One Simple Change That Will Change Your Entire Life | Caspar Craven on Impact Theory | Transcription

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Introduction

Intro (00:00)

It's a famous formula which I'm sure you heard of, E+R=A, where E is the event something happens to you, R is your reaction, and O is the outcome. And the instinct that matters is your reaction to whatever comes up, because you know in life, in business, stuff's going to come up at some point. You just don't know what it is. And it's all about your reaction and your deal with it. Everybody, welcome to Impact Eerie. Our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams. Alright, today's guest is a successful entrepreneur, adventurer, and serial disruptor who grew up in a tiny fishing village in England that had a total population of 35 people. Despite that, he started his first business when he was just 14, and by the time he was 16, he was exporting a half ton of crab to Spain per week. Since then, he's founded several other successful companies, including one that he sold for a seven figure sum while sailing on a yacht in the Pacific Ocean. But he wasn't sipping martinis and playing shuffleboard. He was in the middle of a beautiful, albeit brutal journey, that would test his courage, leadership, and resilience. After years of struggling to save a failing business and working on a marriage that was lukewarm at best, he realized that he needed to radically change his life. So he let go of his ego, set about building a business that could thrive without him, and then set sail on a seemingly impossible trip sailing around the world with his wife and three children ages 9, 7, and 2. They would ultimately be at sea for two years, circumnavigating the entire globe one and a half times will be crammed into their small boat with limited supplies. But not only did they complete the voyage successfully, the experience was entirely transformative and laid bare for him the fundamental truths of effective leadership. Since returning these insights have made him one of the most sought after speakers on the subject of teamwork and leadership, and he is regularly featured in the most prestigious media outlets in the world, including The Wall Street Journal, BBC, The New York Post, and CNN. So please, help me in welcoming the man who stitched a gash in his daughter's forehead with a strand of her own hair while in the middle of a stormy ocean. The author of "Where the Magic Happens," Casper Craven.

Life With Purpose And Overcoming Challenges

Living a life with intention despite the excuses (02:18)

Excellent, well, welcome. What an amazing response to not being satisfied with your life and the feeling that you could do more. I mean, that's really extraordinary, and that's a thing that blew me away with the book, with the speaking that you do, is where this all started. So talk to me about intention. OK, so the whole thing that I wrap this up in these days is all about the philosophy and how you think about life. And it was 2009, and my wife and I, who you alluded to in the bit at the top there, our marriage wasn't in the greatest shape, and we have arguments about money, not spending enough time together with the children, all those sorts of things. And we were kind of asking ourselves the question, is this all there is to life? And to the outside world, it probably looked OK. We had sort of young family lived outside London and running my own business. But the inside story was very, very different. It was difficult and it was painful. And it all changed. It was the 13th of June 2009, when it was actually my brother-in-law suggested or told us about this family who sailed around the world, and then went on to say, what a ridiculous, crazy idea that was, which it was. And then we basically, my wife and I, that was the seed that caught our imagination. And we said, why don't we go and do something radically different with our lives? And the idea was crazy back then, because we didn't have the money. My wife, she'd been on a boat twice, and she'd been seasick both times at that point. And yeah, we didn't have a boat either. So there were lots of good reasons why we shouldn't have done it. But it was all about sort of saying, let's do something radically different with our lives. And I guess that the whole thing started with the intentionality of sitting down with my wife, and we spent a lot of time listening to each other and saying, what's really important to you? And we created these two different lists. I visualised it. Like here's all the things that was important to me, and here are all the things that were important to my wife. And we just found where there were things that crossed over. We had an intersection, which is my thumbs here. The rest of it we dropped. And we just focused on those few things that we had in common. And then we just created a different narrative of the future, which was all around only those things that we shared in common. And that was kind of where it sort of really started to come to life. Because when you talk about things that excite both of you, then that creates energy. Whereas before I'd been saying, I want to do this, and the club was saying, do you want to do this? And you just end up clashing. So it all came with creating a different story of the future, basically. One thing that I find so amazing in that is getting out of the energy of bickering and fighting and worrying about money and all that. I know the vibe that that creates. And I know the way that it makes you come at each other. How do you guys conceptualize maybe in the beginning just we need to think about this a fundamentally different way. And instead of talking about all the things that we disagree on, start talking about that area. About that piece there. So what we would do is it gets the weekend. We wait until the kids are gone to bed, they were aged two and four then. And we just ask ourselves the question, what's really important to us in life? And when we started to free flow and let those questions come out, and I would ask Nichlara, I'd say, tell me everything that's really important to you. And I would write down everything that she said. And then I'd say, this is what I heard. That that process in itself, we call that deep listening, I think that's a really, really interesting that people really sit down and understand what's important to your partner. That for me was the first part that started to change our direction by really listening to what was going on. So I think that's where it started with the listening piece. Deep listening, that's really strong. It actually makes me want to go to get with my wife immediately. That's a, and I feel like I know my wife, but we've actually never done that where it's like, I write, write it down and then say back, this is what I think I understand. So was this all stuff that was coming from what you were learning about team building and work and you were bringing those strategies into that? So this stage, the business was still struggling. And we thought, well, let's create an exciting narrative for us and what we want for our future. Because the previous model of the world that I'd had had been build a business up, sell it, get some money, and then go off and have family time. But in our mid 30s, that wasn't working and I haven't figured out the secret to really grow a successful business at that stage. So we kind of came at it from a different angle and said, okay, well, I'm about to lose my marriage unless we saw something out here. So let's pay attention to that. And that just happened to be the key that unlocks it.

