Ben Saunders knows very well the ups and downs that come with attempting to do something extraordinary. Like so many entrepreneurs, he struggled with the challenges of being an effective leader, and faced the pain of fundraising or not meeting payroll. But Ben’s end goal was a bit different. He’ a polar explorer. Between October 2013 and February 2014, he and his companion Tarka broke the record for the longest ever polar journey on foot. On their path to the South Pole, they faced temps of -50F and wind chills near -70F all while they covered nearly seventy marathons back-to-back on less than four hours of sleep a night. This record breaking journey was nearly ten years in the making for Ben, and truly was an amazing accomplishment, but despite all that he found the inner journey that followed even more challenging than what he faced out on the ice. In this conversation, Ben and Jerry discuss his journey on and off the ice.

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Welcome to the Reboot podcast. I'm Dan Putt, one of the partners here at Reboot and I could not
be more excited about this conversation. We're here to showcase the heart and soul of authentic
leadership, to inspire more open conversations around what we consider the most important part
of entrepreneurship, the emotional struggle; and hopefully, we open up some hearts along the
way. We are extremely grateful that you have taken the time to be with us and look forward to
this journey ahead with you. Now, on with our conversation.
"Difficulties are just things to overcome after all." That quote is from Sir Ernest Shackleton. Ben
Saunders knows very well the ups and downs that come with trying to do something great. Like
so many entrepreneurs, he struggled with the challenges of being an effective leader and face the
pain of fundraising or not meeting payroll. But Ben's end-goals are a bit different; he's a Polar
explorer. Between October 2013 and February 2014, Ben and his companion Tarka broke the
record for the longest ever Polar journey on foot.
On their path to the South Pole, they faced nearly 50 degrees below Fahrenheit temperatures and
wind-chills of seventy below all while they covered 70 marathons back to back on less than four
hours of sleep a night. This record-breaking journey was nearly ten years in the making for Ben
and truly was an amazing accomplishment. But despite all that, he found the inner journey that
followed even more challenging. In this conversation, Ben and Jerry discuss his journey on and
off the ice.
Jerry Colonna: Hey Ben, it's really good to see you again. It's been a long time.
Ben Saunders: It's been a while; yeah, it's good to hear your voice Jerry.
Jerry: Yeah and I really appreciate you coming on this show. As you know, what we
try to do in the podcast is talk about, in some ways, the ups and downs, the
emotional life of an entrepreneur and while being a Polar explorer as you are
isn’t – one doesn’t necessarily think of you immediately as an entrepreneur.
Since we have worked together now, I guess, since 2008 I believe?
Ben: Yeah.
Jerry: Yeah.
Ben: Wow [Laughter]
Jerry: All right. You had a lot more hair back then.
Ben: [Laughs]
Jerry: And my hair was darker.
Ben: I've got more on my face now. [Laughter]
Jerry: That's right. [Laughs]

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Ben: It's just shifted, you know. [Laughs]
Jerry: I've always been struck by the similarities of your journey to achieving the
goals and that which I sort of encounter with my more conventionally viewed
entrepreneurs everything from fund-raising, to securing the supplies, to
leading a team of people, sometimes well, sometimes not so well –
Ben: Yeah.
Jerry: – to dealing with disappointment and perhaps the only thing that's really
different is that you actually had to face certain death [Laughs] as opposed to
psychic death.
Ben: Yes, it wasn’t – if things went wrong, it wasn’t just investors and kind of
venture capitalists and people, shareholders that would be let down. The
stakes are pretty high but you are absolutely right. In so many ways, I had
almost inadvertently become the CEO of this weird business.
Jerry: Yeah.
Ben: And I remember before Antarctica, so kind of summer 2013 and we had – we
were signing big sponsorship deals, the money was coming in, we had an
office in London and we had eight people working at one point. Which I
realize, isn’t a big business by many people's standards but for me, you know,
who likes living out of a backpack or a sledge in the middle of nowhere, you
know, walking into an office and seeing eight people and phones ringing and
emails coming in and meetings and conference calls, and just thinking, how
the hell did this happen? Everyone turning to me for direction and leadership;
that was an interesting learning curve.
Jerry: Yeah, I know you sat in on some of my workshops over the years and in
particular, the disappearing to the fire, the notion of surviving the startup life
and if you remember from that, one of my favorite Shakespearean quotes is
from Henry V in which the night before the battle of Agincourt, Henry in a
[Unclear 0:05:00] speaks about the burden of leadership and he says, "Upon
the king! Let us our lives, our debts, our souls lay upon the king!" and you
know, it's always dangerous to quote Shakespeare to a Brit but –
Ben: [Laughs]
Jerry: – especially with my Brooklyn accent. [Laughter] So please forgive me but
did – when you think back to that time in preparation for the journey, does
that notion of everything being on your shoulders resonate?

