Boyd Varty - Becoming A Meaning Maker - [Invest Like the Best, EP.394]
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I guess today is boyd bari boy was one of the most popular guests way back in two thousand sixteen and seventeen in the early editions of this podcast. He's a lion tracker, a storyteller who grew up in the south african wilderness, living amongst and tracking wild letter ds. This is his fourth time one of us like the best, but the first in six years.

Boy is the perfect follow up episode to my episode of luma vy on packing the intrigues of storytelling. And why is such an the central scale for founders? Boy walks us through different mechanisms of cultivating storytelling and becoming a meaning maker.

He encourages everyone to become someone whose stories happened around, be a character who finds characters. We discuss his concept of story hunting, leveraging stories in business and continually finding new meaning in life. Please enjoy my discussion with board body. Can you believe it's been six years since we .

asked that this oh my god, we had been diagram on the pod cost here .

and we believe the amount of freaked ventures we had together since six years ago yeah I mean.

if I think about our first meeting in your new york partment and then i've got images in my head of other scenes, jumping over waterfall, tracking a lion and sleeping in the bush. A lot of ground bed cover since then.

we're going to talk about stories today and the relevance for everyone of living stories, having stories, telling stories, maybe a little bit of an angle for a business because I don't know. I'm interested in the application of everything you've learned to how people might build their thing or contribute to building something.

But maybe you could just explain to us why right now your creative output is so dedicated to stories and hunting stories. I like that idea being a story hunter. What made this so interesting for you to explore in the asking of months?

Yeah, it's a great place to start. I mean, I think there's a few parts to of things coming together. The first was I grew around camp files, and I grew up around incredible storytelling ers.

And I had these memories of my childhood, of someone being out on a safari, or my father taking someone out and something going incredibly wrong. And then that night, sitting around the fire, a great story tell that would be telling the story of what happened, for example, that I remember one occasion with some folks came down. This has when they were still building the safari business.

They went up to track a lion. Um they track for a number of hours. The guests were tired and hot and then they found the line and the lion stood up and growled at them and there was thirty seconds of absolute terror. And then the line turned and I ran into the bush.

And that night, sitting around the fire, my father was telling the story of how incredible IT was as the line stood up out of the grass and grand, how you felt this energy move to the group and everyone grab the hold of each other and the gaze of this animal standing there in the tony grass. And then how turn them ran off in the feeling of being on your feet with the lion. And when did that actually happened? IT had just been scary, but now, in the telling of the story later, these new friends of meaning were being attitude.

And those guests would go back to jahn, eh, burger, whatever they had come from. And probably monday and tuesday, they were recovering from the experience. And then by wednesday, they went out to the first dinner party of the week, and they started telling the story as they had heard of that night around the fire.

And by the next weekend, people would be coming on safty, because in their mind, that was this incredible bitche, the amazing encounter. And so I started to see storytellers as meaning makers, and I started to see story tellers as context creators. And then later, when I started working more in the coaching space and working with teams, there was this incredible sense that if you are leading something, if you leading your family, if you're the sea of a company, any form of leadership is context creating.

You are the head storyteller, and what you are doing is you are the first speaker of the meaning. You are helping people understand how to feel. You're helping people fall into a context.

And all of that can become the culture of business. IT can become the wife of business. So that's where I started to see this incredible overlap and why IT was important. If you are a good story, Taylor, you are a meaning maker for the village.

Maybe explain a bit more about how you've seen people find the meaning in the first place. We'll talk a lot about actual story telling and story hunting and to fix this, but that seems pretty hard to be confident in something unique, that meaningful and relevant as a leader. How have you seen people find that thing in the first place? There's no one that teaches you that you have to find out for yourself. So the best leaders feel incredibly convicted in the thing that they're trying to make happen in the world that a team has gathered around. What about just finding is a big question, but finding meeting your size purpose in the first place.

IT is a big question. And that's why I called the story hunting, because IT is a turning of your attention. I think our first podcast was about tracking.

I'm always interested in this idea of turning your attention on to something because that's essentially what tracking is. And that's why I D became story hunting, because you have to develop a way of seeing and almost drop into a set of principle. So there's a few things that I said.

The one was become someones. Stories happen around. And I think of this all as a practice.

So that is an awareness and an openness to life, is a willingness to say yes. It's a willingness to try things often. It's going into uncharted terrain. I had one friend who whenever we're going to hike, almost always if there was a path that said this path is close, he wanted to go down. So the first part is, be someone, stories happens around in that to, as a mind hit, I would say, be a character who finds characters.

And what I mean by that is the more you become aware of what likes you up internally, the more you are willing to follow your curiosity often, that will pull you into unusual encounters. So many of the most amazing and outrageous people i've MIT is because I was willing to follow something I think about recently. That trail we went on together. Matt, who is this wild man trail guard, is like a wilderness to go and try things, and you start having encounters with people who are very untuned with what brings them to life in the world.

Can you explain him? That's a really good example of just a person that has this vibe about them. Maybe a little bit more about .

that yeah in the roms of beer, character who finds character, he loves the wilderness. He loves wild places. His companies called wild child africa. His central mission is to find the most remote wild places and then take people there.

