S1E86 · Beau Miles #2: Full of Beans

Hey team, welcome to another week of the Virtus Performance podcast. Before we get stuck into the legendary human that is today's guest, I'd like to thank all you guys for listening. I have a favour to ask though, I would love for you to leave a review. If you've been enjoying it, please jump on iTunes, write some nice things, chuck us a five star review, so that we can push this out to more people. I think these conversations that we're having are important, and because they're important, we should pump them up. But thank you, I appreciate it.

Every listen, every download, it's a pretty cool feeling to know that you guys want to listen to my voice in your ear. I know you're mostly listening for the guests that are lucky enough to have on, but yeah, it's a cool feeling. So today's guest is a repeat offender on the podcast. His name is Beau Miles, you guys might remember him from earlier in the podcast. When was he on? I think he was number 22, potentially. He's an adventurer, he's a filmmaker, he's an outdoor educator. Our last conversation was in November 2017, so 16 months ago, also.

Over that time, Beau just handed in his PhD then, so we can now call him Dr. Beau. Over that time, he's been making the world a better place through his teaching and educating. He's been making some rad videos, he's got some pretty cool projects that have come out in the last 12 months, and some that are very close to finish. Beau is about to take a little bit of time off from teaching, a bit of a sabbatical, to write a book and look after his old man. So today's chat was a bit of a short one.

Beau is a busy man and I appreciate his time immensely, so we kind of dove in pretty quick. We had a chat about what he's been doing, what he's currently doing. He's currently eating his body weight in beans, but he'll explain why, and had a little bit of a chat about the future and what he's excited for and what he's proud of. It was a really cool check-in, a quick conversation, and something that I think you'll all enjoy a lot. So without further ado, let's dive in. 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. Bowie, round two. Welcome back. These things pick up still really well. Yeah, does the job. We're on, so let's see how we go. All right. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to come back on 15 months later. It's nice to see your beard, mate. It's a bigger beard from last time. I'm trying to catch up to you, which I don't think will ever happen.

Hey, I had a beard that was pretty lame until about '24, '23, '24, and then something kicks in. I don't know, it's an extra testosterone burst or something. I don't know. Yeah, well hopefully that hits at some point. How old are you? 27. So I'm a little bit behind. Hey, it's not a bad beard, though. It's going okay. It's going okay. Thanks, mate. I appreciate that. I appreciate that a lot. It's been a little over a year since we caught up last time. I want to congratulate you on being Dr. Bow now. Yeah, I think it was only, I think I'd handed it in last time, but it wasn't official.

Yeah. Bravo. What's that process been like, finishing that up, and the wash up, like 12 months after, I can imagine it would be pretty... Well, funnily, you strive for it for years, and you think this thing's never going to finish. It's not necessarily about the title of doctor, it's about this, you start a project and you just want to finish it. 2/3 in, you think, gee, when does it end? Because that was five years at that stage, and I knew I had a big year or so to really finish. Anyway, no, it feels really good.

It's amazingly, you get on so quickly beyond it, and I presume it's like, I have no idea, but I'm in awe of pregnancy, and I often think it's a bit like that in that it's such a long-winded thing, especially, imagine if you really struggle to get pregnant, and then you finally get pregnant, and then you have all of that huge emotional rollercoaster, and the trauma of having a baby, and then all of a sudden, three or four months later, this little bub and life is normal. Well, it becomes a new kind of normal, so I suppose that's what it is, it's a new kind of normal.

Yeah, normal shifts. What's it been like, I guess, having finished it and kind of moving on to that next stage or next step? Well, you realise just how many PhDs are out there as well, so you realise that it's really just another thing. Lots of babies and kids out there as well, I guess. Exactly, yeah. But that's right, I'm only really just settling into the idea of being - you know, there's potential to be a lifelong academic, and I've never thought that before. Without a PhD, you don't have that currency at the university level, and

so to have that now is really nice and comforting, but I've now got to try and find my voice of what the heck that means, and I haven't done that yet. You know, I'm still in a sort of a, "Gee, Beau, what do you want to say? What are the key words in your life?" Yeah. It's a hard conversation, but I think you're probably someone that's been able to accumulate, for lack of a better word, like a body of work that kind of starts to show your voice, because I think from someone outside in, not in the education space, not in the outdoor ed space, I think your voice is fairly clear around what you believe in.

