Did our primal experiences of adventuring create modern day entrepreneurship?
Ashe Oro: Welcome back, Liberty Nation. Welcome to the Liberty Entrepreneurs Podcast. I'm your host, Ashe Oro and today's guest is Derek Loudermilk. He's the host of The Art of Adventure Podcast. He's a high performance coach and the author of the forthcoming book Superconductors which promotes the idea of skill stacking, how to acquire a set of skills that makes you more rare, valuable and irreplaceable in the marketplace.
Ashe Oro: Derek, welcome to Liberty Entrepreneurs.
Derek Loudermilk: Ashe, it's a pleasure to be here.
Ashe Oro: So, fill in the gaps here. Who are you and what are you passionate about?
Derek Loudermilk: I like to call myself professional adventurer and I have been traveling for the last four years. I think you and I have actually wound up in some of the same places. I was traveling solo and now, I'm traveling with a family. And wherever we go, countries around the world, I like to both go on adventures, find some wilderness area to explore but I'm also talking to entrepreneurs in each country that I go to and I'm learning from people like co-working spaces but also local entrepreneur, people that own fruit stands and tour guide companies and things like that.
Derek Loudermilk: I'm really trying to get a pulse of the state of entrepreneurship in each place that I travel to and mixing that with going on adventures and spending plenty of time outdoors and in the wilderness.
Ashe Oro: Yeah, so what is it about adventures specifically and just what are adventures and why do you feel like this is drawn to you and what does this have anything to do with being an entrepreneur?
Derek Loudermilk: Yeah. So, I've come up with this definition of adventure. There's three parts. One is that an adventure is called an interesting or remarkable experience in the dictionary, which means to remark about something means you tell a story about it. You leave an adventure with a story. There's some element of risk to adventure. The word adventure comes from the French "aventure" and it's the same as venture as in venture capital and that there are some element of risk whether it's real or perceived risks of physical danger or maybe it's just you feel like you're taking a risk socially or something like that.
Derek Loudermilk: And the third is there is some element of change that happens to you. As you complete an adventure, you come out of it as a new person. It leaves its mark on you that you bring to your following endeavors, that you bring to the rest of the world that you can share with your friends. An adventurer, maybe and the most common types are traveling to a distant place. It's easiest to have an adventure when you go to a new country or when you go to the wilderness because you're physically changing so many things in your surroundings.
Derek Loudermilk: But adventure can happen on a much smaller scale any time you have those elements where you are taking a risk and you're going through something. It could be buying a house for the first time as some type of adventure or a relationship or there's any number of things that can fall into that adventure framework including starting a business.
Ashe Oro: Right, hence, the tie to entrepreneurism. Are you an adventurepreneur?
Derek Loudermilk: I am. Actually, I love to tie in adventure. The podcast that I host is The Art of Adventure Podcast and I recently held a retreat for entrepreneurs called Adventure Quest. And one of the things we do is we actually go out on big adventures like jumping off waterfalls or climbing giant volcanoes or surfing waves. And there's lots of analogies like, "Oh, entrepreneurship is like climbing a mountain." Well, we went and climbed a mountain to see if it really was a good analogy for entrepreneurship.
Ashe Oro: Yeah, I should say we're currently recording in Bali, in Indonesia and as you're talking about mountains, I can almost see Agung, the active volcano that's just a couple of miles from our house right now.
Derek Loudermilk: Every morning, I look out my window, and I give a report to my family, I say, "It's erupting today. It's not erupting."
Ashe Oro: It erupt like two nights ago.
Derek Loudermilk: Yeah. With a little poof.
Ashe Oro: Yeah, I saw the pictures. But let's get you on with the mountain and hiking up the mountain metaphor because I think it's really good and I know that, so you hold these adventure quests which is part of your business where people from around the world, I assume part of your community since you've written a book previously. You're currently writing Superconductors, your upcoming book. And you've had a podcast for how many episodes?
Derek Loudermilk: We're about 230 in right now?
Ashe Oro: Wow, 230, congrats. I think we're only in the 80s here but what have you learned like when you bring these people from around the world, they basically buy your service of let's mix ... Let's get a group of people from around the world together that may probably don't know each other and I'm going to take them on adventures that are going to challenge them how?