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Ben: Very much so yeah, and I think looking back, I think in some ways, I think
leadership came relatively naturally because I'd had, by that point, for many
years – sorry my dog's barking.
Jerry: Yeah, hey Molly.
Ben: [Laughs] Where was I? Okay, so leadership in many ways, I had this giant
vision; I had set my sights on something that had never been done before. This
is in Antarctica and finishing, trying to complete the journey that defeated two
of the biggest icons of Polar expedition in history Sir Ernest Shackleton and
Captain Scott. Both these guys had tried and failed and Scott and his four
team members died in the process. So, there was this – and knowing he won't
be able to finish the journey since it was totally out there vision and I'd been
working towards this goal for so many years in this kind of obsessive fashion
that it seemed that people actually responded to that in terms of my team.
They definitely responded to the vision and to my belief that this was possible.
So in that way, the elements of leadership in setting this goal and saying, 'I
believe we can do this; we are the team that's going to make this happen' and
believing that with every fiber of my being. I think that bit I did okay but
actually managing people and getting the most out of this team, looking back,
I felt pretty ill-equipped to do that and I'm not sure that I did. Again, it was a
steep learning curve; looking back, I'm not sure I was a great manager because
in many ways I was also the product in a way.
Jerry: Yes.
Ben: I was the one going – we weren’t selling something, we were selling my
ability to do this. So, in that respect, there was a lot of pressure on me
personally, much really self-imposed and by necessity I became more and
more focused on this goal as our departure got closer.
Jerry: It's interesting as you were talking about the way in which you inspire people,
I was recalling the way I was drawn in and in some ways, our coaching
relationship became slightly different in the sense that I felt very much a part
of the support team and two images came to mind as you talked about pulling
this team together. So, you know, one was when you suggested and I read –
what is it called; The Worst Journey in the World?
Ben: Yes.
Jerry: Which is –
Ben: Apsley Cherry-Garrard, he was the youngest member of Captain Scott's team,
23 years old.
Jerry: And he was one of the few to actually have survived, right?

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Ben: He survived, he didn’t – he wasn’t on the journey to the Polar back, he was
seen as too young, he had bad eyesight, he wore glasses so he was excluded
from that team. He led one of the rescue attempts to try and find Scott and
they turned around a few miles away from where Scott actually was. He never
really forgave himself that but he was extraordinarily intelligent and a brilliant
writer and so he came back from this expedition and spent years writing this
book. It's called, The Worst Journey in the World and it is extraordinary. The
New York Times said, 'It is to travel writing what War and Peace is to novel'.
So, it's an epic book.
Jerry: Yeah, and I remember crying reading it. I remember it breaking my heart and
then I remember juxtaposing, thinking about you and Tarka. We weren’t sure
at that time, who the team was going to be but the notion of you guys walking
there struck me and then, I don’t think I will ever forget the videos of you and
Andy Ward the expedition manager and others clipping the corners off of foil
packages or shaving down toothbrushes in order to save weight –
Ben: [Laughs] Yeah.
Jerry: – and you may have perceived yourself as a less-than-stellar manager; I will
share with you that in my observation, I saw a level of drive that was
incredibly inspiring and it really made a difference for a lot of people.
Ben: I think people responded to that; often times, particularly around 2008, when
the recession kicked off, some of that year, we had real challenges. We had a
big sponsor pull out; I was in many ways back to square one. We had almost
nothing in the bank, it was back to working in my spare bedroom with a
laptop and a phone and that was it. Starting from scratch trying to raise money
and I remember, you mentioned Andy and he was my right-hand-man for
several years really and thinking at that point I didn’t – I couldn’t make
payroll. I didn’t have enough money to pay Andy and he carried on working
for me. He would juggle part time; he was working at a tree-surgeon part time
to pay the bills, pay the rent but he carried on working for me. So he wasn’t
doing this, the team weren’t doing this because it was well-paid, that was for
sure. So there was something else in it and I think we all – yeah, I think we all
had a lot of pride in the fact that we were trying to do something genuinely
pioneering in a very challenging niche.
Jerry: You know, I was thinking about connecting with you today, I was thinking
also about the date; it's near the end of January and it was just about a year
ago, I think you were still on the ice making your way back–
Ben: We were still out there– this time last year, we were still out there. We were
nearly finished; we must have been very close to the end of it. I can't actually
remember, I need to this up; what date we finished.