Well, that's good to hear from you, because I'm not sure it is from me. I don't know. There was a meeting yesterday at three o'clock, and it was exactly that. Beau, what do you want to be in academia? I thought, "Gee, that's early to ask, really," but then it's not either. I'm no longer a young man. I'm a young man that's getting older pretty quick, and so I don't know. I think often my philosophy and sort of world view is pretty steadfast, but I want to shake that up a bit too, because I don't know. I'm full of contradictions, and I hate that.

But I think that's kind of life, right? You should be able to sit there and hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time, and kind of see merit in both. It's important. Well, all right. So we're pretty deep pretty quick. Mate, we're on time limit. Yeah. I think humans are ultimately really flawed, and I'm part of that, and so I live in this really pretty part of the world, which has got lovely rolling green hills, and I think I've talked about this before, and it's a horrible version of what it was 150 years ago, in my mind.

So there's one big thing that I drive to and from this place each day that I see huge problems with, and secondly, just as sort of an offshoot, we have so much stuff. We live in this mega consumerist world, and I probably don't laugh enough anymore, so I'm thinking of all of these bad things, which is sort of horrible. And look, I know I'm a bit of a grumpy bum at the moment, because I've all eaten these beans for 30 days. We'll definitely dive into that. This is day 27, and golly, what a shitty experiment. It totally does give me a different lens of the world, and that's the whole point of this, too.

We eat things, and what we eat makes us moody in a particular way, or think a particular way. But anyway, I'm still trying to find my feet about what keywords are those. Yeah. It's a hard one. You'll probably never find it, maybe. I hope not. We go on holidays to get a bit of zen, don't we? Yes. To sort of settle and read a book that we've been wanting to read for a while. You hope to think that life can be like that sometimes, too, that you can plateau happily. And I am in a really good space, don't get me wrong.

But I don't know. Why do you go on holiday? It's actually something I've been speaking about with a couple of guys I've spent a lot of time with, and I love my life. I guess the way it's designed and the way I get to wake up in the morning and come here at 8 o'clock after coaching this morning and have a conversation like this. And I think if I lose that, and I'm kind of losing a little bit of moment, I'm working a little bit too long, I'm not sleeping enough, and it's things I'm working

on, but I'm losing that, and maybe similar to you, I'm losing that enjoyment out of a lot of the little things I usually get enjoyment. So usually, my answer would be a holiday is a chance to explore an adventure, a different part of the world. But at the moment I'm like, I need a holiday to just relax and chill out. And it's very unlike, I guess, how I've lived the last couple of years. So it shows me that I need a shift in the way I'm spending my days. Yeah, so yeah. I mean, outdoor education, let's go there for a second.

Outdoor education is a premise that's based on the working humans or the working person that recreates elsewhere in some respects. And outdoor ed in itself is seen as extracurricular. It's on top of all the other stuff that is core to what is education. Rather than being a part of. Yeah. Now often we find that the people are the most ambitious and the busiest, they end up doing a lot less of what they really are passionate about. Or they've reinvented their form of passion into such a complicated form that they wanna get away from it. And I've done that a bit, you've likely done that a bit.

In fact, the people that we spend circles with are those people because we're attracted to like-minded people that are ambitious and have got lots of energy and really go for it. My sister is classic at that. She's this wonderful thinker and wonderful doer, but they do so much of that thinking and doing in a day that it never leaves time to enjoy themselves. Do you think, not that there's an answer and not that there's a finish line, but do you feel as though the shift just needs to come back to living a simple life or being more aware of that consumerist culture and what you're actually doing with your days?

Yeah, and we all know that. It's classic. It's one of those adaptive challenges where we've actually gotta change who we are. Yeah, well, you have to really shake it up. You gotta make some bold decisions. I haven't made bold decisions for years, really, that go back to the core values. I know I'm really good at living cheaply and like a mongrel and I can't enjoy it. And I haven't done that for years. And so I challenge myself and other people to do that too, to make those changes. I always strive to never have a righteous voice because crikey, you can't when you live a life that's half the time is mediocre, which I do.

