Boyd and Bronwyn Varty – Track Your Life - [Invest Like the Best, EP.99b]

Today’s conversation is a continuation of my discussion on applying the lessons of tracking animals in the wild to tracking in your own life. I encourage to listen to that episode first. In this second part, Boyd’s sister Bronwyn joins and offers perspective on business and life. Given that Boyd and Bron grew up in this wild place, their perspective on the world is refreshing and very different. We discuss a wide range of things, But the section on restoration near the end is just phenomenal stuff. Please enjoy part two of my conversation with the Varty family. For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag Show Notes 1:21 - (First Question) – Concept of shame and the role it plays in the lives of the people that visit 3:11 – Bron’s take on shame and if this is uniquely male issue 5:15 – How the Varty’s think about the concept of presence, and time with Nelson Mandela 13:34 – Selfishness as an impediment to presence 20:26 – Tending the cup 20:37 – Life is not a zero-sum game 23:15 – How they run the reserve as a business 30:18 – Importance of motivation as a business 33:55 – Cultivating a culture that makes a business a family 40:15 – How they help other family businesses 45:29 – The idea of restoration as a business and legacy 51:23 -Restoration model in investment 53:49 – The age of restoration will be born on the age of information 54:48 – Places that have given Varty’s deep connections (other than Africa) 1:00:46 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Bron Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

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• 0:36Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Hello and welcome, everyone. I'm Patrick O'Neal and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Patrick O'Neal is the CEO of O'Neal Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Neal Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of O'Neal Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

• 1:22Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Today's conversation is a continuation of my discussion on applying the lessons of tracking animals in the wild to tracking in your own life. I encourage you to listen to yesterday's episode first. In this second part, Boyd's sister Bronwyn joins and offers perspective on business and life. Given that Boyd and Bron grew up in this wild place, their perspective on the world is refreshing and very different. We discuss a wide range of things, but the section on restoration near the end is just phenomenal stuff. Please enjoy part two of my conversation with the Varty family.

• 1:53Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  So we were having a conversation at lunch and I just don't want to, I don't want to lose this thread or this track, so to speak, which is some of the common things that you both see when you're working with people, whether they come here or whether it's somewhere else. And we were talking about shame as an interesting concept and problem that people deal with. I think it'd be fun to talk about some of the problems, actually, and the common threads you see across people with these problems. So I'd love to just get your perspective on, on the notion of shame and the role that it plays.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  Shame and guilt are definitely two of the primary things that people are working with. If the culture is always presenting you with ideals of what you should be, and everyone you've been around has been playing to those ideals, then one of the natural byproducts of not living into the ideal is a certain kind of shame. That is almost like, even if you haven't been like particularly shamed, it's just there, underlying. There's something you should be that you aren't. So that's one I see a lot. And you know, if you just look at the, the roles that men are presented

• 2:58Speaker 03

  with, and usually like male shame tends to be more around the presentation of roles, whereas what I've seen is that female shame is usually because of more some kind of incident, something that happened, some kind of abuse that happened, some kind of sexual abuse that happened, something like that creates a lot of shame. And that happens in men too, but it's also very prevalent in the cultural roles that have been presented. So, you know, the minute, and where's the most classic one, the role of provider. And the minute that the role of provider is not met, then some kind of shame flows into it. And all of those ideals that the culture presents you to be, you're never

• 3:40Speaker 03

  really allowed to be yourself. And so that's one of the primary places.

• 3:44Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I wonder how, Bron, how you see this present itself most often. It was kind of interesting to see the two of you guys. Team up, so to speak, talking to people, kind of diagnosing first and then sussing out. So is this one that you see that you think is, you know, more specific to men? Just curious your take on this idea.

• 4:03Speaker 04

  I think that for men in particular, they have such a limited, their roles are so limited. So as picking up from where Boyd was saying on providing, not only is the role limited, but then to sort of compound that, the actual, whatever the role is, is even dialed down even more. So for example, not only do you have to be a provider, but the only way to provide normally in our culture for a man is through protection or money. And that in itself now limits, not only do you have a limited role that you have to try and be, but also the way to provide is limited as well. So I think the place where the shame comes in is that it's actually, you could be providing

• 4:44Speaker 04

  in a completely different way, but no one acknowledges it and no one sees it. And that not being seen, again, layers the shame, particularly for men. And we as women, and I think as a culture, are very programmed into what a man needs to be. And therefore, not only does, as a guy, are you, well, the work that we've done, not only do the guys arrive having a very specific idea of what they need to be, that idea is incredibly limited, then it's limited even further by how to live up to the ideal. And then compounded with all of that, the people that surround them are supporting that even stronger. Because as a wife, no one would put any sort of, some of the work we've done is, for example,

• 5:29Speaker 04

  husband would come home and because maybe financially he's not providing, he's considered not to be providing at all. But he may have been providing in a completely different way of sharing his time, or taking adventure, or expanding the family in a different way. And that's where you start to get the imbalance. So that would be my take.

• 5:48Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  We haven't talked a ton about, a lot of our conversations centered around some of these words that seem, they're hard because they're so layered and they're so abstracted that it almost becomes like meaningless. Like take a word like consciousness or something, or purpose, or some of these big ideas, which I think can turn some people off or shut them down a little bit because they're expecting like some sort of, you know, magical woo woo nonsense. But I've been very impressed by the like the layers of depth to which you guys have thought about some of this stuff. And one of these ideas that you hear most often is presence, be more present, attend to the moment, like all these kind of nice sounding things that unfortunately has gotten said so much that I think it's been denigrated. But I'd love to explore this. We were talking, Boyd and I were talking a bit about it at lunch.

