Full Transcript for 037: Dan Richards | When Should You Quit?

If you're listening to Spartan Up! Podcast, we're gonna interview somebody every week from all over the world and see what they did in their life to become successful, no matter how they define it.

Alright, good morning and welcome back. We're here once again at the SpartanUpPodcast .com in the beautiful Pittsfield town, town of Pittsfield, in the Amy Lodge barn. I've got with me here this morning, as always, we've got Johnny, Dr. Johnny, we've got Sephiroth, the seed queen, and we've got Joe De Sena. And today we're gonna talk about Dan Richards, who is the founder of Global Rescue.

It was a pretty cool idea, right? I mean, for years we'd been leaning on Colonel Nye to extract us from difficult situations, and he wouldn't show up because he was busy with the military. And so to have a private company that could rescue you in a tough situation. Hey, we're here with Spartan Up! The Podcast. Our guest today, I should always be saying this by the way, our guest today, I don't think I've ever said that, is Dan Richards, CEO and founder of Global Rescue.

Global Rescue is a company that will just come rescue you wherever you are. So we sell a membership that provides medical security and evacuation support for people who have oftentimes encountered what becomes the worst day of their lives. Anywhere in the world? Anywhere in the world. Typically it's used more than 160 miles from home, so we do a lot internationally.

But believe it or not, we do about a third of our mission volume domestically. So somebody will buy our membership and be going to India or Nepal or someplace, and then they'll come home and be skiing in Colorado or off in the woods in Vermont. And get stuck somewhere. Like if I was in the woods up here and I, is there a pin I pull or something? How do you know to come get me? Well, so if you don't communicate with us, it's very hard for us to know that you're having a problem.

So we recommend that people obviously use their cell phones if they have cell service. We also strongly recommend that people who go into remote environments take some kind of satellite communication capability. So satellite technologies come down in price. You can buy a sat phone for 500 bucks or less. You can also buy a satellite texting device that allow you to actually sync with your mobile device.

How long do batteries last on something like that? Well, I guess you only need it when you need it. You only need it when you need it. So we frequently advise our members to pack extra batteries depending on where they're going. Also solar rechargers or some other way of recharging if you're not going to be near civilization in a power source.

Sure. What's the number one thing, the number one mistake people make like that gets them into trouble? That's a tough question to answer. We're very much in the business of saving people from themselves from time to time. I think what people probably most frequently do is they underestimate sometimes the severity of the environment that they're entering.

So we do probably three dozen missions a year in the Himalaya, in Nepal. We frequently have people who are just they're not prepared with the right gear to go. It sounds hard to believe if you're going to Nepal. Yeah, you know what you're getting into if you go to Nepal. You would think, right? But we have people that show up and they haven't packed properly.

Like they're wearing sandals? It's not usually quite that extreme, but they don't have, you know, the Himalaya is one of the most difficult environments on the earth, right? So you go there and you could be one day it can be 65 degrees and you're sweating and, you know, it's warm and you're getting bitten by mosquitoes. And there's actually malarial parts of Nepal, believe it or not.

And then the next you go to a different environment and it's 20 below zero and you're stuck in a snowstorm and you can't go anywhere for, you know, a week and a half. So they're not ready for it. And but more importantly, physically, many times they're also not ready for it. So you get or mentally, right? Or mentally. So you get people who have medical conditions that, you know, it's on their bucket list.

They want to check check it off and they go to Nepal and encounter an environment that's just much more severe than they expected. You know, I heard I was friends with the founders of some of the divisions of Ironman. And they said they're having problems because so many people that have no business doing an Ironman are out there doing it because it's on the bucket list.

And so they're seeing a lot more injuries, a lot more difficulty. So it's probably the case, like you said, where people are going out. We suggest people get out of their comfort zone, but maybe that's a little too uncomfortable for people. Well, you know, one of the problems with social media is, you know, your buddy goes and does it. He posted, you know, a video.

You see it on Facebook. And then you start thinking, you know, if this guy can do it and this other guy can do it. No, I saw this girl over here do it. I want to go and do it. Sure. But just because you can, you know, download a video and watch it on YouTube doesn't mean that you're, you know, able to successfully complete whatever it is.

