, it's like 5, 5, 5, 5. I have found that people live in this zone of comfortable complacency from four to six because they are so worried about experiencing a one. They're hedging so hard against not experiencing any of the low moments of life that they actually, what ends up happening is you take off the table, the tents, you take off the table, the tens. You have to be willing to experience some of the ones to actually experience the tens. People ask me all the time, colin, you've done all this dangerous, high risk stuff. Aren't you afraid of dying? I'm like, look, the last thing I want to do in the world is die. I visualize myself as an old man with my wife, with grandkids around me. I know that that's going to be the end of my life. But I'll tell you what I'm more afraid of than dying. I'm afraid of not fully living. I'm afraid of not fully living and a life lived only in that zone of comfortable complacency that is the biggest fear of all. So when people think about. Again, to your initial question about what's your Everest? It's what's your Everest? What scares you a little bit? What, like, might be hard some of the time. Right. You have to be willing to embrace that this 12 hour walk, even for people, is a step outside of the comfort zone. Will your feet get tired at some point if you're on your feet for a better part of 12 hours, absolutely. Are you going to get stuck in some loop in your brain because you're not used to being able to distract yourself by your social media? Yep, you are. Meaning you're going to experience maybe not a one, but maybe a two or a three or some moments of discomfort. But I have never known anybody to get back to their front door not experiencing an 8, a 9, a 10. This peak moment. How many days in our life do we not even remember? What'd you do last Tuesday? What'd you do a month ago? What'd you do? This. This 12 hour walk imprints on you, but in a way that allows you to go, oh, if I just for one day can prove to myself that actually a little bit of discomfort, a little bit of a shakeup outside the norm, not another bleh 5 day can exist for me, how can I go chase other things in my life and that Everest allows you to anchor that and go, oh, now I see the journey is not necessarily linear, but the negative or the harsher emotions of that are actually a pathway. The ones are opening up the door to the tens.
- [64:23]
A
I have to say, that was like maybe one of my favorite five minutes of this podcast ever. Like, that was so good, Colin. That was so freaking good. So, Colin, I want to go through a couple of these limiting beliefs in sort of a quick fire way. You went through the first one that I wanted to go through, which is being uncomfortable, and you said that. That beautifully. So another common limiting belief that people have is that they don't know what to do, right? They don't know where to go next. They don't know what actions to take. What is your guidance for people who don't know what to do next?
- [64:57]
B
So one of the things, and again, I said before, I'm a passionate Carol Dweck devotee, the woman who originated the concept of growth Mindset, but where the possible mindset to me encompasses both growth, mindset, some other elements, and something that she doesn't talk about is intuition. Is intuition, this inner voice, this inner knowing. Now, I'll leave it to you because I know we're of limited time here to actually buy the book, read the book, this entire chapter, but it's a chapter about me being on a Mountain in K2 and experiencing some significant tragedy where intuition actually, quite literally in this instance, saved my life. And I know this is rapid fire, so I'll be concise here. The fact of the matter is, what I've realized in many, many big decisions in life is you actually do know. You do know, you do know the answer. And look, I'm a very analytical guy myself. I found myself, you know, making the pros and cons list a million miles long or logicing through something or whatever. It can be useful at times. But here's the thing, I'll give a couple examples. Say you just got offered a job on the other side of the country, big job, you know, more pay, all this kind of stuff. But you got kids, you got a 10 year old and a 12 year old and they're like ingrained in sports and community and whatever, and moving across country at this phase of their life is going to be disruptive. I do not have the answer for you what that is. And you could make a million pros and cons, but I bet if you actually listen to your intuition, you know the answer to that question. Or now here's another one, you're lying in bed late at night, you've been dating the same person for however many years, and you're thinking, well, I'm 30 years old, we've been together for four years. Like, should I go buy a diamond ring and make this official? Put a ring on it, whatever. The answer might be a resounding yes, this is my person, whatever, or it might not be that, but here's the thing, you actually know the answer. You literally already know the answer. You don't have to make the pros and cons list. So the 12 hour walk. One of the beauties of the 12 hour walk, and specifically around this limiting belief, is you can distract yourself. You can make a million to dos lists and pros and cons and kick a decision down the curb. Go spend 12 hours by yourself. When you have a big decision that you think you're going to weigh, I'll tell you the voice that gets loud, your intuitive voice, your gut. And when you can in tune into that what I say when you know, you know, you already know. And that the stillness that we don't allow ourselves too often, this modern day society, that stillness allows that intuitive voice, a voice that quite literally saved my life in the mountains and has guided me in all sorts of other decisions I made. When you know, you know. And that's it, you know, act on it.
