Aldo Kane - Full Interview with the Mulligan Brothers

the main biggest thing that people can do is take action because in a year's time you're going to wish you started today [Music] so just for people who don't know just introduce yourself uh who you are and what you do my name is aldo kane i'm a former royal marine commando and i now run a company operating in extreme remote and hostile locations around the world yeah so one of the things that i was nervous about coming here is that you work with film crews so be being judged as a film crew was like a little bit nervous um going back to early days when you were growing up councillors they uh if you were to describe that we have a large american audience what's the council estate what was it like growing up yeah don't worry about being judged it's fine you've got enough cameras here finally um yeah so i grew up on a housing estate which is you know in a cul-de-sac um down at the end of a road which is um probably how the majority of people are actually brought up in in the uk you know uh working class um and you know i had a very outdoor lifestyle i was born um near glasgow but live on the west coast of scotland so down you know near the sea just across from northern ireland um so my upbringing was was as far as i know fairly standard and normal um in the uk scouts early on i think was like in in the book so i i've read i've got one chapter left of this book uh unbelievable like well done with it it's amazing um but yeah early on it talked about shaping who you were scouts was like a massive thing at that point again like what what's the scouts like and how did it shape yourself so um when i was so when i was very young um i joined the uh the beavers which is like beavers cub scouts um like boy scouts in america boy scouts of america but it's all one organization um and it was joining them at very young age which gave me a glimpse into the outdoors and how you can not just survive but thrive outdoors um and so my twin and i spent years before i joined the marines we spent years going away camping hiking learning how to navigate how to live off the land um and so for me the boy scouts were like a fundamental part of of my childhood and growing up and fast forward from there 10 15 years and then you know an elite royal marine commando sniper operating in the middle east uh you know using the skills that i learned in the scouts as a boy and if you look back to the scouts you know they were formed lord baden powell um you know it was military instructors it was you know a way of training people in the way military weighs so did you as a child then doing the scouts early on with your twin brother did you always know that you were going to take the path into the military or was was there a gap in between something that made you decide um no so i was not academic at all at school the scouts helped me get outdoors and stay outdoors i didn't play computer games you know i wasn't i wasn't an indoor kid and the more that you did that the more that i did that the more i realized i didn't want to have a normal job and so i got to the point where i was looking at what jobs i could do and would want to do in the military it seemed to offer this lifestyle of of being outside adventurous boyzone sort of adventure and that's what i was in the scouts for that's what i was in the cadets for um and so i went to the careers office up in glasgow and um you've got like the navy the air force the army um and i went into the naval one and there was a marine in there raw marine in the commando and uh he basically said look there's no point going to the rest of them we're the best uh so but i did do my own due diligence and went down and checked the rest of them out but that was like the first time and i i reckon i was 14 when i went there to to see which one i wanted to join and then for the next two years i was like focused i was joining the marines regardless of what my parents thought and regardless of what anyone thought that's exactly what i was going to do there's a story of when you uh the green green beret um i can't remember where it was but it like it the seduction of it brought you even more to it the green berry of the green beret you might say in america the green berry is is like the coveted um headdress of the royal marine commandos it's it's renowned and revered throughout the world um and the first time i actually saw one was was at a cadet camp an air cadet camp up in scotland north scotland and this helicopter pilot sort of swaggered to the front of the queue that i was in and and he put it down on the desk he was buying something i remember just seeing it and just being like that looks beautiful like the black anodized globe and laurel badge on it in the green berry and like i just thought that is that's what i'm going to have basically so what was the process of training like i mean for yourself was it a bit of a shock or did it meet expectations because i wanted to join the marines from like 13 or 14 i by the time it came to joining up like i knew inside out what training was what was happening in what week and the only bit that i didn't know was whether my body would be physically strong enough to complete it you know my head was my head game was good you know i knew that's what i wanted to do um and it's the longest infantry training in the world it's 30 odd weeks um so it's quite a long time and it's very intense you know there's very hardly any days off through the whole process and every week is is like a killing phase you know getting rid of dead wood in in the troop um so out of maybe 50 people that join 50 men that join um then at the end of it there might be seven or eight that finish it um and so joining at 16 your my bones weren't fully developed and my body wasn't fully developed i was essentially still a boy um but yeah it i found it was tough but i i knew that it was going to be tough and i knew that that wouldn't last forever you know there wouldn't be people staying in the marines for 10 15 20 years if it was as hard as it was every single day in training you just couldn't last that long so i kind of it was the first part of my life where i started to realize that you can literally become what you think about you can you can you can have what you want as long as you know what it is that you want and i think a lot of my friends at school they just didn't know what they wanted to do you know they you know they're going to prolong it a bit more to do a levels or highers and then they go to university still don't really know what they want to do choose a course that they're not that interested in come out 23-24 still not know what they're going to do dodge around a few jobs you know by the time i was 26 i'd done 10 years as an elite soldier um you know i and and that you know i just shortcutted that whole 10 years of messing around by knowing exactly what it was that i wanted to do and then breaking that down and and that's really you know my life up till now has been based on those fundamental points of you know you can have anything and be anything and do anything that you want you just have to know what that thing is i mean that is so important as well and i think it for some reason it's not instilled in people like i think we we can work hard but work hard towards nothing and like having a goal we can get that it might not even be the right place you want to arrive at but you you will find you get progress and sometimes looking back the dots connect as well um you say it