What would be an exciting life of us? (07:10)

And that whole philosophy of putting family first and then creating the businesses which would support that. So the whole business journey is another one where I almost broke my business, but I'm sure we'll come on to that. But that piece of the deep listening, that was really the core of it. And what were things that you were learning and were the things you were learning getting you excited because you could see a shared area of energy where I know we'll create a really cool vibe here if we start getting amped up about that. So going back to when we had that, there were literally only three things that we shared in common. We wanted to go and see the elephants in Africa. We wanted to go dive in the Great Barrier Reef and we wanted to go to Carnaval in Brazil. Because they wasn't a huge amount to go on. It was three holidays. So basically, we created the narrative around that. And we just played with what that might look like. And it was Nicola who actually said, well, why don't we get a boat and go and sort of join the dots up by saying around the world. And that was kind of how it started to come together. But we then, we got a piece of paper. It was the headed note paper from Myel Business. And we literally wrote out a mission statement which started in on the 1st August 2014. We're setting sail as a happy, contented family, having achieved so much money. And this is how we're going to do it. And also, this is what we're going to do afterwards because this can't just be a one time only thing that has to be the narrative for how your life is going to continue into the future. And we set a date. So the 1st August 2014, that date was literally locked in stone. And when we told everybody this is what we're going to do, then of course everybody laughed and said, we were crazy and told us all those reasons that we couldn't do it. That's crazy. And so I've read the letter which is you actually put a photo of in your book which I thought was really cool to see it in your handwriting to see you guys adjusting words.

What does Psychosybernetics? (08:54)

Yeah, exactly. You see the quits crossed out of it. Which is really cool. I loved that. And knowing that you guys hung it up and it was there for so long. But what I love is the tense that it was written in. It was like you had already done it. And so that was really interesting to me that you would choose that to do, we have left and we have made the money and established the connection as a couple. And I thought that was really pretty powerful especially if you're looking at it every day. Well, it's interesting. So one of the influences I had back then was book Psychosybernetics by Dr Maxwell Maltz. And there's the whole process he describes in the theatre of your minds. And literally every day for the five years after we created that, I would come downstairs five-thirty in the morning. And I would sit down 95, 10 minutes seeing everything in the theatre of my mind. And I would see us buying the boat. I would see us sailing down the English Channel, sailing into the Canary Islands. I'd see the flags fluttering all the little detail bits and pieces. So yeah, that was an important part to see it. Yeah, that's really powerful. One thing I found so interesting in your story is that you guys had a lot of naysayers.

How did you handle naysayers? (10:15)