Derek Loudermilk: Generally, the way I structure it is a mix of physical challenges followed by business-specific workshops where we have this nice villa. We do our workshops in the villa and so we're resting physically on the days we're doing the workshops. But part of these physical challenges and part of any adventure is this question that people have of do I have what it takes when the chips are down? And how will I be when I'm faced with some great challenge, when I'm faced with the peak moments of my life, who will I be in those moments?
Derek Loudermilk: And when you are thinking about rappelling a hundred feet off a cliff, it's very confronting and you have to use courage. You have to practice courage. We also have to deal with all these things that come up for you like people are still worried about their physical safety even though it's theoretically a safe activity. We've got protection in place.
Derek Loudermilk: There's all kinds of great analogies between climbing a mountain or going canyoning or rappelling to business in the sense that, okay, I'm taking these people out to the canyon, right? So, I'm a guide. And in business, it helps so much to have a guide and we hire even local guides who are more expert at the terrain. You can translate that hiring specific people to help you with specific things-
Ashe Oro: Like microcoaches.
Derek Loudermilk: ... in business. Absolutely, or just your council of wise elders that gives you the advice you need when you need it. There's also the group aspects, these adventure trips. I have this motto that the wisdom is in the group like these are all high-level entrepreneurs. They all know a lot and they're still looking to uplevel themselves and it's not just me that's the coach or the leader of the adventure but each person in turn will probably support the rest of the group throughout a week on trip. And they all have different experience of business that they can add to each other.
Derek Loudermilk: Partly, it's about bringing together the right people which is my most important role is to just get the right coaches, the right activities, the right people in the right location and magic is going to happen.
Ashe Oro: And I'm really curious what you think happens to these entrepreneurs when you get them out into the wilderness for instance. And part of this answer, I'd like for you to talk about your trip up that mountain like literally hiking up and down that mountain, but what do you think it does for these entrepreneurs who oftentimes live up in their brains rather than down in their bodies?
Derek Loudermilk: Oh, my gosh. Yeah, this is such a theme. Great question because we are biological entities. We're large mammals and we spend all this time thinking strategically going through all different parts of businesses. It's often cerebral and our bodies have all kinds of knowledge that is untapped. Intuition is such a powerful tool that successful Silicon Valley CEOs are really learning to tap into and if we can access body knowledge and energy and motivation in addition to our cerebral, then it's a huge advantage.
Derek Loudermilk: Just walking in the woods will put you back into your body because you're using your body. You're using your physical sensations and you're feeling the wind on your skin and all of these things and it goes so far into getting you out of your head and reducing stress and all these things but also improving the way you utilize the discussion between your brain and your body. And it also really helps in the communication between two people because so much of our communication up to 93% is non-verbal.
Derek Loudermilk: There's lots of benefits just to moving your body and getting in touch with that.
Ashe Oro: Yeah, and what do you think it does for the brain to be able to not shut off but almost like delegate some of that decision-making to other parts of the body because I'm guilty of this. I don't move my body nearly as much as I say that I want to and I stay up in my brain a lot and that's because I've had a lot of success being up in my brain.
Ashe Oro: I built successful businesses. I've made money and it has been a safety zone for me to protect what I think is myself. What do you think it does for the people that join your adventure quest and get challenged not in the regular entrepreneurial sense like, "Oh, I've got to set up this PayPal and I got to set up this bank account and then I need to connect it to my website and I need to make sure I'm following my clickthrough rates and check on my Google analytics and all the ... My email marketing list," and all these things that entrepreneurs know they need to do. But what does it do for them whenever they come on an adventure quest where maybe they're not using their brain even half as much as what they would typically?
Derek Loudermilk: Yeah, and so everybody had a good idea when you're in the shower, some epiphany moment, the common like I have a great idea in the shower is ... It comes from because your physical body is occupied by the sort of routine movement and that lizard brain part of you is busy scrubbing the soap around. And so you have a more direct connection to your cerebral cortex and you can actually access your good ideas better.
Derek Loudermilk: Some of my best ideas and throughout history like people like Einstein come up with their best ideas while walking because it increases blood flow to the brain and it occupies the physical body. It's a great creative resource, first of all. So, physically moving but it also spurs people to action, climbing a volcano and being in the present, you're climbing over a set of roots or you're dealing with whatever and it forces you into the present.