is a 16 year old going you know into this training with men fully grown men um how much of it was physical and how much of it was mental um yeah i suppose that you know the royal marines training is hard physically you get smashed every day you know relentlessly for the entire time that you're there um but as a young man you're fairly robust you're fairly um resilient to that sort of training um if your mindset is good you know of 50 people that start let's say 10 finish not all of those 40 that don't make it have physical injuries you know the majority of those probably just don't have the minerals to finish the course and that's because you know there's a big lesson there in in anything that you do if the why isn't big enough then you'll never have the drive the determination to get out of bed early and finish that thing and so let's say i just say i'm going to join the marines there's nothing else going on like my apprenticeship's finished and you get down there and you're in week 10 and you're getting smashed and you're you know cold wet hungry tired um then it's very easy to just stick your hand up and say i'm sacking it off whereas if that's all you've wanted to do and that is your end state is to get there then like for me in those hard times i was in my absolute element i was living my dream like it's hard to explain it but i i had this like the fire inside my stomach that i was doing the thing that i wanted to do and it was such an amazing feeling and and i feel lucky that that i found that early on because it shaped the rest of my life you know the my time in the marines was ten years um which was quite a short period of time in comparison to lots of other people who might do 22 years as the longest um and my twin did 16 years um but you know for me what i took away from that was not all the hardcore skills i've been able to shoot from a long distance and being able to run miles and miles and not feel tired what i took away from it was the soft skills um and they call it the commando spirit and that's courage determination unselfishness and cheerfulness in the face of adversity now those four things if you can employ them and put them into everything that you do then then anything is possible like i said they're little you know if the y isn't big enough or strong enough then you'll never get out of bed in the morning you never you know get up when things are hard but with courage determination and selfishness cheerfulness and faith but basically which is like the command of spirit you can almost achieve anything anything they should have they should have a lesson in school that's like you know once a year one hour and then they just they just go through that you read the meditations of marc australia yes and it's like it's such a stoic philosophy to to um be cheerful in the face of adversity um yeah so i mean mock yeah marcus aurelius like that was a book that shaped like shaped you a little bit yeah i mean yeah so if you when most people think back to 2000 years ago you might think people are running around living in caves all the rest of it but no you've got marcus aurelius who was a general of the roman empire um and i think i got that right general of the roman empire but but he's written these memoirs his his which were never supposed to be published uh they were you know they were notes to himself basically um meditations and that is as true today even more so today than it than it ever was 2 000 years ago and i only stumbled across it maybe a few years ago not early on certainly not before i joined the marines but what i did find is that his historic philosophies were very and the stories as a as a group of people their philosophies were very similar to the way that i was the way that i acted in the way that i was already operating and sailing my [ __ ] it was really good to read so we do mulligan brothers but we also have a channel that's based on stoicism so as my brother william who's back at the studio he will he will do a lot of the stoicism and this when i saw that and and how it linked up with the stuff you'd already been doing like it's such a great conclusion to draw yeah um and i think people are now getting a lot out of stoicism because you know like you say it's more more relevant today i think so and there's i mean there's some parts of it that you know that they just don't work as they do today like you can't just say to someone who's gone through horrific trauma on the battlefield it's man up bro just like get on with it just be thankful it wasn't you you know like people have people have some serious um mental health illness because of you know whatever's happened so so um there's definitely the best parts of stoicism are excellent and then there's definitely like now talking about how you feel is is such an important part um of yeah it's like an addition onto stoicism is that we can openly talk as men you know about our feelings and about you know that sometimes we're not all right if that makes sense yeah so another person that i just spoke to you before this about luke stockman so he's a strong man um one one of the strongest men in the world and that's his thing is about opening up and talking about it and uh yeah i mean linking on to him is um he was working on the oil rigs which is another industry that's like you know renowned for like not sharing your feelings and um there's a culture around the oil rigs themselves i mean how what was your experience like working in the rigs yeah so i worked offshore on the oil rigs for three years um so i left the marines and then i kind of messed around for a little bit and then and then i went into um into the offshore industry and there's a lot of hard men and women um you know who work in the offshore oil and gas industry and um it's you know for me for me i used it as a as a platform to have time off so by this time i've already been to iraq i've already been fighting in war i've already realized that time is more valuable than money i've realized that you know you can earn as much money as you want you know it comes and goes daily monthly weekly whatever you know when you're up you're eventually going to be back down um but time doesn't that's just gone um and you know if you are privileged enough to get to old age um then then that's one of the best things that that can you know physically happen to you um and so so for me when i went offshore it was very much about using you know i was sacrificing two weeks of my life which is huge when you think about it to then have two or three weeks off which i could then use effectively into reshaping retraining and regrouping on what i valued and what i felt was important and which direction i wanted to go in life um and when you're offshore it gives you opportunity to reflect because there's a lot of time when you're not working um and it gives you a lot of time to reflect and to to plan if if you're of that mindset there's also you could easily blink and you've done 20 years in offshore industry which means you've spent 10 years on an oil rig which to me was you know it's not what i wanted to do with the rest of my life i wanted to use it as a leg up to then use the time to eventually get the qualifications and the experience that i needed to do the job that i do know and when you look back when i look back like the the dots joined perfectly like it's it's 20 20 perfect it's crazy right look like looking back because especially sometimes in the moment it can be quite scary and daunting like is this it and but it