Order of Man - ALEX HARRIS ｜ Why the ＂Let's Find Out＂ Mentality Matters to Men

00:00:00.840 Most of us as men think that courage is simply something that you either have or you don't,

00:00:07.420 but what if it was actually a decision that you make over and over and over again, the

00:00:14.140 same way you train any other muscle?

00:00:17.360 And today's conversation is about what happens when you stop asking, what if I fail and start

00:00:23.120 asking, let's find out.

00:00:24.960 We get into why 90% of what we fear never happens, how to raise kids with grit in a culture that is definitely built for convenience, and why the most dangerous thing I think a man can do isn't the risk that he takes, it's the potential that he leaves untapped.

00:00:43.880 My guest today, Alex Harris, has summited Everest, walked unsupported to the South Pole, and made the first ever unsupported crossing of Arabia's empty quarter on foot.

00:00:56.880 But this really isn't just a conversation about extreme sports.

00:01:01.140 It's about the mindset that separates the guy who just stays stuck, trapped, sedated inside the fence from the guy who goes out and actually finds out what's on the other side of that wall.

00:01:13.020 so if you've ever felt like you're sitting on untapped potential something that maybe you even

00:01:21.800 haven't had the guts to pursue in the past you're going to really enjoy this episode

00:01:26.460 and maybe you won't because i think it might just push you to take your game to the next level

00:01:33.380 you're a man of action you live life to the fullest embrace your fears and boldly charge

00:01:39.160 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time. You are not

00:01:45.000 easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are.

00:01:52.180 This is who you will become at the end of the day. And after all is said and done,

00:01:56.940 you can call yourself a man. Man, what's going on? My name is Ryan Mickler. I'm your host and

00:02:02.480 founder. A lot of you guys obviously are repeat listeners, and we've, I'm sure, have some new

00:02:09.160 listeners as well. Glad you're tuning in. If you're a man, if you're married to a man,

00:02:14.140 if you have a son, this one's for you. All of it is for you, regardless of who you are.

00:02:23.260 But I do want you to know we talk about all things masculinity and manliness in a society

00:02:27.800 that continues to be dismissive of it. I think a lot of things have changed over the past several

00:02:33.900 years. And I think people are waking up to the realization that men are needed now more than

00:02:38.460 ever. But it's also not a podcast that is geared towards painting women as the enemy. I don't think

00:02:47.820 men or women are the enemy. I think there's incredible women and incredible men. And I think

00:02:53.340 there's horrible women and horrible men. And my goal is to make us all better working together,

00:02:59.640 but primarily through elevating our abilities, capabilities, and the way that we show up as men.

00:03:06.360 So, got a good one lined up for you today. But before I get to it, just want to mention, speaking of good men, every good man has a knife. You know it. I know it. If you don't, you know somewhere deep down in your soul that you should have a knife.

00:03:24.120 we are tool wielding animals. We, we are required to have tools that make us more capable for the

00:03:32.280 everyday, whether that's cutting up a steak, picking your teeth, breaking down an animal in

00:03:38.280 the woods, uh, protecting a loved one, protecting and defending yourself. You got to have a good

00:03:43.560 knife. And there's no better place than my friends over at Montana knife company. They are making

00:03:49.940 knives in America. So if you're going to have a knife, you might as well have one made in America.

00:03:54.120 and you might as well have one made from montana knife company head over to montana knife company.com

00:03:59.840 use the code order of man i'm actually inventorying all my knives right now because i've got some fall

00:04:05.480 hunts i'm very excited about and i fully plan on getting those things bloody so guys check it out

00:04:10.860 montana knife company.com use the code order of man save some money when you do now let me introduce

00:04:17.720 you to my guest his name is alex harris i'm not sure if you've heard of him but he is one of the

00:04:23.340 world's most accomplished extreme adventures he's the first south african to walk unsupported to

00:04:31.240 the south pole the first person to cross arabia's empty quarter on foot without support talks a

00:04:37.940 little bit about that today in today's uh conversation and a summiter of the seven

00:04:42.920 summits including everest for over more than 30 years and 60 plus expeditions he's paired a

00:04:53.180 a sports psychology degree with first-hand experience in what is no contest the world's

00:05:02.120 harshest environments to understand what actually drives human performance under pressure he's also

00:05:07.760 a record-breaking ultra endurance cyclist and the founder of the manga which is a grueling

00:05:13.360 1100 kilometer single stage bike packing race across south africa's karu alex now channels his

00:05:21.980 over 30 years of expedition wisdom into keynote speaking, delivering talks like making the

00:05:30.940 impossible and facing your own Everest to organizations across five continents at this

00:05:36.800 point from Harmony Gold to Coca-Cola to Deloitte. And he and his wife recently relocated their

00:05:44.580 family of six from South Africa to Texas to Dallas. We welcome him here. And it's a decision

00:05:51.620 that he treats with the same deliberate faith-driven approach that he's brought to

00:05:56.560 every single summit, every single desert crossing. And you can find him over at

00:06:01.660 explorealexharris.com. Gentlemen, you're going to like this one.

00:06:07.860 Alex, what's up, my friend? So good to see you. Glad I could have you on the Order of Man podcast.

00:06:13.080 Well, it's a great honor to be here. So thank you for having me.

00:06:16.840 I told you not to tell me too much, but before we hit record, you told me you were in my neck

00:06:22.760 of the woods, what, a month ago, hiking in the Narrows? How amazing is that?

00:06:27.680 You know, I was blown away. I mean, obviously, I'd read about Zion being a climber all my life.

00:06:34.220 I just remember seeing pictures and making a mental note to go there one day.

00:06:39.280 But the occasion now was surprising. I've been working with some guys from the

00:06:43.860 the Colleyville Christian Academy in, you know,

00:06:47.980 it's a private school in Colleyville here in Dallas.

00:06:50.640 And so there's this group called the Watchmen that are really just parents

00:06:54.240 that, you know, the husbands that stand accountable fathers.

00:06:56.840 So I led 45 of these guys up the narrows, you know, and let me tell you,

00:07:02.560 it's going four miles up that canyon trying to keep to have a 45 guys

00:07:06.840 was no easy toss, but I was blown away.

00:07:10.560 I mean, what a place.

00:07:11.760 Wow.

00:07:12.000 how uh how deep was it when you went did you guys get up to your chest up to your waist where were

00:07:17.820 you guys at yeah so it actually rained a couple of days before and the day before so we were really

00:07:24.000 down to the wire but apparently it just drains so quickly and most of the time it was kind of

00:07:30.620 ankle with some knee deep but we just went as far as um oh gosh i forget the the compulsory turn if

00:07:38.780 you're bigger than a group at 12 about four miles in and that last section there were one or two

00:07:44.520 pools where we got up to shoulder height you know if you're six foot but most of the time it wasn't

00:07:49.080 too bad i think they said it was 50 uh cumix per second or whatever measure they use you know but

00:07:55.420 yeah i mean it was incredible but i can see how that place can quickly turn ugly if you're not

00:07:59.960 if you're not paying attention to the weather right oh you're right so it it probably was

00:08:06.000 maybe a week or two after you were here we had massive massive flooding and wow it would kill

00:08:14.540 you i mean if you were in the narrows you're you're dead uh everything drains into the narrows

00:08:19.700 it's it's you know you've got debris and wood and logs coming down there and i actually went up

00:08:27.280 yeah no i went up this weekend and everything's washed out and there's

00:08:31.120 uh sediment just everywhere the river's still pretty muddy with the dirt settling and everything

00:08:36.740 it's pretty dangerous and we had some big flooding down here uh below zion which is where i live but

00:08:43.420 it can get nasty very very quickly yeah we we did the bottom up hike so we just went from the the

00:08:51.020 trailhead four miles up turned around but man i would love to go back and do the full from the

00:08:56.520 top down that place is just unbelievable and then when we flew back the line you take from

00:09:01.580 st george back to dallas flew us right over the narrows literally i was looking out of the plane

00:09:07.340 window and oh my gosh that's where we were we were hiking up there and it just carries on

00:09:12.420 forever into the mountains it does did you guys get a chance to do uh angels landing by chance or

00:09:19.740 no so that was going to be our backup plan if the park called off the narrows but i'm glad we didn't

00:09:27.560 because when i looked online at what it was i mean that's a crazy place like 19 people have

00:09:32.740 fallen off there you know and uh you know they they never made it back looks pretty intense

00:09:38.740 it looks intense it looks a lot more intense than it actually i mean don't get me wrong it's

00:09:43.300 it's intense i mean there's areas of the hike that are yeah man maybe two and a half three feet

00:09:49.120 wide and you're holding onto a chain that's anchored into a wall. So that has some intensity

00:09:53.200 with it. And I get a little bit of, I don't particularly enjoy heights. I don't, I don't,

00:09:59.140 I don't like staring down below me and seeing that there's a thousand feet that I could fall,

00:10:04.720 but I've done that probably half a dozen times now. And it's, it's, it's incredible. So if you

00:10:13.200 come back out, let me know, I'll take you up the, uh, up to angels landing. We'll do it together

00:10:17.220 and we'll have a good time up there.

00:10:19.020 Sounds fantastic.

00:10:20.220 Yeah, I know it looks, I'm also, you know,

00:10:21.860 at the start of my young career,

00:10:25.800 I spent two years cleaning inaccessible skyscrapers,

00:10:29.580 abseiling down ropes on a tiny ledge.

00:10:32.060 So I wasn't scared of heights then,

00:10:34.280 but I noticed about two years ago,

00:10:35.900 I took my kids across a rope bridge in South Africa.

00:10:39.600 And all of a sudden I was like, whoa, hang on a second.

00:10:42.900 You know, I think I've overcompensated

00:10:44.800 from a life of crazy stuff.

00:10:46.380 i'm now super cautious my wife's the crazy one though is that well that that's actually

00:10:52.740 interesting that your wife is because a lot of the times it seems well i think we all do when

00:10:57.480 we have that maternal and paternal instinct where we tend to quiet our our more adventurous days

00:11:06.240 do you think you attribute that to fatherhood and then why don't you think she has the same level

00:11:12.560 of that concern or whatever it might be that you do?

00:11:18.540 So I think a life of just looking after people, you know, and obviously when I got back from

00:11:25.240 my first Everest expedition in 96, that's when I started my first business guiding people.