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Jerry: I think you finished in mid-February and then there was that delay first in
Antarctica and then in Chile before we all met again in London.
Ben: Yes.
Jerry: Let's go back and you've done such a fantastic job. You did such a fantastic
job of documenting the experience with those old blog posts and blogging
from the ice with this Inspector Gadget contraption of satellite dishes that – I
mean, I joke but thank goodness for Intel as a sponsor for really making all of
that possible.
Ben: Yeah, absolutely.
Jerry: And we should say thank goodness for Iridium because we were able – you
and I were able to speak fairly frequently; every few days or so.
Ben: Yeah.
Jerry: Even for just a few minutes.
Ben: Yeah, it was wonderful being able to share the story in that much detail, in
real time. We sent more – in terms of sheer data, we sent more back from a
human-powered expedition in the field than ever before. So we were – even
though it seems like a quite old-fashioned thing to be dragging sledges or
[Laughs] as a polar explorer, we were pretty high-tech and we were doing
some cool stuff and I loved – because I'm not a photographer, I'm not a
filmmaker, I'm not an artist so writing for me – it was travel writing that
inspired me really as a kid, reading books about these explorers and the
chance to be able to share my diary with the world was magical. But it didn’t
necessarily make things easier, having that communication because compared
to Scott and Shackleton a century ago, our suffering was entirely optional,
entirely self-imposed. If we ever wanted to make it stop, we just dialed a
number, a plane turns up day or two later if the weather is good. So, we
weren’t – someone asked me recently, 'What do you think it was that
motivated Scott or Shackleton and kept them going?' I said, well, they didn’t
have any option. They were skiing for their lives. What do you – you give up,
sit down on the sledge when it's 40 degrees below and you were last indoors
four months ago? [Laughs] You would die out there. So they were skiing for
their lives whereas for us, we always had that safety net and having a satellite
phone doesn’t always make things easier. It's great, to be able to talk to your
loved ones but it also, certainly in my experience, can make you more
homesick as well. It can certainly take you out of the tunnel vision focus that
you often need to have.

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Jerry: Meaning that there is an option that you could always pull the chord and say
[Crosstalk 0:14:31]
Ben: We can always quit and go home any time we wanted.
Jerry: Do you remember – I mean how could you forget, I know your answer but I'm
going to take you back to the resupply which was probably in my experience
of it, you tell me if this was right, one of the most poignant moments of the
whole experience and just for folks who don’t know, the intention was to ski
the 1800 miles or so without any resupply.
Ben: Exactly; yeah so pulling everything ourselves which was very different to the
way that Scott and Shackleton travelled who had big support teams. They had
massive teams, dozens of people, prepositioning a big supply chain of depots
all the way to the top of the Beardmore Glacier halfway to the Pole. So Scott
didn’t put his own sledge harness on until the bottom of Beardmore so several
hundred miles into the journey. So, we were travelling in a different fashion.
Of course, we had wonderful technological advances, we've got – they didn’t
even have zips, they hadn’t been invented several hundred years ago. So of
course, we had the modern – wonderful modern clothing, equipment, we had
carbon fiber skis, we had solar panels, lithium batteries, satellite phones,
freeze-dried food, GPS, all this stuff but in effect they would enable us to push
ourselves as humans, as athletes even harder. So, we were dragging 200 kilos
each - 440 pounds, which is more than twice as much as Scott's men were
pulling. So, the technology doesn’t necessarily make things easier, it just
opens up new, different ways of doing it, different opportunities and for us it
meant, well, for me it meant that I thought that it would be possible to make
this journey with no support. So just two guys pulling everything from the
start. So pulling 105-110 days' worth of food, the same amount of fuel for our
stoves so we could melt snow to get drinking water and a lot of experts
disagreed. A lot of people said, 'This is impossible.' Again, I have talked to
Mike Stroud, he was interviewed on the centenary of Scott's death and was
asked, 'Do you think with modern-day clothing and food, would Scott have
made it?' And he said, 'I'm not sure. I'm not sure he would have. This may be
impossible.' So another guy, Professor Tim Noakes, he did a study into what
he called Total Metabolic Expenditures; how many calories are burnt in the
course of an event. He said, if you look at the toughest endurance challenges
today, the Tour de France bike race three weeks, the race across America,
there's a running race across America that takes up a few weeks, they are all in
the sort of hundreds of thousands of calories, it's measured in calories. So he
said, the Tour de France is about 300,000 calories. He reckoned that Scott and
Shackleton both burnt about a million calories in their respective [Unclear
0:17:23]
Jerry: Wow.

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Ben: So we must have been close to that if not more because we were pulling
everything from the start. So, it could have been – I don’t want to sound too
conceited but it could have been the toughest endurance challenges ever in
using that metric.
Jerry: Well, I'm glad you see that because one of the jokes, and I've used this
constantly since you got back and it is that I remember having conversations
with you where – and you know I love you man –
Ben: [Laughs]
Jerry: – but you were complaining.
Ben: Oh yeah, I was just picking holes in it and that's all I –
Jerry: Right and me saying to you, do you remember this? 'Well of course it's hard.
You're trying to do something that's impossible.'
Ben: [Laughs]
Jerry: 'But it's so hard, Jerry.' [Laughter]
Ben: Yeah, the resupplies, so basically we were dragging everything ourselves, we
left ten little depots, ten cases of food for the return journey on the way to the
Pole. Turn around the pole and in hindsight, we probably misjudged the final
depot. We left it quite a long way from the pole thinking we'll be fast, the
sledges will be almost empty, we'll turn around the Pole, we'll have a tail
wind, it'd be really quick, really flat, the conditions would be great and we
were wrong on almost every count. The weather turned really shit, we had to –
there was no tailwind at all, the surface got really poor, the sledges – there
was so much friction between the sledges in this particular type of snow; we
were exhausted. We had already covered 35 marathons back to back in the
coldest place on Earth. We are now at altitude 12000 feet on the Antarctic
plateau so that makes things harder and we really started to struggle. I realized
we weren’t going to reach – we were going to run out of food before we
reached the [Unclear 0:19:09] depot so we started halving our rations. So
we'd eat half rations which was terrible. I mean, just – I have never been that
hungry or debilitated. We lost a lot of weight, just were genuinely exhausted.
We started becoming hypothermic; Tarka first quite severely, I had it mildly
couple of days later and you become utterly disoriented. I mean, you don’t
know where you are, what's going on, it's like being completely blind drunk
and it comes on very quickly. You don’t really notice it happening, you feel
comfortable, you don’t feel cold and it's really dangerous. I had to put Tarka
into bed and make him a hard drink. He didn’t know where he was and I was
in a similar state a few days later. So I just thought, this is a huge risk. We had
almost no food left, we had half a day's food left between us, we had about