it somehow finds its way to work out right yeah i think if you i think the big one of the big things that i think that people are anxious about is fear of the unknown and thinking is this it is this all i've got is this what i'm doing with my life if you're lucky enough to be that introspective and thinking about yourself and your life because most people are too busy with the minutia of everyday life that they don't give tomorrow and the next week in the next month or second thought it's quite deep this but but effectively if you're in that position to think about the future then you're one of the minority and then if if you're able to think about the future and shape it then then you're in the top one two three percent of people on earth um and that is it's quite a powerful place to be i've never thought of it like that that's yeah i love that yeah i've never honestly never thought of it like that so yeah like being stuck at a certain point was the uh door-to-door gas is it gas and energy so i used to do i was a double glazing door knocker i it was the worst job i ever had it was really tough as well i remember thinking like this cannot be it so at that moment in time first where does the dot connect for you and also what was that experience like that so i ended up i was selling gas and electricity it was a really horrible time you know i'd left the marines and i didn't leave the marines because it ran its course or anything i left the marines because i was like at the top of my game and it's the hardest the easiest thing to do for me would have been to stay in and see out my 22 years that was easy the hard thing to do is leave something when you're very good at it because you you know it's completely unknown it's very easy to stay in that one in that rut and i didn't want to be in that rut you know i'd done as much as i thought i could do in the military i'd gained as much experience i just knew there was something niggling me that there was something that i wanted to do that was it was um i don't know that there was just something that was niggling at me that made me want to sort of put my notes in and leave i then had this transition period of coming from being one of the most elite fighting soldiers on the planet to no one to just not having any backup you know i was i was just this guy who was out in the park with everyone else looking for work um and so i took on this job of being a gas and electricity salesman and it's you know i'm not a salesman and and it it just felt like it was a job for the sake of a job and it was it wasn't that the people that i was working with weren't that nice you know they were i don't know if you found that as well yeah i did but they like sales and and that's it just didn't sit right with me and they didn't care about the people and that's all yeah and so i did that for two or three months and i you know it was utterly so destroying but at that point i still hadn't connected the dots with you know i just decided i wanted to join the marines i decided i want to be a sniper i decided that i wanted to be in recce i did all these things but i hadn't really fully grasped that everything was in my control i kind of felt at that point i was just like what am i doing i'm just getting sort of smashed around here by by everyone else um and it was that classic if you don't have a plan you become part of someone else's and that's exactly what was happening so i i took a big sort of um [ __ ] to myself and i probably shouldn't swear take a big uh i took a big set of like you know i took myself off and had a word with myself um about what it was and where i was going which is why in the book i talk about acres of diamonds and it's an old fable about um you know everyone's looking outwards in everything they can go and get and have and and actually what i needed to do was look at what i was good at what skills i had and what i could then offer as a service um you know to to you know by becoming valuable to people in industry um you know that's that's the way you become successful so i started to look what do i know how to do what can i do um so i dodged around a bit doing the gas and electricity salesmen had a world with myself and then got into doing the ropes you know i already had a good background in rope work and that's how i got offshore and i did three years offshore the the fable itself is of a ma would you explain the fable yeah of acres of diamonds it um yeah i'll hopefully get it right but it's about a farmer who um who's you know looking to find diamonds he's got a stretch of land and he's essentially thinks he's exhausted it sells it moves on and the next guy who comes in you know digs and just spends hard work hard graft and he finds this rich seam of diamonds in his own backyard and that's essentially what that's about is that you know we we often look you know as a human race we're looking at what's next and you know adventurous spirit and let's go outside let's go here let's go there and we're looking and chasing this thing which is never there and um and essentially what it means is like for me was look at what you've got look at what you're good at and how can you turn that into service to then help other people yeah i think um one thing we've skipped over is your specialty in the military um so i mean that in that industry that was you being extremely good at what a certain thing you're one of the youngest to to reach that level is that right yeah so when i when i was in the marines i joined reckey and then i'd done my sniper course the royal marine sniper course is one of the hardest sniper courses in the world to pass um has lots of diff it's not just about pulling the trigger and or sneaking about you know there's so many different um sections of being a sniper that that make you more of an elite soldier effectively um and so by the time i did that selection past that course i was 20 or 21 so i would have been one of the youngest trained snipers in the you know in the royal marines at that time and that was again it come down to me knowing what i wanted and and instead of waiting five or six years you know until i was ready i thought why don't i just go and do it and if i fail it at least i'll know what i failed on and then i can improve on that and then i can you know and then i'll go back and do it again but i actually passed first time um so yeah and and that required you know a lot of focus a lot of training and a lot of i suppose mental fortitude yeah that's what i was going to say i mean um this would be the last of the military questions um and it is like what kind of mindset does it take to be a sniper i think to become a sniper you need to you know there's two parts of it there's all the practical parts which are um you know field crafts basically and you have to be very good at operating on your own and then the second part is is more your personality and your personality traits are you happy and confident operating on your own you don't need another 30 guys behind you do you have the courage in your own convictions about making decisions you know what i love about it is the fact that you live by and die by your own sword it's very easy in a group of people in any walk of life to hide and to blame other people when things go wrong and the [ __ ] hits the fan as a sniper as you're working in you or or your sniper pair you are effectively responsible for your own life and lots of others and and you know there's nowhere to hide and i quite like that stripped bare you know this is