Yes Your Way to Success: What Endurance Teaches Us About Leadership

So if you think of casual endurance athletes like a 5K, you'd probably try and want to beat 30 minutes, a marathon, you probably want to beat four hours. This was a 36 hour endurance challenge. I had no formal management or leadership training. I was just told I was doing a great job and do that great job with the team. Now I realized pretty quick that not everyone is me. I was lucky that I learned pretty quickly to embrace diversity of thought. And to me, it was part of sort of my insatiable appetite for learning. I just found that by focusing on others and reaching out to catch up, lend an ear, see how I can help them. It just the business has come back to me, the relationships have come back to me, the introductions.

Every team says they want to win, but winning takes more than just stockpiling talent. It takes trust, discipline, hard conversations, and leaders who know how to coach people through pressure. I'm Ed Molitor and this is the Athletics of Business, where the lessons of high performing teams, elite athletes and high impact coaches become the playbook for more impactful leadership, stronger cultures, and sustained success. Gavin, thank you so much for joining us today on the Athletics of Business podcast. It is great to have you here.

Thanks, Ed. So happy to be here.

Hey, listen, first and foremost, congratulations on all your success. And I'm talking both professional, impersonal, your book, The Endurance Challenges, everything that we're going to jump into today, it's been one amazing journey you're on.

Thanks. I feel like I've packed a lifetime into the last five years.

Well, and I'm sure the listener will feel the same after they listen to you. But it's pretty amazing how, like, early lessons for you and early challenges for you and accomplishments, for that matter, have sort of showed up again in the way you went about doing it early in life. Right. Football, the junior National Skiing team, you know, all of those things and what your approach was and what your mindset was. But, you know, first, take the listener through your professional journey and how this crazy idea you have of these endurance challenges, they've connected, you know, and how they both sort of fed off of each other.

Sure. I've gone in and out my entire life of being an entrepreneur. Even As a kid, 8, 9 years old, I set up a landscaping business and went to people's houses and raked their leaves. And I feel like I was always, always hustling a little bit. I have started a business every decade of my lifetime, which was kind of shocking to think back on, but it's actually true. So it could be as small as a landscaping business. Or I had a ski tuning business in college and taught some of my friends how to tune skis all the way up to starting a Wall street equity research company. And now I have my own consulting company where I help companies save money and improve margin when they purchase goods and services.

You know, and when you say something like that, you know, being a business owner, you understand the significance of that. But someone who doesn't swim in that circle, so to speak, it doesn't really sound that glamorous or that sexy. But I'm here to tell you it's as significant as you get. Right. Because we can't always predict or control the revenue, but we certainly can control the cost. But you are such a relationship person and you connect with people. Normally when you hear about procurement and relationships and connection, they don't necessarily go hand in hand. But how is that? How has your personality helped you thrive in that area?

Sure, I think it happened. I had very outgoing parents, and I'm a only child. So if I went to a party with them, cocktail party, local park, something like that, I did a lot of listening and observing because my parents were pretty outspoken, social, bubbly people. So it took work and effort for me to get comfortable finding my voice and speaking. And I think the one thing that helped me in my career, I spent two years at Merrill lynch in their financial consultant training program. And I was required to call 100 people a day. True cold calls. I didn't know who they were. I was given an index card or a list of names of what they thought they were. Didn't even know if it was a good number. But every day, Monday through Friday, call 100 people, and it was logged and tracked.

Yeah. So you got really good at rejection.

I did. I was told no quite a bit. And that was okay. That was okay.

I have a question, and I want to go back to your early days, if this is okay. As I looked at my notes for a second to write something down, and you and I were having a conversation months ago, and things fascinate me about people, and you know this to be true, but you played Division 3 football at Hamilton College, but yet you were also a member of the USA Junior Junior Olympic Ski Team as an aerial skier. Those normally aren't near each other on someone's resume. Okay. Just that it's very challenging to do one of those things, let alone both of those things. How in God's name did you. And that was probably an early indicator of how nuts you really are, in a great way, obviously. But how did you make that happen? Like, how are you able to do those two things? Accomplish those two things?

Sure.

Besides being an amazing athlete?

No. So for me, and I think it's one of these things that have come in and out of favor in my brain, but I found my passion. Skiing is my favorite number one sport. I, to this day, when I am skiing on the snow, I am smiling and laughing out loud. I'm having so much fun and enjoy it is one of my number one things to do for myself, for friends and family. So I knew at about. I started skiing when I was six. When I was eight, I went on a vacation to Waterville Valley, New Hampshire. And my parents were great. They always got me a ski lesson. And on that trip we were with friends. So I was like, oh, I can take a ski lesson with my friends, spend the day with them. It'll be great. So we go to the ski school counter to sign up, and we're looking and we could have signed up for a normal ski lesson, learned how to turn, go down the mountain, but right next to them was the Waterville Valley Black and Blue Trail Smashers Freestyle Club offering jumping lessons like they were, why not?

