Jesse Itzler  3:29  

It was great. Well, the format of the event is, if you’re not together initially, the mountain’s so big that there were some people I didn’t see until Sunday. Just because the way that if I was a half mile ahead of them or a half mile behind, there was no way that we would ever connect if we both kept going. So, it was good to bump into you and get to chat.

Preston Pysh  4:16  

Yeah, it was awesome. I kind of liked that. Because almost every two or three summits, you’re with a different crowd of people. You’re networking. You’re learning. I mean, these people were hardcore, first of all. And then, almost everybody I met was a CEO. And so, it was such an opportunity. That’s why I’m just so appreciative because everyone that I had a chance to talk to was just so giving with their time and sharing amazing information. It was just really fun. I mean, we talked about so many books with these people. That’s the thing that I thought was really cool as well.

Jesse Itzler  4:53  

I don’t look at the weekend as a race. It wasn’t a race. There were no awards given. It was a personal challenge. We set this up to be an investment in yourself. I think the goal of this weekend was for everybody that came to get something out of it way bigger than just completing or not completing a challenge. It was really just a three-day investment in yourself, to learn something about yourself that you didn’t know you had in you, and create a memory that you could apply this lesson or the lessons learned to all the different areas of your life, especially business. And I think we accomplished that.

Preston Pysh  5:33  

I guess let’s start off with this, Jesse. Where do you get an idea for something like this? How does this come about? Because when I was on the mountain, I was talking to a gentleman named Mike Sheehan, which I’m sure you know who Mike is. Mike told me, “Man, Jesse’s had the idea for this for like a decade”. And I was like, “No way.” Is that true, first of all? And then talk to us about how you think through such a neat idea. This is really cool stuff.

Jesse Itzler  6:01  

I think my superpower is I’m an idea guy. Do the others like to put a flag in the grounds and say, “This is what I’m good at”? Most of my ideas are bad, but I have a lot of ideas.  After I finished marathons or 10Ks, 5Ks, a race or this and that, it’s always like, “What’s next?” And people always ask me, “Do you want to climb Everest? Why don’t you go climb Everest? You ran 100 miles. You’ve done this. Go climb Everest.” And I’m like, “I really can’t go to Everest right now.” It’s expensive. It’s a long trip. I got four kids. There’s altitude. There’s training. It’s crazy dangerous.

So I just said to myself, “Well, why don’t I bring part of the element of Everest? Bring the largest summit height mountain in the world to the United States.” And that’s sort of how it came into my head. And then, that’s sort of what happened. And it was just built from that initial idea.

Preston Pysh  6:41  

There are people that I was telling this to. I was talking to my parents about this. And they’re just like, “Oh, yeah. 29,000 feet, that’s really high.” In my own mind, “It’s really high”. But then, I was trying to put it in terms people can understand. This is like climbing the Empire State Building. It is something like 35 times. Imagine yourself going into the stairwell of the Empire State Building. Running that stairwell 35 times, and doing it on a weekend.

Jesse Itzler  7:27  

The magnitude of it didn’t really hit me until I was flying home. The light illuminated telling us that we were at 10,000 feet. I looked down, and I was like, “I couldn’t believe how far up in the air we were.” And I’m like, “This is only 10,000 feet, and we kept climbing.” And on the visual on the airplane, you could see how high you were. And when we got to 29,000 feet, I looked down and I said, “No way. There’s no possible way. That this is what we just did.”

Preston Pysh  8:01  

Now that you put it into that context, I never thought of it from that vantage point. It is flipping high. 

Jesse Itzler  8:07  

It’s high. It’s steep. It’s slippery. It’s windy. It’s sunny. And it’s cold and everything.

Preston Pysh  8:15  

We’ll talk about your first summit up because the first time I went up the mountain, I know what I was thinking. And I’m curious what was going through your head after you did the very first summit?

Jesse Itzler  8:25  

Well, as the curator of the event, about three quarters of the way up, I said to myself, “I probably should have walked up this mountain before I threw the challenge out.” Because I was like, “Man, this is really hard.” I looked at my watch. And I’m like, “I’ve been out here for 45 minutes”. This is going to be 17 times and basically almost an hour, plus the commute down. This is going to be a 22-hour event. Wiggle your thumb for 22 hours. Your thumb will fall off.

Preston Pysh  9:00  

It’s a long time. That’s where I kind of made my err because the mileage was being broadcast at 1.1 miles per summit. So I was wearing my Apple Watch. It’s keeping track of my steps. It’s keeping track of the mileage and doing its calculation and whatever. I just got done running a 28-miler a month before. I’m thinking, “How long am I going to be on my feet?” That’s where you can really kind of gauge your pain. “How long am I on my feet?” 

And so, when I said, “Oh, it’s just 1.1 miles up. I can knock that out probably in 30 minutes or 25 minutes or something. This shouldn’t be too bad. I can do this.” And like you said, it was way longer than what I had expected the time to be. 

Then, I looked at my watch after the first time up, and it was saying something like 2.1 to 2.2 miles, which was double what I was thinking it was going to be. Most of that is because of a little bit of a switchback. You’re not walking in a straight line. You’re kind of zigzagging as you’re going up. Just trying to get in some of the parts of this mountain were super steep. I saw a guy going up on all fours at one point.

Jesse Itzler  10:12  

Me too. Yeah, my wife said to me, “I think you might have undersold the difficulty.” And she said, “Maybe for the next one, you might want to think about doing it on a mountain where it’s not as hard,” and I said, “Absolutely not.”

You can go run a 5K or a marathon. It’s an event. It’s like a weekend thing, and it’s great. But I wanted something that had a permanent imprint on everybody that did it. The only way to get there, the only way to really get the benefit is for it to be a struggle. If it’s not a struggle, or a point where you want to quit or you want to just go like, “This is ridiculous” or you’re not mad at me, then I failed. 

Seriously. Then the fee isn’t worth it. The fee that everybody paid has to go beyond just the weekend. It has to be either a memory, a series of lessons that are applicable forward. And that doesn’t happen unless it’s hard. 

So I said to my wife, “Listen, no way.” This is the exact challenge. It’s doable if you are willing to go through the pain, willing to do the math, willing to plan, willing to sacrifice, and get in early if you had to get extra summits. Stay out late if you’re going slow, and finish it. If you don’t, then there’s a lesson learned. And if you do, there’s going to be a lot gained. 

Preston Pysh  11:38  

I love this point because there was a quote, and I think you were the one that came up with this quote, you said, “You can’t learn about grit from a book. You have to get out there and do it.”

Jesse Itzler  11:49  

I speak a lot. I get to hear a lot of speakers before I go on or after I go on. There’s a lot of people, inspiration and motivation out there. Books, speakers, movies, and you leave fired up for five minutes. And then you go back and your kids are crying, or the bills have to be paid, or this and that. And that motivation goes away. The only way, in my opinion, you can get lessons that you can apply, but you have to put into real life situations. You have to go out and actually do something that’s challenging. 