the nuts and bolts of life and and this is you know and it's how i it's how i work and operate now you know i i love the fact that i'm responsible for being successful or unsuccessful just going off the book alone there's so much more to i mean your life seems to have got crazier and crazier as it's kind of gone on yeah i you know the the military part of my life is you know i i almost everything to it because it's given me the confidence and the ethos and the courage of my own convictions to to do what i want to do now um you know it certainly doesn't the military part doesn't mean i'm any better you know anything than anyone else but i think in my own head in confidence you know i i know that i passed one of the hardest infantry training in the world at the age of 16 that means you know in my head i have this confidence that you know i can i can do most things you know i i just haven't been taught most of them or you know if someone teaches me something then i'm i'm very focused and dialed on learning that thing um but the thing that made me join the scouts was adventure the thing that made me join the marines was adventure and then after i left and i started messing around and went offshore i then started to formulate this idea that i would then work in the outdoors not as an outdoors instructor because there's too many people doing that and they're very qualified and it's not well paid and and also it didn't give me that you know i didn't want to be taking groups out on the hill and you know i led a lot of expeditions in south america and all over the place with with young adults and it just like i didn't quite know television existed yet but all these parts were starting to like slot together i had all my training that was ready i was like ready for whatever job came my way um i'd spent all that time offshore getting ready for that and had the confidence of my background in the military so that was all done and dusted and then someone asked me if i could get film crew inside an active volcano for a tv program and i was just like yes i can do that and and then it just like the penny dropped i was ready i didn't know what was preparing for but when that job opportunity came along it then suddenly clicked everything clicked into place from scouts right the way through like over that 15 years to taking that job and and it you know it then looking back on it was like that's what i was preparing for and again like i was saying earlier you know when you're when you're too busy with the minutia of everyday life three kids you know your job 12-hour shifts baba like you don't have time to stick your head above the parapet and think about tomorrow never mind next week never mind next year um but that's what the offshore part of it gave me was that time to then work out this plan and and so when i eventually got to doing that job in a volcano it was like all of this just went into position and then it was just like fine so i went to congo got a bbc film crew inside one of the most active volcanoes in africa biggest lava lake on earth epic epic sort of environment to be in and it used every ounce of my skill set to get the crew in and out safely and then i sort of came back and had a couple of weeks off and and just like i was like this is amazing because i i never watched television and to be honest it never crossed my mind that television was a you know an industry that that you could work in um and so it just and it was right at the time when adventure tv was picking up and and getting busy and and so with all the preparation and things i was doing it just i was perfectly placed at that time to to get stuck into it and and i'm not saying that i'm you know there are a million people out there better qualified than me in cave diving than skydiving in climbing and all these things but you know my main focus is more of a like step back i have a jack of all trades basic understanding of these adventurous activities um but i also have a more holistic approach to looking after people and crews and making sure that they're safe in these extreme environments what was what was the first experience seeing the finished product you know like the shots that the crew had got like was it was that did that mean anything to you once that would come out it did yeah it did because you know you you spend three weeks inside an active volcano risking your life to get all of this together and it's all compressed into eight minutes of footage and you just think how does that like how does that even compute but i've been doing this now for 13 14 years um so i understand the process now and i'm much more involved in that process you know my job really is is you know with you guys it's with the crew it's everyone working together to get this end product and whether that's in jungles or up in the high mountains of the himalayas or way down in a cave system you know wherever it is on earth or dealing with narcos in in the jungles of south america um it's the same it's about can do attitudes and and looking after people and it goes back to what i was thinking about acres of diamonds it's like what service can i provide someone else you know by adding value to someone else or something else and it's like enlightened self-interest you know i get to do all these cool jobs i get to go off about it on social media and have cool pictures with cool people in cool places but really you know you're helping other people achieve their goals and achieve their um ambitions and that you know that's quite important definitely and i think i mean i'm this is our thing that we do but i think film and documentaries and stuff is some some of the most inspirational stuff for people it really can like perspective on volcanoes i i've not watched the piece personally but you know it really really can make a difference and obviously that's an integral part that you're doing it just doesn't happen if they haven't got someone who can do what you do it yeah and so i've worked a lot with investigative journalists so during the ebola outbreak in west africa which i talk about in the book or chasing down tiger traffickers in southeast asia or or doing the narco stuff in south america um and these guys using the medium of film and journalism you know have have so you know they're giving a voice to for example tigers that that don't have a voice you know and they're being slaughtered at a rapid rate of knots um for for luxury goods so you know if you if you can find a way of telling that story and telling it effectively by you know film then you know you have much more reach than you do any other way i think no definitely i mean the you've just mentioned a handful of things there um cartel um those polar bears you know tigers lions uh it's just crazy but one of the things you've gravitated towards the end is animal welfare like is is that something that you're passionate about yourself yeah so with with the anti-poaching stuff that i've done so i kind of got to the point where i'd done a lot of stuff in the military and um and wanted to give something back in a way that you know to to for example animals that don't have that voice and to be able to train anti-poaching units and um i was down in south africa doing that for a while and um and the more i was doing that and i'd been working in television a while i thought there's this opportunity here to tell stories of you know of for example trafficking um and that's how i got involved with uh doing the tiger film that was a bbc investigation into um tiger