Bert terHart's Knack for Knocking Off the Impossible: The Transformative Power of Doing Hard Things

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Living a life in full is the conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books. Or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full and I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by the nonprofit I founded, the center for Global Initiatives. The center is an all volunteer organization so there are no salaries and thus all tax deductible donations can go to the work. While our key country partners in Tanzania, our work is global and generally focused in the areas of education and healthcare. We also help others to get their nonprofits started or augment others project based initiatives. It's our goal to open source humanitarian intervention and to help make it easier for others to do more good in the world. We are proud to have been ranked a great nonprofit every year since 2011 and to have achieved a Platinum level rating by Guidestar Links in this episode's show, notes will take you to published articles on our outcomes, a number of helpful tools and downloadable resources which are all free always. Please Visit us at CenterForGlobalInitiatives.org and be sure to watch our video at Patreon.com DrChrisStout to learn more. Thanks. Welcome to another episode of Living Life in Full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout. Have you ever been captivated by the power and the mystery of the Oceans? Imagine logging 50,000 miles of solo sailing adventures including a non stop circumnavigation of the globe and a 7,800 kilometer paddling journey across Canada from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Or or how about having a passion for the oceans and oceanography and investigating the role of the world's oceans and coastal seas, how they play in moderating and regulating climate, nutrient productivity, pollution distributions or Simon Migration or maybe you're more interested in entrepreneurship and making an impact in the lives of others using technology and artificial intelligence. Or maybe perhaps you have a desire to be an author. If so, on all of these aspects, you're in luck, because in today's episode, we'll be talking with a person who has done all that and more. The remarkable polymath Bert Terhart. Bert has sailed solo non stop around the world into the Bering Sea and out to the Aleutian Islands, accumulating more than 50,000 nautical miles of solo adventuring, all in an effort to follow in the wake of of some of the world's greatest explorers and cartographers, making him the first North American solo navigation of the globe via the five southern capes using only celestial navigation. In the same vein, he's paddled solo across Canada from the Pacific to Atlantic Oceans, covering more than 7,800 km by foot and canoe. Software engineering and business drew him away from the formal world of academia. And his explorations have allowed him to combine his advanced degrees in math, physics and physical oceanography with his entrepreneurial spirit to create software and technical tools used by healthcare professionals in Canada, Great Britain, the United States and Australia, ultimately helping in the diagnosis and treatment of tens of thousands of patients. Burt's programming and business skills have been sought out by universities, professionals, and environmentally responsible businesses and corporations in Canada and the U.S. his exploits have been featured both nationally and internationally, on television and in print. He's a frequent speaker to business groups, libraries, museums, schools, and adventurers of every ilk. He's a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. He serves as explorer in residence for the British Columbia Historical Society. He's the founder of the Canadian Interactive Waterways initiatives and the CEO of leadbrain AI, a tech company he founded. And he is the author of, among others, the children's book Sir Salty Goes to Sea. Hey, Bert, it's great to have you on. Welcome to the show.

It's just great to be here, Chris. But every time I hear something of an introduction, I want to look over my shoulder and see who they're talking.

Who is that guy?

Who is that guy?

I know what you mean. Yeah, I constantly channel the imposter syndrome. I'm just so afraid someone's going to find me out. But that is what the research says. So I may have a fact here or there off. So if that comes up, it's your responsibility to fact check me. But you know, man, you. You walk the talk, brother. So I have to say, you're a great fit as a guest on the show, since it's entitled living your living a life in full, because you are certainly living your life in full. And so much so, it's kind of hard. It was hard for me to kind of, you know, script and figure out where we were going to start because you blend exploration with science and entrepreneurship with adventure, and you do all that in a variety of truly unique kinds of ways. So maybe you could start off with sharing how all that came about. Maybe your orig story of what inspired you to pursue exploration and adventure, you know, take us from there.

Well, I think that I've never been able to say no to an opportunity. So if there's something, and of course there are those things that I'm. That I'm passionate about. So if there's an opportunity that lands at my doorstep that falls within the purvey of my passions, then I'm just all in. And sadly, of course, well, I shouldn't say sadly, but that leads you in all different, seemingly different directions. And when, when I. Maybe an interesting way to sum it up is when I, When I told my dad that I was going to sail solo, attempt to sail solo around the world, the only thing he told me was I thought you were smarter than that. So you're, you're constantly flying in the face of those, the. Certainly the, the common wisdom and, and those that really care about you because these tend to be crazy things. Sail. Sailing around the world is not easy. Start business is not easy. Of course, paddling across the country is not easy. Joining the army, going into the Special Service Force is not easy. And there's, you know, we could talk about that because I strongly believe that there's a moral imperative to do the hard things. If you're ever in doubt about which way you should be headed, then the more difficult of the two choices is probably the better of the two choices. But that said, my. Both my parents are from Holland. My father came. My father came to Canada. His job was painting a house. And within two weeks he was working for the Department of Natural Resources in Northern Canada, surveying. My mother worked for the Dutch embassy. She was secretary to the ambassador to the French ambassador or to the. She was secretary to the Dutch ambassador to France in Paris when she decided to marry my dad, who hauled her off to Canada to live in a tent, to live in a trailer that he had built himself itself, you know, on a model, a frame. So there. The. The spirit adventure, I guess doesn't, doesn't seem to. Yeah, I guess maybe I'm swimming In the deep end of the gene pool,

the DNA really kind of loaded you up for this, I think.

But what's the, and this might seem a little bit strange, but I'm, I'm almost completely colorblind. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being, you see, black and white, I'm a 9. And I didn't know that growing up. So when I, all I ever wanted to do when I was a kid was I wanted to follow my dad's footsteps. He was, he was a mariner. He was in the Dutch merchant marine. Sailed around the world after the Second World War. It's a very prestigious job. Ended up basically as a first officer and he gave all that up and eventually came to Canada. But I, I, that's all. I only wanted to go to sea and I wanted to be a scientist. But it turns out if you're colorblind like I am, you, you can't go to sea. You certainly can't go to sea if you're in the Navy. Which is at the time the only place you could get an undergraduate ocean or undergraduate oceanography degree in Canada was with, was with the military college. But that wasn't going to happen because I was colorblind and they gave me the option, they said, okay, Terhart, you, you can be in the army or you can be in the army. What do you want?

Army, here I come.

Army, here I come. So, and I said, okay, well, I guess I'll just do the hardest thing I could think of to do in the army. And then as soon as I got out of the army, I decided I was going to go to graduate school so I could go to sea and study oceanography. And by the time I finished graduating, the Canadian government decided they were going to cut all the funding for any, any, any shipborne research. So, okay, that, well, that's not out because I'm, the only reason I'm here is to get on a boat and, you know, go to sea. And then a doctor friend of mine, he, because I had programming skills, said, you know, I'm going to start this clinic up in California. We need a programmer and can you do this? And sounded really interesting. So I said yes. And that kind of fell into the healthcare field. And it's just been, I've always been trying to stick my feet back into the, my toes back into the ocean in some way, shape or form. And that's how I've, in a nutshell, how I've gone from military college to the army, back to graduate school, into the healthcare Field always with the, always looking over my shoulder at how I can get into a boat and go to, and go to sea. But is it. I figured if, if no one was going to pay me to do it, I better, I better do it myself.

Self fund. I hear you.

I gotta self fund it all. And because I'm a science guy and a tech guy and I love, I love leveraging technology in every, in any way that's good because there's. Well, you know, it's a different discussion. But technology obviously hasn't, hasn't hurt us societally at all. And the other side of the coin is that technology can be the, can be the bane of society. But you know, I'm, I'm firmly on the other side of the fence. So anytime I've gone to sea, I've always. I've taken PhD students from UBC from University of Alaska. When I was sailing around the world, I was throwing in current drogues in faraway places where it's next to impossible to get a research vessel. I've gone up into the Aleutian Islands to core Sitka spruce to help forestry, the Faculty of Forestry and Forestry students understand the migration of, of indeed of invasive and indigenous species. So it's. I've never, I've been able to patch together my, my passions over the course of my life. So I've never, I've never moved very far away from, from my technical roots, whether they be my interest in the oceans or whether my, my interest in, in the environment in general or whether they be in just understanding how technology can play a role in helping us all either contribute to the global knowledge base or help us move society forward in some. In what I would consider to be a beneficial way.