• 6:32Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  What that actually means and the effect that it can have on people is so powerful. So I'd love to spend a little bit of time hearing how you both think about this concept of presence.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  The only feedback I can give you is that when you have the opportunity to sit with someone who's truly in presence, there's no debate in your mind anymore. So I think the biggest thing for me is that we as a culture don't even have a place to peg it. But the day that I was lucky enough to sit with Nelson Mandela, I was very clear on what presence was. And the hard part about it is that it's completely wordless. It is a felt experience and it hits you right between the eyes when you feed it. So that's the first piece that I'd definitely share.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Sorry, there's an elephant making quiet noises in the background. I'm not sure if we picked up on the microphone.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I have been thinking a lot about the notion of power through presence. And to me, what that is, or what I have come to see is, and in some ways, I guess, One of my first teachers of this were lions and we spoke about this on the other podcast we did. But you know, when a lion rests, it rests. When the evening starts to cool, it stands up and because of the cool air on its body, it stretches and it starts to move. And when a lion hunts, it hunts. And when a lion goes to kill a buffalo, it goes from eighteen hours of the deepest sleep you've ever seen to the most intensity.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  And then it will go after this animal that's three times its weight and size, that has horns that can throw it miles through the air, that could kill it. And it hunts it with an intensity and it kills it. And the focus and the intensity that goes into that is absolutely unbelievable. And then when the pride feeds, it's every lion for itself. They're the only sociable cat. They greet each other, they bond, they hunt together. But when they feed, their ears go back, their teeth go up, and it sounds like someone started a dirt bike in the bush. It's rrr, rrr, rrr. And if another lion encroaches on where that lion is feeding, they smack each other. And that's the time of feeding. And then straight afterwards, they stand up from that and they rub up against each other. They greet and they go to sleep.

• 8:53Speaker 03

  And when I think about the feuds that can form over a family dinner and then linger for weeks and years afterwards, studies people, you need to watch lions feed. But what it started to become to me was access to what the moment is asking for. And the cultural ideal of power is in men is like strength, hardness, domination, the ability to subjugate your own feelings and needs. And I'm like, yeah, I'm down with all of that stuff. If that's what the moment's asking for. I want to have access to the harder parts of myself. I want to know that if the moment is asking me to get in a fight, I can get in a fight. But I also want to know that on the other side of that, if the moment is asking for tenderness,

• 9:39Speaker 03

  I'm not afraid of that. Or if the moment is asking for me to, whatever the moment is asking me for, I can drop into it. So powerful presence for me became like a movement around a wheel into what the moment was asking for. And that, to me, is the core of presence, your ability to be at one with what the moment requires. And you know, Bronwyn spoke about Mandela. When Mandela was in prison, he came to stay here with us after he got out of prison and we had time with him. And he told us a story about when he was in prison. He worked incredibly hard to learn the language of his oppressor Africans. He built a connection with his warder in his cell block and he created a lifelong bond with him.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  He worked well to be polite to all of the guards. He created an energy of connection. Then one day a guard came in who he saw was clearly a bully. And he switched straight out of that mode and he went straight at that guard. And they got involved in an intense verbal exchange and Mandela gave him a totally different type of energy. A very direct, a very intense, very aggressive energy. And immediately the guard got into line with, basically with Mandela. And we saw it when he came here, you know, he was staying here with us and he was remarkably present. We would take him breakfast in bed. He would eat his food and then he would go for a walk around the garden. And he was in a period of rest and recovery as he came out of prison.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  And then when he would, would sit and talk to you, he would be totally with you, open, engaged. We were a white family that he had come to stay with. And he would listen and you would, you would feel yourself go into his energy field. Then one day, there was a thing called the cadessa talks. And the cadessa talks were just as the country was going into democracy. And they were talks about how they would have the talks that led into the elections. And the right wing of the South African government drove an armored car into the middle of these talks. Country was on the brink of war. Mandela walked out of his house and he screamed at my father. He said, "You will get me a helicopter. I need to go and be with my people."

• 11:52Speaker 03

  And it was the first time we had seen this other side. And my father said to him, "I won't do that because if you go there, some fool will shoot you." And with everything that was going on, he was able to be so deeply in the moment that he was like, "That's a good point." You know, he just, and then we organized the plane for him to go and he flew there. But, you know, he would meet someone who had been in the apartheid government. We'd meet them in the hallway, greet them by name, speak to them in their own language, inquire about their family. And by being with the person very deeply.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  It became very clear out of every exchange who was leading, you know, not out of trying to dominate them, out of being with them very deeply. And that was a, it was just a different way of seeing true presence work. But because by then he was president, he could have dominated, but he created this deeper kind of connection. I don't know if that makes sense.

• 12:48Speaker 04

  I think to also add to that is no role and no agenda. I think that's the biggest thing about presence. You don't arrive with a particular role and you don't arrive with a particular agenda. And that, that's a way of, that's a practice you can get into. And every single time you're meeting somebody, you're just arriving.

• 13:07Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  One of the things that I, and I'll project my own kind of experience this past week a little bit, can't help it. But the word that I've thought a lot about and talked a lot about with you guys is, is this notion of selfishness. And like selfishness as an impediment to presence, because oftentimes you've got these sort of ideals or these norms. And when you violate those things, that's when shame and other, these other kind of interesting emotions come in. And oftentimes the thing that you want to do, which is more in alignment with kind of the wild self, as you put it, is just very different from what anyone else does, or what the playbook is, or what the expectations are. And oftentimes, at least for me, that manifests as a feeling of selfishness, like I'm, I'm doing it for me and not for somebody else.

• 13:47Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  So I'll generalize an exercise that we did together, which was this notion of, you know, more for me might mean less for other people. And maybe hear your thoughts on why that might be completely inaccurate, even though it seems like at surface level, that if you're taking, you're taking from someone and it's like a zero sum game. I'd love to hear your reaction to, to that idea.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  One of the things that I've seen is quite often what happens is that we've been so in everyone else's business, so in the role, so in the responsibility, so in all of these ways we should be, that there's usually a period of coming back to what you actually need. A lot of people don't even know what they need. So the first movement is getting in touch with what you actually need, what actually feeds you, what actually you want to do. And that can appear selfish at first, but you need the space to get in touch and work out what you actually want. But once you've done that, and you start to actually be able to follow what you actually want and get what you actually want.

• 14:48Speaker 03

  And what I experienced is people who actually get in touch with what's calling them with. What they deeply need with what's being asked of and start to live on the trail of that thing and nourish themselves while immediately they start wanting to serve. Immediately they start wanting to share it. Immediately they start wanting to give people what they have. It's this very strange thing. It's all of us in scarcity are trying to like grab everything that we can. But the minute you actually come into the abundance of being connected to with with something that's actually deeply speaking to you and calling to you, we switch and the human inclination then becomes to share and to offer and to give. And it comes

• 15:33Speaker 03

  out of this feeling of abundance and enough that only comes when you actually get out of what you thought you wanted into what you actually want.

