M&R Episode 170: Desert Island Survival with Tom Williams.

In Episode 170 I sat down with expat Tom Williams from Desert Island Survival and winner of Alone UK season one. Tom quit his nine-to-five to design a life where he guides people to a desert island for ten-day excursions and teaches them how to survive. Enjoy!

Show notes: Desert Island Survival, Bamboo Fire Saw, Second Thought movie, Polar Challenge, Support Misfits and Rejects on Patreon, Get a Misfits and Rejects T-shirt or Tank

What up all you beautiful Misfits and Rejects out there, thank you for joining me for episode 170 of Misfits and Rejects.

In today's episode I sat down with Tom Williams from Desert Island Survival and winner of Alone UK season one.

Tom, like many of us, had a 9 to 5. He found himself super unhappy and daydreaming about Desert Islands.

About survival skills, about the things that we seem to have lost over the years of technology coming into our lives,

and just creature comforts, convenience, things that we all love,

but have taken us away from that hunter-gatherer sort of mentality that's still in us, that a lot of us thirst for,

that pushes us to start things like Desert Island Survival.

So that's what Tom did. He quit the 9 to 5, started Desert Island Survival after having gone on an experience

where he felt he could really deliver something different.

He said he went and he had tried it out and felt that the company he went with that dropped him off on a Desert Island

just wasn't providing the type of service that he felt he could give his customers

if he decided to try and build a company around his idea.

And that's what he did. He designed a very curated, very fun, very safe experience

that allows people to kind of get back to that route of hunter-gatherer survival,

and you get to then contrast your life situation after 10 days of surviving on a Desert Island

with your current life situation and make a big decision.

Do you want to continue down the path of going to a job that you hate?

Or did this experience that Tom just provided give you some perspective

and maybe give you the courage to go out and try something new?

It's a really cool story and I could relate to the experiences that he provides people

and then the awakenings that he watches them go through after the 10 days is up.

So you hear throughout the episode how the 10 days goes. I'm not going to spoil it for you.

It's a great episode and I was captivated the whole time

because he does provide a really cool experience that isn't so extreme and militant

that you just get dropped off and hear it figured out.

Every aspect of your experience is curated, calculated, and made to be fun, but also push you.

Push you a little farther than you might be comfortable into realms that you get to have a lot of self-discovery.

And again, his story is so cool because it's so out of the ordinary.

I mean, who decides to quit their 9 to 5 and then start Desert Island Survival

where all of a sudden now you're running tour groups out to Desert Islands and teaching them survival skills.

And I mean, he supports his whole family on this.

He lives in Thailand at this point from the UK originally, as you'll hear,

and he's able to support his family. Like, that's really cool.

So if you're interested in this type of experience, definitely check him out.

His link is in the show notes. Desert Island Survival.

I mean, as you'll hear, it sounds like such a cool, incredible experience.

And he's got a lot of return guests, so thank you for joining me today.

If you are a first-time listener, please pull up that phone at the subscribe button.

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If you are so inclined at the end to rate it, I'd love a five-star rating.

Commenting on it is also super cool. I love hearing the feedback from fans of misfits and rejects.

And I just want you to know I really appreciate you coming, supporting this podcast,

and participating week in and week out, listening to these guys and girls' stories around the world

who are designing their life in exactly the way they want.

So please sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode with Tom Williams from Desert Island Survival.

Welcome to Misfits and Rejects, a podcast about the lifestyle design of expatriates, travelers, entrepreneurs, and adventurers.

I'm your host, Chapin Kreuter. Enjoy.

I didn't fit in America.

With cocaine, there's just always too many guns and too many bad attitudes.

I quit the limiting stories.

I really try to overcome that fear.

And right there, for any of your listeners, a lot of what I was to do in the rest of my life was formulated by the fact I just went and did it.

Welcome to another episode of Misfits and Rejects.

Welcome to Misfits and Rejects. Today I'm joined by Tom Williams from Desert Island Survival.

That's right.

How are you, brother?

I'm feeling very good.

Yeah, it's nice to see you, man.

You too.

We met at DC, and the second we sat down next to each other, the common conversation,

hi, what do you do?

And you drop people off on Desert Island.

And I was like, you have to come on the show.

I think it was 30 seconds after meeting you.

Yeah, like literally, that's how the conversation went.

This is the first time I've seen you since then.

Yeah, so it's nice to have you, man. Thank you for coming.

Pleasure.

We talked pre-show that you're now in Thailand searching for more islands.

And we're getting into how this whole retreat business, I guess you'd call it, started in a minute.

But how are you actually searching for islands in Thailand?

You're in Chiang Mai now, which is landlocked city, quite far from any island.

So what are you doing to proactively look for islands?

It seems like an illogical choice.

But we're in Chiang Mai because it's a beautiful, fantastic place to live.

It is about as far away from the sea as you can get in Southeast Asia.

But we absolutely love it here.

And the place where the islands are is Indonesia and the Philippines.

And it's kind of equidistant between the two.

And it's a great jumping off point for us to go and explore.

Why Indo and the Philippines? Just because there's so many?

Yeah, exactly. It's just quantity.

And to find islands, it may sound simple.

Like you've got 18,000 islands in Indonesia.

Only 5% are inhabited.

But as soon as you start looking at the parameters,

we're very picky about the islands we use.

And as soon as you start going through those parameters, the funnel gets very small.

Right. What are the parameters?

Right. So I guess I call it like the Goldilocks zone.