Gotcha. Well, let's put a pin in the tech stuff because I do want to get into the whole entrepreneurial aspect of your life and your journey, but I want to maybe kind of unpack what you were just now talking about. So in doing those research things and having, you know, students be a part of it and the work that you did was that as an academic in a university setting, was that via grants or how did those kinds of activities come about for you?

Well, when I was a graduate student and afterwards doing all the stuff you do after you graduate with fancy degrees, the question becomes where do I get the money to do the research I need to do? And of course it's a giant scramble because there's only a limited amount of money to, to go around and which isn't to say that the pie is limited. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there's a, it's a finite resource and there's lots of people vying for those same funds. So it was a challenge. And I know from, because I was always trying to go to sea, that it's very, very expensive to go to sea. And it's very, very expensive to put ships at sea or put people on board those ships and put them in faraway places like the Bering Sea or the Aleutian Islands or the, or the bottom of South America, the bottom of Africa, you know, the bottom of New Zealand and the Great Southern Ocean. All those places. It's, it's, it's prohibitively expensive. I mean, to the tune of millions and millions of dollars. But that doesn't mean that there are, that there aren't people in those places. So I would say I would simply contact, for example, with, with regards to UBC Forestry. I contacted, I contacted UBC and I said, look, I'm going to have, my boat is going to be in these places. And if there's any research that you guys are doing that, that I can assist on by at least giving you a platform to get, whether it's postdocs or whether it's PhD students or whether it's researchers in general to get them into those locations, I'll do it and I'll do it for free, just because I'm going to be there anyway. And everybody jumps at that chance. So whether it's, so whether it's geologists out of the University of Alaska who want to get to the islands of the Four Mountains, whether it's, in this case, again, whether it was UBC forestry researchers trying to understand how Sitka spruce migrated from California up into the Aleutian Islands, whether it's physical oceanographers, like I'm formally trained as a physical oceanographer. So whether it's physical oceanographers trying to understand, you know, the west wind drift in the deep Southern Ocean, they need, they need real, they need people in those places to conduct real, you know, to conduct real observations, to get real data. And then they use that data, of course, to make better decisions, which, which hopefully drive better policies, which of course, which we would hope then drive better outcomes. So, and unless you get, unless you have the data, then you cannot really understand how it is that your theories or your hypothesis is, are going to, whether or not they're, they will bear fruit. So getting that data, and I've done the same thing I'm a real believer in citizen scientists. I mean, for example, you could take, you know, one of my favorite examples is surfers who tend to, you know, who tend to be on shores all the time because they want to go surfing. And one of the big problems, and I shouldn't say one of the big problems, but one of the big. One of the questions that we have to ask ourselves is, is how soils, for example, are transported along coastlines. It's called literal transport. And surfers can make really, really important contributions into understanding how that process works because they're constantly looking out at wave heights, wave frequencies, all those kinds of things. So you can, you. And, and there isn't anything in this world that you can't talk about that there isn't some scientist who's completely over the moon about. So whether it's, whether it's littoral transport or whether it's, you know, Sitka genetic distributions or whether it's, I mean, it could be, it could be. As a kid in high school, we discovered, because you're just a kid thumping around the prairies where I grew up, we came across these dens of garter snakes where there's hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands of garter snakes who are overwintering in these small caves. And I hesitate to call them a cave because there's no mountains on the prairies. It's basically a hole in the ground with some rocks around it. And of course, this, you know, we, we came back, told our science teacher, hey, we found a hundred, thousands and we found, you know, thousands of snakes. And next thing you know, the University of Regina was all over the place. So.

Wow.

So there's, there isn't anything that you can't do, or I shouldn't say that. They're just about, just about everything that you can be passionate about. There's a, there's a scientist somewhere who has a technical passion about it, who's trying to answer about that particular phenomena in a way that will help not just the global knowledge base, but, but help, you know, move us, move us forward in a, in a meaningful way. And of course, if you're talking about the environment that meaningful could, could translate into sustainable. So there, there's. There's just no end. There's no this, this. There's no end into which you can, you can leverage a context in which you're passionate about.

That's fantastic. You know, speaking of citizen science, I friend of mine and my wife last year did a citizen science project through one of the forest preserve conservancies up here. And it was just fascinating. We had a specific plot and they gave us training and they gave us a kit and we would look at water flow, oxygenation, you know, blah, blah, blah. And we did it for a period of six months, like the fourth Wednesday of every month or something like that. And it was just also, it was fascinating from the nerdy part of the science and, you know, kind of having these chemicals and, you know, learning how to do these things, feeling like you're, you know, back in high school, you know, chemistry class. But it was also fascinating to just observe and be in nature and see this, you know, beautiful little, you know, waterway of, you know, how much life was in it and how much, you know, and that obviously correlated with how much oxygen was in it. And, you know, water flows being high and low, and it just, it also kind of just for, I think for the three of us, if I can speak for all three of us, it was just this nice kind of novice understanding. Novice, better understanding, but human appreciation of being out in nature and just kind of the wonder, you know, of it all. And I, you know, like you talking about the surfers, you know, it's the same kind of thing. You know, here's. Here are these, you know, kind of simple, elegant opportunities that, you know, if someone's kind of already there, that, that's, that's great. But I want to circle back to what you were saying. So you made yourself available and your boat available. So did. Did they then like, cover your costs of those trips or how did. How was that economically viable for you to be able to. To go off and do that?

Well, I was. I was going into those places anyway so that the, the boat is going to be there.

Oh. So they just.

I'm gonna take.

Yeah, they're just hop on. Okay. All right.

They're just. Yeah, it's hop on. And, and they're. Of course they're going to bring their own food because no one. No one wants to eat what I'm going to eat.

We need to get into that. I want to learn about that.

So. So there's, you know, and it's. It's really simple and I made it pretty clear the, the only rule is you could. You have to show up with a smile and that's it. So.

Wow.

And it's, you know, you can be. You can be as. As easygoing or as blyish, to coin a phrase, as you want. But. But, you know, they're. They're. These people are just so excited about and passionate about, about what they're doing. You, you, you can't help but be, you know, be, be enthusiastic and you can't help. Can't help but, can't help but for it to rub off on you. So every, and I've, I've always self funded everything. I never wanted to, I simply do not want that to be. I never want someone to look at me and say, oh, well, you know, you got, you got a sponsor for this, you got a sponsor for that, therefore you could afford it. So I never wanted that to be an impediment for someone to pursue their own dream, however big or small they, they might be. And it is, you know, I mean, I'm sure you know this, that, you know, corporations are typically bombarded by, by people looking for money to go off and do their, to do their, their crazy, you know, whatever, whatever might be crazy, but. So I just never wanted to do that. And of course it takes a tremendous amount of time to do it, so I just never felt I had the time to do it. And secondly, it was, it leaves me a little bit more latitude, I suppose, to pursue what it is that, that's important to me as opposed to someone else's agenda especially, which is a very difficult thing to. Thing to do as, you know, if you head off into the mountains, you know, pretty soon your agenda is no longer your own. It belongs to the mountain. You're on mountain time now.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We make plans and God laughs. We make plans. Or the sea and the mountains laugh.

So. Exactly.

Right. So was that funding from your entrepreneurial endeavors or how. Correct. Okay, all right. I still want to get to those, but I'm still on the sea right now with you, Bert. So. Yeah, so were these like these citizen science and scientific things and whatnot with graduate students doing research and whatever was that then on. Were your vessels all sailboats? Did they lend a hand with the sailing or. Tell us about that.

No, it was all on a sailboat. It's all on the boat I sailed around the world in. So, okay, I, I only have one boat. So someone asked me, why did, you know, why did you sail this boat? Typically French, why did you sell this boat around the world? And I said, it's the only one I had. It's not like I have a, you

know, a fleet, a flotilla, a quiver.

Yeah, quiver of go fast sailboats. So no, it's a sailboat. It's, it's not that big. It's 45ft. And you know, the accommodations are all, I mean, it's a nice boat. I won't say it's not a nice boat, but you know, it's, it's a 45 foot boat and you're at sea and it's a small space and they don't do any of the sailing. They, I mean, they like to sit around and watch, I suppose, but there's, there's no requirement. I mean some, some people had no experience whatsoever and some people have had some experience sailing. But up in those places, you know, up and towards southeast Alaska, northern British Columbia, out the Aleutians. In those places, the sailing can be, let's call it rigorous. So there's, there's, there's not a, basically there's not a, there's not a lot of room for fooling around.

Yeah.