And so he's just following a love for what he likes to do, and then he's figuring out how to expose that to other people. And then even within those wild places, he finds ways to go on little adventures and have little experiences within them. I mean, this is a guy he's made friends with, an ill in a pull in.

Something about that is like he's full of that. Be someones stories happen around, be a character. He finds characters. He's just living in that way. And then I would also say that storytelling, his attention, we are so distracted most of the time, if you are a storyteller, you have to be paying attention and seeing what is actually there.

One thing that you'll do with people early on, if they want to improve their storytelling, is, i'll just say to them, tell me about your life. And there is something about taking time, even thinking about all of the threads that brought you to where you are. All of the products twists all of the unexpected encounters.

And literally, when you take the time to put attention on how you got to where you are, you start to find that there is a narrative component to life. There is meaning to the way that at all tied together. And literally, when you take the time to put your attention on IT, these threads start to come together.

And so to get back to your original question, to become someone who can hold the meaning for the village, for the company, for the team, IT requires you to start to turn your attention to what is meaningful to you, to be willing to be open enough to try things, to follow your own curiosity and meet interesting people. And it's an opening of your life and your attention. And the other thing then is I say that great story tellers are always context creators.

And I think Steve jobs was so good at this, if you watch old clips, he's so good at saying, here's how i'm thinking about us. Here's the chAllenges that come up when I think about us. Here's how I think we should be facing that.

And here's the things I don't know about IT. He stays away from being just singularly positional, and he just creates a context. And then into that, people start feeding their ideas. So the journey to actually finding more meaning is to start to open yourself to the awareness of your stories, what's going on here, looking with the right type of eyes, that sort of how I start to think about how I conStellated.

What about fear? Thinking back on our most recent time together with math, if you just ask me to visually a something from the trip, the two moments that come to mind were the two, by far, physical scarious moments and both of which are, like you said at the line in the moment, you're just kind of scared. But then after the fact that becomes this thing and build with meaning, what do you make of that? That IT seems like so much of the meaning and purposes found, like there's some fear inner row around the path.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think this sort of a sweet spot there, there's the type of fear that overwhelming and actually shuts you down. But then is the type of fear that as you face IT together and you stand in the face of IT IT actually brings you together.

I mean, I think about we had to swim across that one wild piece of ocean. But again, the story there, the way that math framed IT as a story teller, is part of reading a shared sense of how we're going to do this together. This is a very rough edge of ocean.

I can tell you that if you get sucked off to the side, they swim in that direction. And i'll pop you back in. We have a couple of guys here who are gonna the gravity.

When people stand back, I am gonna call the gap between the sets. And so he's giving us a sense of, we do this with the right type of people if you do this, and we approached with the right mentality, we can do IT safely. We do have to take care each other and be away.

But the brief thing he gave us on that was a great example of helping us understand that this is an age. But if we approach IT properly, and if you follow my guidance and we work together, we can get through that. He created a frame for us to think about IT.

He created a context that we gotta watch ourselves here, but he also created the guidelines for how to do at well together. And I think that was the perfectly example of being up against an edge. But they in frame IT correctly so that people know how to handle IT. He helped us understand how to feel about IT. And I think that is so organ as a leader, you're showing people in to how to feel about the situation.

Probably the most common question that we get these days is from people running companies, usually successfully, who want to know how to tell there in the company's story, which is so strange because you would think it's really hard to create a company that works and often at big scale. And even the people that have had objective success come with the same question.

We don't know how to talk about ourselves or what resonates or what people will care about. We know our story. We see we've lived IT, but we don't know how to tell you. What would you tell someone like that? Because there's lots of those people out there are trying to figure this out.

I think that's right. And I see a lot of that too. And I actually think that great stories need to be worked on because sometimes in the reflecting ting on IT with other great storytellers, and in a context, you can start to help find out what was important about IT.

And so my sister and I started doing these things called story labs, where we would just chat to people about their journey, and then we would help cross the narrative. So I think that's the first thing. Even if you look at great storytellers, comedians, they work on that material.

So I do think you need to step back and consciously work on IT. I think you need to work on IT with people who aren't to IT, so that you can get a context of what was almost the wallpaper to you. IT was so like central to you that you maybe can't even see why was interesting.

So I would say that's absolutely critical to step back and work on your narrative and work on up with people who are good at IT. The second thing is, I would say that when you develop a cohesive narratives, that in some ways is also the beginning of an incredible culture. Because that's the other question that people are asking me a luck as they found things.

How do we create culture? And I always think that an incredible story is the beginning of shaping that culture. And for example, at lona losy, I think we have an incredible culture there as a business. And what I love is that IT starts with a shared narrative. And then, like we've spoken about before, IT becomes compounding.

So then you ask yourself, once you have a narrative of who we are and why we are, and you can take every decision against that narrative, does this reflect who we believe ourselves to be in our own identity? That's the initial phase is of IT. And then what culture is, is many, many microvision ons that are a part of that identity and over time, that becomes your culture.

And then what you want is at first, it's narrative. At first, it's actually consciously creating an identity for yourself and the business. But then what I should become is an identity that people don't even have to think about. IT as an identity is just. And so as people join in, the culture deepens and the story of who we are deeply s it's like IT becomes its own self creating field, and individuals working within IT relate to themselves as a part of that story, that culture, that way of being. So that's why I think early on, if you can create a shared language, consciously work up on telling your story, IT will result in the beginnings of a very, very deep culture, and actually a self identity and a group identity, which is really what culture is.

