Mike Horn: Extreme Expeditions, Losing Loved Ones, and Finding Discipline in Life | E33
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You're listening to part two of my incredible conversation with Mike Horn, the greatest explorer of modern times. If you haven't yet listened to part one, be sure to check that one out first. Without further ado, here's part two with the amazing Mike Horn.

You complete your trip down the Amazon. And as you're looking out the horizon, you say to yourself, if you could continue on this way, you could go around the world. And that's when the idea of an expedition called Latitude Zero Degrees was born, which would be an even bigger challenge. As a reminder to our listeners and viewers, Zero Degrees Latitude is a line designated the equator and divides the Earth into two equal hemispheres, meaning the equator is located at a latitude of zero degrees. For this trip, you took a Corsair F-28 Triad,

trimaran, which is a multi-haul boat that has a main haul and two smaller outrigger hauls that are attached to the main haul with lateral beams. Your journey started in the central African country of Gabon and then went west. And similar to your trip down the Amazon, you almost died several times. When you were crossing Colombia, you encountered a group of drug dealers who were making cocaine in the jungle of Arco Cuara.

They wanted to kill you, but you explained what you were doing. The drug dealer was impressed with your courage to cross the entire forest and let you pass. When you crossed the border from Colombia into Ecuador, the U.S. soldiers who were guarding that part thought you were a drug dealer because no one entered or left such an area. So they captured you and beat you up before they realized you were just an explorer.

If that wasn't enough, you caught malaria on your trip across the Pacific Ocean, which made you very weak for several days to the point where you passed out almost two and a half days. When you were crossing the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a rebel group thought you were a spy and put you in front of a death squad. And as they lifted up their Kalashnikovs and AK-47s, you thought this was it. You closed your eyes. And as they were waiting for them to shoot you, when you were seconds away from death, a police officer saved you by telling the rebel group that it was a police affair, not a military.

affair. This is some crazy shit. Let's go back to the firing squad when you closed your eyes and thought you were seconds from dying. What were you thinking at that exact moment? And in search of excellence, how is it related to 30,000 days? I believe that one life to the average age of 82 years old, that's the average age that we live to around the world, we have 30,000 days. And half the time you're asleep.

So you've got 15,000 days that you can actually do stuff. And then until, well, let's say to the age of 10 years old, you're not really living life. You're kind of being taught how to live life. So we don't have a lot of time on planet Earth to really do what you want to do. And once you find your passion,

That's when these days count and you want to live each day to its full capability and capacity. And that's why I love your subject about excellence. The more you know, the better you inform, the better you educate yourself, the harder you work, the more you're interested in what others do, the more you build relationships instead of discussions.

destroying them. The more you help people, the more you become helped. The more you surround yourself with amazing people, the easier it becomes to reach your goals. And those things are the search for excellence that I did in my life. Just the fact that I wanted to go out there and just make my life a better place because I am allotted 30,000 days in a lifetime.

And those 30,000 days, we've got to be able to live to the fullest of our capabilities. And basically that's what I did. So just the death squad, I don't know if the death squad was just trusting people that I shouldn't have trusted, going, walking,

right towards the lion that was going to eat me. And I was caught with another guy that I thought was a rebel, but he attached himself to me and we kind of traveled together. And having two people to stop and one to scout out to find information and stuff made it easier for us. So we were caught together. And when we were caught by the rebels, obviously,

It was like we were put into a hut and kept prison in that hut. And that night, well, when we were caught, they said they were going to publicly execute us the next morning. So unfortunately, the guy that I got caught with was shot first and I was going to be shot second when he fell.

I just walked forward and I took the gun, the Kalashnikov of the command and put it on my head. And I said, just shoot me. But that willingness of me to survive made him afraid. That willingness of saying that I'm not who you think you are, but if you think I'm really a rebel, shoot me while I look at you, but I'll be.

your biggest problem for the rest of your life. You will never get rid of me. I'll be in your mind. I'll be everywhere and I'll haunt you. So that power of survival that I needed to portray to him just mentally made him hesitate at that moment. Why they shot the other guy first is because he reeked of fear.

He died the night before. He said he was going to die and I believed I would survive. Although that if I believed that I survived, that I would survive and I actually die, I wouldn't know. So why don't you want to go?

Give yourself a chance of survival in your mind. Why should you worry? If you worry, you die. If you don't worry, you also die. So why worry about stuff that you cannot change? Be able to be the power that influence people, that overpowers people in moment that you really need it. And that hesitation let that policeman come out and actually saved my life and said, this is a military affair.

