Andy Schell: Leadership Lessons From the High Seas

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Sometimes the best lessons of leadership and resilience come from the most challenging environments. Hi everyone, I'm business coach Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward Podcast. My guest today is Andy Schell. Andy is a highly experienced sailor and the co-founder of 59 North, which is an ocean sailing adventure company. In today's show, We explore how the principles of seamanship, which Andy defines as anticipation, adaptation, and the rigorous application of knowledge, are similar to the skills that you need to guide your clients through economic uncertainties and market fluctuations. We also discuss the unique challenges and profound rewards of life at sea and how that mirrors the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey. With that, please enjoy my conversation with Andy Schell. So tell me, when things really get rough, you're out in the middle of nowhere. How do you deal with a tough situation, a crisis at sea?

In stressful situations, the only thing you can fall back on is your knowledge. Seamanship is basically all the technical skills that you need to run a boat. I distill that down into two things. It's anticipation and adaptation. So you anticipate as much as you possibly can, cuz you can't anticipate everything. And there's gonna be some situations that you've never seen before. Then you have to learn how to adapt. So I do also believe that it's not just experience. In fact, I get this from Andy Chase who teaches this stuff at Maine Maritime Academy and he's written about it extensively, but he says something like, experience in a vacuum is not valuable. Even good experience, you have to reflect on and debrief in order to see, were you lucky or did you actually act properly? So you can't just say someone is good at their job because they've, they have 20 years of experience. They may have gotten lucky and been doing things wrong all the time. Conversely, you can have all the knowledge in the world, but at some point you need to apply that knowledge and test that knowledge. So you read as much as you can, you study as much as you can, and then you start applying that. And I think that needs to come first, like in that order.. And eventually, and there's some situations that I have studied extensively that never been in, I've never been in really serious heavy weather. But I think I know what to do, because I've studied it. So that knowledge is the basis of a stressful situation is when you know exactly what to do, it's not stressful. What is stressful and what generates fear is the unknown. Fear is not knowing what to do. And that's what causes the, the fight or flight thing. It's like, I don't know what to do. And you either freeze or run. That's like the worst thing that can happen with leadership. Now, some people, even if they don't know what to do, doing something is usually better than doing nothing. You know, the medical stuff is a big one. All of us have to go through medical training for this. Cause when we're offshore, middle of the Atlantic, you're 3 days from getting someone to a hospital if you even can. So you have to be able to handle stuff in the moment. I have some of that knowledge. I've never tested it, but it's there and you should at least hopefully know what to do. So I think those stressful situations, you have to fall back on knowledge, and if it's not there, then that's when the stress starts.

I think we can also get in trouble when there's overconfidence, where we think we have the knowledge and we get overconfident, and then we get ahead of our skis here, so to speak, and then we got a real problem. So how do you balance— you have to have confidence to begin with, but not step over the edge of, let's say, arrogance, where I'm more confident than I should be based on the knowledge I have.

I'm really glad you brought that up because I feel really strongly about that. I don't know. And this— the fact that I'm saying that is my point, actually, is I don't know everything. And there's also— there's a fine line between humility and being able to say you don't know, but also having the confidence to act when you're needed, but also not feeling like an imposter. Like, a lot of the people that have the empathy required to run these types of trips also have imposter syndrome. I put myself in that category sometimes as well, where you think, well, who the hell— what do I know? I don't know anything. There's a really fine line there because you have to apply your knowledge and have that confidence. I think you can teach people that err on the imposter syndrome side. I think you can teach them confidence. Not sure you can teach the arrogant person humility.

So every entrepreneur runs into challenges. And when we're talking about boating, there can be all kinds of issues with boating. So what have been maybe one or two of the more difficult periods in terms of the business, whether it's things related to the boat or just what have been the challenges along the way that you've perhaps got to the point where you're like, man, did I make the right decision doing this?