It doesn’t have to be physical. It could be staying and returning emails when everyone else is at the bar. You want to be at the bar, but you’re sacrificing. You’re challenged because you’re conflicted between comfort and goal. And to me, the only way that you can really hit a nerve and have a permanent mark is by going and trying to do something.

Preston Pysh  12:50  

I just recently read Nassim Taleb’s book, “Antifragile”. We decided not to do the book on the show, but the basic premise of the book is a person who’s antifragile actually gets stronger and more robust whenever they are disrupted, or whenever they are put in an environment that rattles them. They actually get stronger through that. 

Whenever I think about this event, it’s hardening a person. It’s showing you what grit is truly about. And when you come out of this event, a person then approaches the next hardship in their life with this mindset, “Hey, so what? I did this thing over here, which was really flipping hard. And so I can get through this right here.” Like you said, you can’t read about that in a book. You have to experience it. You have to do the hard thing, so that you get hardened, right?

Jesse Itzler  13:42  

Think about a boxer. If you and I read or watched a video on how to box, read every book about boxing, and watched every fight ever for 10 years, and then we got a ring. Until we get punched, deal with the speed, the adrenaline, the fear, and everything that can substitute boxers for entrepreneurs. Anything. Until you’re in that situation, all that studying, listening, learning, watching, it’s not really going to mean anything. So, that’s sort of what I was getting at.

Preston Pysh  14:15  

Yeah. What was the thing that you were most surprised with during the event? Was there something that stuck out? What was the one thing that you’d walk away and just say, “I was really surprised by this thing.”

Jesse Itzler  14:30  

I was really surprised at how many people kept going. Regardless of body shape, body type, age, or experience, there were some people that stood out in my mind that completely shocked me. They just kept going. 

I kept saying to myself, “This is just a weekend event.” There’s not even an award at the end of it. I’m not giving out any trophies. Why are these people on the mountain at 3:00 AM, in this windstorm? And the answer is, they wanted to finish their goal no matter what. Those are the people I want to hire tomorrow.

Preston Pysh  15:15  

Yeah.

Jesse Itzler  15:17  

I’ve never seen anything like it. Brad is a fellow that did it two times. He “double Everest-ed”. He did 58,000 feet of climbing. It was time restricted, so you couldn’t go around the clock. He had to put in so many hours, and he had to go at such a fast pace. When I was done with 17 men, I was done. I’m still done.

Preston Pysh  15:43  

Well, I want to put this in context for people with Brad. So Brad’s the guy that did it twice. He started at 2:00 PM on Friday with all of us. He went the entire night. He completed all 17 by the morning. So like me after I’ve done 17, call it 5:30 to 6:00 in the morning, I’m toast. I mean, you’re going to bed at that point, right? 

But no, not Brad. Brad stayed on the mountain. He kept climbing it past 17. He went clear until 5:00 PM the next day. So now, he’s over 24 hours. and all he’s doing is climbing a mountain for over 24 hours to 5 p.m. the next day. And then, he finally stopped because that was the time constraint. The mountain shut down at 5 p.m. On Saturday, you had it open the whole night, from Friday into Saturday, then you shut it down at 5 p.m. on Saturday. And that’s when Brad finally slept.

Jesse Itzler  16:32  

Unless you’re even there, it’s impossible to put it in context of how challenging I found this to be very, very challenging. And the challenge is, it’s physical, but it’s also the time just to be present and focused on a goal for 20 something hours. It’s really really difficult. Listen, we live in a world where our minds constantly wander. Add we’re floating around. We’re multitasking. We’re getting distracted. 

How many times in your life have you actually spent an entire weekend is what he did on one thing and like before the race? I don’t know if you were there, Preston, for this. But I said a couple of words to everybody, some safety briefings, but also, I was encouraging. 

I was encouraging everybody just some thoughts on how to finish and one of the things that I said is for this weekend, this is your job. Everything else in your life stops right now. And resumes again on Monday. But right now, this is your job to get up and down the darn mountain until you’re done. 

And when you think you have no more, keep chipping away, just chip away, chip away, chip away like any big task, right? I mean, you start a business. You have a bazillion things on your to do list. Chip away. Knock one down. Go to the next one. Chip away, chip away. And that’s exactly what Brad did. He put everything aside for the weekend. And I don’t think he would like to pass me by then. Look, and keep going. 

There was like, you and I were talking about the economy. We talked about business proposals. Yeah, we were talking about you. We were talking about your salt pills. He was just like, “Good luck! Got to go.” He was on a mission. And those are the kind of things that stood out to me the most during the race, and there were probably a dozen plus examples of people with that same determination.

Preston Pysh  18:24  

I mean, he looked like a tornado going past me. I was going up. And I mean, he just went past me like I was standing still. I’m just like, “Who the hell is this? Guy’s crazy and consistent.” And, if he was doing it for himself, he definitely wasn’t to impress anybody. He had set an internal goal for himself that he was going to knock out 34 from the incident. He was there on the mountain. 

And I guess this was something I really took away from this, Jesse. This is something that I learned, really, it was so obvious that this was the learning lesson for me coming away from this mountain, was the first time people went up, people had adjusted their expectations of themselves. People had said, “I’m going to knock out 17, no matter what, whether my hands are bleeding and my feet are bleeding and anything. I’m going to do 17, no matter what!”

There were people that came away with that mindset after the first till there were other people that were like, “I don’t even know if I can do one more of these.” That and then there were people that were like, “I’m still going to knock out 34.” 

Yeah, and that mindset was something that I guess I need to ask you. What do you think drives that mindset? How can a person hone that skill of just being rock hard in their mindset and being relentless and persistent and getting what they want? I mean, he channeled it from somewhere, and I think, here we go. I mean, he did 10 summits on the last day and we and you shut down the mountain at 2 p.m.

Jesse Itzler  21:54  

He was sprinting when he got one, but nothing got when I got off the gondola after each one. It was like I was celebrating my wedding, man. I was like taking my time. I was signing autographs, you know? Not real. Not literally, I’m just saying in my own head. Yeah, and taking my time. He was sprinting. 

He would brand the board, which was our indication that you completed a lap. He would brand that he completed the lap. He would drop the iron, and boom, you start flying up the mountain. And it was clockwork. I would go to my tent, make like two emails, [and] get some hot water to warm up. [It’d] take me 37 minutes, [then,] come back. And there he is, off the gondola, while I’m back up the hill.

Preston Pysh  22:36  

Jesse having read your book, “Living with a SEAL,” I was expecting Sarah to not participate in this because in the book, Sarah kind of saw your antics with David and what you were doing kind of from a distance as if you’re just crazy. This is nuts. 

And I wasn’t expecting her to be there. I was maybe expecting her to be there, but not be climbing the mountain, so I was very impressed. Wearing off on Sarah, is that what’s happening here? Like, what’s happening?

Jesse Itzler  23:04  

Well, Sarah likes a good challenge. She had just come back from a trip, a 10-day trip to Africa with Richard Branson, where they had done four days of cycling and hiking, extreme cycling and hiking, and if you know Richard Branson, his version of extreme is like extreme 2X. And she had just flown back. She was home for a day. And I said to her, “Sarah, it’s great that you’re coming to support me and everybody that’s doing this, and I think it’s just amazing that you [are] there. Just get up, get comfortable at the campfire, and enjoy yourself. She’s like, “What are you talking about? I’m going to do it.” 

