- Hey everybody, how's it going.
I'm Chase.
Welcome to another episode of the Chase Jarvis
Live Show here on CreativeLive.
You guys know this show.
This is where I sit down with amazing humans,
and today is no exception.
In fact, you're going to be very impressed with this guest.
She is one of the world's top mountain climbers.
She has summited Everest more times
than any other Western woman and is the first American
woman to summit and descend Everest
without supplemental oxygen.
My guest is Melissa Arnot Reid.
(rock music)
(audience cheering)
- They love you.
I'm so happy you're here.
- I'm so psyched to me here with you.
- Thank you so much.
- Yeah, of course.
- This is a long time in the making.
It was like maybe even a year.
Is that true?
- It is.
I had to be with you out in the mountains
and dirty and climbing to the high altitude summit
of something before I'd agree to come.
- It's true.
So for the folks at home, I think you're familiar
with the show.
But, there's a long sort of history
and trajectory for the show around people
who have done amazing things in a lot
of different disciplines but also around a theme
of people who've made a living in the life
doing what they love.
And, I've wanted to have you on the show
for many reasons.
One of which is obviously that climbing a mountain
is this classic metaphor for life.
- Super classic, yeah.
- Classic metaphor for life, but how in the hell,
we're just going to orient the world.
How in the hell did you decide to walk uphill slowly
for a living?
- That's my true, proper profession
is I walk uphill slowly.
- For a living, how did you decide?
It's not an exaggeration to say you've dealt
with life and death on a regular basis
in that profession.
We'll get to that a little bit later.
But, there's folks at home who believe
that their dream is completely unobtainable
and people would laugh at them,
but you literally walk uphill slowly for a living.
So A, how did you craft that dream,
and then what are some of the things you did to get there?
- Yeah definitely.
So I grew up in Southern Colorado
with two authentically hippie parents
which I mean authentically hippie,
and their biggest dreams for me and my sister
were that we were going to live out of the back
of our trucks and ski all year.
That was like their highest aspiration and hope for us.
So I really had that influence from an early age,
but I like all teenagers fully rebelled,
and I went to college in Iowa
and got a business degree. - You were clean.
(Chase laughing)
- Yeah, I also got an apartment and a stable job
- And a shower.
- working for Proctor and Gamble, and yeah.
And, I just totally rebelled against my parents.
I was like this is not the life I want.
I don't want to be outside and be dirty and all of this.
At some point as I was sort of living this life
that I had imagined somehow was different from my parents,
and I'm not gonna be like them.
I came back to visit them in the mountains,
and I saw the mountains for the first time.
And, I had truly never seen them because I was
surrounded by them so much growing up.
And, I had that inspiration that I think so many people
have felt when they see nature in a first time
sort of way whatever that power that it holds is.
And, I immediately knew that I needed
to get into the mountains and learn as much as I could.
And, for the first time in my life, I found something
that was athletic but non competitive.
It was this like collaborative activity,
and I'm like the anti competitive person.
If you try to race me, I'll just stop and watch you,
and just be like, you have fun with that.
Like, I'm just not competitive, you know?
But, I'm super driven internally with myself
in being better, but I like working together
with somebody towards a shared goal.
And, so climbing offered me that, and I started learning
how to climb.
I learned how to rock climb first and ice climb,
and then eventually got into glacial mountaineering.
And, I live now in Washington state.
I started out working as a guide on Mount Rainier
- Amazing.
- which is the most glaciated peak in the lower 48
and a great place to learn all of the skills
for climbing bigger mountains.
And, I grew up rather poor, and I didn't think
I was ever going to have the opportunity to travel
in the world and get places.
And, I realized suddenly you know mountains
are this passport to seeing cultures, and places,
and people that I don't know anything about.
And, I fully went all in.
And, I definitely lived in the back of my truck.
I definitely like counted pennies to buy ramen
or like Totino's pizza from Super Walmart.
And, my dad was so proud of me
and like all his dreams were fulfilled.
- Just shining moments.
- Shinning moments, yeah.
So that's like the path that ultimately led me
to what now, I think, is a high accolade career
where people are like wow, you're so amazing.
And, I'm like if you knew the number of days
that I have chosen to sleep in the back
of my truck, the hotel rooms I've cleaned
to you know make minimum wage job that I could work
in the early hours, and then still be able to go climb
and do the things I wanted to do.
It's not such an obvious path, and it's definitely been
a passion path though for sure.
And, that's what's kept me on this course.
- Well it's such an extraordinary to have,
you mention accolades, to have achieved the things,
the world records, the firsts, the mosts all those things.
- The summits if you will.
- Yeah, the summits.
- The high points.
(Chase mimicking drum roll)
- We just have cliches abound in my career.
It's like you have to try not to hit them if you want.
- I'm trying, and I'm losing right now.
(Melissa laughing)
But, a little bit to dig into the why.
So you went back and you saw the mountains
for the first time.
The folks at home are going like my goal
is totally unreasonable.
And, I think a big disconnect is some people think
that they start something, and they have to see
it all the way to the finish line in order to start it,
or for you was it a matter of just seeing
like oh I want to pursue this 'cause I'm having fun?
Which of those two or some combination
was it for you?
- You speak from a place of knowing in just the way
that you phrase that question because I know you know
what the catch of actually accomplishing big things is.
And, the catch is that you need to have
this long term focus with a really short term goal set.
And, you have to have equal parts conviction
in pursuing what it is and willingness
to totally let it go in any moment.
I mean just think about like we've all been
in a relationship.
You can't be very successfully in a relationship
where you're like all in but also totally willing
to like say goodbye and be cool with either thing,
and that's what chasing big things requires.
There's a mental hiccup somewhere that has to happen there
where you realize that the small step that you're taking
right now, again pardon the cliches.
It's gonna be cliche ridden, I'm sorry.
But, you know you take this one step,
you climb this one pitch, this one peak,
this one summit that gets you ultimately to be able
to climb the big mountains.
You know you're always kind of doing it
for this greater goal, but you still are putting in
the toil of that sort of--
- It's so literal in climbing mountains.
- It is.
I mean here's the thing I think about climbing,
the biggest thing that it's given me.
It's given me the ability to be totally a control freak
in general life that is completely out of control,
and I can't control the things that are happening.
So it's like welcome to being humbled
just minute by minute and just having to accept it,
and then like joyfully choose to be humbled
'cause it's not like we don't really joyfully choose
to be humble.
It's not something we pursue.
- Yeah, it's not something we're running
around volunteering for.
- No, I mean like people that do, I admire them,
and I'm also confused by them because it's like
real hard to be in that position.
But, you know you're pursuing that, and you know you're
working towards something so big.
And, when people are like, oh I have this big goal.
People say to me all the time, oh I would never be able
to go climb Everest.
And, I'm like you know what in this temperature
controlled room where I've just had
a delicious lunch, neither would I 'cause you don't go
from here to there.
In your mind, you're going from here to there.
And, there's a lot that happens in between.
- So, I know with myself and a handful of other folks
that have decided to pursue things that might have been
perceived by most as irrational.
Like oh good luck with that, you're gonna make hundreds.
- Yeah.
- Like how did people respond when you said
you know leave this stable job to go
you know walk uphill slowly?
What did people say?
And, did you feel distracted, or discouraged,
or empowered, or both, or neither?
How the freak did you figure out how to make money
walking uphill slowly?
- I would say I didn't really figure it out.
It like sort of figured itself out in some way.
And, I do think that like when you're in,
you know I had no backup plan.
I grew up economically in the tight confines
of an authentically hippie family where we just didn't have
extras.
My sister and I didn't have the support system.
Once we were adults, we were like fully on our own.
And, so I knew I could survive financially, and I knew
that that might mean different things.
I wouldn't necessarily be thriving, but I would be okay.
So I could put that aside as a worry.
And, then the other side of it is that for every naysayer
that you can find that says like this isn't gonna work,
I accidentally found myself intentionally surrounding
myself but with people who thought what I was doing
was so cool.
And, for every one of the naysayers, you can find
somebody that thinks, oh you're so bad ass
with what you're doing.
And, like living in the back of your truck
is just not that sexy, but I guarantee
when I like introduce that people are like,
oh I wish I could just.
You know this was like pre hashtag van life
and everything.
There was no hashtag anything.
And, so it wasn't like, I mean I'm sleeping
in like Motel 8 parking lots because generally you
wouldn't get harassed for like sleeping
in the back of your truck there.
And, I had like homemade curtains so no one would know
I was there and almost got abducted once from the back
of my truck.
And, like there's a lot of unsexy moments in it.
But, you could always find somebody to be like
yeah like fist bump.
You're core.
I'm like if this is core.
- Do you really want to see under the covers of core?
- Yeah, 'cause then there's this whole other side,
you know which I think we're much more exposed to
in our current lives where we have exposure
to glossy, beautiful highlight reels
of everybody's life through all of the social media
aspects and things we're exposed to where you do
just see the sexy side of it.
And, it is like people are really curating
that existence to be this like thing.
And, I actually think the most beautiful parts of it
were the non curated parts, the parts that just happened.
I mean I can tell you some of my happiest moments
in my life have similarities whether they were
achieving a big goal that I'd worked
really hard towards in this later part
of my more successful, externally validated,
successful life, I felt as equally elated and happy
as I felt when I was 14 years old waking up
at four a.m. riding my bike to a hotel where I opened
the continental breakfast cleaning hotel rooms
and then closing a health club gym at night
to make money to save to move out of my house
and be able to be independent.
I feel equally as happy working hard towards a goal.
And, so that's been something that's really tied
it all together for me.
- Is that a skill that you developed as a young person
to cope with the reality of your parents
not providing sort of like this on ramp to college?
Do you feel like was there a self sustenance thing?
Was is a separate thing?
Was it sacred, was it fear, or was it joy?
- You know not fear, so I will say that.
All of the greatest things in my life,
I've not pursued out of fear.
Almost everything I've pursued out of fear
of losing something or fear of not achieving something
has been vapid and ultimately when I get there,
it's like (grumbling) I don't like this.