• 15:41Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Could you give an example or two? Just maybe you know, you've seen and talked to so many people. It's helpful to have examples because the ideas make sense, but to hear an example of somebody that's living a certain way and realizes something and then, you know, chases it would be would be interesting and helpful.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Well, here's a really common one. I'm very committed to not being selfish and to serving others because serving others is what I've been told a good person does. And so I start to give to other people. But I hit a point in myself where I feel overrun, where I feel like I don't have something to give, where I feel like I don't have the energy to give. But at that moment, instead of being in touch with myself and being like, I don't have anything to give right now, I keep giving because that's what a good person does. You know, that's what you have to do. That's you've got to keep giving like giving is what is what is the ideal of what a good person does.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  And this is where all people's good boys and good girls and compliance has come out and value. Like if I'm giving you something, I'm valuable, I'm worth something to you. And I cross my own boundary a thousand times to be nice and to be good and to do for others and to be a good person. And you know what happens? Inside myself, relationships become dangerous. And so

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Either what I wanna do, instead of being around people because I'm gonna have to give to them is isolate. Or I start shutting down opportunities for genuine friendships. Because my only way of being in relationship is to give to you to make sure you're okay.

• 17:14Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Depleting.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  It's depleting. So because I don't have access to just being present enough to say, I can't do that right now. I need to go and recharge myself. Then actually, less starts to be available. And I don't wanna go places because I'm gonna have to give to everyone. And I don't wanna explore a new friendship because someone's gonna want more than I have to give. You know, the other side of that is the people who are able to say, I can't do that right now. Or the people who find a genuine no, you know, it looks selfish, they say, no, when they actually mean no. And they learn to to value themselves and take care of themselves, well, they start to get gas in the tank. And then when they are with you, you know, they really wanna be there. When they do do something, they authentically wanna do it for you.

• 17:59Speaker 03

  When they don't, you can trust that they'll say to you, I can't do that right now. And as they restore themselves, they start to serve. Because that's they start to give, but not out of the role or the obligation. They start to give from this genuine wellspring of desire to give. And the feeling of being with someone who's there with no role and no agenda, they're there because they really want to be there, they want to be doing for you, is just unquestionably different. And we were exploring this the other day. It's here's another classic. The guy who is providing for his family, he's providing for his extended family. And he has to handle the business, handle his family life, handle his personal life, handle all these dimensions.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  And he just wants to get some time for himself. He's just and so many of the guys I work with just want some solitude for themselves. They've got all these responsibilities. So when he's with the kids. It's time to be with the kids. It's in that box. It's time for that role to be activated. He's there, but he wishes. And he's saying to his wife, okay, I'll look after the kids. But a part of him is desperate for some solitude. She doesn't hear what she's saying because she lives with him. She knows his energy field. And what she feels is that he's there and kind of wishing to be somewhere else. So what does she do? She feels that he wishes he was somewhere else. She says, you need to give more time to the kids. You need to give more time to the kids.

• 19:29Speaker 03

  Whereas if he could actually go and get the solitude that he needed, charge his battery up a little bit, actually know what he needed, go and get it. Well, then he's going to go back into that. And when he's with the kids, what she's going to feel is that he's actually there. And he has what he needs. And the presence is going to speak, not the words. And it's just a different thing.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  I think the other thing is languaging. So the word selfishness, even just saying it immediately makes it feel like something's gone awry. And when I work with a lot of women, and this is a classic issue for mothers and women, is I call it tending the cup. And the way I just re-language stuff. So if you can create a language within a family or within a partnership of tending the cup, and the idea is that each of us have a cup inside of us. And at some point, if you take the time to tend the cup, the cup begins to fill. And ultimately, it overflows. And ultimately, as your cup starts to overflow, you move into a state of abundance.

• 20:31Speaker 04

  If you're in a situation where you have, in your view or in your mind, you have a limited amount in the cup, you immediately start to analyze where you're going to put what in terms of time and energy, and you move into that scarcity of energy. And what you find is that if in the beginning, if you just take the time to really get the cup optimized, to tend to the cup, it it starts to overflow. And the minute that starts to happen, you have more all of the time. And you in a place where you have an abundance of space, you have an abundance of an ability to be able to share in a really authentic way.

• 21:10Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  We ended that exercise with this idea that the opposite was true. So more for me is actually somehow ends up being more for others. But it's still illogical. Like you need to experience that for a while first before you can really see it happen.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  We are the only people who are exhausted and then lash ourselves. And the ideal of the culture is, you know, the less deep you get, the more caffeinated you are, the more busy you are, is better. So I wanted to go back to, we think we're doing more in that type of arena. If we can be up earlier, drink more coffee, stay up later, do more. And the actual output of quality of presence is just going down all the time. Whereas if we actually just listen to ourselves, rested when we were tired, worked when we were inspired to work, ate when we were hungry, there would be a more natural rhythm to it. And I really believe it would be, we would have more to give rather than being in like some mad drive.

• 21:58Speaker 04

  I think this is going to trigger so many people who are listening because as you're talking, they're like, you don't understand my pressures. But I think the first question to those guys is to say, what is more?

• 22:11Speaker 04

  Just let that hang there for a minute. Like, what is more to somebody? And until you already cared, before you get to needs and you're debating about selfishness, the question is, what is more? And you as an individual have to decide what that more is for you.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  We think Bronwyn's right. Everyone thinks more, but what we're actually looking for is more of what we really want. More time, more meaningful connection with people, probably more quality time with family, more, more freedom, more solitude, more wildness, more night skies, more, that's the more we're actually looking for. More laughs, more time playing with great people, more time creating something for the, for the sake of creating something amazing.

• 22:55Speaker 04

  So many people said to us, like, more money. That's where most people start. I just want more money.

• 22:59Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Because money is like an option on everything else.

• 23:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:01Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Money somehow allows you to do all those other things.

• 23:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, the guys we work with, a lot of people say, well, if I could have more, I'd have more money. And then we say, okay, go underneath that. All right.

• 23:11Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  What would you do with it?

• 23:12Speaker 04

  So you've got all this money, right? Now you have more money. Now what? Oh, and that's where you just see people start to go like, well, I don't, I don't actually. Well, I'd, and that's where the process begins.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  Anyway, you know, that's where we, that's where we're told what to want by the culture. Keeps telling us if you can get the money thing sorted, everything else will be fine. And you know, it makes it easier, but it doesn't sort everything out.