And I was kind of chuckling to myself, and I said, “Okay, how much are you going to do?” And she said, “I’m going to try to do the whole thing.” And she actually got to 12, which was 111. 11 summits was the equivalent of Kilimanjaro. Climbing Kilimanjaro. Yeah. And for Sarah, she just clocked out. She just didn’t have enough time. She wasn’t moving as quickly as she didn’t do the math right, but it wasn’t lack of effort or lack of will.

Preston Pysh  24:10  

It’s funny you said she didn’t do the math right. So Friday night, I had done 5 summits at the end of Friday. I was smoked. I went in, had a bowl of chili. I sat down at the table, and who comes and sits right next to me, but Sarah, and so, I’m sitting there, and I was talking to one of my friends and I said, “The math tells me that I’ve got to have a big day tomorrow or else I’m not going to finish.” So, Sarah looked at me. She goes, “What’s the math? Run that math past me.” 

And so, I started saying the numbers of what I thought I was shooting for 10 on Saturday. I didn’t get there, but I got 8 on Saturday. And if I didn’t get that far, I mean, I was hosed like I wasn’t going to make it on Sunday. 

It’s funny because she, I think, because she was really shooting for it. And for anybody that doesn’t know what 12 summits on this mountain are like, that is when you’re really kicking butt if you did 12, because this thing was a beast.

Jesse Itzler  27:00  

If you use all the adjectives: humble, unassuming, gracious, and everything. I didn’t know Colin. I knew a little bit about his story. But I I met him on the mountain, too. I met him at around 11:00 PM. It was pitch dark. I was going so slowly. I feel this headlamp beaming on the back of my neck. I turn around, and he introduces himself.

I said, “Colin.” I looked on the board, “You’re in first place or something? You’re [the] first top three guys. What are you doing here talking to me?” And he slowed down. He joined us for the rest of the next [climb], basically, 30 minutes. He slowed his pace down and shared his story. 

And when he shared his story, I was like, “This is absolutely unbelievable.” It’s inspiring, motivating, sad, and everything. It was just an honor. I mean, I can’t think of a lot of people that I’d even really rather be on the mountain than him. I didn’t even know him.

Afterwards, I went and I watched one of his speeches online. It made me cry, literally. I’m glad you have him on the show. We hear about the headliners. The guys that have a million people following them, and the guys that are loud on social media, trying to tell the world how to live their life and this kind of thing. And that’s great to an extent. 

And then, you have guys like Colin, who holds a world record. There are 7 billion people in the world. He’s number one among record holders.

He has lived through incredible tragedy. It was just an unbelievable experience that you don’t even know about. And then, they come into your world. You’re like, “Wow, there’s just so many interesting people that I don’t even know about.” It makes you realize how many stories and how many people are out there that have done incredible things. And then, it makes you think to yourself, “Why can’t I do something incredible in my life?” 

Preston Pysh 30:21

Yeah, thanks, Jesse. And thanks for the opportunity to meet people like Colin. And to just go through this experience where I can really learn a lot about myself. I really hope that some of the stories that we are sharing with the audience can motivate them. Maybe they can go out there and do something similar, or whatever that Everest is in their life that they’re trying to overcome. 

To think about some of the comments of what we learned and what we took away from trying to tackle this here, and trying to apply in their own life because there’s so much learning happening over the weekend. I’m just so thankful that you were able to give me the opportunity to do it. So I really appreciate it, Jesse. Thank you.

Jesse Itzler 30:22

It’s my pleasure.

Preston Pysh  30:38  

All right. I am excited to share this interview with Colin O’Brady. Colin’s here with me right now. Colin, I got to tell you a quick story before we start our discussion here because you might not realize this, but climbing this mountain for me was very difficult. This was not easy. 

Colin O’Brady  30:59  

I think it’s like that for everyone.

Preston Pysh  31:01  

This thing was such a grind. I’ve done a lot of things in the military. I have done a lot of sucky things in my life. But if I had to say something that was just pure suck, this thing is way up there. It might even be the highest for me. For you, it’s obviously not. We’ll get into that. 

I want to tell this story about the first time I met Colin O’Brady. We get there on Friday. The event starts on Friday. It starts at 2:00 in the afternoon. Jesse’s making the announcements. I’m still trying to shed all my clothes off. Then it’s like, boom, everyone’s running up the hill. And so, I’m there going up the hill. 

Later that night, it’s getting dark. I didn’t set my headlamp. I had done like the lowest setting. I didn’t even bump it up to the highest setting like an idiot. I get up to the top of the mountain. I want to say it’s probably 9:30 to 10:00 at night, something like that. It’s starting to get a little windy. It’s getting cold. And cold for me, and cold for you is two different definitions. You’re going to hear why his definition of cold is so much different than mine. 

We got up to the top and we were riding down. So we’re taking the car down. I get into the car. It’s dark. You can’t really see anything. I asked the people when we got in the car. We’re just kind of having some side chat about how much this mountain sucks and how much of a steeper hill it was than I kind of anticipated before I got there. 

Well, I asked this question in the car. I said, “Hey, so how many of you guys are trying to complete tonight?” Because I’m pretty much on my last run. Like I’m getting ready to go to bed. I did 5, and I’m smoked. I was exhausted.”

And I had Saturday to Sunday morning to still knock it up. Everyone’s kind of like, “Oh, I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that.” And then, there’s one person sitting up in the front of the car. He goes, “I’m going to do 17 tonight.” I literally just started laughing. I was like, “Yeah, right, like, that’s even possible.” 

This person was dead serious. He said it without even hesitation. Not like, “I think I’m going to do 17.” It was, “Yeah, I’m going to knock out 17 tonight.” That’s how many times we had to do it to the total amount to Everest. That’s 29,029 feet. 

And I just thought to myself on the car ride down, “There’s no way that guy’s serious, but I don’t want to be the dummy in the car that asked him, ‘Are you serious?’” And so, that was you. That was you, my friend. Before we go into the rest of the Everest event, I want you to take us back. How many years ago was this? 10 years ago you had your accident?

Colin O’Brady  33:54  

Yeah. So long before you and I ended up in the car in the middle of the night in Stratton, Vermont, trying to climb it all through the night. First, I stayed up through the night and knocked out the 17th one at around 5:45 AM, or something like that. It was a long night to say the least.

Preston Pysh  34:14  

Colin, I came out at 5:30 AM. I was like, “I’m going get a good jumpstart in the morning. I came out at 5:30 AM.” And I was like, “Let’s see if this guy did 17.” I went over to the board and you had the brand. You had the brand that looks like this mountain into 17 slots. 

Sure enough, I go over and I look at this flipping board. And right next to Colin O’Brady, there are 17 marks on this flipping board. I just looked up at the sky [and] was like, “Who the hell is this guy?” Because I didn’t know who you were before this. So, go ahead. I’m sorry to interrupt. Keep going.