trafficking but but it was much more about using my skills again what what can i do with my skills that that provides a service to someone else so we were helping the eia environmental investigation agency with some of their operations investigations so it's it's about it's about again not what can i get out of this but what can i give and i always find that's a more useful way of approaching situations is what can i do what can i give how can i help and eventually that all comes back around to you anyway so how do you think it's important that people find that that purpose like something that they are working towards that has you know like we talk about like money or you know fame of stuff but like that has that higher purpose as well to them one of the biggest things that i see from from military people when they leave is that they struggle because they don't have purpose and passion anymore when you're in the military you you have purpose and passion and i would say 90 of people in the military certainly speaking from in the marines have um you know this passion and fire in their belly then they leave and then that's gone and it's a very slippery slope like you're standing on top of a sandpit there um and about to end up going you know falling down into it not being able to get your way back out but because of passion and purpose um and like i said earlier about you know if the y isn't big enough then you don't have the drive you won't get out of bed in the morning and that's why when i go to schools and i speak to kids and they're like i want to be a youtuber you know i want to be famous i want to be an influencer and you dig down you're like why do you want that and they don't know uh what are you going to talk about you can't just be on youtube like sat in your bedroom with someone pointing a camera at you like what are you gonna what you're gonna talk about so for me it's about finding that passion um and whatever your thing is you know there's a niche there's a niche for people who measure screws you know on or nails you know like there's a there's a bit for everyone but you have to know what that passion is you have to or you have to know what that thing is that you want to be interested in um and i think you know for me i've always had a passion for adventure and an adventurous life and it's always led me to make decisions based on that um so yeah i think your right people probably would do better by finding what actually floats their boat not just they want to be famous for whatever reason yeah i mean for our company like the biggest thing is to inspire change through film it doesn't matter that you being a youtuber is a byproduct like it could be it could be facebook or instagram or whatever um but i think having that end goal or that that purpose that that one thing the other stuff comes if if it's supposed to come and if it's not you're happy anyway because you're doing the right thing one one of the the adventures that was really interesting to me was the row that you did it sounded absolutely brutal um but one of the things i was really interested in is in the military you spoke about like you're in control a lot and although there was times where you would be you were being shelled or like and it felt unfair but you always had some form of control but with nature i got a sense that a lot of the time it's all it's merciless like there is no sometimes you can't control the outcome yeah how do you accept that like what are you doing to kind of get through those moments that's so for example on the road we rode from in a rowing boat from portugal mainland europe to venezuela in south america so like 50 days 10 hours 36 minutes roughly um of of rowing two hours on two hours off two hours on two hours off that's it for the entire time all the way through the night through the day through the night you know for nearly two months um and you are it's literally you and the elements that's it live by the sword die by the sword you know like you will um you will either get through it or you won't it's as simple as that um and you know when when you're pitting yourself against the elements i you know like we never knew that we were going to be able to we we wanted to achieve that goal if that makes sense like we knew that we wanted to get across and but if that y wasn't again big enough we would have sacked it off we capsized at night one of our guys nearly got washed overboard and um i can tell you being capsized at night in the middle of the atlantic is one of the most terrifying things that you could ever imagine um and you know if the y wasn't big enough at that point you know you would have sacked it off but with all of us you know we you know we had this like resolute goal of getting to south america um sorry i kind of went off key there was just rambling well it was i mean you've answered it with the why basically yeah it's a bit is like i just wondered how you switched that mindset into you know i'm okay with being capsized and like if i don't know how big the waves get but like if it watch it big if a huge wave comes and just sinks us like i'm i don't know if you're ever okay with it but i don't know how you accept accept it um everything that i do is balanced um risk and hazard and likelihood like you know when i when i go inside an active volcano i know that i could die in there i know that but what i do is i mitigate as many of those hazards as possible you know wearing hard hats going in at the right time with the right crew doing the right thing not pushing it like we mitigate as many of them as possible but if the volcano decides to erupt in there then you'll die right that's that's like big boy stakes um you know that's that's you know what was setting out to not happen but you know you try and make that as clear as possible and the same with the row the stakes were high um you know a capsize and coming out the boat is death and probably a slow one because you'll be separated and float and eventually drown so it's the stakes are high but it's also testing you you mentally and physically testing me mentally and physically and that's what i enjoy i enjoy those high stakes but it's not about taking risks it's about controlling hazards you know it's about controlling them and controlling the risk of things happening and being as prepared as you can be so that when they you know the curveball hits you you know you eventually you can deal with it or not deal with it however it turns out why why do you continually strive for more like what's the reasoning for me personally it's it's it's an internal thing of testing myself against the environment and testing my my thought process you know i talk a lot on social media about you know having a strong mindset but i am often asking myself when was the last time i was really tested when was the last time i really put myself through the ringer instead of just talking about being resilient and talking about being you know having mental fortitude or having courage or determination like in the marines you would say don't tell show um and that that's one thing that lots of leaders and managers don't do is like lead from the front and show people how to do things don't tell them how to do things um so for me that's always been a you know i like to test and keep myself current and also by pitting yourself against the environment you realize how small and insignificant you are and i find that truly motivating is is that become a bit difficult you know like especially without the risk