Yeah. I think that mediocre is probably mediocre to your standards, but maybe not mediocre to everyone else's standards. Well, that's right. Well, that's why I've got to not be righteous because I make some good choices, but I also make some pretty weak ones as well. Yeah. Yeah. What was the last weak choice you made that you can think of? I had chewing gum a few days ago, which is a cheat. I'm supposed to be eating beans only. Now, I had chewing gum that was- You didn't swallow it, so? No, no, that's true. But there would have been, I don't know, 10 grams of sugar in our fire.

I don't know. But yeah, that was a weakness. Talk me through the bean experiment and the challenge and why and what and how and just go nuts. Well, I only probably read, I don't know, six or eight books a year now that are outside of academia. And so the last, well, I've read one last year, Midway Through Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat, which is set in 1925's Mexico, California area, down on the coast. Great book, really great book. And books always kind of define your era, in a sense. And you go through, I can remember where I

was 10 years ago on Expedition reading a particular book and how I almost remember more from my experience of the book than where I was on Expedition, sometimes. And this was kind of like that, Tortilla Flat, and there was several bits in it. The character of Danny is fantastic. His anti-consumerism is a fascinating character, the lead character. But I got a real peach from these kids that lived only on beans. They're none just fed the beans because she was so poor. And I just thought, gee, I really like beans. I could eat beans for a while.

For a while. Yeah, I thought I'll eat my body weight in beans. You know, when I thought that, I'm just going to eat my body weight in beans. I never thought that it would take so long to eat your body weight. I thought 25 days, 3 weeks, 2 weeks, whatever. The amount we consume. But of course, that's probably liquids as well. But eating 80 to 85 kilograms of actual food is probably up to two months. And so, you know, anyway, so that was the inspiration behind it. That was the seed. And then of course, I tried to layer it up with other ideas.

And so yeah, that's it. I'm on day 27, I think I am, and I'm tin 123, 124 or something. Are you allowing yourself variety between the different tins of different flavours? Yeah, well, I've taken all the labels off just to spice life up a bit. Oh, good. Surprise. Yeah, although that kind of works for the first half, but now I know what sort of tins they are. They've all got slightly different designs. Has it made you be a little more aware of the different designs of the tin cans? One's got a nesting bottom and the

other one's got a slightly different sheen of silver and one's got a gold top and one's got labelling, you know, it's sort of, well, you know, some sort of imprint on the can, you know. But yeah, there's heaps of variety, about 8 varieties of beans, and I still love them. You do? Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking forward to it. I haven't had one today yet. And so I really look forward to beans. I love it. So you've got 4 days left, 3 days left. No, no, still 2 weeks. Oh, 2 weeks? Yeah. Okay, so it's, yeah, that's outrageous.

What's the last 27 days taught you about, I guess, what you're putting in your body? I've had one real epiphany. The whole body thing is I've lost probably close to 5 kilos, and it's not a nice way to lose weight. You kind of just meek your way through it, you know. But I was in West Australia over the weekend doing a talk over there, and I was there too quickly. You know, classic ambition where you just go somewhere to do it. I was there for 36 hours or something in WA. And I was driving home,

I was in a rental car, and I was driving back to the airport, and I was in this bubble of 22 degrees in this little car, listening to an American podcast, or just a radio that happened to be an American. It was a film that they just put directly onto the radio. They just play it, which is a really good sign of a film when you can just push play, and it translates to radio. That's huge. That's amazing. So, while I'm thinking about that, how cool that is, and that's a great filmmaker's toolkit, but the fact that this guy spent 12 years travelling around on Greyhound buses in the States, just 12 years, that's it.

Just went from bus to bus, and that was his life. Wow. So, really good film. But the idea of it was that I'm travelling along in this vacuum car in this landscape that's been mostly cleared, in a place, and this is gorgeous sunset, and I really like road trips anyway. And I'm listening to these voices, and I'm in this temperature bubble, and everything just became pointless. All of a sudden, everything was pointless. I wasn't sharing the moment with anyone. I'm in a landscape that's been abused. I'm in a car that doesn't tell me how hot it is outside, or at least I can't feel it, on a road that's straight.