Colin O’Brady  34:50  

So long before all this climbing and crazy things that I’ve done the last 10 years, taking it back to the sort of origin story. I had just graduated from college. I thought I was going to be a finance guy, sort of like an Economics degree. I grabbed a surfboard and a backpack. I thought I wanted to see a little bit of the world. 

I was actually a house painter in the summers all growing up. It was kind of silly sucking away a couple thousand dollars each summer with this idea, when I graduated from college. I want to take a trip around the world. I didn’t have money to do anything fancy with just peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, living in hostels, and hitchhiking around, and just kind of spreading my wings a little bit.

I went on an amazing trip up until I found myself on a beach in rural Thailand. And for those of you who have been to Thailand, you might know this, but fire dancing and things like that are somewhat common. And of course, because I was 22 years old and seemingly invincible at the time, I thought that jumping a flaming jump rope sounded like a great idea. I participated in that activity, which changed my life, honestly, in an instant. 

The rope wrapped around my legs, splashed excess kerosene on my body, lit me on fire completely up to my neck. I was able to jump into the ocean to extinguish the flames, which certainly saved my life without a doubt. But not before about 25% of my body was severely burned. It was predominantly my legs and feet. 

I was in the middle of a tiny little island in the Gulf of Thailand, so the ambulance was a moped ride down a dirt path. The hospital was a one-room shack. They couldn’t really move me until they finally moved me at the back of a pickup truck and a little boat to what they called the “better hospital.” 

At the better hospital I underwent 8 surgeries for 8 days in a row. I’d come out from the surgery room, and there would be a cat running around my bed and across my chest in the ICU. So, kind of paints a picture of the worst place. One would want to end up certainly with this kind of injury where infection can honestly kill you.

Preston Pysh  36:47  

As I’m hearing this story. I thought that if this happened to me. It’s not like you didn’t have a lot to look forward to. I mean, you went to an incredible college. You had so much going for you. I’ve been to Thailand. I’ve seen exactly what you’re describing. You see so many people go up there. Everyone’s having a good time. No one has what you just described happen. It’s just like everything is shattered at this point. I couldn’t imagine what was going through your head. Devastation?

Colin O’Brady  37:21  

Complete devastation. And like you said, I think there’s no matter what phase of life you’re in. Just having this type of thing happen to you is horrible. But of course, I’m 22 years old. I was kind of thinking that I’m embarking on the next chapter of adulthood in my life. I’d been a lifelong athlete. I was a swimmer in college, which is what kind of got me to be able to go to a university like that after a lot of hard work as a kid. 

Here I am. I think of my whole life in front of me. And all of a sudden, boom, this accident happens. And to make matters worse, the doctors are coming in every day and they’re saying things like, “Hey, kid. You’re pretty much not going to walk again normally after this, with how badly your legs are burnt, with the ligament damaged, the scar tissue over the ankles and knees. You’ll be lucky to kind of hobble around.” 

I was just being told that devastating diagnosis to say the least. The physical pain mixed with that emotional trauma, mixed with being a million miles from home was just overtaking me. Honestly, I can just remember sitting in that hospital bed, feeling that I want to give up. My life is over. It was just the darkest phase that I can ever remember in my life. 

My mother who really is the hero of this story, for sure. She flew over to Thailand and sat by my bedside. I certainly know now that she was just as afraid as I was being a parent and seeing her kid this way. But she’s always been someone that’s instilled the values of dreaming big, setting goals, looking forward to the future, and working towards things. I’ve a lot of things I’ve achieved in my life because of her ethos. She was unrelenting in this hospital. 

When the doctor was saying, “You’ll never walk again.” She came in smiling being like, “Colin, let’s set a goal. Let’s look towards the future. What do you want to do when you get out of here?” I literally was looking at her like, “Mom, stop trying to cheer me up. Let’s call this what this is. This is devastating.” She really just kept in on me and kind of forced me to pick some anchor point in the future. 

Actually, looking back at the 29029 event itself was amazing. But I think what we found in the people on the mountain is having that goal, having that linear pursuit. There’s just something powerful about that. It could be business, sports, art; it doesn’t matter. In this case, for me, it was sports. So I said, “Hey, I want to one day complete a triathlon.” 

I’d been a swimmer in college, as I mentioned, but I’d never biked or run competitively. And certainly, looking down at my legs, it seemed pretty unrealistic to do any of those activities ever again. And I said, “An able-bodied person will be able to swim, bike, run and finish a triathlon.” And so, for the next 18 months, that was my goal, literally. 

Three months in a Thai hospital. I had flown back to Portland, Oregon, where I grew up. I still hadn’t taken a single step. I carried on and off the plane. I was placed in a wheelchair, when I got home. I really learned how to walk one step at a time. And to my mother, I mentioned this a little bit in the TED talk I recently gave, it’s an important moment in my life. 

My mom said, “Great, kid. You’ve got this big triathlon goal, but today, you need to figure out how to take one step.” She actually took a chair from our kitchen table, placed it one step in front of my wheelchair and said, “Figure out today how to get out of your wheelchair, and take one step into that chair.” 

And although it might sound tiny or insignificant, having the courage to take that first step, it turned into the next day. The chair was five steps away. The next day was 10. And as trite as it might sound, literally, step by step, I got a little bit stronger up until the sort of punchline of this chapter of my life. I arrived 18 months later to compete in the Chicago triathlon because I had taken a job on commodities trading in Chicago. I was trying to get my life back on track. 

I trained with the Chicago triathlon as best I could. I was learning how to walk again. I showed up to compete. I finished the race, which was 18 months after my accident. It was certainly a joyous moment for me. And there was one last surprise in store, which is I didn’t just finish the race, but I actually won the entire Chicago draft, beating about 4,000 to 5,000 other participants on the day. It was my first ever race. So, it was a very surreal moment to say the least.

Preston Pysh  41:12  

This is absolutely nuts. You go from 18 months. They were carrying you on and off the plane. 3 months after the accident, you’re in a wheelchair. And you turn around in what would be 15 months from just taking one step a day to literally winning a triathlon in the city of Chicago. That is nuts. Absolutely insane.

Colin O’Brady  41:43  

It’s absolutely wild. It was certainly, in a lot of ways changed my life. I became a professional triathlete right after that. I quit my job and got some support. I’ve actually got some guys in the financial industry there, particularly a guy by the name of Brian Gilbert. He was my first sponsor. I moved to Australia. I began training as a professional athlete, which was kind of always a lifelong dream of mine. 

But yeah, it was crazy. But really what it made me realize was, and it’s become a larger theme, as I’m sure we’ll get into with other things I’ve done in my life was this moment of facing this extreme obstacle and realizing that in this moment, it would have been so easy for me to give up. I wanted to give up. I wanted to say, “My life’s over. There’s nothing to do. The doctor’s right. I’ll never walk again. I’ll be hobbling around the rest of my life.” 

And, you know, I’m so grateful for my mother and what she was able to instill in me in that moment. I realized, moving forward, “Look, I don’t think of myself as some superhuman genetic freak or something like that.” I’m a regular guy. You met me. I’m like a normal bail. A regular person. 

