Why the Most Remote Journeys Are the Ones We Need Most | Ep 271 with Monika Sundem CEO of Adventure Life

0:00Today's episode is sponsored by PipeDrive, the number one CRM tool for small to medium businesses. I'm excited to share more about them later in the episode.

0:14So, Monica, two things I've always wanted to do in my life. One is travel to Antarctica, and two is to travel to the Galapagos Islands. I've been to pretty much every continent in the world. I just hit 50 countries travel last week, but those two things are things that I'm like, I need to go to those things. And that's what I love about adventure life and what you're doing. So let's get to it. You've been to Galapagos and you've been to Antarctica. I think some people think like, holy cow, like that's where it's like, I'm going to go to France or go to your, go to South America. I take a plane like this.

0:58It requires a lot of stuff. Can you tell me exactly what is the experience like if I was to go to those two places? Oh my goodness. It's second to none. I actually, a funny story. I didn't really want to go to the Galapagos when I first went. I more went out of obligation so that I would know what I was talking about with travelers on the phone. And I was so blown away that I just remember feeling like, oh my gosh, I didn't know a place like this existed. I think everyone should come here. Just a place where the wildlife truly are not scared of you and, in fact, curious come up to you. It felt like a living zoo or aquarium that you're walking around in and exploring.

1:38And so I really, truly think everyone should go there at least once in their lifetime because it is so remote. So many of the islands don't have any people living on them. And so you truly feel like I just got plopped in the middle of the ocean to go explore this little island here by myself. So, yeah, I really think that Antarctica as well gives you that same feeling. You are, again, you're just at the furthest south feeling of the world. I mean, you're not South Pole South, but you're really darn close when you're around the peninsula. And it just feels like the sky is so big. and I live out here in Montana where it's called we're big sky country right I never understood that I grew up in Seattle area and I came out here and I'm like oh they call it big sky because the sky truly is so big because you can see the horizon for days and days and days and in Antarctica it's the same exact thing it's just like oh my gosh all around 360 views I can see so far no civilization, nothing.

2:44I'm just in the middle of nothing. And it's gorgeous and pristine and feels very untouched. So I really do think you should get to both of those. If you haven't been either of them, time's ticking too, because you know, there's climate change is happening and you will possibly not experience the same destination that you would otherwise. That's why I need adventure life because I've heard Antarctica. I mean, it might be like beachfront property, sadly, in the future. And I even heard like penguins are leaving and I don't know if they're migrating or they're dying off. I'm not sure. But so can you tell me about how it is to get to Antarctica?

3:25I've heard a lot of stories around this as well. And it sounds very fascinating. And everyone's told me it's not always so easy getting there. but when you're there, it's totally like, oh my gosh, slap in the face, worth it. Can you share with me the process of how you were getting there? Yes. So for me, I actually traveled with one of our operators that we work with. We work with all the main operators who are doing expedition cruising down there. And so I went with Aurora and how we worked it is you fly actually out of Punta Arenas in Chile. You board a two-hour flight to go fly down to King George Island, board your vessel there, and from there you sail.

4:03And the reason I did that is I did not want to sail across the Drake Passage, which is that little spit of water between the southern tip of South America and the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. It's well known for many historic shipwrecks. The Wager book actually talks about one of them, which was a really fun read. So I didn't want to do the Drake because I don't like the sea. I get seasick very easily. And so I'm like, I'll skip it. So I board a flight two hours down. I'm on the vessel for nine days. And then you're just sailing around the peninsula and getting off where you're able.

4:37It really is, huh, maybe we'll go here today. I mean, the ships do have an idea where they'd like to go, but the weather changes everything. So each day it may be roughly mapped out, but then it might change depending on the weather, depending on the opportunities in the area we're at. for my voyage, we actually ended up spending some days trying to escape a little storm that was following, a storm system that was following us around. So it's like, well, maybe we'll just go over here. And we actually ended up tipping over into the east side on the Weddell Sea, which is not common on the sailing I was supposed to be on because the weather was looking better out there.

5:15And so we got to explore an extra area that wasn't even supposed to be on our itinerary. and it is just really fun because you just never know what the day holds. It's like, oh my gosh, let's look and see what we can do today. So it's a different kind of travel. Yes, some people love to map out everything. Some people in my family, I can never travel with them because they need to go to this museum, they need to do this tour. That's not me. I like the adventure life. Really, that's what I like. I don't necessarily want to know everything I'm going to do up front. I want to kind of figure it out as I go along.