This is a civilian affair. This is not a military affair. We cannot be executed military-wise. So I was taken in by the police, and a couple of hours later, I had the gun in my hand, the commander was put in front of me, and I had the right to shoot him because I was protected by Museveni, the president of Uganda. Everybody knew that I was coming through and that I'm just an explorer and they should leave me out. So

The roles changed. And when they said, shoot him, I just said to him, listen, I'm still alive. He did nothing wrong in my eyes. That's why I cannot shoot him or kill him. I'm alive. I'm fine. What he did might have been wrong, but he didn't kill me. So it's not for me to execute him. I can't possibly ever put myself in your shoes.

I don't think I'd last a day on any of your expeditions, but when I think about going on one of them and then I think about what the biggest highlight of one would be for me,

which I think would probably be, for the overwhelming number of my listeners and viewers, it'd be overcoming the tremendous amount of anxiety and fear about going on a trip where the odds of completing it are nearly impossible. And that if we make it and don't die, our greatest moment would be completing it and achieving success against all odds. But that's not your view. You've said that the greatest moment of your trips is the day you leave.

Why, and in search of excellence, how important is it to look at our chances of success when they seem low or impossible to confront and fight our fear of failure, get to the start line and try? You know, why do we do what we do? Simply because it's unknown.

At the end of what, when we succeed and when I arrive at the end of my expedition, it's no longer a dream. I've actually made the dream come true. And then I feel empty. Then I feel, wow, what next?

So the moment that you stand there ready to go out and find the answers to your questions, that's the most interesting part of the expedition. The moment to actually make that first step to go into the unknown, that moment that you say, I'm not sure that I will make it, but I will be able to learn from it. I will enrich my life with knowledge. And I

And I would have experience that nobody can take away from me. Stock exchanges goes up and down, shares prices rise and fall.

You might lose or you might win. Knowledge is the only thing that you can never lose. Knowledge that you carry in your heart, nobody can steal away from you. It's your wealth. So I invested in that wealth, that wealth that will keep me alive. So the moment that you actually stand there with that little bit of knowledge and you seek to that excellence, to get that knowledge that becomes your wealth,

that's why you actually leave. That's why it's the most exciting moment of the expedition. And in the 10, 12 books that I've written, and unfortunately I write in French and only two or three are translated in English, but there's in German and Spanish and Chinese and Korean and whatever languages. I wrote after this expedition, I just said, in the beginning, I thought I had the knowledge to set out to do what I wanted to do.

But it's only on arrival that I knew that even now that it's done, I don't have the knowledge to redo what I did. And that's where you've got to be able, and we spoke a little bit about fear, and fear is a very interesting topic that we can address a little bit later if we have time. But there's a moment that if you come back from an expedition,

and you ask yourself, will you be able to do it again? And the answer is no. Then that was the best expedition of your life. Because the moment that you answer all your questions is the moment that there's nothing to look forward to. One of the main ingredients that allowed me to do some of the

fortunate things I've done in my life is that I'm always the most prepared person in the room. If someone spends one hour for a meeting, sometimes I'll spend 20 for our podcast today, 33 hours. I call this extreme preparation, going way above and beyond what would be considered great preparation. You've talked about reading three-foot-high stacks of snake information, training with special forces.

You spent two years of preparation before your trip down the Amazon River. You prepared two years for Pole to Pole, which was your two-year circumnavigation of the globe via the poles. We already talked about you trained with Brazil Jungle Warfare Center. Crazy stuff, but necessary stuff. How important has extreme preparation been to your success? And in search of excellence, can extreme preparation make the impossible possible?

I believe it can, but you must never stick to your plan 100%. There's a couple of times in life that how I planned it at home when things happened, the outcome was completely different than what I thought I would do, the action that I should take. And I believe that it's important as well in life to not have too many options, meaning that

stopping is not an option to me.

I've got to find a way of not stopping. While people believe that as soon as they have a little bit of resistance, they think of stopping, while I think of continuing. So the way that my brain, I program my brain to reach excellence is to be able to not go to find the options of trying, this is not working,

Now I'm going to try this, and if that doesn't work, I'm going to try this, and if that doesn't work, I'm going to try something else. And you're not moving forward, you're just moving sideways in your life. And a lot of people move their whole life sideways, and they would never reach excellence because we're not heading anywhere in a direction. So I believe by removing the options, there's one option, you've got to go. And

When I often get to that point where you have to overcome obstacles and things like that, I'm not looking for other options. I'm confronting the problem. And by confronting the problems, you overcome these obstacles. By saying that life is difficult, by saying that, oh, now we've got inflation, now the market has crashed, doesn't mean

It's difficult. It just means that you have more challenges. And the best way to overcome that challenge is if you better your life, if you better who you are, then the obstacles become smaller. By complaining, it will never become smaller, it just becomes bigger. And that is how I solve my problems. I go out to find a solution, not to try a different option, because those options

are all going to face the wall at the end of the day, and I'm not moving forward. When I went to the North Pole, the ice was moving back, and for 11 days, I walked to stay in one position. And a lot of people can't even imagine to walk for one day on moving ice that drifts back.