I think that really, it’s about mindset. I think that in that moment, I was forced to choose a measurable goal and move forward. I went into that with my whole heart and my whole soul to overcome this obstacle. I believe, as humans, we have this untapped potential inside of all of us, reservoirs of it that we can unlock, when we choose the positive mindset. 

It has certainly been something that I absolutely preach. It’s just that I learned it in such an intense environment. I hope that not everyone has to learn it that way. But it was a valuable lesson I carried before. It’s the many things in my life.

Preston Pysh  43:24  

I recently read an article that Bill Gates posted as like an op-ed. He was talking about the thing that Warren Buffett taught him. What he was saying that taught him more than anything else was a positive mindset. He said, “Before I had met Warren, I just didn’t necessarily have such a positive mindset. But after I got to know him, and I studied him, he says a lot of people might have the opinion that the reason he has a positive mindset is because he’s the richest person in the world.” 

But Gates said, “I think people have that in reverse. I think he’s the richest person in the world because he has such a positive mindset.” They actually have it out of order. 

Let’s keep going here. You accomplish this milestone. And I love how your mom was so instrumental in placing that idea, in planting that idea into your mind. Like, you have to have some type of milestone that you’re going to try to achieve here. And then, you did it. Not only did you did it, but you knocked it out of the ballpark. So you achieved this, then what was the next goal?

Colin O’Brady  44:31  

For the next 5 or 6 years, I competed as a professional triathlete, which was an incredible period of my life like I said. It was living out my boyhood fantasy of being a professional athlete. It was amazing, a huge pivot from what I thought was going to be a career in finance through my 20’s. And I ended up racing in 25 countries, 6 different continents, living all over the world. I was having my fair share of success on the racecourse, as of course, setbacks. It’s not like I won every race I’ve ever competed in, but I had some great success as a professional athlete. 

Interestingly enough, coming off a win in 2014 at a half Ironman event, I just had this kind of overcome moment of like, “This has been an amazing chapter.” And although I had sponsorship to continue me into the future of triathlon racing, I felt like I wanted to do something bigger. I’m ready to set my next huge audacious goal with a combined purpose of doing something greater than myself. 

I set myself the goal to become the world record holder of the fastest person to ever complete the Explorers Grand Slam. I’ll break down what that means in a second. It means to climb the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents, as well as complete expeditions to both the North and South Pole. About fewer than 50 people in history have ever completed the entire Grand Slam. Most who have done so in 5 or 10 years climbing Everest or Denali, and then coming back and training for the next one next year. 

Now, I was aiming to do it the fastest. So basically, all 9 of those expeditions without any stopping, without any breaks in between, climbing one mountain, and coming down looking fine to the next. And then, the larger purpose was, I coined a name called “Beyond 72,” which is the name of my nonprofit. It is all focused around inspiring kids to get outside, move their bodies, set goals, live active and healthy lives. 

And so. I built that into the fabric of this project, using the media to leverage sort of a positive impact in the community. Triathlon at that time, kind of felt a little bit self-serving. I was winning or losing on the race course, but didn’t have this larger purpose. So I was really excited to push my body in an incredibly intense way, but also have sort of a larger meaning baked into the entire fabric of the project.

Preston Pysh  46:35  

Unbelievable. So you set this goal. This is the Explorers Grand Slam. You’re climbing Everest, Kilimanjaro, Denali, and all these mountains that are the tallest in every single continent. And you’re also going to the North and South Pole. What did you think you could do that time? What was your goal?

Colin O’Brady  46:58  

So the record time that I was trying to break was 197 days. Skipping forward to the beginning, I didn’t know how much faster I could do it. I thought that I had a shot at it. And of course, there’s a great entrepreneurial detour that we could take here. I set myself this goal, but I had no funding. I needed half a million dollars just to pull off this project. I was trying to make any money. The hard costs of doing this project. I had no financial support. That’s certainly not a check that I can write. 

Remember I’m a kid that grew up painting houses. I have a blue collar background in that way. There’s not a check that I could write. I also have never found a nonprofit. I’ve never run a media campaign. I’ve never done any of these things. But I have this idea. I have this goal. And then, there’s a growth mindset of being like, “Okay, great. Well, now let’s figure it out.” 

The first 150 people that I probably asked to support me financially were like, “You’re crazy. Who are you? You’re not a professional mountaineer. Why do you think you can do this?” In 2014, there was a bad avalanche on Everest that unfortunately killed 16 Sherpas. And then, in 2015, there was a huge earthquake in Nepal that devastated the entire country. So no one had actually even climbed Everest in 2014 or in 2015. 

It was in 2016 when I was trying to do this. People are saying, “Wait a second, so no one’s even climbed one of those mountains in 2014 to 2015. You’re saying that you’re going to climb Everest, as well as 8 other peaks back-to-back. I don’t really think we could support that. That doesn’t seem like a high probability that that’s going to work out.” 

But there was just this, like I said, a full heart dedicated passion. I’m going to figure this out, some way somehow. How to pull this project off. So there was a year to a year and a half in the planning before I even took the first step. I began the project in January of 2016 in Antarctica. 

It rolled on for 139 days straight from there with many ups and downs, which I could tell many stories about. But that would be a whole day’s worth of podcast. But I finished on Denali 139 days later, having set actually 2 new world records for the Explorers Grand Slam, as well as the speed record for the Seven Summits.

Preston Pysh  49:07  

Alright, so take us to the one I’m sure everyone wants to hear about, Mount Everest. So walk us through the challenges. From what I understand, the oxygen part just makes you feel like your face is going to explode, as mentioned by the people that I’ve talked to. 

I’ve never talked to a person other than you that’s actually gone clear to the top. I’ve talked to some other people that have gone up to various base camps. They said that the oxygen is just unbearable. It’s something you can’t even describe.

Colin O’Brady  49:36  

Yeah, I mean, it’s crazy. I joke around that on the summit day. I was using supplementary oxygen on the summit day, but anything above 26,000 feet is known as the death zone, which is aptly named because literally the human body above that altitude, even with supplementary oxygen can’t survive for very long at all. You’re actually slowly dying physiologically as you’re up there. 

My joke is, “If you’re taking one step every 15 seconds or even one step every 30 seconds a year, you’re like Usain Bolt on the summit ridge of Everest.” It feels like you’re flying past people. Barely a lot of people are taking one step and collecting themselves for a minute, 2 minutes, or 3 minutes just to take another step. 

I know it sounds ridiculous to say. I had that described to me before I was up there. When I got there, I was like, “Yeah, people weren’t exaggerating. It’s crazy.” It’s really intense. Everest actually came 8 out of the 9 expeditions. So before I got to Everest, I had actually already been going for over 100 days, just before to begin the Everest expedition. And from the altitude perspective, your body acclimatizes to higher altitude, of course, over time. 

I had been on previous high altitude mountains. However, the expedition that fell right before Everest, just due to timing and weather and whatnot was the North Pole. It is of course sea ice floating in the middle of the ocean, as close to sea level. 