This is gross.
And, I need reroute myself.
I think it has to do less with like, well,
equal parts with necessity of what I needed to do,
what I knew what was required of me
and sort of like this admiration that I had
for how hard my parents worked just to get by.
Because they made a choice.
They're smart, capable people that could've taken
high paying corporate jobs and had a super posh existence,
but they wanted to be in the mountains.
They wanted to, you know like maybe fly under the radar
of the government perhaps or whatever.
So there was some necessity maybe of them on that part,
but they wanted to be happy.
And, my dad, I remember, he did construction
when I was a very little kid, and he said,
"I do this because I can go work for a month,
"and I can spend two months watching my daughters
"grow up, and if I went and punched a clock
"everyday, I'd miss your whole lives."
Though I didn't know it, I was gaining this admiration
for hard work.
And, I see that in myself, my sister.
It's something that just was obvious,
like you have to do it.
And, it comes actually at a cost.
It comes with this like very conscientious resentment
that I have towards people that, you know were born
into different circumstances.
And, you know pardon the categorization
because not everybody fits into it neatly,
but like the trust fund set that is hashtag van life now
and is this super sexy curated side of living
out of the back of your truck because you also know
that like at any moment you could go
get an apartment.
There's a very different reality when you're like
it's all in.
And, I think that that willingness to be all in
has been the most important consistent theme in my life.
It's that knowledge that once I go all in,
it's on me to make this work or to reroute
and take it as it comes.
- It's like Tony Robbins talks about you want
to take the island, burn the boats.
- Yeah, totally.
What's interesting about that metaphor exactly,
so you know, and maybe we don't have to talk about this
right now, but for me to be successful with the biggest
sort of physical achievement of my life
of trying to climb Everest without using
supplemental oxygen.
Somebody had told me early on you cannot have oxygen
with you because you will use it.
And, I was like you don't know how much willpower I have.
I can too have it with me.
And, it took me eight years.
And, every single one of those previous tries,
I had the option of oxygen, and I always used it.
And, when I was successful, it was absolutely 100%
not an option.
And, that was true.
It was like there are some areas where you gotta
burn the boats.
- That's incredible.
So there's a lot of different ways I want to go right now.
I want to go straight to that because you went there.
- Sorry.
- No, it's incredible.
So folks are both listening to this as a podcast,
and some folks are watching it 'cause we capture the video.
The woman that you see before you here
or that you're listening to.
- Might not line up with what you think I look like.
(laughing)
- Is a certifiable, like bone crushing bad ass.
And, I've had the good privilege of climbing
Mount Kilimanjaro with you under your guidance,
how 'bout that.
With you, behind you.
- I don't know how much guidance you needed.
I really felt like you were a co-climber with me.
And, trust me I would tell you if you weren't.
I'm not being nice.
I'm not known for my niceness.
- I didn't see you pull many punches.
But, the sheer goal, so if you're a mountain climber,
the goal of climbing the biggest, most dangerous peak,
or one of the most dangerous peaks in the world,
is like an extraordinary goal.
And A, to have set that goal, what made you want
to go as big as you absolutely, possibly could?
Because there's a lot of people who climb mountains,
myself included.
I'm really happy just to climb these volcanoes
that are up in the Northwest. - Well there's some great--
- Yeah, there some beautiful things.
But, I had zero desire.
In fact, I've had opportunities to go to Everest,
and I've turned them down.
But, what makes you say yes to that most massive goal
that you can say yes to in that industry?
First question.
Second question, is go back over, and over, and over.
- Yeah, I think it's really hard for people to understand.
At least half of the people who are watching this
or listening to this, probably had a moment
of like eye rolling, like huh, Everest.
You know because we hear about it in a kind of gross
way a lot of times in the media where you know
any rich person can just go pay their way there.
And, I think that that is maybe true.
I don't actually fully subscribe to that
having been a person who's spent a lot of my life there,
I would argue with that.
But, it's also who are we in our infinite wisdom
to look at other people's motivations
and say that they're okay or not?
And, I think one of the beautiful parts
about climbing big mountains and big mountains
in the world in general is the world belongs
to us all regardless of what your motivation is
and regardless if I agree with it or not.
So if you are just like a super wealthy oil executive,
and you've never climbed a single mountain in your life,
and you want to go to the summit of Everest.
By being a human on this planet
and also by like whatever economics
are afforded to you and a bunch of other things
that have to go into that, you can do it.
And, who am I to like shame you for your reasons.
But for me--
- You're so good at framing this.
(Melissa laughing)
- Yeah, you know the person.
You know this person that we're all like hate,
and we're like oh isn't Everest just filled
with people that are carrying, aren't Sherpas
just carrying everybody on their backs to the summit.
It's like, I mean, okay so if you've listened
to this point, I hope you think I'm
a reasonably intelligent person.
I've spent about 10 years of my life on Everest,
and if I was reasonably intelligent,
there has to be something more there, right?
And, also like the ego accolades you get
from climbing Everest are just not sustainable enough
to get you through like the negativity
if that was really what it was like.
For me, going there the first time, it was about a job.
You know I work as a professional mountain guide,
and I had the opportunity to go and guide a client
in one of the most weird circumstances
that I ever had been put in.
My client was a climber who had summited
all of the seven summits already including Mount Everest,
and he wanted to go back and climb again.
And, he wanted me to be an assistant guide
partly because of my guiding skills that he'd seen
on other peaks, partly because of my medical knowledge.
And, I was like no, I can't do that.
And, he said, "Well, what would it take?"
And, I said I'd have to work with another guide.
And, he said, "Great, then I'll hire two guides."
And, he was in the position that he could do that.
He also had some deeply philanthropic reasons
for wanting to be there knowing that Everest
was this incredible billboard that catches
all of our attention whether we're climbers or not.
And, he wanted to capitalize on that
from a business side of things and raise funds
and awareness for the global AIDS crisis
and Product Red and working with Bono
and Bobby Shriver.
- Of course.
- So, I was suddenly in a position where I'm
not being the philanthropic one.
I'm just a mountain guide.
Like I'm here to make sure that the knots are safe,
and to also learn and have this opportunity
to climb the biggest mountain in the world.
And, that first time I didn't go thinking
this is where my life is gonna be,
this is gonna define me.
But, as soon as I was there, I realized that the people
in the area surrounding Everest,
all of the different, various tribes,
one of which is the Sherpa tribe.
It's a tribe of people.
It's also we refer to Sherpa as a job often,
and that's a little bit incorrect.
Porter is the job, Sherpa is the last name
in a tribe of people.
But, the Sherpa people shared something
that I saw as very familiar from watching
my parents work hard growing up, you know?
It's something I'd seen in myself, and it was
this like work ethic and just drive and ability
to be okay in nature and not try to like conform nature
to you, but to like work with nature.
- So this is what we have today?
Right, okay, all right.
- So yeah, exactly yeah, and then so what we're gonna
do with it and figuring it out.
And, I knew that I wanted to go back to that place.
So I was successful my first time guiding and climbing
on Everest, I summited.
It was not uncomplicated.
There was a lot of things going on that year.
The Olympic torch was being carried
to the summit from the Chinese side
by a group of climbers from Beijing,
and they put all these restrictions
on the Nepal side and said you can't climb.
We're constantly told no, no, no,
and then all of a sudden one day, we're like yes.
But, we didn't have enough time left in the season
to acclimatize, and everybody was climbing
on the same day, and it was just like crazy.
And, I left with more questions than answers.
And, that's sort of my barometer of how I put myself
in new experiences is curiosity is my biggest driver.
And, so if I can learn something, I'm gonna go
and learn something.
And, I have to tell you the dead truth of Everest for me.
Every year that I went back and had a different experience
whether it involved the summit or not,
I found myself with either more curiosity
or a satiated curiosity but whole new type of curiosity.
And, that's what kept bringing me back
is just trying to see there's all these questions
I want answers to, and I believe I can get them,
but I must be persistent.
- Well, it's probably reasonably easy to translate
that into a metaphor, but what is,
I'm gonna let you do the work here.
What is the metaphor that that provides for others?
You're doing it on a mountain.
You continue to go back.
Everything you do, you learn a little bit more,
and some provide answers and closure,
other provide more questions.
Is there some sort of quest thing?
- Yeah, it's interesting 'cause I don't know
if this is specific enough in terms of a metaphor
to understand, but you can tell me.
I think it's like all of us humans
have felt we were starting to excel
and maybe not to the point of being a true expert.
We've probably all felt we were an expert at something
at some point whatever that thing is.
If everybody who became an expert at any given thing,
turned around and walked away from it at that point,
nothing would evolve.
Nothing would become bigger and better.
You know, and it's like I think about if you're good
at like sales or something, and you're figuring out
like oh you know we're doing this credit card sales.
Okay so yeah, we have a credit card company.
We're like making great credit cards
and credit card processing, and everything's great.
Let's do more credit card processing,
but the pivot point is where you get curious,
and you say--
- What if?
- Could we do something better?
Is there a better way to do this or a different way?
And, it's that reinventing the wheel.
It's the two genres of people that say
like why reinvent the wheel, and it's like
why not reinvent the wheel?
- Right, make a bigger one, or a better one,
or a faster one.
- Yeah like is the wheel really the best thing here?
And, I think that that's the point where innovation
actually occurs.
And, I think innovation can occur creatively.
It can occur physically, it can occur personally
on like the little micro evolutions that we're all going
through as humans right now while we're all doing
whatever we're doing.
And, then it can occur like on this big macro level.
And, so for me, that was a huge part of what it always is.
It's like this evolutionary thing of just this constant
curiosity of, what?
- Well, to me I think there's something that is
also embedded in there which is the idea of mastery.
You said it really eloquently with like everybody's
an expert at something.
And, did you figure out that you were an expert
at climbing?
- I really am super, duper mediocre at climbing.
Just to make that totally clear.
I'm still like well in the throes of trying
to work towards expert, but I am like deeply in it for sure.
I have so much I can learn.
That's the best thing ever.
