S1E25 · Bill Kerr (aka Doc)

Hey guys, welcome to the Virtus Performance Podcast. This is episode number 25. Before I get stuck into the episode, I'd like to thank all you guys for listening for the last 25 weeks. Thank you for all of your messages of support and feedback and suggestions for the podcast. It's cool to have a little bit of, I guess, influence from you guys about what we talk about and who we talk to. If you have been enjoying the podcast, please share it, please subscribe, please rate and review. That gets us off the bottom of the barrel of iTunes.

Today I sat down and spoke to Bill Kerr, or Doc as he's more commonly known, of Adventure Fit Travel. Adventure Fit Travel is a really, really cool business and a business that after hearing their podcast, Adventure Fit Radio, I've looked up to over the last few months in terms of the culture they're able to create and the vibe of everything they do being an adventure travel company. It's kind of colliding two worlds, which I'm very excited by, so it's kind of cool to see that coming out in the business. Bill or Doc is very driven when it comes to being a business owner and being an entrepreneur.

He's kind of living the entrepreneur life every day in terms of throwing everything he's got into his business, which is really inspiring and really cool to listen to. Enjoy this. I hope you have fun. If you've got feedback, feel free to send it through. Cheers. My personal and business goal is to be just a little bit better every day. I believe everyone, especially normal people, have a story to tell. The Virtus podcast exists to help us all find small ways of consistent improvement by discussing the journey and experiences of each of our guests. Doc, welcome to the podcast.

Cool. Thanks for having me. This is Coop's first time co-hosting, so welcome to you, Coop. Thanks. Looking forward to a good chat. Welcome to the podcast, Coop. Doc, what gets you out of bed in the morning? What gets me out of bed in the morning? Well, shit. That was a... Yeah, yeah. I was expecting like, "Tell us a little bit about yourself," but I already prepared that in my head. But what gets me out of bed in the morning, well, I suppose I'm relatively passionate about what I do with adventure vid. So what I do is I put smiles on people's faces, really.

Good answer. I mean, as an entrepreneur who's, well, three, four years in, a lot of the time, it was pretty hard to get out of bed in the morning. Not to get out of bed in the morning because I'm pretty driven, pretty motivated, but it was hard. It was a hard slog. So the thing that got me through was thinking about the impact that I have on other people, all that adventure vid has through what I do, I suppose. It's not all me. Yeah, so I suppose... And I made a bit of a mantra earlier

in the year when I was coming out of a bit of a rough patch that I had, and I did a lot of work to try and find what it is that makes me tick. And it's funny that you asked that because we narrowed it right down. I did a lot of work with a mate of mine. He was doing a bit of life coaching, and I know it sounds kind of wanky, but I don't care. I'll back him in 100% because he's good at what he does. And we figured out that, yeah, making people happy is what makes me happy.

I don't think there's such a thing as an altruistic act. It's win-win, isn't it? Yeah. Because every time I do something that makes somebody else feel good, it makes me feel fucking awesome. So, to answer your question, making other people happy is what drives me with adventure fit. Talk to me about adventure fit. Where did it start? What is it for those that don't know? Yeah, so where it all started was I was an avid traveler. I invested in real estate really young. I was from 19 years old, I was buying, selling properties, renovating houses, so on and so forth.

And yeah, it was good. I mean, I was able to do a lot of things with the money that I made through doing that. But my whole mindset was shaped around money, you know, money, equity, my property portfolio. That was how I gauge success, you know, my success. And that was really unhealthy. I think it was the wrong way to be. And when I was 23, I was really sick for a period of time there. For a year, I had to have medication and so on and so forth. I couldn't play football, couldn't drink and socialize, which, you know, wasn't in the world, but I was kind of ill as well as the medication knocks me around.

And about halfway through that period, I decided that I was doing everything wrong. You know, it was like a light bulb, you know, it was like a light bulb moment where, you know, I had all the subscriptions to all the property magazines, I'd come home for two hours every night, and I'd be on real estate.com looking at all these hypothetical, I wasn't even in the market to buy, but that's what I've been doing with my spare time, you know. And I just, one day I just figured out, I'm like, fuck, this is not, this is not right.

I'm not happy, I'm not fulfilled, I'm not experiencing things. And then and there I was like, right, fuck it, as soon as I'm well, as soon as I'm good at the end of this 12 month period that I'm in, I had medication for a 12 month course. And then I decided that I was going to travel the world, so that's what I did. And then six months in South America later, I came home for a few months, went back to South America, Africa, the UK, came home, went and surfed in Indore for two or three months.

- Amazing. - Yeah, all this stuff for a good period of a few years. And then, - That's awesome. - Yeah, I was always, I was always worried, not worried, sorry, I was always stressed a little that I can never train the way I wanted to overseas and, you know, I like to, I party a lot. Well, I don't party a lot now, but I like to party, I enjoy, you know, getting out and drinking beers and, you know, all the fun stuff that you do when you're traveling, basically. But I also always like to

feel like I earned it, and I never really felt that, I'd get like bugs crawling under my skin when I wasn't able to train and train hard and do some good stuff. So, I mean, I could drag this actual one question out for an hour and a half, to be honest, the whole story. But from that, that was the itch that I felt like I wanted to scratch. I wanted to, I came home, entered the fitness industry, wanted to open a gym. The gym didn't work out, so I didn't have enough money in the bank after selling my last property that I owned.

But I had this plan, I wanted a gym and I wanted to take my members every three months on a holiday, like an action-packed adventure going to holiday. And the gym wasn't working out, I just, I was so, I wasn't that annoyed about the gym part of it. I'm like, I could take it or leave it with the gym. But I was shattered that I couldn't go and implement these holidays that I wanted to do with my members. Like I just felt like that was such a good idea, it's gonna be such a good experience.

So I thought, well, you know what, fuck it, I'm just gonna open it to the general public, wonder if just anyone and everyone will book on this holiday. So made a logo, started a Facebook page, got one graphic design poster made up for a New Zealand trip, 11 days in New Zealand. I sold 10 tickets on that with no website, no mailing list, no whatever. Yeah, eventually it started from there. Were those people from your gym or were they just general public? No, they were, there was 10 people originally and the first, like nowadays, I'll probably know maybe one person on the trip, maybe I won't know any, you know, a bunch of random people from all over the world.

But at the start there was, I think, three from the gym that I was working and coaching at. There was a group of four girls from a place, another place in Victoria who knew me through some competitions that I'd done or something in the past or something like that. And then it was about four people that I didn't know. That's pretty much our work, the demographic at the start, so yeah. How'd that first trip run? How'd it go? Was it smooth sailing from the start? Look, I mean, I've got a pretty decent poker face, like

early days of behind the scenes, like you wouldn't know it, but like we had no, well we, probably me, I had no idea what I was doing. You know, preparation wise, now we are absolutely 100% prepared for anything and everything. We've got people in the back end that are there at all times in case something goes wrong. We've got a big team and whatever, but the first New Zealand trip I was like, so my whole idea was like, fuck it, I'm going to plan a holiday. I've never been to New Zealand. I'm going to plan a holiday.

I'm just going to see if people pretty much paid to come with me and pay for my holiday. That was like the holiday, you know. So I got to New Zealand and I'd never even been to any of the places that we were going to. That's amazing. Yeah. So people were like, yeah, yeah. Well, I just, that's probably my strength and my weaknesses. I'm confident enough to give things a crack. So like we'd arrived to places like Waitomo Caves and Rotorua, all these places in New Zealand and you know, from time to time, people will be like, oh, so this place, when were you here first?

Like, tell us about it. I'm like, oh, I've never fucking been here. I've never been to you guys. Yeah. Don't ask me. Having said that, so nowadays, nowadays we'll always make sure we've been to everywhere and prepped the trip pretty well, but, but that trip, like that trip was life-changing for everyone that went on the trip. Like we got the most unfathomably good reviews, people coming up with tears in their eyes thanking me for the greatest experience they've ever had. One of the guys, Chris, who's coming on our Iceland trip in December for his second trip.