So it's, and it's. The other thing too is that there's, there can only ever be one captain on board a boat. And sometimes, sometimes I've got to say, okay, we're doing this. Whether, whether it's, whether it may not be the, the most obvious choice, but it seems to, it would seem to me to be that the safest choice because the weather can be extreme. So that's, that, that's just it. It's just, it's, they're, they're complete passengers basically. Their, their, their role is simply to pursue their, their passion and this and the science they have on board. And my job is simply to get them there and back, provide accommodation and, you know, and, and cook. I cook breakfast. I'm okay at cooking breakfast, but everything else is, everything else is a crapshoot.

That is, that is very cool. That is so cool. So. Well, let's, I want to do, you know, maybe focus on the big one. You've circumnavigated the globe solo, so lead us through that. How did, was that like a, you know, a childhood dream? Did it? Okay, I've done this, this and this. And now I'm, you know, I'm ready to pursue, you know, something more grand. What was the seed of that, that goal?

Well, I think I had sailed up and down the coasts of the west coast of North America, following in the footsteps or the wake as I suppose guys like Cook and Bly and La Perouse and Bodega de Quadra, all these very, very famous hydrographers and navigators and at the same. And my father was a land surveyor, so I had an early appreciation for just how amazingly hard it is to survey. And of course, you know, when you, when you're trying to, you Know, make a chart of the sea and. And make a map of the world. You're. Most of the world is covered by ocean. So, yeah, you've got to make a pretty big map of the. Of the scene. And it's incredibly hard, like it is. It is astonishingly difficult.

Yeah.

And if you think about the tools that they had 200 years ago, it's. It's mind numbingly hard and.

And terrifying, I might add. So.

Yeah, and terrifying.

Yeah.

And then I'm fortunate to live in a part of the world where I can take the boat and within a very short period of time, I can park it in a place where Captain Cook or Bly or famous Americans from the Columbia, the name of the ship Columbia, from Jacob Astor, where they parked there or moored or anchored their boats. And I can walk on the same path. The paths are. Look identical. They're literally trodden into the rock because they've been used by indigenous people for perhaps thousands of years. I can look at the same trees. The trees are 5, 6, 700 years old. And you get this real sense of. To me anyway, of connection with all that has come before. And if you really want to know, it is impossible for you to determine where it is you want to go if you don't know where you are. And it's impossible to know where you are if you have no idea how you got there. So it is. I've been fascinated by what it has taken to put North America on the map quite literally. And I was fascinated by the exploits of these people who had sailed around the world in all different corners of the world at a time when it was next to impossible to do it. Like, it is astonishingly difficult to cross an ocean.

Yeah.

I mean, you think of. I mean, Samuel Champlain is an early Canadian explorer, the father of New France at the time when. When Canada was first being. When Canada was. Was first starting, it was basically. It was basically a company. It was a. It was a company that was owned by whoever had the. The gall to think that they could make something of. Of a place on the other side of the ocean. And it turns out that Samuel Champlain, if you can believe it, crossed the Atlantic 27 times. And he did it in the early. In the early 1700s. So. But in around 1620, he crossed the Atlantic 27 times. People will cross the Atlantic once in a sailboat and think they've actually accomplished something. So. And that. That has to give you that the guy who put Canada on the. Literally put candle on the map, his Name is David Thompson. He's. And all these guys are, with the exception of Champlain, because he was very early. But you know, David Thompson, Mackenzie George, Vancouver, Vancouver island, the city of Vancouver, you know, Fraser from the Fraser river, of course. All these guys, Lewis and Clark, they're always there from the same. They're all contemporaries from the same time. And at the same time that Cook was going around the world and that, and was charting the world, David Thompson was, was thumping across North America. And when I say thumping across North America, David Thompson spent 28 years in the wilderness surveying. And his, his. He. He walked. He walked more than 90, 000 kilometers to do so. And what's even, what's even more fascinating to me about that is that his wife walked 50,000km with him because nothing was. It was, it was impossible. It was impossible to travel in this country without, without the work and support of, of women. So we know, you know, we, we know. Well, I'll look at, look at Lewis and Clark, who is Lewis and Clark's guide, Saca Kaweah. So it would, it would have been impossible for, for Lewis and Clark to do what they had done had it not been for Saca Kaweah. And she was carrying a child at the time, you know, some famous pictures of her. But my point is that we have, we don't. I was interested in, in how those people had managed to do what they had done. So sailing up and down the coast, you know, in, in the wakes of, like I said, Bly and Cook and all these guys, I figured, well, the only way they got here is to sail around the world. So I'm going to do that because I wanted to know something about how tough that would be and in order to figure out. Because the clothing is different, of course, the boats are different, the sails are different, the food is different, everything is different. But you can if you can. And this is true in, in a, in the most general context you could imagine, if I spin you around three times and walk you blindfolded, you know, four steps into a deep dark forest and then take the blindfold off, that, that tear that starts rising up in your gut immediately because you are now lost is the same as it was a hundred thousand years ago when we were indistinguishable from, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and there's a lot of people who are, who are afraid to lose sight of land, not because they're afraid of the ocean, but they don't want to get lost because as soon as you lose sight of Land, you therefore have no more landmarks, therefore you're lost.

Right.

And so to go to sea with just a sextant, which is what I did, is. Is equivalent of getting lost. I went across Canada again with. With. With just maps, maps I had made in a compass and a pencil. So. Okay, so.

So now you had a choice, I mean, in. Not so much. And you're a tech guy. It's not like you're some Luddite or anything. So what. What was the. Is it just an homage to those who went before to then navigate by the stars for, I think, 267 days at sea? Which just. Just gives me the heebie jeebies to say out loud to imagine what that was like for you, Bert. Golly.

So, yeah, because it's. It's. It's really hard. Like the longest and, and well, I guess, let me put some perspective, I suppose, on. Because we keep saying it's hard. It's hard. Oh, it's hard. It's hard. So to put some numbers on it, because I'm a tech guy. Okay. So 6,000 people, about 6,000 people have been to the top of Everest. About 600 people have been in space. 300 people have sailed non stop around the world. And when I did it, I was the ninth person. The ninth person to sail non stop around the world with a sextant. And I was the first north or South American to do it. So it is. You have to be as, you know, if you do something, you know, if you do, if you're gonna go face nature squarely in the face, you got to be very, very lucky. I didn't, you know, I didn't sail around the world. I snuck around the world for Mother Nature.

Well said. Yeah.

Before she realized there was an idiot out there. And so it's. You have to be very lucky. And it's, it's really hard. Not just because it's, you know, you spend so much time alone, but it's in the harshest. In my opinion, it's the harshest environment in the world.

Yeah. I would much rather be on a mountainside than where you were in a boat. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can't. You can't walk on it and you can't breathe it. So you're in trouble immediately.

Yes. Oh, my gosh. So.

So the idea was to get as close as possible to the experiences that those guys had had. And the only way I could do it, because I, you know, like I said that the boat is much different, much more capable, the sales are amazing. The food is, you're not, you're not getting scurvy, all those kinds of things, but you can get lost. So the longest time I went without any, you know, without any celestial observation was close, was just about 17 days. So you're just guessing, you know, where you are, how fast you're going and all those things. And it's important not, not because you're going to hit some, you know, an island or anything, but because you're trying to avoid these massive storms that are, that are bearing, you know, that are barreling down on you. So I mean, the closest person to me was in the International Space Station 200 miles up thousands. Starboard. Starboard bird ye disturb. Exactly.

So. So, I mean, not only the issue of, you know, being lost, but like you said, it's like then this issue of also, I mean, you, you needed to be a, you know, a weather person too, you know, to. So you had to read the skies, you had to read the stars, you had to read the sea. And that, that just seems impossible, man. That just seems, you know, if I would have GPS and, and Noah, you know, I would like nobody's business, but. And I have to say too, on top of this by yourself. So, yeah, I'm a psychologist. So what was that? You know, the fear, those 17 days, the whole 267 days, emotionally isolation, fear of being lost. You know, tell us about that. Unpack that for us.

Well, I think that there's a fundamental, not just a fundamental difference, there's a universe of difference, a world of difference between being alone and being lonely. Okay, so I was certainly alone, but I was never lonely. Firstly, I was very busy. So, yeah, not a lot of time.

No time to woe is me.