- But, that's a humility that you as a human being--
- But, it's also the truth.
Oh my God, we're gonna fight about this.
- I've seen you in action.
- You guys, we're having our third fight,
and you guys are witnessing it.
I can't tell you what the first two were.
- But, I think there's something beautiful
in that everyone's an expert, and if you can actually trust
your instincts and do the thing that you're supposed
to be doing or that you're an expert in,
like there's this beautiful thing that if you follow
your curiosity, or follow your interests, or your effort,
then that's a great way to sort of plug into this.
When you feel like you're doing something
that you're supposed to be being, there's this tractor beam,
this pull rather than this hard trudge.
Again, I can't keep losing the climbing metaphor--
- I know it's hard.
- I know it's impossible.
But, what about, like the part where you have
to figure out how to make money.
To me, that's fascinating.
- Well, there's two things about that.
So the first thing is finding your passion.
And, I actually think that like probably more people
in the world are struggling to find their passion
than to find a way to make money.
And, then you have the whole problem
of making your passion make money.
Like that's a whole secondary conundrum.
But, I think first is knowing your passion
and finding that thing that pulls you.
And, I think that we're constantly living in a world
especially now, and it's complicated every day
by distracting ourselves from true feelings.
And, we distract ourselves with so many things
and so many stimulations that greatly enrich our lives,
but some are also just preventing us from truly ever feeling
something.
And, so we tend, now, let me take a moment
and psychoanalyze the entire world.
We all tend to glom quite easily
onto other people's passions when we see
something that's beautiful or especially when we see
something that's very validated by the public.
- Culture yeah, rockstar.
- Yeah, where like I want to be a rockstar.
- I can stand onstage and sing.
I can sing.
- Totally.
- Yeah, look at all the praise here she's getting.
- Yeah, exactly.
And, in my microcosm like climbing especially climbing
Everest, it's an interesting thing.
People are like I want to do that for that accolade.
Well, if that's your only reason for doing it,
I can tell you it's going to be 10 times as hard
as if you do it because you love it
which is true of everything, right, if you find that thing.
So how do you find that thing that is your passion?
People are always asking me like oh you know how
did you know?
And, my only answer I can give you is if you're doing
something, and you're like is this my passion
especially for young people 'cause they're the ones
that want that sort of shortcutted like yes/no.
If you're asking that question, it is not your passion.
'Cause when you're in your passion, it's almost like
you're so blinded by just executing it that you don't
even have time to pause and say is this my thing?
And, you know what you could have about 1,000,000,000
things in your life.
That's the gift of being human, right?
Like I don't know that being like a climber,
a high altitude climber is totally gonna be
what defines me.
Like in 20 more years, maybe nobody's going
to even mention this because I found my real passion
or whatever.
But, this is something that I've pursued fearlessly
and completely, and I've committed all the way into.
And, so then how do you sort of morph that into something
where you can make a living out of it?
And, I think that that is really, really, really hard.
And, I referenced it a little bit earlier,
I think you have to be totally willing
to be in survival mode and to know that--
- I'm good with survival mode as long as I'm getting
that thing.
- The nourishment that your character and your soul
receives from doing the thing that means the most to you
is so much more calorically dense then real food.
If you have to starve yourself to achieve your passion.
That's what I think.
You know so I think that you make sacrifices,
and those sacrifices don't feel like sacrifices
because you are doing this thing.
Okay, this goes to another cliched metaphor thing.
It's like we've all been in a relationship, right?
It's like you're in the beginning stages
of a relationship where sacrifices just feel
like sweet things.
Or, you're like this isn't, like oh I didn't even want
to do my own thing on Sunday.
I wanted to totally, and you truly feel that.
And, so it's holding onto that moment forever
and then suddenly it becomes quite easy.
It's like it opens up the cleverness part
of your brain, and you're like suddenly quite clever
about how to capitalize that and how to turn it
into something.
So for me, it was a necessity to be able
to pay my bills, right?
And, I realized quite quickly, okay I could be
a climber and just be a total dirt bag climber
and probably, quite honestly, be a way better climber,
or I can try to spend as much time as I can outside
and also climb.
And, maybe my climbing skillset will not develop
as quickly, but I can make a living doing this.
And, I really spent a lot of time
especially in my early days
when I was like 19 years old, 20 years old
just really studying the people that I thought were cool
and figuring out like what do we have in common
and how are you making it work, and could I see
that working for me too?
You know just like high jacking other people's blueprint
a little bit, and then tweaking it so that it became
my blueprint.
And, the thing I've created, nobody does
the career I do.
It's hard for me to describe what I do.
And, it's such a matrix.
And, if you were to look at my schedule
of like how I make it work, it is 100 balls
in the air all the time.
I spend nearly no time doing nothing.
You know I'm always like hustling or saying yes.
I mean I just flew here from Texas
where I was speaking yesterday,
and you know I'm going then to Colorado
to teach at a retreat for next week,
and it's just like constant movement
and a matrix of all sorts of different things
that ultimately come together and make this thing.
But, it's not, you know.
(Melissa laughing)
So this is my whole conundrum, like when you're on a plane,
and someone's like oh what do you do for work?
And, I'm 100% of the time, I work at Starbucks.
(Chase laughing)
They're like oh nice, like making the coffee?
I don't even get to make, I work
in like the corporate office, and their like hmm.
And, they go back to reading their book.
And, I'm like this was so much easier of a conversation
than this person who says like oh what do you do?
And, I'm like, well, I work as a mountain guide.
They're like oh what do mean?
I'm like, well, I work as like a high altitude
climbing guide helping clients experience
the mountain safely.
Oh, like you drive the bus around like Mount Rainier?
I'm like, okay, so let me tell you.
And, I quickly have to go like you know I work
on Mount Everest as a professional climbing guide.
Oh, to the top?
I'm like, well yes, to the top of Everest.
This is like the conversation.
It's a really common conversation I have.
And, so it's funny because it's like hard
for people to understand, and I don't know what to say.
- Oh for sure, yeah.
- I'm a guide, athlete.
I'm a speaker.
I like sharing my story.
I'm a teacher, I'm a mentor.
I do some philanthropic work.
Like, it's just a matrix.
Sometimes, I'm like a house cleaner.
- But, to me, going back to the thing
you said earlier about being willing to do
whatever it takes, the fact that you do
just figure out when you're sort of all in
or when you're committed to the thing,
or where you're feeling the flow state.
I think that's the thing that so many people
today in our culture but just, I say today in our culture,
especially because we have the other side of us
that's rather disconnected or that's looking
at what everybody else's highlight reel is.
Did you feel like you were able to go straight there,
or was there any sort of like, did you screw up
and get off track, and if so, help us see you
as human as opposed to Wonder Woman.
- Yeah, well it's a very human experience
that I'm in.
It's constant.
I mean I screw up like all the time everyday,
still today figuring it out.
You know like I don't think I've cracked the code
quite honestly.
Like I think I have a code.
I do feel quite centered in what I've got
going for me now, and I feel like I have
a sustainable balance.
But, if I showed it to you, it wouldn't look
anything like balance to anybody else probably.
It would look like something crazy,
and it doesn't make any sense.
So I think that--
- Relative to what you have been doing
in order to get here, it's balanced, right?
- Totally.
It's sustainable, I guess is a better word than balanced.
- Yeah, we were talking about that before.
- I strive for balance, but I ultimately want
sustainability.
I want something that I can keep doing
and that makes sense and is possible.
But, I think one of the biggest hiccups
that I've struggled with, and it's, you know
my highly centered self right now, I would tell you
if you're gonna pursue whatever your thing is
and to be able to do it, I think one thing
you have to do is be willing to abandon
what others think of that path.
To do that, you have to be also willing
to give up the accolades of people thinking
what you're doing is great 'cause you have
to give up the good with the bad.
You can't just ignore the bad feedback
and listen to the glossy stuff.
One of my biggest challenges is that I'm
a normal, insecure human who cares deeply
what people think of me of course in a really small
net little circle of the you know 18 friends
that I might have had when I was 20 and learning this
to like now the public audience that knows about me.
I care just as much what everybody thinks about me.
And, so that has been such a challenge, I think,
to keep your motivations authentic.
And, I don't know, like, this is where I say
I don't have the answer to it, but it's the thing
I constantly, if there's one thing that I am
truly messing up, it's that.
It's that making sure that I'm making decisions
that are like values based decisions
and not validation based decisions.
And, I think actually in some ways, the more successful
you become, the bigger of a trap it is,
though it's a trap we all feel no matter how much
quote, unquote success we feel like we do.
- Yeah, whatever the measure.
- Yeah, it's just so easy to get mired deeply
into what other people think of your path.
And, the truth is, at the end of the day,
like you're with you.
And, if you're not cool with your path--
- How many people told you couldn't do it?
- Told me, or gave me the vibes that they knew
I couldn't do it?
Like so many.
Yeah, so many.
I mean especially climbing Everest without using
supplemental oxygen.
I actually in 2010, I was climbing Mount Everest
with Dave Morton who you met.
- Yeah, love Dave.
- Yeah, and it was my mentor and taught me
a lot about climbing in the Himalayas and big mountains.
And, I remember sitting in our base camp tent together
like I'm not an overly emotive person.
I don't like cry often.
But, I remember like feeling near tears
at this general sort of sarcastic vibe
that I had passed through base camp
and other professional climbers and other guides
and members of this Everest climbing community
that had written me off in away.
They were like, oh, Melissa like conned her sponsors
somehow into paying for her to come back here
and try this thing 'cause it was the second time
I was there trying it.
- Got it.
- And, little did we know it would take five times
for me to be successful.
Yeah, attempting to climb without using
supplemental oxygen on trips that I was subsequently,
like I was mentioning before, did use the oxygen.
And, I just remember thinking, and I wrote
something about it too.
I could dig it up and find it.
I think I wrote about how more people
didn't believe in me than did.
And, if you step away now 'cause we're in the future,
and I've achieved this thing.
And, I did it really quietly.
