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Episode 78: Building A Strategic Enterprise Overseas with Brian Glorioso
214 Plays5 years ago
Our mission with the Uncommon Life Project is to teach you how to invest in yourself so you can create the life you want to live. When it comes to the United States, Brian and I are very capable of helping business owners achieve financial freedom. Beyond our borders, however, we turn to other professionals for their wealth-building expertise. Our guest for this episode, Brian Glorioso, is here to translate the Uncommon Wealth philosophy for the global playing field so entrepreneurs across the world can implement similar principles no matter where they’re doing business.
Brian is the founder of Adventure Access, a strategic enterprise on the Tibetan Plateau. Eastern Tibet is an amazing place to experience, but with little infrastructure, it can be a difficult region to explore without connections and resources. Brian and his team have been living and working in Eastern Tibet for 17 years, bringing trekking, mountain biking, mountaineering, and cultural experiences to travel enthusiasts from all walks of life.
Brian leads the Adventure Access team and serves as the primary experience coordinator. He is an avid mountain biker, climber, and trekker who continues to use these passions to show the beauty of western China’s wilderness. In his free time, Brian enjoys reading, triathlons, and spending time with his family. During our conversation, Brian shares his expertise on building a strategic enterprise and talks about how he has helped others follow a similar path.
what you will learn in this episode:- Brian’s entrepreneurial journey
- How Brian has helped his children adapt and assimilate to new cultures
- The difference between travel and vacation
- How Brian has helped others use a strategic enterprise model to follow a similar path
- Why strategic enterprises are the most sustainable and beneficial to the communities in which they are created
- How Brian has gained a significant advantage over all of his competitors in 2021
- The traditional American wealth-building principles that are applicable beyond U.S. borders
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Uncommon Lives
00:00:02
Speaker
Everyone dreams about living an uncommon life, but how we define that dream is very different for each of us. And for most, it's a lifelong pursuit. Welcome to the Uncommon Life Project podcast. We're going to introduce you to people who are living that life or enjoying the journey to get there. We're going to also give you some tools, tricks, and tips for starting or accelerating your own efforts to live an uncommon life.
00:00:27
Speaker
a life worth celebrating and savoring.
Meet the Hosts: Phillip Ramsey and Brian Dewhurst
00:00:30
Speaker
Please welcome your hosts, Brian Dewhurst and Philip Ramsey.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of The Uncommon Life Project, where I'm your host, Phillip Ramsey. And I am Brian Dewhurst. Thank you for tuning in to another episode. We have a very fun episode, but before we get into it, I have a feeling this guy's got followers. So for the people who are following for our guest, let me just describe who Brian and I are, or I'll let Brian, I mean, it's one or the other, but basically we're financial advisors that like to put you in the driver's seat of your future.
00:01:04
Speaker
Meaning, what is the things that you get excited about, passionate about? And then we try to use your money to try to get you to that end as fast as possible.
00:01:14
Speaker
where I think a lot of advisors will put your money in avenues and retirement accounts that really lock your money up. And you are just back to the grind of the eight to five for the next 32 years. Instead, Brian and I like to figure out what you're excited about. Then we like to see what kind of assets you have. And then we try to put a plan together to put you in a place where you are loving your life every day. Brian, I probably jack that up so many ways from Sunday. What would you add?
00:01:40
Speaker
We just try to teach people to invest in themselves, which is kind of a foreign concept. And there's lots of ways to make money and create the life you want to live. So that's what we help people do and make those types of decisions.
00:01:54
Speaker
So the reason why we have our guests on the show, I'm gonna let Brian do the bio, but before he gets into it, I feel like Brian and I are amazing advisors when it comes to the United States of America. When you get out of this continent, we are toast. We are no help.
00:02:11
Speaker
I wouldn't say no help, but we do have a lot of clients all over the world, but they have US-based companies, which helps us navigate those waters. Our guest is kind of like the uncommon wealth advisor for the rest of the world. Can't wait to get him on
Guest Introduction: Brian Glorioso
00:02:26
Speaker
the show. Brian, do the bio of my man, Brian Glorioso.
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, I want to do a proper Italian introduction today, so we'll see how that goes. He is the founder of Adventure Access, a strategic enterprise on the Tibetan Plateau. You heard that correct, Tibetan Plateau. And the proud part of his family of seven. Welcome to the show, Brian Glorioso. There you did it.