Why not?

And they're like, we'll teach your kids how to jump. They can go jump with our freestyle school freestyle kids. So that trip, my buddies and I learned how to jump, and it was amazing. We just had so much fun going out these freestyle jumps. So I learned about the freestyle club, I learned about the school, and we went back to Waterville Valley the next year. And I told my parents, I said, I want to go to Waterville Valley Academy and be a freestyle skier at nine years old.

So you were hooked. That was it.

That was hooked. They basically said, yeah, yeah, whatever. Okay, get good grades and come back to us when you're in high school, and if you still have the passion for skiing, we'll let you apply. So my freshman year in high school, sitting at the dinner table, I said, hey, remember five years ago when you said I could go to Waterville Valley Academy if I had good grades and still loved skiing? They said, no, but we have no reason not to believe you, so let's go. And I tried out and applied and was accepted and started my freestyle skiing career. Now the interesting thing, I played football in eighth grade. I played football in ninth grade. Going to compete. They didn't let me play football. So it was choose skiing or football. I chose skiing.

Wait, who gave you that ultimatum?

The ski or the football, the skiing school.

Okay, yeah. You have to go on all in on something like that. How hard was that? Was that hard for you to say no to football for a minute?

No, not as hard as you'd think, because skiing was number one. It was clear number one. So I skied. I got injured. I blew up my knee. I went and got it checked out. They said, you should probably stop skiing and have surgery to clean up a meniscus tear. If you go back and ski, you'll probably injure the other knee, just compensating. And I said, well, the way skiing works, the way to get promoted up the ranks, it's kind of like minor league. It's kind of like baseball, rookie league, single A, double A, triple A, freestyle skiing set up the same way. It's an Eastern B team, an Eastern A team, a national team, et cetera. And you work up to the top of the pyramid on the World Cup. So the only way I could get moved up is if I competed at the end of year championships. So I was like, I'm not missing that. I want to get moved up. So I went back and I heard the. I blew out the other knee just like they said I might, so had to do rehab, came back stronger. There's other little rules and things. So I did get promoted to a. I had a good year.

Okay.

So. Well, here's the thing.

It's just like, you don't necessarily blow out both knees and then default to go back to playing football. Okay.

No.

So how did that all work out? So when you walked away, then what was the catalyst? To walk away from skiing and to go back to football.

So skiing I learned in the two years that I did it. So sophomore, junior year of high school, my passion was moguls, but I excelled at aerials. And I then had to make the decision if I stayed on the freestyle skiing path, it would have taken me eight years to graduate college because I would have to step away in the winter and train and ski. And there was not virtual classes back then. It just would have been chopped up. And the people I knew, it took them eight years to get through college. And I said, look, it's. I love it, but it's not my passion. I'm going to go back to my high school but keep skiing. I competed my senior year, but not through Waterville Valley Academy. As a student, I just went up on weekends and trained when I could and competed. But then I was allowed to play football again.

Now, here's an aerials, a little bit different monster. But you'd reference like when you're skiing, you're constantly smiling and laughing. Like to me, skiing is a very freeing sport. Right. Whereas football is a very violent. Wonderfully so time our team oriented sport. Right. So you have these two totally different separate worlds. So when you get back to football, first of all, did football welcome you with open arms? We're like, that's really cool. You went and did that and here we are. Come on, let's go.

So that was interesting because I had only played freshman football and then I disappeared for two years because I went to the skiing academy and then I came back for senior year. I did go to a meeting at the end of my junior year. The football interest meeting. Everyone that's interested in playing should come to this meeting. And I went into the meeting. The head coach said, who are you? I don't know who you are. I'm here to play varsity football next year. I said, okay kid, whatever. We'll see you next year. Camp starts in August. So they didn't know who I was. I was not a proven commodity, but I was an athlete. So I did all the summer training, I did all the summer lifting, showed up for camp. I was the second fastest kid on the team. I was one of the biggest kids on the team as one of the fastest. So they didn't know what to do with me. We had an amazing running back and I like to play running back. So they're like, you play wide receiver and cornerback, but we don't. You're not going to be a starter. Like we just have no history with you. First game, they put me in at the end of the game, threw me one pass, I scored a touchdown. Second game, put me in towards the end of the game, threw one pass, I scored a touchdown. Didn't play much defense then sort. We had a tough, tough, tough year. Our football field was under construction, so every game was an away game and our starting quarterback was injured, who was a senior and was going to be a four year player. So the team did not do great. And the coach basically opened things up again after the second week and said, we're starting from scratch, every position's open. And from that point forward I started at wide receiver, started at cornerback and played special teams and never came off the field and ended up making all league.