Like, I didn't tell anybody I was going to do it,
and that was part of me sifting through my motivations
and making sure I wasn't looking for validation
in having a big goal.
And, I just sort of quietly.
I actually lied a lot, and I said
I'm not going to Everest this season.
I explicitly said that, and then I silently
sort of went to the quieter side of the mountain,
avoided all the climbing community,
showed up and by that time my tent had been up there,
so some people knew I was coming.
But, I kept my motivations really private.
And, I had to go and just like do this thing on my own.
At the end of it, it was like all these people
that were so shocked and surprised,
and I couldn't tell are you shocked and surprised
'cause I didn't tell you I was doing this
or 'cause you didn't think I ever could?
That's sort of that non competitive side of me.
I'm not motivated by people saying you can't do this.
That doesn't like drive me in that classic.
I know a lot of, especially women, are super motivated
that way.
If you tell me I can't, like watch me.
But, I don't have enough like deep seeded anger
to go that route yet.
I mean I have other kinds of deep seeded anger,
but not in that way.
And, so I feel like I had to like
get through what do I believe is possible?
And, the truth is I don't know.
And, so why am I taking it so personally?
This was what I wrote.
Now, I'm remembering exactly was that how dare I
give these people who don't know me
as well as I know me a right to tell me
what they think I can do versus what I think I can do?
And, I had to like become really clear with that
and to just when you're trying something that's bold,
especially something that nobody else
has done before or that very few people have done before,
I think you really have to be willing to trust
your own instinct of you know you best.
And, what am I pursuing?
I'm not pursuing achieving this.
I'm pursuing the curiosity of can I achieve this?
And, I'm cool with the answer.
I just want the answer.
It can be yes, and it can be no.
I'm not trying to prove something.
- I think in the startup world the parallel
is Bezos saying you need to be willing
to be misunderstood for long periods of time.
- Almost forever.
And, you know what's crazy though.
It's a slightly embarrassing human trait for us,
I feel like, 'cause once you achieve a success,
I mean I definitely share handshakes and hugs.
I have a special term I'm using in my mind
right now for them, those people I know
behind my back were always saying I couldn't do it.
And, there's something really beautiful
about achieving something like what I did
under my own power.
And, like nobody can take that away from me.
You know nobody can say--
- She flew to 23,000 feet.
- Yeah, she paid people to carry her to the top.
It's like I toiled.
I did all the hard work myself, my husband.
We did that trip together just the two of us.
We hired no staff.
We used the fixed lines that are present on Everest
which is really complicated not to use them,
and so it would be silly not to.
And, I did it.
And, it can never be taken away from me.
You can say what you want about anything else,
but I also put in eight previous years
of work on Everest to get to know that mountain
to the point where I felt like I knew it well enough
to be that naked in front of it I guess I would say.
You know to be truly that vulnerable.
And, so it feels good to know, and if feels
even better when I see the people that I know
naysayed me.
(Chase laughing)
But, also it feels good to know that I didn't suddenly see
myself as like an elite mountain climber
when that achievement happened
because I knew the toil that went into it,
and I know like you know it doesn't mean
that I'm immune from all of the responsibilities
of learning how to be a better climber
in certain disciplines.
It doesn't mean that I suddenly am safe
climbing Mount Rainier which is you know more of a beginner
glaciated peak.
I still have to be heads up.
I still have to pay attention to what's going on.
I still have to train, make sure my skillset
is as good as it can be, and if I want
to continue to advance in other ways,
like I didn't get a pass card at all.
I just got one moment in time that was awesome,
and I achieved something that was really hard.
And, you know now I have about 1,000,000,000
other hard things to try to achieve.
So it's just a process.
- So two things I want to touch on.
One is being female in, I think, what is--
- Do you want to talk about your experience
of being female?
- No, I'm fascinated by, and I'm trying
to honestly shed a light in there are
very few women in tech.
And, it's just, I would say a cultural crisis.
I think we're waking up.
Like the distance between waking up
and us being balanced gender whatever oriented,
it's 1,000 miles, and there's a lot of work to do.
And, I think one of the things that I would love to hear
from you is I think it's thought of as generally
a male dominated industry.
- Very much.
- And, so like what is it like operating as a woman?
That's thing one.
And, thing two would be the fear point you made earlier.
But, let's focus on.
- I'm super impressed that you can keep up
with like my ADD just shooting around all these
different topics.
It's very impressive.
- It's only matched with my own.
- Great.
It's like remember to come back to this point.
Being a woman in a super male dominated atmosphere
professionally and passion wise has been interesting.
I don't know what the alternative is, right,
'cause I've only ever been a woman.
So I can only have my own experience.
But, one of the things that I think
is the greatest blessing of being in the big mountains
is that there is not gate you pass through
going to climb Everest where the Mountain Everest
is like you know what's your economic background?
What's your racial background?
What's your cultural belief system?
Oh, and what's your gender?
Okay, now you can go.
It doesn't matter, right?
You show up with what you have, and you put yourself
to test essentially in this static,
super dynamic, but like same atmosphere.
Everyone's experiencing the same thing
whether you have one set of organs or other.
Basically, there's not difference.
And, so there's something that I personally
just from, I don't know that other people see it this way,
but from a just confidence standpoint, I know
that I'm having the same experience as my male
climbing partner.
Almost all my climbing partners are men.
It's densely saturated with super talented men.
And, you know it's starting to become
spottily populated with women, and I think it's more
to do with cultural reasons than to do
with like physical capability reasons.
'Cause climbing, this big endurance stuff,
it's just not suited well, better to bigger people
or more muscular people or any just genetic set that way.
I think it has a lot to do with the cultural
representation of women.
So big mountain climbing in the Himalayas,
it can be expensive, it's time consuming.
Those things typically start to come together
for people in a middle age zone.
Usually it's not super young people.
It's like have some life under me.
Well, for a lot women, that's when they have
young kids, or their have notions
of starting a family.
And, that sort of tethers them more to that side of life.
So I think you see less of a population of women in it
because of that.
That's changing I hope, and I hope it continues to change.
I sort of set out like in my earliest days,
like my very first summit of Everest, I remember coming back
and the newspaper wanting to do an interview with me
of like this female mountain guide summited Everest.
I was like so did like about 200 other male
mountain guides, and I just happened to be
the only woman there.
But, like it's just uninteresting
other than my ovaries which is not how you're going
to lead any headline in a paper.
- Ovaries make it to the summit.
- Ovaries made it to the summit, shocking.
You know it's just not so interesting.
And, so I really shied away from that kind of media
because I wanted to have something to stand on
that would stand up to that neutrality
of like it shouldn't matter if I'm a woman or a man.
And, there is something that I think is really cool
and powerful about being in this like unique set
as like one of the only women 'cause it means
that I was as good as the men, but I had to do something
that women also hadn't done.
And, now every woman who wants to do it after me,
like it's possible.
I proved that to you, right?
Like I wasn't trying to prove that to you.
But, now you know it's possible for you too.
And, I'm not an oil executive from Texas.
You know I came by this as honestly as I could
in the process of being myself.
And, I just brought to the table my best version
of myself everyday, and that is good enough in climbing.
But, it's a battle.
And, I will say this too.
I am certainly no martyr as being one of the only women.
I know it is an absolute double-edged sword.
And, I like both edges of it to be honest.
Like you get opportunities and attention
for being an minority and especially being
like a young, small, blonde haired girl.
There's opportunities that presented themselves to me
that probably didn't get presented to my equally skilled
male counterparts.
But, as soon as I had that opportunity,
then I had to like fight for my life
to prove that not only did I get this because I was
this minority that you thought was interesting,
but because I also have the skills.
So for me, and I think in tech this speaks
truly to how do we fix it as a group of women?
How do you create better gender balance?
How do we encourage that?
The only thing we can do as the population
of the women who are this minority in male dominated things
is be the very best you can be at what you do.
And, you don't have to worry about if you were hired
to fill a quota 'cause who cares?
As long as you're doing the best job you can,
then it doesn't matter.
You don't have to wonder why you were there.
And, if you were there for the wrong reasons,
who cares?
'Cause you're still doing the best job you can,
and if that's good enough, that's good enough.
And, it starts to just equalize and sort of blend
the lines of why and how we have people in places.
- So beautiful.
- Yeah.
- I remember talking to you about that briefly.
- Easy to say, so hard to do.
- Yeah, and I think that's one of the reasons
I'm trying to call attention to it.
Just to like give space to remark on it
and to say damn.
- And, know that there's hard days and easy days,
like for all of us.
And, I think we tend to live in these echo chambers,
like, we're becoming a little more aware of
in this current time in life and like surround ourselves
with people that look like us.
That happens gender-wise, that happens racially,
that happens culturally.
And, the more that you can sort of thrust yourself
into uncomfortable situations and try to excel,
like the more you're going to learn about the world,
I think, and the more just generally nice I think
all people are gonna be.
And, that's, I mean I'll tell you what,
being a female minority in my work
it sort of hearkens back to part of my authentically hippie
family was that my sister and I went to school
on an Indian reservation as some of the only white kids
and all Native Americans at our school,
and so we were the minority just racially and culturally.
And, I didn't notice until we left
that we were treated any differently.
It just felt like the norm.
And, I think that there's a lot to be learned
from sitting in a space where you don't look like
all the people around you, and to own yourself.
I think that's what it gives us 'cause I think
so much of what is the harmful things that happen
in the world happen from insecurity and not really being
cool with who we all are inside.
And, so figuring out how to do that
is the gift of travel I think.
- Yeah, there's a lot of perspective
that comes with travel.
Then let's shift to fear. - Fear.
Yeah, let's talk about fear.
- So I opened with mentioning sort of life and death.
And, that I'll say, unfortunately I'm using
my own words here.
You should feel free to use your own,
but it's a real, like, you hike past people
who have died on your way to the summit.
And, you don't help them out of the ability
to stay alive yourself.
I have an experience of that, and it's a crazy
responsibility to both have and not have.
And, it has to be a piece of the psyche, fear,
like everyday.
You are in arguably one of the most dynamic
weather environments
- Just so dynamic, right.