There was never any doubt that I'd be successful. That was never, ever a question. Never second-guessed myself. The beauty of being an entrepreneur is like, You can always figure out how to make more money. You will always find a way if you're in trouble to just beg, borrow, and steal. Not steal, but there's always a way. And the other side of it too, I was very lucky in that I knew exactly how I wanted my life to look. I get a lot of questions. People ask me, oh, I want to do something similar. What do you advise for me? It's like advice number one, you don't need me to tell you what you want to do. Like you need to know what you want to do. And I know not everybody has that, but I was, super focused on what I wanted to do. It was just there. It was just innate. I had that. And when you have that, everything else becomes easy because you have such a clear target. Now, not to say it was easy. The biggest challenges for me is I am a big picture guy, and I'm bad at details, and I'm terrible with money. So the biggest challenges for me have been on the money side of things. And then for me, the stress— I mean, I went through a period that I'm only just now coming out of, of pretty deep depression. And just fatigue. There's actually in Europe, there's a diagnosis for burnout. It's like a medical diagnosis. It's basically a version of depression that is just lack of motivation, no energy, super fatigue. I was never depressed in the sense that I was like sad and depressed. I was just done, just completely overwhelmed, stressed out, and just like, as a business owner, you can't, there's nobody to pass it off to. So that was and is the hardest part, I think for me is just doing everything and being responsible for everything.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of entrepreneurs will reach that point if they're in a, a business where everything relies on them.

It's so clichéd. That's the, that's what's so embarrassing. It's like, how did I fall into this trap that everybody talks about?

Well, what I'm interested in though is how did you get through that? And you said you were just fatigued, you're burned out, you know, I'm sort of done with this, but yet a minute ago you said, I was never in doubt that this was gonna work. I was clear. I was gonna find a way to make this work. I'm always gonna find a way to get the money there. How do you think you got into that situation? What caused you to get overworked?

It wasn't just work. It was everything in my life. It started going all the way back to my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2009, died in 2012. And I traced the beginnings of this sort of long, slow descent to that, for obvious reasons. And then when we started the business, I think my way of grieving Partly was just to dive into because I was, it was just coincidental that it was like when she died was right around the same time that I was, I think I was like 26 or 27 and really starting to like, things were happening with what I wanted to do. And this business idea was forming. And that was just like naturally there. And then also gave me an outlet. Instead of staying in the moment and grieving about this, I'm gonna just throw myself into this passion. 'Cause I also like, well, that's what my mom would've wanted 'cause she was really passionate about all this stuff. So, but I think in hindsight I should've slowed down a little bit. Like an example of this is I did a, Mia and I did a delivery with an owner on board on a Saga 43 across the Atlantic from Bermuda to Azores. Mia missed my mom's funeral 'cause she was on the leg from BVI to Bermuda. I stayed home from my mom's funeral and then flew out to Bermuda like 3 days later. So I immediately went to sea and did all this. And in the moment, I, you can find my old blog about this, how I, related and I was using that but I think in hindsight, also knowing that like, hey, I got to this point, I didn't need to be in such a hurry. I should have spent that summer with my family. I should have said no, I'm gonna just stay in the present here and get through and I didn't. I don't regret it. But if I was telling my younger self, like, what would you do differently? That's, that's probably what I'd do differently. Just not be in such a hurry with everything. I think that's what got me stressed out as well as like trying to really trying to be in a hurry. And that's such a balance because like, that's also why I've been successful because I've been super passionate and work really hard. But also like, maybe I would have gotten there anyway without that sense of urgency all the time. But that's what that led me down this sort of like, long— I think with depression and burnout, you don't— by the time you realize what's happening, it's too late. You've already gone off the cliff. And now the hole's too deep to get out of by yourself. Yeah. And then I started going to therapy and actually was like, okay, I saw something once where when it's with mental health, to think that your brain is what got you in this situation in the first place, to think that your brain can on its own get itself out of that is a very foolish thought. And I very quickly, you know, said, okay, I can't do this, I need help. Another way to look at this is when we did our Spitsbergen trip in 2018, that was like the biggest the biggest trip we'd ever planned and the biggest, most challenging thing we'd ever done. And when we did that, and that was such a long-term goal, we spent 3, 4 years planning that and then executing it. And at the end of that, I was like, now what? I needed something else to look forward to. And Mia gave me really good advice. She's like, just be patient. Like, let it come to you. Like, you don't have to need some— let's just like keep doing what we're doing and let's— and then let's see what the next thing's gonna be. And That was really good advice and I've, I've been better at doing that lately.