But the way you responded to them was not what I expected. How did you guys handle naysayers? So it's interesting, right? So someone gives you criticism, right? And they come at you like this. The first reaction is to push back. And you know, my experience when you do that, you just end up with an argument and nobody wins and that's not particularly helpful. So it was helpful, by the way, in the process I'm about to describe, that it wasn't just me, it was me and my wife together, the whole thing we talk about, we rather than me. So when people told us all the reasons that we couldn't do it, that sometimes those reasons come across so powerfully, they sound like facts, but they're just opinions. And it's really important to remember that distinction that they are in the opinions. But whenever someone told us things like that, we didn't dismiss the end of hand. We'd write it down. And then we put that piece of paper to one side. And you know that listener got bigger and bigger over time, of course. But because we'd spent that first six months talking about the vision of where we were going to go and also the purpose of why we were doing it, which was to create magical life-changing experiences for us and our children. We spent a lot of time talking about that purpose, actually. But we got so clear on that, that that became this unstoppable momentum. That when we then came back to all those reasons why not, then we could start to work our way through those methodically. And it's interesting because we have us saying in our family that if it was down to me, nothing would ever get finished, it was down to my wife, nothing would ever get started. So we kind of worked quite well together as a team. And we'd literally take each of those different areas. And so for example, one of the areas was medical. And we think, okay, well, how are we going to deal with this if something happens on the boat, which, as you mentioned before, it did. And we had to figure out a way to get comfortable with that. So we both trained to become ship's doctors. Do the most intense medical training you can do outside of becoming a nurse or a doctor. And then we always made sure we knew where there were other doctors and other medical resources that we can get a draw on. So rather than being overwhelmed by this whole list of reasons we can't do it, then we just literally worked our way through them one by one or rather my wife took control of doing that and figured out all the details of it. So it's a real team thing.

Relentless action (12:39)

Talk to me about your concept of relentless action. That was something that I found really powerful because there are the criticisms like you were saying, you like to choose to believe that they were coming from a place of care, which I think is really smart. And so hey, they're just worried. They want to voice all the things that they think maybe we aren't thinking about. But they had a pretty damn good list of reasons why you shouldn't. You even listed them yourself. But one that I've never heard you talk about, but was the one that jumped out at me on your board was pirates. And I thought, oh God, there's a lot of legitimate stuff to be freaked out about. And how do you go in and put your plan of attack together to deal with those things and to use relentless action to find solutions to all this? Yeah. I mean, the relentless action for me comes from the fact that you know that whole thing. You know where you're going. You know why you're going and you are locked into that. And it's that whole thing. You try something. If that doesn't work, you try something else. If that doesn't work, you try something else. But for me, when you make a decision and you say that is going to happen, come hell or high water, you're going to find a way. And you want to say, if there's something you want, you're going to find a way or you're going to find an excuse. There's the only two options right. So the relentless action piece is that going until you find it. And the filter that I ran in my mind that people are just caring about us and it just sometimes comes out in a funny way, that just made it easier to deal with. And you know, think about all those different issues.

You Didn't Have the Money? It's about Timing (14:13)

And the one that I think would be a great excuse for most people is that you guys didn't have the money. And so it's the story. There's so many interesting pieces in it that you're a successful entrepreneur, that you're a disruptor and you know that you've been active as an entrepreneur since you're 14. And you hear all the success. But once you realize that the timing was you guys put a five year ticking clock. Correct. And I said, we have done this as of this date. And it was a lot of money to get the boat. So how do you like when the business isn't working and all that? I'd love to hear some of the mechanism of what you did to the business to actually achieve that. Because it's pretty extraordinary once you have that driving force.

"You Have Turned Our Dream into a.... You Know What You Have Done" (14:54)

But you actually pull it off. It was late in 2011. And I was feeling the pressure now because before it was, you know, it was five years away and now it's three years away. Oh, that's suddenly getting closer, right? And it's like, okay, so I've got to do something different. So my mind was now starting to look out for different things that I could do. And I came across a guy, a guy from the States, Dan Kennedy. And I started going to his seminars and events. And I went to one at the end of 2011. And I literally had sort of light bulb moments going off inside my head. And so I went back into my business at the beginning of 2012. And I started implementing like crazy. I was, I hired new staff. We launched new products. I was doing all these different marketing campaigns, videos, paper copy, newsletters. And literally I was charging through the business like a man possessed because I had, you know, three years to get everything ready. And we got to the end of quarter one. And my business partner, his name's Ed, took me to one side. And it's a Casper. If you carry on doing what you're doing, every single person in the business, including me is going to leave because you are driving us crazy. And you're forcing these ideas on us. And it's all utterly ego driven. And you know, slap in the face. It's like, okay. So there's this thing that I really, really want to make happen. Now we need two and a half years away. And I realized that I've got to have a different approach. So I found this lady called Margaret. She became my, my savior. And she was a leadership training expert. And we did all this stuff drawing pictures and figuring out, you know, what was my leadership style and how could I engage the rest of my team in the business. And I started to have some light bulb moments going off at that point about how do you truly build a team to make something happen. And taking my ego was out of it was one part of it. Another part was getting really clear on the vision where we're going to the purpose. Why do people care? A values based approach. That was a huge part of what we did both in the business.