Derek Loudermilk: It forces you out of the past. It forces you out of like wondering what is going to go wrong in the future and it forces you to deal with the solutions that are right in front of you getting around these obstacles, sliding down this muddy slope, dealing with my heavy breathing, whatever it is and it forces you into the present and into a solution-oriented mindset which all of that, getting into action produces results. But it also builds your confidence because you can see the direct results of your actions.
Ashe Oro: Yeah, and I love that term that you keep using "action". One of the main reasons, if not the sole reason that I created Liberty Entrepreneurs because I was tired of just the idea of thinking about freedom and I was tired of all the libertarian theory and the anarchist theory and like all these ways that things could be and when I look back on my life, the thing that was most important was the actions I took.
Ashe Oro: It seems very common to what you're saying about not only being an entrepreneur taking action but being an adventure and taking action. When did this idea of the adventure mindset come to you and when did you start to realize that it was so closely aligned to the entrepreneurial mindset?
Derek Loudermilk: Yeah. That's really interesting. We are wired to be happier when we are adventuring, when we're solving problems, when we're creating new businesses. Imagine an ancient tribe of people and they sort of utilized all of their resources in their valley and they sort of expand their population to the point where they're being low in food and it's up to a few adventurers to go over the mountain range and explore to find the next fertile valley to expand then.
Derek Loudermilk: Our evolution has wired us to seek solutions, to give us a surge of dopamine which is a happiness chemical when we're solving problems. When we're out adventuring, there's any number of random problems. When we're creating new businesses, it's the same dopamine surge that we're getting into the adventure mindset of taking action, of trying things, of testing things out. And failures have been part of adventure like there's a lot of things that don't work out. But you keep persisting in adventure until you get to your destination. You keep persisting in business trying things and it's an enjoyable process like let's see if this works.
Ashe Oro: Right. It's like that curious nature. It's like, "Okay, what can I do? What can I accomplish? What can I build?" Do you think that's intrinsic to humanity or do you think that this is a learned behavior?
Derek Loudermilk: I think it's intrinsic to humanity but it's something that our socializing, our culture dampens down. I think people ... It's natural to worry about if we take a risk, what will people think of us? We lose our social standing. Social support is important, right? It provides us some safety. If we feel like if we get on stage and we bombed singing karaoke-
Ashe Oro: Which I always do.
Derek Loudermilk: Exactly. I might lose all my friends and I'll be a social outcast like that's like the logical extreme. I'm just like, "No, thank you." And this was me for years. I didn't sing ... I wanted to sing karaoke but it took me like 10 years to get up the courage.
Ashe Oro: I always sing Garth Brook's I've Got Friends in Low Places. But I hear you. I don't want to sing.
Derek Loudermilk: And so, we want to take these risks but there's all kinds of "good reasons" to not take these risks but that ... A lot of times these risks are perceived and not real and they're like the positive upside of trying something is much greater than the perceived risks of failure.
Ashe Oro: Yeah, and I love it because the adventure mindset is the entrepreneurial mindset because a lot of times, entrepreneurs find their niche or their opening in the marketplace by seeing something that other people either haven't done before or seeing something that other people have done but they know they can do a better job. Like that's why I started Liberty Virtual Assistance is because I saw what was happening in the marketplace and I knew that I could do a better job, and it is adventuring.
Ashe Oro: It's adventuring into the unknown. As my audience knows, I don't claim to be this like super entrepreneur. I'm not Elon Musk. Hardly, I'm a tenth of one billionth of 1% of what this guy has built but it's like having that adventure mindset to go out and just be curious about what I can do. I know that it's going to be risky but know that as long as you're able to take action that at least, when you take action, you're going to have more information to take better action later on.
Derek Loudermilk: And for you, like you had this insight like, "I think I can create this. I think it will be useful," and a lot of people wouldn't trust that insight like, "Who am I to decide to create this business?" Even CEOs deal with impostor syndrome. How do I know enough to be the one in charge here. And it's this confidence that you build through a variety of different challenges that like I know that I'm going to be able to deal with people well. I know I'm going to be able to learn things. I know I'm going to be able to manage this in the future even though I don't know what's going to be created.
Derek Loudermilk: I'm going to go ahead and give it a shot and create this business, this VA business or whatever it is. So many people take themselves out of the game because they don't have the confidence, because they haven't put themselves in enough situations to purposely build their confidence, to use courage enough.