element of it and also the the factor of raising a child it takes a lot of time like very time consuming thing yeah how are you finding time to work to like to do both and yeah i just had my son atlas this year he is eight months old um and that you know my lifestyle the sacrifices that i have you know for my job and for my lifestyle meant that i missed his birth um i was in a on a big science research vessel for this james cameron bbc studios nat geo project um and i was in the science lab watching my wife gave birth to atlas and i missed it i got home 17 days later um and and so that you know that is the hard part about the job it's very easy you'll know from you know you can go down a you go down a wormhole of social media and think everyone's got a better life than you and you know it's very easy to just see the glossy side that people portray there but you know the the other side the flip side of a job in my lifestyle is that you know home life is can often be chaotic and bouncing from one job to another and you know missing my son's birth and i think when it comes to risk you know people might think that i'm a risk taker um but i'm not you know i'm i control risk i control hazards i control all of these things so i'm more of a control freak than i am a risk taker i'm very cautious so i don't think my outlook in my the way that i operate will change at the minute it's not you know i've you know since atlas has been born i've been diving with sharks night diving with sharks i've been diving underneath um you know the the um sea ice up at 82 degrees north up in you know 400 miles from the north pole so you know like i've been doing quite a lot of full-on risky things since then but i would rather have that and come home with stories than and not have them at all um and it's you know it's i don't want to bring atlas up in a world where he's not going to take risks or understand risks and and you know understand the process of decision making decision making is one of the biggest things that people can do even if it's the wrong decision make a decision follow it through and it often opens another door that that wasn't available you know before about by sitting doing your normal stuff every day you know to change your life and to change what you're doing you must change something if you do the same thing every day you know nothing's going to change the outcome isn't going to change the talking on the factor of risk is one of the riskier things i think you spoke about in the book was the cartel work and you know you was at the whim of somebody else's decisions almost like you could put everything right but you know what was that like the experience working with those guys so we yeah so we worked on a show inside real drug lords um and it was basically three months embedded with different cartels around in south america and you know it was different to it was different to the sort of work i normally do and i found i found it quite hard to you know if you go into an active volcano or you're dealing with i don't know um you know you're on a foot patrol and anti-approaching foot patrol in in south africa somewhere that you can deal with those hazards dealing with with nautical traffickers is is very different you know you have young young guys with with mega egos nothing else to lose um trafficking drugs very dangerous very like it's a very um it's a very very dangerous lifestyle they lead um and to be in and working with them and you know for such a long period of time was just pretty stressful i have to say and you ended up in like genuine situations like so foxy was interviewing one of the guys and you were there for safety but it was like the there was a deal where you went off question they would shoot you dead yeah so folks it was interviewing the guy and basically the brief was beforehand like you veer away from any of these um questions then you'll be killed you know and it was fairly standard by then that like if they found out we were tracking where we were or anything like that then you know then the job was um super interesting job being being you know given the privilege to to be in there but you know like when when i got back from it i was just thinking i don't want to do that again you know it's pretty full on get me in i remember when i was inside the volcano it was erupting this one time i was in there it was kind of kicking off and i remember being scared and thinking god what job is next it was narcos i'd like get me into peru or get me into colombia with foxy like get me out this volcano and then i remember being doing the knuckle job and thinking i want to be back inside the volcano okay right yeah and there's more there's so many more stories um which i just advise people to go read the book but you did say there was a lot cut for the book so have you got anything that was that's interesting to hear that was cut out of the book i mean i mean so the the book really lessons from the edge follows my life from you know being a kid all the way through to now this year um and you know to fit that amount of adventure into one one book and keep it as a page tone and keep people interested like quite a lot of it you know it has to to get rid of um and towards the end of the book i scrape over this expedition series that i was working on and i talked about two or three of them um with steve backshaw but that was one of the most intense couple of years because i went from uh let me think about this i was yeah did that that that right so i did i went head-to-head with no i was in russia with guy martin doing like a five-week job there filming came back 12 hours at home flew out to uh borneo went head-to-head with ed stafford over 10 days on his discovery show flew back um went into the bunker for sorry no i didn't i then flew back had 12 hours then went to mexico cave diving with steve on his expedition show for four weeks came back had 12 hours at home went inside a nuclear bunker for an experiment on circadian rhythm and mental health locked in a bunker on my own in the dark with no contact with outside world no phones no clocks no tech nothing just in a hole in the ground on my own ten days came out flew to greenland that night i had another five weeks in the expedition there flew back like it was then went to the volcano yeah so it was just like this mental year i've like crammed it in in the boot to like two chapters but it was just an incredibly bonkers what does that feel like like does it feel like a blur or does it really does it is it because it's purpose driven is it like is it distinctive is each part no it's hard um and for example there i did 11 world firsts in 11 months right and they're big they're like finding the oldest figurative art and hand paintings in the world fifty thousand years old in ballnail exploring new cave passages in tulum diving um cave diving um that have never been seen before paddling two rivers in suriname in south america that have never been paddled before like all of them knew all of them first time that they'd been documented or done and you just kind of like they go by in a blur and you you kind of forget and you don't process and that's why it was so helpful to me mentally and physically when lockdown happened because i was just like burning out i was just doing one big job after another big job after another and lockdowns with coronavirus happened i was in south sudan and um we got called back from there i was there for three weeks got called back from the end straight into lockdown