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two days' travel to do, to get to this depot. The weather was bad, very cold,
we're at an altitude and this for me was absolutely – and I mean talking about
leadership, this was the crux of the whole trip. This was - Ben this is on you,
you know, how much risk – what are you willing to risk here? How much
does this goal mean to you? Does it mean your life, your friend's life? Getting
him back to – what is your priority here? So, the decision I took was to stop to
put the tent up, light the stove, eat the food we had and call for a resupply. So
I had to call for a ski plane to bring out some more food. So they brought us
eight days' more food, it cost about $100,000, it was the most expensive take
out and yeah, it kind compromised the style of the way the expedition – the
way I wanted to do it but it meant we could carry on and finish this journey.
Of course, Scott and Shackleton as I said, were both supported so it didn’t
mean we were doing it in a different way to them. They had people using
tractors and horses and dogs, we had an airplane that came in and but we were
both supported externally and I wanted to do this unsupported. So, yeah, I
remember really – we were talking last to last year and I remember like really
beating myself up thinking like what could we have done differently? It was
just – and I remember talking about it as flawed; like the whole expedition
was being flawed by this thing which – and I don’t think I have told you this
but I was in South Africa every Christmas and I did long bike rides and it was
the opposite to Antarctica. It was too hot, it was insanely hot and the challenge
was how much water could I carry on the bike to do the long rides. I got lost
one day and I ended up going a bit further than I thought. So I was probably a
bit wobbly anyway when I was riding back to the house and I had almost back
and there was a big hill and I could ride over this thing to get back to the
house I was staying at and I suddenly had this really emotional – and I think it
was quite compounded by how exhausted I was on the bike and probably a bit
of heatstroke and whatever but that's me being English. I didn’t really get
emotional –
Jerry: [Laughs]
Ben: – it must have been something. [Laughs] I started crying. I said, it must have
been to do with –
Jerry: It was the biology, it wasn’t my emotion.
Ben: Yeah, heat stroke, I think was the – but I suddenly realized, and this was
December last year so it was 9-10 months after the expedition. I suddenly
realized that I had never actually congratulated myself and I'm about to get
emotional now – because being English, you are told not to do that. You are
told that that's conceited, that's egotistical, but all I have done was beat myself
up. All I had done was think, well, 'I've made so many mistakes', 'Wish we
had done this', 'Wish we had done that', 'What could we have done to avoid
getting the resupply?' And the whole time just picking holes in it. I was giving
a talk yesterday and I said – we were talking about failure and in many ways.

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I've led 11 big expeditions now; ten in the Arctic, five in Greenland and one
big one in Antarctica obviously and looking back, I don’t think a single
expedition – on any expedition have I achieved everything I set out to achieve.
So on some levels, every one of my expeditions have been a failure. You
could label them all as failures. It was flawed or what – however you want to
look at it. But it's only through failing and failing and failing and generally I'm
failing because I have always set my sights to fucking high. It's only through
doing that, that I have done the things that I have and you know, we broke the
record for the longest ever Polar journey on foot. I am right at the top of my
game, I'm a pioneer in the field that I always wanted to do something in. We
have finished the journey that two of the biggest icons of Polar expedition
couldn’t finish.
Jerry: The worst journey in the world.
Ben: Yeah and no one's been able to do since. So we've pulled off a lot to be proud
of and I keep saying 'we' because I don’t want to say 'I'
Jerry: [Laughs] Yes.
Ben: And of course, there is a 'We', there is an enormous support of so many people
but I guess I in a sense and I realized after riding up this long hill in the sun
that I had never really – I had never congratulated myself. All I had done was
pick holes in this thing and yeah, I'm not quite sure what the moral of that
story is but it's – I think so often we just sort of move on to the next thing and
very rarely do we step back and appreciate what we have done and what we
have achieved.
Jerry: Well, that brings me to the thing that I think might be most powerful to talk
about and that is what I have been referring as the journey after the journey.
And I'll let you tell the story because obviously it's your story but this notion
of failure, the notion of success, we were talking a little bit before the
recording began and there is the consequence of failure of course and then
there's the consequence of success and you know, in my observation, again,
having being close to you for so long and watching you in the months since
Antarctica was over, Chile, from Chile back to the UK we were there, we
were all together, for those few days; bright lights, paparazzi, literally
paparazzi at the airport and then some really dark times, some hard times.
Ben: There were, yeah, I mean, – and I'm not sure what I had expected that there
was definitely – there was a brief blip of media interest but it didn’t launch me
to stardom, there wasn’t sort of massive public acclaim and I think I had
expected more recognition in a way looking back and there wasn’t a great
deal. In some ways, there was a misconception that this has all been done
before, hadn’t it? Yeah, surely. Prince Harry who was in Antarctica [Laughs]
for a week or so at some point. So, people would say, 'Oh were you down