Maybe just to put a final point on IT with an example, how would you describe the london's culture and maybe the story that was the seed of what's become that culture?

I think at this point, it's almost become a law. And there were elements to her. IT begins with this incredible love. The business was founded with its three mad huts, out of a sense that if we don't start something here, we're gona lose this wild piece of land. And then the founders almost live the story into life.

And at first I was a passion to restore the land, and then later I became a passion for excEllence in service. Now, over the years, that story has been told enough. IT has become central to everything that happens there.

And there is such a sense of who we are that is emerged out of that story, care of the land, care of the people, they making sure that we give people transformative healing experiences in here. And it's just been spoken so much and they loved so much that IT has now become aware of being. So the chAllenge of, I guess, is that IT becomes quite like it's almost ferial.

But IT is a culture of belonging. IT is a culture that you join and is a group identity and an individual identity. At the same time, it's a way we do things around here.

People arrive now to london, the culture, if they are not of the culture. And it's amazing how quickly people are assimilated, ted, into that culture. They expanded themselves almost.

It's like an energetic beat that is off. My favorite thing is three or four weeks after a new person arrives at under losy. And I think of us actually consciously working on our narrative, being really good at storytelling, making sure we understand how to express that.

We taking the time to express all the dimensions of what we try to do, and then you find yourself walking along one of the pass and you hear a new arrival coming the other way. And they are telling the story in literally something that you heard in a workshop two months ago that you spoken about and put into our information about who we are. And then you start to see how to translating and then living into, I think also, the story has to be backed up by daily ways of being and actions. And so that's why the story is the beginning of framing who we are in our identity. But then the real cultural bt is brought to life by living IT.

How do you make that work? I love the notion of doing such a good job that the people in the culture, the story becomes portable, and they start telling IT. Is any advice you give on how to make a story portable in that way and easy for someone to pick up and run with themselves?

Yes, I would say that for us, we have our history, why and how we came to be where we are, then we have who we are right now as a big pot of the story. We are future, take african village. We take people on world class encounters in nature, where a culture business, we care about people.

And we deeply believe that if we take a lot of time to make sure that this is an incredible place for people to live and work with dignity in south africa results in amazing outputs on the other side were obsessed with excEllent. So we have these pillars and then we speak to them vigorously. And so when you're inducted at under losy, all of these things will get told to time and time again.

One of our things is that we're a place in a space for individuals to become the best versions of themselves. It's focused towards being a growth environment, but we can then measure ourselves. And every junk share are we living up to that? Are these individuals who joined our team? Are they becoming the best version of themselves? What do they need to grow? Because that's central to how will we relate to ourselves.

So on some deep level, once you've taken the time to work on IT, on frame IT, you live IT until IT becomes a group identity and then actually individual identities within that you should offend you to Operate outside of your own cultural values. On some level, when duncan clarity, the general manager, see something that is subpart IT offends him personally because it's against who we are on some fundamental level. So again, I would say that what people don't realize is when they see good story tellers, they think, oh, he's just a good story teller and i'm not.

And what i'm saying is that actually becoming a good story teller is a mindset and it's an approach you can practice IT. And becoming a good story teller is taking the time to work on the craft of IT and actually realized that if you get this stuff right, you can have an incredible impact into your life and into your business and into your culture. But IT dos deserve being taken up as a powerful practice.

Your point, and duncan makes me wonder what you've learned about dealing with violations of a story or culture. What is the most effective way when you see if something that's been done wrong and out of sink with the culture, to deal with IT?

Well, the first is to deal with that quickly and to use that as an opportunity for messaging. And often it's just you deal that right there. And then I think that messaging is a powerful thing. You should find ways to continuously as a story to be messaging into your organization.

Jobs used to have this thing that as the source of a company and as the hid storyteller, you should constantly be iterating and telling the story because there's something about the power of IT over time. And so it's not like you just tell at once almost every strategic meeting we have, we begin with who we are, where we've come from. And we reiterate that story constantly.

Something is outside of your culture is an opportunity. And the way you deal with IT can the an even more powerful way to convey who we are. So that's the first thing, is anything that outside of culture you should be thinking of IT is, how can I use this? How can I use this to deepen a sense of who we are? To use IT an example without shaming people or hurting people, if you do that well and you do that continuously and you don't let things drift, and that's the thing.

If you are building narrative culture, if something is slightly list of what you wanted to do, you have to arrest that. Because over time, that two degrees of can become a hundred degrees of. So you have to earn the story.

I remember someone telling me once that they were at a table with disney executives, and someone made a sarcastic comment about, oh, you guys are just obsessed with a mouse and the whole meeting went out cold. They will not allow any kind of comment about this symbolic horr than narrative to be off. So you have to arrested.

And then over time, once become most amazing is that if you deal with those things up front, if you deal with them hard, if you continuously to create, uh, critical mass, who deeply understands what our cultural story are, narrative, our way of being our identity is, then very quickly they start to fix things. And so in some ways, to me as a culture business, I would say that's the most amazing thing. That someone can come in from a different background and within about a week can deeply understand what this is about.