Ashe Oro: I think it's story time.
Derek Loudermilk: It's story time.
Ashe Oro: Story time, and whenever you came back ... Again, Derek is currently my neighbor here in Bali, in Ubud, Bali. Once your adventure quest, your most recent adventure quest was done. You came back and you're telling me about this hike of this mountain and I'm sure you'll know the name of it but you said that you were actually surprised that everyone made it up and made it down.
Ashe Oro: And I'm really curious why that was and if anyone before you started the hike, if everyone is talking about the possibility of failing to make it to the top because I know it wasn't an easy hike. It is no walk in the park.
Derek Loudermilk: So, it took us 10 hours, six hours up four hours down. It's the second large volcano in Bali and you go through four different ecosystems as you go up, four different types of forest, rainforest, cloud forest and moist forest and then sort of pine forest at the very top. And people were coming up with like, "Oh, I have this old knee injury like I might not make it," or whatever. Everyone had their built-in excuses, their out if they had to turn around. But I knew that everyone wanted to finish the summit and make it back.
Derek Loudermilk: And in the first couple of hours, everyone is full of energy-
Ashe Oro: Chatting it up.
Derek Loudermilk: Chatting it up and all these things, right? And then it's like the volcano gets steeper and steeper and it gets hard. And then people move into their own like they're pushing their physical limits. They're breathing hard. It's steeper than a set of stairs for hours. There's slippery roots. There's leeches, just all kinds of things and I actually didn't realize it was going to take us so long. I was like, "We're fit. We're great. It will only take us like six hours."
Derek Loudermilk: It was harder than my own expectations and this ebb and flow like seeing people hit the end of their limit and be like, "I don't think I can make it," like, "Where is the top? Give me some palm sugars so I can get a burst of energy." Okay, the top is still an hour and a half away like, "Wow, what do I do knowing that I really just want to stop but I'm motivated to keep pushing."
Derek Loudermilk: And I saw people do things like start supporting other people because they didn't want to think about themselves so they became cheerleaders for other people, or I noticed when someone was hiking in front for a while, they got so much energy from leading and from being like they saw themselves as an inspiration like here they are hiking strongly at the front of the pack. That gave them energy, their own self-image.
Derek Loudermilk: And on the way down, like we're slipping and sliding over these muddy obstacles and people were really enjoying the chance to get muddy and dirty and giving themselves permission to get through this no matter what it looked like, how pretty it was. Women than normally like to be fashionable and-
Ashe Oro: Their fingernails are painted.
Derek Loudermilk: There are so many different components to an adventure like this that we can reflect on afterwards and say like, "Wow, I made it through this whole full day long adventure and I did what I needed to do in different moments when I was struggling or when I was feeling good. Physically, I was tired but mentally I was strong." And once you have accomplished something like this, it's a really big thing that you can say, "I've done this."
Derek Loudermilk: And your next big business challenge is so much easier for you when you can say, "I've climbed a-
Ashe Oro: Freaking volcano, yeah.
Derek Loudermilk: ... year volcano that took me whole day. This is nothing." Pitching a $10,000 contract is nothing. Standing in front of a room of billionaires, it's no big deal.
Ashe Oro: Yes. Derek is an American and when he says 9,000 meters, he probably means 9,000 feet.
Derek Loudermilk: Oh, 9,000 feet, 3,000 meters.
Ashe Oro: He tries to get fancy with these international numbers here. Let's transition a bit and what is a Superconductor? Why write the book and how did you get that idea?
Derek Loudermilk: Okay, several questions. Superconductor is someone who mobilizes people and ideas and leverages their networks and their creativity and their skills to make big things happen. It's someone who can control and access all the tools that are available to them to really go above and beyond and creating powerful movements or powerful ideas or creating businesses that are sort of the next level. A Superconductor is someone who is like an orchestral conductor, someone who controls lots of moving pieces to bring them together to accomplish a very complex task.
Derek Loudermilk: And I wrote this book because I started noticing in my interviews with guests on The Art of Adventure that certain themes kept coming up, certain very useful qualities kept appearing in these interviews. And so I did an assessment of what are these common themes, these common skills that are so important for these successful people and they include things like strategic relationships, being able to tell good stories either in person or in your marketing material, being able to come up with really good ideas and then act on those good ideas.