So we just got off this passage from Barbados to Antigua and I experienced your leadership firsthand as you were trying to, uh, to coach me and teach me. I wasn't doing a very good job of letting you do that. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about your leadership style, your leadership philosophy.

I am definitely an empathetic leader for sure. And that's just my personality. I think I have that. Gift of like, if you lined up a series of photos of people's faces, I could tell you exactly what they're feeling. When someone's on the boat, I can sense like, okay, they're either scared or they're overconfident or underconfident. Like for your example, you were overanalyzing and I could see that very clearly. So, okay. All right. I'm in Steve's head now. He's overanalyzing because he's a very analytical guy. How can I adjust the way I teach this from that perspective? Versus there's a woman we had, Helen, she's a big fan. And if she's listening to this, hi Helen. She sailed with us multiple times now and going across the North Sea, it was blowing like 40 knots, huge waves at night. It was her turn to drive. And she's like, I don't know if I can do this. And I was like, why not? She's like, oh, I'm really scared. I said, what are you scared of? Tried to put my finger on what it is that she was scared of. And I said, all right, well, this is perfect because we're gonna get you outta your comfort zone now. I am not going to let you fail. I will stand right next to you. You're gonna do everything and I will be right there. And after 10 minutes, she, I couldn't get her off the helm. I really like that idea of, okay, what are people's motivations? What do they want to get out of it? And then meeting them where they are and then getting over that hump, whether it's a technical motivation, you wanna be better at something, whether it's overcoming a fear, everybody's different. And being able to see things from their perspective is, that's just naturally how it comes to me, I guess.

Yeah. And do you think that's something that is trainable or teachable? Or like you said, it was just natural to you, but it's obviously— it's gonna be easier for some people than others. But is that a skill where you can really read another person and know, okay, I think this person needs this right now to get them out of their zone or whatever?

I mean, that's the age-old question, right? Is leadership teachable or is it innate? I probably fall more on the innate part of things because if you don't want to be a leader, there's nothing you can do to teach that. Some people want to be in charge, other people don't. And Mia has said this many times. She is extremely capable as being a skipper. She wants nothing to do with it. She is very happy in that second-in-command role as a support role. And she knows that and she doesn't desire that. She can do it when she has to. She had to when I got appendicitis offshore on one of our early trips and she filled in and did great. But like the desire to be in charge, to be a leader is not— I don't believe that's teachable. And I don't think it should be teachable. I don't think people like— everybody's got to have a role. And like to have a good leader, you also need good followers. What I think is teachable is finding whatever your style is. So like if you want to be in charge, if you have that in you to take the responsibility and step in, everybody's gonna have a different style. So find out whatever that is. I'm gifted in that I can empathize with people. Nobody taught me that. It's just, I just have that. And then that's what I've used as my sort of foundation for how I lead. It just comes naturally to me. And I know other people have different styles and things like that. And I think that is teachable. Once you can hone in on, okay, yes, you want to be a leader, what is your— what is your sort of default style? Then kind of get better at that and make it individualistic.

Another aspect of leadership is the planning piece in terms of like short-term planning versus long-term planning. I know in your business you obviously have both. Every business has both of those. How do you think about that from your perspective in terms of How much of your effort is focused on what's happening in the here and now versus planning 2 years' passages from now? Because you've got to get everything lined up and know where the boat's going to be and all that sort of stuff. So how do you balance short-term versus long-term thinking?