It's an amazing story. You go on to play at Hampton College and here's why I wanted you to dive in there a little bit is because it speaks to kind of the way you go about Doing things right. And it speaks to the title of your book. It is, yes, your way to success. And then why don't you. But you say yes, and then you figure it out, right? So you take a lesson, how to jump at 8 years old. At 9, you go back to the aerial school. Next thing you know, you're in junior national team. You go back to football after two knee surgeries, you figure out how you're going to become a starter. You do that, you excel. You go play college football. And then your professional journey. And you had, I mean, you have had an amazing journey. And then Covid hits, right? And then Covid hits. And what in that moment changed in your world? Because it really, though it's only six years ago, seems like a lifetime ago. And again, you say, you said you squeezed a lifetime into 51 years. I feel like you've squeezed a lifetime into the last six years.

I agree with that. So Covid was transformative for me and on many levels. Where I live in Pennsylvania was one of the most locked down in the country. My kids did not go to school in person for two years, two straight years. So at that time, I worked for a Japanese company. We went fully virtual, but it put me in a position where I was in a global role. I was in a lead, a VP and leader in the company. I woke up and talked to Europe. I then went about my day job with my team in North America. Then I took calls with Asia after dinner. And I was working 20 hour days. My boss at the time, who I'd worked with previously, one of my favorite leaders of all time, had a health issue, left the company, ultimately never came back to work. The health issue was so serious. So I'm working 20 hour days. I'm not moving, I'm not outside, I'm not getting the daily walking. There were activities during that time, like, let's have a virtual happy hour. Sounds like you're just. I'm drinking in my office at home.

It's a great idea. I mean, it really was like, it sounded, I should say it sounded like a great idea.

It did, but it just was. That was like the one thing you could do is have these happy hours and drinking. So then I felt like I was drinking too much and not eating in a healthy way. And my wife and I got together and just said, we need to change. We need to do something different. We need to change. This is not healthy. We feel like we're prisoners in our own home. And her brother, my wife's brother, had participated in an endurance challenge named 29029 Everesting. And the purpose of this challenge is to show up at one of the five, six, seven mountains where they host an event. So maybe Whistler, British Columbia, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, places like that. You and 300 other people start hiking up the mountain at 6:00am on a Friday and by 6:00pm on Saturday, 36 hours later, you're goal is to climb 29,029 vertical feet. Which means in those 36 hours you climb the equivalent of Mount Everest. So this was, it was a herculean type task. But the folks at 29029 Everesting do a couple things that we love. One, they're all about community. It's not a race, it's you against you. And they want to be the endurance event company that cares the most. It's just a hands on white glove, world class experience. And we just, we needed to move, we needed to get outside. As I said, we just felt like we were unhealthy. My wife and my, our vacations were normally sitting at a beach somewhere reading a book, not moving. So we just needed to like jumpstart ourselves, get moving again, get outside, do something for ourselves physically and mentally.

To do that, you didn't just say hey, let's go for a walk. Right? Because that's, that's usually the challenge, right? Because when people try to make a change and they try to start doing something, they don't attach it to something very significant and meaningful. And you, you folks did that. So how did that help you in, in, you know, because obviously the longest journey begins with the first step, right? My grandfather used to always say that to me. But that, that had to help knowing that there was a purpose behind everything that you were doing each day.

A lot was going on at the time. So with 29029 Everesting, they give you coaches and they give you a 20 week plan. So we had some organized structure. The other thing is work was no longer serving me. Like I just working 20 hours a week. My boss had a physical breakdown. I saw the writing on the wall that I was going down the same path and I just knew I couldn't do it anymore. Like physically and mentally I just couldn't work that workload. And I quite frankly eating and drinking too much and not moving. I thought I was gonna follow in his footsteps with like a heart attack or stroke, something terrible. So that's why we just, we needed to, needed to make this change. The 29,029 Eversting was taking care of me physically and getting me to move. Then I knew I was going to leave my job and start something else. At that time, I didn't know what it was. I just knew I couldn't physically and mentally put into 20 hours a day of work. I wanted to be with my friends and family. I wanted to get better, physically wanted to spend time outside. I just knew it wasn't that job. And I just had to step away and give myself time to heal and move and figure out what I wanted to do next.

So let's talk about that. So how is that process? And then you go to the first Everest.

Yep. So the first Everest was not as.

I don't mean to laugh because it's not a great ending to the story, but the look on your face is just.

It's priceless.

And we've had this conversation before, so. Although I know it's coming.