You’re literally walking around a frozen ocean. So I came from a month at the North Pole at sea level. Not acclimatized at all. I was the last person to arrive at Everest base camp about a month behind schedule for the normal summit window. A customer usually has 8 weeks to climb, I only had 3, including all the acclimatization. 

So by the time I got up on the Everest summit ridge, it was brutal. My first trip up actually into the death zone at 26,000 feet, I was climbing with just myself and a Sherpa by the name of Passang Bhote. I did most of this project, either climbing completely alone, or I would have a friend of mine come meet me, but not like guided or anything like that. 

We went up there. We actually got caught in a huge storm above the death zone. We had to retreat into our tents and spend a full night out in a really brutal, scary set of circumstances and then retreat back down the mountain. 

And so, when I actually eventually did make it to the summit a few days later, it was on my second attempt. I was having to fight not just the physical fatigue of having been near the summit and having to retreat, but the emotional trauma of like, “Oh my God, I’ve seen how bad this can go up here.” 

And if you read…I’m sure some people have read “Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer, or other books about Everest. The Death Zone, Camp IV, or the South Col are historic places infamous for losing a lot of lives there. And so, knowing that background and then seeing the power of Mother Nature, what it actually feels like to be out there to storm is like, “Oh, this is the place I’ve read about where people die.” It was a very intense environment to be in. And just like I said, “Each step, you’re earning it all.”

Preston Pysh  52:24  

What was the temperature? And what was the wind that you experienced? Was it 30 miles per hour wind? I’m sure it was stronger.

Colin O’Brady  52:33  

The average temperature on the summit there, I think was somewhere around -20 to -30 ambient temperature, but with the wind it was as much as -50 to -60 degree wind chill. When you’re moving that slow, obviously, it’s very hard to keep your body warm, as well as when you’re not getting oxygen in there. So that really is one of the biggest challenges. It’s keeping your body warm, which is of course why you hear about a lot of people losing fingers and toes, or getting frostbite and whatnot. 

So for me, as successful as it would have been to climb Mount Everest, success really looked like coming back from this project with all my fingers and my toes. I know what it’s like to be physically hindered after my burn accident and certainly didn’t want to have that happen again. But it’s intense. 

And about several people, not people who we were climbing with, but several people who climbed on to the summit that same day were evacuated the next day because of severe frostbite injuries. It was actually quite a windy and cold evening up there for sure.

Preston Pysh  53:30  

We’re going to have pictures of Colin on top of Mount Everest in our show notes along with all the other things that you’re doing. We’re going to try to pull that from your embedded Instagram posts and stuff. We’re going to try to put that into the show notes, so people can see some of these pictures. These pictures are mind blowing. 

I’m curious because you brought this up. When you went to the North Pole, how far did you have to trek? What makes it part of the Grand Slam? I’m thinking somebody just takes a helicopter, you fly out there and you land on the pole. So how far did you have to go to make this count?

Colin O’Brady  54:07  

I didn’t create these rules, but the rules that are governing this record state that you have to travel by your own human power, at least one degree of latitude. So I crossed the last, what’s called, “the last degree of latitude” to reach both the North and South Poles. It was roughly 69 nautical miles, completely self sufficiently. 

You’re walking. I was using cross country skis with skins with flat ground. You’re dragging about a 150-pound sled behind you, which has all your food, all your fuel, tent, stove, and all that kind of stuff, day by day for the polar region.

Preston Pysh  54:42  

I’m dying because I keep thinking back to me in the car with you and complaining about, “Oh, it’s a little cold. It’s like 60 degrees or 50 degrees and a little windy.” And I’m in this car with this guy that’s done all this stuff that you don’t know. It really is a lesson on, you just don’t know what somebody else has gone through. 

You’re sitting next to a person that has done just such amazing things. And all you know is that, like when you said, “I’m going to knock out 17 tonight.” I’m thinking, “Yeah, right. This guy’s nuts.” But you don’t know the other person’s vantage point until you step into their body, in their shoes, and you live life through what they’ve seen.

Colin O’Brady  55:22  

But for me, I love the essence of this 29029 challenge that we all did together. I loved how Jesse set the tone for it. He began the event by saying, “Hey, this isn’t a race. This is you against you.” Although, me going 17 laps in a row, and you going over the course the weekend. 

To me, both of those achievements are just as valid and just as incredible. And to me, that’s why I love to do these things with groups of people because it’s not about, “Oh, I did it better than you. I did it faster. I’m stronger.”

I’m also human. It was cold for me up there because I’m not wearing a down suit like what I was wearing up on Everest. The cold there in the South Pole was insane. I showed a photo of this in my TED Talk. And you may have seen it where I say, “I didn’t know what -40 felt like until I got out to the South Pole because I never been somewhere that cold.” And the best way I can describe it to people is I took a cup of boiling water. I threw it into the air, and it literally instantly turns into ice, like ice fireworks in the air. It creates for some really cool photos actually. 

It’s wild to feel that. That said, just because I’ve been on the Everest summit ridge, hiking up a mountain in Vermont that is super steep and muddy in the middle of the night, and lonely at times, it’s not like, “Oh, that’s nothing to me.” I’m just like how you know it. So that is all a valid challenge. I’m putting it on an incredible part of the journey as well. 

Preston Pysh  56:45  

Oh, it was not easy. It was a grind. But I mean, relative to some of the stuff we’re talking about, it’s a little different. 

I’m just curious because you just can’t talk to people that have been to the South Pole or the North Pole. So, my question is, when you got there, are you doing this by yourself? Or did you have a team that was kind of around you, assessing you and making sure that you were okay?

Colin O’Brady  57:14  

I was more or less by myself. There was no one that was consistently with me throughout this entire project. I did bring in a couple of people for key sort of moments. For example, on Denali, though my last mountain, an old friend of mine by the name of Tucker Cunningham came and joined me for that stretch of the journey. He’s a great climber and we’re good friends. So he was there when I actually finished the project. 

On Everest, I climbed with a Sherpa, who I’d met climbing in Nepal before. It was his 7th summit of Everest when we made it to the summit. He is a great strong climbing partner. And then, on the poles, I went with one of the top polar explorers from the United States with me. 

But then a couple of them, I was completely by myself. Completely alone out there. It was a little bit of a mix of everything. And then, my fiancee, Jenna, was really running the show behind the scenes back home with all the stuff we’re doing with our nonprofit and various things.

Preston Pysh  58:10  

I want you to tell this story because this story is just hilarious. So you just completed Everest. You literally just got back down to your base camp at 26,000 feet.

Colin O’Brady  58:23  

Camp IV at 26,000 feet. Yes, you’re way still up there on the mountain.

Preston Pysh  58:29  

You’re out of it, I’m sure. You just did this ridiculously hard climb. And whenever I see in the pictures of that last little bit as you got up to Everest, it looks like you’re going to fall a couple miles off this thing.

Colin O’Brady  58:43  

Yeah, literally, it’s crazy. The last little stretch is called the “Cornice Traverse and the Hillary Step.” It was a famous feature on the mountain. You’re looking down either side of you, it’s like a mile drop off on either side. You’re walking on this tiny little balance beam of snow, essentially across the video. 