IT becomes so self generating as a field, and that's why I think it's worth investing in culture and meaning story. why? Because IT creates such a rapid acceleration of bringing talent and people into your business that literally the vide in the space starts to tune them to your desire for excEllence, your direction, who you believe yourself to be where you wanted. Take the company.

he said earlier. A favorite question is just tell me about your life. Obviously, you have a day to listen to someone's answer. You can probably find the story and bedded within what they tell you. Are there other questions that you like to ask, or you would encourage people to ask of themselves as they try to solve this? And again, my like business had is on, but is pretty relevant for any story. But if it's one of these companies like, wow, we created this great thing, but we don't know how to talk about IT, are there any other question prompts that you would offer that might help them trying delete on this problem?

Yeah, I think what brought you here? How did this idea first come to light? What was unexpected? What did you think I was gonna? And what did IT actually turn out to be IT is usually some we thought that would be this, but actually it's this, or people think it's this. But actually when we look closer, it's this.

What were the major chAllenges and how would they actually the door way to breakthrough and transformations as you have sport this, what has come to be most important to you and to your team? Why does this continue to grab you? And who do you believe you could still be as an organization? And then i'd like to say you must dill sometimes on pluto sts, because plutus are a powerful parts of any story and blot twice in your own life.

Blood west, in the genesis of the business, will almost always have juice to them. What else do I think about that? That would be powerful places to start.

I love that. Do you think that stories need some sort of archetypal core? Maybe have been reading too much Young lately, but seems like a powerful idea. What do you think of trying to find some sort of very classic, deeply embedded human psychic types core to a story?

Well, one thing that I would say to that is I believe in a universal personal, and almost always, if you can be really personal about what you are trying to say, remind yourself for some of those questions. I asked why? What hurt? What was inspiring about IT? The more personal you go, strAngely archetype, the more universal IT becomes.

And so almost always, when we do a story lab with someone, I will ask them more personal questions about what was going on for them as they try to create this thing, what drew them to IT. Because what are they afraid of? What are they still afraid of? Because within that, there is almost always what will make IT profoundly relative to other people.

And so the more personal something can be, almost always the more universal. So that's the principle. I remember telling me when you started the podcast and my whole business plan was I just like talking to the people I want to talk to, and I want of the reason to that.

Such an interesting genesis, because inside of IT is so many things, more than anything, a willingness to follow your curiosity without any sense of where it's going. And that is very unusual in modern times. Mostly people want to know where things are going. I always think of that if we built into, we would find more of those type of things. That's very universal to me.

I've seen you talk about this notion of leverage, not like financial leverage, but energy leverage or something. Your point there reminded me of IT. You save a bit more about harnessing leverage to create stories and present agent of your curiosity.

I would say that an incredible story is leverage. Imagine here in a room with a whole lot of great ideas. Actually, often the idea that wins out is the one that is not always the best one, but is quite often the one that is best conveyed. And so there is an incredible power to being a story hunter and cultivating your skills in the department.

I think the example that I was telling you about is so often when a safari is going badly, and this came back from when I was still a safe, I guide, if you could pull out a story at the right moment that you had worked on and crafted, you could the whole momentum of the safari in your direction. And when I look back on so many moments in my life, having a really brilliantly articulated story has changed the energy of the group. And alex x and I used to have this thing that you need an incredible ninety minutes to bring any group over to your side of the fist spring, the mental m towards you.

And the story is certainly part of that. So I learned that everything I look at, I would say, where are the leverage points here? And because i'm interested in working with leverage. And so often the answer for me has been the power of a story as leverage.

And you know, if you imagine yourself at a dinner party or a networking event or at a founders gathering, one incredibly told story can stand out in people's minds through a whole night of cocktail talk and shop talk and business talk. Someone who has an incredible piece of storytelling in those type of gatherings. IT can set you a pot.

IT puts you in people's minds. IT shifts the direction of the energy in the room. So I actually think that take time to work on stories, construct them because they are powerful leverage points.

Can you talk about this notion living outside in versus inside out?

yeah. So one of the principles that I mentioned earlier is be a character who finds characters. I think you and I share this and so interested in finding interesting people.

And then when I have found interesting people, I ask myself, what is that that makes them interesting. And usually it's that they have found their way into some very unusual niche by following a set of internal expressions. There's a self knowledge to IT. The guy that I talk about in the podcast was as a character was this guy, Chris buckles.

Tell about him, please.

after for the guy who I met in the the marland desert. And i'll never forget, we walked into a bar. Chris has one ARM because his ARM was turned off by a crocodile.

He has one night, jack Russell and I remember walking into the bar with a good for people, and he was standing at the bar with a huge pint of logger, and he knew that we were his arriving clients. When he saw us, he picked up the pint of lagging, and he eyes locked with out. He started downing IT again.

Then he slated down, and he picked up a second pint as we made our way across to him. And he started downing that. And then he slammed that down.

As we sort of arrived next to him, he put out his good hand and he said, i'm press a big red hair early and someone said, hi, i'm Steve, i'm jm, i'm boy, i'm James and IT was like to all of us and then he said, okay, let me just check. I got that right. c.

gm. Boy James and he named everyone's name twelve and A I was like, okay, we're in for something. yeah.