Success to Teamwork (17:06)

And then we'd apply that in the family as well. And then just finding brilliant people and building on their strengths and letting them do what they're amazing at. And this is stuff that, you know, you know, and lots of other people know out there. But it was sort of, I kind of stuff that I knew, but I wasn't doing it. So we literally started to put that in place in the business. We did a lot of work on our values and we agreed on our values as a team. And we started to find ways to bring that into the business day to day. And literally that was the turning point for the business starting to take off. And I think in the next 12 months that followed that, we grew at the fastest rate we'd ever grown before. We made more profit than the previous six years combined. And literally the business was just starting to take off. But it was all just from that mindset shift of rather than saying it's about me, it's about we and how do we engage everybody in the team to go and do that. Dude, I love that. That concept has been transformative for me as well as an entrepreneur. Give us some detail about the being of values driven organization or family. What that means, like what's that process? Okay. We got creative and we got magazines out and we got nice food and drinks in. And we started to say, you know, what values are the things that we want to feel proud of of how we show up in our business. And literally we had a small team of 10, 12 people and we engaged everybody in that debate around one of these values. And then we distilled it down to a shorter list and then it came down to six values. We created a picture to symbolize all the values. So it's a picture of a lion. So courage was one of the core values. But we also spend a lot of time saying what is it that we do when we demonstrate this value that it's very best. Because if I say the word courage and I ask 10 different people what that means, I'll get 10 different answers. So it's creating that shared understanding. So that was the first piece. Then the next piece was making sure that lived inside the business, which very simply, I get all the teams together, we do a weekly scrum on the Monday morning, we talk about our priorities. And then I would just call out two people and I'd talk about specific actions that I'd seen someone do. And I give out bars of chocolate to our candy bars. And then I got other people in the business to start to spot and hand out the values prizes. So I'm training people to look for what's right. Because you know that whole thing, our brains are hardwired and trained to look for what's wrong. And in terms of growing people, I don't think that really helps. It's that whole thing about building on people's strengths. So the values framework provided us that conversation around building on people's strengths. And what was fascinating, so that was a key part in transforming the business. There's a famous formula, which I'm sure you heard of, E plus R equals O, where E is the event something happens to you, R is your reaction and O is the outcome. And the only thing that matters is your reaction to whatever comes up. Because you know in life, in business, stuff's going to come up at some point. You just don't know what it is. And it's all about your reaction, how you deal with that. Yeah, that's an amazingly powerful math equation and really makes me think about your marriage. And this I think is, this was so beautiful to me in your story because, okay, the event is sort of like life isn't as fun as I thought it would be. Which is like that insidious, it's so like you described it perfectly. You said it's like 60 degrees. It's not overly warm. It's not too cold. So you just sort of settle in there.

Why coming together with a shared vision can lead to change. (20:44)

And the insidious nature of how quietly that can just take over your life. So that's the event, right? Now most people's reaction to that is essentially nothing to just lay helplessly in the frustration. But your guys' reaction wasn't divorced. It wasn't to scream and yell. It was to go, hey, we want something better and to build this shared vision. What was it about coming together on a boat in difficult situations? Like, you guys knew what you were in for. You've done this before by yourself or with a team, but not your family. So you know what's coming. You know it's going to be hard. It's a little bit like a foxhole life. But I see the images you guys took where your wife looks giddy as you guys are planning everything. And she gets seasick. So, like, I can feel the two of you knowing that there's going to be something about the proximity or something that is going to help us with these issues. So what was it? Like, why was that such a beautiful, magical time when it sounded just kind of dangerous and cramped and lonely? What a great question. The essence of that for me was the whole thing about truly working together as a team and appreciating the strengths each person brings to it. And I joked before about, you know, it was down to me. Nothing would ever get finished now. It's a little bit of a bit of a staccid. And it brought that deep appreciation of each other. But also being on the boat as well, there's that reliance on each other, that deep reliance. And, you know, it's that whole thing that, you know, when you're facing adversity, that does bring you closer together. And I'm glad you mentioned a bit about the 60 degrees, because, you know, that's, I think, where we were before. And we did all the screaming and shouting and all that sort of stuff. But it doesn't do any good because nobody's listening and nobody cares, right? So you come back to it, it's like, well, I care if I want something different from my life, if I want more for my life, then I've got to take control of this together. And I think one of the sentences my wife always says is that most people end up living one centimeter away from their own faces. And you're just caught up in the here and now. And you don't take that time to imagine and dream and create a more exciting story. I mean, literally that story was the thing that just pulled us out there into the future. That was the essence of it. Dude, that's a pretty rad R. Like, that is a great way to react to this scenario. And for me was the part that was the intoxicant that pulled me into your world. And hearing you talk about one day, one day, you said I've had countless conversations with people where the answer is one day. What is that conversation? So the whole thing, you know, you meet so many people, one day I will go and do this. One day I will go and get that beach bar and the Caribbean. One day I will get fit, whatever it is. And it reminds me of when I was building my business before, I'm building a business and in five years time I'll sell it. But no matter how close I got to it, it was always still five years away. And so the essence of that is putting that date in the diary and making that firm decision, that is going to happen. And there's no two ways about it. So that was literally the thing that changed it all.