Chris got a tattoo to represent the trip. He named it. Amazing. Yeah, yeah. It was, it was, it was epic. And I think, yeah, I think my staff, the way that we run things and, and the itinerary that I was able to create, I mean, well, I would have had to have really, really severely fucked it up for it not to be a pretty epic experience. So yeah, no, we, we, we really hit it for six, even though I had no idea what we're doing. It's an impressive start. It's pretty cool. Did you, how long ago was that?

That was September 22nd, 2014. Okay. So I call that the birthday, you know, the contraception, the contraception was conceived in December, December 13th, 2013. It's funny. It's literally like nine months later, you know, full term, you know, surely not an accident. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's funny. So, so that's like when it was conceived and that's the, I call the birthdays, the anniversary of the first trip, which is September 22nd. Amazing. How many trips have you run since then? You know, I don't know. Cool. I genuinely don't know. I mean, I've got it written down.

If you, if I, if I needed to call on it, I can find it in two minutes, but I would say we would be, we'd be 30, 35 trips in now, something like that, you know, next year we'll probably run 15, we've got eight, eight on the general pop calendar and then we'll run a bunch for, for private, private gyms and corporate clients. So yeah, so probably about 35 trips in now I'd say. Amazing. Cool. How did you find the process of building the company from three years ago into what it is now? Well, it's funny, like I've done everything myself.

I'm self taught. I'm, I go through stages where I'm addicted to things in my life. So when it was, when I was younger, it was real estate. So I would, I would be like, my mindset was like, if I read as much as humanly possible, if I study as much as humanly possible, I'm going to be the best real estate investor in the world. You know, I've moved away from real estate, then it became an addiction to travel. I wanted to open ourselves. I wanted to do something in travel. Obviously I have found that, what I'm doing now.

Then it was the fitness industry, when I ended the fitness industry, I want to be the best coach in the world. And then it was being an entrepreneur. So yeah, I definitely enjoy learning and teaching myself things and, and finding out about business. But it's so funny, like my friends that have seen me do what I've done with adventure fit, like a lot of people asked to buy me lunch, you guys, coffee, we had coffee, you guys came up and had coffee, talked a bunch of shit about business and training, whatever. But I get that

a lot and I'll always say yes for the most part to people and, and it's really good for people that I'm close to that because I can, I can, you know, I have a lot of knowledge to impart now, you know, like I didn't deal with a spreadsheet for the first year. I didn't have a database. I didn't have a mailing list. I didn't have any emails for the first 15 months. I didn't even, I didn't even know that that was what I was supposed to be doing, you know. So like Tommy who I do the podcast with, like he's starting his own thing.

He's got all the spreadsheets, all the systems, all the formulas, like fuck and I wish I had that. But yeah, but cause I didn't, I want to help people that are on the same journey. So it's been interesting. You know, if I look back six months into the past and then 12 months in the past, 80 months, I mean it's chalk and chalk and cheese. It's a totally different company. I think totally differently. The way we track things is totally different. So you just got to be evolving always and you just got to never, never be happy with where you are.

I think the moment you get complacent and you're like, okay, I figured it out, then you just... - It'll never happen. - Yeah, no, it'll never happen. It'll never get to that point. And that's when, you know, your business will be, businesses don't really stagnate in a happy place. Like you've got to be striving to grow or you'll be receding, you know, you can't, there's not really an equilibrium. So I think you've always got to be trying to educate yourself and for me, yeah, look, I think that's answered your question. - Obviously running a business, you've got like the amazing times when you'd have trips that go really, really well.

Have there been some times like, and running your own business, I've had many of these days where it's just like, what the fuck am I doing? Like, why am I doing that? Have you had those times? And if you have, what's helped you kind of drive through? - Yeah, I definitely have for sure. For sure. Like I've had years of that, man, dead serious. I think like 2016, I had, I just had breakfast with a friend of mine who from the gym, I used to work out really old buddy and he's like just stoked to, you know, see the progress of adventure fit and we're talking about a lot and whatever.

And I told him in 2016, so last year, like I imagine, and I don't know this, but I imagine most people would have thrown the talent. You know? - Yeah. - I am extremely driven and stubborn, I suppose. - Not a bad quality. - Yeah. Well, it's not bad. My business coach from, I was dealing with a business coach last year, he was fantastic, but we ended up stopping work together. He told me once, 'cause I was getting hit for six, just hit pillar to pose, just smash, we're losing money everywhere. Nothing that was, we planned to work, was worth actually working.

And I would come in every fortnight when we'd meet and I'd stand up in front of the wife and I'm like, Ariane, look at this. Hey, what about this? Let's try this. I've got this plan. This is gonna be awesome. And always with so much energy. And then one day he's like, he just started giggling and shaking his head, he's like, mate. I'm like, what? What are you laughing at? And then he said, you are the most driven person I've ever met in 15 years of coaching. He says, I mean that 100%, I've never met anyone as driven as you.

And I was chuffed, you know, I'm thinking, fuck, check me out. But he said, yeah, but he said that's not always a good thing, you know, it's, you got to know when to, you got to know when to fold them. And it doesn't have to be your whole business, but you got to know if something's not working that don't-- - Which ideas to call and which ones to keep going with. - Yeah, that's right. And I'm terrible with that. You know, I'll hang on to something until, you know, a bunch of people are like, hey man, fuck, it's not working, you know, so, and I went through lots of periods where things were really bad.

I remember like, I remember we were so financially strapped and everything was that you feel like it's kind of falling, crumbling down around you. And I remember, I was training as a weight lifter, I was taking it pretty seriously. I was like, you know, competing national championship level, whatever, you know, I was going okay, but I took it really seriously. And I'd had all these back issues, I had bulged discs, I had two bulged discs and a torn disc in my lumbar. And I'd spent, it was a period where I wasn't able to compete for

about two years, but this is about the middle of that period, I'd been training for a year, I just hit, I was one week out from my comeback competition after a year. I just hit PBs in the snatch, clean and jerk, and jerk I think, in the heavy week in training. It was a deload week, super, super light, was in doing some really light back squats just playing around like a Monday, and then bang my back when I had the biggest back spasm I've nearly ever had. - Oh yeah. - And it was just really, really, really hurt me emotionally, like I was really disappointed.

And then that night, I was sleeping on my couch because I'd rented out my rooms on Airbnb. So I was for a full entrepreneurial style, like I did that so many times through the tough periods. I would rent, so I was literally like homeless inside my own house, I was sleeping on my own couch. And sleeping on my own couch, and I had this tendency because I had so much business in the US and abroad that I would fucking check my phone in the middle of the night. And so I checked my phone in the

middle of the night, and one of the accommodations that we had for the US trip that we had coming up in a month had emailed me and said, "Hey, Mr. Kerr, you didn't pay the deposit when the time was by the due date, so we've since opened your rooms to the general public and they've all been sold, we just thought we would let you know." So that was, you know, a fuck up on my behalf, but normally everything that we book is through one certain system, and this is a different system, and instead of being one week out with confirmation of numbers, it was four weeks out.

And I missed, they didn't tell me anything, I was furious, but that cost us, because it was the middle of summer, it was less than four weeks from the actual date, the accommodation, we didn't have accommodation for the trip we were about to run, and we didn't have money to pay $7,000, whatever it was, to fill an extra 18 spots of new accommodation for sale. So I mean, that was a period where I didn't know what to do with myself, you know, there was no money I could take from anywhere, there was no, it just, it was just unfairly stressful on somebody, you know?