00:11:31.020 So for 30 years, the focus has always been constantly assessing risk, looking after people

00:11:38.200 in the high mountains, watching the weather, watching the terrain, how close is a guy to the

00:11:43.220 edge until it becomes second nature. And my risk profile definitely changed when I started, you

00:11:49.920 know, a family and I've now got four kids that are between six and 17. So I'm hyper conscious of risk

00:11:57.960 and probably to a fault, but I'm also aware that, hey, I have to facilitate an experiential kind of

00:12:06.640 exploring journey with my kids. So it's maybe not that my wife is like super risky. I don't think

00:12:13.120 she is, but I think she's definitely the riskier one between the two of us, probably because I've

00:12:18.420 just spent a life, you know, compensating. And it kind of catches me. I have to assess all the

00:12:26.920 time. Okay, well, what, because really when you're assessing risk, you get very good at

00:12:33.760 understanding, yes, there's a statistical chance of something happening, but the probability of it

00:12:40.300 happening is very slim. And so now I find myself just thinking through that, yeah, okay, there is

00:12:48.080 a statistical chance. Let's take our kids on a hike, whatever. But the probability is really low

00:12:53.820 risk. So let's do this, you know. But on a day-to-day basis, it's definitely my wife that

00:12:58.820 is a little bit more spontaneity and, hey, let's go do this. Hey, let's go do that. I mean, I'm also

00:13:03.720 an ultra endurance bike racer so I'm constantly thinking about consequence you know what not to

00:13:10.680 take how to save weight what are the chances of this breaking that breaking but now as I'm in my

00:13:16.420 kind of mid 50s I'm realizing hang on a second this has become an innate pattern and it's not

00:13:23.180 necessarily always good you know it was good looking after people on mountains but it's it's

00:13:29.280 not necessarily good looking after my kids you know so it's kind of that like a conundrum you

00:13:34.960 don't want your kid to run too close to the fire but you want them to experience what heat's about

00:13:39.720 you know that's a great way to say it not too close to the fire but experience the heat

00:13:44.880 yeah i feel that you know i i definitely feel that with with my children um but but it's

00:13:51.760 interesting because you're talking about the conundrum and weighing risk versus reward risk

00:13:56.840 versus being safe or experiencing life i mean we all do it every day the difference is most people

00:14:03.220 just aren't conscious about it i got in my car this morning and went to the grocery store

00:14:07.820 statistically there's a a percentage chance that somebody hits me or i get into an accident or

00:14:14.700 whatever it might be and and i get injured or or or die sure the same as anybody else who gets into

00:14:20.680 a vehicle but nobody thinks about it let me ask you this this might be a challenging question and

00:14:27.240 and i'm i just want to ask questions that maybe you haven't been asked before or that kind of

00:14:34.460 push the bounds of what most people would ask i i know you do so much adventuring and you've done

00:14:40.480 some some wild things by what most people would consider how how would you feel

00:14:47.360 maybe that's not the right way to start that question let me think about this here for a

00:14:52.640 second have you ever considered what your kids might experience if you were to die on one of

00:15:02.240 these adventures and what would be the positive and negative outlook from their perspective

00:15:08.640 so i mean i have i you know i made an intentional decision back in 2009 to shift the the trajectory

00:15:20.660 of my risk profile because up to that point my my focus when it came to risk was always on specific

00:15:28.600 challenges circumstances mountains elevations the objective danger but really on on an expedition

00:15:36.220 in 2009 i was leading a south african team to climb broad peak which is a 26 000 foot peak you

00:15:42.440 know one of the the 14 8000 and and where is this this is in south africa no in pakistan oh pakistan

00:15:49.400 okay yeah so so we were right up on the chinese border in the baltoro and it's a peak next to k2

00:15:55.160 so the altera motive was to try and make the first south african ascent of broad peak but to look

00:16:01.520 spent six, seven weeks looking across at K2 to see if there was a safe line to maybe come back

00:16:06.520 the following year and try and make the first South African ascent to K2. And I had my first

00:16:12.480 daughter, she was six, seven months at the time. And on our summit day, well, the day before we

00:16:20.260 set out for the summit at High Camp, the Lord really challenged me about where the trajectory

00:16:27.040 of my life was going, not so much about the decisions, you know, I was making on a day-to-day

00:16:34.320 basis. And it wasn't like the choice was, hey, if you push onto the summit, you're going to die.

00:16:39.180 That wasn't kind of the sense I got, but the choice was, hey, the trajectory you're on

00:16:45.080 is not conducive to growing a family. And so if you want to grow a family, you need to shift the

00:16:50.960 trajectory of your life and your risk. And so I made a decision that evening, you know, to pull

00:16:56.960 out, to not go the next day for the summit. I didn't feel right in my spirit, you know, and you

00:17:02.460 look back. Interestingly, it's where if you followed some of the media in the last two months,

00:17:08.180 there was a massive avalanche on Broad Peak that killed Nims, you know, that famous Nepalese guy

00:17:13.640 with I think maybe 10 or 11 climbers. That avalanche was triggered at exactly the spot where

00:17:20.180 where i was you know where i felt was that just recently that was about six weeks ago maybe two

00:17:25.160 months ago yeah i mean i've seen this guy i even reached out to his team to have him on the podcast

00:17:30.720 he passed away he died he died in an avalanche on broad peak with i think 10 other climbers

00:17:37.160 uh maybe six weeks ago yeah maybe 10 weeks ago you know so look it was an objectively that mountain

00:17:44.600 has some objective dangers but the decision wasn't around the specific danger then it was

00:17:49.880 around the kind of the trajectory my life was on.

00:17:53.360 And so I made a principled decision to turn around,

00:17:56.160 but to stop going at 8,000-meter peaks, you know.

00:17:58.880 And I would forsake the opportunity to go to K2 with some friends

00:18:03.360 a few years later who became the first South Africans to climb, you know, K2.

00:18:09.060 But so now I look at risk through the trajectory that my life was on,

00:18:16.620 meaning that i'm less likely to end up in a situation like two years down the line where

00:18:23.160 i'm on a mountain and i'm really caught you know you know and the shit's about to hit the fan as

00:18:29.340 it were because i've changed the way i make decisions to your question specifically for sure

00:18:37.380 i mean you know the the the trite answer is well my father climbs mountains and does all of these

00:18:45.340 things. So he died, what he was doing, they're going to be sad, you know, but hopefully, I've

00:18:51.780 instilled in them the culture of exploration. But that's probably not the truth. Because,

00:18:56.960 you know, now I'm just so much more aware of these experiences, that we still have a small,

00:19:05.360 so one of the consequences of making that that principal decision way back in 2009 was that the

00:19:11.260 high peaks part of our business i gave to my partner at the time you know and i focused on

00:19:17.680 the speaking uh events leadership stuff we still do a couple of tours so i still you know once

00:19:24.360 every year or two years i'll take a group of guys up kilimanjaro we've done orizaba the heist in

00:19:29.580 mexico guadalupe a couple of the 14 000 as we do a bike trip to the islands on scotland where we

00:19:35.420 cycle from distillery to distillery. I love whiskey. So the risk of those, it's unbelievable.

00:19:41.920 It's actually, you know, when the sun's shining, which is like one day in the year, it's the most

00:19:45.240 beautiful place on earth. But, uh, the only thing I've ever done hiking wise up there is old, old

00:19:50.740 man of store. I believe it is. Okay. Yes. You know, I don't know what's like 500 feet or something

00:19:56.000 elevation. I mean, it can't be very significant, but it is beautiful. Absolutely. So I, you know,

00:20:04.460 I'm probably less likely to have that experience.

00:20:07.520 What might become a reality in my timeline is that one of my kids want to

00:20:11.920 maybe one day go to a big mountain like Everest.

00:20:15.860 And I've often thought about what do I do if the question from them is,

00:20:21.900 hey, will you come with me and climb Everest, you know?

00:20:25.000 Now that opens a whole Pandora's box that I kind of have left for if the

00:20:31.460 opportunity comes.

00:20:32.800 I think it's unlikely.

00:20:34.560 You know, I think, I mean, I look at my trajectory through my life

00:20:38.380 and sort of the guidance I had.

00:20:39.820 I mean, I wanted to be an astronaut and a pilot and that didn't work out

00:20:43.040 and I was climbing at the same time.

00:20:44.840 So I was in a very unusual space career-wise as a young climber

00:20:50.400 in South Africa as international doors were opening up

00:20:53.900 and I was exposed to some really profound opportunities early on

00:20:58.320 that accelerated kind of the pathway of becoming a sort of an extreme adventure.

00:21:04.480 It wasn't my intention.

00:21:06.020 And that's an unlikely pathway that my kids will go on.

00:21:09.120 But look, a month ago we were in Colorado and for the first time

00:21:13.780 I took them up a proper mountain.

00:21:15.720 You know, three of my four kids, we climbed three 14,000ers

00:21:20.080 just outside Breckenridge.

00:21:22.080 And I must tell you it was a wonderful nine hours, you know,

00:21:24.880 to see them have the DNA I have or had as a youngster,

00:21:30.460 the energy, but lack the wisdom.

00:21:32.740 I mean, they were running up this first 14,000.

00:21:35.100 I was like, hey, guys, slow down.

00:21:39.140 Later on in the day, they were lying on their backs, you know,

00:21:41.560 and I was still pacing slowly.

00:21:44.260 And yeah, you see, I told you, you can't run on a 14,000er.

00:21:47.980 But it was a wonderful experience just to be able to facilitate

00:21:50.900 a relatively safe thing in an environment I've become

00:21:54.320 so intimate with, but for them, was still new, exciting, fresh,

00:21:59.360 and we'll see where the Lord takes that journey.

00:22:02.740 I don't think it'll lead to Everest, but who knows?

00:22:07.580 So I'm a little confused.

00:22:09.720 You said you have a 17-year-old, I believe, is your oldest.

00:22:12.600 Is that what you said?

00:22:13.520 Yes, six years, 12 years, 15, and 17.

00:22:17.200 The two older are the girls.

00:22:19.280 The girls, okay.