The importance of having clarity. (23:55)

Talk to me about clarity. Like how important is clarity? Do you encounter that? I know you do workshops and stuff. Do you encounter that a lot with the people that come to you that they just don't really know what they want? Yes. That's a huge thing. And you now talk about when we came up with that vision, we didn't just sit there one weekend and like there we go, we created a piece of paper. It took us six months to create that. And a large part of that is you ask yourself the question and your conscious mind will throw out half a dozen things. But what I'm really interested in is the stuff that comes out of your subconscious mind. The stuff that's been buried over time. Because that whole thing, you ask people what's happiness to you or what do you really want to do because I don't know. And so it's investing the time to go deep into that process and understand what it is and uncover those things, not just for you but for your partner as well. So it's just finding a different thing and challenging the norm and just finding your own path. That's really incredible. So you've really become known for your ability to build strong teams and leadership. And I know you give a whole talk about the eight cornerstones of leadership. What are they? How can people really build that into their own lives? Okay. So I always think that the things that will make you thrive in business are exactly the same things that will make you thrive in a family. But it's having a really clear vision of where you're going to. It's knowing why that's so important to you. And the reason why when you get knocked down, when everything fails, when my business partner, everybody threatened to walk out, it's like, I've got a really strong reason to make this work. So I'm going to get back up together and make it work together. The whole piece about relentless action and you go until you sort of find the way. There's a lot in there as well about not waiting for perfect. You mention why people don't often do things. I think that's a big one because I think this whole concept of perfection for me is such a dangerous concept because people wait until everything is perfect before they can move forwards. So when we left the UK, our boat was not perfect. We only bought it 10 weeks before we left. And that was a short period of time. And when we did slip lines and leave Southampton, one of the toilets wasn't working and there were a few problems with the boats. But we asked ourselves two questions. One, have we got a good, safe boat and all the fundamental things work? Yes. Two, do we trust ourselves that we'll be able to figure out the answer to whatever it is that comes up? And we could answer yes to both those questions. It's like, right, that's it. We're going to get going. I've got friends who've got boats who are going to go sailing around the world. At the same time as we were, they're still in England. They haven't left because they're waiting for perfect. It doesn't exist. Another one is a happy team as a fast team. You get people in roles that they love doing where they're thriving, where they feel fulfilled. Then you'll go fast. That was what we did in the business and that was what we did on the boat as well. So that's a really important one about getting people in the right roles. Emotional resilience is another one about, you know, that they're living your values and how do you deal with stuff when it comes up. And also massively overlooked. When everyone talks about this, but the whole power of celebration and whenever we had small victories, we would celebrate those because small victories lead to big victories. So it's just creating that winning habit.

Scalability (27:36)

So yeah, those are pretty much the lessons that I share with people, both in families and business, so in principles. That's really strong. So as you're building out these teams and you're getting people moving and you're realizing that there's a level of happiness that is bringing everybody together, going back to the business world, like how do you begin to scale that? Like how do you take that culture and pass it on so that you can leave? Yeah. I asked myself the question, how can I create a business that can run without me? And that question led me to the path of again, taking my ego out of it, but making myself redundant from the business. And I always think that's relatively easy to find people who are better than I am in every single role that I can go into. So I'm very humble about that. There are some very, very talented people out there. And it's just finding people better than me. And my piece, I guess, was helping to set that fabric of the culture, of the direction of the purpose and getting people to do that because those are the perfect teams, right? You talked about essentially getting out from under your own ego, that your ego was holding you back, that the running the company was coming from that place. How did you get out from under it? How did you still get pride in yourself? Like what was it like to navigate that? Great question as well. The first point of how I got out of my own ego was the rational thoughts that if I didn't, we weren't going to be getting on the boats, so it's that whole thing, "Have you got enough leverage on yourself to be able to make a difference?" So talking about leverage, I think that's really interesting.