But I, that was pretty much when I started meditating, really, yeah, that was probably the beginning, because I got to the point where I would sit at my desk, at my computer, at my laptop, and I would stare at the screen, and I had so many things that were broken, so many things that were fucked, I would, I wouldn't-- - Not know which one to hit. - Yeah, but I couldn't, I would be, I would be, I would be numb, like I would just be staring at my screen, and I wouldn't be able to work

sometimes, and yeah, that's actually from, I think it was that point in time was when I actually started, I've been playing around at meditating, probably done 10 sessions in a year, maybe less, it was less, because I had the Headspace app, and I wasn't through that, it's 10 free sessions, and yeah, then I, that was when I, I was at my most stressed, and I remember I went and meditated, I thought, fuck, I'll give this, I'll give this another go, went and meditated, and I remember, I had so much going on in my head, I

had, if you can imagine, your head being very busy, I had, say, a million things in my head, and I remember sitting down, and five minutes has gone, and nothing's really, you know, it's not really happening for me, and then big breath in, big breath out, and then I was like, oh, I feel like I've got 500,000 things in my head, that's cool, another big breath in, another big breath out, then I was like, oh, I feel like I've got 1500 things in my head, this is fucking amazing, you know, 50 things, two things, and

then just, breathes out, and I was like, oh my god, this is fucking incredible, so, it was the first thing I realised, the first time I realised that meditation actually works, and, you know, it's not just a woo-woo thing that people do that are super spiritual, I remember I got up that day, shook my arms out, ready to go, sat down at my desk, and just started taking care of all the problems that I had, and then, yeah, so meditation's been a big one for me, and just being driven to not give up, you know,

where do you think that drive comes from, is that something that, I guess, was instilled in you from a young age, or something you've always had? - No, that's a good question, I'm not really sure where it comes from, look, I, it's kind of a little bit out of necessity, like, obviously, it's a necessity that I have to keep my business afloat, but some people don't feel the need as much, but I mean, I didn't like what I used to do, I used to be a tradesman, I used to work in, used to work as a plumber for years and years and years, as, while I was renovating houses and stuff, you know?

- Yeah, 'cause that's not a normal thing to do for a 19-year-old, to be buying some houses. - No, no. - So, do you think that you're always gonna do something like that, and just, like, initially try and chase money, and chase, I guess, success, or do you think that's something that you would just kind of like, yeah, let's give it a go, and you enjoy the challenge? - Well, I'll tell you one thing, I'm not sure about the drive, I think, for me, the alternative wasn't, I didn't want to go back to the alternative,

so, and I also have always thought that I can make Adventurebit the coolest fucking greatest company in the world, it won't be the biggest company in the world, it's not a tech company, it's not gonna be valued at 50 million dollars, but I can make it the coolest company in the world, I genuinely believe that, and I have from the start, so that's a part of the drive, but to your question about, like, you know, starting things, and was I always destined to go out and give something a crack and become an entrepreneur, the fact

of the matter is, like, it's proven that if you invest in real estate, for example, or if you go and build a big share portfolio, or you go and start a business on your own, whether you win, lose, fucking draw, whether you, however it ends up, if you do that from a very young age, then you become, is it risk averse when you're not afraid of risk, it's risk averse, right? - Risk averse, yeah, yeah, that's right, so, because I invested in real estate when I was 19 years old, so from 19 years old, I

mean, when we're talking about money, for example, I was dealing in, like, my mates were dealing in 10s and 20s and 50s, you know, if they lost a bunch of money or had a bad week, they might have lost a couple hundred bucks from not working as much that week, or, you know, something like that, I was dealing in tens of thousands, you know, hundreds of thousands from a very young age, and it didn't scare me because I got used to it very early, I had three properties at 22, so that means that in my

latter years, then everything was, the risk was always at a lower scale, it was never, I'd handled risk, you know, I'd seen it before and I'd seen it when I was young, so that allowed me to go out and just have a crack at, you know, anything without really fretting too much, people ask me how did you, you know, how did you get the guts to start an adventure, and I've never-- - Just done it. - It was not even a thing that crossed my mind, you know, it was, I'm gonna go do this, and hopefully it works, and if it doesn't, then fuck, who cares, I mean, what have I lost, you know?

- Yeah, and from like outside looking in, you think of the two things, the majority of people, especially our age love, it's travel and training, and like that spark and idea and scratching the itch of being able to put them both together is pretty, like it's pretty cool, like as soon as I heard about Adventure Fit, and I think I heard about it because of the podcast, I was like fuck, that's cool out here, like really, really cool. - Yeah, where did the initial passion for training come in? - I've always trained, I used to

be, I used to be a footballer, so I used to just play locally, but I took it really seriously, so anything I'm doing in a sporting, like anything that I'm competing in, I take it very, very seriously, so, and that's just been, that's just been since I was very young, I don't know why, I don't know, I just like to give myself the best chance to do-- - Like a competitive spirit? - Yeah, I just like to just give myself the best chance to do well, you know? So yeah, I used to be, like, I

mean, as a local footballer, we get paid, I used to get paid like $150 a game or something like that, and say, you know, you got maybe three hours Tuesday, Thursday at training, and then you got maybe, you know, five hours of the game, that's 11 hours, so most people probably do 11 hours. I would probably have been at a footy club maybe 30 hours a week, you know? Well, that's probably, that's probably a lie, probably 20 to 25, you know, me and a couple of other guys-- - Putting in extra hours. - Yeah, just

doing, just in the gym, you know, trying to get better, doing extra training, like as in running training and stuff, skills training, just something that I've always done, and then for me, I found CrossFit through wanting to get better at football, I did CrossFit for a little while and gave up football, and then, and then I found weightlifting through CrossFit, I gave up CrossFit to get better at weightlifting, competed pretty heavily at weightlifting for a while, and then now, I'm not able to, I was on a, on a program as a powerlifter, just down in

South Melbourne where I train, and it's the first time in my life that I can't give everything I want to give to competing and taking it seriously and giving it, having it, giving it a crack. So I pulled myself off the program, I said to Alex, my coach down there, I said, I'm not, I don't want a program anymore, I just want regular gym, I'm just gonna come in two or three days a week, because for my mind, state basically, I was going out, because I was on a program and I was supposed to be

following that, I was supposed to be getting stronger, I was supposed to be this and that, and I wasn't able to, due to travel and due to work and stuff, and me prioritizing work over a team. You almost got that fight between being an entrepreneur and spending time on the business and training and looking after yourself. A hundred percent, I couldn't do both things well. So I look after myself enough, but competitive-wise, I had to step away because I didn't want to feel like I was doing something really poorly, you know, for my own benefit, you never want to feel like that.

So training now for me is, you know, I want to look good, I want to maintain a relative level of strength and fitness. And still be able to commit your time to other things. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Do you struggle with that, being someone who's perfectionist, for lack of a better term, with footy and CrossFit and weightlifting? No. Are you kind of okay with it now? No, not really, because I mean, I'm a very competitive person, and I think now what I'm competing in is I'm competing in business, you know, like I'm literally, the

extra hours that I'm putting in in the office is the equivalent in my mind, like it's the same feeling as putting extra hours in the gym. I think that hard work and that dedication definitely translates from that training context to business. Yeah, for sure. It's probably a lot of people's logical next step in life, really, you know, most people don't start a business early, but if you've got a good work ethic and you know how to train really hard, you've put in sport, and you can transfer it over to anything pretty easily. I remember Jared

Fleming, he's a mate of mine, he's an American champion weightlifter, yeah, he's a great guy, he came on our Mexico trip, and Jared was talking about a Vipassana retreat, meditation retreat, so Vipassana is, you guys familiar with Vipassana, 10-day meditation retreat? Yeah. So anyone that's listening that doesn't know what Vipassana is, it's 10 days in silence, meditating 10 hours a day. And it's actually quite hard on your body, it's quite hard on your mind, as you can imagine, but Jared was talking to me, I was talking to Jared about it, he'd never even meditated before. Really?