- that you can possibly be in on this planet.
And, you're doing all those things simultaneously.
How in the hell do you not get paralyzed with fear?
- So I think that, for me, which I can only speak
to this experience of myself.
- You're so good at that.
- For me, the reverse has happened, I guess.
Instead of becoming paralyzed by this like really tangible
fear of like, yes, people have died around me.
I've seen people die.
To clarify, when I'm climbing to the summit
of any peak, if I see somebody in distress,
and I can safely help them without putting
my clients or myself at risk, I absolutely will.
And, I've actually like turned around
on the way to the summit of Everest to help
a climber descend in that exact scenario.
And, that felt right to me.
It doesn't always work that way.
Like, it's not always that obvious.
- Black and white, yeah.
- Yeah, so being confronted with the very real reality
of death.
And, you know on Everest, I think probably
the most confronted I ever have been with it
was in 2014.
There was this single ice fall avalanche that happened
inside this really dangerous section of the climb
and 16 local and Nepali workers were killed
in one accident, and five of them were friends of mine
that I'd worked with closely over the previous six years.
And, it's easy to talk about risk in theory
and that fear that comes with risk.
But, when you're confronted with, I mean
this is quite graphic, but like when you're literally
confronted with a stack of bodies
and helping to load them into a helicopter
to get them to their families where they can be
cremated and said goodbye to.
It's just a different kind of thing.
And, that's like warfare.
Like no human should have to see that
without know that that's what you're going into.
And, climbing big mountains, you don't think
that's ever what you're going to go into.
And, so there's this side of it that could rise up
that is this fear is paralyzing because you know
(fingers snapping) millisecond.
There's zero reason why that person was there
instead of me.
And, you could just be totally paralyzed by that.
And, for some reason in my brain
and in my experience, it does the opposite
which it does this thing where it makes me feel
super like comfy in my daily life
'cause we're all confronted by the fact
that like the only certainty of this existence
is that living is fatal.
We are going to die.
And, we all have some really deep, I think,
human and innate fears of death and unknowns
around death.
And, we do all sorts of things to prevent our deaths,
you know presumably everyday.
And, we don't just like embrace that.
And, I don't embrace it, but I don't live
a very fearful existence in the rest of my life.
You know I think I live a hyper alert existence
in all areas of my life.
I definitely walk into a room and look up first
and make sure there's no overhead hazards
before I like enter.
- You're trained to pay attention.
- Yeah, it's like sensitized me in ways
that like probably normal people don't look at,
you know like aren't quite as cued up to.
- So the scaffolding that's hanging.
- Yeah actually was like I don't know if,
no, 'cause there's no person operating it.
So it took out the objective hazard.
It's just like a static hazard.
But, then I think it's like a good thing in a way
because it sort of reassures me that it's okay
to have fear and to be confronted with the reality
of death and sudden death and accidental death
'cause I think death, being like I'm cool with death,
a lot of us can probably get there.
I'm cool with accidental death, kind of a harder thing
to get cool with, you know?
It kind of probably makes you feel
a little bit uncomfortable to think about that right now,
but I also think it sort of puts in check
that normal fear that we all have, unless,
I have to tell you the truth of it, it's less
in regards to myself 'cause if I die, I die.
Like, I'm done.
I don't care really how I die.
I'm not there to grieve my death.
It's like thinking about people I love dying.
That's where the fear for me comes in.
And, I say this, you know I had an accident
happen climbing with a climbing partner,
and my climbing partner died.
I did not obviously, and I, in the end of that experience,
I said so many times, and I still hold to this day,
the easier thing would've been if I would've died.
You know because dealing with people close to you dying
is so hard.
And, that's where the fear lives for me.
It's like I fear another accident like that.
I fear that happening.
But, then being constantly communicating
and like existing as a guest on nature's terms
makes me feel better about it 'cause I'm like
you know what whether you believe there's a design
to it or not, like we're all at the mercy of it
in some way.
And, so I kind of have to find a way to be
in the flow with knowing that it could stop.
- Snap.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Advice to other folks.
There's a fear that keeps people from doing things.
It's maybe a little less prescient than death
in the Khumbu ice fall.
But, advice?
- I think fear to fail is the biggest thing.
And, I have always sort of mentally put failure
as like fail and live are the same word sort of.
So if I take an action as a fear to fail,
I'm taking it as a fear to live 'cause failure is--
- Wait, say that one more time, that was so fast.
- (laughing) Work with me here.
Yeah, so like I replace the word fail.
'Cause I think it's easy to be like I'm afraid of failing
with the word live.
- I'm afraid of living.
- And, so I'm afraid of living because, in a way,
living is failing.
Like we're just gonna repetitively fail,
fail our way through all sorts of experiences
until like we have a little modicum of success,
and then we're like gonna get good at that
and start failing at everything else again.
And, to be not afraid of living
'cause it's easier to think of it in those terms.
You know like I'm not gonna live a life
that I am afraid of living a life.
And, I'm gonna sort of like embrace that failure.
And, I don't know, this is probably pretty complicated,
but take your ego out of it and don't make it
so personal when you fail.
'Cause that's what paralyzes us in big and little decisions
is the fear of I'm going not to succeed with this.
And, it's like well of course you're not gonna succeed
probably at most things you do.
There's very few things you're just gonna
blatantly succeed at.
And, what a snooze, right?
Like honestly, you're probably not gonna keep
pursuing those things.
You know it's a process.
The good stuff comes from failing.
So that's where, to me, I just mentally shift it to living.
So that's like the advice especially to young people.
'Cause I feel like, again, the gifts of my parents
and sort of being untethered in the way that they were,
I don't have a fear, and I got this from them,
I just don't have a fear of trying something,
realizing it's not working and changing my mind
and doing something different.
And, so often we put these like parameters up
like if I quit my job and go do this thing,
like what if it doesn't work out?
It's like what if it doesn't?
Like, and then what?
Like, you don't die.
Like, you're not dead.
It's okay.
You're gonna then just do something else.
And, of course there's tangible, and I get this
all the time.
You don't understand.
Wait till you have a mortgage, wait till you have
like a family, wait till you have all this,
and then you'll understand.
And, I'm like I don't know that the wait until,
I think you either choose to understand it or you don't.
You know I think it's like you kind of just gotta be
okay with taking that little feeling of falling
and knowing that it's gonna stop eventually
and try to make that a soft landing if you can.
But, know that it's cool if it's not.
- So much wisdom baked into there.
- There you go.
That's all the answers.
- I'm gonna shift gears now, and I'm go
to a little bit more about you personally.
- Yes, I'm Sagittarius which if that wasn't clear already.
(Melissa and Chase laughing)
- So that's a December birthday.
- Wow, so good.
- I only know like five.
- That's like what a sister or something.
Yeah, like the people in your immediate life
that you know.
You're like, oh you must be an Ares.
- So, and we've talked about this.
We've talked about it off camera.
We've been friends for a long time.
Do you see yourself doing this forever?
What do you translate this into?
Do you have an idea of what you're pulling on right now?
Where is it going?
'Cause do you keep walking uphill slowly?
Or, do you go to other mountains?
I'm answering the question that I'm going to ask
a little bit.
But, I know that you want to get back
and part of your connection to Everest
has been the Juniper Fund.
So maybe talk a little bit about where your sort of mastery
of this universe, where is it taking you next?
- Yes, definitely.
So I think the same way that I choose a climbing objective
is sort of how I choose a life objective
which is to say it's complicated.
When I'm on a mountain climbing actively,
and people say oh what are you gonna do next,
or what peak are you gonna climb?
I always say that's like calling out somebody else's name
when you're like with your boyfriend.
You can't do that.
Like I can't cheat on this mountain.
I'm here doing this now.
But, I definitely wait until I'm inside
of that discomfort to find the inspiration
for the next thing.
And, so I don't have this master plan
that's written out in my life that's like this is
where I want to be, and this is what I'm working towards
at the moment.
I really take the inspiration of each experience
because I'm learning something and it's altering
who I am and the things that I can bring
to the next experience.
So I don't want to have too much rigidity
in where I think I'm going.
And, so I'm really am like always trying
to sort of feel that out.
And, one thing that has happened super organically like that
has been my philanthropic work.
And, I would love to sit here a little bit taller perhaps
and be like I founded a nonprofit which supports
39 families, and I do this out of the goodness of my heart.
It's like I don't have time to do this.
I don't have any skillset to do this.
I'm not good at doing this.
But, I saw that passion that was necessary,
that necessity, and I knew that no one else
was doing it, and I had to do it.
And, so in 2010 when I was climbing on a peak
near Everest in Nepal, that accident I was alluding to
was with a climbing partner of mine
who was a Nepali Sherpa and a close friend.
He worked in the United States.
We'd formed a close relationship
over the preceding couple years climbing together.
And, on a climb we were doing together, he was killed.
And, he has two young sons and a wife,
and I had to go back to their home without him
when we left together.
And, it changed my life, you know?
It totally changed everything for me.
And, on a sort of big picture level,
I committed to his family that I wanted to pay them
what his salary would've been as long as I had work.
If I had work, and I was capable of doing it,
I wanted to put back into their family
what he would've brought because I felt responsible.
He was with me, you know?
I felt like that was the right thing to do.
I quickly realized the impact that that small thing
had in their lives was massive because it allowed
them to sort of do the grieving that they needed to do
without worrying about how to feed themselves
and how to pay for education.
And, I really realized that this is a need
that many families have.
And, they aren't, I don't think that family's lucky
they lost their husband and father.
It's not lucky, but it was lucky that they had
somebody like me who was there who was willing
to sort of look at a solution for how to help
not just guilt money of here take this money,
I feel so bad.
But, like how can we make this situation better.
- Yeah, and recurring and sustainable.
- Yes, sustainable.
Yeah and so, so many families,
especially of the Nepali workers, the economics
in Nepal are crazy.
It's like the third poorest non African country
in the world.
You know their main export is tourism,
and then they have like power that they sell to India.
The economics are really volatile.
