Guest: Pete Goss, a sailor and adventurer turned entrepreneur and author of the best-selling book Close to the Wind: An Extraordinary Story of Triumph Over Adversity.

In a nutshell: The adventures we take outside of the office and home give us more than just the chance to unwind and come home with a good story or two. My own experiences running. climbing mountains, and learning how to sail have taught me so much about planning, leadership, continuous self-improvement, and my own core values. Whether you’re navigating volatile markets or steering your firm toward long-term success, values, risk management, team, trust, and a spot of tea, are essential pillars.

But for those brave souls who push themselves a little further than the rest of us, those pillars can be a matter of life and death.

On today’s show, Pete Goss shares his extraordinary experience in the 1996/7 Vendee Globe, a non-stop, single-handed, unassisted around-the-world yacht race. Pete was alone in the Southern Ocean when he got a mayday call and was asked to execute a dramatic rescue. Pete’s insights will inspire you to take calculated risks, rely on your team, and always lead with trust and values.

.Pete Goss and I discuss:

  • The unique challenges of planning for and finishing the Vendee Globe race.
  • How a hurricane and a distress call changed the course of Pete’s race and his life.
  • Putting risk in its proper context so that you can manage it properly as well.
  • Why Pete always pours himself a cup of tea when he’s faced with a daunting challenge.
  • How creating a collaborative workspace creates a culture of accountability.
  • Visualizing obstacles so you’re prepared to clear them.
  • Why Pete believes 70% of the result of a race is locked in before the race begins.
  • Pete’s three pieces of advice for living life with no regrets.

. Quotes: 

Pete Goss on going all-in on his dream to race around the world:

“ There’s two challenges. The first is to get to the start line. The second is to finish. And ironically, the first one is often harder in a sense than the second one. The second one, the start gun goes and all you have to do is race around the world. It’s what you love. It’s what you want to do. And yes, it’s a course that’s full of all sorts of potholes but you’re up for resolving them as you go. When you’re doing the first challenge, I had a sketch on the back of a beer mat. That’s all there was, and passion and belief and commitment. There’s a lot of money involved and the problem of course is you don’t control the valve that feeds that and I had no idea about business. I used to hitch up to London. I’d sleep on Paddington Station and put my blazer and tie on, get knocking on doors, trying to learn about this thing called ‘business,’ and raised enough money to start building the boat. But halfway through, I stumbled across this thing called ‘cash flow,’ which is dreadful, isn’t it? And we just hit the buffers. And it was awful, sleepless nights. We decided to sell the family home to keep the project going. And we had three young children, and that will perhaps give you a measure of the commitment required to get to a start like this.  But I think the most important point to make from inside the project is there’s no way we felt we were throwing our home into the winds of a dream. We really believed there was a future for the family in ocean sailing. We’d created this new sponsorship model that we believed would work. And at the end of the day you have to be committed. And the funny thing that happened was at the moment we’d made that absolute commitment, it was as if someone had bolted wheels on the project, and it just took off. And I think it demonstrates that unless you personally are absolutely committed to something, then you can’t expect anybody else to be committed with you.”

Pete Goss on taking strategic risks:

“The last thing I am is a risk taker. If you threw down a challenge to go from the top of a mountain to the bottom on a push bike, then a risk taker or an Evel Knievel type would grab the first bike that they could find and launch themselves down that mountain. Whereas what we would do, and again, I underline that word, we quietly go away, do a ton of research, find the best bike possible. And then we quietly do a trial run, a quarter of the way, halfway, three quarters. And we find we need to develop better brakes or wheels, whatever it might be. But it wouldn’t be until we’d gone through that process that we would choose to leave the top of the mountain on our terms. Absolutely confident we would far outstrip the Evel Knievel time. We would know that we should have created a new area of innovation and technology for the benefit of others in the future. And I guess one would also leave with this quiet sense of inner confidence because we’d have woven this safety net whose duty is to preclude the ultimate sacrifice, which, as you’ve gathered by now, is loss of life. So what I would say is we don’t take risk, but we embrace risk, which is a very different relationship. And we’ll articulate quite clearly all the risks that we face. And then fence an area outside of which we’re not prepared to step and police it really quite diligently.”

Pete Goss on what sailing has taught him about life:

“My parents always used to say that you can do anything if you want to, and I always believed them and said it to my three kids. But having done the Vendee, I know it now and I couldn’t underline that enough. The second thing would be if you can get a group of individuals, and if they all commit mind, body, and soul to a clear and simple goal, then you’ll get there in the end. You might have to change your course a bit, but you will make it. But finally, deep in the Southern Ocean, you really appreciate that life hangs in the balance on a very thin and delicate thread, and the cancer of time is complacency. And if you want to do something, do it now, not tomorrow or the next day. Walk out that door, pick up the phone, get your notebook out, and make it happen. And for me, just making it happen, the vast majority of all of this stuff, is just get up and go. And suddenly, all sorts of unimagined circumstances will conspire to help you get to where you want to be.”

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