And he went and did a Vipassana retreat. That's outrageous. Yeah, and I said watch. I'm straight in the deep end. Yeah. Like, what are you thinking? And then I said, was it hard, was it difficult, so many people say it's the most difficult thing they've ever done, and Jared was like, nah, it was easy. It's almost like you would have gone in with no expectations not having meditated before. Yeah, but he's also, from like 12 years old, been a national level elite competitor in something. So he was like, I just thought about it like I think about training.

Focus. And my whole life, I've just gone and I've trained no matter how shit I feel, no matter how I'm feeling mentally, physically. I'm in the gym. Just do it. And I do it, you know? Yeah. And that was really cool. I was like, it just, he said it was easy and that was because he had that, he already had that in his... Yeah. He's got that winning mindset. Yeah, yeah. For sure. That's cool. That's a cool mindset. I've seen my mindset change the last couple of years with footy being the priority to starting a business to going, well, I actually enjoy working more than I enjoy playing footy.

Wow. Which is a mind blowing thing to say. Like you told 20 year old me that I'd say that I've been like not a chance in the world. Yeah. But as soon as you're building something, you're competing against business and you're actually creating something that, well for you, didn't exist and it's something that's completely, completely new, which is kind of cool. Yeah. Well, you're the same as me though. Like, I mean, what you do is you help people. So I mean, I get just a little dumbfounded with the people that like work 80 hours a

day in the stock market and when money's the goal, you know, not, not helping people is the goal because I wouldn't be able to do that. I wouldn't be able to work 80 hours. I can work, 2016 I was working 90 hours a week in general to keep a venture fit alive. It wasn't all in a venture fit. It was doing money, bringing money on the side, whatever. And I was able to do that because I was like, yeah, I'm fucking creating something amazing. You're making the world a better place. Yeah, yeah. Everything you do. Yeah.

And I'm getting tangible results of people being like, that was fucking awesome. Don't stop doing what you're doing. Please keep it, keep it, keep it going. Yeah. Yeah. I just, so I think it's easier for me and you to, to, to really put that time in. Yeah. I mean, some people are able to do it in, in, in fields that aren't really making a positive impact. And that's cool, but I just, I don't think I could, I'm not at, yeah. So anyway, how do you go with adventure fit and kind of building a community around it?

Do you find it is same people want to keep coming on trips or do you find you have to find their friends or new people? Because I guess my big focus at work is building a community of people that all want to help each other get better. And I always found it interesting with travel where people travel together and they want to keep traveling together. So how do you find it with building that community around that brand? It's probably not something we've done fantastically well, to be honest. I mean, we don't have, or we haven't

in the past had an avenue for people to, we, we create like little Facebook groups for all the trips and they'll always be very, like very active for like months after the trip, everyone's become best friends and so on and so forth. And we've had people that have come back like Craig's coming on in December on his fourth trip in 18 months. That's cool. You know, which is, yeah, he plans his life and his, and his holiday around adventure bit, you know, where we're going and when. So we do that relatively well, but creating the community is not something that we're, we're really great at.

It's something that I've, I'm always thinking of ways to strengthen our community and so forth. But for me, so much of the first three and a half years has been like keeping the, keeping the, keeping it driving, keeping, keeping everything afloat. Yeah. Yeah. Keeping everything afloat. And I know community will do that also. Like having a rock solid community that, that absolutely love you. So I mean, creating the podcast was probably a big part of that, you know, people actually getting to know us before they come on a trip. You know, I've, I've people all

over the world and you know, that have reached out to, to me and Tommy and I have relationships with, with people I might never ever meet that I'm quite close with to a degree in form of, you know, just going back and forth in emails and that's people that tell me the deepest, darkest shit ever. So I mean, that's been something that's pretty cool for us, but, um, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, we just try and create the most amazing experience we can on the ground. Um, you know, and, and we, we kind of, I suppose we're, we're very unique in a number of ways.

I've never looked at the travel industry and go on, okay, this is what I need to do. I've, I've never really looked at my competitors ever. It's not, it's not, it's not, I'm not saying it's a good thing. It's probably silly. I went to the, I went to the travel expo last month, um, and within a, within a couple of hours of talking around to people around the place, I came up with some great ideas I'd never thought of, you know, I should be ingratiating myself a lot more with tourism travel industry, but I don't.

Um, and so we've never, I don't, I don't, I wouldn't go on one of my holidays either because of the way that I like to travel. I don't like to travel in groups, a huge portion of the community it's perfect for, they just love it. They want a new plan. They don't want to have to think. Not me. So I didn't really have anything to base it off. So our whole vibe on a trip is very, it's like we're all a bunch of backpackers and we've just met for the first time, including our staff. Like

I say to the crew, I say to the crew at the start, and this might sound silly, it might sound crazy, but I think it works better than the other options out there. I say to people, I say, look guys, um, this is, you know, give them a bit of a briefing about how things will work and so on and so forth. And then I go on to say that at some point, um, not at some point, I just saw my friend walk through the window. I lost my breath. Um, what I say, what I say is we're here to facilitate the best work of your lives guys.

And we will do that. We will make sure everything runs smoothly, where any questions you have, we'll be there. We'll bend over backwards, blah, blah, blah, but we're not, we're not tour guides. We aren't tour guides. I mean, that's, that's not how we do this. We're your friends. So treat us, so treat us like that. Um, we've probably gone a little bit, um, we've probably gone a little bit overboard from time to time in things that we've said, we've probably crossed a few lines, um, you know, socially drinking and so forth and, and partying a little bit too much in the early days.

Um, but I think by and large, I mean, we're, we're on the same level as everyone that we're traveling with. We're just facilitating, we're, we're the ones that are making sure everything, everything comes together nicely. And I don't really know, um, I've done very, very limited group travel, you know, I've done much, but you're in a group and you know, things like that. And I just feel like it's just a really nice way to do things, you know? Um, yeah, you're sharing, you're sharing your experience with people. Yeah. Which has value. Yeah, that's right. And

I keep, you keep asking me questions and then I answer it and I feel like, all right, that wasn't over the end of the day what you're asking, but isn't that podcasting? Yeah. How do you go like running a travel company, doing your own travel now? Uh, yeah, it's been difficult for sure. Like because I needed to start a venture with a, with a hundred grand in the bank and I didn't have that. So we've been chasing our tail the whole time and we've always been riddled with debt and stress and money, stress, whatever. Now we're starting to get a little bit more freed up.

So as soon as that happens, so this year in May was the first time since, since 2013 that I was able to do any of my own travel, um, and that was actually not my own travel. That was just extending the Thailand trip that we were on for an extra seven days. Having said that, it was one of those seven days stretches of my life. I did my dive certificate. I made a bunch of new friends. I fucking dove with a whale shark, just had an awesome time, partied heaps, which I hadn't partied. Like I

said, I really like, I don't party much these days, but, and I also, I'm 31, so I was, I was in a hostel and I felt like, I wonder if like, I don't know if I've got it in me to really light it up again and I ended up having three nights in a row of partying and you know, I proved to myself that I probably, if I really need it, I probably got it in me. Yeah. Yeah. But so that was fucking amazing because it actually reminded me like why I do this thing, you know, because for me, I have a great time with everybody that comes on, comes on our trips.

I ended up with 10 new friends, but it still worked for me. Yeah. You know, it's still, it's working very lot like awesome destinations. We can be doing some cool stuff, but it's still, it's not travel, you know? So I did that and then I just obviously, not obviously, I just recently got back from Vietnam, which was over there for three weeks. And that was, that was the first time I'd actually gone and planned my own holiday, wasn't tacked on an adventure with anything. It was right, I'm going to go to Vietnam and I'm going to do this.