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there with Prince Harry?' Or 'Oh, my grandmother went on a cruise to
Antarctica, did you see her where you were there?' So, there definitely was a
misconception that it's all been done nowadays, it surely has been done
before, hadn’t that?
Jerry: I think that's also rooted in a misunderstanding of the size of Antarctica.
Ben: Absolutely, yeah.
Jerry: I mean there's this I can go the coastline of Antarctica on a cruise ship and say
I'd been to the South Pole but actually you are not.
Ben: No, you've been to the edge of this continent that is twice the size of Australia.
Same size as China and nearly [Unclear 0:27:14] It's vast. It's a huge, huge
place. So yeah, there was a – and then I started to realize – and this has taken
me a few months to realize this, well, there are a couple of big lessons; the
first one is, and I forget who it was that said this, I think it was a concert
pianist and I can't remember his name or who it was but he said, 'If you only
play for the applause, then you are putting your happiness in someone else's
hands' and I started to think, really no one else knows – Tarka my teammate is
the only person that knows what it was like and he's the only person that could
ever know what it was like. And no one else really has any reference points
even in my world. We went over 400 miles further than any expedition in
history. So, no one else has any reference points and for the layman, if I am
not waiting for this kind of public acclaim, how on Earth can I expect the
general public to understand what we've done or appreciate what we've done
or how it differs from other expeditions because they have no idea. We were –
the coldest temperatures were in Fahrenheit probably in the negative fifties.
Wind chill into the 60s or 70s below zero, we were – we covered nearly 70
marathons back to back, 1800 miles, we were averaging about 4.5 hours of
sleep per night, we were there for 105 days, we were outside on our feet for an
average of 13 hours a day. We were pulling, I'd say 440 pounds each the start.
That's a bathtub with two fat guys in it.
Jerry: [Laughs]
Ben: Now, who's trying to pull a bathtub with two fat guys? No one. [Laughs]
Who's being camping for nearly four months in an average temperature of
minus 25 or so? No one. No one's that stupid. So no one really has any
reference point. So for me to be waiting for, I don’t know, this sort of
[Unclear 0:29:19] of public approval, oh yeah, we can recognize that that's X
degrees harder than – it's just stupid. It's never going to happen. If Tarka is the
only person that is going to get this, then the public – how can I say the public
to be able to medial whoever it is that I am. So, I think one of the biggest
lessons of the expedition, there are two; one is about what we talked so much
over the years about mindfulness and about presence and in many respects, I

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was spending years living in the future, like aiming towards this finish line.
This is my mission, this is my obsession; for years, I have put everything into
making this project happen into getting into Antarctica and then getting to the
Pole and then getting back to the coast again. Finishing this journey, that was
the mission. So always it was aiming – the aim was that finish line. Stepping
ashore at Ross Island which is the landmark of the edge of the Antarctica west
coast. That was Scott's finish line the way that he never crossed, it would have
been Shackleton's finish line as well and it was our finish line. It was the
same, exact the same route. So, this journey was ten years in the making
really, millions of pounds raised and spent in sponsorship over the years.
There were ten expeditions leading up to it and each one was a stepping stone.
So many challenges along the way and then you have this epic journey. You
have 1800 miles of genuine suffering. [Laughs] It was a really tough, tough,
tough expedition and then after 105 days, you get to this finishing line in the
end and there is a definite crack in the ice between the ice in the Ross Island
shelf and the obvious rock, the shoreline of Ross Island. And you step over
this, you step over this crack and we've done it, we've finished the journey,
you can take off the sledge harness for the last time and of course, nothing
changes.
Jerry: Mm-hmm.
Ben: Nothing – I cross the finish line that I have been aiming for more than a
decade. Most of my adult life, this has been the goal and I reach the goal and I
crossed the line and nothing happened. I think so often we – we say, well, the
thing is a shit now but when I – when we closed the second round of
investment or when we – IPO or whatever, when we shipped the first product
or when we went out and made a million or went out and sold the business, or
whatever, then I'll be happy, or when I have kids, or got married, or the
university, or bought a holiday home, or a private jet, then I'll be happy.
Looking back, some of the happiest moments of the trip were – we're halfway
through. And then of course, there's a huge cliché about the journey being the
bit that matters and not the destination but we still always aimed for finish
lines and I'm not saying this that there's anything wrong with that, I think
that's important but I think that the biggest lesson of all has been the
importance of decoupling self-worth, self-esteem, I don’t know what to call it
and achievement particularly to the external validation, praise, criticism, any
other stuff because none of that matters really. Self-worth is something that is
inherent. We are all worthy people and we are all so complex as human beings
that to be boiled down to how good we are at business, how good we are
dragging a sledge, or how much money in the bank; that is a pitiful way of
assessing someone's goodness. So we are so complex, we are so sort of multi-
faceted that there is no – there is absolutely impossible to objectively judge
someone as good or bad. So why do we do that to ourselves the whole time?
Why was I doing that to myself? Things are shit now but things will be good,
I'll have made it when I've done X and this is something that has only really

