What does hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and leadership have to do with one another? A lot actually. Joel Swanson joined us on our podcast recently to chat about what the hike taught him and how his story inspires his clients daily. Not only did he teach us some valuable things like how to trust your people and get through the hard things, but also gives insights on how he teaches this to his clients daily.
Where to find Joel?
Linkedin
His Website
Full Transcription below (may contain typo's...):
[00:00:00] Joel: [00:00:00] And so I kept going and there was a big trail sign that I came up on the back of and stole anybody parking lot with a trail sign. And I came to the other side of the sign and looked at it and the sign said, and a fuller Ridge. and at that point, when I saw that sign, I realized I'd gone all the way across for Ridge without even realizing it because I was expecting something so much scarier than actually was real.
And I, I remember dropping my pack and kicking a pine cone. I was pretty frustrated with myself and frustrated with the situation, but the, that whole idea of going to gemba and going to see for yourself, Played out a lot throughout that hike.
Keerstyn: [00:00:46] welcome to the podcast, Joel. I'm really excited that you're here today. Can you just give us a brief intro and bio of who you are, what you do and how you got involved in your work?
Joel: [00:00:55] Sure. My name is Joel Swanson and I am in Minneapolis.
[00:01:00] I am married, I've got three kids and I am a certified EOS implementer of doing I've been doing that for about six years and I got into it originally. when a client asked me to implement for them and I didn't know anything about EOS at the time. And so I did some learning and. Did an implementation and it didn't go very well, honestly, but I was really impressed with the system.
And so I decided that was the direction I wanted to go with my career. So I've been consulting for, and working with running small, mid sized businesses for my whole career and, with EOS. That's what I do now. And I love it. Awesome.
Keerstyn: [00:01:40] That's really interesting that a client came to you just randomly and asked you to do that, regardless of if you knew.
I didn't think about it. I'm sure that you had an implementer type personality and that just really helped, boost their ideas of you and, felt comfortable doing that. That's really fast.
Joel: [00:01:55] It was fun. And it was a compliment. Certainly they've
Keerstyn: [00:01:59] been
Joel: [00:01:59] a client for [00:02:00] about 10 years and a few different derivations.
So it was a pretty natural extension for me to do that.
Keerstyn: [00:02:06] Awesome. That's really sweet. I love that. So for listeners, obviously we, me and Joel had a conversation prior to this and we basically are going to be talking about a fight that he did from Mexico to Canada.
That was five months long. And basically how, he now incorporates leadership concepts with his stories from that. so Joel, do you want to just give us a brief. Background and, the why of why you wanted to do this. What made you do this? And then some of the things that have come out of it, because of that.
Joel: [00:02:35] Sure. So the, I hiked a trail called the Pacific crest trail in 2009, and this is a literal hiking trail that goes all the way from the Mexican border to the Canadian border, through Oregon, California, Oregon, and Washington. And. I had been an outdoors person my whole life, but I'd never done it. A lot of backpacking.
And then I [00:03:00] was probably 23 and somebody, I just heard of it and I went okay. And Googled it. And my eyes got really big and I'd heard of the Appalachian trail, which is another long distance hiking trail. The Appalachian trail is some long trail that's out East, somewhere. when I saw that the PCT went all the way from Mexico to Canada, that was something that really captured me.
And so I started looking into it and, had never done backpacking a lot of other outdoor things and camping and stuff, but I've never actually done backpacking. And so I started doing that and learning about that. And, probably seven years later, I guess it would have been, I. I quit my job and went and did that height.
And it took five months from Mexico to Canada. And whenever anybody hears about this, they always ask her a couple questions. And I'll just answer those quick, because these are the ones that you're.
Keerstyn: [00:03:57] Thank
Joel: [00:03:57] you. Yeah. So one, did I carry a [00:04:00] gun? No, guns are heavy. I was, I ever like I did. I said any wild animals.
Yes. but not in a dangerous sense. It wasn't like I got. I scared off grizzly bears or something like that. animals tend to want to stay away from you if you're in the wilderness rather than come to you. Did I go alone? Whether it's the next question everybody asks and the answer is sorta, I started, my dad actually was kinda my backpacking partner and he started with me.
And so we did the first two weeks together, and then he had a, I think it's called a job that he had to go back to. Yeah. And then beyond that, there was a couple of places where there was some things that were legitimately dangerous. And so there's a couple of guys and I, that said, we're going to stick together for this one or two week section.
But after that, other than that, no, I didn't explicitly stay with anybody.
Keerstyn: [00:04:58] That's awesome. Thanks for [00:05:00] answering those because I probably would have asked about those. Absolutely. So what were some of those things that kind of resonated with you after the fact, when you think about leadership and this hike, obviously I'm sure it was the hardest thing.
You've. All I've ever done probably, or one of the hardest things that you've ever done. So what are some of those things that you first think of when you think of leadership, but also this hike and some comparisons between the
Joel: [00:05:26] two? pretty much everything I learned comes from a story that makes me look bad.
so we'll just throw that out right out there. So the thing that amazed me even very early on in that journey was that so much of. The things I was experiencing and learning had direct ties back to business. And for me, I've learned a lot of things in business and most of them have common.
I won't say most I've learned a lot of things in business and many of them have come from my experience in business, [00:06:00] but some of the most important ones haven't come through actually being in business it's came through the experiences that I had hiking that I've really transformed. Who I am as a person.
So there's a few that I like to share, especially the first is really about a concept called goat, gemba and gemba. for those of you who may not know is a Japanese word, that means like a place where the value is created and it's part of lean manufacturing and the Toyota practical problem solving system.
The idea of saying, we're not going to solve this problem by sitting in a conference room, we're going to solve this problem by going and actually looking and seeing what's happening out there. And so go to wherever things manufactured, sit next to the rep who's on the ph...