Yeah. One of my nicknames at work is Nostradamus because I just. I have a ability to predict the future and just. And it's part of how I learn and process things. I hadn't competed athletically since I was 19. I'm now 46. I had moved up the corporate ladder. I had experience starting companies, but it was very predictable. It was going to work out. It was working out. I could follow my steps and processes, and it worked out. 99% of the time. I had never. I had run 2.5ks. That was my endurance experience, 2.5ks. So I thought I was in a great shape. I did the 20 weeks of training. I listened to all the coaches calls. My wife and I show up to Snow Basin, Utah. We do. We hike up once. It's awesome. See a beautiful sunrise. We're feeling great. Second ascent, and there's 13 of them. So. Second ascent, I got a cramp in my leg. I was like, huh, this isn't good. I got my way up there. Third ascent, the cramp got a lot worse. Fourth ascent, I have cramps in both my legs. And I tell my wife to go find help because I was really hurting. Like Charlie horse legs, like, just spasming.

How is your wife doing at this point?

She's fine. She's just walking ahead of me, like, no big deal. So I went. I got to the top. You hike up, you take a ski gondola down. So as I'm taking a ski gondola down, my legs are shaking. A coach is with me. I get to the bottom and stand up. I turn a shade of white. The coach said she has never seen on human skin before. And I faint. So it's not even lunchtime for this thing and I'm already fainting. So it took me a while to recover. I did end up going back out the next day and doing three more ascents and did it differently. We can touch on that. But I did it differently that time and got through the three ascents. That experience was so humbling because I thought I did everything I was supposed to. And at the time, it was the most successful event 29029 had ever done. The most people in their history finished and I fainted and I thought I did everything.

Before lunch on day one.

Yeah, before lunch. We're like six hours in. Like it's not even that far in.

So what happens then?

So I really struggled and I called that coach that was in the gondola with me. It turns out I was doing everything I thought I was supposed to do and listening to what, to the coach's words, but I wasn't hearing what they were actually saying. And I was not an endurance athlete. I completely missed heart rate zone training, just ignored it. I didn't understand it. I didn't know what they were talking about. I didn't have a heart rate monitor device that I wore when I was training. I absolutely, completely missed that and didn't understand it.

So yeah, when I started to do my second half Ironman, I started to pay way more attention to the heart rate, right? And the first one was fine. I mean, everything went great. It was an awesome experience. But just because you do well doesn't mean you can't do better. And I had some buddies that did better and I would ask them what they did. And that heart rate monitoring was a huge, huge thing. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I know, I know the type of listeners that we have out here know they're into these very things that you're talking about. So I would love for you to walk them through that.

So if you think of casual endurance athletes like a 5K, you'd probably try and wanna beat 30 minutes a marathon, you probably wanna beat four hours. This was a 36 hour endurance challenge. This is longer than triathlons that are normally what, 10 hours or 12 hours garments. Heart rate becomes the most critical piece of what you're trying to manage in an endurance challenge. And you need to train to heart rate zone 2, which is low, very conversational, and you can go all day. And why is that important? It's important because that's how you consume calories in a normal way. That's how you consume water and electrolytes in a normal way. If you're at a higher heart rate, like 150, 170, something much higher on the spectrum, you will consume more calories, you will consume more electrolytes. And over the course of 36 hours, if you under eat and under drink, you can never catch up. It's the one critical mistake you can make. So that first Everest that I did, I was go. I was so excited, so jacked up on adrenaline, I was going way faster than I ever trained. It immediately put my food and hydration plan out the window. I was dead. I was dead. On the second lap, I went so fast on the first lap.

Was that out of excitement or just I need to get this done as quickly as I possibly can?

Excitement? Because it was. It was finally there. 20 weeks of training, the weather looked great. People are having fun and talking, and it was just the adrenaline is so high. I don't know if you've ever gotten to the even, like the coin toss of a football game, like, your heart rate's up, like, you're ready to go. Standing at the top of the ski rut, your heart rate's up, you're ready to go. Like, if you actually track it, I would guess your heart rate's probably a little higher when you're about to start something, just because you have that adrenaline and excitement that is finally here.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the running joke. When my kids were a little bit younger with my Garmin watch, you know, I made a joke one day about what they were doing to dad's heart rate, and they now they want to see my watch. Right. You know, they think it's really cool. You know, that's not supposed to be, like, an accomplishment. You're proud of the first challenge. You have a saying that failure is learning in disguise. Right. And that's a theme in not just only your book, but in your life. So this is a learning moment for you. You walk away from this, then what happens?

