My Entire Ethos is Centered on Experiences

I design them professionally, I seek them personally, and I believe in their transformative power in business and in life. The best experiences offer you something you didn’t expect - something that makes you pause to take it all in.

Tomorrow, I am leaving to have a new experience climbing a 6,000m+ mountain, but two weeks ago, on a business trip, I decided to climb a different mountain, Toubkal, the highest in north Africa. This mountain isn’t particularly high at 4,167m / 13,671ft, but it’s a grueling climb covering 8,000 ft of ascent and is 18-miles roundtrip.

It was the highlight of the trip. Not just because I enjoy climbing, standing on the summit, or viewing the breath-taking scenery.

The experiences that you remember teach you, change you, or give such an “other” experience that you think about them long after.

Here is what I was reminded of the side of Toubkal:

1.) Someone is always doing something harder than you, and you can learn a lot from that:

💫 My guide was Berber Muslim, and this was during Ramadan. He did the entire trek fasting - no food / no drink during daylight hours. His presence was calm, happy, and at peace. He prayed quietly to himself all day on the trail when he wasn’t teaching me to speak some Tamazight (the language of the high Atlas). It made me think about how “hard” is determined by our personal frame of reference. Watching him and learning from him changed my perspective on climbing entirely.

2.) World-class hospitality has nothing to do with spend or status:

💫 We stayed overnight with a Berber family in their tiny home. No running water, no modern heat (at a balmy 15 degrees), and a light bulb dangling from the ceiling. I slept on the floor, in my clothes, under a pile of mule blankets. But the warmth, the generosity, the incredible food, and the laughter were world class. We broke fast together for Ramadan in the evening and the morning in the early dark, and I walked away with a lifelong memory. Stepping out of your norm is when the magic happens.

3.) Learning to embrace suffering and mentally reframe it will take you a long way:

💫 I seek out discomfort and the unfamiliar because it’s the state I find the most personal growth. When you can learn to suffer with grace, without giving up, without complaint, and find that other gear, that I believe we all have, you find a quiet power that benefits you in every part of your life. Mountaineering is suffering. If it’s easy, you didn’t pick the right mountain.

I will always believe in the power of experience to transform. It’s why I dedicate my time to helping others have them whether that’s a client or a mentee or a friend.

A friend of mine, who is an executive at TikTok, underscored this for me when he said, “you can’t create great experiences for others unless you are out in the world having your own.” Truth.