Derek Loudermilk: There is all these themes and so, I decided to look at all the interviews I had done and all the books that I had read and come up with the most important skills that basically make you more valuable in the marketplace that can add on top of your existing technical skills as a programmer or a marketer or as a writer, whatever it is your basic competence is. You can add these skills on top and all of the sudden, you're the only person in the world with this particular mix of valuable skills, which then allows you to really control the trajectory of your career.
Derek Loudermilk: It allows you to choose the projects that you really want to do. It allows you to affect the most people and it allows you to be compensated really well and feel fulfilled in your career which is the whole point working after all [inaudible 00:27:01] to enjoy it.
Ashe Oro: Yeah, it sounds very in common with the idea of being a polymath. And I know we have our pal here, Patricia Parkinson, in the room eavesdropping on this presentation. She is one of the foremost leaders in the ideas of polymath and founder of Blockchain Babes. But is this like collection of stacking skillsets on top of each other, purposefully stacking skillsets on top of each other like a polymath tendency? And would you consider yourself a polymath? And if so, what is a polymath in your idea?
Derek Loudermilk: Well, thanks to Trish, I do consider myself to be polymath. Specifically, I have a very broad interest but I like to go deep in a certain number of those fields. I have been a professional cyclist. I have discovered a new species as a scientist. I'm an entrepreneur and adventurist. These are some of the areas that I'd like really gone deep and I'm probably in the top 5% of the world in these specific skills. But there's other skills that like I'm just interested in learning. It forms my like broadness. I'll read any topic.
Derek Loudermilk: And a polymath has an advantage and that they can see the intersection among different fields that they have gone deep and that is where the cutting edge lies. This is where new ideas, new businesses, new solutions to problem often are found is when you mash up let's say adventure and entrepreneurship or geopolitics investing and you start to see things that other people, who don't have such a broad and deep range of skills.
Derek Loudermilk: It's just not going to be available to them, like their brain, whatever your brain is exposed to, it's sort of like where your thought patterns exist. And so, when you have this broad and deep series of inputs, thing that you've learned, all of a sudden you start making natural connections which you may be the only person in the world that may seem very obvious to you, like, "Oh, of course, we're going to do whatever with the blockchain."
Ashe Oro: Right, the intersection of engineering, economics and entrepreneurship. Of course, that's every day but to most people that is a perspective that they have almost no ability to comprehend but to me it's like every day.
Derek Loudermilk: Yeah, and that's so cool when you get to that point and because it feels natural and people are like ... Again this impostor syndrome comes in like you can't believe this is so obvious to me that no one's come up with it but new knowledge is created every day. New businesses are created every day. We're constantly expanding all kinds of things and you might be the person, the person listening or Ashe, you might be the one person like right at the cutting edge which is so exciting, right?
Ashe Oro: Yeah, for sure. And how do you think this mindset, this both polymath but adventurer mindset builds that confidence to overcome that impostor syndrome?
Derek Loudermilk: When you're forced to complete something and you're forced to get through climbing a volcano or when you're forced to use your courage and so coming down a volcano. Or in business, you know that you need to earn some money and you're forced to sort of cold call someone and pitch them. All of these things take some courage to actually do that take a little bit of willpower and a little bit of courage. Once you do them, you're like, "Okay, cool. I did that. I think I can do that again."
Derek Loudermilk: It really helps when you have like good sense of who you're doing this for, if you know your customer or, "I want to create this business to help so and so and I really connect with the single person that I'm practicing courage for. Maybe it is my family. I need to earn money so that I can provide for my family and I'm practicing courage for them." That really helps.
Derek Loudermilk: But once you build this backlog of things that you've done that have required courage, then you end up getting pretty convinced of your ability to succeed in the next unknown situation. You are confident that you can relate well to people. You're confident that you can be creative and find a few different solutions and then pick the one that works. You're confident that even if you're sweating and fearful, that you'll still step onto that stage and deliver the talk and it's this foundational belief in yourself that's so important because if you don't have this, you've probably won't take action. You probably won't take risks and the only way to get results is by doing something.
Derek Loudermilk: If you don't start, you can't finish. Like if no one started this volcano, they couldn't have climbed it.
Ashe Oro: Right, and sitting around thinking about climbing the volcano, it's not going to give you near the confidence and actually, acting in climbing the volcano.