So, I pulled over at the service station, and I rabbled onto the camera for about 15 minutes, and it was all about food. Here, I've simplified my diet to the point of it being so boring, but boring in a nice way. Like, I still really like the beans, but I'm less of a human. I'm a six or a seven. So, I wasn't sharing the experience with Helen. I wasn't experiencing the world with other people. I was just going through this bloody, useless bubble in a landscape that had been – the landscape was boring too. The landscape was exactly like my beans.

They'd been cleared with straight roads, with non-Indigenous plants, you know. So, I just thought, "This is fucked." And I'm part of this, because – and that's the whole point of the experiment. So, that was a bit of an epiphany, really. I hope to think I'll remember that experience when I next take on all these gigs that just squeeze them in for the sake of it, you know. There's no quality. When you kind of said yes to the gig, what was your intention? To take Helen and to spend more time and to make more quality of it, you know.

And even the talks I gave, you know, one of them in particular was pretty crummy. Like, I flew in and it was a 7.30pm Perth time talk. So, that's a 10.30pm my time. So, I've got to be up. I've got to do a keynote presentation for an hour at 10.30, my body clock time, and I'm not, you know, I'm not into venting my spleen at 10.30pm at night. And so, I had to kind of, yeah, really shake myself into, you know, and I was okay. But the next day much better because it was my time and I'd met them and it was light.

I could see their faces, you know. Anyways, I don't know what I'm learning about. Well, it's interesting, like, the parallels between, you know, if you simplify to a point where, like, obviously you still love beans, but if you're not actively pursuing something you enjoy or that you love or you're exploring a new area or something that's exciting of how much it can actually impact how you're feeling and your output. And I think that's something that I remember last time we had a conversation and you were, I think, and I'm probably going to butcher this, but your language wasn't around, you weren't enjoying it, but you were starting to notice that you were waiting for trips to pass.

Is that something that's changed over the last year and a bit? I go up and down on the idea of trips, you know, because I'm, I mean, I know the power of human perception and that you can, and we're so privileged, and I don't like saying privileged because we throw that around privilege, the idea of privilege, and we don't really engage with what the hell we mean by privilege. Because there's various privilege, you know, it's complicated. But, all right, do I enjoy going on the same trip that I've done now for 10 or 15 years? Yes, I do, because I'm wanting to enjoy them, too, because I really do enjoy my job, and I love my job.

And so, if that's, you know, if my trips now are a seven out of 10, I can bump that to a nine, no worries. Just by the way you look at it. Just with a few, yeah, just give yourself some spin bow, you know, layer it for crying out loud. Otherwise, you know, you're a flawed educator and a flawed human if you can't make good at this amazing trip that's on your plate three or four times a year. Yeah, I kind of look at that in the same way that I look at, say, you know, this morning's Tuesday 6am class.

Like, it's different to last month's Tuesday 6am class, but the same for these four weeks in February. Do you make it about the people? That's got to be the shift, right? It's, what can I, because I don't get better as a coach by just coaching the same class every Tuesday morning for 52 weeks a year, and then, yeah, and it's, okay, what can I teach these guys today? And whether it's the same group that was in last week, whether it's, you know, loading up on one of our interns and helping them push their edges and

push their boundaries, it's 100% completely a perception and intention deal if I come in and go, "Oh, just another Tuesday 6am class," or if I come in and go, "All right, I'm going to make someone's day today," or, "I'm going to, you know, change the way this intern thinks about this whole exercise or this whole thing." And I imagine it would be a similar kind of experience, albeit a three-day one rather than a one-hour one of how you can look at your trips. My best mate's a tennis coach and he's had that same conundrum for, gee, 20 years now, you know, since he was 18.

And I'm often, and he's a great coach, right? And you see him on court and you think, "Well, how do you do that day in, day out?" And he says once he's on court, "No worries." He clicks in and it's no worries, but sometimes the anxiety exists in the lead up. It can definitely resonate with that. I want to coach today, you know. Yeah, so that's, and we've all got it, I suppose, gee, from everyone, from someone selling newspapers on a street corner to CEOs. Everyone's going to have that monotony, but it looks, it's just completely shifts as soon as you change the way you look at it.

I wrote a blog piece for today. It's just front of mind, but, and JFK was touring NASA in 1961. He asked the janitor what he does and the janitor said, "I'm helping put man on the moon." And I was like, "That is exactly the way we should look at our job or our day or whatever." Yeah, that's a nice sentiment. Two writers, yeah. Looking back over the last year or so, you've had a couple of epic projects that I've been lucky enough to see, obviously through video. Talk to me about the, what was it called? Miles an Hour?