It has to be somewhere that is close enough to tourism

that we can get there without it being too much of a struggle for our customers.

Close enough to hotels and nice hotels that we can start and finish,

as well as a hospital, clinic, in case of an evacuation emergency.

But not too close that you feel that you're in an area of mass tourism.

There's boat traffic. There's people visiting the island.

We can't have that.

So that's the first kind of like big drawdown of islands.

And then we have to consider safety.

Like we can't. I was looking at some beautiful islands in Indonesia

and then found out that there's pit vipers and cobras,

which is just not going to cut it.

And then other variables as well, like enough resources

for us to be able to sustainably use these islands.

Not bad insect populations. No dangers from humans.

Like southern Philippines is a no-go right now.

There is still piracy in this part of the world.

All these things have to be considered.

That's really interesting, especially when you talk about the nature that lives on islands.

Because I mean, you have been running tours in Panama, off the coast of Panama, right?

Correct, yeah.

I mean, I would imagine there's snakes there.

There are, but there's non-venomous snakes.

And I think one of the things that helps us as well

is walking in the footprints of where TV shows have previously gone.

They've done a lot of due diligence for us. That helps.

So you study up on Survivor and those types of shows and where they took people.

I don't want to give away all my secrets, but yeah,

in the past I've watched Bear Grylls the Island,

gone through the credits, found the people and the production guys,

and spoken with them, and we now use the same island in Panama

where they filmed Bear Grylls the Island and Survivor and other such.

That's really cool.

So yeah, then going back to the original, how did you get into this?

What is your enthusiasm with dropping people off on desert islands

and teaching them how to survive? Are you like X Special Forces?

What's your background?

I guess it's two kind of separate answers.

But the catalyst for doing this initially was in,

well, actually I'm going to go back further and maybe we'll edit.

Because I noticed on the brief for your podcast,

it's about feeling uneasy with traditional living in a way.

And I previously worked, I used to work as a snowboard instructor,

a scuba diver, and I was doing all sorts of cool jobs

that I just felt right and I was happy.

And then I think there's an expectation from my parents to get the proper job,

to work in the office, to earn the good money.

And so I dropped that. I got a good job working outside of London.

Great money selling software for a US software company.

And whilst I was there, I just got increasingly depressed.

I felt like a caged animal.

And I think the real realisation of how severe it was

was when I was driving to work, I was like,

I could just crash into the central reservation and get two weeks in hospital.

And when that becomes like a potential suicidal movie,

there is something really quite wrong here.

Absolutely.

And so whilst I was doing that job, I didn't want to be pigeonholed

as a software salesman. I didn't want to be that guy.

So I signed up to walk to the North Pole.

And I spent the next two years training and fundraising to race to the North Pole.

And in 2010, did the race. We won the race.

Missed the world record by two hours and 20 minutes.

And once I'd done that adventure, I think once you jumped so far out of your comfort zone,

and it wasn't just that, we did white collar boxing tournaments, all sorts of shit.

But once I'd done that and kind of go so broadly out of my comfort zone

and then came back in, I couldn't really live a normal life

and do a normal thing after that.

But I did. I moved to Chile with my wife now.

And I found the first job I could there that would pay good money

and worked as a financial advisor.

I put on the uncomfortable hat again and continued to do that for another eight years.

And then two years before I left that job, I set up Desert Island Survival.

And thank goodness, it seems to be working out and I don't have to go back to a cubicle.

How long has this been going on with the Desert Island Survival?

We're three years in now.

Three years in and sustaining you, your wife, and your son, you said?

Correct, yeah, he's free.

And you've been living in Chile and now you're in Thailand.

And that's awesome, dude. Congratulations.

I'm still pinching myself, to be honest.

It's incredible.

What your story just brought out in me is like my current situation

where we make these decisions to go after that lifestyle design that we want,

we've always dreamed of, and we maybe cut all ties to the past.

Like you said, I'm not doing the finance thing in England anymore.

I'm going to go out and do my thing.

But then you go to Chile making that first move and you're like,

what am I going to do for money?

And you get back into it.

Yeah, where's the money?

Yeah, and I'm kind of in this situation where this isn't really working anymore.

I'm going to have to probably go back and get a job for a year or two

unless some miracle happens and just reboot.

So I think for all the listeners out there,

we advocate to really go out and try to design the life that you always wanted,

but you do have to probably have a really good plan

and a little bit of money saved up or have a side hustle that is your dream life

that once that becomes viable, then you can transition to that.

Exactly.

Like cutting the cord like you did is super brave and awesome,

but it's not for everybody.

I was lucky.

So the job I was doing was 100% commission.

And so I was able to have like a sliding scale between time and money.

So I would work nine months on the finance stuff

and three months on building my business.

Kind of obviously not exactly cut like that,

but it gave me that safety net to build the business while still having an income.

And it's a rare situation that I was able to take advantage of.

Not many people get that option.

Totally, yeah.

And I consider myself lucky.

I can go back to the States whenever I want.

I work in a warehouse.

I can literally land, show up at the warehouse, and they'll give me hours.

And it's like a really flexible time thing for me to do.

Makes good money.

Going back to your decision to move to Chile, like why Chile?

It was actually my wife's job.

We met in India.

She happens to live right next to me in London.

And I said, I don't want to live in the UK anymore.

And she was like, me too.

She was working for an alcohol company, Diageo,

the guys who's Johnny Walker, Smirnoff, Guinness.