00:22:19.980 So let's say your 17-year-old said,

00:22:23.320 hey dad let's go do Everest yeah you would you would say no

00:22:28.860 I don't think I would say no but okay yeah yeah no no no I'm definitely saying no I wouldn't say

00:22:37.920 no but I'm saying I would leave the specific decisions when that happens and then I would

00:22:43.280 probably use my experience to try and facilitate a safer journey as possible you know but I also

00:22:50.600 I want to know that it's a highly unusual individual,

00:22:53.820 and we've had them over the years, that comes up to me

00:22:56.000 that's never climbed a mountain and says,

00:22:57.680 hey, I want to climb Everest.

00:22:59.420 And then I have to sit the guy down and say, okay, look,

00:23:02.000 you can throw $100,000 at the problem and we can prep you for next year,

00:23:06.820 but the chances are you're going to fail.

00:23:09.080 There's a better investment of your time and energy for you to qualify

00:23:12.600 whether this is really something you want to do,

00:23:15.200 and that roadmap looks like Kilimanjaro, Aconcagra in South America,

00:23:19.600 maybe Nanali in North America.

00:23:21.820 And so the same thing would likely happen with, remember, you know,

00:23:25.180 these things happen along a trajectory that's predictable.

00:23:28.220 It's not likely that my 17-year-old is going to come up to me and say,

00:23:31.400 hey, let's go do Everest.

00:23:32.580 My 15-year-old has already said she wants to do Kilimanjaro.

00:23:35.860 I'm taking that same group of guys that took up the Narrows.

00:23:39.100 I'm taking them up Kili next year on a spiritual kind of journey,

00:23:42.680 which is a first, you know, where we theme in the climb along sort of the road

00:23:46.540 of a Christian man.

00:23:48.160 And she was like, I want to come.

00:23:50.320 And I was like, well, the particular group is probably not suited because it's a group of men and we're structuring something.

00:23:59.200 But I'm excited you want to do Kilimanjaro.

00:24:02.020 And, hey, I'd love to do that with you.

00:24:04.660 Now, I know that that might start a path that ends in a conversation about Everest.

00:24:10.180 But that's still some time down the line.

00:24:12.860 i you know and i appreciate what you said about hey this might not be the most the best environment

00:24:18.380 to do that to come with 45 other guys but um i i was talking with a friend uh this weekend

00:24:26.020 and she was telling me a little bit about when she was growing up she grew up traveling around

00:24:31.340 and she was in alaska and her dad did a lot of adventures and she she said you know she felt bad

00:24:37.700 because she was always, it was always that she was too young or she was a girl or she was too

00:24:44.780 small or, you know, whatever the excuse was. Yes. And he would come back with these incredible,

00:24:51.620 incredible stories and she always felt left out. But it sounds like you're not opposed to the idea.

00:24:56.560 You're just trying to find an appropriate way to do it. Yeah. So also, you know, I, one of my

00:25:02.260 passions when we were in South Africa, we've only been a year now, but one of my lifelong passions

00:25:08.580 has been collecting artifacts from one of our wars. We had a war from 1899 to 1902 called the

00:25:17.200 Boer War between the Boers, which were ostensibly the Afrikaners and the British. Complicated story,

00:25:23.280 but one of our passions has been exploring the battlefields, looking for cartridges, and I would

00:25:29.440 take my kids up there and on those we would often climb hills and and you know my girls were coming

00:25:35.020 since youngsters but as they got into dancing and modeling so both my girls modeled you know

00:25:41.180 the natural inclination to kind of uh be a model and spend less time roughing it uh inevitably

00:25:49.580 meant that we we spent less and less time but I you know I think they still have the the desire

00:25:56.400 to explore places because that's what happens when you when you take your kids outdoors you

00:26:02.880 know when you take them away from their devices regardless of what you're doing out there whether

00:26:07.240 you're fishing or climbing or hiking and we've done that so now just six weeks ago we we returned

00:26:14.080 to South Africa my brother my my wife's brother was getting married so we had a wedding wasn't

00:26:20.580 my intention to take the whole family back within our first year of immigrating but suddenly we've

00:26:25.100 got this wedding and we figured, well, let's take the kids because, hey, we've got a three-month

00:26:30.240 summer holiday here in Texas. We've got to do something with them. So we ended up spending six

00:26:34.320 weeks and we took six of those days. We went to a favorite part of ours about three, four hours

00:26:39.900 east of Johannesburg in the mountains. And we did some hiking, looking for these secret lost

00:26:44.380 waterfalls. And in the moment, it's tough, like it is for any kid going out of the environment.

00:26:50.860 but afterwards, I mean, it's just special, special memory.

00:26:53.860 So they've kind of grown up with that spirit of adventure

00:26:56.540 and it's just a matter of time before like my 15-year-old

00:27:01.800 heard the conversation about Kilimanjaro and say,

00:27:04.200 hey, or maybe she thought about our Colorado trip.

00:27:08.260 We spent nine hours hiking seven miles up those three 14,000ers.

00:27:13.440 It was so easy for them, like physiologically,

00:27:16.400 like, you know, until it wasn't easy because they'd gone too far.

00:27:19.460 So, you know, maybe the curiosity-

00:27:21.700 They're not wise quite yet, but that'll come with edge.

00:27:25.600 So I think we facilitate inadvertently our lives.

00:27:28.800 What we do naturally allows our kids to sort of map their own path.

00:27:32.840 But especially now, I mean, I'm realizing now in Texas, like how, I don't want to use

00:27:37.200 the word soft, but the downside to convenience and innovation is that the opportunity for

00:27:44.080 kids to do tough things is significantly less.

00:27:46.940 So we notice amongst our kids in their ages, they have more natural grit than their Texas counterparts, simply because life in South Africa is just so much more complicated than life in Dallas, Texas, if that makes sense, you know.

00:28:01.460 And so the need here is to try and foster a way for these kids to go and develop grit and perseverance before it's too late.

00:28:10.340 Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

00:28:12.020 I imagine there's a large distinction.

00:28:13.800 Well, let me ask you.

00:28:15.360 well first of all dallas is relatively flat so i'm not sure how much how much uh intense hiking

00:28:22.960 you're doing or climbing mountaineering canyoneering whatever you want to call it um

00:28:28.280 and also from an american's perspective you tell me if i'm wrong i'm very curious i've been to

00:28:36.120 south africa once i was about three i flew into johannesburg and it was and was hunting about

00:28:40.440 three hours north of johannesburg uh near the botswana border it was beautiful i loved it my

00:28:45.840 oldest son and i had an incredible time we went out there and hunted uh but from an american's

00:28:51.400 perspective it seems to me what is being portrayed is this this right well frankly racism against

00:28:59.380 against white people is often what we hear and do you feel like that was is number one is that

00:29:05.120 prevalent and number two is that part of your reasoning at all for deciding to come to the

00:29:11.080 states or is it completely separate from well i mean that's two really complex questions you've

00:29:17.300 snuck together back to back so let me address the first one look the narrative that the media puts

00:29:24.540 out inevitably is biased towards more noise and is not necessarily just based in fact.

00:29:35.760 Is there racism in South Africa?

00:29:37.980 A hundred percent.

00:29:39.400 Is there, I mean, I've been the recipient of this kind of, you know, quiet racism when

00:29:46.320 going into a shop and just being ignored by the person on the other side of the counter

00:29:51.120 simply because I'm white.

00:29:53.320 The narrative that's been pushed at the moment is this aggressive

00:29:56.800 and ubiquitous genocide against Afrikaner farmers.

00:30:02.780 That is not entirely true.

00:30:05.460 That is a highly complex scenario.

00:30:08.980 But what you're hearing here is that every white farmer is just the target

00:30:15.260 of a systematic kind of genocide.

00:30:21.420 That's not true.

00:30:22.360 Are there farm murders? 100%. Is crime in South Africa one of the highest in the world? 100%. Do

00:30:28.740 we have some of the highest gender-based violence and rape? There's no question. Those stats exist.

00:30:33.800 They've existed for a long time now. And I know this because we have a 700-mile ultra race

00:30:42.920 in South Africa that crosses about 100 farms. And I dealt with white Afrikaans farmers

00:30:50.280 almost all the time. And they're not just subject to random genocide. But the real problem is that

00:30:59.860 that narrative is distracting everyone from the fact that we are a society that's in decline.

00:31:07.340 Crime is rampant. Our government is not governing. The rule of law is treated with disdain.

00:31:14.740 These are real issues. And the problem when the media puts such a hardline narrative that it's just genocide, that's not entirely true, it distracts people from what the real issue is. And it gives our sort of government a kind of a cop out, you know, because the real issue is that, hey, we're not accountable and we need to be accountable.

00:31:36.900 So that's the first question.

00:31:40.300 You know, what motivated us to immigrate?

00:31:45.480 One, the starting point of that was just being really sure that the Lord was calling us to a new season in our life.

00:31:55.780 Now, I can then unpack that and say, okay, what are some of the push factors?

00:32:00.520 and the push factors are for a fact that we we lived in a in a neighborhood in johannesburg

00:32:06.420 a nice neighborhood but we had high walls we had security fence we had electric fence we had uh

00:32:12.760 which is every like i was so surprised when i flew into johannesburg and i was driving around

00:32:17.280 the neighborhoods it seemed like the the the nicer areas were all the houses were all high

00:32:23.880 fenced in and it seemed like everything was you know very secure it's very interesting to me

00:32:28.140 Because you wouldn't see that in Dallas.

00:32:30.020 You certainly wouldn't see it here in southern Utah.

00:32:32.360 No, and that's the way of life.

00:32:34.640 So you live in a bubble.

00:32:37.680 And it doesn't matter whether you're a white South African or a black South African.

00:32:41.320 If you're a middle-class family living in a city,

00:32:44.700 you'll live in a bubble that protects you because the crime is indiscriminate.

00:32:50.100 And so the idea of my 15-year-old going outside

00:32:54.540 and running around the neighborhood for a 5K jog,

00:32:58.140 No sensible parent would even contemplate that in Johannesburg

00:33:02.820 for a variety of reasons, you know.

00:33:04.960 So these are the push factors that it's becoming increasingly more complex

00:33:09.100 for a white family to live in South Africa with children.

00:33:13.040 You know, there are what we call BEE, Black Economic Empowerment,

00:33:17.900 which are kind of a quota system that started out with really the right intention.