Imagine walking 20 hours a day on ice drifting back and you're not making one kilometer progress. And when people ask, tell you that you're not making progress, they're not thinking in the right way because indirectly,

If I stayed in the tent and I didn't walk for those 11 days, I would be minus 500 miles, but now I'm at zero. So I've made progress. I'm not at minus 500 miles. I'm at zero. And that gives me a chance of success.

Let's talk about the elements of success. We've talked about preparation. And when we think about the other ingredients of success, many people will include being motivated. We've talked about that and having a positive mindset. We've talked about that as well. What are the other ingredients of success and where does discipline fit into this? I believe that you've got to be able to make fear your home.

Fear has got to be present in your life. Fear shouldn't be a factor that would influence the way you do things or think things. Fear would just awaken your alertness to what's actually happening. And that's the moment that you cannot sleep. That's the moment that you've got to start focusing. That's the moment when you find the solutions. So fear becomes my home.

Fear is something that I love. I understand fear. If we speak about fear, what are people afraid of? Let's take a simple example of kids. They don't want to walk into a room that's dark. They're afraid of the dark, but they're not really afraid of the dark. There's something else they're afraid of. Are they afraid of somebody hiding underneath their bed that would come out

and maybe injure them? Are they afraid of walking into the cupboard or standing on a toy and fall or hurt themselves? By understanding what they're afraid of, you can actually deal with that fear. So fear becomes my home. I accept it. That's where I live. And if I'm not living in that life of fear, I'm not at my full potential.

And fear is just simply not knowing what's going to be the outcome. Fear is something that becomes your home. And then in life, if you want to reach excellence, you can't only do what you love doing.

You've got to start loving the things that you hate doing in life as well. Because the moment that you love what you hate doing or don't like doing, you broaden your life and then you can reach excellence because you're capable of operating on a

much wider playing field that opens your mind to be able to reach goals that you couldn't reach before because you're not only doing what you like doing, you can do what you don't like doing as well. And by using those things in life, you actually go out there and live a much broader life.

You've had all these incredible successes, but I want to talk about failure, which is something we all face many times in our lives. What you do is often life-threatening, and despite some incredibly close calls, you're not reckless in accomplishing your goals. There have been times when you've had to turn back and abort your trips. To name a few, you had to abort your first attempted solo crossing of the North Pole when you were only five days away from reaching your goal because you made the mistake of taking your gloves off and experienced severe frostbite.

to have three of the tips of your fingers amputated. You've attempted to summit K2 three times. For our listeners and viewers who don't know, K2 is located on the China-Pakistan border. It is the second highest mountain in the world at 31,532 feet. On your first attempt in 2002, you left base camp at 4 a.m. and 36 hours later, with only 1,300 feet to go, you had to give up because of a snowstorm and snowdrifts that prevented you from breathing or seeing anything. You couldn't even see your feet.

When you made the decision to turn back, you knew that the ascent was only half the battle and that you still had to make it down the mountain within a short window of time and go through something called the death zone, which refers to what is above an altitude of 24,600 feet, a height where hikers can only last between 22 and 26 feet.

hours on the 70% oxygen available to them. It was your birthday and you thought to yourself that you couldn't die that day, which was a good decision because an avalanche killed two people from teams who continued toward the top.

You've said that turning around might be seen as a failure by others, but that true failure is dying. And that's when we're so close to our goals and objectives in life, it's very hard for us to fail because success can be so close. For you, breaking boundaries is the fine line between failure and success. You've also said that failure can be beautiful and that you value it more than success.

Why is that? And how do you define failure? Why shouldn't we hide it? And why is making peace with failure an absolute requirement of success? Randy, if you know the perfect person that never experienced failure in life, I would like to be introduced to them. So as success, failure plays a part of our life.

And for me, climbing K2 three times, the way that I choose to climb it solo, without oxygen, without ropes, without camps, climbing from base camp straight to the top, is making it as difficult as it possibly can be to climb a mountain. Now, there's a bigger chance of failure, but I'm not choosing an easier method to succeed. I'm choosing the method

Where failure, there's more chances of failure than success. And why is it important to do, to be able to live with failure and to openly admit that you failed? It's because then people can't speak behind your back and say, he failed. If you come down and said, I failed, I didn't get to the top, but I tried and I was alone up there.

The others failed to leave base camp. Then let's speak about the level of success or the level of failure in a way. And that in the level of failure, I was the most successful. And in many ways, we don't deal with failure right. We see it as being ashamed. But you mustn't be ashamed of trying.