Yeah, so that I think I left with heart rate monitoring, but I left with concepts for life. Because as I said, I. I listened, but I didn't hear. And that was over 20 weeks. That wasn't like, I missed one 15 minute conversation. I missed it over 20 weeks. It was right there in front of me visually on my training sheets. There was a coaches call every two weeks. I went to. I just. I didn't hear and process it, so. But this got me excited to learn more. Like, you can quote, unquote, Say I failed at that challenge. Cause I didn't get, I didn't climb Mount Everest. I climbed seven out of the 13 ascents. What was reinforced after I talked to the coach and said, like, oh my gosh, I totally screwed up. What is reinforced is when you're an endurance challenge athlete, when you're working on a long project at work, 10 months, 18 months, whatever it might be. You need to enjoy the process and pay attention to the process. Of course I wanted to finish. Of course I wanted to say I got to Everest. But looking back, I spent amazing time with my wife, training. I lost a bunch of weight, I got into shape, I spent a lot of time outside, brought my kids on training hikes. Like, I really put myself in a better position physically and mentally over those 20 weeks. I didn't manage the day. Like, because I didn't, I didn't hear what was going on. I didn't manage the day. So it's still something I work on. Like you can, if you're doing, I'm going to do another one of these challenges in July.

Right.

I can't control the weather. I can't control how I feel that day. I can't control if I get a blister or not. There's so many variables that go into 36 hours. You just can't control all of that. But what I can control is how I train, going into that, making sure I'm putting in the time, listening to my body, listening to my coaches, really make sure I understand. And I'm looking for incremental improvement through the enjoyment of that process. Yeah.

As all of this was happening and you were evolving, did you notice the shift in your world from a transactional one to a transformational one and just kind of the way you went about doing things?

A hundred percent. I think for the, I'm laughing at myself, but for the first time in my life, I found patience. Like, I, I really stepped back and listened to, like, I really needed to listen. I really needed to make sure I understood what was going on. I'm now asking people to explain things in a different way. If I didn't understand it, like, if I just didn't. A lot of times you just, someone's speaking and you just let them go. And I don't know if maybe you leave that conversation. You're like, did I really hear that? Well, I'm now stopping and saying, like, did I, did you really say this or will you explain that in a different way? Think of just the social media, email driven culture we're in right now. Now I will write an email in response to something. I don't send it. I come back to it one day later and read it again and see if it's relevant. Sometimes I'll sit three days, four days on that response. And a lot of times, things just resolve themselves over time. I didn't need to respond. I just needed to have some patience, let things fall the way they may. It doesn't need to happen urgently. It doesn't. You don't need to say something in that minute or have an immediate response. I have so much more patience than I ever had. It's really been nice to step back and listen and process things and not feel like everything happens, has to happen immediately.

This happens a lot. And this is going to be unexpected question for you. Okay. Oftentimes I have an epiphany, even if it is like the eighth time we've spoken. All right. But in what you did professionally, a lot of it was about controlling the cost, controlling different elements of the transaction. Transaction process. Right. So control is a big part of who you were. Did you all of a sudden get to a point where you realize by doing this endurance challenge, you were starting to give up control of the elements of what would happen to you? You know, what you can control, was your response. But did you see a connection between giving up control of certain elements and gaining more patience in your world?

So I said that work was easier for me than endurance.

Yeah.

That revelation happened to me earlier in my career, and when I became a manager for the first time.

Okay.

I was tapped to be a manager because it was the next step of going from an individual contributor to a manager and getting a promotion. I had no formal management or leadership training. I was just told I was doing a great job and do that great job with a team now?

Yeah.

I realized pretty quickly that not everyone is me. People go to work for different reasons. People have different motivators. People have different experiences. I was lucky that I learned pretty quickly to embrace diversity of thought. And to me, it was part of sort of my insatiable appetite for learning, that I'm just always learning, always learning, always learning. So I learned about myself as none of these people are like me. Let's embrace what they like, who they want to be, what they want out of work, why they're working, and then let's tap into that. So that I had that. That was 2010, so that was almost 10 years before I did the endurance challenge.

So I, we have to get back to endurance challenge because there's so much more good stuff coming. But you just brought something up in the continuous learning. And you and I talked a couple weeks ago and you said something to me that. And I have it pulled up here on the other screen because it was so good. Toddler logic. Can you talk the listener through that?

Absolutely. So I, in my quest to learn and in my ability, in my statement that failure is really learning in disguise, I thought of a baby and a toddler, and a toddler, when they walk for the first time, they fall down, they get up, they fall down, they get up, they fall down. They might fall down a thousand times, but for them, walking is what they wanted to do next. So they kept trying. And they had to go through lots of different variables. Different. Maybe they had socks on, maybe they didn't. Maybe they had socks and shoes. Maybe the terrain was different. Maybe there was something to hold onto and not. They're processing thousands of data points to be able to learn how to walk. Imagine if a toddler, Imagine if a baby stood up for the first time and fell and never walked again. Never tried to walk again.

Yeah, that'd be a bad deal.