00:33:23.620 You know, the genesis of BEE was to try and redistribute some of the enormous wealth that was concentrated in a small elite group of white people at the change of the old dispensation.

00:33:35.720 So we're going back to the early mid-90s now.

00:33:38.460 And the black population, which were the majority population, had very little of that wealth.

00:33:43.400 So the genesis of the idea was good.

00:33:47.240 But sadly, it's just been largely corrupted.

00:33:49.940 And so this manifests in all kinds of ways.

00:33:53.300 quotas in the sports teams in our schools, quotas in tertiary education institutions, you know.

00:34:01.740 So life is going to become increasingly complex for a white family in South Africa.

00:34:07.780 The pull factors obviously were one, the U.S. offers an opportunity that really allows people with potential to do something with their lives, you know.

00:34:23.300 Now, I don't want to say that that's not offered in South Africa,

00:34:26.160 but there's a reason why the U.S. has always been so attractive to immigrants.

00:34:32.020 There's a reason why immigration has been the bedrock of the U.S. system for centuries.

00:34:39.520 You've attracted – and if you think about who immigrants are,

00:34:43.200 they're people that are typically – and I'm obviously talking about legal immigrants –

00:34:46.660 they're people that are typically problem solvers.

00:34:48.640 they're risk takers, they're willing to do something different, to gamble a whole lot.

00:34:56.440 And when they get here, they're going to have to figure out how to work hard. So they typically

00:35:02.200 have high participatory rates in the economy, they work hard, they innovate. And that's why

00:35:10.100 I personally think the US is what it is. So these are the pull factors. But none of that would have

00:35:17.240 really made much sense if we as a family didn't feel like and specifically my wife and I that we

00:35:23.160 weren't in alignment that hey we believe God's calling us and let me tell you it was a three

00:35:28.400 year process to get our visa we were on a very unique visa category and in that journey we would

00:35:34.480 sit down we've always involved our kids in a in an open sort of family dialogue hey this is the

00:35:40.560 season. This is where we gain. We're not 100% sure that God's calling us. We're pretty sure.

00:35:48.780 But even if we're wrong about that, we know as a family, we're going to go on an adventure. We're

00:35:54.160 going to share a chapter in our lives and it's going to work out. God's got us. That's kind of

00:35:59.680 the story that we've been getting our kids to buy. Our kids actually were super excited,

00:36:05.900 but I won't you know lie and sort of sugarcoat the fact that our first year has been hard you

00:36:11.780 know like I think it is for most people going to another country it's not a easy thing culturally

00:36:17.520 we're different you don't have the network you don't have the memories you know it's all the

00:36:22.420 times the 55 years I've spent in South Africa the the connection with the people the connection

00:36:29.420 with the land, it, it forms us in a way that we really don't understand until it's overnight gone.

00:36:37.360 And now you're in a place where you're no longer connected and you don't have the people and the

00:36:42.860 relationships and the memories, the connection with the land. So, you know, it's, it hasn't been

00:36:48.400 easy, but we're, we're convinced that this is, this is where we meant to be, you know? So I know

00:36:54.060 that's a long way to answer a very short question, but it's not a simple thing taking, you know,

00:36:58.660 four kids a wife and two dogs to the opposite side of the world let me tell you all right guys

00:37:05.900 i'm just gonna step away real quick now look you heard alex talk about turning the impossible into

00:37:11.140 a plan and that is exactly what we're doing inside of our brotherhood it's called the iron council

00:37:17.060 and right now as we head into in the next what week week and a half head into q4 look the reality

00:37:24.660 is that most guys are just going to coast it till the end of the year. They're going to let

00:37:28.660 everything happen to them. They're, they're not going to be take initiative or be assertive.

00:37:34.340 And then they're going to wonder, well, how come things happen to me? Okay. That that's not what

00:37:38.160 we do here. And it's not the kind of man you are inside the iron council. You're going to find men

00:37:43.200 who are like you, who are doing what you want to do. And we use something called the battle

00:37:48.040 planning method. Uh, it's how you take the next 90 days of your life. And that's not a long time

00:37:53.080 guys, 90 days. And we're going to help you map them out where you're strong, where you're exposed,

00:38:01.100 what it's going to take for you to finish this year stronger than you started. And this is not,

00:38:06.120 it's not hype. It's not rah, rah. It's not motivational bull crap. I mean, I'm on Instagram

00:38:10.760 and Facebook and all the social media places, TikTok, like you guys are minus TikTok. You're

00:38:15.680 probably not there. My listeners aren't on TikTok. But this is, this is not hype. Okay. This is,

00:38:22.320 this is a system, battle teams, accountability, men who are going to hold you to the plant.

00:38:28.880 You're going to have uncomfortable conversations, have uncomfortable conversations with hundreds

00:38:33.980 and hundreds of guys every single day about some of this stuff. So if you're tired of drifting

00:38:38.520 through life, drifting through whatever came your way, instead of actually dominating what

00:38:46.540 comes before you, then, then join us. A Q4 is going to happen. Whether you plan for it or you

00:38:56.620 don't plan for it, it's going to happen. But the only question that remains is whether you're the

00:39:00.560 guy who will let it happen or you're the guy who's going to make it happen. Head to orderofman.com

00:39:05.500 slash iron council. That's orderofman.com slash iron council. Do that right after the conversation.

00:39:12.020 let's finish it up with alex i'm sure i mean i have so many questions you know it's it i i do

00:39:20.020 and i'll start with this love that you made the distinction between two i wouldn't say classes

00:39:25.760 necessarily but two mindsets of immigrants you have immigrants who come to this country who

00:39:30.620 want to work hard who want to uh not only take advantage of the opportunities that are present

00:39:38.000 but contribute to the way that those things are provided and and and the opportunities that are

00:39:44.200 created through people who are producing frankly more than they consume i love that i love that

00:39:49.220 mindset and and juxtaposed with those immigrants who come to this country who aren't really willing

00:39:56.240 to produce more than they consume they want to consume more than they produce and america has

00:40:01.640 generally been pretty lenient about allowing that to happen to our great detriment so i'm glad that

00:40:07.620 you made that distinction so i've got a couple of questions about uh culturally and coming to

00:40:14.980 this country but first and foremost what is what is your do you guys plan on becoming american

00:40:21.620 citizens and if so what is your path to citizenship because we're i'm pretty ignorant about this i

00:40:27.640 think most most americans probably are so what is your pathway to citizenship so excuse me so

00:40:35.000 if you're a legal immigrant, you have to reside in the U.S. as a permanent residence for a period

00:40:42.460 of five years. At the end of your five-year period, you can apply for citizenship. Interestingly,

00:40:48.340 America doesn't recognize any other citizenship other than U.S. citizenship, but it allows you

00:40:53.440 to have as many citizenships as you want. It just recognizes the U.S. one. So what would happen now?

00:41:00.200 Can I end up real quick? Do you feel like – I'm a little bit ignorant and I'm willing to acknowledge that and be open to the idea that I'm ignorant about this.

00:41:11.760 But I feel like if you are going to be an American citizen, you should denounce citizenship to every other country that you ever had citizenship to.

00:41:20.620 I don't know if you agree with that, disagree with that. Again, a little bit of ignorant speaking, but that's where I'm coming from.

00:41:25.620 so that poses some practical problems for one i've only got a sister who still lives in south

00:41:33.500 africa but my wife still has her parents and her her brother so you know that would just really

00:41:40.880 complicate the ability to just visit and and keep those relationships alive that are formed who you

00:41:47.360 are you know yeah so i don't know a straight out dogmatic uh you know kind of decision would would

00:41:54.320 solve the problem i kind of like the way the u.s has gone about the fact that they only recognize

00:41:59.740 the u.s citizenship but they allow you to have you know because otherwise for us to go back as

00:42:05.780 a family of six if if we renounce our south african citizenship it's going to become increasingly

00:42:11.840 complicated because if you've been following the rhetoric lately diplomatic relations between the

00:42:19.220 U.S. and South Africa right now are as strained as they've ever been.

00:42:23.980 They are hyper strained.

00:42:25.460 They're putting enormous pressure on the South African government to own up and be accountable

00:42:31.340 for some of the stuff that's not right, you know.

00:42:34.060 So there's – and they've also made visa restrictions on South Africans.

00:42:37.820 There's conceivably a time when we hit the blacklist and, you know, South Africa becomes

00:42:44.220 a difficult place to travel.

00:42:45.300 So I don't know that outright just, you know, rejecting all other citizens.

00:42:50.840 But I think it comes back to your point around the kind of type of person you are and the family.

00:42:58.000 Like we're here because we believe we can contribute, you know.

00:43:02.080 We believe we can add value.

00:43:04.120 We're attracted by the things that are good about America.

00:43:09.040 I mean, there's an enormous amount about America that's questionable at the moment, you know.

00:43:14.080 I agree.