00:02:53
Speaker
Hey, man, thanks for being on. Really, I'm excited to just dive into just your assets, your gifts and the way that you impact others. But give us and our listeners a little taste of how you got to where you're at.
00:03:08
Speaker
Oh, man, we don't have time for all of that. This has been a long journey. I've been living in Western China for most of the past 20 years. And so it's a long story. But essentially, it started out with an opportunity to study abroad when I was still in college and just kept following just one desire after another, being intentional about placing myself. And then as my family grew, our family
00:03:36
Speaker
squarely where we wanted to be and not settling for anything else and enough successive steps of that and you're going to end up somewhere like I am.
00:03:49
Speaker
I get, there's a lot of stuff to deal with this. I feel like the number one thing that you said though is keeping going down this path of really diving in on your gifts and your strengths and where you think God has strategically placed you in many areas of your life. I think it's interesting though with you is because normally when we're talking to individuals, they're doing that for them and maybe their wife.
00:04:13
Speaker
They're not taking their whole family, although they are kind of taking their whole family on a journey. But a lot of times that journey is in the United States. How is life, when you start impacting your children in different cultures, how do you help them process through this? How do you get them excited for what you are excited about? What does that look like?
Family Life and Adventure Access
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think, you know, if work is a nine to five kind of thing, you know, where you go to it and then you come home from it, then your kids are never going to connect with it. When you build a career and you're on this path, this trajectory that
00:04:56
Speaker
It has proper boundaries. I'm not saying that you're just a slave to work and your kids have to live, breathe, and eat it, but when it becomes something that is important on the home front and it's something that the kids can see and they can touch and that they can enjoy, and it doesn't hurt that we run an adventure travel company, so it's a lot of fun.
00:05:18
Speaker
And you know, our biggest fans are probably our kids. They're the ones that like to be out there careening down the mountain on the bike, you know, and climbing mountains and things like that. So it's not real hard to like. So, but just in involving, it just being a part of the family life, you know, and not just something that I go to.
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah, right. Okay, Adventure Access, I wanna talk about it. What is the company? You kind of alluded to it. What is the company? What's your intentions of like mottos? What are you trying to create? That kind of stuff. Yeah, so Adventure Access is an adventure travel operator. We are based in Western China with a focus on the Tibetan plateau, which, you know, encompasses multiple countries. Our primary operations are all within Western China.
00:06:06
Speaker
And so we specialize in creating those immersive type experiences. Adventure travel is a combination of things that include the outdoor sports, that kind of activity element, cultural immersion, and time and nature. And you combine those things together, and that's where you get the adventure travel sphere.
00:06:29
Speaker
That's something we've been doing for a long time now. And our sweet spot is on trekking and hiking and mountain biking all on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. I mean, it's a dream job, really. It's funny because when you think about it, I'm going to totally just be personal quickly. But when my wife and I go vacationing, I think there's two sides of the spectrum. They're the one side I want to sit on the beach and I want to read a book.
00:06:58
Speaker
Then you got the other side, which is like, all I want to do is adventure. That's my vacation. In fact, if I'm exhausted after my vacation, I feel like my love tank is full. My wife is completely opposite. And so it's funny to say like what you're describing is like my dream vacation, Brian. I'm just telling you.
00:07:17
Speaker
We learned as a family, a number of years ago for us, there's a difference between travel and vacation. There are times that I want to do exactly what you said, especially at the end of a long season where we're needing some recovery. We need a resort on the beach where we don't have to make decisions, we don't need to think about anything. We can do exactly as you just said. But then there's times where you want to travel. Traveling is
00:07:46
Speaker
It can be an exhausting thing. The planning of it, especially. Where do we go? What do we want to see? What do we want to eat? What do we want to learn? How do we want this to impact us? How do we want this to impact our kids? There's a load of information there. Really, that's one of the sweet spots about Adventure Access is we help design that for people.
00:08:09
Speaker
and listen to them so that it's easier to achieve that desire and that goal. And so it's more than just picking you up at the airport and taking you where you want to go. It's from conception all the way to getting you home. You know, these are very intentional tours and it's not your vacation type experience. It is your, I'm going to grow and learn and be impacted by this experience. And so that's what we do.