They don't have a constitution.
There's just a lot of things going on in the country
that are challenging.
So the local workers that work in the mountains,
they expose themselves to incredible risks,
sometimes that result in death, and they don't have
a support structure from the government,
from individuals unless they're just lucky enough
to have been working for somebody who feels bad enough
to give a little cash.
And usually, it's a one time thing, and it doesn't support
a family.
So Dave Morton, who I was mentioning, was my climbing
partner and mentor who you know we climbed
Kilimanjaro with, yes.
Way more stylish than I am honestly, also.
I'm glad you didn't have us on together
'cause I would feel like way out styled by the two of you.
We both had been working in Nepal at that point for awhile,
and we both recognized this need to do something bigger.
And, I said this model of what I've done
with Chuwong's family seems like it's working really well.
And, so we started the Juniper Fund in 2012.
And, what we do is we pay the families of local mountain
workers who are killed in the mountains while working.
We pay them a cost of living grant for five years.
So it's a temporary grant, so they don't become
financially dependent on us.
And, it's about equal to what a year's salary would be
for an average worker.
It's $3,000 a year every year at the same time.
It's nondiscretionary.
We don't tell them this has to be used for education,
or this has to be used for something else.
We let them choose what they want, give them
that freedom back, that power back that they once had
when their primary breadwinner was bringing home a paycheck.
And, we also create opportunities for those families
to become fully financially independent.
So we provide vocational training, classes
for widows, brother, whomever is the family member
that's benefiting, and mothers.
And, then we provide small business grants
so that they can open their own businesses.
And, I think right now I have to totally like do
the counting.
I think we have somewhere between five to seven businesses.
- Well we have Christina, right here.
- How many total businesses?
I mean she'd probably have to do the counting too
because we were just over in Nepal,
and we just started a couple more right now.
- We have a chicken farm and five restaurants.
- Yeah, a chicken farm and five restaurants at this time.
- That's wonderful.
- That came from you know training these women
in restaurant management.
And, then we're putting you know another handful of women
and men through language classes, a variety
of language classes too.
One guy's taking Korean classes, a lot of English classes,
and so that they can better their own situation.
So at the end of the five years, they can be
through that primary grieving period
and have some sort of ability to be financially stable
and empowered.
And, I did not ever foresee how big it would become.
That accident I mentioned where 16 workers
were killed in on accident changed the face
of the Juniper Fund 'cause suddenly we had
16 families we anticipated about two or three a year.
And, we had 16 in one year.
And, then the following year, the earthquake happened
in Nepal, and we added another 14 families.
So as of today, we have 39 families.
And, we're committed to supporting all of them
for five years, and then continuing to be supportive
of them through the rest of their lives or our lives.
And, that to me is the most meaningful work
of my life honestly.
If you're going to write something about me
on, you know my obituary, it's like I hope that that leads.
I'd rather be known as somebody who had a positive
social impact in a country that's so important to me
and has given me so much and has given me
that sort of accolade and propelled my career.
I would love to be know for having done
something positive to help contribute back to that country.
And, I'm not doing it.
You know like you're all doing it.
You can donate to the Juniper Fund yourselves.
It's not me paying my money.
You know I'm spending my time, and I am paying my money,
but it's just generous donors.
I mean really most of our donations come from private
donors who have either been impacted
by an experience in Nepal or who just like the mountains
and say, yeah giving a couple hundred dollars
to this cause is truly meaningful.
And, our monies are going to support these families
in a really cool way.
- Yeah, I think there's something about being
a part of a thing that has so much impact
where you can actually feel--
- Oh, it's like real tangible.
- Yeah, it's very, very tangible, and some money
goes a long way.
You know the families and the families
are verifiably under duress.
- Well, and I go and seen them early on
in the process after an accident's happened,
and then continue to visit with them
again and again over the years.
And, it is like meeting different people every time
because the process of grief and the process,
because they're in two types of grief, right?
Like the loss of somebody you love
and also the fear of how am I going to survive now,
just eating.
And, that is something that like we just don't
experience very much in the West.
It's not something we have a lot of like government
welfare programs that prevent that from being
a real reality for a lot of people.
And, it's not to say it doesn't exist,
but it's less common.
So to see people more from this totally griped with fear,
to, I mean, women who by no measure of their imaginations
do they ever think they would own their own business
and be making enough money to put their kids in school
and be like fully flourishing and sustainable.
It's just the most beautiful and wonderful thing.
And, I think a real testament for me to how passion
can be successful to kind of like turn it back
to what we were talking about at the beginning.
Is that if you want to see a business fail,
like just fail, no parachute type failing,
ask two mountain guides to like run a nonprofit.
Like, that's a great way to watch something
just like tank.
But, this is so meaningful, and like these highly
unprepared two mountain guides, Dave Morton
and myself, who are like also working full time
are trying to like scrape together like A, the paperwork
to get like an approved nonprofit, and then like be
responsible with the money that we're trying to raise
and get it to the families and get this all going
into this now highly functioning system that we have
that's like a really functional, low overhead,
high impact nonprofit that I am embarrassed
and proud to be attached to.
I'm embarrassed 'cause I'm like I have no right
to be doing something that's this successful
'cause I know nothing about this, like zero.
- But, there's a beautiful lesson in there,
is there not?
- There is such a beautiful lesson
'cause I think when you think again about bringing
it into the middle section of like fear n'stuff,
I don't fear walking under big seracs that could kill me.
I fear like sitting at a desk and having
to fill out forms to make sure that our nonprofit
is properly registered.
Like terrifying, I just can't possibly.
It makes me feel short of breath even thinking about that.
So I did it, and then I got smart,
and I hired somebody, thanks Christine,
who's much better at doing it than me
and can help us be more effective.
And yeah, it's a total lesson in the fact
that like I think no matter what it is,
and I always say this is true too,
intention is worth two-thirds of action.
Like when your intentions are really good
even when your actions are kind of mediocre
'cause you don't know what you're doing,
it kind of fixes itself in a way and that's
kind of nice.
- People will be more likely to listen
and forgiving and help. - And help you, yeah.
I'm not doing this so anybody knows I did it.
I'm doing this 'cause it's a total necessity,
and I am not good asking people for money,
but I am much less good at sitting at a table
with a widow who's crying and telling her
I can't help her.
You know so you prioritize which thing
is less uncomfortable.
Asking people for money is way less uncomfortable
than like sitting with grieving widows,
for sure, hands down.
Like definitely.
- That's compare perspective.
There's so many things that you said
in that last moment whether it's referencing
Christine, Christina, or Christine?
- Christine.
- Christine, whether it's referencing Christine
and the team that you guys have--
- Christine, and Dave, and I who run the show.
- Have like born, or your relationship
with the climbing partner with whom your life
is literally, not even figuratively--
- Tied to.
- Literally tied to and tied to success together
and failure together.
Talk to me a little bit about sort of teamwork
in your career on the mountain, and your nonprofit.
It's obviously a theme.
- I have some awesome metaphor cliches for you here.
- Okay.
- So something that Dave Morton, this mentor
who is the cofounder of the Juniper Fund with me,
we talk a lot about this, and he calls it the brotherhood
of the rope.
And, what it is when you're attached together
by a climbing rope is that you stop using words
because your communication comes from your movements,
and you can feel each other's movements.
And, you always know that you're moving towards
the same objective, and if one person's moving
at a quicker speed than the other, you have to figure out
how to fix that 'cause you can't move
at two different speeds, and you can't move
in two different directions.
And, so there's this real reality of just like projecting
in life that you're kind of always in the brotherhood
of the rope with somebody whether that's
like a personal relationship that you're in,
whether that's your friendships, whether
that's your professional growth.
You're in these sort of roped relationships
where you're communication with words
kind of ceases 'cause it's not easy to hear,
not easy to understand, and you instead
are in this like intuitive line of this is a thing
between us that allows us, as long as we're moving
towards the same objective, figure out how to move
at the same pace and figure out how we assess
hazards together.
And, you become like this single little amoebic thing
rather than this individual.
You're a new kind of individual that includes
somebody else.
And, I honestly thing that like being a self-centered
person is probably more challenging in some ways
than caring about somebody else
'cause it's easy for me to care more for somebody else's
health, happiness, wellbeing, and comfort
than maybe my own sometimes.
And, so you suddenly are attached to somebody
who you're so concerned with their health,
happiness, wellbeing, and forward motion,
that you disregard the discomforts that you're feeling
'cause you're moving for the unit not for yourself.
So I don't know if that little metaphor--
- That's amazing.
- That was hard to make up all on the spot
right there.
All I had was brotherhood of the rope.
I had no idea where it was gonna go.
- But, clearly you know it intuitively
because you've lived it - I lived it, yeah.
- for you entire career, right?
- Yeah, and I do think that it's like,
yeah, you team takes on a whole new thing.
'Cause I do think that so often what we're striving for
is individual success, but it's born through, I mean
there's no such thing honestly to be totally clear.
Even the most single individual, successful person
that we can think of who we say that person
is successful, their success is born from tons
of brotherhoods of ropes.
I mean there's so many ropes they're attached to
that have gotten them to this point.
And, that is most definitely true for me.
I thought that, you know I really wanted
to like climb Everest without the assistance
of anything including supplemental oxygen.
It's like a very childish defiance that I've maintained
since I was like about three.
I can do it myself, like that's basically what I said.
- I could never think of you in those terms.
So surprising. - Are you shocked?
So shocking.
- We've spent a lot of time together.
(Chris laughing)
- I need to everything myself.
Like don't help me put on my backpack, go away.
Yeah, and so this was in my mind like this grand display
of like I can do it myself.
I don't need your help oxygen, necessary element
for all of our survival.
I don't need you.
Like, I got this.
But, at the same time, this is interesting.
When I was on the final push for 14 hours
to the summit of Everest without oxygen
moving just death crawl slowly.
I had a lot of time to think, not a lot of oxygen
to think, but I do remember thinking
about the fact that I was being moved along
by all of the people who had taught me things
and believed in me and even the ones that hadn't.