And yeah, she's a really smart, talented woman.

She got the job as a marketing manager for Chile.

And so off I went.

Was she fluent in Spanish already?

No, no Spanish.

No Spanish.

And she jumped right in the deep end.

Because part of the job requirements, I'm assuming, was to learn Spanish.

After three months, she had to make the switch.

So for three months, it was intensive learning.

She slept like a baby.

She was so tired.

And then after that three months of intense learning, that was it.

The whole job had to be in Spanish.

That's incredible.

I lived in Nicaragua over 10 years, and I can't speak Spanish that well.

Me too, man. 10 years in Chile, I'm terrible.

Tenses, I can't do them.

Yeah, what do you think your block is with the languages?

I mean, partially, it's a story I tell myself.

I'm just not good at them.

I feel that that kind of learning area is something

I need to put five times the amount of effort to an average person,

and I feel like it's not a good return on investment.

English is hard enough. I'm dyslexic.

I feel the exact same way.

It takes me so much longer to really...

At one point, I was tracking it, I would learn one new word a month,

because I'd have to hear it 100 times, I'd have to say it 100 times,

and I'd have to use it in a visual context that made sense to me

at least 100 times before it would stick.

And that is just so frustrating.

At least you're moving forward with one a month.

You are, but still you play like an idiot.

I just felt like, oh, I'm just not smart enough.

Now meeting people who have really grasped the language,

you're like, dude, we all go through it.

Sure, some people don't really have the quickness that some of us do

in learning it, but we all had to put in effort,

really hit the books, put ourselves out in uncomfortable situations.

I'm super introverted.

So even English conversations, I might have one a day.

So if you're not conversing average with a lot of people on an hourly basis daily,

you're not going to pick up the language.

That's true.

One thing I found with Chile is that it's very first world.

Pre-show, we talked about the unfortunate circumstances that Chile finds...

It's going through right now.

Going through right now, which with its past, you're like, oh, these poor people, not again.

Maybe we can talk about that a little bit.

But it was very clean.

People were very like, they did things according to the law.

And what I mean is when I land in a country that I perceived as being kind of like Nicaragua, lawless, fun,

I want to go have a beer at night in the morning at the bus station.

And that was impossible.

There's no beer sales, one, at the bus station.

And then two, they wouldn't even start serving alcohol until like 11 or something like that.

I was like, where am I? This sucks.

However, it's a beautiful place, cool people, great waves.

I love Chile.

What did you love so much about it to keep you there for 10 years?

Well, I think if I summed it up in one word, and it feels less relevant with what's happening right now,

but it was just easy.

It's a very functional place.

If you're earning good money, it goes a long way there.

This is one of the problems there is this huge disparity of wealth.

But it's just an extremely easy place to live.

The country has money.

So let's say the roads are getting jammed.

They will proactively start improving the infrastructure before it gets to be a real problem.

And it's just nice to live somewhere that feels like it's always getting better.

You could see everyone making a movement towards healthy living.

There were gyms springing up everywhere.

It was nice just after being in England.

And certainly now, which has a very kind of negative zeitgeist,

Chile just felt like it was increasingly positive at that and the wilderness.

To live somewhere with a low population prior to the land and extraordinary wilderness was a big deal.

Yeah. So you said you were also a snowboarder.

Did you get to snowboard in Chile?

Yeah. It's about an hour and a half outside of Santiago, up to the slopes.

It's nice, but you only get like two or three good bluebird powder days a year or so.

And there's no trees up there.

So as soon as one day after it falls and dumps, it all just blows away because the trees don't protect the powder.

Oh, yeah. Interesting.

They're still cool.

I'm not a big mountain guy, so I wouldn't have even thought about that being an issue.

It's so high. There's no vegetation.

Yeah. Do your parents support your lifestyle?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. They're very, very happy.

So they come and visit you wherever you got?

Well, my dad has gone full hermit.

He's retired from his job and he's now living in France.

He's just drinking industrial amounts of red wine and chopping wood and watching the river go by.

He came to Chile once, but that's a big deal for him.

I might get him out to Thailand. We'll see.

It sounds like, I mean, just based on what you just said about your dad,

the fact that you raced to the North Pole and you've done a bunch of other things.

Were you kind of groomed to be this adventurous person?

No, not at all. I don't really know where it came from.

Well, if your dad's chopping wood in the wilderness, it sounds like he kind of desires that sort of thing.

He has a solicitor.

Okay.

He just, again, I think he went through that his whole life.

He had a countdown for a thousand days until retirement.

He just couldn't wait to see the back of it.

Again, the cat felt very uncomfortable for him, but it just felt like it was what society expected of him.

You know, you've got to earn that money. You've got to get that good job.

And he's never been happier now with his simple living.

He doesn't need much. He lives very humbly.

That's impressive to me that somebody, and I see it around me as well back home,

that people are willing to stay in that life situation and they just count down the thousand days.

Yeah, which is wishing your life away.

Yeah, but it's also like how they're mentally tough enough to do it.

Yeah.

Like, I'm so weak in that sense.

Like, I'll start drinking at work or something like that to let the time go by.

It's just that painful for me. It's like, I got to get out of here. I got to get out of here.

Which is why I've stayed away for so long and I'm trying to make this life for myself.

But I do think it needs to be said for people who are toughing it out and willing to do whatever it takes.

And if their goal is to make that money and then just retire with that, hats off to you, dude.

It just shows how unnatural it is as a state for us humans.