00:08:39
Speaker
I love it. Go ahead, Brian. I feel like I'm asking too many questions.
00:08:43
Speaker
Well, I mean, I went on a trip to Zimbabwe with some buddies to Victoria Falls, which is one of the seven wonders of the world. Down from that is a little gorge and these guys had shot metal cables over the gorge and you would zip out over the thing. They had a big swing. It was really a transformative moment for me, just not only being in another country continent, but then also experiencing kind of like an adventure type thing. And it's not like OSHA is there.
00:09:12
Speaker
in Africa are like, oh, what's the, you know, code to keep all this safe? You're kind of just some metal poles chocked into a big rock, you know, metal cables. But can you talk to us about kind of the experiences that people have and just like how transformative, you know, it's been not only for your family, but just also the people that, you know, you're coming to share a life with you in this, this experience that you've built.
00:09:38
Speaker
Yeah, one of the measures that we have internally on our staff and we ask ourselves quite regularly.
00:09:45
Speaker
on behalf of our clients is like, did they have any wow moments? Because I mean, that's really what we're looking for. And we're not trying to overreach for those. We're not trying to create something for the sake of that. We know the part of the world where we operate, and we know our level of service is such that it will create those moments. And so seeing our clients have those moments, and not to be cliche here,
00:10:14
Speaker
it's not hard to discern because they usually literally say, wow, like, you know, in the moment.
Living in Ancient Towns and Strategic Enterprises
00:10:21
Speaker
And so, you know, it's not like it's real hard, you know, for us to, you know, try to discern, you know, what it's like. Are they enjoying themselves? Yes. So, you know, we're, we're tuned into that though, because that's what we want them to have. We have that, um, you know, life overseas is so interesting for us because,
00:10:41
Speaker
Usually, we're living in a city of 16 million people, big Asian, modern, you know, fast people everywhere. Well, our main base of operations is up on the Tibetan Plateau. It's about a six hour drive outside of that city, small town.
00:10:58
Speaker
It's like living in a fishbowl as the only non Asians who live there. And the town is 2,700 years old. It still has walls and fortifications around it. And our small home there in town above the office space
00:11:16
Speaker
of our outdoor center is right in the middle of that. We walk out to go to the market to buy meat and veggies for the day and we're walking on the street and everything around you. It looks like something that
00:11:31
Speaker
Is just so real you know and all the time like doing something as simple as Going to get the groceries. It's like we actually live here. You know like I mean it's It's not even lost on us even after we've been there for so long. It is a deeply impactful place
00:11:52
Speaker
That's so cool. Okay. I want to get into strategic enterprise because this is where I really do feel like you are helping people in an uncommon way do things like you are doing and being intentional, not only with their family, but what they're doing with their life. And so I want to talk about that role and how you have been instrumental in helping people make these same choices as you have done with your family. So let's go there.
00:12:19
Speaker
Strategic enterprise. Talk to me. What is it? Define it first and then we'll go from there. Yeah. So I think better than a definition is maybe giving an example, um, because to me, like it just, it works that way. Uh, you know, I can read a definition and still be like, well, what does that mean? So when I use the term strategic enterprise, um, what I mean from that at the outset is that it's something that originates with design.
00:12:46
Speaker
There's no room for default responses here, and just being driven along by, well, I'm just going to make do with whatever this thing becomes. It's not that. I'm going to design this thing from the very beginning to achieve a goal that I have at the very outset of this venture. Strategic enterprise fits squarely within the realm of entrepreneurship.
00:13:15
Speaker
It is for people who are trying to create job, create opportunities to make something. And so it's going to be a small niche. You're not going to find your average business student leaning towards strategic enterprise unless they want to be an entrepreneur.
00:13:37
Speaker
It's just that it's I have a clearly defined purpose and why I want to do this. And that is the track that it puts me on. So, you know, you are going to evaluate everything in light of that. Does this get me there or not? I think there's an incredible book that gets to this idea called Essentialism. I don't know if you've ever read that.