Ice climb something. Yeah, that's exactly right. Being done. I think I heard a bear. So, so you come in when you're saving somebody in Nepal, you'll get them, pick them up with a chopper. How do you, how do you get them? So it really depends on what their situation is. We have the major helicopter companies in Nepal under contract. We use their helicopters, you know, 20, 30 times a year.

Sometimes though the weather prevents a helicopter rescue and we're forced to send a ground team. And ground teams can take a while because they either travel in Nepal on foot or sometimes they use yaks or other, you know, horses and Nepalese ponies actually to transport people. So the cavalry, really the cavalry. I mean, sometimes, yeah, you really, you really have to show up on horseback in order to perform a rescue.

So when things go right and the weather cooperates, which is not all the time, we use helicopters to pull people out. So is it expensive? I mean, if I was going over to climb Everest and I wanted to be a member of Global Rescue, how, what would that cost me? So we sell a one week membership starts at $119. Our annual membership medical only.

That's not going to get me a helicopter or a horse. That'll get me what, a cat? What's $119? $119 gives you full access to all of our services. Really? So if you need a helicopter, if you need a fixed wing aircraft, if you need a ground team to come and get you, that's all it costs. That's cheap. I mean, that's a pretty cheap way to ensure.

Are there places they won't go? Marion has a question.

Marion is trying to take my job. I know it. Are there places you won't go? So we sell a medical and a security membership. And what medical provides for is if you are in need of hospitalization more than 160 miles from home, you don't need to be in a hospital. If you're not in a hospital, we'll come and perform what's called a field rescue and pull you off the mountain or, you know, out of the desert or out of a, you know, a difficult environment.

We also sell a security component. And what that means is if you're in danger of imminent grievous bodily harm. So you could be in Egypt, for instance, during the Arab Spring or in Haiti after the earthquake. These are very difficult and dangerous environments. Our operators, we give full discretion as to whether or not we make, they make the no go or no go decision.

So it's really up to them. And if they feel that an environment is too dangerous to enter immediately, then we'll wait and then try and enter that environment and actually prosecute the rescue. But in 10 years since I founded the company, we've never not been able to reach someone anywhere requested a rescue. Yeah, that's amazing. And so do you get a lot of requests for people going to very dangerous places like Syria or we do get requests from members who are going to dangerous places, but not so much Syria.

Usually what happens is people are going to go into an area that could be dangerous, but no event has happened yet. So Egypt is a great example. None of us predicted that Egypt would play itself out the way that it did, even though we all knew, at least those who followed the intelligence community, knew that Egypt had the potential to do what occurred.

And so when events happen suddenly, that's when people are usually caught by surprise and need to activate our services. Now we provide services to corporations and governments, and they routinely send people to difficult places, in which case we actually support those missions, but we do it preemptively. So we'll actually send personnel to support the people who are being deployed to that area and actually provide medical and security support.

That's more than $119. It is more than $119. Yeah, the average individual doesn't have access to that. Yeah. I hope you're not sitting still while you listen. If you are, you better get a burpee break in.

I don't know if I ever told you, the first race I put on was in the British Virgin Islands. Did I tell you the story? I don't think so. Cut me off if I did. I don't think so. So we were rigging ropes out of the ocean. People were going to coast the Lear and then pull themselves out a couple hundred feet. And one of our riggers cut himself and he got into a dinghy.

And the other riggers continued to work. Eight days later when the race was over, everybody was packing up. Somebody came over and whispered to me, hey, we haven't seen so and so. I think you did mention this too. And he drifted 150 miles to Little Tobago, an uninhabited island. So,

unbelievable. Unbelievable story. Coast Guard got involved. We actually just did. We don't do a lot of maritime rescue, like open ocean rescue. We actually just did one about a month ago. There was an ocean rowing team that was going from, they were rowing from India to Australia. Wow. And about halfway there, one of the team members was boiling a pot of water, dumped it right on his leg, on his thigh.