If you make, like I said earlier, the same mistake twice, then yeah, you can be kind of embarrassed about failure. And if you're not learning from others or listening to others to not make the mistakes that is so visually put in front of your eyes, then we try and hide failure. So my father told me again, when he gave me that freedom, that failure is part of success.

And the more you fail, then the more successful you become because you're trying. And the moment that you're trying new things, it doesn't mean you need to fail and pay with your life. That's the moment that very close to the summit of K2, I decided that if I go further,

I'm going to die and I will never have another opportunity to climb. And the moment you get back to base camp and you look up, you say, I'm alive. So coming back to base camp alive might be seen as failure for others, but it's success for me because next year I can come back and climb again.

We've already talked about how you studied sports psychology in college and how you were always interested in the human capability of always breaking records and going further than you did before. In 2011, you started putting that into practice by using motivation sessions to significantly improve the performance of professional sports teams.

In 2001, you coached the Indian cricket team and they won the World Cup that year. Next, in 2012, you coached the South African cricket team, who then went on to beat England, who at the time was the best team in the world. You coached the Kolkata Knight Riders, a cricket team from India, and they won the Indian Premier League the next year. And finally, in 2014, you coached the German soccer team, which won the World Cup that same year.

After working with these teams, you found that the difference in winning champions isn't so much about physical capabilities. Yes, you've got to have the right DNA and make up to be a marathon athlete or a spinner or a football player or a baseball player. But once somebody has reached what you call the summit of their performance, you said that the only difference that we can make is our psychological attitude that we have towards things. And that in your case, 80% of what you do happens in your head.

15% is physical and 5% is luck. Can you tell us about what you did with the Indian cricket team and the reasons they've never sworn so much in their lives? And for those of us who don't have the DNA to be professional athletes, can our psychological attitude and mental strength make the difference in whether we achieve excellence? And if so, can you give us a couple of examples how? Randy, absolutely, yes. We can make the difference through using our psychology as evidence

as power. So I spoke about top athletes, when they are running 100 meters or 800 meters or playing in a World Cup series, we have some of the best athletes from all the countries competing against each other and their skill levels are more or less the same. Now you're speaking about experience that might change, but skill can adapt

and add value to less experienced players if they have an amazing skill. And how you develop the skill and how you train it is really important. What we cannot really train is our psychological attitude. How can I become psychologically so strong to overpower the others? And how can they see that and understand it?

So I'm speaking about showing weaknesses. The moment that you show a weakness is the moment that somebody else is psychologically overpowering you.

We see that in football, and that's what I told the German football team. Don't roll on the ground and act like a complete loser just to get that penalty and act like you've been hurt or kicked in the shin. That shows complete weakness.

Show strength, no matter how hard they push you, no matter if they really commit a penalty, stand up straight away, look them in the eyes and gain that respect. They will feel weak. Then I spoke about space, space that you take, space that I take on the field.

The moment that you can take space of others in any business is the moment that your playing ground becomes bigger and their playing ground becomes smaller. You play with more freedom and they play with less freedom.

And imagine you play in a team like the Indian cricket team. When the bowler or the pitcher comes in and he throws that ball and the whole team moves into the one that's got to take that shot, then it shows like, wow, this team is like a solid concrete base. I can't get through them. There's not one weakness shown. There's only power shown. And those aspects impact.

in professional sports becomes really important. It's that the whole team, if it's in a team sport, should be able to not show one weakness. And then the space that we take from the other team becomes our space that allows us to play with freedom and they play with less freedom and more stress.

Can you tell us about the polar bear sitting on your tent in the North Pole expedition in 2006? And in search of excellence, what's your advice about relying on others to solve your problems versus solving your problems by ourselves? I think that we, as soon as we run into problems, we always kind of look around who to blame instead of blaming ourselves. And then second of all, we're trying to look at who's going to help us out of the problems that we got ourselves into. So the polar bear walked up,

To the tent, we were tired, Borgi and myself, the Norwegian explorer in the tent, and the polar bear got into my sled.

So the polar bear is kind of eating a little bit of the food that we don't have much of. And I'm not there to feed polar bears. And if the polar bear is going to eat all the food, he's going to come into the tent and eat me. So he gets into the sled and he pulls the sled back and it moves and he sits on the tent and he actually sits a little bit on the tent on my stomach.

Only thing I could move was my elbow. So I woke up Borgi next to me. I said, Borgi, Borgi, there's a bear in my sled. And Borgi wakes up a little bit confused. We're tired. It's dark. It's permanent darkness. And he said, what's happening? I said, Borgi, there's a bear in my sled eating my food.