What you guys saw on this trip is 1% of the work. Like, the fact that we did this trip successfully is because of the 99% of the preparation that went into it. But as far as like the long-term, short-term thinking, we are on such a tight schedule with such high stakes that we can't afford a delay. We can't afford a breakdown. We can't afford an injury. So we tend to plan our schedule around like, all right, the boat has to be perfect. The skippers and mates have to be perfect. We spent a million dollars building this boat so that it would be easy to maintain because we cannot afford a breakdown. So we've put everything into the preparation and now we can maintain everything from new. And like looking at this stuff, we— everything's on a schedule. So the engine will be replaced at a certain hour interval. The sails will be replaced. You gotta replace stuff before it wears out. Um, you gotta be ahead of that. And it's really high stakes cuz our, our calendar's like a domino. If we miss one trip, we only have— normally we only have 5 days between trips. Like right now we're on a maintenance break. That's on purpose cuz that's like a fuse in the calendar. If we had an issue on one of the previous 4 trips, we have 3 weeks now to catch up to the next 4 trips. But normal trips have 5 days between it. And because we go from A to B to C to D, if we miss one trip, there goes the rest of the year and the year after that. That's what happened in COVID. That was out of our control, but we missed— COVID pushed everything 2 years down the line for us. That's the domino thing. So we have to stay ahead of those dominoes.

And related to that, one of the things I also noticed that you do really well is you seem to have systems and checklists. Like when we were getting off the boat, we were cleaning the boat. Alex was there with his iPad and he was checking through every item on the checklist and making sure what was done and what wasn't done and getting everybody in the right places. So tell me how you think about systems and checklists.

So the basis of that started in, in like maritime world, then it went to aviation and the aviation people really improved on that. And that idea of checklists for everything, taking your brain and downloading it basically, so that you don't miss anything. And then hospitals also adopted this, some of the aviation things, and then it's, it's cycled back into maritime, got behind on it. And there's a couple of pretty nasty maritime disasters that happened because of a lack of what we call crew resource management is one aspect of this where, you know, back in the day it was you had your Captain Bligh and they were it and they, everybody followed them. Well, that's no longer the case. And Now there's been some— the sinking of the Bounty in 2012 in Hurricane Sandy, the sinking of the El Faro, uh, was a commercial ship. That was a lot of down to a lack of these procedures. So the aviation world has taken this cockpit resource management where there was some high-profile plane crashes in the '70s and '80s because the copilot knew something that the captain didn't know, and the copilot culturally was not empowered to speak up about it, and they flew a plane right into a mountain. One example. So that's then cycled back to hospitals where, okay, the surgeon has a checklist. Are we sure it's the right leg? Are we sure it's the right patient? And then that's trickled back down to maritime where they teach at maritime academies now crew resource management. And the checklist aspect is one aspect of that where you're basically, you're doing two things. You're guarding against complacency, because like, we're all very good at this job. But if you miss a small thing, That can be a, you know, a cotter pin in the forestay can bring the whole mast down. So the same way a pilot will run through a pre-flight checklist, we do a pre-flight boat check to make sure we're not missing something small and everything's on a list. So we don't have to think about it. It's just like, okay. And when we do like the rig checks, probably the highest stakes one that we do. So I'll put my headphones in, I'll call Alex, I'll go up the rig and he'll have the list in front of him. He'll be, okay, look at this part, take a picture of it. Describe what you see, everything down the list, because it's so easy to forget stuff. And it's so easy to be complacent where, well, that was fine last time. So it'll be fine this time. And we do that both before and after each trip. It just takes the pressure off. You don't have to think, you just follow the list. I'm sure you're familiar with Nassim Taleb, the author wrote The Black Swan and a bunch of other books. I subscribe to his idea that like, you have to look at low risk but high consequence things. So I've taken that even to how we outfit the boat. Okay. So like if I'm going to have a system on board where a system can make things easier, a good example with sailing is you have a roller furling mainsail that's in the boom. The boat next to us has that, that makes sailing and reefing much easier. And a well-maintained system like that is pretty low risk of failing, but really high consequence if it fails. Because now you have a system that the failure mode is dangerous offshore. Okay, well, high consequence, that's off the list. We cannot have that system even no matter how low risk it is that it fails. The consequence of it failing is we can't live with that consequence. So therefore it's out. So you go through from the, like the planning stage, all of those things and see what are the risks, what are the threats, what are the risks and what are the— what's the outcome. And if it's a consequence you can live with, then that system can stay. For example, the engine, Well, carrying fuel, a lot of sailboats will carry extra fuel. I think that's stupid. It's a sailboat. The engine is an auxiliary and you manage the fuel that you have. And if you run out of fuel, that's a high risk if you're in low wind, but it's low consequence. You gotta sailboat. You just sail to where you're going. Then it's like, all right, well I'm not gonna carry any extra fuel because there's a risk in keeping fuel on deck. It can spill. It's really hard to fill it up when you need it anyway. So that's just, we're not gonna do that. So low consequence. So thinking about stuff like that way, way early in the game, and then when you go to the maintenance side of it, looking at, okay, what needs to be addressed immediately versus what can wait versus what is something we can just live without completely.