And it was just awesome again. It was so amazing. So it's really good to, it's good to have adventure vid so I can go and see the world and I can make new friends and I can show people awesome travel experiences, but I still need to have my own sense of adventure, you know? So I'm so glad that now I'm getting back to that where I can, I can spend, you know, a little bit of time and go and do my own thing after a trip. It's getting back to the root of why you created adventure vid in the first place.

Yeah. It's exactly that. So it, it, yeah, it's really, it's really rewarding for me now to travel. And then, yeah, I just get really excited and it makes me pumped about travel in general and the feeling that you get because it is easy to forget that, you know, if you do, if you do the most amazing thing, you do the most amazing thing, we'll put it this way, my uncle owns an apple orchard and they're the tastiest, most glorious, crunchiest apples you'll ever eat. Yeah. He's probably sick about this. No one fucking eats apples in

my and my uncle's family, like, because, you know, so, and I don't ever want to get like that with travel so I need to be out and you know, being refreshed and then excited about it and otherwise it all becomes, yeah, work-like and that's not good. What percentage of your trips, and just throwing a number out there, would you have been on? Is it like a small percentage? Probably around like 80% of them. Okay, so about how much? Yeah, this year I've been on all of them, which is strange. Last year I was on two of eight by choice and this year I was on, you know, all of them by choice.

So, but ideally my life would look like, and this is not going to happen next year, I'm going to be on more trips than I would probably ideally go on, but it's cool, I'm happy to do it and it's going to be great. But ideally I would have probably two trips a year, the ones that I'm most looking forward to going on, and then I would tack on my own travel inside of that at the end, really. And then, yeah, that's probably pretty good for me. I mean, I'm not an adrenaline junkie, I'm not a,

I do love travel, but I've got a dog or a business or a life, so it's very tempting for me to put my backpack on and, you know, my laptop and my scribble pad are, that's a venture fit, you know, everything's online. So it's very tempting for me to work as a backpacker and run a venture fit, you know, I could do that. Have you been close to doing that? Look, I'm always thinking about, I'm always thinking about moving abroad. More so I think about moving somewhere, like doing, getting away from the winters. So I'm

genuinely, genuinely thinking about next year through the middle period, four or five months, when it's coldest in Melbourne, I might go live in Bali, surf every day and can take Ziggy over there and, you know, cause I've got to look after Ziggy, and sure, I could maybe go into Southeast Asia with him and maybe, you know, chuck him on my back and cruise around. Put him on like one of those little vests, sitting on your chest. Back on the back, dog on the front. What type of dog is he? He's a dachshund. He's a mini, he's a sausage dog.

So he's got a couple of our staff that would be like, get around him. Oh yeah, he's the best. He's the best. So that's awesome. So now I've thought about it. I've thought about it for sure, and I'm single, you know, so there's nothing stopping me from doing that. Yeah. I'm not always going to be single. I hope that I'm not always going to be single, you know. So while I have the opportunity, you know, it might be something that I'll end up doing. It's one thing that I haven't ticked off that I always wanted to tick off, which is living abroad, you know, bunking down in the UK or Canada or the US, Bali, Thailand, I could live anywhere.

I would love to really, yeah, get thrown into another culture, another, you know. It'd be so different, our physio has lived overseas a lot, like he's lived another 20, 30 years on us. My easy way of saying he's old, but he says he's like, everyone should live overseas at least once in terms of actually moving your life and having a postal address and having a driver's license and all those different things, because it actually makes you really appreciate everything that we've got here, but also it challenges you to adapt to a new environment. Yeah. You know, when you're like, I grew up on the peninsula, like I'm still closest to the peninsula, living on the peninsula now.

Like I've never spent more than six weeks away from there. So I think it's something that I'd love to do at some point, but especially for young people who haven't moved out of home before or who haven't gone out and experienced things. I think it just gives you a different perspective on your life and what you have and what you want. 100%. And it challenges you to make friends, you know, like you've got to, all right, fuck, it's just me. I don't have anyone to fall back on. Yeah. That's a great feeling. It's a daunting feeling.

But when you start succeeding, you know, like, and I'm only talking about when I've traveled, I've never lived anywhere, but I've traveled, you know, I've traveled solo a bunch and, you know, it can be like, fuck, like, what am I doing? You know, you get those thoughts and then you make amazing friends and you travel and you have these awesome experiences and you're like, oh wow, I'm really, you know, I'm doing it. On the flip side of that, there's also being comfortable just being by yourself, like traveling solo. Yeah. We were talking about this the other day with, after your podcast with Beau Miles about how people don't spend time just by themselves for extended periods of time.

No interaction. No interaction with any other people. It sort of draws back to the meditation retreat, the 10 days just not speaking or interacting with anyone. Some people just don't have exposure to. Nah, I'm terrible at that. I mean, I've always got, at all times, at least mine. Yeah. Yeah. So, because I was about to say, I was about to say at all times I've got a set of iPhone headphones around my neck. Any time that I'm away from people, if I'm walking to get a coffee, if I'm listening to something. Yeah. Yeah. Which is

good because I'm always trying, it's always pretty, for the most part, it's normally educating myself, listening to my audio book or a good podcast or whatever. It's not normally music. I'll work the music, but I'll, if I'm not working, I'll listen to something. But that's like, I have to stop myself if I'm like walking Ziggy on the beach or something and it's a beautiful morning, I'll have to stop myself sometimes and like pull the headphones out and say, just appreciate the sound of the fucking ocean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the podcast, I did a couple of weeks ago with a guy named Beau Miles, he's an adventurer, filmmaker, all that kind of stuff.

He's challenged me to spend 24 hours by himself with no human interaction, no music, no phone, nothing. So I think next week, week and a half, I'm going to go away for 24 hours on an island off Wilson's Prom and just spend 24 hours by myself and just see what it's like. So it's, yeah, it's a little bit daunting actually now that it's getting closer, but it's something I said, yeah, I'll do it. And then now it's like, fuck, it's actually, I've actually got to do it like this. Yeah. I'm always podcasting or audio book or something.

And that's, yeah, just silence and silence is deafening as Beau said, so it'd be interesting. Nah, it'd be great, man. I think I really, really, really would love to, and I just will at some point when I get a little bit more time or whatever, but I would love to do it like a trip to the US and just do National Parks, but do it by myself. Just go and hike and just be by yourself, just read and then fucking just hike and just be in nature. I think it's just super refreshing for the brain, I reckon.

Yeah, definitely. I could do it in Melbourne. I should do it in Melbourne. I keep saying that I want to go to Werribee Gorge. I want to go to New York. We'll recreate your backyard a little bit. Yeah, a hundred percent because I'm very bad with like traveling in Australia. I'm one of those people. Everyone takes their own backyard for granted. Yeah, that'll be great, man. You'll love it. I'm looking forward to it. It'll be sick. Talk to me about your podcast, why'd you start it? I started it because I was listening to podcasts and I thought, "Oh, this is cool."

Oh my God, same. We had access to pretty high level athletes for a while there with Adventure Beat coming on our trips and stuff like that. I thought, "Oh, this could be cool. I could get those guys involved." And then I went to, I'm a creative guy, so that helps, but I went to a seminar thing in Melbourne. It was like an entrepreneurial ... There was a bunch of different business coaches and leaders or whatever. It was basically that they were kind of pitching by our program, get our coaching, get our training. But this particular

one, because I've been to a couple of things like that, this particular one there was quite a lot of value, there was quite a lot of really good stuff. So I went there very early days. When I started our podcast, it was about 18 months ago, I'd planned it for a year before that. I just hadn't taken the plunge. I wish I hadn't done it earlier. But yeah, so I remember them bringing up the fact that podcasting is a really good medium for getting through to your community, your tribe, so people can hear your voice connect with you.