And he looked at me like this in that darkness and we got our headlamps on. And he said, Mike, why are you waking me up? The bear is in your sled eating your food. It's not my problem. Let me sleep. So in fact, it's true.

The bears in my sled eating my food, it's going to influence my life. It's my problem. I have to deal with it. But that's when the boar, we got a flare gun that we actually shoot a flare at the bear. And usually the flare is a banger that makes the bear afraid and he runs away. And there's this massive big flame burning and the bear doesn't like that intensity of light. So it disturbs him completely.

So one day, Borgi sleeps with a flare gun in his sleeping bag because a flare gun can actually freeze. And I sleep with the flare gun in my sleeping bag the next day. So we change it. And Borgi forgot that actually he had the flare gun and he slid. So I said, Borgi, I'm not asking you to go out there to chase the bear away. What I'm asking you is just to give me the flare gun, the tool so I can get rid of the bear.

And it became kind of this private joke in between ourselves that, listen, if the bear's in your sled, it's your problem. You do something about it. But if somebody has the tools, ask them to give you the tools and you do something with their tools. Don't ask them to do something that you can't do.

I always talk about work-life balance on my show, and it's usually focused on successful people who we consider to have more typical jobs or running big companies who work a tremendous amount of days, long hours, and return home to their house every night and need to decide how to allocate their time between work, their families, their kids, and other responsibilities, including board positions and philanthropy. Your job is a bit different. In your world, you may not return or see your family for two years.

In 1990, you met your wife, Kathy, at a local in Switzerland, and she quickly became your partner in these expeditions. She handled all of the planning, logistics, support, and promotion. After 27 years of marriage, she passed away after a seven-year battle with cancer. She knew what you did when she met you and was always incredibly supportive of your career. She supported you being away for very long periods of time, even though it had to be tremendously difficult on your family, especially on two young kids. For most people, I think that being away...

for a very large part of the childhood would severely hurt the relationship with your kids. But in your case, it didn't, even to the point where your daughters took over Kathy's role when she died. How did you manage that? And what's your advice on work-life balance for those who lead more conventional lives?

I think, Randy, we all have that predicament or that challenge to overcome as soon as we spend too much time at work and not enough time with your family. It's not actually that we've got to understand that it's the amount of time that we spend with a family that's important. It's the quality of the time that we spend. A father is somebody that must give something to his kids that the kids or his children can only get from him.

So meaning that only you can be the father of your kids. It's not buying a bicycle or a computer or something else. You've got to give them something that's so unique from you that they can only find that from you, that they're always looking for that in you. That is basically how I educated my kids or my daughters. Not that I was always at home.

But the moment that I could take them with me on expeditions, they became the youngest kids to ski to the North Pole. They crossed the Violet Island 500 kilometers. They sailed around the world with me. And that bonded our family because they knew that is what they could only get from me. So we're not often coming back home from work and sharing what we did with our kids. We're sometimes too tired to even listen to them.

We need to be able to give them our time. And the moment you give them your valuable time, that means you are interested in their lives. And the more you become interested in their lives, the better it is, the relationship. Now, Kath, unfortunately, my wife that I was married with 27 years, was an angel. She was

the most amazing person that I could have been married with because she knew that for me and our family to operate, she needed to give me the freedom to do what I could do because that's who I was. I didn't change along the time. I was always like that and she knew what she married in. And I was heading to the South Pole when she got cancer and she called me and said, listen,

I've got cancer. I said, oh, shit. Okay, I'll try and get back. But I had to ski back to my boat. Would it take me a month and a half and then get on my boat and sail to Patagonia and then from Patagonia get on a plane and maybe get back home a month and a half later? And when I said, well, I'm heading back home, she said, no, why do you want to head back home? This is my problem. You can't do anything about it. Just keep on doing what you're doing.

finish it up and then you come back and then we're going to discuss it. And as the situation, I eventually made it back home. The situation didn't look better and she got close to death. It was, it was a really special time for our family. And we kind of sat around the table and

with the girls and we spoke about life in general, our family and what we achieved in life as a family that arrived with no money in Switzerland. That she was from New Zealand and I was from South Africa. I got on a standby plane, arrived in Switzerland. She came and worked as a nurse and completely low life that built up to become

respected by everybody. And we sat around the table with the girls and my one daughter, Jessica, studied at Boston, in Boston and BU, and the other one was in Paris. And we said, listen, life's going to change and mom's not going to, she's not going to be around for much longer, but I want to die with her, I said. And when I was willing to say that I want to die with

the person that I loved so much. The kids, my kids understood it. And then Kathy said something that was really amazing. And she said, you know, Mike, don't die for me, but live for me. Wow. That is the power that we have when you alive. You can live for others. Even though I was willing to die because I thought I did everything that I wanted to do in life.