He had third degree burns over the top of his thigh. And you can imagine out in that harsh environment with the sun and the salt, it got septic very, very quickly. And so, they contacted us by satellite phone. And so, we had to figure out how are we going to rescue this guy. So, we worked with the Australian Navy and were actually able to identify a ship that was passing a freighter, passing by on its way to Australia.

Take them up. Coordinated, yeah, coordinated basically the rendezvous between the two vessels. Got the guy on board, got him to a hospital a few days later, and he was fine. So, what I'm most interested in about that story is, did the rest of the rowing team continue on without him? They did.

That's what I want to say. You can imagine they were pretty, you know, hardcore group of guys. Actually, it wasn't just guys. I think there were two women on board as well. That's awesome. And any idea how long of a mission, you know, how long of a row that was? For them? Yeah. You know, I don't know. We've actually had, interestingly, for whatever reason, we're known in the rowing community for the people that are going to be doing these long distance rows.

Yeah. There was a woman actually who wanted to row. She had rowed across the Atlantic and done that successfully. And then she wanted to row across the Pacific. And, you know, the Pacific is incorrectly named. She got about 150 miles off the coast of California. And then she wasn't just, the ocean got rough. She wasn't just, you know, capsizing side to side.

She was actually going, you know, vertically down some of these waves. And her whole craft ended up getting trashed. And she actually ended up getting picked up by the U .S. Navy. A Navy ship was passing by. Wow. She was an interesting case though, because even after her boat was severely damaged, she didn't want to leave it. And they sort of had to talk her out of the boat.

And so what was her reason for not wanting to leave the boat? Just she'd grown fondly attached to the boat? Well, you know, there's a law of the sea, which I am not versed in. But apparently you abandon a craft and, you know, you leave it. Anybody who finds it, I think they own it. Oh, got it. It's sort of how it works. And she had really wanted to do this, but obviously it didn't work out for her.

Yeah, that sucks when you get so close. That kills a lot of people on Everest. It does. They're so close and they can't turn around, right? We see that a lot in the Himalaya, particularly with people who, you know, they might be getting a little older in years. And they're, you know, in their 50s and 60s and they've got, you know, medical issues.

And again, this is a bucket list thing. They want to go climb Everest. They're going to do this great, you know, this great push. And they're not coming back. So this is... Some of them don't, some of them don't come back. But I mean, in their mind, they're saying, I'm not, I'm not doing this again. I'm so close. Let me just push. Well, when you think about the time that goes in and effort that goes in to trying to summit Everest, I mean, you train for a year, you spend easily 50 plus thousand dollars to do it.

So you get out there, you've convinced your family. All right, I'm going to go do this, right? I'm not coming home. So here's your shot. Yeah, here's your shot. And oh, it's late in the day. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? I'm just going to push it. And when you push it, bad thing. We've had a number of missions like that. We had one that was very notable actually on a mountain called Dalugiri, which is the seventh highest peak.

It was an Argentinian climbing team. They're actually shooting a documentary for viewing on Argentinian television. And it was a four man team and they had made it to the high camp. And one of the team members wasn't feeling well. And so the three others decided to summit. It was summit day. Good weather conditions. They go and summit. The other guy stays in the tent.

They come back and he's feeling better. The three guys are totally, totally smoked. It's, you know, 20 something plus hours up and down from the high camp. So they decide, he decides that the individual who had been in the tent decides I'm going to go and try and do a solo summit bid. This is a guy with, you know, wife, young child at home.

He's regretting his decision stand behind. Exactly. So he goes and does it. And round trip is 20 hours. Two of the, of his teammates descend. One of them stays in the tent waiting for him. And at about 25 hours, we get the call that he's missing somewhere on the mountain. And at that point, you know, we know that if you're up there alone and you're, you know, you've got a few, you've got a few hours to try and find and help somebody.

The likelihood is if it goes longer than that, you're, you're either not going to find him or you're going to find him in a different situation and he's going to be dead. So, um, we spent the first day, you know, really scrambling and trying to get Sherpa teams up the mountain to try and find this individual. Um, we, we recovered all of his, his, his gear, including his camera and a lot of, a lot of other things.