• 23:37Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  One of the things I wanted to spend time on is, is the way that you guys run La Deluzi as a business, which is also as a family. One of the interesting things watching that this week is this notion of scarcity and abundance. Again, that most business operates with the scarcity mindset of like, we're going to create something. We're going to capture some percentage of that. That's our profit and you know, less expense is always good. And it seems like the way that you kind of think about the business is quite different than that. And very counterintuitive, even contrarian relative to most how, how most businesses are run. So maybe starting at like first principles, what the core philosophy or ethos is when it comes to scarcity, abundance, experience, and how you think about the business.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. And there's been evolutions of it for sure. I mean, I told you the, when it was still the three mud huts and it was my father and uncle and mother who did everything.

• 24:29Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Yeah, the business plan.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, one, one day my, my uncle rolled in and he's, he's kind of a, an eccentric character. He was burnt out taking the six guests who would come down on the weekend. And then it became the guest there all week. He was burnt out dealing with guests. So he said, how do we get less guests? So my father said to him, well, we double our price and then less people will come. He said, double the price and burnt out. We doubled the price and people kept coming. So, I mean, there was like, it was in the early beginnings, there was not a lot of sense in, in strategy. It was just like a make it up as you go along. But then the idea emerged and the first movements of it were when this place was still, it hadn't quite got going yet. The arrival here of this guy, Kenton Lee, who I had mentioned previously.

• 25:11Speaker 03

  And Ken said, if you want this place to work, you need to partner with the land. You need to think of the animals as your kin and you need to make sure that the local people in this area participate. They must be a part of an economy of wildlife. They must be tied to making sure that these areas remain wild.

• 25:30Speaker 04

  He also showed us that it wasn't about gender and it wasn't about race. It was about us as a species, almost the shared humanity. Engage with a shared humanity. And I think that was a amazing piece as well.

• 25:44Speaker 03

  And one of the early philosophies that emerged out of that, those principles, were the idea of the Londelosi family. And that everyone here was a family who was reliant, who was at our core. Doesn't matter the mess that the country was in, everything that was going on. We all here, from all different races, from cultural backgrounds, we were one family being provided for by nature. Ultimately, it was this natural world. It was the leopards, it was the trees, it was the, the, the nature here that was looking after all of us. And we were united by that. Nature was caring for us. And so what was born out of that was the Londelosi model. And then about 12 years ago,

• 26:26Speaker 03

  there was a shift in that model where we really made a decision that said, our reason for being is to uplift society and nature, is to uplift our area and to protect the natural world and.

• 26:42Speaker 04

  And ultimately to become a quiet global force for good.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  And that notion and, and people, you know, said stuff to us like, oh, so you're a social enterprise. And we didn't really know what that meant, but we knew our reason for being was to uplift local people, to protect the natural world, and to give people moving transformational experiences. So every, everyone who touched Londelosi, we wanted them to be uplifted in some way. And that meant that we made decisions from that place. And it was a very different jump off point. And it meant that we would do some things that were not good business, so to speak. They cost money. We didn't know if we were going to get a return. We were going to put some things in place, but they were right. And man, we have seen the rewards of that. So like, I mean, one example, the Tracker Academy.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  Alex approached us to have a base for the Tracker Academy here. Now, for most businesses, you would say, oh, that's extra people on site. They're going to use extra resources. It's going to be another vehicle out on the land. And there's no rental payment or anything from it. So it's, it doesn't really work for us. But the Tracker Academy came here. Graduates who went through that program started to enter our ranks. And what we got was world-class trackers and people who had been through an amazing program here at Londelosi. So the unregistable human capital of it just lifted it. And those trackers who came through that program gave guests incredible experiences. They found leopards when other people couldn't find leopards. They interacted with guests.

• 28:15Speaker 03

  They had been well mentored, so they had this amazing connection. And it became a part of our story. The Good Work Foundation, we wanted our staff to have access to world-class education. And then we wanted their families to have access to world-class education. And so we set off to create these hubs of excellence, learning centers around the reserve.

• 28:37Speaker 04

  And not just knowledge-based. I think that was the other thing, that these centers, you can have knowledge acquisition in them. Mathematics, English, science. But more than that, you also have a very deep human model as well. So that you arrive there and the idea was to create somebody who could compete on a global stage and could go through a holding process. So if there was any trauma, if there was any abuse, if there was any, there's also a human factor that came in. So there was the wisdom that is innately African and very us. There is a model there that as Africans, we are very passionate about. But we also twin that with the excellence of a first world country. And those two, that ancient wisdom and modern technology fusing was at the center of that particular idea.

• 29:21Speaker 03

  And at that time, we provided some funding for it. It's not core at all to running a safari business. But what we ended up with was staff who put themselves through amazing training programs, staff whose children went to these Centres for Excellence. Some of those children came and worked here, beautifully well educated, had been uplifted by Londo Lozi. We had guests who were coming on safari, who ended up teaching out in the villages. We had guests who ended up donating to the cause and changing their whole reason for coming out here towards that type of philanthropy. So there were just tons of unexpecteds that started to come out of it. And you couldn't put it in a return business model.

• 30:06Speaker 03

  It was heart centered at first. And then I should also say that with all of that, we've still remained rigorously disciplined about things we were doing. It was not warm and fluffy, but we understood that actually our guest would get so much more out of being here and having encounters with different dimensions of what was possible. Education, tracking academies, a movement, the restoration of the land. It was, it was making us a stronger product, although it was not at all core to running safaris.

• 30:37Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  One of the things your dad said last night, we were talking about this, is the frustration at the lack of the ability to measure so many of the things that matter here. And, you know, I've seen a hundred million investment pitch decks and this world is obsessed with measurables and returns on investment and numbers, basically. And I was thinking about it this morning after the conversation and you realize that if you look back at the biggest, what, what now are the biggest companies or whatever, there are often no measurables at the beginning. You couldn't begin to project out like what was going to happen. Maybe you could tell a story, but it never turned out that way. And that maybe in investing in business, not often enough, there's this tyranny of metrics. We're almost slaves to these metrics all the time. And that many of the best opportunities might be, what was your phrase earlier, something

• 31:21Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  like compass rather than culture, applied in the business sense, which is just like, go the direction that feels like it plays to the strength of what you can offer to other people and be willing to go past a spreadsheet or, you know, a cash flow model or whatever. And you'll come up with things that you could have never expected.

• 31:37Speaker 04

  Particularly in human capital.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's talk about that.