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just sunk in the last few months. Maybe it's all this time to think in Antarctica
just finally clicking into place but realizing that if you hang your self-worth on
your achievements, on your work, on what other people say about you or
think about you then that never going to lead to fulfillment, contentment and
happiness. So happiness isn’t a finish line that you get to one day. It's either
here right now or it's not and that's down to you. So that's a big lesson and I
think looking back, I think Tarka was a wonderful – he was in some ways, just
a perfect companion. I can't imagine finishing that trip with anyone else, to be
honest. He was incredible. I mean, tower of strength, stalwart, so humble,
incredible guy. Never complained, never ever – just literally skied until he
dropped with hypothermia. I mean, he came close to losing his thumbs to
frostbite but never a word of complaint. Never asked me to slow down, never
complained about the snow, amazing guy. He's extraordinary because he's
almost devoid of ego. He just doesn’t care about [Laughs] what anyone says
or thinks of him and I kind of funnily hope when I've grown up, I could be
more like Tarka.
Jerry: Well, the piece that was striking me so much was the way in which you used
the months after the journey to really process what had happened and to sort
of see some of the core questions, some of the core issues that had risen
during that whole process –
Ben: Yeah.
Jerry: – and I think that there is a – I'm so admiring of the way in which you have in
effect, pieced together the existential thoughts that are enabling a recovery.
You described so eloquently the ways in which your body was just physically
drained. The calorie count is such a symbol and I know that the months
preceding – there were weeks, I'll say it out loud, there were weeks where you
just disappeared, my friend.
Ben: Oh yeah.
Jerry: And we were all worried about you.
Ben: Yeah.
Jerry: But we also knew that you were kind of in a hole recovering; is that a fair
statement?
Ben: Very, actually, yeah, couple of people said that it looks and sounds like PTSD.
Jerry: Yeah.
Ben: And I said, don’t be ridiculous. We didn’t go to war, no one's trying to kill us
or – but this place was trying to kill us [Laughs] but it sounded kind of

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decadent. We chose to be out there, in many ways this was the trip of the
lifetime. So it sounded kind of self-indulgent to say well, yeah, I've got PTSD
but I was in a deep hole. I mean, physically, mentally, absolutely spent. I had
just – I had given it everything I had to finishing this journey. I mean,
everything went into it and not just the 3.5 months in Antarctica but the 10
years leading up to it.
Jerry: And to circle back to the point you were making, you had given everything
you had not only in achieving the goal but in achieving the kind of wish for
extrinsic external affirmation of self-worth –
Ben: Yeah.
Jerry: – and then to find the emptiness that comes –
Ben: Yeah, I think that's one of the paradoxes and I chose to – probably all the
people who I have worked with and many people listening to this is that if you
are the kind of – for most entrepreneurs, most people that do big things in
difficult conditions, could be in Antarctica, could be launching a business in
the United States; if you are doing something pioneering, doing something
new, trying to do something or make something that's never been done before,
invariably you are going to be the kind of person to make it work. It's going to
take everything you've got. We talked about the walking into the fire and if
you are a kind of person that can do that, can focus, can commit a hundred
percent, can put everything to making your goal happen, then of course if you
are doing that and if that's taking a hundred percent of your bandwidth, then
there is zero bandwidth to think 'what happens when I've done it?' 'What
happens when I've crossed the finish line? Then what?' Academically I was
kind of aware of athletes, guys that won the Tour de France, or the World Cup
or an Olympic gold medal or whatever it is, falling into a bit of a hole
afterwards because you've done it. You've done the thing that you dreamt of
doing. But I hadn’t really thought about what would happen to me and there
was definitely a hole afterwards. It was wonderful to talk to people that had
been through similar things and it was fascinating. I spoke at Ted in March
and even that was just so hard because I came there five weeks after we
stopped skiing and everyone else – and this is the big main stage; the 30th
anniversary Ted. So, Bill Gates is there, Sting is there, I mean it was
extraordinary and I was the least prepared out of anyone. I never felt less
prepared to give a talk in my life. So it was really nerve-wracking, very
stressful because I was still processing that and I was still totally shell-
shocked. So, I gave this talk and I do a lot of professional speaking and I
normally – I never use notes, I never use – but for this Ted talk, I didn’t know
what I was going to say. It was the first talk I gave since I got back from
Antarctica, I'd never tried to tell the story on stage, let alone at Ted. So, the
film – that Ted talk is online now and I've got notes, which is a real Ted, no
line – I had notes because my short-term memory was so short, I'd keep