Technology obviously affects every industry and we've got artificial intelligence and all that good stuff happening. How do you think about the balance between having the latest greatest technology on board, but then also having the traditional ability to sail through, let's say, celestial navigation or just be able to sail to a compass heading. Because I know it felt like when we're at the helm, we just have a compass in front of us and we've got a couple of things that we can see. We see what the boat speed is, we see what the true wind angle is. That's about it. And yet we know that you've got an iPad that has everything else on it. But I think you're really trying to teach us if all the systems fail and now it's just you and the wind and the sky and everything, You're still gonna be able to make it home somehow. So how do you balance the thinking of technology?

So I think that's your technical analytical side coming out right there. Okay. Because to me, it's not about if systems fail. The first part you described there, sailing to the wind and the compass, that's the point. That's the mission. Yeah. My mission with ocean sailing, it is one of the last places that you can be disconnected and at sea and there's no rules. And that philosophy behind it, I mean, the reason our tagline, there's a reason our tagline is sharing the wisdom of the high seas. Like, I love that about it. That is the whole point. All that other stuff we have to have because we're a commercial boat. I could happily navigate us across an ocean using the sextant that's behind me, but I don't have that in case all this other stuff fails. I actually have this because that's what I'm most interested in. Now with technology, it goes back to what I was just saying about, okay, how far do you want to take it? First of all, what's the mission? You have to define the mission. This is almost similar. To like, what is it that you want to do with your life? Like, what is the mission? Okay, now we have this business. What is the point? I am trying to share the beauty of ocean sailing with people at a very visceral level, and technology is not part of that, but it's a necessary part of it for safety. It would be irresponsible of me to not have any of this technology. Not only would it be illegal because we're commercially coded, but it would be irresponsible because it exists. You need to use it. You Sat phone's probably the best example of that. I need to be able to call a doctor and have medical advice on the phone. If we have an injury or illness on board, it would be irresponsible to say, well, philosophically, I want to stay disconnected. You can do that on your own, but we can't do that in the context that we're running the business here. So finding that balance between what is safe and responsible while also not deterring from the mission, because like the sat phone is that example. You guys didn't know I was even had the ability to do that. It's not really part of it, but it's there. And if we need it, The other side of technology is the connectivity really is Starlink's a thing. Now, if you walk down the dock here, most of the boats have a Starlink antenna. It's the first generation. I think that in, I don't know how many years, but in the second, third, fourth generation, eventually there's going to be a Starlink antenna in your phone and it won't be a choice anymore. You're going to have it. And whether you like it or not, one of my favorite things about ocean sailing is the fact that you are connected But minimally we get weather forecast and text. Basically, you're not scrolling Instagram, you're not checking email, you're not able to work. That is changing and going to change as long as our business continues. That's gonna be a challenge where right now it's, it's not a choice because I don't have that equipment installed. I don't have that technology. So when we're offshore, that's it. Not a choice. Soon it's gonna be a choice. And as with all things related to like human willpower, it's very hard to turn that off when it's so tempting. And I'm not looking forward to that because one of the nice aspects of being offshore is being disconnected. And your brain literally changes after 3 days. Once you finally get over that sort of acclimatization period, your brain changes and adapts. People interact differently. All of a sudden you can have conversations that don't require an answer on Google and all the rest. Very clichéd, but it's true. And you can't do that anywhere else. So to me, that's like part of the fundamental part of the mission. So then How do I put technology on the boat? Well, that's part of it. Does it adhere to the mission or not? Is it a safety consideration? That's probably step 2. And then I love new tech. Like, I'm sitting on top of the new lithium batteries and stuff, but I have to go back to that risk consequence analysis. Is the risk of new unproven technology going to create a consequence that I can't live with? And then how many— how can I build in these redundancies in this? I mean, I always compare what we do to space travel. Like, we're this little— this boat is our little spaceship. You know, the nickname is Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. It's Star Wars fun on the boat. So like, I love the idea that we are driving our little spaceship through a hostile but beautiful environment, entirely reliant on everything we have on the boat to get us there safely. And, and you have to balance then from a tech standpoint, that risk versus consequence versus does it apply to the mission.