Woe is me. And I like, there's a D.H. lawrence quote I really like, which is I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. And I think, you know, and in the army we just never. And people ask me this too, I mean, I never ever once thought about quitting unless, unless I, you know, broke the boat up into little pieces because, you know, one year and I was in the army when I was very young. I was only 17. So we never, we never started out to do something that was really hard. And you know, the CEO or the sergeant major would never say something like, hey, terror, if it gets too hard, too hard, you can always go back to the hotel.

Yeah. Take a time out.

Yeah, exactly. Just. You just don't have that option. So I never started out thinking that I was going to quit. It's like everybody who's ever going to climb a mountain, they're going to the top.

Yeah.

But I had, I was shocked. I had a satellite tracker so, so people could follow along. I wrote something every day and I sent it back over a very, very low bandwidth satellite connection. So I would write something, I would take a few pictures. They would also go back. And my sister, who was the shore team, she would get it posted on social media. So I was, and I, I started doing that just so that my father, because I was really concerned about torturing my father because he knew.

Yeah, he wasn't a big fan at the start, right?

No, he wasn't a big fan of the start. He knew what I was in for. And I, I, I felt very guilty, actually, because, to be honest, I told him the day before I left what I was going to do.

Wow.

I, I, because it's very hard to get off the dock. It's very hard to leave the boat. The boat has to be good to go. You have to, you can't be sick, all those sorts of things. And three weeks before I left, I fell off the top of the mast. I fell 55ft to the deck. I broke four ribs, cracked my sternum, collapsed along.

I would have taken that as a sign.

Yeah, well, you know, I'm not that smart.

Oh, man.

So, so all these things can go wrong. And I didn't want, I didn't want my father or, you know, I didn't tell any, I didn't even tell my brother or my sister, told my one sister, but that, that was it. The only person who really knew I was going.

Wow.

Because I didn't want them to worry because if you don't go, they say I tell them six months in advance. They worry for six months and then I can't go. I'm going to go next year. That's another 12 months. And I mean, I'm rationalizing, I'm rationalizing, of course, for doing something that was incredibly selfish. But so I said, okay. I told my dad the day before I was gonna leave. My brother didn't know where I was. He called my dad and said, I can't get hold of Bert. He said, well, he's, he's somewhere, he's at about a thousand miles, you know, west of Baja California, headed around the world. Oh. I guess that's why I can't get him on a phone.

Wow.

So, so I felt very badly about making such a Selfish decision. So I decided I was going to write something every day and I was going to get back to my dad, who was, you know, and he was, he loves to see and all those sorts of things. And so he'd be interested in the pictures and all that. And it soon became. I was shocked, absolutely gobsmacked at how unbelievably supportive of this, this, this wide swath of total strangers were in my, in, in me succeeding. Like, these people could fall out of the sky and hit me and I wouldn't know who they were, but they were genuinely, genuinely and sincerely interested in me succeeding in, in this wild and crazy and stupid thing. And it's unbelievably inspiring and motivating. And so I, I, I was never, ever, ever did I ever feel alone because I felt this push, this groundswell of support from all these people who had, who had latched on to what I was writing because my sister was putting it on social media. And then, yeah, just kind of, kind of. It almost blew up from there at one point because I left mid, I left before COVID started and arrived, you know, and returned at the height of the, the COVID thing. So at one, at one point, Yahoo News declared me the safest man on Earth. If you actually.

What an honor.

Yeah, what an honor. So, of course, the sailing community just exploded because I'm not the safest man on Earth. At the time, I was in the Southern Ocean just getting pummeled. And, you know, as far as they were concerned, you know, I couldn't possibly get Covid. I was the only, I was one of the few people on the planet that could not possibly have been exposed to Covid.

Yeah, you weren't you the, the safest in the sense of your situation, but you're in the sense of being infected. You were the least infected man.

Yeah.

Wow.

So I was, that's, it's a long way of saying I was. I was never, ever, never ever did I feel lonely. That's because I felt, like I said, I just felt this giant uplifting surge of people who, from all I had 3500 kids from all around the world follow me. But that's one of the things I tried to do. I tried to, I reached, I tried to reach out to brilliant, to elementary school teachers to engage with kids and hopefully get them interested in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences by following along again. I was doing citizen scientists stuff. I was doing these macro plastic surveys by standing out on deck and looking for, counting the number of plastic things that I Could see as I. I sailed by.

Wow.

So there was. There was lots of people who were, you know, who were cheering me on and never once did I ever feel lonely.

That is awesome. And I think the aspect of that in the sense of connection to community and, you know, being. Doing good work, you know, citizen science stuff, being, you know, scratching the. The adventure itch and enjoying that and having that, you know, kind of a. An experience and that it isn't like. Like you said, you know, with. You use the term selfish. And, you know, man, that resonates with me because when I would go on climbs, it would feel like. Not the climb. Yes, but even just all the training, you know, for that kind of a thing, you know, I'm out on runs or. We talked off Mike before, you know, I had a period of my life where I was doing a lot of ultras. And, you know, basically your training is like going out and running a marathon. And, you know, I wasn't setting any records, but so it would take me a while to get the miles in and. And it, you know, I was away from my family, I was away from my kids. I was, you know, I had a day job, so I had to squeeze it in weekends and evenings and whatnot. And it does feel kind of selfish. But when you can, we started a thing called Summits for others to try and, you know, get. For me to feel better about myself and doing that, where we would do it to sponsor a charity and stuff. And I think it's brilliant to reach out with kids and young minds and that excitement of, you know, what's he up to? You know, what's. What's the, you know, what we find out today? And what did he see? And I did in my background, I saw some of the stuff about your journaling and stuff. So I'll put. I have a shot of, you know, some of your logs. I'll put that in our LinkedIn piece for this. But I, you know, I think that's also very grounding and, you know, kind of a, you know, creates a documentation and a history of this that is, you know, crucially important, you know, for while you did it and supportive of, you know, your mental health, but then also for, you know, next generations and others to be able to appreciate and learn from have. I know you. You write, but are you thinking about maybe putting this together as a. As a manuscript or any thoughts around that?

Well, I wrote four books about the last. So I wrote a book to like 267 and counting, a Voyage around the World. Which is. Which is supposed to be coming out, but I'm. As you can imagine, I'm

got to finish writing it.

No, no, I finished writing it and it's one of those, you know, I wrote it and the editor has gone back and forth with it and I'm fighting with the editor and all those things. I don't. I'm new to the whole writing a book thing. So I wrote the book and it's gone to the publisher. It's gone together. It's gone back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. So it should be coming out sometime in the fall because I've got another big thing. I'm leaving on another expedition for the summer. So I got. My focus is sort of turn away from it. And so there's that book. There's a book, 90ft of Waterfront. That's basically the. It's the pictorial history of the trip around the world. So Suburban is 45ft long. So 90, you know, 90ft of waterfront is my clever way of thinking. I got, you know, 45 up one side and 45 down the other.

Oh, I get it. That's very clever.

And then I've. And then there's. And then there's. Then there's the Sir Salty Goes to Sea, the children's book. And then there's the book about the paddle across Canada, which is a voyage across Canada on foot and by canoe. So like I said, I turned them all over, wrote them all, turned them all over to the publishers and the editors and all this sort of thing. It's all self published as well, because no one wants to. I struggled. I shouldn't say struggled, but I really couldn't get a publisher who would be interested in anything I had done. So they're self published, but then, you know, the editing process.

Right.

Something I. To be honest, I'm struggling with, but. Or struggled with.

That's never the fun part. I tell. Yeah, no, I hear you. And you just mentioned it. I want to. I have in my notes to ask you. So your vessel's name is the Sea Bourbon. Like a. Is it a play on words with the Chevrolet Suburban?

Exactly.

Yeah. Okay, there you go.

There you go. Because I was. When we bought the boat, like I used to buy these old Chevy suburb Bourbons because you get them for next to nothing. And I would take the kids camping and fishing and all those sorts of things.

Oh, perfect.

We'd stuff everybody in the thing. And my idea of camping with a Suburban was you drive it into the bush where you can't drive anymore. Then you get out the back door, the big barn doors, and then you

just leave it there.

And then when it comes time to leave, you can back out again. So. And. And these things were so ugly that that it. My kids would not allow me to drive them to schooling. I would literally I would have to stop and. And you know, like a few blocks away from school.

Suburban of shame.

Yeah, exactly. So when we bought this boat, we were searching around for a name and my daughter Catherine, she said well you should name it after those stupid trucks you always buy. And I go, that's a good idea. People call it Sea Bourbon.

Oh, that's great.

Roll their eyes. You know. So. Yeah, it's just so people either think I'm a raging alcoholic, like it's suburban.