Then his jack Russell came running in, and he scooped up with his good omen that had one eyes, said, pris, what happened to your dog's eyes? He said, he bit my ARM off, so I did. I just immediately knew we're in for a idea.

And we had incredible next couple of days with Chris, the desert. And he loved the wilderness. He loved the desert.

He loved rocks. And roll around the fire night, he stopped singing A C, A, C, D C songs. And you could just see, he had built a life around what he loved.

And he had been guided by these internal polls, and what, in my other body of worker, we call the tracks of your life. And he had found his way to all of the things that he liked, expressed internally by following these things. He found a way to be in nature, to guide people, to be in the desert.

And I realized, ed, that my encounter with him came because I had heard that if I went on this trip, there might be a chance to track a desert black rina. And so my curiosity to follow to that opportunity had resulted in me meeting a character like rice. And so the great characters of this world are not people who are trying to fit themselves into some external box, into the frames that the culture tells you this is who you should be and how you should be.

But rather, they take the time to get tuned into what actually they feel, pull too. And then they figure out how to build their life externally around those internal knowing ings. And that usually results in a very original person. And so i've said, be a character who finds characters because willing to become a character, follow your own internal knowing will lead you to other unusual people. And that's where the meaning of life is, this density in being willing to live like that.

All this is very much in the realm of getting going. The opposite side of this is what's you do all that successfully, whatever you build the culture, you build the company, you do the thing, you meet the characters. And we were talking earlier about before recording becoming a sort of slave to your greatest hits like the eagles or something. And there's a question here around reinvention or returning to some core essence or curiosity that got you to where you are in the first place. What could you say about that correct problem of like you do the first thing successfully and then again, the world tries to build a circle around you and want you to do the thing that knows you for versus the thing that you want to a do at your core.

something like that? I mean, I think that's one of the deepest tensions of any creative process out. The example of you use is when my sister loves with the eagles, get up at the concert in vegas now, and people are still seeing hotel california, something they wrote forty years ago, and then an artist becomes famous for a certain body of work, certain type of painting style, and then that's all that is commercially wanted of them.

And so it's a deep tension. I think that that's why I consider story hunting a practice. And IT should never be a destination.

Now with culture, IT does in bed, you know. But even in as a business, you have to be constantly willing to look at at all and reinvent ce yourself. And the only way to do that is to be willing to be in states of reinvention yourself.

I always think about personal identity. I think about practice. I think about how that could become an external expression, a group identity in the coaching space. One thing we would say often is like being aware of your own stories. And I think that changing identity is an art form.

And I think that you have to be self aware enough to realize that there are times when change comes upon you as a result of a catholic event. And there are times when you should, if with enough self in a sense, that you are becoming classified in your consciousness in the certain identity. And the art of reinvention is exactly that.

It's an art form. And IT usually begins with some form of letting go of how we thought I had to be. You know, it's tiger words being a world champion, being the best in the world and going to reinvent his swing.

It's a very, very courageous moment. And you can only know if you reach that classified place. And so then you have to go and melt down.

And that's usually stepping out of life and allowing your ideas about who you think you are. Do you would think you are meant to be who other people have made you to be? You have to let that melt.

And that means you have to step into, like, I don't know what's gonna be mixed, and really dwell in that, not knowing. And then in the next space would be to start to attune yourself to the meaning again, how do you hunt the story? You have to start paying attention to the original curiosities, things that pull you forward, characters who like you up, and start to ask yourself, what is IT about these things, grab my attention.

And then you go into another phase of starting to build around that. If you are someone who can constantly put attention on transforming yourself, almost always new meaning. Will consulate around that? A new story of yourself? Will constable late around that and sometimes in coaching, we will even say to someone you can feel when someone stuck in something and it's just become an old stick and we'll actually say, you know, that's actually just starting to feel like a story.

IT doesn't feel like IT has a live ness in IT. So self reinvention, the courage to self rey invent, the courage to melt down and change your own identity, to be in the practice in of hunting, news stories and new ways of being. That is the art form of staying original, keeping your consciousness malleable and staying in tune with what actually brings you to life, as opposed to being just rolling out your greatest hits album for the next thirty years. I guess what i'm saying is this is a practice, and you have to consciously practice IT, consciously be stepping back and saying, does my story about who we are, who I am even anymore?

I'm thinking about the stories lab, which is a good idea. And the other people that i've turned to teach me about components or elements of a good story, and the one that always comes to my mind is Green Carters, who used to run benefit fair and will certainly no stranger to a great story, which was basically narrative conflict. And he called the proprietary data, something I know that other people don't know.

A great story has those three components to a narrative conflict and some unique information that others can learn from. I'm curious ous reaction to those three. I mention them just as an example of what i'm after with this question, which is the components to you of a great story.

Yeah, I think those are very strong. Just from a technical point of view, I think you wanna start with something very unusual. So I think that the opening line of any piece of story telling is incredibly important because they immediately helps people know how to feel about where this is going.

Then I think you should develop your characters and you should help people understand how your characters were thinking about issues. Then you should help people understand what the chAllenge was and what the conflict was and how they got through IT. Then you should have some call backs to things you learn along the way.