00:43:14.820 nation is in flux. Like, it's an interesting time. But we're convinced as a family that we

00:43:22.000 have something unique to add, you know. And so if you're of that mindset, and you're in the group

00:43:29.320 that you say will contribute and help affect and bring and protect, ironically, like I've played

00:43:36.540 no part in the culture that is American, but I feel a strange responsibility to protect something

00:43:42.180 that's never been mine because the world needs the good that america has you know and that has

00:43:47.740 to be protected whether it's through u.s immigrants or a combination of that you know so it's a it's a

00:43:54.480 complicated uh it's a tough one yeah well no i and that's why i wanted to approach it you know

00:44:02.600 sensitively because obviously you're you're in the situation i'm not i don't have to worry about

00:44:06.760 dual citizenship yes i have no no expectation or desire to even have dual citizenship anywhere else

00:44:12.860 so it that that's why i wanted to bring it up is because i'm very curious from a perspective of

00:44:18.640 somebody who does want to contribute like you said and how do they feel about it i am curious about

00:44:23.760 with with your children um i i years ago i moved my my family so my ex-wife and my four children

00:44:32.740 across the country from southern utah to maine and it presented its fair share challenges and

00:44:39.160 we got there and i i ran into an interesting phenomenon i loved maine i love the people there

00:44:46.160 their salt of the earth they'd give you the shirt off their back they were incredible people hard

00:44:51.540 working industrious hardy um very kind and caring uh god fearing god it was just it was good

00:45:00.540 every experience i had with anybody out there was just good but then i also had people that i knew

00:45:07.620 who had moved there recently and they would warn me about how uh people mainers is what they call

00:45:17.220 them uh don't don't appreciate people the term the terminology used for anybody who was not born

00:45:23.400 and raised in maine you're either a flatlander or you're from away those were the two terms they

00:45:28.780 used yes and these people painted this image of mainers not appreciating flatlanders or those

00:45:37.220 from away and i thought to myself i have no idea what you're talking about because i have not

00:45:42.660 experienced any of that at all and i can't help but think it's less to do with the people and

00:45:50.720 more to do with your own attitude and perspective what are the challenges and then what have what

00:45:56.060 have you found in moving here that your kids um have struggled with maybe there's some some teary

00:46:02.960 some teary eyes when they come home from school um and what are the things that they think man i

00:46:07.700 just we really love this aspect of it so we love the freedom you know and and that's the primary

00:46:15.120 difference this is a society that's fundamentally built on freedom and and that manifests in all

00:46:22.980 kinds of ways we've come from a society that that's built on fear and that manifests in a

00:46:29.200 whole bunch of ways you know so the fact that I can just leave my front door unlocked and and look

00:46:35.400 I get that they're neighborhoods that maybe you won't do that but by and large you know this is

00:46:41.400 the American story that I can let my kid out they can ride a bike and I don't have to worry about

00:46:48.820 them to the same degree that I did back home. You know, so we love the freedom, the quality of life

00:46:55.200 for a kid being able to do that is radically and profoundly different from where we lived in South

00:47:03.420 Africa. I mean, culturally, look, obviously, Texas, for us, there were a number of reasons.

00:47:10.120 My biggest network of friends was based here in Dallas. But when I came to kind of checking boxes,

00:47:15.800 it had to be conservative. We're a Christian family. We love the idea of family values.

00:47:22.640 And Texas is relatively conservative. It's also great for business. You know, business is really

00:47:27.720 big in the industry I'm in. It's a good place to be, you know, to be settled. And they're also

00:47:33.300 entrepreneurial. So if I had to think about an American culture, because I've traveled all over

00:47:39.500 the US. I mean, I've raced my bike down the Rocky Mountains on three occasions from Canada to Mexico.

00:47:44.740 So I've experienced remote parts of the U.S., but if I had to liken like a white English-speaking South African culturally, it's probably most similar to Texans in that they're entrepreneurial, they're outgoing, and they're conservative.

00:48:01.740 So some of the challenges for us have been, you know, the consequence of convenience and like the education system is so different here.

00:48:10.880 small little things like you start school in in in the middle of the year in august my five-year-old

00:48:17.400 this his school day is like an eight last year was eight hours i mean what five-year-old has

00:48:23.020 energy to sit in a class for eight hours i'm so glad you're saying this my kids are homeschooled

00:48:29.160 but i'm so glad you're saying this he would come home the door would open he'd walk off the bus and

00:48:35.200 he we would literally guide him into our room he'd collapse on up and just sleep for two hours you

00:48:39.940 So we've held him back.

00:48:41.320 We've kept him back now to repeat Kay.

00:48:44.760 Also, he had just turned five two weeks before school started.

00:48:49.020 So if you're familiar with that social behavioral dynamic that, gosh,

00:48:54.440 who wrote Malcolm Gladwell I think first coined that idea of the oldest kids

00:49:00.200 in the class typically get the affirmation, they're more responsive,

00:49:04.700 And that self-fulfilling prophecy means their growth accelerates.

00:49:09.820 The youngest kids in the class tend to be shyer.

00:49:12.600 They put their hands up less.

00:49:14.100 They don't get asked to do stuff.

00:49:16.000 And so they get stunted.

00:49:17.800 I mean, it's a well-documented phenomenon.

00:49:20.380 I mean, not to mention the way that the school system is, quite frankly,

00:49:25.180 stacked in benefit and favor of our young ladies and stacked against our young men.

00:49:31.940 yeah look so the other worrying thing for us like our girls or well last year our one girl was in

00:49:40.420 intermediate and our other girl was in sorry middle school and high school now they're both

00:49:45.440 in high school but you know in texas those two campuses the kids aren't allowed outside so for

00:49:52.520 eight hours they don't get to see the sun and i get that that's related to the security thing but

00:49:58.060 it's like for us that's just like radical you know like we have to be conscious about getting

00:50:04.840 them out and exposing them to the sun and vitamin d and so the other thing that that brings on then

00:50:10.480 is the inability to participate and watch some of their training sessions so culturally there are a

00:50:17.320 couple of things that we've had to figure out also like my wife realized early on like boys so

00:50:22.960 Aaron, my 12-year-old, last year was 11.

00:50:25.700 He brings some grade five boys.

00:50:27.280 They walk in the door.

00:50:28.340 They don't even greet us.

00:50:30.620 And, you know, my wife very quickly got onto it and said, hey,

00:50:34.840 and I don't know whether – I don't think it's just our school.

00:50:37.240 I think it's got to do with this convenience thing that the kids generally

00:50:41.060 are – I don't want to say disrespectful, but they're just not as mannered

00:50:46.520 as, you know, kind of our sort of school environment, you know.

00:50:51.040 So we've – and it's very easy for our boys to drift down because, you know, you tend to spiral towards the lowest common denominator socially when it comes to morals.

00:51:04.300 I thought about this in the context of a car lot.

00:51:08.760 You know, if there's a car lot and let's say they sell, you know, vehicles that are 10 years old under $15,000.

00:51:17.920 if you put a an eighty thousand dollar tesla on the on the lot the other vehicles don't increase

00:51:27.620 in value the value of the tesla is diminished yes and and and the same is true if if i have

00:51:35.220 most of my vehicles are you know eighty thousand dollar teslas but i start infusing these fifteen

00:51:40.040 thousand dollar junkers that diminishes the value of the tesla so absolutely agree with you

00:51:46.080 yeah so it's been interesting you know my wife sends him back out and says hey knock on the door

00:51:51.420 and say hello ma'am hello sir so i love but she does that with the kid like the kids who come with

00:51:57.140 the name i love that that's amazing and so we've had to be really mindful with our boys you know

00:52:03.040 technology i mean our 12 year old doesn't have a cell phone he's the only kid in amongst his

00:52:07.860 friends that doesn't have a mobile phone and we're like boy you're not getting a phone for another

00:52:12.040 two years at least you know and he's just learned to accept that so like there are some things that

00:52:17.880 you you realize the the the innovation has created convenience and convenience has a byproduct that's

00:52:25.660 not necessarily good for culture and value and as parents we we become aware of that and we're just

00:52:32.520 trying to be more mindful to not let our our kids just slip down that slope you know i mean our

00:52:37.460 five-year-old already has a texan accent believe it or not he he sounds texan he's he's been your

00:52:42.320 one year he's now six it's crazy so they assimilate you're like who are you even

00:52:47.280 that's funny i mean it's exciting you know whether we'll be uh as you say dallas is the

00:52:54.980 flattest place i've come from a life of high places and i'm in the flattest place in the u.s

00:53:00.300 but it's a landing and you know it's my mandate as as a father and husband was first get my family

00:53:07.340 transition them, let my wife dictate where we school, where we live once I made the decision.

00:53:14.260 And after a couple of years, so we're renting and, you know, maybe the Lord has a different

00:53:19.160 chapter, but for now, we're where we need to be. And, you know, I travel so much anyway. You can,

00:53:24.840 like I've been to Big Bend, we climbed Emery Peak, you know, we've been to, so we travel and

00:53:30.260 that's the thing. You can live in a flat city. I spent my entire life living in Johannesburg

00:53:35.280 with no mountains, but mine dumps gold mines and made a living out of being an extreme athlete,

00:53:41.680 you know? So it's just the limitation that you embrace or you say, hey, it's a challenge. Let's

00:53:46.940 figure out a way to solve it. When it comes to being an extreme athlete, is that something that

00:53:53.500 you feel like was groomed into you through your parents, through your environment, through lack

00:53:58.700 of a better term? Or is that something you actually actively had to go out and pursue

00:54:03.080 outside of your environment and upbringing?

00:54:07.180 So neither.

00:54:08.380 I didn't actively pursue becoming an extreme athlete.

00:54:11.780 I inadvertently ended on this trail.

00:54:14.320 But I can tell you that my parents,

00:54:17.620 you know, so if you backtrack,

00:54:18.680 I said I wanted to be a pilot

00:54:20.120 or I wanted to be an astronaut growing up.

00:54:22.160 And I knew the only way to do that

00:54:23.480 is to get into the South African Air Force,

00:54:25.400 learn how to fly.

00:54:26.080 Some might get to America,

00:54:27.280 join the U.S. Air Force and get into NASA.

00:54:30.600 And when I joined-

00:54:31.720 Did South Africa have any sort of astronaut program?

00:54:34.600 No.

00:54:35.240 I don't even know.

00:54:35.980 Okay.

00:54:36.360 I figured, but I don't know.

00:54:37.960 I figured.

00:54:38.720 No, not at all.

00:54:39.740 And we had a very good Air Force,

00:54:41.480 but a strange thing happened in the early 90s

00:54:44.860 when I joined the South African Air Force.

00:54:47.640 And if you remember,

00:54:50.920 Nelson Mandela was released from prison in the early 90s.

00:54:54.180 In 1994, we had the first democratic election.

00:54:57.060 So it was a change of dispensation.

00:54:59.460 The old apartheid government, the National Party lost in the democratic election, and the first black government, the African National Congress, won.

00:55:08.100 And so overnight, we went from being the pariah in Africa and hated by all our neighbors because of apartheid to being the poster child of the African continent.

00:55:19.100 And the consequence of that was that we overnight lost our enemies, and so we no longer needed the advanced military that we had.

00:55:29.460 And so one of the specific consequences that affected my career and destiny was that I joined the Air Force in 1991 as they were downsizing and grounding one squadron off to another.

00:55:42.340 Flight training was suspended indefinitely.

00:55:45.040 It turned out for about three, four years there was no formal flight training.

00:55:48.920 The guys who wanted to fly, they said, hey, you need to do something else.

00:55:53.380 So I became a PDI, a physical training instructor.