We made a stop in the Saints, which is a small group of islands just south of Guadeloupe. And lo and behold, as we're anchored there, a dinghy comes up. There's 2 people on the dinghy and they were so excited because they saw the name Falcon on the side of the boat and they were previous crew members, like in the previous few months. So here we are in the middle of nowhere and you've got 2 crew members there that were super excited. Then we pull into Antigua and another guy comes, his name is Pablo, and Pablo's got a big boat here and he was all excited 'cause he had just watched a film that was made on Falcon. So I'm interested in, have you consciously tried to cultivate a community or the brand. You've got your own podcast, you've got the Quarterdeck, you've got people from all over the world that have sailed with you. Is that part of the mission here is to build that community or has it just happened organically?

It happened organically and now, now we're conscious of it. So my podcast, I started in, uh, 2013 and just because I had been writing for sailing magazines, I was listening to other podcasts and I was like, this is cool. I could do this. And there wasn't anything in sailing.. And it was also a way for me to like cultivate mentors in a way, because I had all these people that were well known that didn't know who I was. And I said, all right, well, this goes back to like my sort of social anxiety. I have a hard time making small talk, but I happily will interview someone and it's easier in that setting to ask deeper questions and all the rest, more like expected. So that just happened and I, I did it as a hobby. I loved it. It was super fun. And then when we started the business with Eastbourne, the boat on the picture behind me, I naturally just started talking about it on the podcast. And then lo and behold, when people started signing up, you know, we have a line on the application, how'd you hear about us? And it's like, podcast, podcast, podcast. It's like, oh, okay, it works. Yeah. But it wouldn't work if it wasn't authentic. If I didn't like doing it, it would never work because it would be obvious that I didn't like it, that I was just doing it for marketing. So now we're well aware of that, but I still love— it's still my favorite thing to do. I love interview. I love talking to people. I love interviewing people. I love hearing people's stories and what can I learn from them and all the rest. I love that. But we are aware that's the widest end of our marketing funnel, so to speak. So yes, we're trying to, or we're aware that we're cultivating this community and we're also, I think the other thing more that we're more conscious of is we are trying to set the standards in the recreational sailing world, both in terms of seamanship and how things are done and leadership, but also in terms of how people treat each other. We guarantee there's two women's spaces on every trip because sailing's historically been very male-dominated, especially professionally. We are pretty equal in terms of male-female in the leadership of the actual business and the skippers and stuff that we have. And we're trying to change some of these very bad clichés in sailing that has been historically male and white dominated. So we're conscious of that and trying to basically say, look, we are all inclusive and we're making it clear. And that's back to the international thing again, that's like just what we're interested in, but none of it would work if it was, you know, authentic. But like, I can honestly say that I'm only doing this because it's what I want to do. It's too much work to do it otherwise, if I wasn't motivated, there's not enough upside. If you— if we were doing this to make money, I would have done something different a long time ago. I mean, we're getting by, but like, no one's getting rich doing this. And that's not the point. And that's never been the motivation. So that's also like this— not the scary thing, but just like, well, if my motivation runs out one day, then what? So doing all this stuff is keeping it fresh and keeping it— having the team we have now has made it fresh for me and more now we have this, like I mentioned this to you guys at the beginning, we have this really fun aspect of it where we're able to fulfill the dreams of our customers. This is like a bucket list type thing people wanna do, but we're also able to, by growing slightly with the business, having two boats and a large schedule, we're able to fulfill the dreams of people like Alex and Nikki and, and Mano and Emily and our staff that all they wanna do is get paid to sail professionally. That's what they're most passionate about. And we're able to do that. So it's this wonderful sort of symbiosis that we're able to help each other out. And like the fact that we make a little bit of money doing it is just kind of like a necessary aspect. Because if we didn't, then we, it wouldn't work. But that's not the point.