It's just that's not how things happen. So I looked into this concept more and learned that this happens in children's brain until they're six. When they're six, they start to realize someone's watching them and that someone is probably an adult. So they have six years of free learning where they're just trying and trying and trying and trying and no one cares. They don't care. They'll just keep trying to do it. So for me, I have that same attitude in everyday life that I just like the endurance challenge. I don't. I didn't believe I was upset and I didn't understand why I struggled so much in that first 29,029. But I figured it out. I went out to find my own data points. I talked to the coach. I did like my own Gavin360 on what went wrong and what went right. And then I started to dive into it, read articles, listen to podcasts, go out and talk to more people who does triathlons, who does marathons, who does trail running to just get different perspectives. And then I decided I wanted to do it again because I knew I made a mistake. I knew I made a mistake going too hard, which messed up my fuel and hydration plan because I never listened. I never heard heart rate zone and what that meant. So for me then the. Just the very next year, I signed up to do Two. So I was like, I already signed up to do one and trained for it. I'm gonna sign up to do two. Let's go for two the next year.

I mean, sure, why not go for two after you cramped before lunch on the first day with the last one. That speaks to your identifying what it is you wanna do. Figuring out what you need to do to. And then going. And then figuring it out.

Yeah. So. So for that, like just the way I think is to try to. And it comes with. I'm not really surprised very often. And why I'm nicknamed Nostradamus. Just because my brain works like a filing cabinet. I put my email like a filing cabinet so I can recall things really quickly and then get lots of data points and put them into my brain and put them into my notebooks and put a plan together. So for the next year, hired a coach. I paid attention to my shoes, my socks, my underwear, my shorts, my shirt, my fueling plan, my hydration plan, Kept talking to people with the coach. I had immediate feedback, went and did a training and something didn't go right. Immediate feedback. So I logged every single day, every training to just. And I shared that log with my coach so we could just talk through every single set. Immediate feedback.

What would you put in the log, Gavin? Like, what were some of the things that. I know you just talked about what you're paying attention to, but would you actually put like today this happened. I had this much sleep last night. I drank this much.

Like, what was going into your logging? Logging my sleep, Logging how much, what I ate and when, logging what I drank and when. Then while I was out hiking or doing the exercise, how did I feel? Was I sluggish? Was I not sluggish? Did I eat during and start to feel better? Did I try a new electrolyte and compare that to the old electrolyte and see how that went. Was I consuming 1500 milligrams of sodium per hour or 1000? Like, I was into very. A lot of detail and. But a lot of that, as you said, was feel like I went for a ruck carrying 25 pounds of weight. That hurt my shoulders. So that's feedback. This hurt my shoulders. This step ups with the ruck on hurt my knees when I stepped down. Like, were my shoes old? Did I need new shoes? Did I need new insoles? It was just like how I'm processing these data points on a continuous basis.

Yeah. Is it safe to say that those feedback loops that you ran. Right. Continuously ran that it helped prepare You. So if you're going for a hike or a walk or, you know, a ruck walk, whatever it is, and you're like, today I'm feeling this. This is what I'm. You know, these are the amount of electrolytes in the type I took. This is the weather. This is the sleep I had last night. I remember when this happened last time, and things weren't so good or I crushed it today. This is going to be great. So did that. Those feedback loops help prepare you and respond in certain situations, in future workouts, in future climbs?

Yes. The irony of all that. The second endurance challenge I did, I went back to Snow Basin, Utah, one year later to hit the same mountain.

Yep.

I fainted twice and went to the hospital. So I did seven ascents the first time. I did ten the second time. And again, I was just progress. I did better. Exactly. I did better. I broke my plan on the first day. I listened to someone that was not my coach tell me about a food and hydration plan I should try, and didn't. My coach was there. Like, I could have contacted him. My nutritionist was there. I could have contacted her. And I didn't. And I started eating sugary crap foods that I didn't train with ever. And that was the first day. I literally broke my plan on the first day. Again.

What did they do when they found out what you took?

Called me out.

Yeah.

Good. It's funny, too. I'm gonna have to investigate this further. The coaches that I have that are women call me out immediately. The men sort of baby me a little bit, but the women I've hired to work with me are just one second. Then they're like, gavin, you totally messed up your plan. Like, what is the matter with you? You should have called me. I was right here. You messed this up. Why'd you do that? So, yeah, some strong wind.

That is interesting, though. Yeah. It's good to have strong women in our lives. So you go to the hospital, you faint twice, you go to the hospital. Now what?