Derek Loudermilk: Yeah, and it's so funny like everyone was like, "I'm so glad I did this and I will never do it again."
Ashe Oro: Yeah.
Derek Loudermilk: "It was so hard but I'm so glad I did it."
Ashe Oro: Right. It's like, "I will never try to set up an offshore bank account again because it is so hard but I'm glad that I did it." Who are some ... And I haven't met someone like you before, especially someone who may do all of his podcasts without a shirt on, I'm not sure, but definitely this podcast. But who are some of like your superheroes, or people that you would role model yourself after or even like fictional movie stars or real people? I don't know, who you have you taken influence and inspiration from?
Derek Loudermilk: Yeah. We were actually talking about this a little bit before the recording. Thank you for bringing it up.
Ashe Oro: It was a good conversation. It needs to be on air.
Derek Loudermilk: I came up with this idea that we have our sports heroes. We have the movie characters that we love and the characters in the novels that we really identify with, and I was thinking like why do we identify with these people? Why do we love these heroes? And it's because we see a reflection of ourselves in them. We see either something we already have this little bit of their spark in us or something that we aspire to.
Derek Loudermilk: And so for me, when I was thinking like who are my heroes, like Indiana Jones comes to mind. The scientist, the [inaudible 00:34:34] scientist, Richard Feynman comes to mind. Jim Carrey comes to mind. And for example, Indiana Jones is a type of person who he's very charismatic and he's like leap into action. I'm going to try this like defeat the enemy even though I don't have a plan at the moment, I'm going to start.
Derek Loudermilk: Richard Feynman was so curious. He was willing to work on a physics problem because he was tossing plates in the air and he won a Nobel Prize because of it. But he also went and played the bongos in carnival in Brazil or he studied the ants moving around his apartment. And he was willing to go deeper and deeper into something. And then Jim Carrey, he's so physically expressive he's like so using his body but he's aware of his own evolution as an artist, as a comedian, as an actor.
Derek Loudermilk: And so, I'm identifying each of these things in the heroes and I'm seeing in myself what I value, what I like to cultivate. And our heroes, they really just provide this great reflection for who we'd like to become or the things that we want in ourselves.
Ashe Oro: And what do you think are some of the base or most fundamental characteristics that makes a good adventurer and/or entrepreneur?
Derek Loudermilk: That's a good question. I think we have this balance between us ease and comfort and complacency and like I'm satisfied with my life where it is which is somewhat of an obstacle to overcome and a lot of people fall into their routines. And they go through life and they realized like, "Wow, I was quite happy with my routine and I ended up at the end of my life but I have a few regrets that I didn't take that trip abroad or that I didn't ... I had a brilliant business idea. I didn't have that insight, and I knew it would work but I didn't start it."
Derek Loudermilk: And the difference between and adventurer is their curiosity over what they might be able to achieve and wondering at the end of their life. If they're going to have regrets, they want to eliminate that. They want to actually see what's possible for them and that is enough to pull them into action versus someone who would be content with letting the world dictate for them the path of their life.
Derek Loudermilk: An adventurer is someone who decides actively. They use this gift from God, the ability to make a decision about should I go this way or that way with their life. That's the true nature of an adventurer.
Ashe Oro: That free will type of being okay with the unknown, know what's going to be risky and embracing the discomfort?
Derek Loudermilk: Absolutely, yes. The discomfort, being comfortable with the uncomfortable. Being comfortable being a beginner, being uncomfortable with the unknown and going anyway.
Ashe Oro: How have you found being an adventurepreneur has created freedom in your own personal life? And what doors has it opened?
Derek Loudermilk: I think for me a large part of freedom is how I choose to spend my time. Time is such a limited resource and now, I'm a father. Now, I have a family. And I love being able to decide when I'm going to pour a lot of energy into developing a business or pour a lot of energy into spending time and cultivating the relationship with my son or my partner, Heidi. And freedom and adventure to me is really having the ability and control to choose how we spend the moments.
Derek Loudermilk: If I'd like to earn some more money, then I won't be able to choose to do that. And I also want to be able to choose to spend time with my friends recording this podcast.
Ashe Oro: Oh, thanks, man.
Derek Loudermilk: With Ashe. My buddy Ashe.
Ashe Oro: Uncle Ashe.