Um, but we never found him after 10, we searched for about 10 days. Yeah. So you really, um, what your experience is, these people make, they're dealing with their own issues. In other words, it's not necessarily always the environment. It's themselves making a mistake or doing something, pouring hot water on your leg by accident, right? Or, yeah.

In the aviation community, they call it pilot error. Um, you know, here people make, um, mistakes in judgment and we see it more often than not, particularly in those kinds of environments. Not that it's your business, but is there a trick to not making those judgment mistakes, especially when you're like low on oxygen just because you're at altitude or whatever, any, any, anything you've read or.

Sure. Here's the problem. If you're going to go into those environments to begin with and participate in some of the activities that these individuals do, they tend to be pretty goal oriented people who have, many of them who have experienced a lot of success in their lives, right? You don't go pony up $50 ,000 to go climb Everest and, you know, do that stuff without having been successful.

Their past experience has been to push through adversity, to push through hardship. Everything we talk about. To make it through, right? Well, you have to though, correctly calibrate your perception of risk to your environment. And, and there, this is a new environment, particularly the Himalayas that they've never been in before. Sure. And their calibration is just off.

You know, what you can do, for instance, in Vermont. Well, it's always worked before. It's always worked before. I pushed and, and my business succeeded. I pushed and I married that girl. That's exactly right. Right. You're right. Or out here, you know, in the mountains of Vermont, right? Yeah. You can do things in Vermont and push that would kill you in the Himalaya, for instance.

Yeah. It's too bad we don't all come with one of those red line dials, like in a car, right? That's right. Where you're reaching the red line. That's right. Enough. That's right. Yeah. Well, that was good because that's a completely different perspective than everything we've covered. And we've done, I don't know, 70 interviews here. Really? And so everybody's talking about grit, persistence, motivation, just keep pushing.

You get involved when we push too far. Yeah. There's an objectivity. You know, there's been a lot of talk about math and statistics. And there's an objectivity that comes with the math. And there's no question that, you know, the human desire to push through and to achieve great things can take you so, so far. But at some point, there is a, you know, law of numbers that says you've got, you know, this much oxygen remaining.

You've got this much food remaining. You know, the temperature outside is, you know, 25 or 30 degrees below zero. It's blowing 100 miles an hour. You might not make it out of this. Game over. Yeah. So performing those kinds of analyses, preferably before you get into the environment, is very helpful. Yeah. Good stuff. That was good. That's a different perspective on grit.

Stop before you break. What's your thoughts on this? As a guy who is military and, you know, this is obviously running parallel to that. What do you think? Yeah. I think this is a great, great idea. I think this is, you know, a guy found a niche, opened up a company. The company is doing well, so that's great. I've always been fascinated by the people who go out and either climb the mountains, go down in the volcanoes, head off into a jungle, whatever, and then find themselves in that position where they need to ask for help.

And when I lived in Hawaii, I lived in Hawaii luckily for four years, you'd see guys going up to the volcano all the time, and then they wouldn't be able to get down. And the choppers would have to go in, the state rangers or eventually the military. And it just always fascinated me that that's on the taxpayer's dime. Sure. You know, it was never programmed to reimburse.

I mean, so why should I, as a taxpayer, have to fund somebody's trip that they were unprepared for? And he talks about being unprepared, whether it was through mechanical error or pilot error, which he also kind of talks about. So, I think this is a great company to fill that void, that niche there. And pretty inexpensive for that kind of insurance.

Yeah, 119. Yeah. You got a cat, right? Yeah. Really well. But I guess so few, very small percentage of people actually need to make the phone call, other than your brother who incessantly makes phone calls. Well, one thing I thought was really interesting was when he kept referring to the bucket list about the idea that there's a lot of people who really have no business doing some of these things, but this idea of the bucket list and of striving has become such a big thing that these guys, it's just another trophy for their mantle.