She enabled me. She was the anchor. She was the pillar. She was the one that educated my kids. My kids even agreed with the fact that I could die with her because they were educated. We had no debt. We had a stable, solid life. And then she tells you, don't die, live. And that's what I'm doing. I'm living life to the fullest of my capabilities.

Because my kids understand who I am, they find the joy to join me. I'm giving them what a father can give to his kids. And that's what bonds us as a family. If you're stable at home, if you have that base that's good, then you're

That base will allow you to reach for the stars. But keep your feet on the ground. You're not bigger than life. You're not because you got a lot of money doesn't mean anything. Just be a perfect person that's an example to everyone. That people look at you and say, wow, that's what I want from him. And the moment you start doing that is the moment you start living for others.

Let's talk about our environment and ecological issues. One of your main missions is to conserve the planet, something you've encouraged all of us to care about, which stems from how you've seen the world change before our eyes for more than 30 years of expeditions.

You've seen the Arctic warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, with temperatures reaching 100 degrees in the summer in the Siberian Arctic, which has caused the North Pole, which has been frozen for 15 million years, to start melting. You've seen polar bills being killed by grizzly bears, massive amounts of the Amazon being cut down, and more wildfires than at any point in history. And I want to start this discussion with your $14 million custom-made 115-foot boat called the Pangea, which

which was named for the supercontinent that existed when all continents were joined around 300

200-300 million years ago during the Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. Your boat isn't a normal boat. It was built for extreme adventures to navigate through the tropics and small rivers as easily as it can in the polar regions. It was designed to leave a minimal carbon footprint with its two engines to be used only as a necessary alternative to the 35-meter mast that has 2,000 square feet of sailcloth attached to it. In addition, the Pangea

It's also ecologically friendly. Its aluminum body was built out of recycled Nespresso pods, and its hull was deliberately left unpainted so that when it has to break through the ice, no flecks of paint break off, which would be toxic to the environment. And the boat also has large nets to collect bottles and plastic bags from the waters.

We've all heard how we have to do our part to help save the planet. And one of the comments I often hear when this comes up is that with 8 billion people on the planet, how can my little actions have any impact on anything or that the Arctic Circle isn't going to melt in my lifetime or that polluted oceans don't affect me? So why should I care about them? Can we really make a difference? And if so, how? And as part of this, he would tell us about writing letters to Jacques Cousteau when you were younger,

that Pangea project and the Young Explorers program and what you're doing to save the planet and what we should be doing. Randy, I'm no example. I just try and protect my play field. So as a young boy growing up in South Africa, although South Africans were boycotted, we had one TV program. It was about an explorer, Jacques Cousteau. And I was allowed to watch that program.

And I saw him diving and had this boat and sailing and going to these most amazing places and really explaining nature to everybody that didn't have access to it.

And I told my father that, wow, I want to go and work for this guy. And he said, well, why don't you just write him a letter and ask if you can work as a deckhand? So I wrote him a letter and he never answered. As a young kid, I always went to the post box to see if he wrote a letter to accept my application. But I was far too young. But my father made that dream come true because he gave me hope. I wrote a letter.

he may be reply. You don't write a letter, he will never reply. So I grew up and he never replied, but there was always hope. Until the day I thought that I wanted to give the opportunity that I didn't have to younger people. And that's when I built my own boat. And I actually sold my name to investment company that bought my name and IP'd it and

created a trademark that they can put on watches. And I had sponsors of Panerai, the Panerai watch from the Richemont Group, automobile manufacturer, Mercedes-Benz sponsored me for 20 years. And I could actually use my intellectual property and copyright in some of their marketing campaigns. And everything was to be able to conserve the planet and educate the youth. And when I built the boat, I just thought that

I need to do something to change our planet. I need to educate the youth. And if I can educate the youth and they can educate their friends, then the little action that we are making is going to have a ripple effect and a massive

impact around the world. And that's when I built Pangea. Like you said, Pangea was one super continent. And that's why the boat was named Pangea, because I didn't reunite the continents together. I reunited the people on my boat. So the boat became the super continent where I took two kids from the six different continents, North America, South America, Africa, Australasia, Asia,

And I put them back on to my, in Europe and put them on my boat. So when I sailed off on my expeditions with these young explorers, I had the world represented. Times for Kids wrote about it and we were on the cover of Times and stuff like that where we could motivate the youth to be able to get involved in educational projects.

And we reached 62 million people in 2013. 62 million people that did their environmental projects. Now that's starting to make a big difference when you think that alone we can't make a difference. But if we can inspire others by our actions, that's when it's going to start counting. And that's why I want to give hope, a message of hope to the youth.