It's almost like a modern form of slavery and imprisonment to an extent,

where we have to drink, we have to take inebriance to get over that way of living.

And it's not right, is it?

I would agree.

And then there's the argument that why can't you just accept your present situation

and be conscious and present because life's good no matter where you're at.

And I haven't quite gotten there.

Tell that to a caged bear in a zoo.

Yeah, right. That's a good analogy.

So you talked a little bit about pre-Desert Island survival and then the actual idea that came to you.

Like, this is what I'm going to put all my time and effort into.

Yeah. I mean, I had the idea for about seven or eight years.

It's something I'd always wanted to do. It's one of those childhood fantasies that many people share.

And I'd looked online. I'd see there's a few companies kind of doing it.

There's a couple of companies that would do jungle survival, tundra, desert.

And once a year they do Desert Island survival trips.

So I went on one of their trips and I was like, this is cool.

And there are elements I like, but the island had a person living on it.

And there was infestations of insects like sandfly bites.

I think I had a thousand on each leg.

And it just did not marry with my kind of image of Desert Island experience.

So I think that was a big shakeup that made me think I could do this better.

Maybe I will do this. And so then I went on another one run by.

So that previously was one run by an ex-military guy.

And it made me realize that, I mean, he's super talented and does some great stuff.

But for me, it's so important to have emotionally intelligent people run these trips,

people that are going to make it fun, that can identify different personalities,

that aren't going to make this a boot camp, that are going to say,

for example, once we chop the coconuts open, we bring out a bottle of rum

and it's time for pina coladas and we have bonfire beach games.

That's real, like even the survival setting.

Well, I haven't even told you about how the trip works,

but the first five days is training.

And during that training, we ease you into island life before the final three days of challenge,

but we'll cover that bit in a minute.

And so the next one I went on was a guy who now runs all my courses in Panama,

a guy, Tom McElroy, super talented guy.

He's lived with different tribes all across the world, in Papua Guinea, Indonesia, Mexico,

20 years of bushcraft experience.

He lived in the woods when he was 19 for one year.

And he, yeah, all about the primitive skills, really easy going attitude.

What kind of skills?

Primitive, primitive survival.

Oh, primitive skills, okay, got it.

Bushcraft.

Got it.

And so, yeah, and so at the end of the trip, I was like,

I kind of want to set up my own company.

Do you want to work on this?

And he was like, yeah, let's do it.

It was the longest pause in my life,

because I kind of felt like I was a bit of a mole in his backyard.

So wait, with the Tom McElroy guy, how did you meet him again?

I went on his trip.

His trip.

I went on his island survival trip.

Then you approach him about working together on your project?

Correct, yeah.

Okay.

That's why it was awkward.

Yeah, and he was into it.

He was super cool about it.

Did he scrap his thing just to jump on board with you?

No, so he's got loads of gigs going on.

But in the winter in the US, it's not such a busy time for him.

And that's when he comes down and does the Panama gigs.

So he does like flint knapping classes, bow making, leather hide, kind of curing,

as well as still doing an island survival trip in the US Virgin Islands.

So he's got loads of gigs going on,

and he's just effectively a freelance consultant in the bushcraft world

to come and run our expeditions too.

Really?

He's been to Tonga with me, French Polynesia.

We've had some great trips.

Do you go on every trip?

No.

I mean, wife and kid means that I've got a strict five trips a year rule.

That's still 60 days away from my family.

Right.

Before we get into the actual day-to-day on the island,

let's talk about just logistics from a business perspective

as you're going into other cultures.

And I'm assuming either renting a portion of space on the island

or getting permits to be on the island for a certain amount of time.

How does that work?

It's different every island, every country.

So we rent from governments in many of our locations.

We'll get a permit to use the island.

That's one option.

We also rent from local villages.

So in Tonga, for example, they'll have an island which is their scrub.

It's like their larder, their backyard where they keep their pigs

and they might have a cow there and their taro growing.

But they don't really go there.

It's just where like Garden of Eden prevails.

And so we'll pay a donation to the village,

which exceeds our expectation, keeps them happy, makes us happy.

In an exclusive, we're launching in the Philippines.

We're about to go live with that next month.

And that's an island which is owned by an Australian entrepreneur.

And he likes what we're doing.

He's happy to rent it to us.

How did you get in contact with him?

I found his island for sale on privateislands.com.

I won't say anymore because I don't want to betray any confidence.

That's fine.

It's really interesting how the idea comes to somebody or any idea

and then they start working towards accomplishing it

on different avenues they take like searching for real estate.

That's one way you find locations.

And then the logistics of having to navigate through governments

and making donations instead of actually just paying a rental fee

or whatever it is and understanding the cultural norms and differences.

It sounds like it's very layered and probably took you a bit of time

and takes you a bit of time every time you walk in a new culture and environment.

For sure.

And it's one of the big challenges of the business

is acquiring islands that work like that.

I think one of the best ways as well is on Google Maps.

I spend like a bond villain.

I'll be just looking on Google Maps for hours and hours and hours

and hours trying to identify islands that look like they're in that right

kind of Goldilocks zone I mentioned.

But you can't see too many boats wakes behind

because you can tell where there's lots of activity.

And then getting on the ground, there's no substitute for being there,

talking to local people, talking to boat drivers,

going and checking out all these islands.

So do you hire a local translator?

Yeah, so I'll normally find a fixer in that area.

It's helped with TV and other stuff in the past.

Or I'll just find a tour guide.