So coming down the mountain, like I said, I tried to ascend the summit twice. I finally get to the summit. I’m coming back down. I’ve got one last mountain to climb to finish the world record. I get back to my tent at 26,000 feet where most people stop to sleep at night and then climb. Then climbing back down over the next couple of days. 

[I] pull up my satellite phone. I called Jenna to tell her the news. She’s been a huge part of the success of this project, working all the logistics and craziness in the background. I’m just climbing the mountains, but there’s a million moving parts that you can probably imagine at a project like this. 

And she says, “So Colin, how are you feeling?” I said, “Yeah, feeling good. I mean, I’m exhausted. I’m so happy I’m back in my tent. I’m exhausted. I did it.” But yeah, she says, “Well, I need you to put your boots back on right now.” And I’m like, “What are you talking about?” She’s like, “I need you to put your boots back on because it just so happens that if you can get to the summit of Denali in the next week, you can set not one, but two world records.” 

And I said, “I’m on the summit. What are you talking about? That’s the other side of the world. And Denali normally takes 3 weeks to climb. What are you talking about?” At this point, I was about 2 months ahead of schedule for the Explorers Grand Slam. But I had a shot at setting the Seven Summit’s record which is the mountains exclusive of the poles, even though I had been to the poles in that same period of time. 

And so, I’m competitive and intrigued. I’m like, “Well, okay. Fine. Humor me for a second. What’s that going to be involved in?” She goes, “Well, put your boots back on right now. Climb all the way back down to base camp which is at 17,000 feet.” So another 9,000 people of where I am through huge, vast fields, and all this sort of stuff. 

“There’s going to be a helicopter waiting that I’ve arranged. It’s going take you to Kathmandu, but you don’t have enough time to stay in a hotel in Kathmandu, take a shower, or anything. It can take you straight to the airport, and there’s an evening flight that’s going to take you to Dubai, Seattle to Anchorage. By the time you get to Anchorage, you’ll have about 3 days to climb Denali. That’s the best case scenario. But if you do it, you’ll set not one, but two world records. What do you think?” 

But I know better not than to not listen to her. So, I put my boots back on.

Preston Pysh  1:00:53  

It sounds like you married the right person here. I want to put some context on this. People might not understand Denali. Denali is up in Alaska, and I have some stats here in front of me. It is 20,322 feet. And you climb this in how many days?

Colin O’Brady  1:01:14  

Normally it is climbed in about 3 weeks. It got only about a 30% success rate for people that spend 3 plus weeks on the mountain because the weather’s so bad. It’s a really challenging mountain to climb. And unlike Everest or some of these other mountains, there’s no porters or Sherpas, you really have to be self-sufficient, completely on the mountain. I ended up summiting it in 3 days. 

But the craziest thing happened the day before we’re supposed to go for the summit. We were climbing from way lower down the mountain. Usually, there’s a couple camps that you keep going higher, but we were having to skip those camps. It was me and Tucker, my climbing partner. And then, a huge storm rolled in. It was in massive storm mode, and we’re talking about 60 to 70 mile per hour winds that night. And we’re still, best case scenario, 12 hours below the summit. 

This is a powerful lesson for me, which I love. I love this Henry Ford quote. Some people say it was Confucius Henry Ford. I don’t know. But it’s, “He who says he can and he who says he can’t are both usually right.” 

And so, I said to Tucker, “Can you climb for 15 minutes?” And he was like, “Bro, I’m here for you, man. Like if you want to go and see if we can make it, let’s go.” We put all our gear and we were leaving camp. There’s a couple of other random tents from other climbers. That guy unzips his tent and looks out his head and he goes, “Oh, you guys bailing off this mountain? We heard the storms are going to last like 10 days.”

They were like, “Yeah, we’re thinking about bailing out of here as well.” And we’re like, “No, we’re going for the summit.” And the guys were like, “Get back here. No one’s climbing today. This is ridiculous.” We’re like, “We’re just going to see how it goes.” And so, literally we climb 15 minutes. Tucker and I checked in, “How are your fingers? How are your toes? How are you feeling? I’m good. Want to go another 15 minutes?”

Another 15 minutes. Another half hour. You can see where this is going. An hour turns into 2, turns intro 3, and we find ourselves on the summit of Denali. It meant that I set not one, but I was just a day ahead of setting the second world record. So I came home as a 2-time world record holder. And no one on the entire mountain of Denali, no one else climbed at all that day. Not a single person even moved from their camp. We went up to the summit and came back down in a pretty intense windstorm. 

But I don’t know. It was always interesting when you’re up there. You talk about managing risks. You talked about that in business and whatnot. But it’s always this moment of thinking to myself and kind of this mantra, “This must be what it takes to do something extraordinary. You have to push through these perceived obstacles.” 

But of course, in the mountains, your margin for air with your health, and your body, life and death in a lot of ways is very slight. So you’re always kind of checking in. “Am I doing something too risky or not?” And in this case, I think we were pushing just right on the edge of that envelope, and it turned out well for us. 

I’m proud of the accomplishment, but it didn’t come easy. There’s a video clip of me arriving at the summit of Denali. The moment I actually have set these 2 records that I’ve been working on for multiple years were ultimate at this point. But 139 days straight, you would think it would be like this joy, a smile on my face. But it’s just kind of this look of utter fatigue, being frostbitten, not actually frostbitten, but you have like snow coming off. I don’t know. I’m out of it. I had stood on the summit of Everest just 6 1/2 days before that, so it was a crazy week in my life. And a crazy conclusion to the entire Explorers Grand Slam expedition.

Preston Pysh  1:04:27  

Do you think you could have done Denali that fast if you hadn’t just come off of Everest? I would think that because you spent so much time at such a high elevation, you were probably like rocket fuel going up there.

Colin O’Brady  1:04:39  

So unlike what I said about coming from the North Pole to Everest. I was coming from sea level to Everest, which was really challenging. The one benefit, certainly, was that I was pre-acclimatized to the altitude on Denali. It’s crazy to say that 20,000 feet. It doesn’t seem like that high, but when you’ve just been at 29,000 feet you’re like, “Oh, that’s like nothing. That’s like, a whole mountain but shorter than that.” 

Unfortunately for me, Tucker had actually been over on Denali about a week ahead of time, not thinking that we were going to have to go as fast as we pushed. But thinking, “Oh, Colin’s going to come acclimatized, I should probably get my body acclimatized a little bit ahead of him.” 

So he was actually in position to be able to move quickly as well, which is a testament to just also, like I said, all the things in the background with Jenna and various other people supporting this with the logistics. The planning and things really paid off in the end or something like this.

Preston Pysh  1:05:30  

Real fast. Taking the Everest part out of it, of all these different summits that you did both of the poles, what would you say is the one thing that was just really unique or was just a really cool story from all of it that you could tell us?

Colin O’Brady  1:05:47  

Two things come to mind when you ask that question. I have this video clip of myself. I filmed a lot of this myself. So I reflect on some of these video clips that I have. But there’s this moment when I actually step off the plane in Antarctica. It’s a moment where my first expedition is beginning. I am just so blown away by the landscape as I’m looking around. It’s just like another planet. It was just white. 