Oh, well, I guess that's a good sign because I resonated with the. That's.

Yes. Yeah.

Okay, good. That's good. Yeah, well. And you know, it's funny you say that I think, you know, you and I have when we talked off Mike, some overlaps and kindred spiritness. But when I was in graduate school, I was so poor that I had to. I bought a $500 Chevy C10 1975 that was just a rust bucket and it was sort of like. It was. It's the pickup truck version kind of probably not as long a wheelbarrow bases the Suburban was that you had. But it was because I was always kind of. You know, my rent would go up and I'd have to move. So I just automatically had my own moving service as well too. So their workhorses, they're very. They look ugly but man, they, they got the job done. So. Yeah, that's great. Oh man. Well, from my notes I want to pick your brain about. There was a. In terms of like survival scenarios. Was there something in particular going around Cape Horn that you had to deal with? Are my notes correct that that was an issue? Or. Or tell. If so tell us about it. If not, you know what was.

Well, I think, I mean it's. Everything is. You're constantly going around Cape Horn. For example, I had a choice. There was a massive storm coming. So when I say a massive storm, it's hurricane force winds 65 knots to 85 knots. But unlike a hurricane in the. The that that people are generally familiar with when you say hurricane, they typically have a. They might extend over an area of say 100 square miles. But at sea in the Southern Ocean or here actually in the Gulf of Alaska, when you talk about hurricane force winds, they're extending over the, over a region of thousands of square miles. Not 100 square miles, a thousand or ten thousand square miles. So.

Wow.

So this isn't something that you're going to fool around with. And so there was a massive storm coming and I had a choice to either head southwest as fast as I could and then, and then just get absolutely hammered or take a much, much bigger risk, sail across the strongest wind gradient. So the sail across the region where the winds are changing the fastest and get into the nexus of the low, which is the center of the low. So I much everyone was advising over the radio to sail southwest and take your lumps rather than take a great big risk. But I thought it'd be better if I would take a bigger risk to get inside the safety of this nexus. So that's how I, that's how I went around Cape Horn. I took a great big risk, sailed across the wind gradients, the strongest wind gradients before the storm got really, really huge, and then stuck the boat in the middle of the low where it's, you know, you're, it's a little bit rough, but it. Well, that's an understatement. It's very rough.

I was gonna say. Yeah. What, what. I mean, what was that experience like? You must have been beaten to pieces and.

Oh, but it's, it's easy to sail the boat to bits. That's your, your whole job is not to sail the boat to bits. That's, that's easy to do. And as my, as they say, any, any fool can put up a sail, but a sailor knows when to take it down. So. So, so that was going around Cape Horn. I was very lucky because it's the farthest south I sailed. It's 57 south, basically. And I never actually saw Cape Horn. I was, I was, I was way, way too far south. It wasn't worth the risk of getting anywhere near to get a picture. Yeah, because it's, but it's not, that's not the worst part of the Southern Ocean. Actually the worst part of the Southern Ocean is, is more towards underneath Australia and the Southern Indian Ocean. Oh, really? That can be. Yeah, that, that's. Anyway, there was, there was lots of storms. I stuck the mast, you know, normally the mastic straight up and down when the boat is floating level. But I put the mast underwater three times. Oh my God. By a pretty big swimming, swimming in the cockpit.

Oh,

the boat's completely underwater. And I know the boat's almost upside down because everything that's, that Was horizontal, is now vertical.

How do you, how do you deal with that? I mean. Oh my gosh.

Are you. Well, you basically. That's a really interesting question because what I did, what I did was. Well, I learned this basically in the army as well, is that humans, as I'm sure you know, I'm not telling you that you don't know for sure is that we tend to be very optimistic. So if I, if you, if I ask you, you know what, what if there's an earthquake tomorrow, your, your mind, and this is true, I think across, across cultures and, and societies that because you, you, you will take something that's a very low probability of event, you'll sign it, you will assign it a probability of next to nothing, zero, and then blow it off as unimportant. Oh, that'll never happen. Oh, there's no earthquakes. Render. That'll never happen. What happens if a volcano. That'll never happen. What happens if the mass comes down? Oh, that'll never happen. So, so as opposed to what if. Then you. We call these, you know, when if games. So if I ask you when there's an earthquake, what are you going to do then? As opposed to your money mind blowing it off as a low probability event and ignoring it, you will automatically start looking for a solution. So if I say what, you know, what if there's an earthquake? When, when there's an earthquake, what are you going to do? I think I would bet you dollars to donuts that most people are thinking I'll dive under a table. As opposed to, when I say, as opposed to what if there's an earthquake? You go, that'll never happen.

Yeah.

So I sat down and wrote every terrible thing that could possibly happen to me in a book in the logbook. So I had, I had when if I had these when if situations for the wildest things that you could imagine. So that meant that I had a plan A, A, B, A C, A, D and E and f. A Plan 9 from outer space for, for, for, for everything that could possibly go wrong.

Brilliant.

That I could imagine.

You had a book full of black swans. Of all the.

I had a book full of black swans. Exactly.

Yeah.

And what that, what that did for me was all the mental anxiety, all the anxiety. I'm not sure what other kind of anxiety there is.

Yes, fair point, fair point.

So, so all the things that, that I would have, I would have expended a tremendous amount of mental energy on, around anxiety. So, you know, oh, what if this happens and what if that happens? I had a plan for. And that gave me tremendous piece says, well, if this happens, then I have a plan because. And that's all you can do. You can. I can only. I can only hope that I'll, I'll have the wherewithal to, you know, to move forward. So you can be. And I like to say this too, if you'll excuse the French, you can be scared shitless, but you can never be scared witless. So, so it didn't matter. As long as you have a plan to, you know, to, to move forward, you're okay. And the other thing that's interesting about that as well, I think is that if you are, if you are faced with something, anything and you decide to act, I mean, you don't. The future is not any of my business. It's above my pay grade. I don't know what's going to happen. But. So there's a chance it could be right and there's a chance it could be wrong. But let's say I do something, anything, and it turns out to be right. Well, they look like a genius because I'm ahead of the curve, right? I'm ahead of the boat, I'm ahead of the weather. But how. What about if I'm wrong? What about wildly wrong? I look like a genius, right? Because I'm, I'm. Now I'm, I've. I've eliminated something I thought was going to work. That, it, that did obviously didn't. That gives me. And I've done it in time to, to change course and do something different that's probably going to be better because I'm, I've at least eliminated what I thought was going to be good. Now I'm on to plan B. So whether you're right or wrong, you look like a genius. So there's, there's, there's absolutely no downside side to taking action, no matter, no matter how dire the circumstances. So that was my, you know, that was my. When if, you know, my, my big book of black swans, as you had said, and my way of dealing with the mental stress because it's, I mean, you, you have to put. The minute you untie from the dock, well, it's the same as climbing, Right. It's no different.

Yeah.

The minute you leave base camp, you're running out of everything.

Right? Right. Yeah.

You're running out of food, you're running out of energy, you're running out of water, you're running out of. Of everything.

Yeah.

So. And I, I did not want the whole thing Whether it was. Whether it's a trip across it didn't matter what it is. I never wanted anything that I was going to endeavor to go for everything to go south for the sake of a five dollar, you know, plastic part.

Right, right. Wow.

So. And that's your, that's your biggest fear because as soon as you leave, you. You have better at thought of. You have to have thought of as much as possible about everything.

Right.

So you have the ability to sort of deal with, with everything because other than that, you're, you know, you're. The whole thing is going to go south.

Yeah. It's an interesting combination. Like you said earlier, you know, of kind of. You kind of have to have a certain level of optimism. Otherwise, you know, like, I'm. I mean, I'm crazy. But, you know, the other aspect of it, the counterbalance, which I think they work very yin and yang nicely to survival, is to think about what is the worst case scenario. You know, what is, you know, like, you talked about not just the what if, but the when if. I love that kind of, you know, phrasing and conceptualization. So, you know, if I think if this could happen, then, you know, it's a black swan and it's going to go into the book. And this is how I would deal with it. You know, I think that's. That's a very, very clever way to, you know, to conceptualize it. And then obviously, you know, worked. Worked well in practice for your next. Just theoretically. And it's wonderful then to have those when ifs that actually don't manifest. I mean, it's a back to Nassim Talib. You know, it's sort of like the antifragile kind of thing versus the, you know, resilience kind of thing. That's. I think that's great. And it's certainly for the kinds of things that you do and have done, I think is a wonderful model. So, okay, so I want to shift a smidge here the context of maybe this is a good segue. So you've studied the world's oceans and coastal seas in a variety of different kinds of ways and circumstances and weather situations and everything. What's the journey like from sailor to entrepreneurship? I mean, I know it's not a linear. I did this check, now I'm doing this check or whatever. There's a Venn diagram. And your life is like that. There's a lot of overlapping. But software engineering and AI and things like that. Did your maritime heritage influence your approach to tech and innovation or Vice versa. Or you know, tell us about the, you know, shifting into more the entrepreneurial business kinds of aspects of your life.