It's really real. It's really easy for me. I feel comfortable doing it. So I think I'd already had the idea. And then when I went and I actually went to this entrepreneurial day and someone was presenting about kind of podcasting, then I just went back and said, "Fuck it, I'm doing it." Same thing. Jump off the deep end. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And then, yeah, I'm so glad I did because it's just amazing. I'm very proud of what I've created with AdventureFit so far. We're miles away from what I would call successful, but obviously we're doing okay.

But the podcast, it's nearly my crowning achievement in life. I'm so fucking proud of it. I really am. Man, Tommy and Ben, who I just had lunch with, old friend of mine, he reached out and told me that he wanted to make sure, he's not sure if people will tell me this because a lot of times people won't, but he wanted to let me know that he fucking loves our podcast. It's the best thing that he looks forward to every day and blah, blah, blah. All this stuff. We get that all the time. So I'm genuinely, genuinely so absolutely proud of what we've created.

It's Tommy's as well. I know that. We talked about, as we all like, right, we're going to make money, we're going to make money by this point. We haven't made any money. It's just more, so I've had to reframe and be like, okay, that's cool. This is now part of AdventureFit's exposure and like our marketing plan or whatever. Totally fine. We've restructured a bunch of stuff and it's all good. But I said to Tommy, I said, look, if it gets to the point in a company's time where we're not enjoying it as much, our lives

are busier, we just, we decide that we go our separate ways, we don't have a podcast anymore, then I'll forever be so fucking proud of what we've created because some of the conversations that we've had have just made people so happy. So I was a little bit apprehensive. I'm not a naturally comfortable guy in front of cameras and microphones, but yeah, I didn't think I'd love it as much as I do. When you start doing it, it's really enjoyable. It's just your ability to sit down and talk to people for an extended period of time without the distraction of phones or that next task you've got to do, like until right now I hadn't thought about work.

Fuck. I had a good hour of not thinking about work, but, and it's just, and it's genuinely that, it's genuine and it's, and people are telling their story and yeah, and you're able to just talk. Well, it's been the biggest thing you've learned in that 18 months doing the podcast. And I know you've spoken to a shit ton of people, but it's been for people that maybe don't listen to podcasts or have never really sat down and thought about it. What value do you get? The biggest thing I've learned, um, shit, that's a big question. I don't really know.

I suppose just the value of putting yourself out there. You know, like if I didn't put myself out there I was so nervous. Tommy, Tommy took to it like a duck to water. He was, he was our gags man. He was our segments guy at the start. That was his role. I got off the Mac with a host at the very start, co-hosts, um, Tommy took to it to like a duck to water. I was like in between kind of, and Mac was very, very nervous always and apprehensive and, and you know, and then it

grew on me and stuff, but if I didn't, so it wasn't something that I was just instantly, yeah, I'm going to be good at this. It's going to be great. You know, whatever. So it took me out of my comfort zone to actually go on and take the plunge and if I didn't do it, I mean, I've learned, I've learned too much from individual guests to narrow it down to one thing, you know, so I'm talking about more of a general starting the podcast frame, but, but, um, if I didn't do that, then I never would have had so many of the great conversations I've had.

I was able to, because I have a platform because I was able to build a platform for myself. I've been able to interview and become friends with some of my heroes, you know? And I think, um, I think the fact that anyone out there starting a business like you can build that platform for yourself as well. You know, anyone that's your role model, your idol, someone that you look up to. If you go out and build yourself a platform and take the plunge, like you guys have, then, you know, you'll never know where it can

take you and you'll end up, you know, you'll learn a bunch about yourself, but you'll also have great interactions and you'll, you'll get, you'll have the ability to get to people that you want to learn from and you want to become friends with and you just admire, you know? So, um, I think just always valuing, you know, taking the plunge and, and, uh, and having a crack that's, you know, something that I've definitely taken away from starting the podcast because it's not something that I just, I was super confident with from the start. Yeah. Um, look man, I don't know if that answered your question.

It definitely did. I figured out the meaning of life, but just made the world a better place, I think is the, uh, the interim meaning of life before you actually think of a good one. Yeah. Yeah. That's super cool. And I think investing medium to be able to get to know people cause just thinking about it then I think I sought you out initially because of the podcast and then got to know you a little bit and you put me on to Drew, um, shout out to the great man. Um, and like, like my whole

world has changed over the last kind of couple of months because of this, this kind of stuff and the network and it comes from it. So it's incredibly valuable. Um, yeah. Um, I just want to touch on, you mentioned that you don't think adventure fit is as successful as you want it to be or as it could be. What is success to you when, when we get to the stage where you say, yeah, I've done it, I've made success of this business? Yeah. Well that's something that I'm probably not that great at as well because

I said that very same thing once at a, at a, at one of Drew's weekends with a bunch of other business owners and everybody knew adventure fit that was in the room. Pretty much. I didn't, we didn't know each other. Most people knew of adventure fit and now it is shaking the heads of their like, man, it's already so successful. Like how's it not successful? You've made so many people happy. You know, you've created a business that looks the part, you know, it's, it's, it's not going anywhere soon, you know, which is better than a lot of most other business owners.

So I get that for me, I, I enjoy being an entrepreneur. I enjoy building something that I'm passionate about that I think can be great, but I don't enjoy feeling like I'm running a million miles an hour to keep this thing afloat at all times. And I always feel like that. I do feel like that at all, at all points in time. So for me, I really do feel like I'll, I'll be successful, I'll look at it as successful when I am not looking over my shoulder every day for, you know, for things that can,

we're financially not out of the woods basically, you know, when I can go, right, my life is a good balance, I have my leisure back, I have time, I have a buffer of money in the bank, and we have a sales marketing system that we can keep eventually to float relatively predictably. I mean, everything else is successful. The product's fucking amazing. The podcast is my crowning achievement, you know, of the brand looks great, like everything else is absolutely sweet, but as a business, it's not, it's not where it needs to be. And I just like to get, I'm never going to be probably a nine to five, you know, kind of guy.

I'll probably always put in a little bit more because I'm just always excited to see what I can do with the adventure, but I, I suppose when I can get a little bit more balance back and I don't have to worry about things, you know, things crumbling down and yeah, that's probably what I'm going to feel like I'm relatively successful, I suppose so. Very nice. We've got a bunch of somewhat random questions for you to finish up. Cool. You guys do what? Six for six? Six for six, yeah. Six for six. So ours is just a bunch of random ones.

Yeah. Who are your biggest influences, mentors, people that have helped you along the way? Who are the people that come to mind straight away? So I've had a few in-person mentors that are, you know, face-to-face mentors that I know that have really helped me. Look, one of them, one of them was, so first was probably Rob McNaught, Rob owned Peregrine Adventure Tours. He helped me very, very early, early on, Peregrine sold to Intrepid for $20 million like 10 years ago. So he was relatively successful in the, in the travel industry. He helped me very early days, that was really good.

Paul Harmice is a big one for me. He's a guy that's been on that podcast actually. So Paul reached out to me and the email read like a job, like a job application, you know? And I get, I get emails, resumes all the time, like, you know, every week. And I read it, "Hey, Bill, I'm wondering if you need any help, I'd love to help you out, Bob." I can't remember what it said, to be perfectly honest. But then I have a canned response that I'll tailor to people, I'll tweet, but it comes from email, "Hey, look, thanks for reaching out, blah, blah, blah, sorry, we don't have any positions at the moment, we'd love to give everyone a job.

You know, I'll make it a little bit personal in whatever they've told me." So I'm just kind of sending that back to Paul, Paul said, he wrote back, he said, "Mate, I don't know what you think this is, but I'm asking if you need any help." And then I like clicked on his profile and like his email signature and stuff, I'm like, "Oh shit, I fucked this right up." So he didn't want a job, he wanted to help, yeah, he wanted to help me. So Paul's climbed the Seven Summits, so that's the tallest mountain on every continent of the world.