Like that's not the point. You mentioned the podcasting that you wouldn't be doing the podcasting if you didn't love the podcasting. Yeah. And one of the things I often say to advisors is that when you think about your marketing, everyone will say, oh, you should do this, or you, you should do that. And I say no. You think about, like you said, what do you love to do first and foremost? Second, what are you also really good at? And third, what is it that your clients want from you? How do they want to receive marketing communication from someone to, let's say, find a financial advisor? And where you see the intersection of those three circles, that's where you really should put your effort. So, if someone says, "Oh, you should do a podcast," and you're like, "I don't know if I want to do it." Don't do a podcast.

It's going to be crappy.

It's going to be a terrible podcast. If you don't like social media, don't do social media. Yeah. Sort of thing. So find what you love to do because that is gonna be authentic and that's gonna give you that motivation to keep going when things get really tough.

So I think that's a key thing. I'll take, I'll take that a step further when it comes to marketing. Cuz I also think a couple different things with marketing when it comes to like product type stuff. I am a firm believer that you make the product that you want. This is Apple, right? Like you don't try to game the market. You, you tell people what they want and then you get so excited about it that they're gonna get excited and they're gonna want it too. And that applies to whatever. And that's been what we— I've never— one of the questions I asked one of my early mentors was like, how do you decide on where you go when you sail? And they're like, we go where we want to go. I really believe that. And I think that applies to all industries that you make what you want. And then the challenge is convincing other people that they also want it. Because if you can't convince yourself, if you're trying to game, if I'm trying to think, what does Steve want? I can't possibly know what you want. Also, you probably don't know what you want. So then how can I possibly create a product that satisfies me as the business owner? If it's— you're just nowhere then, cuz you're not satisfying yourself or the customer because I don't think the customer necessarily knows what they want. A lot of times that's especially true to like new things. And then the other aspect of it is this is harder because it feels, it feels like you're giving stuff away. But I think information is the best form of marketing. Give away knowledge, give away knowledge. And then people will want more. And it's hard to do that because you want to protect IP and you want to protect all this stuff. And, you know, nowadays the subscription model on newsletters and all that stuff is a thing, but I still think like the widest end of the funnel should be giving away all the specialist knowledge that you have. Some people are going to take it and you're not going to get anything in return. That's the cost of doing business. More people than not are going to come back and actually want more from you and then pay for it. That's my philosophy on this.