And then you should land IT in a very universal place as much as possible. Those are more like technical beats. And then within that, I would say that the use of language is incredibly important. With a single word, you can change the real feeling of something. If I said the buffalo was closed by by the time I thought versus when I saw the buffalo IT was a jacon, there's just a difference in energy on that you wanna be crafting all of those type of things.

There's a element to everything you've talked about in story hunting, which is this tension between complete solitary chasing of something I think like that old idea of entering the forest at the darkest point. Don't enter a beaten path, find the darkest part and enter the forest that way verses the called the commander, or the collective, or the we talk about culture earlier, like the involved of other people, and i'd love you to just ripped on that a little bit. So much of the pioneering spirit that leads to great stories is a sort of solitary pursuit.

When we were together in africa, on the wild coast, that was telling us a story about, at first he did this alone, he went by himself and figure red this entire thing out, and then he brought back that wonderful experience and exposure to other people in a repeatable way. And i'm really curious about that combination of solitary searching and then collective experience. I love you to refit .

so much of art if it's gonna original, IT has to come out of self knowledge. And I don't think you can get all the way to really knowing yourself if you aren't willing to commit to big periods of solitude and a willingness to explore yourself in solitude, explore your own thinking to writing a lot. I think that writing is absolutely critical.

If someone who was coming to you, Patrick, saying, we wanna tell our story Better, I would say you have to put aside the time to be alone and write about IT right about the journey. Take the time to explore your own thinking because things will emerge. If you want to, to talk about the culture that you wanna create, go spend some time by yourself writing about IT, thinking about IT, making notes about IT, all of that stuff that you spend time personally contemplating.

Suddenly you find yourself in meetings telling stories, and you have framework. You have iterative thought on this. And I just think it's so, so valuable to do that. And I would say, as an artist, if you can't be by yourself, as a story teller, as someone who wants to convey something, you're too bombarded by the social contract and social ideas.

And if you want to be original, you have to have time away from that, so you can just be with your own in a beat and feel that a little bit. And it's funny. I sometimes have been talking to founders and teams, or people who are leading teams, about the real jobs. It's like part of your job is to go away and being solitude.

If you're gna hold the narrative story, if you're gna be the source of the culture, if you're gonna the person who is constantly talking about this as a way to anchor who we are, you need to go away and being solitude to be with all of that, because IT becomes authentic in you then. And you may say, I can't get away from work. And what i'm saying to is that is a massive part of your work.

If you invest in that, it's gonna payback in ably. And a lot of people, we pulled into the culture and I have to be there. I have to be husting, I have to be busy. But actually, the time to step back, contemplate and be in those questions results in very powerful outputs.

Do you talk about stakes? The role of high stakes, just in general? Because one of the most powerful things anyone ever told me, one of few people I would call a mentor, said something to me to the effect of the most unhappy i've ever been is when I have the most optionality. And the happiest i've ever been is when I have the highest stakes meeting of the fewest things that have to go right in order for things to work out, or whatever. What if you learn about harnessing or creating high stakes and the role that that means to you and the role that that could play in story?

And you know, the way that I think about IT is levels of a live ess and levels of awareness. You would have to ask yourself, what is the opposite of meaning? And I would say that things becoming too mechanical, too much familiarity, too much comfort, too much of the known almost is where it's hard to keep meaning alive.

Now it's not that it's not there in deep states of satory states, you would say that everything is just inactive, meaningful almost when you really feel a onest with everything, it's meaningful just in its being this. But for most people, most of us aren't there in that profound level of story. I would say you have to be moving towards what you know will bring you aliveness to be up against something enough that is forcing you to new places in yourself, is forcing you to relate to life in new ways.

And that tension of finding out that life gonna not exactly what you think it's gonna be, but it's also not exactly what life says it's gonna be. It's this co creative space that is often where meaning is structured. And so if your life is short of meaning, it's probably because you aren't going up against enough aliveness now stakes people who are up against high stakes come back and have tremendous meaning.

Is that amazing team from the heart? Lock away. The soldier comes back and he's been living with such states and he's walking down the cereal isle in the grocery store and it's just totally did to him because of where he's been. I would say that you can get overwhelmed mistakes to the point for its just stressed and I actually thought to become subtractive somehow to your energy but I think that if there is not enough meaning in your life you are not fully up against enough of your aliveness and then that means you have to turn your attention on. You need to be hunting the story a little more and there is a sweet spot where you're on your edge in a way that is generated and adding to you and forcing you to learn new things, consul late yourself in new ways, and then you can tip over the edge into an overall where the stakes are probably a little too high. So to try and find your way into that sweet spot powerful.

can you tell us about the recent experience you had with the endless hunt of the kudo? I don't know that the right turn for IT. So I think about IT and maybe just using that as an example of some of these principles that we talk to about.

Yeah, so recently, our mutual friend alex and myself and another friend, James, we went into the kalari to be with the cat hori bushman the same people. And we went on an expedition to find out what level of tracking skills still exist. And IT was just as profound journey.

First year you going into the unknown with three of your friends. It's right on that edge. We don't know where we going. We have to figure out every day we're in the desert and you can get things very wrong in the desert. It's incredibly dry out there is incredibly hot.