He was the youngest CEO of an investment bank, he was 26, in the world. He's an amazing bloke and investor and businessman. And so Paul and I are pretty close, we catch up a bunch, so that's good. They're away from Intrepid, we have a good relationship, he's helped me out a lot. He's probably the most powerful Australian man to travel, I would say, him and his partner man, I would say. - He's been on the podcast. - Yeah, he's been on the podcast. - And that was the first one I listened to. - Yeah, it was a good one, I really liked it.

Yeah, so Daryl's been great, and then people that I've spent time with as in business coaches and stuff. So Drew's actually quite a mentor to me, even though he's four years younger than me and he's a total knucklehead, but Drew's great. I think me and Drew go, I feel like me and Drew go head to head though, with like thoughts and philosophies on business and life and stuff, I feel like I give back probably not as much as he gives me 'cause he's coaching me, but I feel like I give quite a lot back to Drew.

I feel like, I feel like I'll be able to in the future, so that's cool, and Ariana, my business coach last year was very big to me, but there's people around the world that I look at that are inspirations, and that's like Aubrey Marcus is a big one from Onnit, so Aubrey, I look at Aubrey and what he's done with Onnit, he's a few years ahead of me with when he started Onnit, where they're at. He's a few years older than me with himself and his life, and I see a lot of similarities in the

way that he thinks of the way that I am and the way, I really like Aubrey and I think that he's got a really good mix. And then there's a lot of companies out there that I look up to that I aspire to as well, and yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, that's probably- Lots of different ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No one in particular, but a lot of people have helped me along the way. And yes, you get inspirations day-to-day as well, not just from certain people and companies, but- Yeah. For sure, for sure. People

inspire me all day every day, you know, like friends and people that I have on the podcast and anyone out there being an entrepreneur, but I mean, I look to people that are at the top and I try and emulate them and their steps because there's no point me looking at somebody that's, you know, I want to look at somebody that's at a level 10, I'm at a level three if I want to look at somebody that's a level 10, that's what I want to aspire to, I don't want to, you know, all well played

and fair game to anyone that's gotten their business to a level six, but there's no point aiming for level six and getting level four, I want to aim for level 10 and get to level 10. So you know, I spend a lot of time listening to books of other entrepreneurs and probably the one that I probably align with best is Richard Branson, just because he is obviously a fantastic businessman and has done amazing things and I'm sure his business acumen is outstanding, but his persona, and I'm not just saying that because Richard Branson's a fucking

like a cool guy, but like I've, you know, I've spent a lot of time listening and reading about, you know, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Steve jobs and all these different entrepreneurs and I don't really see too much of myself in those guys, you know, and the way that they run their businesses, the way that their personalities are, I don't see much of myself. I take a lot of things and a lot of ideas from their stories, but Richard Branson and the way that he looks at business, the way he looks at relationships with

people, I really connect with, I feel like that's my style, that's me, so I read anything and everything from Richard Branson, but yeah, I try and, I try and, you know, yeah, I try and find the guys that have done the best and then I try and take bits and pieces from those guys and try and build my own philosophy with life and business, I suppose. Cool. As an extension of that, what's, what's your favourite book? Chanterem. Say it again, sorry. Chanterem. Can you hear me right now? Chanterem, how's it been? Chanterem, like I was having a go at it.

Like what you don't know. How can it be anything else? Chanterem, so I read Chanterem and I read Marching Powder, which was probably my favourite book before Chanterem and Rusty and I, that's the perfect example of like someone who I'm friends with from the podcast. Rusty's the author of Marching Powder, we're buddies now, it's great, but we, I read Marching Powder, me and my mate Corey read it, me and Corey got like a little bit of a book club basically and we just back and forth, are you going to read this, are you going to read that, have you read this?

And he said to me, he goes, mate, you've got to get on Chanterem. I said, tell me what you mean, he's like, it's like, it's like Marching Powder plus some. And I was like, fuck you serious, it's been at Marching Powder. It's 900 pages, so it's a big chunk of a book, but it's the story of a guy and it's loosely based on a true story, it's not actually, it went from the non-fiction to the fiction section after a bit of debate and stuff, it's the story of a guy who divorces his wife, loses his kids, loses his job, robs banks, goes to jail, breaks out of jail, flees to India.

Right, so that whole section is contained in the first three pages and then the next 897 pages are his life in India, so he befriends, he has no money, no friends, nothing, he befriends a young Indian dude who lives in the slum, goes and lives in a slum for six months, goes into the jungle for six months, lives with his family and then comes back to tour base in Mumbai or when it was Bombay, ends up entering the Bombay mafia, the head of the mafia is part of the Mujahideen freedom fighters in Afghanistan in the 80s, he goes and fights with the Mujahideen in fucking Afghanistan, all this stuff's real.

Some of the stories, the stories pieced together artificially, basically, characters are amalgamated, things are placed around, you know, placed all over the place that certain, certain things that he actually got up to but it's based pretty well on a true story and he falls in love along the way and all kinds of crazy shit. So Shantaran, still to this day the only book that has ever made me cry on the last, last, to the second last page, I fucking-- - No spoilers, man, no spoilers. - But I was so emotionally invested, I thought to myself,

fuck, like, it wasn't really, it was ending well, it was cool, like, but I thought to myself, like, I'm so emotionally invested in this book, like, I wonder how it's gonna end, like, it's gotta end with just something just life changing and then it got to the second last page, I read a certain line about a certain character and whatever and I read it, I read it, and I was like, I was like, what the fuck's happening, I'm crying, I'm reading a book and then, yeah, so it's fucking awesome, I recommend it to anyone and then my favorite non-fiction book is probably, maybe Sapiens, Sapiens, which is-- - It's on my read list.

- Oh, it's the best, just makes you understand the things that we do and it illuminates, you don't really understand the things that we do but brings light on the silly things, puts light on the silly things we do as humans, I think everyone should read Sapiens as well. - That's cool. - There's two for you. - A three part question on the first thing that comes in your head, if you could train with anyone in the world, who would it be, if you could have anyone in the world on your podcast, who would it be and if you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would it be?

- Do you wanna look at East Simultaneous? - No, I wanna bang, bang, bang. - If I could train with anyone in the world, it would be, you say Bolt? - Good, good answer. - I just, I would just run and laugh with him, I just wanna hang around him, anyone on the podcast would be, fuck, there's three-- - Surely, you've thought about this. - Oh, I have, there's three and it's hard to split 'em, so I'll probably say Elon Musk, two and three would be Joe Rogan and Ricky Gervais. And anywhere I'd like to be right now, I would like to be in Manchura, in Peru, at a hostel named Locker Del Mar.

- I'll have to listen back, 'cause I'll be in South America in March. - Yeah. - Six weeks. - It's my favorite spot on the planet, favorite hostel, favorite, best two weeks of my life. - It's a big thing to live up to. - Yeah, it's pretty big. - Cool. - Yep. - I like it. - Yeah. - What is your morning routine, if you do have one? - Yeah, I've definitely got one, so I'll wake up around, I try to wake up at six, but it's normally 6.30. I try and get eight hours sleep

and I never clean up, I don't have to get up at six, but it's cool, so I normally, I start work, I try and get into the office at 8.30, 9 o'clock, and if I get in at 8.30, then I would have had time to wake up, I'll walk first, as I wake up, before I do anything, I'll unlock Ziggy's crate, Ziggy sleeps in a crate probably five days a week, and then come the night and sleep with me, but I'll always open his crate, even at like five a.m. I might open his crate and

come cuddle up with me, then when my alarm goes off, I'll get up, have a shower, the last couple of minutes of that shower will be cold, so I'll finish on a cold shower, get the body firing, wake myself up, then I'll sit back down on my bed and I'll meditate for 10 to 15 minutes, pretty good now, it took me a long time to really get a proper routine with that, but I'm pretty well every day now, then I will, I've taken to writing my gratitude journal when I get to work now, but a

lot of the time, I'll sit down and I'll for two minutes, I'll write three things I'm grateful for, then I'll have a good breakfast, I'll walk Ziggy for half an hour, normally down the beach, and then if I can fit anything else in, then I'll try and fit in some reading, but that's, if I got up at six every day, I'll read for half an hour, I try and read half an hour every day anyway, but that would be cool to add that to my morning routine, and from time to time, very rarely I might,

I want to make it do a bit more, I'll throw in like a 10 minute workout, I'll just wake up and just do 10 minutes of burpees, or get the roll off for 10 minutes before I have a shower, so yeah, it's pretty rare, like if I don't nail most of that, I'll be like, fuck, like this morning for example, for some reason I never sleep in, I slept past, I must have put, turned my alarm off and slept for an extra hour, had breakfast with my mate, so Ziggy didn't get walked, I meditated quickly, look, I just didn't tick off anywhere near as much, and it's okay, but you know, I was kind of like, fuck.