00:55:56.100 and then they allowed us to join the air force flying club and learn how to fly with air force

00:56:01.340 instructors but on tiny little sessioners which was a lot of fun flying around in tiny planes in

00:56:06.360 a military airport while this went on and at the time i realized okay and then you know two years

00:56:12.880 later my dad commits suicide and i've lost the only voice in my life as i'm trying to wrestle

00:56:18.140 all this so I and now when I look back I realize you know what maybe my spirit wasn't geared for

00:56:26.420 the life of a pilot and I think I would have made a great astronaut but at the time I had been

00:56:33.000 climbing anyway and just back to what my parents instilled in me I mean I remember many times my

00:56:38.480 dad sitting me on his knee and saying to me son you can do whatever you want for their life you

00:56:43.540 can be anything you want so my my parents had a way of inculcating this this culture that hey

00:56:50.900 even though we're growing up in a poor neighborhood in johannesburg i can go and be an astronaut or i

00:56:57.200 can do this and the astronaut thing never worked out but i never lost that curiosity and so at the

00:57:03.700 time that the kind of flying dream was coming to an end it was when i was invited on expeditions

00:57:09.840 to Russia. And suddenly I was exposed to high mountains. I had a couple of very close calls

00:57:16.940 and near-death experiences that I was blessed to survive. And so my learning was really accelerated.

00:57:22.980 And then in 1995, I got invited to join a team. The leader pulled out. I end up leader of the

00:57:30.500 team going to Everest, you know, eight months later. That shifted my career. I resigned from

00:57:36.280 sales. I had to lead these guys, figure out a way to raise money. We got back from Everest in 96.

00:57:42.280 I got saved actually at 23,000 feet is where I met the Lord on the north side of Everest.

00:57:47.140 But we never made it up. We were broke, unemployed, started that business.

00:57:50.740 And so these decisions made out of necessity ended me on a track that would one day mean

00:57:58.100 walk into the South Pole, you know, finishing the Seven Summits, crossing the Arabian Desert.

00:58:02.680 But I can tell you now as a kid, none of that was on my radar.

00:58:06.140 I wanted to go to space, you know.

00:58:07.620 So, but the Lord had other plans.

00:58:11.420 It's interesting when you talk about it because what comes to mind is there's a book called Start With Why by Simon Sinek.

00:58:17.820 And he talks about, obviously, the why, the purpose behind what you do.

00:58:22.260 And he says, you know, if you have your why, you can't, I'm paraphrasing, you can find the why in just about anything that you do.

00:58:28.720 And so I'm curious.

00:58:29.960 I don't want to put words in your mouth.

00:58:31.060 I'm curious about, is the same pole that was drawing you to explore space the same pole that's drawing you to explore the highest mountains in the world and the Arabian Desert and doing a 700-mile endurance event across the continent?

00:58:49.140 Like, is that – is it the same pole that's drawing you to this now?

00:58:54.400 Yes.

00:58:54.900 It's exactly the same synapse that misfires in my motor neurons.

00:59:00.160 You know, it's this curiosity, and I'll say it's even an obsession to try and understand how God has made me.

00:59:08.160 I've always been curious, and so that curiosity has manifested in potential, and so everything I do now is around potential.

00:59:17.460 You know, my kind of tagline is, I believe I'm put on this earth by God to shift the way you react the instant you hear the word impossible.

00:59:26.660 That's why I'm here.

00:59:27.520 I have insight into our potential and ways through my experiences to turn really hard things into

00:59:36.300 kind of manageable plans. But I'm still curious. I still, you know, I think I mentioned, I still

00:59:42.000 try and do an ultra-endurance bike race once a year. The high peaks, obviously, less and less,

00:59:47.740 and I'm not going to go to a peak like K2. You know, that is now out of my timeline. But I'm

00:59:54.960 still curious about my genetic potential and so i still find the way to express that in ultra racing

01:00:01.980 because obviously age in ultra racing power and absolute speed aren't as important as experience

01:00:09.920 you know there's a look i mean i'm in my mid 50s so it's no question i'm not the the the guy i was

01:00:15.940 20 years ago but the experience i have and every time you're on a race like that where you're just

01:00:20.980 at your end, you're unpacking a little bit more. Here's the thing. I can't go to the New York Times

01:00:27.500 bestseller and find a blueprint on me. This is how God made me. That doesn't exist. The blueprint

01:00:34.920 is out there. It's our life. And it's the degree to which we push ourselves. And how curious are

01:00:41.420 we how we be made? And it puzzles me that people generally aren't curious what their potential is

01:00:48.380 like, aren't you curious how the creator of the universe made you, what you can and cannot do?

01:00:54.380 And for me, that's been my single obsession. And, you know, I don't think we fully answer that

01:00:58.860 question in our lives. You know, I think, but I think that's what our lives are about. Because

01:01:04.280 as we unpack that, we demonstrate to people around us, hey, this ordinary guy actually did

01:01:12.200 something really crazy. Why? Because one of his belief system, his intention, his discipline. I

01:01:19.360 mean, there's a whole lot of reasons how stuff manifests, but the starting point I think is,

01:01:24.660 is genuine and honest curiosity. Do you feel like you have, this might be a little bit of

01:01:32.260 a leading question, but do you feel like you have a different relationship with fear and,

01:01:37.360 and then the, than the typical man, let's say I asked that because it seems to me like the people

01:01:45.860 that I've had on this podcast over the past 11 years have a very similar attitude to you. And

01:01:51.620 I've always just called it the let's find out mentality. You know, it's like, I have this dream

01:01:56.160 or I have this vision, I have this idea and the more practical people, or even my more practical

01:02:02.160 nature at times, will say, well, you know, what if you fail? What if it doesn't work out? What if

01:02:07.600 this? What if that? And my attitude has always been, yeah, but like, let's find out. Let's find

01:02:15.000 out. I'm more afraid of not trying it than I am of trying it and falling short. Do you feel like

01:02:21.620 you have that same attitude? And how would you describe that if so? I think it comes down to

01:02:30.600 an acceptance of potentially failing and that's okay you know and a very simple example i i was

01:02:40.980 at a conference last week in charlotte north carolina the conference was at the national

01:02:46.320 whitewater center which is this amazing facility that they've built it's a man-made facility where

01:02:51.440 you can go rafting so for the two hours around lunch they asked who wants to go rafting you know

01:02:57.620 And it's indoor?

01:02:58.680 What is it?

01:02:59.120 It's indoors?

01:02:59.780 No, it's an outdoor facility.

01:03:01.220 I mean, it's the most amazing thing.

01:03:02.520 You should go and check it out.

01:03:03.540 So it's where the U.S. paddlers train and the rafters train.

01:03:07.220 But it is a massive facility.

01:03:09.040 Obviously, we were in a conference room.

01:03:10.480 But my instinct initially is to be fearful, like, oh, my gosh, what if something happens?

01:03:16.520 Do I have this?

01:03:17.240 Do I have that?

01:03:18.140 But I tick the box because I've tried to create a culture where, hey, it's okay to fail, you know?

01:03:24.680 and so that culture becomes a lifestyle when you're consistently ticking boxes that are scary

01:03:30.860 for whatever reason now i'm not saying just go and do like you know harebrained adrenaline junkie

01:03:35.540 stunts i probably won't go and throw myself of a bungee cord you know over some big canyon i might

01:03:41.220 have 30 years ago but not anymore but i'm saying don't be afraid to fail and i think the you know

01:03:47.480 like the reality is business has been slow the last year in our thinking there's a big barrier

01:03:55.960 to moving to one of the most expensive countries in the world from one of the poorest countries in

01:04:00.680 the world with a family of six but at the end of the day even if I fail God's got this like the

01:04:08.380 backstop is immovable and so if the backstop if the foundation is immovable then it's okay to fail

01:04:15.860 But I think most of us fear failure because we don't have that immovable grounding.

01:04:21.380 And so when we unpack in our mind what failure looks like, our nature takes us down such a

01:04:27.780 horrible path.

01:04:28.800 But does it ever come to that?

01:04:30.720 Do you know that almost all research now says that 90% of the stuff we worry about never

01:04:37.320 comes to pass?

01:04:38.680 And the 10% of the stuff that does come to pass, the majority of that stuff isn't nearly

01:04:43.820 as bad as we initially thought it was going to be.

01:04:46.400 It's manageable.

01:04:47.820 Yeah.

01:04:48.440 So our nature, the world, the pattern is just to worry and be fearful about it.

01:04:54.100 And I think if you can figure out a way to, and that comes down to failure,

01:04:58.200 that it's okay to fail because, hey, something bigger than me has got this

01:05:03.380 covered, you know, it's got it, it's got it sorted.

01:05:05.460 And for me, that's my faith.

01:05:07.080 But even if you fail, like what's the worst that can happen?

01:05:11.260 You know, you're not going to die.

01:05:12.760 Your family's not going to get up.

01:05:13.460 I was going to say you could die because based on what you're doing,

01:05:17.080 you actually could die.

01:05:19.780 Well, I knew I couldn't die in the whitewater.

01:05:22.640 And as hard as the guy tried to tip our raft, you know,

01:05:26.400 the other seven of us were trying as hard as not to get tipped.

01:05:30.440 But you assess things.

01:05:32.540 And the reality is like even if it's, you know,

01:05:34.960 putting your hand up in a conference when someone says who can sing

01:05:37.940 and, you know, actually you can't sing well but you can still sing,

01:05:40.800 You know, all of those kind of things, they either create the culture where you're fearful of failing and you don't put your hand up or it's okay to fail.

01:05:51.300 And that's the message.

01:05:52.420 It's okay to fail.

01:05:53.380 Like when I look back, I don't have regrets about the stuff I did.

01:05:57.560 I have regrets about the opportunities I had.

01:06:01.580 Oof, you know what?

01:06:02.200 I really should have taken that risk because now with hindsight, that wasn't nearly as risky as I thought it would be, you know.