• 31:40Speaker 04

  Like the knock on effect of human capital and where that can take you is it's really hard to try and track that metrics along because the child you invest in today, ten years from now does one thing and then twenty years from now returns back to London. It's it's it just has so many knock on effects that you have to track over big periods of time.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  And you know, one of the things that's popping for me is if you said when they started this business in after the death of my grandfather in sixty nine, three mud huts, you know, on a bankrupt cattle farm out at the edges of apartheid South Africa, one day this will be a global iconic luxury safari brand, supporting about twenty thousand local people in the area with the impact back into the villages in the area, providing the fourteen thousand guests who come here over the course of the year with incredible transformational experiences and have a forty percent repeat business, you wouldn't have gone for that investment. No, no effort, yeah.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, but the principles that we had for well, that my that our parents started with was, you know, the first guests who came down here, drove their vehicles down and stayed in the mud huts, we had a very simple experience, a very simple idea, which was make sure that they have an incredibly fun time and make sure that you showcase this place as best you can for them. And then when it came time to restore the land, again, it was, there was no return idea on it. It was just like the right thing to do. And so we made these decisions from a different place all the time and we made them because we loved it and we believed in it and we felt what happened when, you know, the simplest thing, when you just connected people with the opportunity to be

• 33:27Speaker 03

  a part of something. And so it was so metrically opaque all the way through. But if you look at it now, we still do the same thing. We give people amazing experiences and we've evolved that. We connect them with the natural world. We allow them to participate in a movement. And those principles are principles that are like almost principles of the human heart. And so things we were talking about is what we actually want. And it's a different way of doing business. And it's a different jump off point for doing business. And at the core, I think of what this place is delivering now is we are working in the field of abundance. So we want people. To be immersed into different scopes of abundance.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  So the abundance of time, the abundance of nature, the abundance of experience, the abundance of tracking, the abundance of, you know, wild encounters. And, and once those things are in place, the, the other stuff sort of takes care of itself.

• 34:28Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  One of the things that you always hear people say when painting an ideal of company culture is this word family, that it's always a positive to say, you know, the company is like a family, you know, the employees are like a family. You really see that here in incredible ways. And I'm curious how you deliberately build that, how you cultivate that. Like, what are the keys, the key ways that you interact with, with the people that work here, the community, how you recruit, like really any dimension of this I'd be interested in. Because I think that that is maybe the most powerful thing that I'm taking away from, from the business. I was with Ranius around the campfire at night, uh, that our lead tracker. And he pulled me aside, kind of out of nowhere, almost like surprised me. And he said, you know, you, you're in a family business, right? And you're a business owner.

• 35:13Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I said, yeah. And he said, okay, something really important to watch for the rest of the week is to make sure that you treat everybody in your, but not just in your business, but that interacts with your business like the Vardis treat the people here. Because the transparency with which they operate and the openness with which they operate create an alignment between everyone in that community and, and the core business, which looks like one thing, but it really, like you said, it affects a lot of people. So he was kind of shaking me, you know, like he wanted to make sure I got this message loud and clear. I certainly did. I'm curious to hear your, your reaction to that and how you think about maybe being deliberate about it versus just being natural, because sometimes it doesn't come naturally.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  I think, I think as usual, Ranius has nailed it on the head. One of the core principles that we, we came back with was open, transparent and honest. That's always been at the center of what we do. And then I think the other thing which is probably not so known is we're not afraid to have the hard conversations. You know, in any family, it's not always warm and fuzzy. And I think that's maybe the big differentiating. We're not trying to be nice all the time. If you, as one of the Longlozy family members, go against the values of the family, then there's a sit down that happens. And there's a real explanation as to that's not how we do things around here. There are values and either you're going to be within the family values and you you're

• 36:41Speaker 04

  welcome to stay. But if you don't believe in those values, then it's time for you to find somewhere else to go that will suit you better. It's not about right or wrong. It's just about being willing to hold very strongly and not compromise on those values.

• 36:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a bit of a funny thing, though, because one of the things I would say is we don't have any rules. You know, so so what it's a funny thing that is like, we don't have any rules and our whole thing is this is what we do. We connect with people, we give people amazing experiences and express yourself. You go and do it. Figure out how to do that. They figure out how to do that. And very quickly, the culture of the place starts to regulate itself and starts to create itself. And so and actually, one of our rules is break rules. Break rules to give people a good time all the time. Do nothing by systematization. Do nothing by route, because we we want people to genuinely participate in what you're interested in, in what you want to do with them as a guide or a tracker. And what Bronwyn's saying is that within that culture, if someone violates something

• 37:41Speaker 03

  in there, it very quickly gets handled by the rest of the community. And it's not that they Self-regulating. Yeah, it's totally self-regulating. And okay, and we want people to have fun with our guests, but we're rigorously disciplined. And I can't exactly tell you how we how that happens, but it it happens. A lot of the recruitment, all of the recruitment is done within the family almost. So, you know. We hired a lot of people who had no service backgrounds, but they were our type of people and they were interested in being here. And the rangers who come, a lot of them don't have never studied guiding experience. We'll bring them in if they're the right type of person. So then-

• 38:21Speaker 04

  A lot of them are way overqualified as well.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  Within the the communities around here, we hire within the families. So the families bring, and then the families regulate how we operate in this space. And so it's it's pretty unusual. Then there's other things like we feed people. We feed people who come here. If a delivery person comes here, we feed them. If we have to get someone in to fix a air conditioner, we feed them. You know, and it's it's a funny thing, but on New Year's Day, when the whole country's shut down and you make a call to the one guy who knows how to fix this one thing on an air conditioner that's broken down on a hot summer's day, and he gets in his van and he drives out here, it's not because, you know, you pay his bill on time. He feels connected to the place. So there's things like that. We create gatherings outside of the work that we do.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  So people work and then we create moments where where people can gather to socialize together, to connect, to talk about things.

• 39:14Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  What's an example of one of those?