It was this incredibly solo experience
that was so super collaborative.
Like, it took all of that to allow me to have
that one success of my own.
And, you kind of realize like embarrassingly
I didn't do this alone.
Nothing really is done alone.
You know it's all done with teams.
And, I think even when you're on these solo
sort of journeys internally or externally
or whatever, you're really doing it
with the help of a team.
And, I think that's part of cracking code.
And, I'm still working deeply on this,
but like to be a good team member and also to be a leader
and like know how to be both.
Like, that's the secret maybe, I don't know.
- Well, let's go to leadership for a second
because I have had a very firsthand account
of your leadership skills.
And, just a quick little context.
So Melissa and myself, and probably, I don't know,
15 other people, 10 or 15?
- Yeah, I think about 15, yeah.
- Went to Africa to climb Kilimanjaro
which is the tallest peak in Africa in an effort--
- 19,340 feet, pretty high.
- Let's just round up can call it 20.
- Yeah, about 20,000 feet.
Very high.
- I guess you don't round off in climbing.
- It's a real specific and like nuanced.
It's annoyingly that way.
- Fair enough.
And, it was to raise awareness for access
to clean drinking water.
And, it was fun.
There was a handful of us, and we're sending messages
back, and we had folks on the ground.
And, there was a bunch of fancy folks involved.
It went all the way to the Obama White House
and to Bono.
I think it was reasonably successful.
But, the core to anything that could be called,
to use your words, a modicum of success
was being on the mountain, being safe,
putting one foot in front of another over,
and over, and over with a bunch of well trained people,
yourself, Dave.
And, it was extraordinary to watch you lead
a group of largely incapable people.
(Melissa laughing)
- Somewhere in all of you there was capability,
and that is what led to the success of coming home.
- I mean there was literally there was rockstars,
people who were smoking a pack of cigarettes a day
like at base camp before we left.
- Like who quit smoking like to just do this trip,
and then pretty much started smoking like the seventh day
when the trip was done.
- So I've had the good fortune of seeing you lead.
Is that innate in you?
Is that something that you have crafted
over time being a guide?
And, what are the core characteristics, you feel like?
- I think both.
I mean I've definitely crafted it being a guide.
I've sort of like exercised my leadership muscle
all the time.
But, like just also I'm a control freak
as I mentioned plus like super type A
and like leadership suits me well 'cause I like
to be in control of things.
But, I also think it comes partially from being
a little bit of a challenged learner myself.
I'm not like your typical learner.
I really am super tactile.
I have to touch things and see things
the exact way you are to truly learn them.
So if you teach me something sitting here,
I would love to be standing behind you to learn it
'cause I'd love to see it from your perspective.
And, that has given me, I think what is
my greatest asset of leadership which is empathy.
And, I can really see people in a variety of different,
like say you know this wide range of people
who are trying to climb this mountain.
Again, we're all like aligned towards the same goal,
and I can just see, like rather than feeling
judgemental of like what you are or are not expert at
in this realm, I can be really empathetic
of who you are as a person and what you're bringing to this
and how hard it must be to be this far out
of your element 'cause I like being in control,
and I like being the expert.
I do not do well when I'm not, and pretty much
all of my clients are always that person.
Like they're usually pretty successful and used
to being good at something.
And, I have like genuinely all the admiration
in the world for my clients for being willing
to be that vulnerable in front of me or anybody.
And, so I try to, in my leadership, I try
to approach it with a type of empathy and kindness
and also just like astute observations
of your most fundamental things.
And, I think there's something about being
in the mountains when it gets really hard
that we like revert back to being children.
So I can kind of pretty quickly see
like how you probably responded best
to discipline as a child, and I can figure out
if yelling at you is better than cuddling you,
or if cuddling you is going to work better.
We just become very child like when we're cold
and hungry and like walking up hill
and physically exerting ourselves.
So I am like basically always just channeling
the inner children out of people and then like
trying to reassure that inner child in whichever way
is possible to let the external adult
know it's cool, like we got this, you know?
And, I also I'm a real optimist when it comes to people.
Like I deeply believe in what, because,
and this isn't trying to be humble, but like I know
where my own mediocrity is, and I know
what I've been capable of achieving.
So I know when somebody is like putting themselves
in front of me, and they're like perfectly average,
I know what they're capable of too.
Like, I've see the inside of me.
I know what's in there.
It's not like something super exceptional or elite.
It's just pretty normal.
And, so I have this deep belief in other people,
of what they're capable of, and I'm just always trying
to puzzle and crack the code of how do I help them
achieve that too.
- We had such a range of physical ability and talent.
- And emotional preparedness and everything.
- To say herding cats is like the most largest
understatement.
We're on the side of a 20,000 foot peak,
and there's no, like--
- No, there's people who were sleeping outside
for the first time in their entire life.
And, not just sleeping outside
but maybe walking outside for more than like
on a city park for the first time ever.
And, then there's people who are like really connected
to the earth but have no physical abilities
or like desire necessarily to even be doing this.
And, you're like trying to figure it all out.
It's really hard.
I think the good thing for me is that I mostly spend time
with people who want to be doing this thing,
and they're like really invested in it
for whatever reason.
And, if I can try to find that motivation,
I can kind of like continuously.
I mean I think the best training for being a leader
probably is like a psychology degree honestly.
You know 'cause it's kind of that.
You're constantly balancing the psychology of others
with yours and how that works together.
And, I just want to say not everybody loves my leadership
like shocking as that may be to you, I know.
Not everybody thrives with my type of leadership.
And, I am now at a point in my life
where I'm okay with that.
Like again, I just know there's good fits and bad fits.
And, I don't love everybody who I interact with,
and so why would everybody love me?
But, I also feel like I have spent a lot of time
trying to figure out who does seem to get it,
and I constantly find myself, much like you,
randomly mingling back with those people.
You know 'cause it's like, hey we kind of get each other.
This works.
And, you weren't one of the people that needed
a lot of guidance on that trip thankfully
'cause my skills were pretty maxed out at that point.
- Yeah, you were say herding cats was a massive
understatement.
It was super, super impressive.
When you talk about, I think there's an interesting
reflection you're making about being mediocre
at a handful of things.
And, you know to what degree does sort of self eval
and honesty, how does that play into how you approach
not just climbing but life?
- Yeah, I think everything, and I think that's the struggle
with our own egos, right?
You know, and I don't claim to have any sort
of expertise in this.
I'm just figuring it out.
It's an experiment like it is for all of us.
But, I think that, somebody said this to me,
somebody who I really deeply respect,
and he said the only face I have to look at when I'm
shaving in the morning is mine.
And, that meant something to me in a way of like
it's true, but you also have to look truly all the way in.
And, so if I buy the hype of all the good things
people think about me, I'm not gonna be very nice
to be around.
I'm gonna annoy you rather quickly.
And, if I am mired in insecurity, same problem.
Like it's hard to be around me for other people,
but it's also hard to be around yourself in that way.
And, so I think just being willing
to remove the distractions that we constantly shroud
ourselves with that prevent us from seeing
who we really are and like actually being honest
about your evaluation.
I don't know if buy the hype is the right way
to say it, but I think that's probably the most useful
skill for all of us whether there's external media hype
that are writing things about you, or it's just
your friends around you.
You have to be able to separate what other people
think of you, and what you're doing, and you're skillset,
and how they believe in you with what the truth
of the situation is.
And, it's not always nice to confront,
but it's important to confront 'cause how can you move
if you're not moving from a place of honest.
It's like I totally can fly.
It's like no, you can't.
And, belief is not going to get you there.
You know it's just not going to.
And, it's like, okay maybe creativity can say
I can create a way to fly.
Well, that's a more honest sentiment.
So trying to constantly, always figure out that
is what I'm always doing.
- And, it was fun to watch you in action.
- Problem solve?
'Cause literally I'm problem solving 15 different people's
complex, dynamic psychology, plus like weather,
plus like anxiety about summiting,
plus like production around.
So there's like camera courage or camera fear
going on in a lot of cases.
And, just to like keep, and everybody needed
a different kind of either cuddling--
- Kicking.
- Yeah, kicking or cuddling basically.
That's like my general spectrum.
Where do you fit on this spectrum?
I'm gonna kick you or cuddle you.
And, it's hard.
Yeah, it's real hard.
And, helping people become honest with themselves.
You know the interesting thing is especially in climbing,
my general job as a guide, I always think,
is to be a liaison between you and the mountain
and to not otherwise impact your experience.
I'm there to help you differentiate
between discomfort and danger.
And, if it moves to the realm of danger,
I'm gonna do everything I can to keep you
and us as a team safe.
If it's in the realm of discomfort, I'm gonna do
everything I can to encourage you through that
with the tools you already have of how to be okay
being uncomfortable.
And, people come to me with a lot of different tools
and different developed skillsets of being uncomfortable.
And, some people are just not good at it at all.
So it's a lot of work.
- And, you can't go with like I have a blister.
You're like wow.
- Or, I'm cold.
I'm a little bit cold, like I'm colder
than I would be if I was in a temperature
controlled room.
And, they're like it's an emergency for them
'cause it truly feels like an emergency.
It's like how do I help you know this is
not an emergency and feel safe enough to continue?
So the thing I struggle with more often than not
isn't people's overconfidence, it's their under confidence.
It's that lack of believing in themselves
and forming a relationship that is honest enough.
From my side like I said, I wouldn't tell you
you weren't a handful if you were 'cause one thing
is if I tell you that, and you were a handful,
our trust is immediately broken 'cause you know
how to be honest with you.
You have to look at your own face in the mirror
when you shave.
You know you were a handful, and so you know I'm lying
to you.
And, so you maybe even subliminally you don't trust me
anymore.
And, so now when I try to dig deep and pull that thing
out of you, you won't let me because I've broken
your trust.
So sometimes my clients feel like I can be hard on them,
but it's for the greater good of me having
a really honest relationship with them.
So when I say, you have this, you've got this.
I know you can do it.
This is what we're gonna do to get you there.
They know I'm not just like fluffing them along.