As a surfer, I can relate to the Google satellite images.

We're always on Google Satellite scouring the coast looking for waves.

And that's, I think, how many waves have been found in the recent years

around the world, just surfers.

Knowing what they're looking for, they have an understanding

of the bottom contour and the topography.

And then they can be like, there's probably waves there.

Let's go there.

Nice.

Yeah. Was this pretty capital intensive when you got started?

Did you need to have a good chunk of change to start?

No, I think we were in the black in the first year.

And I think that's that's been one of the surprises as well.

Like the outlay is not huge for me.

I had to buy obviously a lot of kit.

We bought the very best stuff.

We wanted to last.

A camping gear?

Yes. We have these hammocks from Hennessy,

which are built in mosquito nets, built in tarps.

They're like 280 bucks each.

So 10 of those.

I mean, that's nearly three grand.

That's an outlay.

And as well as all of the other equipment that comes with it.

So yeah, we're talking like five, six grand in equipment.

But the first trip I ran, I just put it out there to my friends

and friends of friends and said, I'm going to do this.

Let's do a cost price trip.

I want your feedback.

Let's see if this works.

And so I did it.

They're all like, dude, one of the best experiences of my life.

Absolutely loved it.

And and that was it.

And so then I booked several more dates and it started to fill up.

So with the first experience with family and friends,

were you the person teaching them survival or did you have somebody?

I was. Yeah.

And it's a very like so learning bushcraft is a it's a rule of 10,000 hours.

It's Atkinson's law.

You can't fake this stuff.

You see the guy in the market chopping coconuts outside here.

He's done that 50,000 times.

And there's a reason he's still got all his fingers.

And I would say that I'm I'm six thousand seven thousand hours into my 10,000 hours.

It's not something you can fake.

But you're just learning by doing like when you got to the island,

I mean, you probably have read a few books and understood a few basics,

but you just started being like, this is what I heard.

I went. So I did a few courses.

I was under Tom's wing.

OK, Tom McElroy, learning from him.

But I won't lie.

The first trip I did, I'm like, oh, my goodness.

And they say fake it till you make it.

Yeah, I really.

But these guys knew this.

And I think having their support really helped.

That was the second trip that was almost harder.

OK. Yeah.

And the fourth trip when I machete through my finger.

Did you get metabacteria?

Did you just sew yourself up?

I went over to a clinic, got sewed up, and then I had to like carry on doing.

I was doing like a fire demonstration and the bow drill.

Yeah. And I'm bow drilling away.

And then I just feel it split.

And then there's just blood dripping off my elbow.

And it's like, I'm going to put out my fire.

But just stoically carrying on.

Like, this has to work.

And it was fine.

Like, the expedition.

But you ripped the stitches.

Yeah. Yeah.

It just ripped open.

Oh, Jesus.

But it was fine.

It was just when I had cut it and I was lying in a hammock that first night,

it was the first night of the expedition.

And I was just like, what do I do?

Do I fly Tom down from California?

Do I carry on?

Do I abandon the expedition?

Just on my own.

On my own.

Now we always have an assistant.

But this is like right out in the infancy of the business.

Can you give stitches now?

Do you know how to do that?

I don't. I don't.

I've got a stitch kit.

But I would rather just get a professional do that.

We always have a clinic within 30 minutes.

Okay.

We're big on health and safety.

Like, I recognize that a mistake there could cost everything to the business.

Yeah. Infection and stuff like that.

Yeah.

We carry antibiotics.

And we have a fairly comprehensive med kit.

Fair enough.

Stitches are just rather not to show.

Yeah.

We glue them if need be.

Yeah.

Butterfly stitch.

Yeah. Yeah.

I became proficient in Nicaragua at stitches.

Just the doctors would come through and like it came to the point though where it was like

people were coming with horrific.

From the coral?

No, more from like machete accidents, boards hitting their face or like body,

like the scags from the surfboard cutting their head.

Yeah.

And it became like to the point like, I'm just like, I can't do this.

I can do like stuff that's within my range.

But like, I'm not going to try to sew your face up.

You know, when it's a female who wants to look attractive.

Exactly.

Yeah.

That's not my specialty.

Your face is important to you.

Yeah.

This is really cool.

So marketing wise, like you had the test go with your friends and family.

And then who are you reaching out to to come on these survival trips?

I mean, we pay a bit on Google Ads and that's how we found.

And we're very lucky.

We got featured in the Sunday Times, National Geographic.

We had a reporter from Playboy come to our Playboy.

And so that's really helped to get the word out there.

But our traffic is still low.

Like, it's not something that people maybe Google, Desert Island Survival.

But like most of your trips are full every year.

I mean, you're sustaining yourself.

Yeah.

We're 90% full for next year.

And once we're in the Philippines, we'll have bandwidth for another 50 more people,

seven more trips.

And so we're just going to start ramping up on Facebook and Instagram ads.

I think it's kind of thing people don't realize is out there

and they don't realize they want until they see it.

Maybe when you're on the tube back from the office and you're scrolling social media

and you see it, you go, that's what I should be doing.

Yeah, 100%.

What has been the demographic of people that mostly come?

I mean, the classic avatar is a London city worker, a bloke who's 35,

who's got a good job, who just feels like the cap's not fitting.

They feel that they just need more adventure.

We forget that we're primal animals.

It's an unnatural state.

And so, yeah, that would be the classic person.

But it's a shame to pigeonhole.

We've had Chileans, Koreans.