You can dehydrate ourself, you can get heat stroke, your car can get stuck in the sand, and no one's coming to fit you. So immediately that increases your awareness. And when I say storytelling is awareness, anything that is bringing more awareness is almost the door way into a good story.

And what we found there was an incredible thing. We found the people who are living in modern ways, the bushman people now are living in various villages, and they've been pushed off some of their lands, and yet they are still getting about eighty percent of their food from the desert. And they think of the desert as their storehouse.

So immediately I started to see the simplicity with which they were living, and this incredible sense of abundance that they have. They literally think of the desert as they store house. And that so IT started to open up these new pathways in me, and then we started to see what level of tracking is still alive.

And we had these incredible days where we would go out tracking, and they were showing us what good track as they were. But we also wanted to show them that we had some skills, and so we would have these sessions where IT would be almost like a paleo at the front of the track, and someone would be on the track. And the minute someone lost that, someone else would be on IT.

And IT was this almost friendly, competitive tracking environment. And we couldn't be more culturally different, but we were united by this ancient art form, which is essentially a former storytelling. And that was profound to me, relating through a practice with people. This is how to relate in a social way. We were actually just having this very deep dialogue through the shared skills, li t, from very different cultural backgrounds.

And then the other thing that we were trying to do is we were trying to find out if the persistence hand still exists, and the persistence hunt is probably the most ancient tracking art form, is referred to as the great dance, because it's really a spiritual practice by the bushmen people. And IT involves actually running after your prey in the heat of the desert, incredibly t soft sand, forty seven degree heat. And you actually, you run just under a marathon distance in some occasions.

And you have to keep running. You have to run and track at the same time. And so you're doing a lot of things.

Your tracking has to be incredibly high level. Your insurance has to be incredibly high level. Your adaption to that environment has to be incredibly high level. So we were finding out if that still existed and was remarkable. Although I hadn't been done in many, many years, we found a group of bushman people who are still able to do IT.

And so I was reflecting on how that affected me that trip, and I was all there, the willingness to go, and we met these incredible trackers. The willingness to go is to be someones. Stories happen around. We found by knowing that we are passionate about preserving this ancient art form of tracking, we met these incredible track kers being out in the desert, and the attention that is required to be that awake and tuned into each other to keep ourselves alive and safe, IT immediately made everything more meaning.

What was IT like at the end of that, see, are chasing this cute around for audi a, how long, long time. And he, what was the climax of the story? Like, well.

what was incredible is that when we had completed IT, and in this instance, we didn't kill anything. We were just running on the tracks, and we were finding out if IT was possible. And then eventually we got two point where we could see the cudi, and we lift the hand.

We called the off at that point because we didn't want to push the animal too much. But the culmination of IT was the amazing feeling that together we had done something that very few people have ever done. And what was most powerful, that the Younger bushmen people had never done, that they had heard about IT in stories.

And so when we actually did that, there was like this reigniting of this ancient art form. And we could see around us that that story of that day was gonna told in villages everywhere. And the sense that this thing could still be done would start to come back.

And there was a pride in IT that we are some of the few people in the world that are still holding this art form alive. IT had this very transformative energy to IT. And yeah, I think for me, IT was another example of, when you go and follows something without any sense of what's gonna come of IT. IT brings something to your life. IT brings powerful meaning to your life.

Another phrase that I heard do you use in your new series is simplicity in abundance, quite like that. Can you explain .

that simplicity in abundance and simplicity as abundant? I think that what I learned from being with the bushman people is that, I mean, so many things. The one is that they considered the simplicity of their life, the gift of IT.

And they have these incredible social structures. They will usually Operate and move in the desert through the early morning gathering, hunting, and then they risk together through middle of the day. They share everything because they feel that the desert provides everything that they need, and it's very hard to spend time with them. Sitting under a tree, lying in the sand, is this relaxed, incredible social connection.

Just to wonder men, are we getting a right in any way, shape, form, as we add more complexity and more intensity to our lives? This is something so pure, and without being constantly bombarded by devices or stories of things happening around the world, they just drop into this quiet, simple presence with each other. And i've found IT to be very, very powerful and transformative.

And I also thought to myself, if you imagine that with the generation of A I now, the world will probably change more in the next five years. And IT has in the previous hundred, I kept having this feeling that being with them out in the desert was a three hundred years in the past. Or was I somehow, in the apocalyptic future, where whatever happens happens, they just walk quietly back into the desert and continue to live their lives? IT was a deep presence for me.

You talk about seeking out characters to become one. What makes a character? What are the features of the people that you find yourself most drawn to?

That's what I got obsess with. That one is their inside out. They're attuned to their own alive ness.

In some ways, they know what brings them to life, and their authentic and so authentically ity and originality is a by product of that. They have been willing to walk their own path and break out of social constrains. And I think that's a big one.

If you think of most people being highly socialized, a character has broken that and become more self authored. They're creating their own story, literally. And the word author r is they have their own narrative about themselves.

They're not trying to fit themselves in with the cocktail scene of where they're from. Often they have made a bold decision to do that, and they've been willing to do something out of a knowingness in themselves before IT existed. If I think of the characters I grew around, part of IT is that they believe that they could do certain things, that there was no savi industry.