So now I'm signed up to do the second one of the year, two or three months later. So luckily, I didn't have a health issue. I was just dumb again with not following my fuel and hydration plan. I never, ever, ever get blood work done after an endurance challenge. You look like you're stranded on an island for two weeks with no food and water, like your body's just going through a lot. So I was fine, and now I had to prepare for the next one. That one was Interesting. Because I was distracted. I started a new job, and my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And my mother and I talked and we needed. They lived three hours away from me. We had to go through the process to sell their house of 52 years, move them out, move them closer to me, so as his Alzheimer's progressed, he could get the support he needed. So I was very distracted. I did my training, kept with my coaches, but just the focus was not on this next event. When I so driving, I even had a work conference where I had to speak. It was a public speaker, like, two days before the event started. So I was that distracted, focused on work and speaking and other things. So this one was in. This event was in Vermont. So I drove from Pennsylvania to Vermont. When I saw the mountain, I burst out into tears, like all of the emotions of my father. The new job, now I'm going to do this challenge again. I've done it twice and screwed up. Like, what's going to be different this time? Luckily for me, my wife was volunteering with a bunch of friends at that event. So she was there. There's going to be a support structure there. The thing I had to process was the worst weather ever for one of these events was coming in. It ultimately rained 5 inches over 36 hours.

And you're walking downhill, uphill.

Uphill only.

Sorry, excuse me. You're riding downhill, you're walking.

So imagine that much rain as you're walking up the ski trail and people are walking up with you. The trail disappears because the next time you come up, it's a stream. So you had to find another path up. So look, that is the one I finished. That still to this day is the least successful 29029 ever finished it. 40% of the participants finished. It's usually.

But the most successful one was the one you learned from, correct?

Yeah, correct. So I was able to put it all together. I even on the second day, I fought one of the coaches who's like, you're gonna drink Coca Cola and eat and, like, eat something. And I go, no, I'm not. It's not part of my plan. I'm not eating. I'm not drinking sugar or caffeine. He's like, no, Gavin, you have to do it. I was like, I'm not doing it. And my nutritionist was there too. I was like, go deal with her. I'm not doing it. So I got into a fight with him on the side of the mountain about not drinking Coke.

Yeah. It come a long way, though, Gavin.

I did. So I stuck to the plan and that and it worked. Like mentally focusing for 36 hours.

That's awesome.

It's hard, but I did it. I finished it. I did one last summer at Whistler, British Columbia. Finished that. So I was 0 for 2 and now I'm 2 for 4 because I finished the last two and I'll go for three in a row in July.

That's incredible. Before we wrap this up, I have another point I want to touch on, but I want to make sure that with the time we have, we talk about where the listener can find your book, where they can find out more about you, whether it be professional or with the endurance and things of that nature.

Sure. Thanks, Ed. So I have a fantastic publisher. The book is available in 80 countries, every major publishing house. It's on Amazon. Very grateful that I went through this. It's become an Amazon bestseller. So that's been really exciting. I have a website. Yes, your way dot com. Where you can see more about me, figure out how to book me for speaking engagements. So yesterday.com and any major book outlets going to have my book.

Okay. And we will have a link to the book as well as to your website in the show notes so listeners can go there and they can get those as well.

Thank you.

I have to read it verbatim because you share with me in an email and then we talked about it and you said in 2022, I started to notice this pattern in my life. Okay. When I go out of my way to help people, make introduction, share what I know, show up for them without expecting anything in return, I get these seemingly random rewards. New clients, new friendships, opportunities I couldn't have scripted. My philosophy is simple. Lead with help and let the rewards take care of themselves. Right. You do things, Gavin, in your life and I've gotten to know this about you. You do them the right way for the right reasons and then at the right time. Talk to me about how that came about in 2022 and how it's like a self fulfilling process. I mean, it's absolutely the law of attraction. Right. I mean, you are so freaking good at it. But walk the listener through that here for a few minutes.