• 39:15Speaker 03

  You know, we do a thing called the 2020 walk around, where once a month, everyone gathers and we go and do something in the village of Landalosi. And it's an act of service. Although people work here, it's an act of service because we also live together. And we go and beautify the space we live in. We go plant trees together and then afterwards we eat some food together. And it doesn't have to happen, but it's one of those things that you do it enough. There's little moments of interaction, you know? My father and mother, myself, we end up planting trees with people in departments we maybe don't get to. We end up, you know, doing something that's outside of the realms of what everyone does every day and there there's a moment of connection there. So-

• 39:58Speaker 04

  And then there's also this sort of your organizational structure that you run. You have a particular job, like you're head of marketing or you- Camp manager. And then there's a totally different structure, which is based on elders and the role of elders. And so in a very African way, we overlay, you may perhaps today be a camp manager, but the butler who's working with you is quite a bit older and he may be on the elders team. So then he would advise in a different scenario. So it's sort of the two, there's the organizational business structure, but then overlaid with that is our African structure, which has a whole lot of different roots and the role of each person and how that plays out.

• 40:38Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I know you've spent some time with even like as specific as families that are in business together, multi-generational businesses, you know, yourself are an example of that. I'm curious to hear a bit about that experience and those interactions and maybe the, the most common things that those groups are wrestling with or problems that they've come up against and how you like this, the, the process of working through that with them.

• 40:59Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, I think at the core of it is to first of all, create a space where the family can exchange roles and really communicate. And I think our first role is just to, to really provide an area, particularly if you're working together. And, you know, in our situation, one minute are you talking, my mom will often say, are we talking mother and daughter now, are we talking sort of head of landlauzi, owner and head of branding? Are we talking, so again, it's to language, first of all, to create a common language for that family business and then slowly start to delve into the areas of role clarity. And then deeper into that, what is the underlying, what is the underlying vision? And I don't even want to use the word vision.

• 41:42Speaker 04

  It's what is the underlying intention as a family? What do you as a family really want to achieve beyond just making, you know, this an economic success? What is it generationally, legacy wise?

• 41:58Speaker 04

  What is it that you guys wanted to stand for? What is it that you guys are passionate about? And really getting a harmonization of energy within the family. Because then ultimately, everyone starts to sort of format. And you get this beautiful interconnection between, between the different partners, different places, et cetera. So everything that we do is, is underlaid with hard business tactics and skills and basics, what I would call business basics, that a consultant would maybe take you through. But then overlaid with that is, is much more of a, what would nature do? What would the energetics do? And, and there's sort of an interconnection between those two things.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  For me, it took me a while to find where I fit, but it became very obvious that, and again, it came down to the language, there were certain places where the business needed impact, where I would be placed. And I'm never going to be the sort of person who's going to roll, going to head up, going to be ahead of department. I'm just not ahead of department. I'm, I go in, I'm, I'm impact, create movement, and then you've got to take me out because my attention span is bad and I'm not going to, I'm not a manager. You know, so it was learning like where to place people. And again, not to be locked in the roles of, okay, now because you're the children, you will take over. What's the business asking for? What, you know, what skills do you have? Where do you?

• 43:18Speaker 03

  And so one of the things is that, you know, I was asked to go out and gather ideas and gather vision and bring it back because it fits and it, it wouldn't have been right to say, you know, here is what you will now be. So you've got to find out what everyone has and let them bring what they have to the table.

• 43:34Speaker 04

  And for a lot of families that we work with, it's also just watching another way. You know, in a, in a normal situation, people would say, you know, Boyd is the son. He should be, you know, the, the CEO. This is his role. He should step into the shoes of the father and there should be this whole dynasty thing rolling out. And we just haven't, it just hasn't gone that way because of personality. So again, it's bringing a family back to their, sort of their innate knowing within themselves. Because if you bring everybody home to their unique contribution. Then the family as a whole begins to understand, okay, as a tribe, here's where our real strengths are.

• 44:12Speaker 04

  Here's where, and then you start to let everybody re and co-create and reinvent what it is to be the CEO or the wife or whatever.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  One of the things that we learnt about ourselves is that we're creative. We want to create something new all the time and that can be incredibly disruptive, actually. Cause we wanna, we wanna say yes and do new things. So we had to realise what we needed was a management team. And we have an amazing management team now who were super grounded in the operations. And that could allow us to create. And then they would say to us, you guys are now trying to do too many things. So tell us what the next innovation is, you guys get it going and then hand it over to us to run. But don't just innovate and innovate and innovate and ask us to keep picking, picking it up. That's not gonna work. And we had to learn, okay, what we need to bring us into balance?

• 45:06Speaker 03

  And where to say no? And, you know, I think maybe we've said this, but the functionality of the family was our ability to keep changing roles. You know, they say a functional family is that people in the family can play different roles. And the definition of dysfunction is you can only play one role. And so we had to learn how to not be encumbered by roles and to let actually what was deeper, which I guess is everything we're talking about. We had to find what we uniquely had to offer and bring that to the fore. And we had to get help doing that. I don't think we would have found our way without the arrival of someone else who could facilitate a conversation amongst us that said, you know, don't try and make him that. You don't try and be that.

• 45:51Speaker 03

  Let's find out what you have and then bring it and share what, share what's essential as opposed to this is now how, you know, as opposed to trying to impose a structure onto what it should be.

• 46:02Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  One of the things that would be fun to talk about is kind of to look to the future a little bit. And use, even though this may or may not happen, but use this idea of restoring an island, you know, off the coast of Mozambique. And the process that that would require as a means to explain kind of this business model, if you will, this restoration model of, of doing business. That would be a fascinating thing to hear about how you think about that, the decision to do it or not. And then if you were to do it, what that would look like, what the actual steps would be and how long it would take and what you would expect to see.

• 46:34Speaker 03

  It's almost like a restoration perpetuates itself. If people see what is possible, and the best example is one that you heard a little bit about earlier in the week, our friends in the Pantanal, who are doing the most incredible jaguar restoration project on a former cattle farm. And they've gone from being at war with the jaguars there, as the cattle farmers have been for years, to one of the most amazing places to go and see wild jaguars and starting to come into harmony with those animals. And as a result, that 50,000 hectares is going back to being wild. And all of the other creatures that live there are finding a home and people are going there and having amazing experiences. So it's, it perpetuates.

• 47:16Speaker 04

  The idea was this model was always sort of a open source shareware model. So the idea of the model that's been created at Longlozy is definitely replicable. And it's something that, that people could do anywhere. There's now almost a formula to it. And the, the byproduct is just, you know, I think that the biggest thing is conservation as a whole, if you move, if you think about how we have to try and save species and people get on a very specific track on that side of things, but it's still very individualistic. Whereas restoration is a returning of something of an island or of a wetland or where rivers rise. And it, it really is, I think, going to become, since we're all on the same planet and one

• 48:01Speaker 04

  planet together, it's sort of, if you talk about the future, it is the future of humanity is that at some point, we're going to have to start to look at, looking after those spaces. But how do we do it in a way that everybody wins? That's, that's the question.