- Yeah, I'm the same, I have a few things that I try and tick off every morning, and then, but if I don't hit it, then I just feel like I haven't ticked the box, I haven't fully like, felt my potential for that morning, I guess. - Yeah, it's good to get wins before you start work, you know, you can go to work and just get absolutely pulverised with just shit, bad vibes, bad, yeah, shit things happening in your business, so if you can win the day before you even start the day, I actually wrote

a blog on this recently, the last blog I wrote for AdventureFit was about my morning, it was called, why I have a morning routine, why you should have, why you should do, and I had my morning routine, I gave it a score, like meditation was like two, two points, walking my dog on the beach was like three points, gratitude generally was one point, whatever, and I gave myself a score, my morning, I scored like 12 positive points, you know, and then I made a list of like 30 other things that you could do and challenge

people to, you know, make their own score up, 'cause my morning routine isn't necessarily the best morning routine for everyone, but I think getting up early and doing things that are of benefit to you, to feel like you've got wins on the board, you know, runs on the board early, then it's really, yeah, it's really positive, and then I'll just be like waking up early to just have sex with a girlfriend, ticking boxes, yeah, ticking boxes, that was a five point out by the way, five point out, yeah, yeah, four or twelve, five point out,

well, times man, times man, waiting for 13 then, yeah, don't overthink this question, what's the nicest thing you've ever done for someone, hmm, hmm, probably, I might go to with my friend's mum when she had cancer, I ran a raffle for her, hmm, yeah, that was probably it. - Nice, nice. - Yeah, she didn't have, the cancer she, the treatment she had wasn't subsidised by the government, so it was like a new thing, and then my mate, one of my best mates, Trussey, told me about it, and I was just like, don't worry about it

man, we'll do the Great Adventure raffle and we'll just do it early, we'll do it with your mum, and I didn't really think about it too much. But really, it was really positive to him, it was a really nice thing, did put in a lot of, fuck, it was like 80 hours of work or whatever, and it was nice and got Anne some money and stuff, that was something that I put on my vision board that I made earlier in the year when I was talking about, right, helping people is what I wanna do, what

makes me happiest, I put up a photo of drawing that raffle with Anne standing next to me and Zach, as well, so that's something that comes to mind. - Yes, that's right, cool. - I've made me feel pretty good about myself and Zach really, really appreciated it, you know, I can Anne as well, obviously did so. - Good. - Yeah, that was good. - That's awesome. - Yeah. - That's the nicest thing someone's ever done for you. - Hmm. Fuck. Fucking hell, that's a tough one. Before I answer, I'm terrible with this because Emma, my,

I call her sis, she's my brother's girlfriend, they've been together forever, she's basically, she's my sister, she looked after Ziggy while I was away in Vietnam and I never thanked her and mum had a go at me about it, so I called Emma and I pretended like mum didn't tell me about it, like no one had, 'cause apparently Emma was a bit miffed about it, so I called Emma and, you know, thanked her and so on and so forth and it's not 'cause I don't appreciate it, but I just, I'm so busy, but I'm probably

not the best at noticing when people do nice things for me, I've got a lot of good character traits, I think I'm a really good person, but I've also got a lot of faults too and one of my faults is probably not giving people the credit they deserve or noticing when people do things nice for me. - Yeah. - So I'll say the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me was when Emma looked after my dog Ziggy when I was in Vietnam, I was the best. - What a legend. - Yeah, yeah, so no, I'm

not really sure, like, something I definitely need to improve on is, you know, thanking people and just like, noticing when people are going out there. - It's hard to give yourself 10 seconds to kind of breathe and think and actually have that thought process. - Yeah. - When, especially when you go, go, go all the time, which I get a little bit. - For sure, I'm sure you would. - This is the last one for me. Top three things you take when you travel? - A book. I read a lot and I enjoy reading, I really, if I don't have a book and I've got down time, I'll be a little bit annoyed.

My phone, as much as it sucks, but again, I just love, love having, having, having, I love having music to listen to in down time and then podcasts and audiobooks, if I didn't have the podcast app and audiobook app, they didn't exist, if it wasn't for Steve Jobs and the iPhone, I'd be, I'd be, I'd be, yeah, I love, love, yeah, cheers, cheers, Steve. I love those, love those apps and then third thing that I take when I am traveling is, well, my, my most important travel document used to sit inside of the slip of my passport and it wasn't my passport.

It was a note, I since lost this, I'm fucking gutted about it. My friend Leon, when I very first started traveling, I did six months through South America. My trip was, my mate Leon had already, I was 24, my mate Leon had already backpacked all through Europe and he'd already lived in Canada. He was finishing his year living in Canada and he was going through Mexico and our paths crossed for three days and he's one of my greatest friends. So we spent three days together in Mexico, had the best three days ever and what we did was like Leon was really good at meeting people.

I'm really good at meeting people, but I didn't really, I never done it before, you know, traveling around hostels and so forth. And Leon had befriended and already prepared a crew for us basically and a couple of them were these two really outlandish, really loud kind of Geordie Shaw looking pommy girls and that was so loud and obnoxious and just like, normally, ideally the other people that like old crossing the street back in the day and I would just not really give the time of day to, or not go out of my way to make friends with them and see the people that they are.

Anyway, they became my best friends for three days, had the most amazing time, it was fucking awesome and then I kept traveling, Leon went home and then Leon said to me at one point, he said, "Do you, did you get that document, that letter that I put in your travel guide?" And I said, "No, no, I never got it," and shook my travel guide and then this piece of paper fell out and it said, "Hey mate, just wanted to let you know that you're a great person, back yourself in at all times and make sure you never judge a book by its cover."

And wrote this big note for me about how to travel, the person that I am and the things to remember that really always will ring true and that was my most prized possession as somebody who travels a lot, was this one document that I slipped in my passport case next to my passport so I'd never lose it and then I lost my passport slip when I was checking in on flight once and I ran back, I'm like, "I've lost my passport case, I've lost my passport case." They're like, "Oh, you've lost your passport," I'm like, "No, I've lost a little bit of paper sitting next to my passport here, fuck my passport."

- That's heartbreaking. - Yeah. - Oh, it's amazing. - So yeah, so that's pretty much it lads. - Last one for you. - Yep. - Favorite quote? - Favorite quote, "Life sucks, live the dream." - Oh, good. - Love it. - Awesome. How can people find out about Adventure Fit and what you do? - www.adventurefittravel.com is where we house most of our stuff, Adventure Fit Travel on all the socials, podcasts and Adventure Fit Radio, I'm doc'sadventurefitlife on Instagram and doc@adventurefittravel.com if anyone has any questions, they wanna email me, feel free. - Perfect. - That's pretty much it.

- Fantastic. - Thanks for having us. - Thanks for having me. - Cheers, man. - Yeah, thanks, boys. - Thanks for having us. - Thanks. - Thanks. - Bye. - Bye.