Sure. It's been ingrained in me my entire life. So I know when we last spoke, Ed, we. I said it was. I really noticed it about five years ago. So my father did succumb to Alzheimer's May 3rd and passed away. In thinking of his memory and what a strong and powerful, wonderful, nice man that he was, I had the opportunity to travel with him regularly. He was a pilot, a commercial pilot for Federal Express. So even in 1977, I flew on a plane on his lap. Like when that was allowed. It's not allowed anymore. But what spoke my father was, I already told you, he was very outgoing and well spoken and I did a lot of listening when I was growing up. But what really resonated with me as we traveled around the world, literally Anchorage, Alaska. We went to the FedEx office and everyone knew him by name. We went to the hotel where he stayed when he was part of a flight crew. He was greeted by name at the front desk, by the manager, the night desk worker, FedEx for him. He flew out of Newark, New Jersey. We did a take your child to work day. So I got to go down there. Every single person that came across knew who my dad was. I was like, dad, how does everyone know you? He goes, I treat them like humans. I treat them like they're in my house. I'm a Captain on the 747 and I don't care. I'm not better than them. We're all flesh and blood. I treat them nicely. I'm not here to big time them and say I'm some powerful captain person and they're just working the desk here. I treat everyone with respect and as if they're in my home. I saw that my entire life and like Christmas would come and someone from Alaska would send them cookies to our house. Like things would. Gifts would just appear because people thought of my dad and wanted to send them a gift for being so nice or for helping them out. We already talked briefly when I left my corporate job in 2022. I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't have a plan. I don't advise this. You should probably have a plan if you're going to leave your job. I didn't have a plan and I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew I wanted. I now wasn't working 20 hours a day. I now had time. So I went through my phone, I went through my email list, I went through my brain and just said, who. Who have I not connected with in a while? Like I'd love to just reach out and have a phone conversation, catch up with them, see how they're doing. You could see a lot of pain in people on social media posts during COVID and struggles and people were losing loved ones and it was a tough time. So I just wanted to reach out to people that I'd lost contact with or hadn't caught up with a friend in six months. And I just started calling people, and they'd ultimately say, like, oh, what are you going to do? I'd say, I don't know. I don't have a plan yet. I want to probably start my own consulting company and leverage this sourcing and procurement work that I've been doing. But I don't know what that's going to look like. Just going to take some time. I'm going to decompress physically, mentally, spend some time with my family, and I'm just going to talk to people. Maybe we can meet up for a coffee, grab a lunch, do something. So I did that with a former colleague, someone I'd done business with, lovely woman named Joe, who's like, I need you to help me. Said, what do you mean? She goes, well, I. My business is going well, but you know Wall street and private equity world, and I want you to teach me how to talk to private equity people. I was like, that, no problem. Like, let's just do it. She said, no, no, I want to do it in a serious manner. Like, I want to buy hours of your time and have it be a formal program where you're teaching and coaching me. And we put marketing plans together and, like, come up with a script. Like, really get into the nitty gritty details. I was like, that's great. No problem. I'll help you out. She goes, I'm going to pay you. I was like, what do you mean? She goes, I'm going to pay you. You have valuable skills and experience. And I did say I want help, but I also said, I want your time. Like, a lot of your time. I'm going to pay for that. It's like, you don't need to pay me for that. She goes, when someone offers to pay you, say yes and pay. I'm going to pay you. So I started working with her, and that was my first paid customer. It has nothing to do with what I thought I'd be doing, but she's like a good life lesson there. If someone offers to pay you, say yes. In business, just a few weeks later, working with her, another former colleague of mine that I'd already connected with, we talked about skiing and fishing, when we could meet up for a ski trip, things like that. He goes, I just caught wind that a vice president of IT sourcing and procurement has left a Fortune 500 company. The company is totally struggling. There's 250 IT projects that need to get done. Would you be willing to go in there for six months and stand up the team, get the work moving again and hire and find your replacement? I said, sure, I'll go talk to them. That became my second paid customer. But that was like we talked about skiing and fishing. I was, it wasn't, oh, I'm gonna do this consulting job. And how many people do you know that I you can introduce me to? It was none of that. It was, when do you wanna go pushing a skew? And then my third customer, same exact scenario played out. I'd caught up with a colleague and a few weeks later she called me and said, hey, I just got hired into this super team. We're missing someone that could go negotiate it contracts. I wanna introduce you to the CEO of the company and I think you can help us out and be part of the super team. That was my third paying customer. So it's. I still don't have a website. I just found that by focusing on others and reaching out to catch up, lend an ear, see how I can help them, it just, the business has come back to me, the relationships have come back to me, the introductions, it's been wonderful. And I attribute that to my father just for how nice he always was and how well he treated people and everyone

I absolutely love. I treat them like humans, like they're in my house. That is going to be a life lesson for my children. Now he's got to hope they listen like you listened. Okay, but hey, Gavin, I can't thank you enough, man. This was awesome. I appreciate it. We'll have the book, we'll have the website for the book on the show, notes how to find you. We'll have your LinkedIn look and everything. And listen, I look forward to watching the future endurance challenges and, and who knows, maybe we'll find ourselves right, walking up a mountain together one day.

I'm going to hold you to that and you're listening.

Yeah, I know this little half ironman thing at some point is going to come to an end and there'll be something we got to turn to and do. But I'll tell you what, really be a lot of fun putting some skis on the old feet and getting up there too. That'd be a lot of fun.

They bought another icon pass for next year and we have one trip planned to Taos, New Mexico.

So I want to get my money back for this past year. That poor snowman, I tell you, icon in epic. I was ofer. Ofer didn't quite get out there. But anyways, hey, Gavin, thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Thanks, Ed. Appreciate your time. Thank you.

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