Forget about environmental anxiety. Yes, the project to save our planet is big. It's not a problem. Do what we can do today. Don't wait for others to do. Be an example. Tell people if you're not happy with their actions.

Pick up papers if you could. Just stop plastic from reaching the ocean. One plastic bag that you pick up out of the ocean would save the life of many fish. And that's how I kind of believe that these small little actions can lead into massive ripple effects around the world. And today we have an environmental project called PangeaX where we inspire young students

to propose ideas and projects related to the ocean. So each year we've got a problematic to solve and we try and get the engineers and the biologists and the researchers and everybody together and help through the industry to finance these projects. And it's going to become the world's biggest environmental institution

to propose ideas to make the world a better place. And that's how I believe step by step I'm changing the way that I would like to protect

our planet. And then from the same side, I just invested a little bit of money and energy. And it's not money that I don't have money. I get paid $5,000 a month. That's my salary, but I live the life of a billionaire and I can influence a lot of people. So I started with 52 engineers, a research program on hydrogen fuel cells.

And today I've got a hydrogen fuel cell that we can put into trains, into planes, into buses. I went to Mike Bloomberg two weeks ago and spoke to him about it because this is what the world needs. We need to decarbonize. I'm a simple explorer. Imagine what you can do in your position. Don't limit your mind to what people tell you.

Open your mind and decide what you want to do because it will make a difference. Before we finish today, I want to go ahead and ask some more open-ended questions. I call this part of my podcast, Fill in the Blank to Excellence. Are you ready to play? Let's go. When I started my career, I wish I had known. I knew that I had to start earlier in my life because I started too late.

You started at eight years old. You're eight years old and you wanted to ride 300 kilometers. I mean, the bike probably went 20 kilometers. I believe that there's no age to start anything in life. If something really drives your passion, go out there, take the risks and do it because you'll find the solutions to it. I started too late. I should have started when I was four. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is...

I think the biggest lesson is not to listen to everybody telling you you can't do it. The biggest lesson that I learned from that by not listening to people is that it's a rocky road that you can overcome. Don't see the obstacles, see the solutions. My number one professional goal is? I think my number one professional goal is to stay alive as long as I possibly can because it's got value. And the moment that...

The 30,000 days that you live in a lifetime, you can live to the fullest of your capability. You had a successful life. Even if your life might be taken, be short, do what you really love doing because it adds value. My number one personal goal is? My personal goals is to be able to be surrounded by people that I love and that loves me. And I think that to me is

more than climbing the highest mountains or crossing the poles or sailing across the oceans. To be a happy family is, I think, one of my personal goals in life. My biggest regret is? Oh, my biggest regret is that I'm not patient enough. I should be more patient. And I want things to happen too quickly and I don't take no as an answer. Sometimes, yes,

Be a little bit more patient. Things happen. Take no as an answer because it gives direction. And then deal with information in a more valuable way. We don't know it all. And the more that you learn from others, the more you deal with good information. And that is where decision-making becomes easier. The one thing I've dreamt of for a long time but haven't done is...

When I was put in front of a desk, what I asked myself if I really did what I wanted to do. And I was 38 years old and the answer was yes, I don't mind dying today. Not that I want to die, but I did exactly what I wanted to do. And since that moment, I think I live my life on what I call a bonus, extra life. It's like a video game that you've got an extra life and you can keep on playing. So I just want to keep as many of those lives in my hand as possible.

If you could fix one thing in the world, what would it be? I would like to establish peace. Why should we criticize if we can help? Why should we break other people if we can add value? That's a human error, and that's what I would like to fix. Imagine we can all think that we have to add value to others' lives, stick out a hand to those in need instead of standing on top of them or just ignoring them. We are intelligent beings.

human beings. Why are we acting in the way that we act sometimes? That's sometimes a question, especially when I get back from expeditions that I spend more than five, six months in remote places only with myself. Other than your dad and Kathy, the one person in the world that I admire the most is...

Well, I admire, honestly, my daughters to be able to live with a father. And each time they say goodbye to me, knowing that I might never come back. And the last expedition crossing the North Pole, where we ran out of food and not sure to ever make it back, how they still believed it was possible for me to make it back. And that's amazing to have kids like that. Totally amazing. My next expedition is...