• 48:16Speaker 03

  Well, and also I think you have to say, okay, in a, in a world where the numbers of people are just spiking, wild places are going to be valuable. And maybe that's the intrinsic value, a place where you can go and be in nature. Away from people is going to become more and more valuable. And I think what we've been saying is it's time for people to stop buying Picassos and football teams and start finding areas where they can restore and for that, those restoration projects to be, become what, what investors do with their extra money. So, you know, the island in Mozambique would be, it would be a place where people could come, where the island could be brought back to, the mangroves of the island could be protected,

• 49:00Speaker 03

  the atoll could be protected, the dugong, which is one of the last outposts of the dugong, could come back to life. A business, a functioning business that would produce returns could be brought to life there. A community could be uplifted. Learning centers could be placed in the surrounding area so that that community, out of the arrival at this beautiful asset of international travelers, could start to fund the education of learning centers in the area. So it just, you start to hit a whole lot of different markers. You have a high net worth family coming and having an amazing time. You have a landscape being restored. You have marine animals being saved. You have local people having access to education as a result.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  And it all comes out of the core understanding that protecting nature is going to be valuable going forward.

• 49:48Speaker 04

  I think even more, you know, we were having that debate, what is more? And I think the other piece of it is that if a high net worth family is looking to leave a legacy, and a legacy that is generational, and a legacy that can bring a family together so that, you know, the grandparents and the parents and the grandkids who are coming in, if they have a joint project that can be passed down, that has something that they can tangibly go and see and visit, I think there's a whole lot of returns there, just heart returns that we don't even know what that could hit. And the way that a grandfather and a grandson, or a grandmother and a grandson can connect and share something, like the dugong never gets old, the beach and a sunset never gets

• 50:32Speaker 04

  old, and the fact that at some level, that is the thing that will join the family across time, across continents. It is the thing that throughout all the legacy projects, that is the thing that the family will ultimately come together on. And I think that's also kind of a powerful thing, that I think the new millennial generation will value more than anything else, because they have everything else.

• 50:55Speaker 03

  We go there, the family goes there together to be involved in something that is not about growing the monetary value, but it's about being together, restoring a place, watching the landscape come back to life and actually doing that work together.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  That's a kind of return on investment that that people do not see on the balance sheet. But the families who we've seen who've been involved in restoration projects, they are bonded by by the work that they have done there in a way that they cannot be bonded by the investing of their money.

• 51:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, and their sixteen year old son and daughter, seventeen year old son and daughter have, from the minute they opened their eyes, been exposed to this natural phenomenon. And they are fundamentally moved. And if you speak to their parents, they'll say, this, at the beginning, this project may not have been the biggest return on investment, but what it has done personally for the family has just completely moved them into a different space.

• 51:55Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I'm smiling because the ultimate irony in all of this, I was talking with your dad about this last night, is that very often at the end of these things is a huge financial return. That that by doing things differently and building something truly unique and special, which itself is, it's unknown, can't measure the rate of return, you don't know what's going to happen, you don't know how long it's going to take, but at the end of that process, could be something that the only way that could be created is by taking that initial step with a mind towards restoration in place versus like, here's the model. And then at the end of that, you have an enormously valuable asset. And it will be fascinating to see, I would love to be a part of this happening somehow, if only by spreading the message. Wouldn't it be neat if that became

• 52:37Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  a common model, the restoration model of investment in places, following, you know, best practices that families like yours have figured out? I mean, that is like such an appealing concept to me.

• 52:48Speaker 03

  And I've been thinking about America, actually. I mean, I've been thinking about Africa, but I've been, what do people have to unite behind? What's our, we're going to the moon? What what is the thing that, what is the rallying call that will tie together this incredibly polarized world of ours to say, you know what, we're going to make? We're going to restore our country. And for these people who can, for these incredible businesses, for these thinkers to start to say, like, how do we take back and restore the wetlands of Louisiana? Who's going to restore the mountain ranges of the Sierras? Who's going to, who's going to go down to the Amazon and, and make that safe? And restore the sanctity of these wild places? Who's going to step up?

• 53:31Speaker 03

  And, you know, there've been people who are moving towards this, but I, I love the psyche of restoration. The idea that we can start to, you know, and what we've seen here is that if you partner with nature, it will come back. It can be restored. It can be brought back. And what it will do for our own well being. Say, you know, we're going to make our country pristine again. And it's going to have to come, it's not going to come out of politics. It's going to have to come from the incredible innovators in private sectors, starting to create pockets of restoration, pockets of light, and inviting people to participate in that. Somehow that's how the, the age of restoration will be born on the age of information.

• 54:16Speaker 03

  But if you restore a wild place, something happens emotionally to the people around it.

• 54:21Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Can you say a little bit more about that? What you just said, the age of restoration will be born on the age? That's an interesting idea.

• 54:26Speaker 03

  Okay, what do I believe? And Bron and I talk about this a lot. There is one of the largest social movement, unseen social movements in the world right now, is the desire to restore nature. But it's, it's not connected in some ways. No one has worked out how to fully tell the story of what we humanity could potentially do. I mean, it's a big idea, but I think that if someone, if, if people at the right levels can start this process and start inviting everyone to participate, and start providing avenues to participation in the restoration of the planet. And people want to do it.

• 55:05Speaker 03

  They just, if you could fly in a plane that spat out vapor instead of CO2, you would. So if, if the right people at the right level start working out how to say, participate, and here's how the restoration could start to be born.

• 55:21Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  It makes me think of a kernel of a conversation we had, and it would be a neat place to sort of lead people. Which is examples in your life, we were talking about India, just to jog your memory as one example, of places that you have been, natural places that they tend to be in cultures, that have given you this like deep intense feeling of connection and aliveness, other than Africa. Because I always, I always try to think in these conversations of like, what, what are things that people can take away, maybe go do, or think about doing with their families, or whatever. And you guys have been lucky to travel a lot of interesting places. So I would love a couple of examples of other places, maybe that have been, that they don't need to have been restored, maybe they've always been in good condition, but places that elicit this same sort of connection and feeling in you would be a great place

• 56:06Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  to end.