00:14:02
Speaker
Um, and it it's really a book about saying no, you know boiling everything down to what do I want to go big on and eliminating everything else The problem is that's not a one-time deal Yeah, that's just the first step because now it does help the process because those one That one big step in the beginning of this is what i'm going to go big on
00:14:26
Speaker
does actually automate 10,000 no's down the line, which will really help you in your head space and your mental energy because trying to decide, is this a yes or no, constantly is exhausting. I don't want to say him you in because that sounds negative, but it clarifies for you. This is where we're going. This is what we're doing. For my family, the desire and the attention
00:14:57
Speaker
from the beginning was we want our lives to be in this part of the world among this community of people, because we love it. And we want to raise our kids here. We want it to impact our children. And we want to be planted here. Now, there are a lot of things working against that concept. And so
00:15:19
Speaker
choosing the strategic enterprise approach gave us a resource, a tool, and a way so that we could actually get after it. And interact with the people around you in a very positive way. I want to talk about it, but I'm not going to let Brian lose that thought. Come on, buddy. To be super specific, you're saying strategic enterprise is your business.
00:15:42
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yes, I would define kind of like yeah, I would define adventure access as a strategic enterprise now Let me give an example of how this is different because I don't think it's just semantics, you know, I talked to a number of business owners people who are Have started something on their own, you know 20 or 30 years ago, or maybe they inherited something, you know in a way from a family business type thing and they're wanting to be purposeful with it and
00:16:12
Speaker
I'm not good at that, you know, so like you said about all set of this, you know, I'm good at certain things overseas in its entrepreneurship for
00:16:21
Speaker
a very clear purpose in living overseas, you know, because I don't know what to tell the guy that's already, you know, their business is already, you know, 20 years into something because it wasn't designed from the ground up with like this strong, like, well, this is what I want this to be. Now, I think they could go back and start to redesign some things, maybe some projects that have that kind of intention in it. But to start from the very beginning with a clearly defined intention,
00:16:50
Speaker
and completely build a business around it is a very different starting point. And that's why I think strategic enterprises is the best way I know how to describe it. Because again, it's all about design and not just suddenly waking up one day and you're where you are and you're asking yourself,
00:17:09
Speaker
how do I make a bigger impact with this thing? Because you know what? You might not be able to. Because I've seen, you know, people take the right business, but with the wrong model. And it completely sabotaged the thing. So it's not just about landing on the right business. It's got to be
00:17:30
Speaker
If you're talking about the right place, you've already defined this is where I want it to be, then it still has to be the right business done in the right way to actually achieve something that you want it to do.
00:17:40
Speaker
And I love this because Uncommon Wealth Partners, that's Brian and I's company, this is our podcast, Uncommon Life Project, we wanna help people impact others at a high level. Because when we're doing that, it's really worth being, that's what God's called us to do. And I think that we can then impact others when we're in our giftings. And that's exactly what you're doing in other countries is you're gonna try to impact as many people as possible.
00:18:07
Speaker
And then when you get to those countries, I love it because you're interacting with these people at such a high level and they can see the kind of person you are by the business and the hard work that you are producing and the level of, I would say, ways that you interact with even the culture in and of itself.
00:18:29
Speaker
But at the end of the day, you are contributing to that. And that's a very attractive thing to people in other countries. It's just not that you're coming over and just going to hang out for two years and leaving. Oh, no, like 20 years. It's got to been a grind.
Impacting Communities and Industry Resilience
00:18:44
Speaker
And the way that the people, Tibetan people can now interact with you, they have a respect there because you've done it right. And now they can enter into seeing what your core values are. I respect this. Like he's a contributing factor to our economy. And I mean, it's such a brilliant model because at the end of the day, Brian, you're impacting people at a very intentional way. Is that a good kind of synopsis of? It is because I mean, if you want to boil
00:19:14
Speaker
it all down. I mean, love God, love your neighbor, right? And there's a lot of places around the world that are hurting deeply. And what is it like to choose a place that is just needs something loving, whether that's for their social need, their economic need, whatever, like to just enter in
00:19:45
Speaker
and just love them because they're our neighbors. But have we ever really thought about, I want to choose my neighbors, not because of what school district this is or because of what access it gives us to shopping or convenience, but
00:20:05
Speaker
Saying you know what like for things that truly matter Meaning by the design of God like these are the things that are most deeply Important like I'm gonna choose to plant myself there and the reality is most places around the world if you are not
00:20:25
Speaker
a national there, it's going to take a great deal of effort to become a resident. And so that's where the enterprise helps because it gives contribution, it gives meaning, it gives something to collaborate with the local authorities on. This is not something that happens in a vacuum that
00:20:51
Speaker
The authorities and other people are unaware of I mean, this is something that is very much in conversation with and in partnership with all the stakeholders you know, whether that's government or just The lady that runs the vegetable stall around the corner, you know, that's it's everybody You know has has a part in this thing. So we're shooting this in early December 2020 covet is ramping
00:21:20
Speaker
You're in a travel business. A lot of people aren't traveling. You're in China. And so can you kind of just talk to our listeners about how you've navigated? I mean, you just sound so upbeat and hopeful. And, you know, I think obviously it's clear like you're not, you know, in a fear mindset and you're not worried about things. So kind of shed light on that. So Brian, you're not in China right now. You're actually in, what is it?