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forgetting what I was talking. So, I had to have these crypt notes in front of
me just kind of bullet-points of things I wanted to say. It was a talk that I was
making up as I went on really. It was just totally raw and actually – and I
couldn’t bring myself to watch it for the whole of last year. I was so ashamed.
I thought I have just done – I haven’t done this whole thing justice; I didn’t
prepare – again, I beat myself up.
Jerry: Mm-hmm.
Ben: Here's one amazing opportunity and I fucked it up and actually looking back, I
think the talk works because it’s the [Unclear 0:40:24] to most modern-day
Ted Talks which are very slick and polished and rehearsed. This was pretty
raw and pretty honest and I wasn’t trying to dress it up and the story was,
yeah, about the journey after the journey. What happens when you do the
thing that you’ve dreamt of doing for so long? What happens when that's
done? And it's amazing, the response that got, particularly at Ted and how
many people come up to me and said, look amazing, I felt exactly the same
way when I sold my first business or made my first million or billion or
[Laughs] or when I got my first platinum album or my first Grammy or my
first – same thing, nothing changed, it's all a bit hollow, bit of a slump
afterwards. I had a brilliant email exchange, I hope you won't mind me
mentioning Sam Morgan who's an amazing – he's a New Zealander and he's a
big philanthropist now, great guy, [Unclear 0:41:18] he sold his business
called TradeMe, which is kind of a local eBay type thing in New Zealand. He
sold it for I think $150 million when he was 29 and he kind of realized the day
he sold the business that he never had to work a single day in his life ever
again. Age 29 and he said, it was – he described it as depressing. [Laughs] For
most people, the idea of $150 million hitting your bank account that – how
can that be depressing? He said that was depressing and I just had this pretty
email exchange with Sam and I met him through Ted several years ago, nine
years ago and extraordinary sort of similar experience. He put everything into
his business in his twenties, sold it, made a fortune, poof, now what?
Jerry: Yeah.
Ben: I've done it, I've done the thing.
Jerry: Yeah, it reminds me of my own experiences in that way and I think to put a
larger construct on it; so many people that I work with, so many people out
there fear failure for understandable reasons and I think for very similar
reasons. William James said that it is not failure that annihilates us, it's when
we attach as sense of self-esteem and self-worth to an accomplishment of
goals and then fail to achieve the goal that we are annihilated.
Ben: Yeah.

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Jerry: And there is a subset of people who fear success and we see those – those in
coaching, in therapeutic circles see that as a kind of nefarious, subterranean
phenomena and so they create chaos around them and there is that – but I
think in some ways, when we attach a sense of self-worth and a sense of self-
esteem to a goal, we may in effect fear completion and there may be a sense
of death associated with completion because I have for so long used the
pursuit to create energy, to create a life force, to substitute self-love, substitute
self-love as the driver, self-care as the driver. We use this external chasing and
I think about it in the context of – and folks who followed my career know
that I have often spoken about turning 38 and leaving the offices of the New
York City 2012 Olympic Bid Committee and passing what was then a
smoldering pile of what had been the World Trade Center in February 2002
and wanting to kill myself. It was one of those moments where things come
into sharp focus and you realize that for me, in the States, we have this image
of – when people are on a carousel or a merry-go-round, the goal was to reach
out and grab a ring, a brass ring and if you grabbed a brass ring, you won a
prize. I would often say, I had the brass ring in my damn hand and the brass
ring was my children would not have to work and the sense of safety and
security that was so long sought after, was there in my grasp and it felt hollow
and it felt empty. I remember reading a book called Listening to Midlife, by
Mark Gerzon and in it he quotes Buzz Aldrin who was the first man to orbit
the Earth and he said – he's reported to have said that when you see the Earth
from the vantage point of the moon, what else is there? And it's so poignant
and of course, he had this sort of post-expedition collapse afterwards because
the removal of the goal, or the completion of that journey which I think we
imbue it with some magical qualities; you are going to step off the plane in
London and Her Majesty the Queen herself, will put roses at your feet–
Ben: [Laughs]
Jerry: – and say, 'Thank you for restoring the dignity to the British Empire'
[Laughter] and as I recall, it actually wasn’t quite like that. There was
paparazzi but you had to keep going back and forth so the TV crews could get
the same view [Laughter]
Ben: Yeah, the reality wasn’t quite as glamorous and it's funny; I mean rewinding
back to the failure thing, my first ever expedition in 2001, I was 23 years old
was in so many ways, a giant failure. Almost everything that could have gone
wrong did go wrong in that first trip and it knocked me [Unclear 0:46:42] for
a long time. I eventually learnt, and this took a few months really after coming
back from that first trip that he most important question I could ask myself
was not what happens if I fail because that's what holds a lot of – I think for
me it was – there was a lot riding on it. I put everything I had in it, all my
savings, it was – it was a very public failure, sponsors, you let people down,
we didn’t achieve – but I finally got over that and learnt that and [Unclear
0:47:18] was not what happens if I fail but more what happens if I am so