5:50Are you finding that it's a different type of traveler that comes to you for adventure life? Yes, completely. I mean, they are people who are up for an adventure. That doesn't necessarily mean they're, you know, marathon runners. I'm not talking about physical stamina needs to be top notch, but they have a heart of adventure. They want to get out and do. They want to go move in some way. And so we help them get out and explore instead of just, I don't know, sit and eat. or sit and watch the beach. So we're trying to get them out and be a little more active. And most of those kinds of people are willing to be flexible.

6:29Like if the weather does this this day, okay, then we're going to change the adventure to go do that. And people who are willing to be adaptable and turn any kind of day into a fun adventure are typically the kind of traveler we're attracting. What's the craziest request that somebody wanted you to do for their adventure? Or what's the most out there thing that you guys have done? I can't, I mean, we have done some very crazy things. We are custom travel. So people come to us with some very interesting requests. One example, I saw it, this was not my own, but one of our staff had a gal request to tour all these different, very remote battlefields in Vietnam where her husband fought.

7:16Specifically, she wanted to go battlefield by battlefield. And some of them are, you know, a little more known to the tourist area, you know, but some of these were very remote battlefields that are hardly even marked. And she just really wanted to walk in the footsteps of what her husband had experienced. So that's one example. I remember back in my early days, actually, I had a gal out of Australia come to me who had lost her husband and her brother and her father on a flight out of Australia. They used to do these flyover flights down to see Antarctica. And one of those historically crashed into a mountainside in a whiteout.

7:55And she lost all three of her family members. And she asked me to get her on an Antarctic ship that would sail right up to where that mountain is and even see if the operator would let her get off on shore there to go experience the actual landing site. And they were able to accommodate that. I mean, it was a real feat that we all pulled off to get her to be able to go commemorate where she lost them. This was on, I think, the 25th anniversary of their passing that she wanted to do this. So we get some real heart-munching stories like that sometimes. I have a recent gentleman. His name is Tom Barrett, actually.

8:35I probably should plug his book. It's Living While Dying is what he wrote as a result of his journey with us. we sent him all around South America and he is recently diagnosed with stage four cancer and just decided I need to get out and explore that's going to bring purpose and meaning right now and he went on this trip and it just completely changed his life and he came back and decided to write a book about it and then he ended up going on another adventure the next year as he's been battling it battling cancer he's still like as long as I can get out and move I'm going to keep getting out and moving.

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10:45And that's really what makes us unique. Yeah. I mean, what I'm hearing, and that's incredible stories, by the way, it's trout. There's different reasons why people travel obviously right like some people just want to get away they want to go on vacation some people want to explore my dad is trying to see every aqueduct in the world i don't even know so he wants to design these lego aqueducts that's i don't even understand but it's fascinating because some of them are ancient so that's true like some of them are really fascinating we're really well built so he's a hydrogeologist it kind of makes sense but but i'll say like My point, though, is we all have these different reasons to travel.

11:29But travel, for some, can be very an emotional experience, like you mentioned. Connections from people in the past, connections to loved ones, connections to... I was just going to Romania to see where my family was before they moved to the US. My mom even gave me her address of where they used to be. So it's like a connection. I think humans for thousands of years have traveled for a variety of reasons, and it's like connection to our ancestral selves. When you talk about the journey through COVID, because the travel industry was initially decimated. I mean, I was really scared for anyone who was in the travel space.

12:12That is something very hard. I was actually also in the travel space, too. So it's hard to go through that. How was the journey like when you drop down to almost having no staff to then going back up to the staff that you had before and these people that you work with all around the world? How was that like? It was, I'll be honest, it was terrifying because you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders in a sense of both wanting to do right by your travelers. Many of our travelers felt they had booked travel, you know, a year or two prior and now they felt trapped in these trips. They felt unsafe to travel and yet they had all this money tied up in this non-refundable thing.

12:59And then our staff felt nervous that they were going to lose their jobs. And so there was a real pull there between doing right by our travelers, but also retaining our top talent that was tricky to navigate, especially that first year. And we ended up deciding that if we don't do right by our travelers, we don't have a company anymore. We just plain and simple. We need to be transparent with them. We need to share their risk and their options. So we would take a very transparent approach of, OK, here's where we sit. Here are some of the options we can offer you in light of this. Here's the risk if you take this option.