We've had guys who are 65 and never been camping,

21-year-old weather girls, students, a very broad range.

OK, that makes sense.

And then now let's take, how many people do you have max on each trip?

So it's eight people.

Eight people total.

Would you run it if there's less or it has to be eight?

We start at four.

The exhibition would go live at four.

If we've got less three months before, then it's possible we've canceled.

That's not a problem now.

In the early days, that was a potential issue, but we never had to cancel just.

That's fine. That's exactly my model.

I'll run it at four. My max is eight.

I like the interaction of small groups.

This is it.

I think eight, above eight, you start to get the danger of two tribes forming,

two different conversations around the fire.

And you've got to keep everyone cohesive.

100%.

So let's go. Talk me through a day.

Yeah, I can't believe we haven't talked about what it is yet.

Let's go through every step of the way.

They land and boom, what happens?

So it's a 10-day experience.

They land and the first and the last day are at a really nice hotel,

like four-star or up.

We want it to feel like a 10-star hotel when you get back off the island.

So we go for pretty good ones.

The very first day is just getting to know and meet each other.

We have a lunch.

People just snorkel, kick back, enjoy the hotel.

And then that evening, we have a full expedition briefing, a safety briefing.

We talk about the dangers on the island, do's and don'ts, hygiene, et cetera.

And we try to have a fairly early night that night, not get too carried away.

Then the next morning, we leave at 10 a.m.

Then the speedboat comes to the beach of the resort.

We don't like to have to go to a marina.

We like to keep it kind of right there.

And we load all the kit up and we go to the desert island,

normally within half an hour or so.

And then we turn up and we talk about, well,

what would you do when you first arrive on a desert island?

Rather than just kind of running around and getting on with stuff,

you need to keep still and just assess your resources,

why is this going to be the best place for us to make home?

Is there the right amount of trees? Is there water?

Is there shelter? Is there food?

And so we've obviously, we're not going to drop off 400 liters of water

and then have to move halfway around the island.

So we kind of know where it is, but then we go exploring

and we take in the surroundings.

The first day is shelter.

We build a big communal shelter together

where we're all going to cook and eat and hang out.

And everyone puts up their hammocks.

And it already feels like home pretty quickly.

After three hours previously, just being a kind of totally barren beach

with a few coconuts moving up and down the surf.

And so the first five days on the island is training.

That's where we're going to teach you all the survival skills

that you're going to then need for the final three days,

which is the survival phase.

So in the first five days, it's survival light.

We're cooking for you. You're sleeping in these hammocks.

We're playing games. It's fun.

A lot of alcohol involved?

I don't want to get drunk drunk.

There's a certain danger in this environment of getting drunk,

but it's really nice to have a bottle of rum passed around the fire in the evening.

It gets the conversation flowing. It's great.

But it's not about getting drunk.

I hear you.

And so, yeah, the first day is shelter.

Then we'll do a day of fire.

We'll go and find the right woods to make bow drills,

which is that archetypal fire technique.

And the other friction fires we do with a hand drill.

We do a bamboo fire saw.

We use a flint as well.

We just show people how to do that, first of all.

It's a bamboo fire saw.

So basically you take a piece of bamboo, about two inches thick,

and you split it in half with your machete.

And then it's kind of hard to explain on a podcast.

There's probably examples on YouTube I could put this show on.

Yeah, totally. But you know that you can actually cut meat with bamboo.

It's razor sharp.

And so that edge, you'll put that in the sand between your legs,

and you will run the other half up and down that edge.

And as it's such a fine point, you get really, really hot friction straight away.

And you have some kindling, something that you prepare to like...

Exactly, yeah.

And it's great because bamboo has that as well.

You scrape your machete on the edge and you get these nice feather curls.

And so you have that inside the bamboo.

I'll put it in the show notes for the audience to understand.

Yeah, do it.

I need to make those videos myself. I haven't done any of this stuff.

I need to get a YouTube channel going.

So yeah, it's a recall fire technique.

So five days is training.

Yeah.

And then are you limiting what people can bring to the island?

Kind of like the survivor stuff?

So we're cool.

Obviously you should have sun cream and bug spray.

We don't want you to come back burnt and eaten.

And it's fine to have your kindle and read in the hammock when you go to bed,

but just not too socially.

We do take people's SIM cards.

On Panama there is a little bit of cell reception on one mountain.

We want you to feel disconnected. We want this to feel real.

But yeah, so five days of training and then we take away basically everything.

You just have a machete, a hand knife, a medikit, a sat phone,

a handful of fish hooks and some line, and that's it.

So you've got to get fire by friction.

You can't take the flint.

You've got to find food. You've got to build that shelter.

You've got to get water.

And the instructor, you are still there for those three days.

Yeah, we kind of set ourselves back in the forest.

We're there. We've got a set of sat phone.

We've got a two-way radio as well.

So we're there in case of emergency, but you really won't see us.

Really?

You feel like you're on your own.

So you kind of just break off from the group and you go do your own thing?

Yeah, if we see them, we blank them.

This is so interesting.

So they do have a kindle for the first five days.

Is there a power source they can plug into?

Yeah, we have a big solar battery.

And you bring in all your water.

So are they not having to filter water or boil it?

Or do they do it the last three days?

So we teach them all those techniques.

We also show them how to make solar stills.

We'll show them how to turn salt water into fresh water.

Teach them how to get into coconuts.

Different vines that you can drink from.