and it was kind of like the first time that i'd taken stock in like two or three years so so it does get hectic but it's a freelance world and you know if you're not if you're not working you're worrying about work i mean it sounds mad and it sound to be doing first in the world and somehow they pass by you you know it's cr like crazy so sad in a way as well in some ways and that's why it was such a good thing to write the book to be able to take you know lockdown was at least six months of no work for me so it was such a good time to be to sit down and focus on what i'd actually been doing and and to you know now my head is much clearer and i'm aware like for example we can talk about um we become what we think about and i've got clear examples of how that's happened so it's just more a case of reflecting i think for a young man who you know you've always kind of had a vision for purpose like you've got you've had some goal in mind what's your advice to somebody who feels that more lost you know like like the night the other 95 of people yes good question so for someone who's lost and i think i think most people generally are until they find something that really floats their boat like i said if the y isn't big enough you won't do it if someone wants to be famous and a youtuber for example like they have to then go and find this thing that that then floats the boat to be able to get out and do the filming right um so for someone that was lost i would say the best thing that you can do is find out what interests you and it's find a passion and if you can't even get there and some people can't change the job because they've got a mortgage in a car and all the stuff that holds us down and three or four kids you know that stuff all becomes a tether and you know you can't change too much but what you could do is set yourself a challenge a physical challenge a mental challenge it doesn't have to be big you know it could be going and climbing your nearest mountain in the uk you could do you know snowden or scaffold pike or that nervous or choose something that interests you and then work towards it so i would say is find a goal break it down write it down and then start being accountable for it and i'll say another thing that goes with know a healthy body and a healthy mind help you achieve these goals if you're cramming [ __ ] into your face every day then it's going to reflect in your mindset i'm talking about like bad food for example and not exercising when i was in the bunker for 10 days the main things that i took away from it was if i'm not exercising and i don't get daylight every day and i don't interact with humans then my mental health is tapering off and so you know if you can get outside and exercise with mates every day that's like one fundamental building block to then helping you achieve your goals out with physical exercise um so yeah find out what your passion is and then work bloody hard process and graft are the two things that people don't see they look at successful people and think it's all right for them but actually what they forget is they've had 12 15 however many years of just doing the basics and doing the basics well yeah i think i think that message works the other way around it's like there's a price to be paid for it like you know it's not free nothing's free and there's no easy way everything you know if something's easy to get right if something's easy to do it's easy not to do it's easy to eat an apple a day it's also easy not to you know if something's hard process and graft like it's much it's also delayed gratification i think we live in an age now where people want instant gratification you know they want something now you know the internet's fast 5g is fast everything's like no no now you order something online it's here the next day all the same day you know delayed gratification you know you your is the art or the discipline of postponing something kicking it down the street a bit so that you have something bigger better longer stronger whatever that thing is and that comes down to process and graft i think a lot i hear as well is you know it's all right for them and those successful people have done it without a promise as well you know there was i think we assume that you know someone achieved something like standing on stage with an award it's like they put in the work and they got that but they weren't promised the result you know you did it they did it without any promises i think that's a big part of it is also like we talked about finding your passion and there's no promise at the end of it but if you can block out the noise like if i'm sat looking at everyone else that does my type of work and looking at them and worrying and social media i'm not putting in 100 into what i'm doing because i'm paying attention to what they're doing you'll find that successful people i don't care what's happening around about them they don't care they're not in competition with anyone potentially other than themselves or they just want to make an exceptional product or offer that service to the masses and when you start to do that and block out the noise it's amazing what you can actually achieve and controlling the controllables controlling what you actually have dominion over it's quite a small thing but control that you control your mind you can control what's in your immediate vicinity but you can't control the weather you can't control what other people are doing and you can't control what other people think so stop trying to is there a single biggest thing that got you to this point good question i would say if i was to look at everything and break it down into something very easy it would be we become what we think about it's just as simple as that and if you're not thinking about anything or if you're thinking [ __ ] thoughts then that will be your life you know everyone is exactly where they are in life because of the decisions they have or haven't made uh sounds quite careless because lots of external things can happen to someone but we always have options like people generally especially where we live we know we're very privileged where we we live in the western world where you know we have all of the mod cones um you know we we have the privilege of of making decisions um and following them through so you know i think the biggest the biggest thing i can see looking back is that i knew where i wanted what i wanted to be and what i wanted to do and i just worked hard to get there so do you believe in like manifestation then i don't know if you'd use that word but like writing down goals and yeah i don't you know i'm not going to be sitting chanting and and doing that sort of stuff but like it's it's proven 110 it's proven 100 um that that what you think about becomes your reality it's like riding a motorbike i get on a motorbike i go around a roundabout i look at a tree i guarantee you i'm going to hit the tree right so the things that you focus on and spend your time on and process and graft then you get there that's that's the bottom line like there's no magic formula there's nothing else like what you think about and what what um dominates your thought process from when you get up in the morning to when you go to bed will become your reality and it's not like hocus pocus sort of fairy dust and all the rest of it it's just simply that you know it's like you get a black car whatever brand it is and then on the same day you see six eight ten others because you're dialed into that thing it's like it's