Leverage (29:20)

And I really hope people at home are listening because this to me is the difference between people that go on to do the things that they want and the people that go on to one day, one day, one day. How did you create that leverage? Because you didn't start with it. So how did you turn that, I know you're a fan of Tony Robbins, so I'll use his language. How did you turn that want into a need? I mean, it all just comes back to that fundamental thing that this has to happen. And the thing that's standing in the way is me, Dan Kennedy, you've still got a great saying, which is, you've got to get out of your own way. And that whole thing with turning that want into the need, that needs to happen. Otherwise, the whole thing is just not going to work otherwise. And it's part of it sitting down, so I'm imagining it, you've got the thing. You guys actually put it up on your wall, the mission statement is shared. You can feel that like my marriage is actually getting better, we're connected, we're excited, we've changed the energy of the way that we talk. And so was there anything that was like, I just want to keep doing this, like the process, the planning, and that in emotionally investing in that, did it begin to escalate in your mind and importance? So what was interesting? I mean, through that whole process of consistently doing that, I mean, there were times when it was tough and you didn't feel like doing it. And I kind of painted the picture, it was like five years and it was all plain sailing. But we had our moments of ups and downs and it's funny, we ran a workshop a few weeks ago and we brought out, we actually ran at our home and we brought out this map of the world and someone said, why is that map all sort of crunched up? And it's like I had to confess that I remember getting to a point of like stream frustration and like nothing was working, it's like, ah, but then like three hours later it's like I take it back up together and put it back up on the wall and okay, we're carrying on again. So, you know, they were definitely sort of, you know, more challenging points in the journey and you got to put it together. I love that. I think that's really useful for people to understand like, because the relentless action, which is definitely my favorite phrase that you have, relentless action doesn't mean that it isn't going to get frustrating and hard and sometimes where you're like, I don't see a way out. Do you have a process for when I don't see a way out? How do you keep moving? The thing that I've learned, whenever I get to a point where I don't know the answer, I feel frustration building up on me, coming down off the wall, that sort of stuff, I now know that to trigger, I've got to go and learn something. That's interesting. So I've got to go out and find the very smartest person that I can to help me get through whatever it is that I'm facing because I know whatever I'm looking at, someone will have faced that before. You've talked about what you call breakthrough thinking.

Thought Process And Risk Management

Breakthrough Thinking (32:11)

What is breakthrough thinking? How can I build that into my life? So for me, it's the philosophical shift when you say, I don't know the answers to this. I've got to go and find A, someone who is doing something that's radically different to me and then I've got to change the way that I look at this. So I guess my favorite example of this is this whole thing of family first. That was our first piece of breakthrough thinking because before it'd always been business first, make money, then go and do family stuff. And it was literally turning life on its head and saying family first. So for me, that's an example of breakthrough thinking. It's just approaching stuff in a different way. Another one would be that whole thing of the criticism rather than responding to it and being like this, it's like, okay, let's just sit back for this moment and think about this. How do we take a different approach to it? No, that makes a ton of sense. So I'm going to ask the question that I would have been curious to know how to admit you as you were about to embark on this and I think is what made me like this story so much is I don't have a good answer to this. How did you face that this is dangerous and you're going to take a two year old out of the ocean? Like that's one of those that like you hear about somebody else doing it and your stomach drops. Was that just a non-issue for you? Because you've sailed so much, you know that it's all, you know, they're hard waters, but they're navigable ultimately. Or was it like some things are just important enough to take risks? So it's definitely not the last one. So it's interesting. So when people hear the story, the first reaction is usually you must be utterly insane to take a two year old on a boat around the world. I get it, I get it. So we took nothing likely at all and our approach was this huge level of rigorous planning, thinking through every single risk and how do we mitigate that.