A Mile an Hour. A Mile an Hour, yeah. Because that was a very, an interesting way to look at running a marathon slash doing all the shit you said you would do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was a fun film, Mile an Hour. In the fact too that was, it was, and that suits me now, and I'm trying to do more of that, is loading up on intensity and one key idea and just focusing on one key idea, even though they had lots of moving parts within it, they were all geared around the same thing. And so, and that resonated really well with audiences and that's swept over the world.

Lots of film festivals and lots of happy crowds and that's really great. So I'm in some respects now trying to replicate it. But yeah, it was sort of running to me, I've run my whole life, you know, sort of three to six days a week for 20 years. And so, I'm not sick of it yet, not even close, but I'm sick of some aspects of it. Of course. And the long runs are hard sometimes, you know, and I'm trying to train up again and get my long range legs back because I certainly don't have them. Anyway, so how do you do that?

You reinvent something that's pretty close to you or intimate to you. So why not run, I've never run miles, you know, I would never just put runners on and go and run a mile. Yeah. But if you did that one mile and then did some stuff for a while and then did another mile, you know, is that a form of training? It all came about with my PhD. I just, I couldn't justify leaving the house really. So I did a mile one day, just ran a block and I thought, oh well, what if I did that all day?

One lap, come back and did some PhD and then did another lap. But let's not do the PhD, that was done. So why not do things in the shed? Is that where the ideas come from? Is it just a string and you just tug at it? Yeah. And I've got more than enough ideas, endless ideas. So it's now about having collaborators to sift through those ideas too. So I'll write them all down, but I've got Helen and Mitch and two close people with me and I'll just put these ideas past them. And you know, sometimes there are six and sometimes there are nine and we go with the nines.

Awesome. What's in the film future? What's coming up? Finished a film yesterday, genuinely finished a film, Junk Office. Awesome. So Junk Paddle, I made paddle from wood I found between the train station and work last year. And so we're rolling out this junk series now that, you know, I'll see where you can make something out of junk and make something out of nothing essentially and fill in a gap. And so, yeah, we wanted a new office for the shed, our direct shed. And we put, we put through a sort of a design pitch to the Monash people and they came back with a massive quote from a contractor.

Yeah. You know, you know, I think it's, I think it's fraud, the quote that came back. I said, that's crazy. Outrageous. I'll do that for a day with secondhand wood, which I did and we filmed it and awesome. And so that's junk office and that'll come out real soon. That's very exciting. Yeah. I think that's cool. That's gonna make everyone who wants to do some DIY a little bit more excited about it, I think. Well, yeah, it was DIY on speed in a sense. Your sister makes a cameo, so you got to watch out for that.

Does she now? She does. She's actually sitting in the room. She looks at the camera. We've got to teach her how to not look. Yeah. When she's supposed to pretend there's not a camera there. Yeah. No, it's quite quirky actually. She's doing her thing and then she just sneaks a pic at the camera. Of course she does. You're obviously about to take a little bit of time off, a little bit of sabbatical. How did that come about and I guess what's your intention for it? How long, et cetera? It's twofold. It's primarily to just keep an eye on my dad.

He's crook. He's got the chemo. He's doing really well. He's got the good kind of chemo if you can call it that. So his chemo is sort of managing him, but he's losing a lot of strength and sort of manliness that he's had for a long time. So I'm just going to be his arms and legs around the farm and help out. And that's more just about living, just being close to home too. Of course. I'm always an hour and a half away. So just to be five minutes away and just be around. So there's a bit of that, in fact, a lot of that.

And then the rest of the time, and that's a real treat too. I see that as a really bloody source. It's an opportunity. Yeah. You got to spend more time with your close people. So that, and then I'm writing a book. So I'm under deadline pressure now. The pressure is just down and I'm out. So writing a book about quirky adventures. Excellent. Why have you always wanted to write a book? I've always liked writing, but I like free writing and I'm still not sold on peer review yet in universities. And I know it's something I've got to embrace and tackle because it's a bloody challenge to me.