16. Reboot012_Journey_After_Journey
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scared of failing, so caught up in this fear of failing that I don’t even try. Like
what happens, what are the consequences of that? So that was an important
lesson. But then the flip side of that was as I had said, this working to kind of
decouple self-worth, self-esteem, self-respect from achievement or from
external validation. I guess – and I'm probably a bit late to this party because
I'm [Unclear 0:48:00] years ago recommending a book [Unclear 0:47:59] of
course I never got round to reading it but I am slowly realizing that actually
that makes a lot of sense and particularly, in Antarctica, all the stuff I have
done to the North Pole, skied to the North Pole in 2004. You're in an
environment where so many factors are completely outside your control and
the only thing really you can control is your reaction to what's going on, your
own emotions and how you behave as a result of that. Ultimately I think that's
a big part of [Unclear 0:48:32] working on that but I think that's important
and for so long, yeah, I guess part of me was looking for the applause, the
recognition at the end of an expedition one day where I finally I would make
it. Yeah, I guess, you boil it down to ultimately I want to do something I can
be proud of.
Jerry: So, let me ask you –
Ben: Yeah.
Jerry: – are you proud?
Ben: Yeah, I am proud of myself for finally getting to the point where I realized
that it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t – yeah, it was a fun thing to do, it was a
great project, we've inspired some people along the way, I've raised money for
charity over the years, did various expeditions, but ultimately – I don’t say it
doesn’t matter in terms of how I see myself, how I – my own self-worth. It's
irrelevant, self-worth is intrinsic, we are all worthy human beings, you don’t
have to walk to the South Pole and back to do something to be proud of or to
be proud of yourself. So, that's been the biggest lesson I guess.
Jerry: You know, over the years, we have talked a lot about Buddhism and how
important it's been in my journey after the journey if you will and I know,
without revealing too much, I know that you carried a bit of Pema Chödrön
with you down in the ice.
Ben: I did, yeah.
Jerry: So shout out to Ani Pema, yo, yo, yo! [Laughs]
Ben: Absolutely, yeah, she was with me on the Kindle in Antarctica, fantastic.
Yeah, it was brilliant.

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Jerry: But you know, one of the things that I love about the philosophy is – because
the whole question of self-worth and self-esteem is so wrapped up in
especially in the Westerners' journey into Buddhism. Most Westerners who
find their way into Buddhism don’t do so because they feel whole and
complete. They find their way through this process of brokenness –
Ben: Yeah.
Jerry: – and so the question of self-worth is often there and from a Buddhist
perspective, I love this notion. We are inherently worthwhile and the evidence
of that is having been born human because only human beings have the
potential for enlightenment. We are not better than other sentient beings, but
only human beings and so whether you believe in reincarnation or not, the
notion that you, in this body, in this physical meat-bag called a human body,
your life-force reincarnated in that is evidence of the fact that you are worthy
and I love that. It makes self-worth a birthright, not something that has to be
earned and that for a reformed Catholic who often struggled with a notion of
having being born in sin, this gives me a little bit of comfort.
Ben: [Laughs] Yeah. I'm laughing also because when we first met, first introduced
in 2008, I remember thinking, 'Yeah, here's a guy that raised a shit ton of
money for the New York 2012 Olympic campaign, he can help me raise a shit
ton of money too. He's a good person to talk to for some good no-nonsense,
commercial, fundraising advice.' And that's like the one thing we've just spent
the least amount of time –
Jerry: The least amount of time.
Ben: Yeah. [Laughs]
Jerry: Well, you have to understand that I use other people's wishes to become rich
as a subversive tool to lure them in to talking about the deeper existentiality
issues [Laughter] I am seductive and nefarious in my own right. [Laughter]
Well, Ben, we'll start to close it out on that and I can't thank you enough for
this. It's been as always, it's – I feel so honored and privileged to have borne
witness to this experience with you and I'm sure the coaching federation will
be annoyed with me when I say that what began as a coach-client relationship
has emerged as a deep and powerful friendship and I'm really –
Ben: I'm grateful for that too; so, thank you Jerry.
Jerry: Thank you, my friend. Thank you.
So that’s it for our conversation today. You know, a lot was covered in this episode from links,
to books, to quotes, to images. So, we went ahead and compiled all that and put it on our site at

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Reboot.io/Podcast. If you would like to be a guest on the show, you can find out about that on
our site as well.
I’m really grateful that you took the time to listen. If you enjoyed the show and you want to get
all the latest episodes as we release them, head over to iTunes and subscribe and while you’re
there, it would be great if you could leave us a review letting us know how the show affected
you. So, thank you again for listening and I really look forward to future conversations together.
[Singing] "How long till my soul gets it right?
Did any human being ever reach that kind of light?
I call on the resting soul of Galileo,
King of night-vision, King of insight."
[End of audio 0:54:48]
[End of transcript]