They were making IT up, they came from hunting, but then they self defined into what they could become. They're willing to be on the journey and realize that we don't know what this is yet, but i'm interested enough in IT and IT brings me to life enough that we could still be finding out what IT is. It's really that first two principles be someone, stories happen around and be a character.

Those are the two things that bring you to great characters. And then there's usually a moral sense almost, where they believe in their path. And they're unswell by IT, unsafe by other people's opinions, and they're courageously standing in that in some ways.

And then quite often, if they've had the courage to persevere at that, then being around them is usually quite inspiring. It's almost like an embodied activism. This sense of self, there are sense of what they are doing, the sense of knowing what the speed is in life. When you get around that, there's usually passionate, because theyve had the courage to find out what that thing is that brings them. And that becomes very, very infectious.

What is the edge of your curiosity tell about being someone that stories happened around? You've had more interesting stories than probably anyone i've ever met, and you're relentlessly seeking new experience and aliveness. But what is the thing you are currently curious about, that your chasing my life .

has landed a lot in practice. I think about my life as a practice. The architecture of my life is designed for me to continuously, both well in the things that I know, work for me, and also to find my way into new frontiers.

What I was mentioning here earlier, I probably live very much between the attention that sebastian Younger talks about, of the courage to step towards new things and the trying to be smart enough to stay still and stay with things that are really valuable. And it's funny how life can come at you. I think the biggest frontier for me right now is probably becoming a father of all the wild things i've done.

Where the track leads now is into figuring out how to be a really stable, solid presence for this new arrival. He's coming into my life. And so that's what's amazing about IT is that it's not like these other things that are wild and exciting and interesting.

Life leads you where IT leads you. And anything can be a frontier. Settle down can be .

a frontier .

is for you, me. But it's as much alive this day for me.

What is surprised you so far about the prospect of becoming a father?

I think just how committed I am to and how committed I am to becoming a good temple. Not like lad hamilton had the stinger, he says being a good father is here the central poll of the tent. And every now, again, people come over and just kick you a bit to see a few solid.

And I think that I like that. I'm sure there's a lot more to than that, but I like the idea of just being really, really solid for the people around me and then probably figure out how to make sure that I maintain my willingness to follow and hand stories and hold family life in a really dynamic way. The a craft ce of that.

who right now is inspiring you. I am really .

inspired by Jessie island. When I look at him, I see someone whose output I find really great. He approaches, life is so much intentionality.

And you can feel there's a big output around him. He knows the things that he likes to do. He's very much inside out as a character. He's self constructed. I like the of his life as a rapper, then became an entrepreneur speaker, insurance as d so you can feel his vme diagram is very him, his output to touch a lot of lives.

So certainly him, and very inspired by my sister, her spiritual practice is evolving so fast, and the presence that he brings to her life, just being around her SHE admits so much energy. I'm very inspired. I have three really close people in my life outside of my relationship with you, but jim death man, gram duncan and josh wet skin, and the three of them have just talk about building your own field around you.

Just the way that they approach their life is enigmatic. Their characters, they live on their own path. And so yeah, super inspired by those three. They're build lives that are real expressions of who they are and each one is a very any character.

It's a good reminder for me to ask you about my topic of obsession, which we call life's work, which we define as the quest to build something that expresses who you are in service of others. What do you think about that concept you think it's useful?

What you think about the idea of the calling, the role of work in a life, and maybe even the very lofty term of life's work, which implies your personal masterpiece or something built over a long period. I'm obsessed to some. Curious what you think about IT.

I do to and to borrow from josh wet. And he talks a lot about being in yourself expression. He has an artistic soul, and I think that is an element of mastery. And I continue to ask myself as part of the willingness to live in the practice of being a story hunter, a meaning maker, a tracker. It's a constant question.

Am I as fully expressed as I could be? So for me, that comes down to touching a lot of people's lives towards holness, connecting people with the natural world, helping people bring the full expression of themselves to life through their own stories and living their stories. So I think we're a line day.

And I guess the question for myself is where am I not quite as fully expressed as I could be? And I mean, I think that's an ongoing thing in some ways, I think that is just an output thing, is probably more of frontier in the scale at which I could be doing that. And that's fun.

I like thinking about how to both keep a deep quality. I said often when people talk to me about scaling your work and that type of thing, I like to Operate more in the campfire. I like human connection. I like personal connection bad. I am also interested in seeing if we can bring really transformative work to more people.

Any closing thoughts you leave people with after creating this series called story hunter that everyone should go check out of their amazing short? Everyone is gonna love this series of podcasting. You put out anything that you would leave people with thinking about that little anybody .

of worth you just created. Yeah, I would say that you're not fair on yourself if you just say i'm not a good storyteller. Everyone has the capacity to develop the skills as a storyteller.

IT is a practice, and you should go away and practice IT. And I promise you, if you take up these principles and live through them, you will start opening up very, very interesting dimensions of yourself, and you will learn to be Better at this. And my bed is, is that if you're a father, if you your mother, if you're leader, if you're C O, your storyteller, and getting bit of this is an incredible leverage point.

IT will amplify you in ways you can't imagine. So I would just say, don't shy IT. It's totally worth doing.

Everyone, go get in the story lab, please. Everyone go listen to this series will link to IT and make IT easy to find boy and teller next venture.

Thank you so much, Patrick.

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