13:38Here's the risk if you take that option. And just try to lay out all the factors that we knew so that they could make an informed decision. I know a lot of companies were not doing that. They were not sharing risks, such as, you know, certain countries would lock you down on quarantine if you still wanted to travel, if you felt like, I'm going to risk the COVID risk. but if you tested positive upon trying to leave the country they could quarantine you and some of them indefinitely some of them would have set amount of quarantine some of them would say we just quarantine you until you test positive or test negative again which for some people was a month so we would have to share very transparently you know if you choose to still do the trip you could it will help you but there is a risk if you test positive that you're stuck there for a month.

14:26And so just trying to be transparent with them about that and then fighting really hard for rebooking options, for favorable credits. Like we shuffled a lot of things down and floated a lot of non-refundable credits that travelers who wanted refunds, but we would take their credit and apply it to and just hope that new travelers would book it in the future so that we could do right by our travelers. And I think in doing that, we managed to also retain our staff because more and more people kept coming to us. Our rebooking rate, because we were so transparent, was very high at upwards of 80 % of our travelers who were booked when COVID hit still rebooked or ended up traveling at some point in the near future with us.

15:11And I think that's because we were so transparent. I know a lot of other travel companies did not experience the same thing, experienced lawsuits, things like that. We managed to navigate it without any of that. And I really do think that stems back from just a choice to maintain our integrity. If our travelers aren't thrilled with our service, then what are we doing? Yeah, I mean, if you can get through those moments, you really can get through anything. It's the tough part of business. I was talking to someone before this conversation and they were like, hey, I want to jump into business, but I'm scared.

15:48I'm scared. And I'm like, look, the fear doesn't stop. even when you hit success, because it can be taken away the next day. They're roller coasters, right? I have a very controversial question. And if you can't answer this, I totally understand, Mo. So some might say that social media, for example, like Instagram specifically, really helped create more tourism, because I think a lot of people are chasing what they've seen. If I never saw the trips of Antarctica, I may never have wanted to go, but I see people posting and I'm like, ooh, I want to go, right? And then obviously, everybody wants to also make content when they go somewhere most of the time.

16:32I'm just talking overall nothing to do with adventure life specifically. So tourism, I think, has been created based on social media, certain places, but it's also in some of those places done damage because there's too many people. They're overrun. overrun. So you have this balance. And I think you have a love-hate relationship with a lot of people, whether they're physically there and it helps them or it hurts them. How do you feel just in general in terms of what social media has done for the tourists? And specifically, I think trips that are more unique or different. Sure. We're a member of the Adventure Travel association, trade association.

17:16And they threw out a really interesting statement at our summit a couple of years ago that has really stuck with me, that we need to not promote what travelers want. We need to promote what destinations need. And that really sticks with me and our ethos of we want to impact positively the local community, the people who are visited, as well as the visitors. And so to ensure that that's happening, you have to be visiting areas where it's welcome, where they're prepared, the structure is there, and it benefits the local community with education and economic opportunities and is not something where you're being cursed if you hit the streets by the locals because they don't want you there.

18:06So we've strived really hard to create and craft tours on our website that visit remote and off the beaten path areas, little lesser known gems that have just as much to offer as some of these larger tourism hubs, but just have never gotten on the map in their marketing. And a lot of times our travelers come back just raving about these places because there's not as many tourists there. It felt more authentic. I really felt like I got to know the locals. They were all so friendly with us because they were glad we were there. I mean, that really heightens the experience. No one wants to go be a tourist in a place where like everyone's scorning your presence when you're walking on the street.

18:48So I feel like in general, the adventure travel industry as a whole, for the most part, really does that well. We really want to try to offer the places in destinations that welcome people and are ready to receive them with open arms because that adds the experience. I want to go feel like I'm someone's new friend when I travel. I don't want to feel like I wasn't welcome. So that's what we start to do. That's a really good one. I've never heard that before, but it makes total sense. I think most people will take advantage of the situation while it's there versus trying to make the place better.

19:25I'm thinking this is this is I don't know. I'm not you know, I'm not an expert. I'm thinking, though, the future of travel could be the space. I know people are already doing it, but obviously it's very expensive and it can only be X amount of times per year. But I'm thinking space, maybe the moon, I don't know, maybe Mars at some point. Would you go? We have considered. We have had companies approach us seriously pitching space hotel options and things like that. And we have started to have internal conversations as to whether or not we will jump on that ship when it sails. I'm not sure yet. The jury is out.