at the front of your mind so whatever your goal is that you're trying to achieve it's the same as that you just you just open to more opportunities and the other thing that's worth mentioning is probably have an open mind as soon as you go down the route of thinking you know everything ego etc then you you're you know or building the walls to protect yourself is keeping ideas and things and people out mentally physically emotionally maybe on a mission like what's the biggest obstacle you've faced so far i think the a lot of what i do in extreme environments are analogous to to life um in a way that the biggest obstacles that we stumble across are probably ourself and what the the wonder language that we use in the words that we use to talk ourselves out of things and you'll find that successful people are very good at talking themselves up and so i think one of the biggest obstacles for achieving anything is probably ourselves and that nagging voice that tells you you're not good enough you know certainly when you come from you know i didn't come from a bad background but i came from a background where nothing much is expected of anyone and it's quite easy to drop back into that into that thought process so um yeah i'm i'm strict with myself and i'm i'm forgiving with other people how um you know with with that positive talk is like you know if i say to somebody i'm ugly or i don't feel i don't feel good about my body you know nobody's going to be that bothered but if you start to say i'm really handsome and feel great looking they might jump in and say well hold on a sec there's a fine line between so how do you how do you balance that fine line um the fine line is ego ego and my line of work will get you killed right that's the bottom line um and so again the old adage of don't tell people how good you are don't tell people what you can and can't do show people and do it quietly get on with the thing that you want to be doing get on with it quietly um and become very good at it and become exceptional at it and one day people will think well it's all right for him or her because they're lucky because they got there but you know everything process graft knowing what it is that you want to achieve and just putting in the hard yards to get there the lessons i've learned in these extreme environments are extreme and not a lot of people have to go through to do those things but they're directly transferable into everyday life um one of the biggest anxieties that people have is fear of the unknown or you know just just general anxiety about thinking that everything's falling apart life's bad you know and and it's you know it's very common um i would say the biggest thing that people can do in that situation is to probably two things one is to write everything down that you're worried about that off it makes such a difference to write problems down physically pen paper and write it down and when you see that on a piece of paper it then becomes quite easy or working down this i feel scared because of this and then the exercises to then right underneath that and then this will happen and then this one and you work it down to the nth degree and then i die whatever that thing is right um and then you realize just how how crazy it is you know when you wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning and your entire life is falling apart and you that little voice inside your head is just telling you that you know that everything's a mess and and worrying about everything then in the morning it doesn't seem as bad right so the biggest thing that you can do with that is control the controllables it's a simple thing is you can't control all of these other things and often what's worse is you're making your judgments and opinions on other people's opinions you know which is other people's judgments which is just mental never compare your insight to someone else's outside because this everyone's everyone's different um so i think one of the biggest things people can do is just to not worry about anyone else control what you you have in your dominion which is your thoughts um and get outside and exercise it's amazing what that does for you um even if you know you've never done it in your life before get outside you know go for a walk do 5 meters today 10 20 100 5 miles 10 miles the main biggest thing that people can do is take action because in the years time you're going to wish you started today with the the book where's it where's the best place to find the book um what what platforms are you on with it uh what's your is your audience mix all over the place yes it's quite a large uh american american uk based so yeah probably amazon annoyingly is like the easiest one to to get it it's on audible as well yeah so all audible's flying up because because it's geezers that listen to it i'm listening to all the balls you're your voice as well it's it's dudes that are listening to it and that's the other thing you know men traditionally young men us and putting me in the category of being young don't really read a lot yeah and so audio books that we had so it's on audible amazon yeah yeah and as i mean a large uh audience um consume self-help as well yeah and i know you spoke like think can grow rich and you read a few of those yourself as a youngster but uh i do think there's so many lessons in this book it's not just about tales which there is a an amazing amount of stories in there but there's a lot of lessons to be had as well well that was my main point i didn't want to sit and write a book it was like aren't i amazing aren't i hard like alpha male bang my chest it was like i've done these things how can i help other people going back to what i said and throughout is look at how you can help other people and how you can service other people and and that ultimately comes back round you know to you eventually yeah i don't read often and i i really i think one of the biggest criticisms on on the reviews is that there's not enough chapters and like and i definitely will be what like reading through this again i say reading i listen to it as well um social media what's the best place to catch yourself uh yeah so i'm easy aldo kane a-l-d-o-k-a-n-e on twitter and instagram and i should say the books you don't read don't help right okay so uh like what stuff you get up to on instagram i'm not very good at doing the whole social media thing because i'm ancient but i'm i'm kind of like i just post pictures of where i've been and what i've been doing so we'll get to see where you are in the world yeah so we just finished working with will smith this year um and then i've just finished doing a big series with james cameron and bbc studios there's loads of stuff from from those expeditions on there i should get round to doing motivational stuff on there but i've kind of left that to the book you

Channel: Mulligan Brothers Interviews

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Keywords: Mulliganbrothers, mulligan brothers, motivational videos, motivation, motivational speech, ollie ollerton interview, interview, the stoltman brothers, the word's strongest brothers, jason fox interview, jay morton interview, the speech that broke the internet, taliban commander interview, stoltman brothers full, motivational interview, shoot interview, marine interview, tom stoltman interview, luke stoltman interview, ant middleton interview, radio interview

Id: A-DDe8mdDhk

Length: 63min 4sec (3784 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 22 2021