You know it's real.
- So, God, so much.
When you climb a mountain with someone, like
there's this metaphor we've been talking
about the whole time.
I observed, and I have, you know climbed
not that much relative to someone who's a professional.
Just enough to be dangerous to make films
in these environments.
- Yeah, be able to keep yourself safe.
- Exactly.
But, I've observed in my own experience
and especially on that trip the mental game.
And, like you said it several times, both sort
of cognizantly and in passing.
Like, oh yeah, you go into your own head.
To what degree do you think success is mental?
- To the degree with which you think it is.
You know so there's that trap of the mind.
So I think that you can absolutely, 100% talk yourself
into or out of anything.
So in that way, success is exactly what you believe it is.
More readily, you can talk yourself out of something.
And, especially when you're uncomfortable
and our of your element.
So I think about the most common time
that it happens where I see people in their heads
where they feel that they're in danger
is about between three and five in the morning,
so just before the sun comes up.
It's the coldest, darkest hours of the day.
You feel like you are out at sea,
and there is no islands in view at all.
Like you're just out in the middle of it.
The summit seems impossibly far away,
and the camp from which you came seems
even further away.
And, that's where people's mental motivation
and their thoughts really dictate their experience.
And, they can stop themselves or propel themselves
either way.
So I always find that's where my work has to kick in.
THat's where I've gotta be your biggest cheerleader
to let you know like this isn't awesome for anybody
including me.
Like, I'm not having fun right now.
This is not the fun part.
No one's having fun right now.
You know like eat a cookie, eat a candy bar
at three in the morning, and you're not drunk in college.
And, like that's winning, right?
(Chris laughing)
Just let's find small joys and then continue moving
forward.
And, the sun is coming to come up and as soon
as it does, it's like the world is reborn.
- It's crazy.
- It's crazy what happens 'cause then suddenly you can
see where you are.
- The lights turn on, for those of you who don't know--
- The lights quite literally turn on.
- When you're climbing one of these,
it's a multi day, sleep in the mud, sleep at altitude,
altitude sickness headache, a lot of people
not feeling well.
It's very uncomfortable.
On the summit day, you are in the dark.
You get up about 12:30 or one in the morning.
- Yeah, you life is the sphere of your headlamp.
- Yeah, and it's very cold.
You're in Africa.
You don't think it's supposed to be cold,
but you're like looking at snowfields ahead of you.
And, you don't get, like, your world
is literally the radius of your headlamp.
And, you're on a rope, or you're--
- In a line with a couple of people.
- And, just putting one foot in front of another
and taking a full inhale and exhale
every single step because it's hard work.
That is a small, narrow, scary, often bored.
- Yeah, bored, sleepy.
I always call it the sleepy time
'cause it's like the time no matter how psyched you were
when you started at midnight.
It's like three in the morning, and you're like--
- Okay, how many more--
- Shouldn't I be sleeping right now?
- Oh, there's 12 more hours of walking.
- Yeah, and it's interesting because, so two things
that I do.
Every time I have like a slight inkling of desire
inside of me to do something big, like a big goal
that I want to pursue that has anything to do
with climbing or physical aspect, I reconsider
it at that moment.
And, I think that that's like one of the best
barometers I personally have for like
is this a good choice for me or not?
'Cause especially if there's cocktails involved,
but any time you're in a temperature controlled room,
big ideas seem always good.
Let's go climb Kilimanjaro.
Let's do it! - That would be awesome.
Here we are.
- Everybody decided to do it in a temperature
controlled room.
Nobody was like at altitude at three a.m.
in the dark deciding to do it 'cause it's hard
to decide to do it.
But, if you can be onboard then,
like that's where I feel like you're good.
Like, you know it's gonna be hard
'cause at that time the other thing that's
in my mind is like this is so dumb.
Like I should've learned how to surf.
Like there's so many better things that I could
be doing with my life.
Like this is embarrassing that I'm wearing
literally all my clothes right now, freezing.
Like, these people are walking quite slow.
- We're all not talking, just breathing heavy
in the dark. - No one's talking.
This is not fun.
I'm hungry, but not really.
I'm a little nauseous too.
What have I done with my life?
Like I had a potential.
That's like going to the dark place, me too.
And, I love this.
I've made my life about this because I know
that it's temporary, and I can somehow
like mentally get through it.
But, it's my job then to like help you
remember that it's temporary.
And often, that involves like not talking to you.
- Just smiling.
- 'Cause that's like the no coffee,
don't talk to me zone where you're just like
don't try to fix it right now.
Just know that time is ticking, and it will get fixed.
Like the sun will come and do magical things
to all of us.
- That's very sort of team oriented,
and you're guiding folks like me and others up a peak.
And, then there's you 250 vertical feet
below the summit of Everest, and you don't have oxygen.
- By the way, 250 vertical feet
below the summit of Everest is about 2 hours
of climbing still.
Just think about that.
With oxygen, it's about 15 minutes.
So there's like a real matrix you've entered
where time and distance no longer apply
to each other in the same ways that they used to.
So that's the first thing that is insane
is it's so slow.
- What's the cognition like?
- So I've only done it once.
I'm not going to try and do it again.
So I can only say what was happening
really in my mind then.
When things are really, really hard for me,
and that was a time when it was really hard,
but also it was easier 'cause I say how close it was.
But, I knew that you know it's only halfway
'cause I still have to descend safely.
So like getting there, by no means do I feel
this sense of relief, but I know I'm that close
to halfway which feels good weirdly.
- Do the math there.
- Yeah, do the math, figure out you're only
in the middle of it.
I, when things are really hard,
try to go to this mental place,
and this is a tool I used when I started training
for these big climbs by running long races,
marathons, ultra marathons, or whatever
'cause I deeply dislike running, and so I used it
as a mental training to say if I can run a marathon,
if I can run for like three or four hours
at a time, I definitely can like climb for you know 15
hours 'cause I like climbing.
I don't like running.
But, when it got really hard, I would go to this place
of like dedicating a mile of gratitude
towards some person, place, thing, whatever
that had helped me get to where I was.
And, I found myself just really naturally doing that
near the summit of Everest.
And, it was like this trudge through the trenches
of gratitude of my life, of all of the people particularly
that had offered me any small thing
and the smallest of things.
And, I literally was in my mind thinking
about my first year working as a mountain guide
when that lead guide who I just totally respected
but was super stoic but barely ever complimented anybody
said like, yeah I like working with Melissa.
She's a hard worker.
And, I was thinking about that, and how that sentence
had buoyed me through that whole first season really.
You know and it's inconsequential.
They don't remember saying it.
And, then going deeper into like the more meaningful
relationships in my life with people
who had put in the work to believe in me
even when I was, you know waffling or going
through massive transitions.
I mean that's how it felt was like trudging
through all of the wonderful things in my life
that had brought me to that moment,
and how it was such a shared experience.
Like, it was so non solitary.
For how alone it really was, it was so non solitary.
It was so built on the backs of everybody else
who had helped me get there.
And, I also had this really intense feeling
that it wasn't the pinnacle of what my life would be.
You know, like I kind of knew.
It was like yeah, you know I'm in the middle of the climb
'cause I still have to descend, but I'm like in the middle
of this life.
And, the thing that's gonna be the thing.
Like, I feel immensely proud of myself
for sticking with something that's so hard
over eight years.
Not like eight minutes or eight hours, or eight months,
like eight years, and then seeing it through.
Like, this has just now given me a tool set
that I can use to do something else.
It's not gonna be the pinnacle of what I'm gonna do.
And, that's truly what I was thinking.
- Wow.
- Yeah, I know.
And, then I cried.
Like I said, I'm not like a crier.
I called Christine on the sat phone
to tell her that I was there.
I was sort of checking in periodically to let her know
in the US and Seattle.
So I mean it was the middle of night I guess
'cause it was the middle of the day there.
- Yeah, like up waiting for the phone call.
- Newborn baby, like couple week old new born baby.
- She's awake.
- Up anyway, right.
And, I was so super emotional because there was
disbelief really.
Disbelief, but also like deep knowledge
that I could do it.
You know, like it was just so cool to be at that point
of like here I am.
I've literally worked towards something.
It's hard to work towards something
and fail at it so many times and keep going back
and trying again.
And, I think that's what people could ridicule.
It's like why go back?
Why go back?
And, all I can say is I needed that 250 vertical feet
of gratitude to sort of like re-anchor me
into not thinking I am just some amazing person.
Like I needed to re-root myself to the fact
that those first steps I took, my very first peak
I ever climbed to the summit of when I was 19 years old
and like seeing the mountains for the first time
are what got me to the summit of Everest.
It wasn't those steps actually walking
to the summit of Everest.
It was every single thing that happened along the way.
- Wow.
- Yeah.
- I could talk to you forever.
- Let's do.
- Let's do.
- We won't keep any more of your time.
- Yeah, we should probably turn the cameras off.
We'll keep talking.
What's the best way for people to pay attention to you?
Are you just Melissa Arnot?
- Yep.
Yeah, so Melissa, A, R, N, O, T.
All the social media, I try to keep people
apprised to all the different adventures
that I'm doing.
And, you can always check my website and see
what kind of things are going on.
- And, the Juniper Fund.
- Yep, thejuniperfund.org.
A lot of people ask about juniper.
It's burned as sort of a cleansing and protecting thing
in the Buddhist culture, so that's why we selected that.
You can check out thejuniperfund.org
and see what things we're doing.
And, you can actually see some of the pictures
of the businesses that we support
and the families who we're actually currently supporting.
- It's incredible, the work that you're doing.
- Thank you.
- Thank you for being a mountain guide in part,
but also a guide for this conversation here.
Thank you so much, and it's so good to see you.
It's been a little bit too long.
- I know.
- Not this long again.
- No, definitely not this long again.
It's a great honor to be able and sit here and chat
with you.
- Oh.
You guys, thanks so much for tuning in.
I look forward to seeing you guys again
probably tomorrow.
- I won't be here tomorrow.
(Melissa laughing)
You're on your own.
(rock music)
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