01:06:08.760 like we just don't as a species do as many things as we know we should when we get to the latter

01:06:16.900 part of our lives you know because when we're young we don't have the benefit of hindsight and

01:06:21.600 and yeah so i'd say i'd say that's the key my my mindset is probably similar to those folk and it's

01:06:27.340 just that hey it's okay to fail so just you know take more risk emotional social business risk

01:06:32.460 what's the worst that can happen you know yeah i like that i like that attitude it's um

01:06:38.680 it's interesting i spent a lot of time in in the mountains especially in the fall and just

01:06:43.660 in the woods and things hunting and it's so fascinating to watch a deer graze on grass 20

01:06:50.560 yards below you while you're sitting in a tree stand or trying to spot and stalk to an elk that

01:06:55.340 you know you saw 300 yards away yes just this weekend i was in zion national park and i've

01:07:01.000 never seen this before i was so fortunate to be able to see this i'm riding an e-bike up the canyon

01:07:05.360 and there's you know seven or eight uh bighorn sheep just 20 yards up the cliff like just

01:07:12.120 watching them amazing so amazing uh all of those animals operate on instinct they don't they don't

01:07:21.620 make conscious decisions they just they're instinctual and we were riding the e-bikes down

01:07:28.100 and it was a little bit dark it was kind of dusk and one of these bighorn sheep runs right in front

01:07:34.220 of us that that bighorn sheep did not consciously make the decision to run in front of it was

01:07:40.920 afraid it was just trying to get away it was instinctual yeah we are not like that we we as

01:07:47.740 humans we can make conscious decisions now some of what we do is just subconscious it's instinctual

01:07:53.560 but we also have the power to override that and make conscious decisions and i and i can't help

01:07:59.220 but think when i look at it that way what a waste if we can't use the incredible blessing of

01:08:06.680 consciousness to make choices that another species can't make that can push us and our families into

01:08:14.040 an incredible place or create opportunities for new people that would not have had those

01:08:18.880 opportunities otherwise and it seems to me and i do this too that so many of us are just sitting

01:08:24.280 on to your point earlier potential that is just untapped absolutely i mean that's the key thing

01:08:33.640 you hit it on the head there the power of choice like i think we underestimate how powerful uh and

01:08:41.940 what a privilege it is that our species has that you know like daily we get to choose like how you

01:08:48.720 react where you go what you do what you don't do you know it's crazy we just we kind of forget it

01:08:54.040 and it's probably the single most important thing that separates us from everything else

01:08:57.760 well i was going to ask you about some of the treks that you've been on obviously everest

01:09:03.420 several times i think is what you had told me other other peaks in the highest continents in

01:09:08.060 the world um the arabian desert south pole is there a difference in your mind from taking a

01:09:16.340 path that's already been traveled let's say Everest you know I I don't know I'm a layman so

01:09:20.920 I imagine that there's several different paths people take and it's like that's the path you

01:09:26.720 take and then there's other treks that you probably participate on South Pole maybe for

01:09:31.300 example I think of you know Ernest Shackleton's adventure to the South Pole and it's you're the

01:09:36.960 first person to ever walk on that ice or you're the first person to ever step on that sand or

01:09:43.400 or stumble over that rock.

01:09:46.040 Is there a difference in your mind

01:09:47.540 between taking a path that's already been traveled

01:09:50.400 and exploring a path that's never been charted before?

01:09:54.940 100%.

01:09:55.460 I mean, obviously there's the practical implication

01:09:58.580 like when we, you know,

01:09:59.860 so we weren't the first South Africans

01:10:02.640 to climb Everest or the Seven Summits.

01:10:04.660 I think I was the third.

01:10:06.160 We were the first Africans to walk to the South Pole,

01:10:08.800 but certainly other people had walked to the South Pole.

01:10:11.360 but we were the first people ever to cross the Arabian desert unsupported on foot you know

01:10:16.720 and so with that came a whole world of trying to one solve the problem can it be done and answer

01:10:24.040 that and believe personally that this can be done unsupported and so that in itself brings a whole

01:10:30.280 Pandora's box in a rabbit hole of curiosities and how do you solve the problem how do you design a

01:10:36.120 cart what does the cart look like how much can I carry all of that but then also just knowing that

01:10:41.340 you know you and I and I remember clearly turning corners in the sand dunes and and standing there

01:10:47.700 we hadn't seen someone for three weeks thinking we might be the first people to ever I mean I'll

01:10:53.300 share a very specific example it was just three of us and in the process of planning so we walked

01:10:59.920 about 600 miles and it took us 40 days pulling this little cart and in the planning process we

01:11:09.220 we used google to map out so google maps to map out a whole set of a3 photographs of the sand dunes

01:11:19.200 that we threaded a line first in the safety of our home and then for 40 days we stood each morning

01:11:26.180 because the gps doesn't help you going in a straight line you've got a 400 foot sand dune

01:11:31.140 how are you going to get a thousand pound caught over that sand dune you can't well how do i know

01:11:35.000 Tomorrow, that sand dune could be right over there, I imagine, not right there.

01:11:41.220 Yeah, I mean, every day was different.

01:11:43.360 So we had a theoretical thread, a needle threading these sort of sand dunes.

01:11:48.700 But then on a day-to-day basis, we actually stood with each one and we looked, okay, this is where we are.

01:11:53.660 We're supposed to go on our planning left around that sand dune.

01:11:57.100 It looks good.

01:11:57.620 Let's go, you know.

01:11:58.880 But there was one particular day on around, I don't know, maybe day 30.

01:12:03.140 I had noticed on the maps a day or two before that about a quarter of a mile off the track.

01:12:10.680 So at that point, we were following a military track right up against the Saudi Arabian border.

01:12:15.560 We were in Oman.

01:12:17.000 I noticed about a quarter of the mile off the track, there was a sand dune that had the most perfect conical shape and an island in the middle of it that looked like a volcano.

01:12:30.380 and i said to the guys guys i'd love to go and see this now remember we're pulling a thousand

01:12:36.100 pound cart there ain't no appetite for let's go on a spare time activity this entire thing

01:12:42.000 we're not taking a scenic route here there's no scenic route so i took a lot of convincing you

01:12:46.640 know and on the morning we stopped and i said okay guys that's the day it's literally like

01:12:50.700 a quarter of a mile it might take us 15 20 minutes to get there so

01:12:53.900 they said okay let's take an hour out it was the middle of the day

01:12:57.400 we walk we untie from the carts now we get to the sand dune the sand dune was a little bit higher

01:13:03.900 than we thought so you know we're laboring up the sand dune and i'm thinking what have i got

01:13:08.180 these guys into like we i mean we we're exhausted you know like we we just we just made it the whole

01:13:13.680 thing so anyway we finally get to the top of this and now we're sitting and we sat down and we had

01:13:18.120 about a half an hour 40 minute break and i was looking down at this perfectly conical sand dune

01:13:24.000 that I'd spotted and there at the bottom was like a perfect flat pan.

01:13:28.740 There's no doubt in my mind, no other human being had ever been stupid enough to go there

01:13:34.440 or had the opportunity.

01:13:37.240 So the fact that we were sitting there, the only people to look at this and do this and

01:13:41.960 probably will be for the next 50 years was a special moment, you know, and it's hard

01:13:47.660 to explain, but it's kind of like you think about God creating this entire universe, but

01:13:53.800 there are still moments set apart in time and space uniquely for our interaction. I can share

01:14:02.700 another example that maybe gives some light. You know, I used to do a lot of cave exploration and

01:14:07.240 there was a cave about three hours from Johannesburg that we'd been back to many times to

01:14:12.660 survey. And it's a technical cave. A lot of time you're on the ground and we'd been underground

01:14:18.180 for about 15 hours and I was on point at the time which means you're the guy who goes and goes into

01:14:25.220 a passage and sees if it goes anywhere if it goes anywhere you go and then you tell the next two who

01:14:30.840 have a clinometer and a compass and a sketchbook to follow and they make some notes and then all

01:14:36.220 of that data gets put into a program and it prints out a survey anyway so I'm we're lying in this

01:14:41.940 chamber excuse me and we're having a rest and we're about to head out now and they asked me

01:14:48.940 does that little funny thing go and I'm like it doesn't look like it but let me go check so I've

01:14:53.320 been down now I'm like pedantic super thorough about these kind of things and I kind of see a

01:14:58.060 small space and I think you know what let me just make sure and I push and I push and I end up in

01:15:02.380 what we would later call the thrash compactor about 50 60 yards of leopard crawl where the

01:15:08.700 cavity so tight I can't fully expand my chest so I've got sort of 80% exhales before I'm stuck

01:15:15.320 but I get to the end of this and I know I can't turn around now so these guys are going to have

01:15:21.000 to pull me out if I don't end up but I can hear them moaning and cussing behind me because they're

01:15:25.540 following with a clinometer and a sketchbook in the same tiny place they're a little bit thinner

01:15:30.120 than me and I get to the end of this thing and I've got a chamber about the size of a small table

01:15:35.900 and in front of me is a rock wall with a hole about that size i had an old cap lamp you know

01:15:41.840 the mining lamps with a hard battery and i can look through it and i see it opens up and i and

01:15:47.340 i take my cap lamp off and i've only got about an inch of two inches of leverage and it takes me

01:15:52.700 about five minutes to bang this hole open and i get it open and i crawl inside and it's a smaller

01:15:57.720 chamber and i'm you know sort of crouching but then i see to my left another hole and i go over

01:16:03.360 and I widen that and I end up falling into a big chamber with all these rimstone pools and

01:16:10.220 white formations. But in that moment, it occurred to me as I popped through there and my light

01:16:15.740 shone on that, that thing had been created, that room, that chamber had been created in the dawn

01:16:22.260 of time. And God knew that it would stay dormant asleep until my light would shine on it for the

01:16:31.600 first time in the history of creation. And it just blew my mind. I mean, it's a tiny, random

01:16:36.800 cave that no one will ever probably see. But the knowledge that I got to see that for the first

01:16:43.140 time blew me away, you know. And I think that's how God's made this world. You know, the Romans

01:16:49.200 120 talks about God's invisible powers being evident in creation since the beginning. And I

01:16:56.060 think there are moments where you'll see a deer in a specific you know if hunting is your thing

01:17:01.980 where you know like that moment has been set apart all you had to do was put up your hand and say God

01:17:07.700 I'm curious I want to go into your world and explore you know and and I'm still blown away so

01:17:12.840 yes to your question about the untrodden path 100% we need to take untrodden paths because I think

01:17:19.940 God hides things that are uniquely for us to discover,

01:17:23.700 even if it's just seeing the sun shine on a forest in a particular way.