It's really hard for me to jump through. Yeah. And it's not my natural style. I want to write and move on, write and move on. And you can't do that with peer review. So, but I like the challenge too. I like knuckling it. Of course you do. You know, it's like a toothache. I kind of like toothaches. And the PhD was a massive toothache. And then, so now I just want to, yeah, I've got to learn it and I want to say I've learned the code and I know how to talk in this language. And so I've just got to persist.

So I forget the question now. Have you always wanted to write a book? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Let's just say yes. What, I guess it's one of those things that I think you've obviously got all these perception and ideas in your head about what you want it to be. But if you could fast forward to future Bo and you've just finished the book and someone's reading it for the first time, and obviously it's hard to do because everyone's going to have their own perception, but what do you want people to close your book and how do you want them to feel?

What do you want them to think? That's a really good question, Loggy. That's a, that's a great question is that anything you do in life, whether it be yourself coaching or your sister playing sport, you've got to find out one while you're doing it and two who your audience is. Are you doing it for someone else? Because we often are. We're all socially constructed. Definitely. And yes, we have biological baggage that we take along to and those two things combined and you are you. All right, so who's the book for? What I want them, I

want them to, I don't know, for the books that I've read in life is, I want to, I don't want to profound, well, I don't know. Yeah. You want, you want to be ambitious with who you, who you engage with. I'm not quite sure of the full demographic yet. My YouTube channel is mostly males. So it says, so I want to come right now. Yeah. Is it? Yeah. There you go. See, so I should do my homework more. So for YouTubes, yeah, I want to, I don't want to pin myself to any particular audience because

I want to really, um, I would hope to think that a 15 year old could pick up what I'm going to write and, and, and like it. And that, you know, maybe if someone in middle age really likes it and then maybe someone who's, I don't know, I just, I want to write something I suppose that is, that is good, that has a coherent structure and that has messages that are really quite subliminal because I often don't think I write with messages in mind other than me self-thinking. Yeah. Um, I'd like them to think that it's a page turner and they really, they like what they're reading.

Yeah. But, but I certainly pulled up on some points. Yeah. Are you writing it mostly for you or mostly for other people? It's also a good question. Do I make films for me to bend my screen and to lay down my narrative to the world or do I make them for others? I mean, of course it's both. There's a lot of ego at play. You know, I'm trying to come to grips with what our, everyone's got ego. It's how we tell that ego or show that ego or shift that ego. Yeah. How we perceive it because it's important to have it.

Otherwise you probably wouldn't make films or you wouldn't write a book or you wouldn't do these things to make the world a better place if you didn't have it. But it's a matter of checking it. Yeah, that's right. We all tell stories ultimately. You know, it might be telling stories for three people in your life or, or 3 billion, you know? Um, yeah. I don't know. I need to be in the summer. I read this fantastic article a while back and you'd really like it. So, so will your sister. Uh, I don't know who wrote it.

I forget his name actually, but if you go to Casey Neistat's site, so the most popular YouTuber in the world, a one off, um, he gets an awful lot of requests for people to meet up with him to make films with him. Just truckloads, right? He could fill 10 lifetimes for projects. So he's just put out a blanket rule and I will not make, I'm sorry, but I've just, I've got enough going on. And he put it down to two camps based on this writing and this reading and you can, and it links through to it.

If you go to CaseyNeistat.com, um, that you're either a maker or a manager. And that's a bit simplistic for my liking cause I'm, I think you can go both and you could be probably other lots of other M words. But the makers in the world need, uh, large blocks of time that are unimpeded. A bit like fetch, you know, wind across water. Need a big fetch. And so in that time he can then be creative. Um, no, I'm still, because I like my job and the job requires of it and that's what I get paid for.

There's lots of moving parts, particularly in outdoor ed with lots of trips and lots of people and lots of students asking about how many tent pegs they should take and yeah, there's lots of managing in it, which I enjoy too. I really do enjoy. And you can get sucked up into it and spend a bit too much time managing. Yep. It doesn't necessarily mean I'm good at it, but you're sort of, I waste a lot of my creative energies on managing. And so, um, I've got to try and get better and really figure out, and it goes back to that first few minutes of talking, you know, where do you, where do you spend your time managing or making?