You also touched on the motivation. And so what keeps you going through all of this? So it's day 7 on a transatlantic. You're doing your X number of 4 hours on, 8 hours off. Yeah. It's déjà vu all over again.

Day 7 is the easy day. It's day 1, 2, and 3 that are the hard days. That's the days. And like, I won't lie to you. I tell this to every person, the first 2 days on a long passage like that, I questioned my motivations and I, and it's very much up and down on these long ocean trips where you go to some dark places cuz it's bad weather, you're sleep deprived, your body doesn't work right. And you're just like laying in your bunk thinking like, why did I choose this line of work? Why I could be at home on the couch with my family, but it offsets like life is about, for me it's like highs and lows. Like I can't, I'll never feel those highest highs without going to those dark places and the hardest part is to remind yourself that everything is transitory, right? Like, I'm going to come out of those low places. And also at the highs, you're going to come off that high as well. And that contrast is, I guess, philosophically what motivates me. I love the contrast. I love the fact that I flew from the winter in Sweden to summer in Cape Verde, and now it's Antigua and it's tropical. And then in 2 weeks, I'm flying back home to basically still winter in Sweden like that. That contrast to me is like the spice of life. The fact that, you know, Mia and I are really lucky in our relationship in that we both do this together. She also works on the boat. She's gone for 4 to 6 weeks at a time. And I'm a single parent. She's a single parent when I'm gone. We both support that. And we— our relationship as partners is better because of that. I mean, the whole absence makes the heart grow fonder thing. That's true. Like, we have a better relationship in this not seeing each other all the time than we would if we just had 9-to-5s and led separate but parallel lives. When we're together, it's everything together because we're business partners, we work in the same place, everything. And when we're apart, that's when we get our own time. And that, that contrast, I think, is the— to put my finger on it, that's what motivates me.

One other area I want to touch on is the customer or client engagement. And so one of the fun things when we get on the boat, we have our our little bag there and we got some little goodies in there, which is kind of cool, a little swag bag. And then at the end, when we completed the passage for our first passage with your 59 North, we got a 59 North patch. And then you mentioned, and then the next one you can get is this, and then you get that and this other thing. So how do you think about keeping your clients engaged? How conscious of that are you?

The patch idea actually comes from traditional tattoo lore. My left arm here, I got all these tattoos. Some of them are superstitious, some are milestone based.. And I just was like, well, people probably aren't gonna be cool if I bring out a tattoo gun and say, all right, you just crossed the Atlantic, now you're gonna get your anchor. It's like, okay, well let's make these cool patches outta that. And it actually started as like a graphic design project. I had a friend who was helping us with some graphic design earlier in the business and I was like, hey Steve, like let's make some patches based on this tattoo culture and that's traditional sailing. And then when people start sailing, what they can get. So it was just like to make a cool thing. We never went into it, how can we keep our clients engaged? Like that wasn't the point. But that's like a nice side effect to it. And that goes back to, I think, like the authenticity thing. I just did it because I thought it was fun. And now it's become a thing that's cool and people like it. And one of our patches is a swallow. That's the tattoo you would have gotten if you sail 5,000 miles. And we've had a handful of customers now that have sailed over 5,000 miles with us. It's really neat to see that they value that, and that's really cool. But that's not why we did it in the first place. Same thing with like the swag bags and stuff. Those are necessary items for your trip. You get a rope to practice knots, you get a hat for the sun, you get the buff for the sun or the cold, and you get a knife which could save your life because you might have to use it if you fall overboard. But of course, people like getting free stuff. So that's like, again, a side effect of that. But it's like, okay, how can we package this stuff that is necessary and make it feel more interesting?

Well, Andy, this has been great. If folks want to connect with you or learn more about 59 North, what's the best way to connect?

So the website, 59-north.com, or just Google 59 North Sailing. We're all over the internet, big on social media, Instagram, 59 North Sailing.

Great. All right.

Thanks, Andy. Thanks, Steve.

This is fun.

All right.

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