Well, I think like I said, you know, academically, I'm formally trained as a physical, physical oceanographer and I studied large period waves in the ocean. So these are waves that have wavelengths of the order of an ocean based basin. So you can think of El Nino as something like a large, a long period wave. There's Kelvin waves or Rossby waves. So, so in other words, it's all, it's all math, it's all science. And in order to study those things, of course, you know, you're not going to get a tape measure out and start in Tokyo and end up in Vancouver. So these things are all you do it, you know, with. We did it with. Obviously you're doing it with a computer. And when I started, I mean I, I started computers when we were using punch cards and IBMs and you know.

Yeah, deck writers, deck tens. I remember those days.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, so I have a long and storied history, I suppose with programming and, and, and I mean we, we were doing. Well, what I was doing in terms of programming was we were doing besides these long period waves in the ocean. Of course we were trying to couple or the group that I was in, we were coupling the ocean in the atmosphere, which doesn't seem like a big deal these days. But back then we were the first, some of the first people to do that. So it was a very big deal. And we were, and we had developed very sophisticated, you know, programs to do that. So we were, you know, bidding for time on the supercomputers out of Boulder, Colorado. You know, we were running things on the supercomputers that were taking, you know, hours and hours to run. So I had programming skills that were relatively rare when all this was going on. And my friend, the doctor who I knew growing up in Esteban, Saskatchewan were still, still, I still work, we still work together today actually. And he had said, look, I'm moving my clinic or I'm going to start a clinic in California. But in order to make this clinic work, there's some software because this guy's a tech guy, said I think we can automate all these things that have to do not just with the front office, but all the back end medical diagnostics or differential diagnostics. I think we can make real strides. But I need a, I need a programmer and you're the only programmer I know. Can you do it? And I said yes. At the time there was no, there was no more ships going to sea and I, I couldn't see myself sitting in front of a computer pretending I was, I was, you know, on the ocean when I, when that's what I wanted to do. So.

Right.

This seemed, and this is, I, we had mentioned earlier off the air that one of the, one of the great joys of my life has been working with highly functioning individuals and this guy is one of the most brilliant people I've ever come across. He's, he's an unbelievably highly functioning physician and I just love the guy to bits. I thought, okay, this is, this, this was an opportunity that, that I couldn't say no to because firstly it was fascinating and secondly, I thought that I had a, had the chance to, to positive, to positively affect the lives of potentially tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of patients. So I did it and we moved, I moved from, from here or from Victoria in, in British Columbia down to la and we started writing software myself, not the doctor, so he was sort of pointing fingers and another guy from Calgary, we started writing this software that was, was just turned out to be wildly successful. So my, my, this idea of, of my, my abilities as a, as a programmer in this sort of in, in, in the science context is, is what enabled me to, to, to cross over into, into the healthcare field. And then, and then, and then just, just write code, just write program. Because it's all, you know, it's, it's not all that different. You're given us, you're given a, a set of rules and objectives and, and these sorts of things and you come up with, you know, try to come up with an elegant way to, to solve, you know, what can be a potentially very thorny problem.

Right?

And it was, like I said, it was, it was, it was successful. We ended up with, you know, something like 2500 doctors all around North America, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand using this, using this differential diagnostic software, patient management software, clinic management software. And this is a time when, when, when computers weren't even in doctor's office.

Right? Yeah, I would, I would think if this is from cutting your teeth from deck tins and punch cards.

So yeah, so we would, we, we'd show up there, myself and a team of guys, we'd show up there and, and, and basically automate computerize a doctor's entire practice. So it was, it was really, it was great, it was fun. But that was, that's how I got into the, into, into the programming space and the entrepreneurial Space and because the, the tech, I guess tech speaks to me and math speaks to me, physics speaks to me that I've, I really, really enjoy. It's a very difficult writing really good computer code. I'll. I'll say this. Writing good computer code is really hard. And there's, there's a very, very ext. Really good programmers are very creative. And I'm not a really good programmer. I'm just very persistent. So the really, really good programmers are unbelievably creative and they'll come up with ways to do things that will just floor me every single time. Where did that come from and what box did you step out of to imagine this solution to that problem? So it's fascinating to see how their minds work and it's fascinating understanding how unbelievably creative they are, even though they're expressing this creativity in a form that, that most people would think, oh, you know, that's, there's, there's, there's, there's not a, there's not a creative, you know, gene that, that exists anywhere within 100ft of that guy.

Right. Yeah. So, so then over the course of your career and the adventures then that led you to found Leadbrain AI Tell us, tell us about that. What's settled about.

Well, I'm, I had mentioned very briefly that, that I grew up in, in Saskatchewan. I grew up on the prairies. That my father came to Canada to paint a house and he was like my, my. I don't want to sell my father short because he was. My father was, was a very, very, very smart man and my mom was, I think probably even smarter. She spoke five languages. She was secretary of the ambassador at a time. It was probably the most important job you could possibly have in the foreign service if you were a woman.

Wow.

So it was, they were both incredibly competent people and to, to turn their backs on, on their country and to come to, you know, to completely foreign place was, was something that's, that's truly extraordinary. I mean we think of it as, as well, like we talked about, you know, flying back and forth to New Zealand for a couple days and doesn't seem like a big deal, but. Yeah, but back then it was, you know, it's a little bit different to get across the continent, but.

Right.

So. And I learned from my father that firstly how difficult it is for small business to succeed because the big question is always for small business is my next customer, Is this client going to be my last or is this next client going to be my Last and my father, I learned from my dad that you have to meet your customers where they are. And Estevan was an oil town, so it was boom or bust. And I can, I don't, I don't know that there, I cannot remember a Christmas or a Christmas Eve or a New Year's Day that I wasn't working with my dad when I was old enough to work because the oil, you know, if someone from the oil patch called and they were wanted a wealth site or they wanted a pipeline or they wanted a lease, then you just did it because if you didn't do it then you know you wouldn't, they'd never call you again.

Right.

So he worked unbelievably hard. So I have this, I've always had this very soft spot for, for small business because I know how, how incredibly tough it is and I also know how, how they were. It was the lifeblood of the, of the town that we lived in because it was nothing but small businesses and it just made everything run. And I think you can, I don't think that's any different than any other neighborhood or any other town no matter how, no matter how big the town is. So. Lead Brain. I started Lead Brain because I want, I know, I know how to put a customer or a business in front of the conversation when someone asks who do I buy from? And in this day and age everyone asks that question online. And if you are able to give Google exactly what it wants, then you can get those, get those businesses, get those people in front of their customers, their ideal customers when they're asking who do I buy from? And it's not a level playing field in the sense that if you are doing well with regards to search there and certainly local search, then you have an unfair advantage over all the other competition in that space because you know, the first three or the, well certainly within, certainly the first three get, get more than 90% of all of all of all new or all potential business. So I, I started Lead Brain to, to enable small businesses to, to tell their stories in such a way that they get placed squarely in front of their ideal customer when that customer is asking who do I buy from?

Ah. And it's based on large learning large language models. It's the, hence the AI part of it.

Yeah, that's the basically. Well, I guess in a, in a, in a nutshell my 40,000 foot perspective of search is basically nothing more than telling stories. So Google wants to know. I hate to talk about Google. It sounds so, sounds so terrible.

But search wants to know.