Yeah. Um, and that's, that's got a lot to do with your sort of ego of your story too. Where do you, what do you want to be? What do you want to do? What are your key words in your life, man? Is it to be the director of outdoor ed at the world's biggest university? Or is it to, to make great films that get a bigger audience? Or can it be both? Potentially. Yeah, definitely. And I think the way I kind of see writing, writing a book and I'm very aware of your time, so I'll

be quick, but it's like, if, if I was to ever write a book, I'd want it to be a book that is like transcends me and it's something that anyone should be able to pick up, get something out of and everyone should read except the person that writes it. And I'm sure like knowing you and knowing how you portray your beliefs and stories and attitudes and stuff. And I'm, I'm pretty confident it's probably going to be one of those books, which is exciting. I hope it's good. I hope it's good. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, that's good.

Um, yeah, I'm still, uh, so I don't know who, who said, I think it was LL Cool J or someone that sort of, I would never really, but he had this great quote recently. Um, and I read it on, in the in flight magazine on the weekend and that you can chase, you can chase around an audience and you can push around a very simple, a good product, whether it be a song or a book or a film, you can push it around and push it into massive audiences via social media and just push, push, push the market, market, market, but that's managing your, what you've made creatively.

Whereas I'm a big fan and I've got to do it more or sort of compromise. Um, just make cool stuff, make cool products and you will find a home. You got to write or film, make or, or, you know, create a business that is for the sake of itself. And if it's good, then it will find a home. And so, um, you just got to do whatever you do to still good or do it to what you think it should look like or feel like. Yeah. Not because of X. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll, then that's

why I'm a bit cagey about writing to a particular audience because ultimately I've got to write it for me to, to really show reality and show that vent in my spleen. Otherwise it's just bullshit. It's just a picture of LL Cool J in front of you. And it reminds you of that. Yeah, I thought it was cool. I respect it. That's really good. We've got three questions for you to finish off. I want the first thing that comes in your head. What are you most proud of? Uh, Helen. Yeah, she's just, um, I just think she's remarkable.

She's a remarkable woman. You know, she just gets on with things and she's got, she's a better manager than me. You know, she's, she manages. Yeah. Puts up with you on your beans. Yeah. Yeah. And that's been, she's been cooking like a champion for the last three weeks. And yeah, that's a rubbing my nose. Good. What are you most confident about? I'm confident in my, in my body. I suppose I've always, I'm not a good sick person when I'm sick. I'm really vulnerable because I think, Oh, and I know you, you know, you guys are really physical people.

You and your sister. Um, I can imagine that when your body goes, you just, your confidence sort of goes a bit too, cause you lose this big part of you. Definitely. Yeah. I'd, yeah, I'd suck if I had a major injury because I'm so physical. I think that's why it's so important to maintain that training and consistency and things, especially when as we do get older. Yeah. And as an educator too, I've got to be, because I'm physical and I can lift a kayak onto a roof rack by myself. I'm really quite exclusive. I've exclusive my brand of education over the years where if you're not physical and good at this, we'll then do something else.

But you got to think otherwise, man, you know? So it's shaken up my form of education too. I like that. What are you most excited for? Um, being a parent one day, if it all works out, you know, I wouldn't mind doing, I think that's a hell of an adventure because, uh, I'm sort of sick of myself a bit. So I want to take the emphasis off me and put all that energy into the next, the next thing. That'll be a huge, uh, perspective change I can imagine. I think so. Yeah. And I think I'll, um, I'll be a pretty devoted, hard dad, but it'll be, um, yeah, it'll be interesting.

I don't know what sort of parent I'll be. I have no idea. That's cool, mate. Thank you very much. No worries. An absolute pleasure. Thanks for listening, guys. I hope you all enjoyed hearing a bit of an update from Bo. If you enjoyed the shorter, you know, 30-35 minute episode, please let me know. I've got a few tweaks and changes coming to the podcast in a couple of months. Um, kind of once we hit that 100 episode mark, uh, I want to have a little bit of a shift in how, how I'm producing these, how I'm making these, the kind of conversations we're having.

So if you guys have feedback, if you have any suggestions, if you have anyone you'd like to hear from, um, either before those changes or after those changes, then please shoot me an email, shoot me a message. All of the relevant contact info will be underneath your podcast on the app. I'm sure you'll find it. If not, you'll figure it out. Be amazing.