Planning & Mitigating Risk (34:12)

So for the last, I don't know, 18 months or so before we left, whenever you saw my wife, Nicola, and Dithararm would be this huge folder and there'd be detailed spreadsheets, literally going through every single thing we could think of. So the medical training is one example, the homeschooling was another example. And not only that, we went and found communities of sailors who had done similar things before and we went and said, "How did you manage these risks? What did you do?" Learning seems to be a big part of the adventure and I was wondering if, so I was really, really hardcore about learning Greek for a while because my wife and I had planned to have kids at the time and so I really wanted, because she speaks Greek fluently, so I wanted to be able to speak Greek fluently so we could teach it to our kids. And she just this weekend was lamenting that we weren't practicing Greek anymore, but the punch line was she wasn't really bothered to do it anymore because it no longer had that driving purpose and was that part of, and I asked this question because I think there are people out there listening right now, they're one dayers, right? Like one day, one day.

Pursuing Purpose in Life and Learning (35:22)

And if they understood how many little things in this that it would affect their life and for the better, was there something to having that driving purpose that gave learning like such intensity that the learning itself became fun and addictive and you really leaned into it? Yeah, so again, driving force, Dave Nadari, that's the vision, that's the purpose, that's why we're going to go and do it. We did get addicted on learning. What was interesting as well is the whole side of homeschooling as well on the boats. So when we left, we had the boat loaded up with all the curriculum books from the schools and I remember about three months in as we're sailing down the European coast and I'm sitting there with my son, it's called Columbus, and trying to teach him about the kings and queens of England. And I come down after an hour and there's this sort of glaring sheet of blank paper and the pen has not moved and he's not even remotely interested in anything going on with kings and queens of England. So I said to him, it's like, what are you interested in? So he said, I'm really interested in fishing. So I said, okay, so we then got all the fishing books out and he started reading about all the different fish and the different oceans and how to catch them and so on. So now his reading is starting to move forward at a good speed. We then start catching fish. So we're catching these great big yellowfinchina and mahi mahi's. So now we start to dissect them, so we're learning biology. He's now writing in his journal and he's weighing them, he's measuring them and growing his beautiful pictures, saying where we course it, and then it led him to setting up a business, making and selling fishing lures and advice sheets, so we get to an anchorage, he's going round and the dinghy going round to all the other boats and said, do you want to buy fishing lures? So what was fascinating is we just took something that he was really passionate about and we just went deep into that and that led him to literally every single subject, to literacy, to numeracy, to business, to science. So that whole approach to learning and finding those things, they were saying that set your soul on fire that excite you, that make you curious and want to learn more, find those things. And I think there's fundamental issues with our current education system. And I think that the skills that our children of the future need are very different to the ones we've had in the past. And I think the secret, part of the secret is finding what each person is passionate about because their learn, Columbus' learning rate literally went through the roof when we did that. So that whole learning thing is really cool to us. Yeah, that's super cool. So in the book you do call outs, skippers' learnings, lessons, what are some of the really key lessons that have been transformative for you, for your family? I think the whole thing about the we, not me, is being a really key one, learning to appreciate the strengths of the people around you and getting them to do what they are brilliant at doing. I love the whole thing about, you know, there's one or two things where extraordinary acts and oftentimes you don't realize what they are because you do them so innately.

Where to Find Casper Craven (38:32)

So it's being more of what you are really good at. So it's getting in your own zone and doing the things that ignites you. But I think that's probably a big one and I think the other thing is that shared narrative, that shared story, that's literally where it starts creating exciting story of the future.

Where to Find Us (38:56)

That's a big one. I love that. Alright, before I ask my last question, where can these guys find you online? Okay, so my name is Casper Craven. There's only one of me out there. So Casper Craven.com, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, all those things. Nice. And it's a superhero name. So I love that. My last question, what is the impact that you want to have on the world? Okay. So the impact that I would love, I would love to give both practical advice and inspiration to millions of people all over the world to grab hold of life and say what's really important to me and my family, create that exciting story and then reverse engineer your life to meet your family goals. Nobody ever gets to their end of the days and says, you know, I wish I hadn't done this. It's always all about family. Put family first, work together as a team and be brave, step outside your comfort zone and go and make that family story happen. So that's my personal mission. And you know, every week I get these amazing messages from people saying the impact our story has had on them and I've become utterly addicted to that. I was when I came back, I started doing other businesses and I've kind of parked all of that because this is the most exciting thing that I've ever done.

Conclusion

Outro (40:10)

Having an impact on other people and getting them to grab hold of life and say what's really important to you and your family. I love that. Casper, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. That was incredible. Thank you. Really incredible. Hey everybody. Thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit and unlocking your full potential.