But let's not forget, I mean, that's one of the things we push here, right? We're saying get outside, get out in bed, rather go out at night. Yeah. And so we probably should get a kickback from global rescue. You know, I've thought that at Spartan Race, it's not that we have to rescue often at a Spartan Race, although you know, it's funny, when I'm running sweep, that's the key is to get those people off there safely, right? But you'll see people out there who really, and I'm saying this not, I'm saying this facetiously, have no business being on a Spartan course, except they do.

And we're the ones saying, get off the coach, go do this, right? Right. But I do think you want to pick your spots. You don't want to go out in the middle of the jungle on your first trip. Yeah, right. But I think that kind of takes away, I mean, think about Shackleton, right? He doesn't have a GPS thing or anyone extracting him. I think in terms of like what Rand Fine said, like be an explorer now that we have all these satellite things, it is kind of different, right? Because anywhere you go in the wilderness, you do have the capability of still being in touch.

And I think it's, I mean, I think it's an amazing service, but it definitely changes that explorer expedition mentality. Well, you're not on your own now. Yeah. I mean, we also talk about setting realistic goals, right? So, I mean, again, if you're going to go out first shot, try to tackle something that's maybe a little bit too much for you.

And this interview was interesting to me because as you said in the interview, this is really kind of the first guy that had a little bit different perspective. And again, to get into this mechanical error versus pilot error, I mean, there are some things that are unforeseen. You know, there can be a weather change, a tree could fall on you.

See it all. Political unrest. Right. Something can happen that you didn't plan for versus you made a mistake and that mistake was you weren't prepared enough or you didn't think this through or you didn't bring the right equipment. You know, that's true pilot error. You know, there are some acts of gods, if you will. And so I think again, this company is perfectly positioned.

I was thinking I was going to become a pilot. It was, I don't know, I don't know what year it was or late nineties. And it was a day of my solo flight. And, um, JFK Jr. died that day, that morning. Oh, my goodness. And, and I, I had about an hour between learning that information and getting in the plane solo. And I thought to myself, and it just occurred to me listening to you, I'm a pretty persistent individual.

And if JFK Jr. with all the resources he had can be flying upside down and not be aware of it, I probably shouldn't take this flight. And I didn't. And, and then again, um, a buddy of mine said, Hey, let's go set a world record. We're going to go climb the seven tallest peaks in the world. And then we're going to race to sea level. And, um, I grabbed a bunch of mountaineering books and I'm reading about Ed Visters and I got done with one of the books.

And I said, um, you know, I'm a pretty persistent guy and I could see me pushing beyond where I should push and probably, uh, not returning. And, and, um, I went and did Aconcongua and I was, um, I was, um, I was, um, I was really close to summoning and there was a lightning storm and I had to fight myself to not just go for it and get it done.

Cause I was so close. So I think you have to know what kind of person you are when you get into these situations. Cause you could be your own worst enemy. No, right. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, a lot of that comes through experience. You've done, you know, how many different type of endurance things. So you've got to, you've got to, just life has been an end.

Right. And, and, and he said it, I mean, like endurance and persistence has taught me that it works, but it might actually be an enemy. And, and right. But with everything you do, there's gotta be a risk analysis. So once you realize that, uh, John Kennedy jr. There, uh, could, could flip the plane and not know it, you, that might not have been a risk you were aware of beforehand.

So that, that changes your calculus, right? Yeah, I know. I know. The instructor did not tell me we could be flying upside down and not be aware of it. I, but, but you know what? It's good. And it's good to know there are companies like global rescue who, uh, pay the insurance. Cause you may end up in a jam, especially if you're Joe or me or any of us who go out and put ourselves in the, in these things.

Um, but in the meantime, go check out Spartan up podcast .com. You'll find out more about this, more about global rescue. Uh, and you'll find out more about our other podcasts too. We've referred to some of the other people we've talked to incredible people. That's where you're going to find them. And if you have some extra time, stop at a Colonel and I's interactive corner on the website, you'll get a real kick out of it.

Back to the corner. You get a real kick out of it. Cool. Backing you in a corner. concordant yeah. Wow. Yeah.