Yes, search wants to know. So basically it's, it's very simple. If you, if you're starting a business, then, then, then you have to tell you, you have to have a culture, you have to decide what that culture is going to be. You need to be able to articulate what that culture is to not just your customers and your potential customers, but the people that you want to, that you want to work for or the people that we would like to work for you or work with you. And if you can't tell that story effectively, then, then everything is swimming upstream and we've made that, we've turned that into an art form in terms of, with respect to, and I use that term loosely, art form in terms of social media, in terms of search, in terms of, of YouTube. There's, there's nothing more than, than. I mean we've, we're, we're swimming in a sea of storytelling. Whether it's on, whether it's again, YouTube or whether it's social media or whether it's search. It just, we're just. Everywhere you look it's, we're getting more or people the, our ability to communicate, our stories granular, it's becoming more and more and more powerful. So think of the, think of the reach when I say that. So I'm telling the story about me sailing around the world and I'm doing it over a low bandwidth signal, but it's reaching tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. A few years ago that would have been impossible. Firstly, just the ability to communicate from circumstances and secondly, how, how in the world am I going to reach some school kids in Kenya? How's that possible? And what are they interested in? They're interested in the story of me sailing about around the world or you know, paddling a canoe or heading up to the Aleutian Islands. It's, it doesn't make any difference. And businesses know, I mean Google search algorithm is exactly the same. They want to know the story of your business, you know, what, what it is you're doing, how you're doing it, how you're interacting with your customers, what are your case studies? So the list goes on and on and on and on. And the more effective you are at that kind of storytelling, the, the more, the more love, I suppose you'll, you know, Google will pour out onto you. So, and AI allows you to automate almost all of that. So what was an onerous task before has become far simpler because you can simply, you can simply automate those kinds of things that would have, that would have been that. That would have taken three, four or five people to do so. In, in the medical practice, for example, we use AI. We use very sophisticated prompts to, so that we can take, take the doctor's notes that, that they're, that, that are being transcribed automatically. Every conversation is being recorded, you know, with, with the patient when they're sitting down. And then when we, then we send a letter out to the patient. We know that. We know that that particular patient. We know what their dietary concerns might be, whether they're vegan or whether they're vegetarian. We know that this particular patient is more concerned about drug interactions than this other patient. We know that this one is more like Bert. He just wants to, you know, he just wants to tell me what works and what doesn't sort of thing. So we can tailor exactly the conversation we're having with that patient. Patient based on, firstly based on fine tuning the AI based on what we know and about the patient and what we know about how we like to do things in the clinic and then with their, with everything that the large language model can pull into it. So when I say pull into it, imagine drug interactions with people who have very significant problems or people who may be looking at, I don't know, off the top of my head, bariatric surgery because they're, they're, they're at risk. Well, just say to say bariatric surgery for whatever reason, then you can, we can, you know, we're instructing AI to, to create, to create a letter for that particular patient that's a result of the conversation they had with the doctor that's, that's leading them to suggest a particular treatment modality. And we're pulling everything that we possibly can from AI to help keep that patient informed in a way that makes sense to them. Because speaking to me about, well, okay, imagine speaking to you about running versus speaking to someone who has never run in their life before. Those are two different conversations, even though the message you're trying to convey might be something similar.

Right, so is that part of, under the, the bailiwick of lead brain or is that back with the original company?

No, that's, no, that's, that's, that's all part of lead brain. Because, you know, most, I mean, there, there's, there's medical practices here in Canada that, that are, you know, that aren't that. There's not 30 physicians in the practice. There's, you know, there's, there's only one or Two. And so it's.

I think that's, I think it's remarkable because it's so difficult, especially like if it's a, you know, a general practitioner, primary primary care physician or practice that taking all the divergent kinds of things, keeping track of them, like just your example, you know, like, well, they vegan, they vert vegetarian, they, you know, are they into this, are they into running? Are they, you know, whatever, and trying to keep track of all those kinds of things because, you know, nowadays, probably the healthcare reimbursement system's different in Canada than here in the States. But, you know, the, the amount of time that healthcare providers are able to spend with their patients, you know, gets shorter and shorter. You know, it just these kinds of step savers where nothing, you know, kind of falls in the cracks, I think is, you know, is brilliant. I. We were mentioning off mic before I had a fellow, Daniel Kraft, who's gonna be on an episode, and this is kind of, you know, also an area that he's very much into the overlap between technology and how it can augment and be able to benefit patients and providers and, you know, providing whatever kind of care, specialty or generality that the provider's in. So, you know, Bert, we've covered, you know, a lot of ground and territory.

I want to.

I've got a few more questions I wouldn't mind. Are you good for time?

Yeah, yeah, of course. All good.

Good, good. So with all the work you've done, done, we've got tech, we've got, you know, innovations, we've got software, we got AI, we've had adventures, we've got citizen science, et cetera, et cetera. Just to toss out this, and probably a tough question, but what's been the most difficult and what's been the most rewarding or. Or are those two things the same thing?

They. They are the same thing.

Are they okay?

They're the same thing. I. I will tell you. I will tell you. I've. You told the people that you meet along the way, erase every, Erase every hardship, they turn them to dust. So. And of course, the people that you meet, it's incredibly humbling to learn the stories of the people that you end up crossing paths with. So I have never been to a place, no matter how far away, where the people I meet there are just absolute. Are just their stories just, Just make me feel about a half an inch tall. So I was doing some. As an example, I was. I had sailed the boat to north to a place called Port Simpson, and we were Doing some research into indigenous genealogy in a place that you can only get to but boat. So Port Simpson is about 80 miles north of. Of Prince George on the northern coast of British Columbia and just south of the Alaska border. So it's a long way north and it's in a very isolated part of the world. And I was feeling ever so proud of myself for having sailed my boat there, you know, sailboat guy, and look at me and all these things. And it's an indigenous community. So I had walked up to the community center center to have a shower and I look on the notice board and there's a recipe card there, this 5x7 recipe card handwritten. And a 16 year old girl had swam there from Prince George to raise money for the community center. Good gosh. So, so that, that, that put an

end to me, you know, kind of level set.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Time to rethink.

Yeah.

And you can, you can forgive people for doing something once because they didn't realize how hard it was going to be or how difficult. And the more. And I read the first part and I just stopped. I just couldn't believe it. And then I, and then I, I was, I took it. I literally took a step back and thank God for reminding me to be humble because there's, like I said, everywhere, everywhere I've ever been. And, and then I literally took a step again, again. And I was reading the piece below that. And that was last. That was the year before. So she had, she was swimming there not, not just, not just to Port Simpson from Prince George, but she was swimming across Dixon entrance to a little island to, to the island of Metlakahtla, which is the ancestral home of those indigenous peoples.

Wow.

So not only was she. Not only had he done it, but she was doing it again and going farther. And Dixon entrance is, is not a kind body of water. I can, I can assure you.

Gosh.

So every and every. I could. I could tell you a hundred stories like that of everywhere I've been. The people, the people you meet are just absolutely. Oh, here's another one. Just, just. So this is. I had paddled into. I paddled. I was paddling into Montreal and. And so you're paddling on the St. Lawrence River. It's a great big river. It's. It's not exactly easy. Not so much because of the big river, but you know, it's, it's, it is what it is.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I, and there was a small yacht club. It's because it's very hard to find a place to stay. You can't just stay anywhere you want, especially if you're paddling, you know, because the land is either public or private. You're not allowed on it. But anyway, you're paddling into the city, where are you going to go? It's like you're paddling down New York, down the Hudson River. Where are you going to stay?

Right.

So I was offered a place to stay at the small yacht club. I said, sure, I'll go stay there. So as I get there and they, they're incredibly kind. They put me up for the night. It's wonderful. And I start talking to the guy who, who was instrumental in me getting a place to stay there. And, and it turns out that he. Oh, you know, he was, he was. Used to be a kayak, a canoe and kayak guide. And then he said, well, you know, I, that was a long time ago, but I used to be a performer in Cirque du Soleil. So. Which, of course, then you. Your, Your ears sort of break up.

Sure.

Because. Well, what, what happened? You say used to. Well, you know, there was an accident, a training accident where I. Where the guy who was in charge of the trapeze, the harness, as you're practicing your thing, he lost attention or stopped paying attention, whatever, whatever the, Whatever happened. And he fell and broke his back. And the doctor said he would never walk again. And I'm looking at. Okay, so you used to be a Cirque du Soleil performer. There was a training accident where you broke your back. And the doctor said you never walk again. He said, yeah, the doctor said, but I just, I just refused. That was his words. I just refused.

Wow.

So. And here I am thinking how, you know, look at me paddling a canoe and there's. There's a ch.

With a former broken back.

Yeah, the guy had broken his back and he, and he was, you know, if I hadn't been poking, he never would have said anything at all about it. And that, that the list goes on and on and on. So, of course, you know, the. We had mentioned this earlier before we got on the air, was that there, there, there is a moral imperative to do the hard thing. And there was. Interesting way that we can chop that up. But, but, but I think that, like you, like I said right off the bat, they're one of the same thing.