• 56:07Speaker 04

  Well, I think one we were talking about earlier is definitely Table Mountain, which is in Cape Town. And that, that is incredibly, it's one of the oldest mountains in the world. And it is magnificent on all levels. Another one would be Lake Titicaca in South America. There's a group of people there that are still living on floating islands made of reeds. And it's a really remarkably beautiful experience. They're still make the traditional boats and you can go out on this lake and it's crystal blue and it really hits you. It's magnificent. And then Machu Picchu is one. It is, it's got a lot of tourists. But if you can get your head around that side of things, it is still a remarkably, just

• 56:50Speaker 04

  the size of that mountain range. And the dynamic way that the clouds move and the light moves and the rainfall and the color green, it is a magnificent place. India is one as well. But you've got to find your way. India is more of a wild journey. It's more, it's more just a sheer adventure. And I think there's, it's just the color and the rawness and the in-your-face-ness of it that is totally, it just shifts you so aggressively out of your comfort zone that you find yourself immediately in a, in a transformation.

• 57:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm thinking of the Amazon. Absolutely. You know, if you sit still in the Amazon, life starts to claim you. Ants start to crawl on you, butterflies start to land on you, dragonflies start to, it's like the jungle starts to take you back the minute you become sedentary. That's one, the Atacama Desert, where it's just so dry. One of the driest places in the world where there's just so few people and you can feel, you know, one of those great silences we were talking about that, and stillness that is just so rare in the world. Then there's a place in Zimbabwe called Manapools, where the Zambezi Valley cuts right through it and you get this beautiful, ancient waterway, which has, which has an energy to it.

• 58:10Speaker 03

  And these floodplains, huge trees on them, elant. And there's a few, a little while ago, I spent some time up there. And I was in search of an owl called the palls fishing owl. And what's amazing about the palls fishing owl, it's one of the rarest birds on the planet. And it's rare because it's almost like it's allergic to any kind of human presence. Any kind of lights, the sound of engines, um, the sound of too many people, anything like that, the bird will move out of the area. And so when you're looking for a palls fishing owl, it's almost like you're looking for

• 58:51Speaker 03

  a totem of wildness, a place that tells you this is a place where not a lot of people are. And we spent days looking for it and we would sit around the campfire and we would hear it call at night. And then the next day we would go and look for it during the day in these big shaded trees. And we found a feather. And then we found a place where it fished at night. And then at night it would call again. It was almost like it was just outside of the circle of firelight saying, I'm here, but, but you may not get to see me. And eventually after four days of looking, we eventually saw it and we looked up into this tree, beautiful big shaded tree and it was looking down at us. And for a moment that owl looked at us.

• 59:31Speaker 03

  And it was like we were standing, right in that moment, you knew you were in a place where maybe a few people in the world will ever go, you know, and you could feel that its presence there was saying to you, you're in a truly wild place. And Just to know that had a kind of energy that just flowed into me. And then there was a, there was a second day where we walked way back into the back of the reserve. And there was maybe a thousand year old baobab, the baobab tree, they call it the upside down tree. And its base had been stripped and by an elephant, you know, maybe some years ago.

• 1:00:09Speaker 03

  And the elephant had opened up a hollow and somehow the inside of the tree over many, many years had been hollowed out by termites. And so it was like this 25 foot tall, empty hollow chamber. And in the top of the baobab, a swarm of bees had made a hive. And as they buzzed in the top of the baobab, the sound of the hum was traveling down this hollow base. And coming out this opening where the elephant had opened the tree up. And it was like standing next to a thousand year old didgeridoo in this tree, just like a humming. The sound of bees. And as you stood there, like the, the sound would come out of you and you could feel it, the vibration on your body.

• 1:00:51Speaker 03

  And I have this weird thing now where like somewhere in the world, you know, New York City or London or somewhere where I'm traveling or on a plane somewhere. I'll just have this thought like that owl is there and that tree is vibrating silently. You know, in this wilderness where maybe no one will ever see it again, but it's, it's drumming there. It's putting out its frequency in some wild place. And there's something about that, that is always kind of calling to me.

• 1:01:18Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Bron, since I did it with Boyd the first time, we'll do it with you this time, which is my, my classic closing question, which is to ask what the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you is.

• 1:01:27Speaker 04

  You know, it's so hard for me because I live in such a wave of kindness. I, I have this innate idea that everything's happening for me. And so to single out, I mean, kindness for me is, I know days that it's just a look. And that's enough that just completely changes the whole spectrum around me. And having, having the luxury of.

• 1:01:56Speaker 04

  Being able to notice kindness, no matter how big or small, is, has changed my life fundamentally. It's, it's taken me into a profound state of grace and a profound seeking of grace. And so the moment of kindness that really shifted for me was, was probably a kindness in the realization of, of myself. I don't know if that makes sense to you, but to wake up, I remember waking up one morning here at Land Lozey and realizing where I was, and yet I had lived here my whole life. But it was a moment, and I remember it so clearly, where I walked out of my front door.

• 1:02:41Speaker 04

  And in walking out of my front door, I just started to notice the tiniest little details. The way that the light came through the aloes and the way that the little sunbirds were sticking their perfectly formed beaks into the flowers and sucking out nectar. And the way that every single thing had its moment in time. And the way that I had seen them my whole life, but today I was actually seeing them. And how each one of them was totally connected to me. And whatever I did would affect them and whatever they did would affect me. And that idea landed kindness for me in a way that just, I was always big on care.

• 1:03:24Speaker 04

  And I think what shifted is that in kindness, there was a way of being. And so even when someone is not being kind, I find the kindness in them. So I don't know if that really answers your question, but.

• 1:03:39Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  It sure does. It's, it's a very fitting answer, given the experience of this week, which has been so interesting and formative for me. And as always, I've just had such a blast talking to both of you. So thanks for all your time and your hospitality and an amazing week.

• 1:03:51Speaker 04

  Oh, we've loved having you. Thanks so much.

• 1:03:56Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Hey everyone, Patrick here again. To find more episodes of Invest Like the Best, go to investorfieldguide.com/podcast. If you're a book lover, you can also sign up for my book club at investorfieldguide.com/bookclub. After you sign up, you'll receive a full investor curriculum right away, and then three to four suggestions of new books every month. You can also follow me on Twitter @Patrick_OShag. If you enjoy the show, please leave a quick review for us on iTunes, which will help more people discover Invest Like the Best. Thanks so much for listening.