Derek Loudermilk: Uncle Ashe.
Ashe Oro: That's because Derek's son Axel calls me Uncle, so just for the audience. Yeah, I'll say that of all the podcasts that I've done, this one has felt the most, if I may, Tim Ferriss-esque, because I feel like this has been a very real and at times emotional podcast where it's ... A lot of my podcasts are about people offering their story but for me for some reason this one has been about action, specifically. And not only action of the mind but action of the body, and it's something that I struggle with at times, action of the body because I'm so comfortable in the mind and it's done me so well.
Ashe Oro: What type of advice would you have for fellow entrepreneurs who are so comfortable and successful building from the mind and they haven't become okay with the discomfort of dropping down out of it and into the body?
Derek Loudermilk: Yeah. There's a really lovely practice, which can increase your presence. And if you think of the Dalai Lama or Bill Clinton or people like that. They are right there with you and it amplifies their power, their ability to influence and get things done is how present they are and how in their body they are. It's actually very powerful to drop into your body.
Derek Loudermilk: And so, something very simple that you can do is we've heard take a deep breath. That's a good step one. Then feeling your toes, feeling your clothes sitting on your skin, just reminding yourself that you have a physical, biological body that you're inhabiting, like your brain lives in this biological [crosstalk 00:42:02].
Ashe Oro: It's just one part of it, yeah.
Derek Loudermilk: And that can really just quickly drop you into being present, but also utilizing your senses, like what sounds are happening around me right now. If I close my eyes for one minute and listen, all of a sudden, I'm right here in my physical body in the present. And then being present in that activity, it's so useful in a conversation. It's so useful in focusing in your brainstorming activities. It's so useful in executing on an idea that you have.
Derek Loudermilk: Yeah, just using some simple ways to bring yourself back into your body, it's such a powerful lever for amplifying your mind.
Ashe Oro: I love the concept of, "Can you feel your fingers, or can you feel your toes," because I've often found myself whenever I'm really in my head, my hands and my toes go cold. And so that's my signal that I can't feel them because they're so cold that I've pulled all of the energy out of them and like pushed it into my brain because that's where I'm purposefully trying to use that energy for my own benefit of some sort but they'll turn very cold. So that really psyched out to me, is when you're really in your head and you're working really hard and you're frustrated with that PayPal invoice that doesn't get paid like can you feel your toes? Can you feel your fingers? Yeah, I really love that.
Ashe Oro: Derek, well, this has been a wonderful interview. I've really appreciated this and I hope my audience doesn't hang me for saying that this is, in my opinion, a Tim Ferriss-esque interview. Do we need in-person interview though? I don't get to do them very often but I can see myself like now doing what Tim does, flying around and interviewing people in person because it's so much more personal whenever you get to talk with somebody.
Derek Loudermilk: Yeah. Again, we can see what each other, our body language. We can read each other.
Ashe Oro: Absolutely.
Derek Loudermilk: And the whole point of this is we're two people. We're connecting.
Ashe Oro: Right, exactly. You're absolute Liberty Entrepreneur. I really commend you for helping our brethren entrepreneurs, both male and female, come and explore and experience and challenge themselves in the physical sense along with their mental sense because I think it creates such a more well-rounded type of person that can go on more adventures, face more challenges and learn from productive discomfort that they find themselves in rather than feeling like the impostor or fraud that I know we all suffer with.
Ashe Oro: Derek, if anyone from my audience would like to contact you or keep up with you, how can they reach you?
Derek Loudermilk: Yeah, thank you. The best place is derekloudermilk.com or @DerekLoudermilk on Instagram, Twitter. Those are the best places.
Ashe Oro: And how about your podcast, what's the name of it again and how can people listen to it and subscribe?
Derek Loudermilk: Yeah. The podcast is The Art of Adventure on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ashe Oro: YouTube, all the normal sources. Derek Loudermilk, The Art Of Adventure. Check out his new book, Superconductors.
Ashe Oro: For anyone listening and if you're interested, thank you again, Derek, for coming on to Liberty Entrepreneurs Podcast. Until next time, keep building freedom.
Podcast Resources:
Superconductors: Revolutionize Your Career and Make Big Things Happen:https://amzn.to/2NKQ4br
CONTACT INFO:
Website: http://derekloudermilk.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DerekLoudermilk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DerekLoudermilk/