Yeah. Well, thank you for saying that. And, and again, we should have, I guess, hit record when we were talking off mic, because we keep bringing it back up, but, you know, it's sort of the, the impetus for me with this show. I mean, I feel like, you know, opportunities to have these kinds of conversations in public with people like with you and people like you that do things. I mean, it just really is humbling and inspiring sort of at the same time to think about what the possibilities are. And just my whole kind of philosophy of trying to spread the word around, living a life in full, whatever ways and means those kinds of things are. And when you have those opportunities to read that recipe card and learn about that person or have that just sort of coincidental, interstitial moments moment with a guy at a yacht club, you know, it's just, those are, those are huge. Those are great. And that's why I, you know, I try to have these things be public. A lot of the guests are, you know, well known figures, but not all of them. And as you and I talked, you know, before, a lot of folks, the, you know, and sprinkled throughout and in the early days of the show are just friends of mine that I thought were really cool folks and are really cool folks doing really cool things. And it's, you know, it's my honor to be able to, you know, talk out, think out loud with them and share their stories. And I find, I always find out stuff about them that, you know, that I didn't know prior to just, you know, having them be on the show, which is kind of weird, but. But also pretty cool. So, so, so, Bert, we've covered a lot of territory. We've been around the world. Is there anything that we've missed or that you'd like to add before we wrap today?

Well, I think that the thing I would like to say is that this whole idea of adventure is scale invariant, which is to say that when you were a small child and you stepped outside your front door, as soon as that door closed behind you, you were on the moon or you were flying a fighter jet, or you were walking through the jungles of deepest, darkest Africa. It didn't make any difference. And somehow, you know, as we get older, that sense of adventure seems to somehow get scrubbed away. But if you're willing to step outside your front door, literally take one step outside your front door and close it behind you, and then look around with an open heart and open mind, the adventure that you will find, or I guess more correctly, the adventure that will find you, will be transformative in ways that you cannot possibly imagine. And it will be. Be. It can, if you let it be, it can be a life altering experience, not just for you, but everyone that. That you might come across, and certainly for the people that you care most about and love most dearly. So I would. My message in that regard is always the same. It just. It doesn't. This whole idea of extraordinary, even the word itself is. Is a bit deceiving because, you know, it's. It's extra, which doesn't say which. Which doesn't imply anything big or small. It's just. It can be the tiniest little bit and ordinary. So if you're willing to just take a little tiny step outside ordinary, you are by. You are by definition extraordinary. You don't have to sail around the world. You don't have to, you know, do anything like that at all. You just have to be willing to step outside the front door with an open heart and an open mind. And if you can't look at a blade of grass and marvel at just at what a miracle that is, then I think that. I think that's almost. Well, I hate to say a crime, because that seems a little bit harsh, but I'm shocked all the time by the miracles that are around me. And my mom, she used to always say that she believed in small miracles because they're everywhere. You just have to stop and look.

That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Gosh, thank you. So what's next on the horizon for you, man? You. You kind of been there and done that, but you're gonna keep. Keep going there and doing it or what's.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So in. In May. In May, I'm. I'm getting in a canoe. I'm leaving the. Basically, it's the B.C. alberta border, a town called Rocky Mountain House, which was the. The. The home base of David Thompson. And I'm paddling from there to the Arctic Ocean and then turning, then making. Making a right, and then paddling from. From the mouth of the McKenzie river to. Which is on the Arctic Ocean, hopefully to the mouth of the copper mine. And that's followed. That's following in Franklin's footsteps. John Franklin, the explorer who perished badly, I suppose, or I know perished badly in the Arctic. And then John Ray, a very famous Canadian surveyor who actually is the founder of the Northwest Passage. It's John Ray who made. Who definitively put the Northwest Passage on the map.

Wow.

So that's what. That's the summer. So it's a very. It's a very. It's a very. I. I'm. It's a rent. It's basically a sprint. It's 5,000 kilometers of of winter chasing me all the way.

Wow.

From the mountains up and you know, to the Arctic. So that's, that's this summer and then. Yeah.

So. And is that going to be public? Are you gonna, are kids going to be following you and. Yeah, same thing. Yeah, you can, stuff like that. Good.

Yeah. You can follow it along every day. I'll, I'll, I'll write something and take pictures and you know, do all that sort of thing. The same sort of strategy.

Excellent.

So that people can stay engaged. And, and again, it's, it's. The idea is not. The idea is to bring some attention to fundamentally the indigenous people that really helped put Canada on the map because all these great surveyors and cartographers, they couldn't have done, they couldn't have done what they had done without the help of indigenous people. And to help Canadians, I think, understand a little bit more about how incredibly amazing the country is, number one. And secondly, how unbelievably, how shockingly competent the people were that, that set out on these, that set out on these expeditions to do these wild things.

Yeah. Their technology was nature, you know, I mean that. Oh yes, it's. Yeah. It's astounding.

Oh well, if, if it weren't for my Gore Tex underwear, I'd basically, basically be Dead man walk. Yeah.

Here, here. Maybe that could be one sponsor, you know. Yeah. Well, this, this has just been just a joy for me, Bird. It's just great to talk with you and get to hear these stories and the kind of the inside baseball about what your life has been like. So thank you so much for taking the time to be on. I've really enjoyed it. What, what are some of the best ways for listeners to learn more, to connect, to do, to follow you on your adventures and you know, historically as well as what's coming up?

Well, I think the easiest thing to do is to go to. Well, you can find me on LinkedIn that, that's pretty, that's pretty simple.

Okay.

And you could go to Bert.com.

okay.

And that, that will give you, that will sort of branch off into all these other places. So if you want to follow the adventures or learn more about the, the circumnavigation and all those things or the cross country paddle. It doesn't, you can, you can get to that, those places from that one spot. And yeah, I think that would, and I have a rule, the rule is if you email me, I.

Okay. Be careful with that, with people hearing this.

Okay. So I'm, I'm, I'm always, I'm always just. I'm always very excited to. To talk to people who are. Who have. Who have. Where something I've done resonates with them somehow, somewhere. Because what's interesting to me is that every time I talk to someone about one of these trips or some of the things I think I'm thinking about doing, I get a perspective that I never would have dreamed before because I have no idea how it is that something I've done is going to resonate with them. And then they'll. They'll reflect back to me what that means to them or what they're picking up on or what has resonated with them. And it's always something that I never would have thought of in my wildest dreams because I'm. I'm this 01, you know, tech guy. Everything is very black and white, bits and bytes. And in. In talking to all these different people or getting all these different perspectives, it sheds a completely new light on what I've done. So it's. To me, it's very. It's very. There's a. There's an element of introspection, of course, and then there's. There's an element of, of sanity because it can be from. It's not hard to imagine some of these things as being just outright, you know, silly.

Yeah.

But it's.

Nevertheless, it's probably very nervous nourishing too, you know.

Oh, yeah.

So that's. That's, that's great. I, you know, I just, I just want to say you, with even doing something like that and having that kind of, you know, direct connectivity at the granular level via email is just. I think it speaks, Bert, to your generosity of spirit. I mean, the people on your boat to go do, you know, science and get their PhD dissertation data or, you know, citizen science and just, you know, every little area of general area that we've talked about is one of generosity. I mean, that's a connecting thread that it seems like throughout your life and through today's conversation and your story. And that just is, you know, is very touching for me. So I just, I want to recognize that and thank you for that because we all get to benefit from it, man.

I think. Well, that's. That's very kind of you to say. That's, that's really kind. I want to thank you for that.

Well, again, to wrap up. Thank you for taking the time to be on, and I've just so super enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

Well, I'll look forward to. I Look forward to speaking to you again and staying in touch. That will be. That will be marvelous. That would be marvelous.

Excellent. It's a deal. We can do a round two.

Okay.

As a reminder, listeners can read a summary of this episode and access links to the show notes via my LinkedIn Top Voice Companion article, along with past gifts as well. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I have, and I hope it will help you in your journey to living your life in full. Until next time, Living a Life in Full is a production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of of Gordian Knot, LLC. Assistant producer Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien executive producer and host Dr. Chris Stout to learn more, stop by our website at lifeinfull for show notes and please recommend us to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information uses only and does not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull.org podcast and my LinkedIn profile. Thanks and until next time. Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with libsynads, go to libsynads. Com. That's L, I B S Y N Ads. Com. Today.