- [67:43]
A
So true. Okay, one more last limiting belief. And this one is my favorite excuse. I hear this excuse all the time and that's I don't have the time. This is one that I feel like people really just limit everything because they just act like they have no time. Talk to us about that.
- [67:59]
B
You know, it's the most common one. It's definitely the most common one. That applies to the 12 hour walk. And my publisher hates it when I say this because it's like bad grammar or whatever. And I'm like, you don't have the time. You don't not have the time meaning like for the important things in your life, you make the time. And here's the thing, I tell people, they'd be like, I don't have enough time for the 12 hour walk. And I'm like, okay, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, got it, got it. So like just random other question, we're not talking about 12 hour walk anymore. Have you seen Game of Thrones? Oh man, love Game of Thrones. So good. Like that last episode though, it's about, I was like, okay, so you have watched 71 hours of game of Thrones and you're telling me you don't have the time or like, you know, our phones do this now, right? They track our, you know, you can see how long I've been on social media. Look, I'm not like I'm on social media. I love social media. It's a great tool. Like I waste my time sometimes, whatever, but I never find myself the excuse that I don't have the time. What it is, is I'm not prioritizing my time. I'm not prioritizing my time effectively. And I'll go one step further when it comes to self care. Ultimately, the 12 hour walk is an investment in yourself, one of the most common ones, particularly with people with kids or kids and a busy job, et cetera. I don't have enough time because I've got this busy job that's important for me to support my family. And on the weekends I got to be at my kids soccer games, the ballet recital, the this. And what they're saying is they're actually Saying something with high integrity. I don't have this time for myself because my priority is showing up for my family, my community, being there for others, which is highly admirable. But here's the catch 22 in that is that you get tired, you get worn down, you snap on your kid, you show up tired of the office, you're not as creative with whatever project you're working on because you didn't take any time for yourself. We have this myth in our culture that self care is somehow selfish. But I rewrite that in the book and I say self care is selfless, meaning the 12 hour walk is one day. It is one day. If that makes you a better parent and a more present parent for the next 10 years, that was a worthwhile investment. The one soccer game you missed this weekend, kind of a bummer in the short run. But the fact that you show up for your kids, even more connected, present way for the next decade because of taking that time, because of taking that self care, that is 100% worth it. So look, time is finite. We get to choose how to use it. Do a time audit. Look at what you are wasting your time on, what's not in priority. You do have the time. And investing that time, some of that time in yourself to better yourself has a ripple and exponentially positive effect on all of the other things that you're doing doing.
- [70:39]
A
I am like gonna echo your sentiments there. I totally agree. We all have the same 168 hours a week. I always say this, and I honestly built a million dollar business, built this podcast because I stopped watching TV for like four or five years. Like that's it. It's like that, unlocked all the time I needed. Right, and so you can do it too. All right, so let's get to the last three steps. This is where we actually take action. It's the walk and rest and reflect. You hit on these a little bit, but let's get a little bit more detail and then we're going to close out the interview. And for the walk part, Colin, I want to understand, like what do we actually need to think about during this walk?