Oh, my next expedition is called What's Left. The next expedition will take me around the year for a period of three years, visiting places I've seen and that have changed, that has changed throughout three years of exploration. And then what's left for me to do that I haven't done in the polar regions, in the Amazon jungle, in the mountains and in Antarctica. And then what's left of our planet that's still beautiful that we can conserve.

what's left of what's threatened in life. And the idea is really to be able to make a documentary series on the topic, what's left. And I believe that when we know what's left, we know how to deal with the problem. The one question you wish I had asked you is? I think the one question is that

Maybe it was that look at the wall and tell me what you see. And that was the question that my father asked me from a young age. You're right. Mike, there's a list of six things I want to ask you, but you've been so generous with your time. I mean, if you have five minutes to talk about the wall or two minutes, a minute, I'd

We'll wrap it up in two minutes. You know, Randy, my father was always studying and he took me in his study and he put me on a couch in front of his desk and he told me to look at the wall and tell me what I see. So I looked at the wall and there was a painting of a mountain on the wall. So I walked to the wall and I removed the painting because if he asked me to look at the wall,

He didn't want me to look at the painting. He wanted me to look at the wall, so I removed the painting. And there was a white wall. And then I started imagining how the wall was painted. So I said, the guy that painted the wall most probably was 32 years old. He had a white suit on. He put something on the carpet.

Maybe he was right-handed. And this is where he started. And I explained to him why he started in that corner. And on the top right-hand corner, far up there, is where he must have ended the painting job. And it wasn't so well done. So I said, I might have been tired. And then I started analyzing, why didn't he start the job where it was more difficult and he still was strong and motivated and then finished where it was easier to do it?

And after this explanation, my father just said, Mike, yeah, it's fine. You never seen the wall being painted, but you don't know how to look. And I went, he said, come back tomorrow, look at the wall and then think of telling me what you really see. And I went to bed and I started thinking of it. And I said, well, if he asked me the question, he must know the answer. So imagine I can look through his eyes and we can reverse the roles. Then what?

He will give me the answer. So I ran to his room. I said, come on to your office. I want to ask you a question.

And when we got into his office where he was studying, I said, now you sit where I sat and I stand where you stood. And now I'm asking you to look at the wall and tell me what you see. So my father looked at me and said, yeah, that's quite clever. So why are you doing this? I said, because I want to see through your eyes. I want to see what I don't see. I want to be able to find more information because the more eyes I look through, the better I will see things in life.

If I only look through my eyes, I can never reach that excellence, that perfection that's needed to really stay alive in what I want to do. And just as my father was going to explain to me what he was seeing, looking at the wall, I realized that it's not the wall that I should look at. It's what's beyond the wall. And when I told him that, listen,

It's not the wall. I can see the neighbor's house. I can see the jungle. I can see the beach. I can see the ocean. I can see the South Pole. He said, yes, now you're not looking at problems. You're looking through problems. And that is important in life. Don't always look at what everybody else can see. Look

beyond that because that is the long journey of life. It's not the snake in front of the tree that will kill you. It's a snake that you don't see beyond the tree that will kill you. So see that snake before he bites you. And that's how I was taught to look and see things. When I was

28 years old, I was invited. I was a corporate guy, as you know. I was wearing a three-piece suit at the time. I was invited to this Hollywood function at Peter Guber's house, who was running Columbia TriStar Pictures. And I was the only non-entertainment people. There's all these agents in their fancy suits. And I was...

intimidated. And Tony Robbins was in the living room speaking. And I've been a Tony Robbins fan. He changed my life when I read his book when I was a freshman in college. And he's there. He's got us doing jumping jacks and suits. I mean, we looked ridiculous, screaming like crazy people at the top of our lungs. And I walked out of there, Mike, thinking, I can lift Peter Guber's mansion on my pinky finger. I'm so pumped up right now. And that's how I feel.

I mean, that's how I feel today when I was doing your research. I mean, what you've done is just so incredible. And I hope everybody listening takes these amazing lessons. Even doing your research, I feel like when my workouts that I do and I think, God, my muscles are killing me and I'm swearing. I said, well, Mike Horne would be telling me to do 10 more reps right now. So you've had a huge impact on my life. You've done great things in your life. I'm so grateful to you.

Shout out to Taya Gensporger, who was a phenomenal person, superstar, has a great future, who set this up. So I'm grateful to her. Thank you for all of your time. You've been so generous. And I hope to meet you in person one day. Thank you so much. Randy, I think you really...

Well, kind of worked hard of getting information that came out today that I never really spoke about. I don't know where you kind of get your hands on all this information. And that means that you dig deep to get the truth out of people. And that to me means so much because a lot of the journalists that I use as well or that speak to me,

touches the surface of things. And we too, sometimes a little bit, we scratch the varnish of life instead of going into the depth beyond the varnish in the core of things. And you've got this capability of going to the core of things. And that is not easy to find in today's world. And that's why you've got to keep on doing this podcast.

because it's really amazing. We're going to point in that direction to have as many viewers or listeners as possible so that we can keep on inspiring people. And I think your podcast kind of inspires me as well, like I might have inspired you. Thank you.