I’ve described it before. It’s like standing inside the belly of a ping pong ball. It’s just this surreal environment as you look around it. It was this amazing feeling of, “Oh, I actually get to do this now.” I had been working so hard in the planning and convincing people to support this project, and the sort of “entrepreneurial spirit” behind building this whole campaign. 

It was this great moment. It sounds crazy. But the first step is there’s all this ridiculousness in front of me. And of course, I know that the pain, the drama is going to happen, and the hardship that’s going to go with this. 

But it was like, “Yes, I get to do this, and whoa, where am i right now?” And then, the other place that is pretty incredible as well is actually the North Pole that stands out. I mean hiking across literally a frozen ocean, where ice is drifting underneath you as well. 

We’d set up camp at night. Go to sleep, and then we check our GPS in the morning. We either have a big smile on our face or a frown because we’d actually been drifting like, “Oh, great, we drifted a mile closer to the pole in the middle of the night, or dammit, we shifted the wrong way.” 

That’s just a crazy environment with these huge icebergs essentially, and big flows of ice cracking to each other. We were actually carrying our sleds over 10-foot walls of ice where ice had kind of compacted. It’s just like, in terms of landscape, it’s just one of those things that you can’t even believe it exists until you’re there. It’s just a wild place. 

And so, to have the opportunity for me to experience places like that, in the wild unknown, was just such an incredibly fortunate experience. I’m so grateful to be able to have experienced that.

Preston Pysh  1:07:43  

Unbelievable. So this is what I want people to really hear. Out of all of this. Your message is a message of mindset. Talk to us about what you’ve learned through this entire journey because what happened to you back in Thailand was probably the biggest blessing in your life. 

Although, you didn’t realize it at the time, it was the deepest, darkest thing that could ever happen to you. But when you look back at everything that’s unfolded since, you probably would have never done any of this without that event, correct?

Colin O’Brady  1:08:14  

Absolutely. People ask me sometimes if you go back in a time machine, would you still jump that flaming rope. And of course, I know the pain and trauma that it caused me and my family and all this sort of stuff, but I’d be lying to say that it also taught me simultaneously one of life’s greatest lessons, which is resilience, perseverance, and getting through hard times. Because unfortunately, in life, and I hope that nobody out there goes through the exact same accident as me. 

But as we all go through life, we inevitably face setbacks and traumas of some kind. And really, what I realized over time is it’s up to us how we’re going to react to those things. In that hospital room, I could have gone down that deep, dark downward spiral, which I wanted to. But my mother pulled me out of that and showed me another way. What I’ve realized is this amazing ability that we have in our own minds to shift towards that positive mindset and to keep taking steps forward one step at a time. 

I’m obviously a big believer in setting this audacious goal. Like I was just saying, “Hey, I’m going to climb the tallest mountain the world. I’m not a professional mountaineer. I don’t have funding but I’m going to do it.” It sounded ridiculous. But then, what did I do? I said, “Okay, well, what can I do today to figure that out?” I might have gone to my computer and Googled: “What are the tallest seven mountains?” 

Literally, the first baby steps. The same example of, “Great, kid. You want to race a triathlon. You’re in a wheelchair. You need to figure out how to take one step today.” And so, something that is a huge part of my life, but I also tell others is I actually, symbolically carry around a small rock with me, which is actually a rock from the summit of Mount Everest. 

And the reason that I carry that around with me as a totem now is it’s a daily reminder for me that even Mount Everest, even the biggest mountain in the world, ultimately can be broken down to its smallest component parts. It is a bunch of small rocks stacked on top of each other, in a lot of ways, many steps leading to the summit. 

And so for me, living by that and shifting a mindset towards the positive when facing obstacles, when facing setbacks, when setting audacious goals, that is how we get there. We set the goal. That’s the Northstar. I know you guys focus a lot on billionaires and the way people accumulate wealth. 

All those people had amazingly huge ideas that were industry-shattering ideas that probably most people said, “That’s crazy. That’s not going to work. Here’s all the million reasons why,” but they were like, “Nope, I believe in myself. And not only [do] I believe in myself, I’m going to wake up every day and take that one small step or stack that one tiny little rock.” 

And eventually, after thousands, if not millions of rocks are stacked on top of each other, I’m going to reach the summit of whatever your amount of risk is. And so, so much of that comes from having that positive mindset, believing in yourself and really realizing that setbacks are inevitable. Obstacles are inevitable. But it’s how we choose to react to them is what makes all the difference in the long run.

Preston Pysh  1:11:04  

I couldn’t have said it any better. So we have a ton of people listening to the show. A lot of people in finance. Please tell people about your nonprofit. Where they can go to donate, because I know there’s a lot of people listening to this that would love to help you and your wife out with your incredible nonprofit. So tell them everything about it. We’ll have the link in the show notes, so people can go there and donate.

Colin O’Brady  1:11:31  

The best way to track me down, I’m pretty active on social media. I’m @colinobrady. Just my name. Our nonprofit is called Beyond 72. So the 7 for the summits, and the 2 for the poles is what we named it. Our website is beyond72.com. I got a lot of information on the work that we do in schools, with kids, and everything like that. All the information is on there, as well as, I’m sure in the show notes, you’ll probably link my TED talk and other media that kind of tell us a story in different format and whatnot. 

So yeah, definitely please. We love hearing from people. Reach out. Just love and support. All of that means the world to us. And really, like I said, my larger purpose for doing all these things is not to just pat myself on the back and say, “Oh, great. I’ve done some amazing things.” But it’s really to be a catalyst of inspiration for others to tackle hard things. 

I think that as humans, we have so much inside of all of us, and we can achieve great things. I’ve been inspired by so many people over time, mentors, and different stories. The power of storytelling is just so rich and valuable. So, I love the opportunity. And thank you, Preston, for giving me the opportunity to share this story today. 

Preston Pysh 1:12:03

This is so inspirational for people because everyone’s got these goals out there, and they’re hearing this story and are thinking, “Hey, if this guy can go do that kind of stuff, I can surely do this goal that I have on my plate that I’m looking to accomplish.” 

So, Colin, thank you. I’m just honored to have met you and to just share a little time with you on the mountain. And then, today as well. So thank you for your time, Colin.

Colin O’Brady 1:13:05

Absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. 

Preston Pysh  1:13:07  

So I really hope you guys enjoyed this week’s episode. I know this was very different from the typical show that we do. But some of the topics are really important for long term business success that we were talking about. And after recording the show, I asked Jesse if he plans on doing something like this again in the future. And he replied with, “Absolutely, yes,” in his email to me. 

So if you’re listening to this episode and feeling motivated to get a little grittier in your life, Jesse’s website for this event is 29zero29.com. We’ll have a link to Jesse’s website in our show notes. 

And if you’re feeling like you want to do this in 2018, there’s a link on his website where you can sign up, enter your email, name and information, so that you can learn more about the event. That way, they have your name and they can contact you 

All right. So that’s all we have for you guys for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us, and we’ll see you guys next week.