20:05the liability and risk of it all is just, you know, cause for concern. But we tend to support things like that if they have some sort of positive impact. Like, I know that space exploration positively impacts research. And so, like, likewise, like, we know that there's also a trade-off when it comes to, you know, carbon emissions of travel. I mean, it's the big ugly no one wants to talk about that the just getting on a plane is emitting carbon and but i believe that travel is the tool and the mechanism by which we can learn and grow from each other and find solutions that impact everyone not just your own one part of the world so i also feel like travel is like the the networking that needs to happen to make positive change so if space exploration would positively impact, then we probably would consider promoting it.

21:00We'll see. We'll have to see. I'm with you. Some of the best things that I've done in my life are traveling because I get to really experience. If you want to learn about a culture, a place, you go there and you stay there and you really see what it's like. You talk to the people. For example, I was just in Finland because, you know, they say Finland is the happiest country. I'm not even kidding. A hundred percent of the people that I asked are not happy. And they said they are not happy there, which I found to be really not happy that they got labeled as the happiest country either. They're not happy about it and that they're actually not happy.

21:38And I found that super fast. I'm like, see, this is why I came here. Like, I didn't come here to see a site. I came here literally because I wanted to talk to people and I wanted to understand like how they're so happy. And it turns out they're not even happy. But then I went somewhere else that's definitely not on the list. And everyone there was really happy. I have learned, I've grown more and more pessimistic the older I get, that almost everything is spin unless you experience it yourself personally. And this reminds me of like, so this is a painting of my first international trip. I went to Guatemala on a missions trip when I was a teenager.

22:13And we were going to a very poor area to help build a school. and I was expecting everyone to just be miserable. And what I encountered was some of the happiest, most grateful, kind people I've ever met. And it really turned something on the head for me internally of like poor does not mean unhappy. And it's the same thing, like having great wealth and economic standing does not equate to happiness either, you know? So it's something else. There's something else to be said for our preconceived notions. And then when you go and you see what reality is, you're like, oh, wow, I had that totally wrong.

22:53It's humbling, too, in a way. Like, it makes you realize how small you really are in the world. Like, oh, I really don't know anything about anything. There's some very small islands I like to visit in Southeast Asia. And like you said, they don't need a lot. They're happy with what they have because they also don't want a lot more things. Like, the more things that you can have, the more things that you seem to want. Final question for you is this. I want to go back to space. If you're given tickets, you per se, nothing to do with adventure life, everything in your life can be perfect in that moment.

23:25You don't have to worry about anything because all that will be taken care of. If you're given tickets to Mars, would you go? I guide all of my decisions around prayer. So truthfully, I would pray and I would say, God, do you want me to get on that rocket and go to Mars or not? And that would be what would decide it for me. Just speaking off the, based on my own personal inklings, I probably would not. I am not a crazy jump off the cliff type person. I have never gone skydiving. I've watched my mother go with my husband because I thought, why would I jump out of a perfectly good plane? Doesn't make sense to me.

24:03So I probably would not, but you never know if it was for a good cause or something like that. And I really felt like I was supposed to go, then I probably would. so maybe if he could bring the whole family i find it and who knows in 20 years i mean i'm super excited for these uh i've heard that they're you know bringing back like faster airplanes like they used to have uh you know get you there in half the time other things too that can i was just reading about like like beam me up type travel like it possibly could be something in the future who knows right but i mean we never know the fact that maybe we could get places faster, easier.

24:40We could do even more adventures. But I love what you said around making sure that the place you're going to, though, actually benefits from it and it's not hurt in the end, along with the people. But if you want to get in touch with you, they want to go on the adventure of a lifetime. How can they do so? They can just go to our website, adventurelife.com. Give us a call. We love people calling in. We still staff everything with humans. We don't use those AI agents right now. So they can just reach out or go on our social media and reach out that way too. It'd be great to chat with them. Well, Monica, this has been amazing.

25:16I'm so grateful for your time today. And I can't wait to get to Antarctica. So I'm going to call you so I can go to Antarctica and the Galapagos. I'd love to send you. That will round out my travel, except for I do want to go to space one day. But this has been amazing. And thank you so much for joining me today. And thank you for all that you've done in one of the spaces that I absolutely love. And I hope more people in their lifetime, if it allows, get to do more travel. And thanks for joining us on Founder's Story. It's been great. Thanks for having me on.