Other wild edibles that are going to give you water.

But if you were to just live off water, it takes up all your time.

And you shouldn't eat food.

The hardest thing of island living is water.

In the Philippines, we do have a creek, so it makes life easier.

But we bring in the water just so we don't have to spend all of our time acquiring water.

And we will tend to give them emergency supply for the three days.

Right, and they get a buffet of experiences that they can, rather than searching for water,

they leave with more of an experience.

Yeah, exactly. Otherwise, that's all they would do.

And then the hygiene thing you mentioned.

Are we talking about they have to shit in a bag kind of thing?

And you can't leave any trace of your existence on the island once you leave?

Yeah, it's amazing how quickly that goes in the jungle.

So there's lots of land crafts you're going to rip it apart.

So we dig a long drop hole, and every time you go, you put some sand over it.

Or my personal favorite is the aquapoo, where you swim about 400 meters away from the rest of the guys,

and start a backwards swim.

It floats in the salt water, so you've got to get some pace up there. Get moving.

Interesting. And what other kind of stuff do you teach them about hygiene?

Like just keep yourself dry, clean?

Yeah, exactly. Don't let moisture on your skin.

People get nappy rash if they don't keep themselves dry.

Imagine similar kind of stuff for you guys.

Oh, 100%. But I feel like, yeah, I guess with the lack of fresh water bathing yourself, it gets worse and worse.

I've definitely gone days in situations where I just salt water on my body and it starts to cut into you

because the salt dries and you walk and you just get these really bad rashes.

I thought it would be worse because we're militant that that water we have is literally obviously just for drinking

and for cooking and brushing your teeth and drinking.

And so it's surprising, though, that people don't get salt sores.

It doesn't seem to be an issue. We're in and out the water 10, 15 times a day.

Not as bad as it should be.

And the ones that you do go on because you go on five a year, you said, are you just as enthusiastic as you once were?

I love it so much. It's my happiest place. I don't think there's anything better.

And your wife, what does she think about it? Has she been? I'm assuming she has.

Yeah, she came to French Polynesia.

Does she want to go back?

Yeah, she wants to do the Panama trip because that's what I always talk about fondest.

I'm hoping the Philippines one is going to be even better.

So she'll come on that.

Nice. But she's your business partner.

Well, she's got her own gigs going on.

But she does help out with the digital side of things.

She's been doing digital marketing and helping more and more.

OK, so going back to the retreat.

So the last three days are them on their own, fully survival mode.

And then on day, what, nine, the boat pulls up in the morning at nine a.m.

Exactly.

And everyone cheers, you hug it out, and then you get back on the boat and it's like party time.

Yeah, it's laden with cold beer, with Coca Colas and fruit.

And yeah, you go back for the best shower of your life.

The aircon hits you as you walk into your room and you see these crisp white sheets after sleeping on palm fronds for three days.

Call your friends and family.

And then we go out for a big knees up, eat your waiting pizza.

And that's a cracking night.

That's awesome.

It's strange because that morning it's a holiday you can't wait to end.

And then once you then you've got back and you've got all your creature comforts, you're like, take me back to the island.

There's a certain simplicity to it that with time you become very accustomed to.

You've been to India. I was in India.

I lived on a beach in India with my friend and his girlfriend under a rock with little palm fronds for three weeks.

Really?

It was a freshwater spring we got our water from.

We walked a few kilometers in to get food occasionally and supplies.

But there was a point where it's like we were in such sync with the sun coming up and the sun going down.

And I never got bored.

I didn't do anything all day except for float in the freshwater.

Maybe take a dip, watch the birds and never got bored.

It was incredible.

Yeah.

And I think so fondly of that moment.

I can imagine.

It's very similar.

It's very similar.

And I think I set this company up thinking that it's all about the castaway experience.

It's all about imparting and learning these survival skills.

But it's now transpired that what people get most of all is that detachment from the modern world and that immersion in nature.

And it does something very profound to us.

We were never happier, I think, than when we're living simplistically in nature without the electricity.

It's how we're pre-programmed to be.

We're only 15 generations ago since we were living tribally, basically.

Yeah.

And that's how we're pre-programmed.

And that hat fits very well.

It does, yeah.

Just falling asleep the second the sun goes down gives us such harmony with Mother Nature.

It's really cool that you recreated that experience for people.

Do you have return guests?

I never expected that to be a thing at all.

I thought it would be like a once in a lifetime thing for people.

We've got about 15%, 20% return.

Incredible.

It has such a spike, such an impact on people that they need that feeling again.

I mean, I'm sure that they could recreate it with different expeditions and stuff.

But as we release new islands, they're like, dude, I want to be the first on that island.

I want to see this new place.

Well, it sounds like you give the perfect balance.

You're not the militant ex-military guy, like, shuck it up.

It's gradually led into a fun sort of experience with passing the ball around at night.

And then, OK, you're on your own for three days, which is going to be hard and uncomfortable.

But it's not so long that you're like, this sucks.

And then you get to finish it off with an amazing experience.

So that's great.

So price point-wise, it sounds like if the audience wanted to come,

there's varying price points for various locations around the world.

Yeah.

Panama is our cheapest location, which is $2,450 for the 10 days.

And that's not including airfare?

That's not including airfare or travel insurance.

Those are the two things that you need to get.

Otherwise, you can't really spend a dime after that.

So I guess there's that aspect to it.

Philippines, I think, is going to come in at $2,900.

And Tonga is $3,200.