- [71:19]
B
So again, probably not in the time we have. That's why there is a book. That's why this isn't a tweet. That's why it's not a tweet. That's why it's not a blog post. I will say this, the book reads quick. It's meant to be exciting and page turning. A lot of people have read it in a day or Two, so it's not like some insane, you know, it's not, it's not a thousand page Atlas Shrugged or something like this to slog through. But it does lay out that it gives you a framework to be thinking about these things. So part of that answer is in read the book. But also during that walk, we're all dealing with different limiting beliefs. I Write about the 10 most common ones. Three of them might be like, oh my God, I'm dealing with the other five or something like, oh, that's not me. But those other three might be something for a different person. So I can't tell anyone specifically what it is is again, the book really lays out a framework for what to think about and how to engage your mind. That intention of that. A couple things about the walk and just in practical matters, the website, 12hourwalk.com, you sign up there, there's lots of FAQs. I'll email you more inspirational content along the way to keep you accountable to your commitment. But more than anything, it's wherever you want it. I actually encourage people to do it out the front door. And I say that for a reason, which is it's so easy to go, oh, one day I'm going to do this. I'm going to wait till I'm on that vacation a year from now in Hawaii, on the beautiful trail of the da da da, like the whatever. Well does two things. One that just kicks down the curb and you might never get to it. But more than anything, what it does is it puts the walk, this moment, as other as is separate from the rest of your life. When you walk out your front door, this experience imprints on your day to day life. Meaning when you're driving to work the following day or the following week, you get to an intersection, you go, oh, I was here on hour three and I was thinking about this. And it brings you right back into that headspace, into that possible mindset. And so it imprints on your day to day life. So I encourage people to do it from their front door. A common question is, and I answered it before, city noise, street noise, people walking past you, totally fine. Can you stop off and go pee at a gas station or a deli or something like that? Yes. Use common sense. Don't talk to people for 20 minutes inside the store. You can go in and out without really having deep interaction. And that's a 12 hour walk. The the rest also important, the rest is, look, this is meant to meet you where you're at, you're not hearing this. And from and out, you're like, well, Great. Collins, a 10 time world record holding explorer, walked across an article. 375 pound sled. Must be nice. Like, this isn't for me. No, that is not the point. This is not a race. This is for you to meet you where you're at today. You don't need to train for this. You take as many breaks as you want. The rest is fine. Because the rest, you are still out there. You are ultimately out there training your mind. You are training your mind. That stillness, that quiet, that solitude still is maintained during those rests. The clock is still ticking. It's the 12 hours spent alone walk, when you can move your body, when you can be outside the whole time. That is the exercise and then the reflect. You know, the app prompts you to do this. I say this in the book, I prompt you to do this. But it's the same thing as the front end. That video on the front end, take that video on the back end. And if the next day you want to share it on social media, whatever, that's your own prerogative. But that's not why I'm asking you to record the video. I'm asking you to record the video because I want you in your purest, most vulnerable, a little bit tired, sweaty, maybe a little dehydrated from a long day moment to reflect on how you're feeling. So a day from now, a week from now, a month from now, you can go back to that and remind yourself, right, I had this breakthrough. This happened for me. I actually did this. I accomplished this. It's a touchstone for you to mark that in time and again. If people want to journal or write or any of that stuff, that's great as well. But I find, you know, we're just like, just talk. And I've, you know, some people shared their videos with me, which I love seeing. And it's just amazing. I mean, people are emotionally cracked open. People are that, that, that, that presence, that flow state that I describe Antarctica. People are there on the front steps of their porch and their family witnesses. And it's a beautiful thing. So to be able to have that moment to reflect on as, maybe as, as life catches up with you and you want to go back to that and go, oh, right, there I am. That's me at my truest, purest version of myself. I want to remember what that feels like and so that I can continue to apply that moving forward.
- [75:30]
A
Yeah. And I, I personally think the concept of the 12 hour walk is brilliant. I feel like it's actionable. It's something that almost anybody can do. Right. And we're going to stick all the links in the show notes for your app, for your book. And I can highly recommend the book. It was a great read, super fast read like you said, and very entertaining. So I hope everybody goes and gets the book. And Colin, we're going to close out the inter I ask a couple questions at the end of the show and we do something fun at the end of the year. So the first question is, what is one actionable thing that our young and profits can do today to be more profiting tomorrow?
- [76:04]
B
I mean, is it shameful to say do the 12 hour walk? Do the 12 hour walk. Do the 12 hour walk that is actionable and that will make you more profiting.
- [76:12]
A
I love that. And what is your secret to profiting in life?
- [76:16]
B
Staying connected to purpose. And for me, that has been remembering the most important thing, which is the love of my life, my wife, my community. It all starts there. And I've been able to build abundance and profit financially in other ways because of that. But every time I forget that all the rest of it doesn't matter.
- [76:34]
A
And where can our listeners learn more about you and everything that you do?
- [76:37]
B
Hang out with me on Instagram, Colin O'. Brady. Follow me there, 12hourwalk.com Got everything about the walk. Sign up for the walk. We'll stay in touch with you that way. Download the 12 Hour Walk app and then my website at Colin O'. Brady. It's got all the things about my speaking and other things about my career. So come hang out. Come say hi.
- [76:56]
A
Awesome. Well, Colin, thank you so much. I've been smiling ear to ear in this interview. It's been so inspiring and motivational and I think my listeners are going to love it.