01:17:30.000 I agree.

01:17:30.920 I call it being in a Bob Ross painting.

01:17:33.780 Like I'll sit in a tree stand and overlook just things

01:17:40.400 that most people would ordinarily, most of the time I would overlook it.

01:17:43.920 But I don't have my phone chart.

01:17:47.400 I'm not on a podcast.

01:17:48.520 I'm not on technology.

01:17:49.940 and I'm just sitting in there sitting there and there's you know 10 deer just grazing right they

01:17:56.420 don't even know I'm there I think it's I don't know what it I think it's hilarious I think it's

01:18:00.500 funny I think it's amazing there's this deer and I'm sitting in this stand 20 yards above them and

01:18:07.060 they don't know I'm there and it's it's amazing one thing that stood out about your story and I'm

01:18:14.700 actually really touched and inspired by what you shared right there and and just like deeply afraid

01:18:19.700 You were giving me anxiety, just describing 80% lung capacity or whatever, crawling through

01:18:25.180 this thing.

01:18:26.300 But one thing that stands out to me is that when you said, you know, that was reserved

01:18:30.780 for you, I don't know that.

01:18:34.500 I mean, yes, I understand what you're saying, reserved for you.

01:18:36.900 But I think more broadly, reserved for the individual who's willing to take some risks

01:18:42.260 and reserved for the individual who's willing to go explore and put themselves in that situation

01:18:48.340 in that environment and and and partially create that you know i i get so tight i know you're very

01:18:55.500 faithful and and spiritual and and have a relationship with god and i know a lot of

01:19:00.760 people who are but i also hear them say oh you know if it's god's will and i and i can't help

01:19:06.500 but think in those moments of course it's god's will that you go pursue so of course it's god's

01:19:11.380 will that you see new things that are available to you of course it's god's will that you go

01:19:16.040 explore living in the United States. Of course it is. And I can't help but wonder if he's just

01:19:21.580 sitting up there wherever he is looking at us and saying, yes, like I've given you everything you

01:19:27.160 need. Now it's your turn to actually do something and stop blaming it on me because you're too

01:19:32.440 afraid to go pursue what I've made available for you. Absolutely. I think, you know, the word go

01:19:41.520 is is right up in god's vocabulary i don't think the word stay is used nearly as much you know and

01:19:48.500 and i think that's our mandate go like go wherever it is just go do explore that's that's how we we

01:19:56.260 enter into community it's how we learn it's how we we fail how we gain wisdom how we do anything

01:20:03.380 is by is by going you know and um yeah it is interesting how like as a culture i mean i i

01:20:10.100 take the U.S. as an example you know you guys are so blessed with natural heritage that

01:20:15.040 historically Americans have been very reticent to travel overseas and I get it like you've got

01:20:21.220 every state you pick you've got like the most unbelievable natural heritage and something

01:20:27.540 different right totally different you know but the the the downside to that is that I still meet

01:20:34.380 Americans that have never been out of their state you know I remember my one tour divide race I

01:20:39.700 ended up I crashed in the snow I ended up in a hospital in Butte Montana a tiny mining town

01:20:46.980 and I was stuck there for a week I had really bad edema on my legs I wasn't allowed to fly for a

01:20:53.340 week until my my legs had come down and the the tending nurse that was looking after me like

01:20:59.100 we had a conversation she'd never been to the sea like it had never the idea of wanting to see the

01:21:05.040 sea like it just had never occurred to me and I was like like I couldn't understand that you know

01:21:09.560 Like I just – and I know some people are made like that,

01:21:13.780 but I don't know how you can never be curious because as a young kid,

01:21:19.220 I wanted to know what was over my wall.

01:21:21.840 And once I got onto the wall and I could see to the end of the road,

01:21:25.820 I wanted to know what was around that neighborhood and over that hill, you know.

01:21:30.040 That's just how I've always been.

01:21:32.700 And I think, like, if you're not naturally curious – look,

01:21:36.080 I also think all kids are curious, you know.

01:21:38.260 I think we as parents stifle their curiosity by our well-intending manner of keeping them alive.

01:21:45.640 Hey, don't go too close to the fire. You know, you're going to get burned. Hey, watch out for

01:21:49.300 the car. Hey, watch out for the wall. You know, it's just in our nature. And it's a good thing

01:21:53.500 as parents. That's how we keep our kids alive. But if you don't compensate with sharing risky

01:22:01.820 experiences, all you do is you stifle their curiosity. And you must see the stats between

01:22:07.240 the number of kindergarten kids that ask questions and fifth graders relative to 9, 10, 12th graders.

01:22:14.700 And it's not that the 12th graders know more or know enough. They're no longer as curious.

01:22:20.920 We lose our curiosity. Society kills our curiosity. And so it's a rare thing to encounter an adult now

01:22:28.400 that's still curious. And that's kind of part of what I do is I help people get curious again

01:22:33.740 because I believe God makes us curious.

01:22:35.800 I believe we all start out as curious kids, you know.

01:22:40.040 Why do we lose that curiosity and how do we find it again?

01:22:42.660 And I think you'll find it's small little tipping points

01:22:46.260 that get people curious about stuff, you know.

01:22:48.840 It doesn't have to be big, mate.

01:22:50.180 You don't have to go and climb Everest to rouse your curiosity.

01:22:53.840 Just watch the nature channel, you know.

01:22:56.340 Get in the car and drive across the state border to the first little town.

01:23:00.280 See what it's like, you know.

01:23:02.220 Go into the woods.

01:23:03.740 I love it. Well, Alex, I appreciate the conversation. I'm inspired by you. Yeah, some of your stories and some of the things that you've told me about, and I'm sure some of the stories you didn't share are just incredible. Tell us where to connect with you, learn more about what you're doing. And for those of us who are curious, you know, we want to be able to look at opportunities that might help us explore that a little bit. So how do we do that with you?

01:23:27.360 well so go to uh my website explore alexharris.com you can pop me a mail alex at explore alexharris.com

01:23:37.220 uh you know on there you'll you'll learn about some of the stuff we do some of the the tours

01:23:42.600 uh some of the speaking stuff you know a couple of my books but yeah explore alexharris.com

01:23:49.440 but you know the the starting point for anyone is just hey i remember 30 years ago sitting in

01:23:57.660 germany i was living there for six months we wanted to climb africa's south america's ice

01:24:02.180 mountain this is before the internet's invented it's 1992 and uh i can't go into google you know

01:24:09.300 we had to walk down to a library pull out an atlas flip through what's the highest mountain in south

01:24:15.200 america it's in argentina oh it's at concaga oh it's almost 23 000 feet hey you can just open up

01:24:21.640 claude you can just open up google now and just you know type in what's one interesting thing

01:24:27.600 in my neighborhood or in my town i mean we we we have no excuse not to be curious anymore

01:24:34.120 yeah i love it every once in a while my son if we're driving my youngest son and i if we're

01:24:39.060 driving somewhere as kids do you're talking about them being curious you'd be like dad why is why

01:24:44.500 is the sky blue i'm like i don't know let's ask let's ask claude and claude's like well it's the

01:24:50.320 light fragments and what's being extracted in the prism of light and he's like well why is the water

01:24:55.480 blue i'm like let's figure it out and he's like what about a black hole what's why is fire orange

01:25:00.480 and it's awesome it's so cool that we have all of the answers at our fingertips and then what's

01:25:08.500 even better is you know you figure out why it's black at night instead of blue and then you can

01:25:15.940 pull up an app and sit out in your lawn with a map on an app on your phone that points out the

01:25:23.340 constellations as you actively look at it and tell you how many light years away those flaming balls

01:25:29.600 of gas are and it's it's such a cool way to like have a cool experience with your kids and also

01:25:37.200 tap into this beautiful technology that we have used properly. It's incredible. Well, Alex, I

01:25:42.840 appreciate you. Um, also just want to give a shout out to Corey, a mutual friend of ours who

01:25:47.160 introduced us. I'm very grateful to Corey for making this introduction because we would not

01:25:51.120 have had this conversation otherwise. So I want to give him a shout out and, uh, Alex, thanks for

01:25:55.860 joining me. I appreciate you. It's an absolute pleasure and it was a great honor. Thank you so

01:25:59.500 all right man mr uh alex harris what what an incredible human being i would say i'd like to

01:26:08.500 go out with him but i'm not sure that i would but maybe that's the challenge go out with a guy like

01:26:12.520 this and let him push and challenge and teach you new things and push you to your limit and

01:26:18.300 past your current limit but man we need people like this in our lives so i was really grateful

01:26:23.480 that Corey introduced us and really grateful that he decided to join us and be on this conversation,

01:26:31.000 this podcast. So if you would, please go over to Alex's Instagram page, connect with him,

01:26:36.560 go to explorealexharris.com, check out what he's doing there. Also just take a screenshot really

01:26:42.000 quickly. A lot of you guys have been doing this and I very much appreciate it. Screenshot on your

01:26:46.940 phone, jump into Facebook, jump into Instagram, post it up in a reel or a story, tag myself at

01:26:53.900 Ryan Mickler, tag Alex Harris, and let other guys know what you're listening to. I just feel like

01:26:59.940 as a man, if you have something to share, if you have something of value, then the best thing that

01:27:05.360 you can do is share it with people who might be greatly impacted by the resources that you have.

01:27:12.780 and hopefully this is one of them. Also make sure to check out, speaking of resources,

01:27:17.060 the Iron Council over at orderofman.com slash Iron Council. Let's help you map out Q4. That's

01:27:23.260 where we're at right now. We're going to help you map out Q4 and get that thing lined out for you

01:27:28.920 so you can have the best quarter ever and then the best year in 2027 ever. Check that out at

01:27:34.300 orderofman.com slash Iron Council. All right, guys. Got a good one with Kip tomorrow for our

01:27:40.120 ask me anything, make sure you subscribe, make sure you share, make sure you listen,

01:27:44.360 and most importantly, make sure you apply. We'll be back tomorrow. Until then, go out there,

01:27:49.960 take action, and become the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the Order of Man

01:27:55.240 podcast. If you're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be,

01:28:00.000 we invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.

01:28:10.120 You

Order of Man - September 22, 2026

ALEX HARRIS ｜ Why the ＂Let's Find Out＂ Mentality Matters to Men

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