Tonga includes swimming with humpback whales, which makes it a double bucket list experience.

Like pre or post?

Pre. So the very first day, instead of going to the island,

we get into the boat and we go and swim face to face with these humpbacks.

We spend the whole day from like 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. doing that.

And instead of dropping us back on the hotel, we get dropped on the island.

And everyone's just buzzing after this magical experience.

And we have a hog roast going on the island.

We don't have time to build a shelter.

It just hammocks up, sundown, run out.

Wow.

It's a strong start.

I'll bet.

That sounds cool.

What's it like swimming with humpbacks?

Well, I've not done it yet.

Oh, you haven't?

No.

Oh, okay.

I guess what I just told you is my imagination of what it's going to be like.

Okay.

We've got those trips in July and August.

I've only been in January when the humpbacks weren't there.

Okay.

The island is stunning, but there were no humpbacks when I did it.

Okay.

That's cool.

We have humpbacks crossing Nicaragua.

So I see them quite often.

I've never jumped in the water and tried to hang out.

Yeah.

So Vanuatu and Tonga are the two places where you can do this.

It's where the mothers come to nurse their calves.

They're stationary.

There's no angry males.

It's a very safe way to do it.

And the water is crystal clear.

So it's like the place to do it.

Wow.

That's great.

So Indo and Philippines are where you're scouting now.

Are you excited for one over another or is it equal?

At the moment, I mean, this island, which we've just got in the Philippines, feels like

it ticks every single box.

I'm so excited for it.

It's got cashew crows.

It's got monitor lizards.

It's got perfect protected coral reefs.

It's stunning.

I'm going there in January to do the final recce, but I think it should do everything.

And it's well connected as well.

You can get to Manila direct from much of the states, much of Europe.

And then it's only an hour and a half seaplane to the hotel from there.

When you do land on the desert island, you're always able to pull up on the beach, right?

You don't have to have to navigate over coral reefs.

It's a great question.

So yeah, in French Polynesia, if we use the small little tin boats, we're fine.

But the main big boat that we bring all the kids on, we can't get in close.

So yeah, you swim to the island the first time and we port it back and forth, the kits

on these little canoes.

Really?

Like hand canoes?

We swim them in.

We load them up and swim them in.

Like little flat canoes that you use and then you just, do you leave the canoes with you

or do you take them back out to the boat?

Take them back out into the boat.

Interesting.

Yeah, it's funny you asked that.

Well, as a surfer, and Surfer's been doing this for a long time in Indo, like they'll

have the locals drop them off on a deserted island that they have seen waves from and

they take all like chickens, goats out there and they just live for months.

Wow.

And yeah, getting off across the reef for them, like there is footage of these guys

and it's like the goats are in the water, like this got like just smashed.

Poor goats, but apart from that, it sounds awesome.

Yeah, no, it seems really cool.

You have to send me that.

I really want to.

Well, the movie is called Second Thoughts.

I'll put it in the show notes.

I'm going to watch that.

That sounds great.

Yeah.

The guy was adventurous.

Him and his friends, they lived it.

A lot of surfers have been doing it for years, so it's not uncommon.

But man, it's really cool to talk to you and hear about Desert Island Survival.

I think a lot of guests will get a lot out of it if they come join you.

Is there something that you really want the audience to know and have an understanding

about you, your service and what it's all about?

I think as we've evolved, I've realized that the three values, the three kind of tenets

of what set us apart and make our trip special, and I've kind of alluded to them, are the

islands have to be perfect.

We are so picky about finding you the best tropical, beautiful islands that tick every

box.

Secondly is the people.

The instructor and assistant instructor have to be the coolest, soundest dudes of deep

emotional intelligence and super talented at bushcraft skills.

I think we will go to the ends of the earth to make sure that both of those elements are

the finest.

I think that's what makes our trips really, really unique and cool and safety as well.

It's fun, we've got the rum, it's all jokes and stuff, and we're not militant, but we

don't take any chance on your safety.

There is always a chance that you're going to make a mistake with a machete, but we do

as much as we can to show you how to safely use these things.

Absolutely.

If you could speak to one audience member who's stuck in the rat race in London, in

Australia, Sydney, LA, who wants to get out and maybe just start something similar to

you, go travel for the first time.

Just get out of the rat race.

What would you tell them?

Come to a desert island.

It's funny, I mean, obviously I was my answer to everything, but we've had a lot of people

who have...

The other thing with doing this is it steps you off the rat race, off the hamster wheel,

and it's the first time for so many people that they've actually slowed down in life

and taken a step out of their life, and they can always look back on themselves like an

out of body experience.

I've had people realize the changes they want to make from that detachment from their life.

We've had people who have given up smoking and started doing ultra marathon running.

I've had people leave their job.

I've had people leave their partner.

I've had people come to get over divorce.

It seems to be...

It's not meant to be a therapy session, but it helps people with big changes, and it helps

as a catalyst for people.

Getting into nature.

If they can't afford your service, go camping for 10 days.

There's so many wiki treks.

There's so many cool pre-done treks out there.

You can just get the GPS points, stick them into your phone, follow these routes.

You can do some amazing...

Make sure you've got the right kit.

Make sure you tell people where you're going.

You can buy a little satellite device now for like 50 bucks.

Just text ones or an SOS button.

Get out there and do an adventure.

You can also do micro adventures.

There's a guy, Alistair Humphreys, who has a book called Micro Adventures.

It's UK-based, but the same idea works for other places.