00:21:46
Speaker
New Orleans? In Louisiana right now. Louisiana, right. Yeah. Because if COVID wasn't enough, we decided we would temporarily relocate in Hurricane Central, right? So this has been 2020. It's just a textbook 2020 move, right? But I think that adds to your question. We're not actually where we want to be. We are 11 months into a three-week trip.
00:22:16
Speaker
You know a talk about you know, a vacation gone wrong Yeah, so it's just been a very challenging year and I think you know if I viewed everything around me with a clenched fist like this is mine like I have to make this work and
00:22:38
Speaker
then I think there would probably be some despair and a great deal of fear. I think one of the keys to living intentionally, especially in the Strategic Enterprise sphere, is to recognize first that
00:22:57
Speaker
my primary role is chief steward. I have this vision and we have this business and it's mine and my executive team's responsibility to steward that well, trusting that at the end of the day, this, this doesn't belong to me. Um, that
00:23:18
Speaker
And that's very freeing. Now, there's still a great deal of responsibility in that. And there is still many a day that I'm just like, oh my, how is this going to work? And so it takes a great deal of trust and just continuing to put one foot in front of the other.
00:23:37
Speaker
I will tell you this though, throughout this year, which has been extremely challenging and the travel industry has probably been one of the hardest hit industries in the world. And that's not just being dramatic. I was on a webcast last night with the Adventure Travel Trade Association, which we're a member of.
00:23:58
Speaker
I mean, the data is there. I mean, travel has been decimated this year. And so, you know, I'm not going to just paint a rosy picture. We're hurting.
00:24:08
Speaker
Yet, we've been able to maintain our core staff. Our executive leaders are still there. We're still hitting payroll for our employees that are in China. I've had to step back from receiving salary from that side, and so there's some real challenges there.
00:24:32
Speaker
But I was speaking with a business mentor of mine just yesterday, and we were talking about just that unique value proposition. Like what are the distinctives of adventure access that give us that real competitive advantage? And it was interesting throughout the course of our conversation that this year, 2020 has really
00:24:59
Speaker
contributed heavily towards developing a fourth. We already had three that we had identified that put us in a really strong position. Interestingly enough, at the end of this year, there is an identifiable fourth distinction that really gives us an advantage over so many competitors. It's internal. It's something that most people will never see.
00:25:24
Speaker
They will not come through our doors, go on an experience with us and walk away saying, man, this company has an incredible
00:25:35
Speaker
leadership team. But I tell you this, having a leadership team that can handle the challenges that we've handled this year and actually come out stronger as a result of it, I'm like 2021 can be whatever it wants to be. Yeah. So because we're headed in the right direction. But those guys see it as stewardship too, you know, and you know, so it all comes back to like, are we doing our part?
00:26:01
Speaker
Core values, right? Everyone shares the same core values. What are the other three distinctions? You mentioned the fourth. What's the other three? Yeah. The others are that we are local in that sense. Our outdoor center is on the plateau.
00:26:16
Speaker
We're not just traveling in with our clients, taking them to see cool places, and then going back to some port of entry with them. They're playing in our backyard. Like I said, we live in that town that is 2,700 years old. And so you can just give something different to people. You can impart something different when it's your neighborhood. And so that's one of them, is that we're local in that sense.
00:26:43
Speaker
We are very passionate about what we do. You know, I would say that we fit in the pro category when it comes to the activities that we lead. So just our expertise, the professionalism of it. There's a lot of things out there that are exactly what you described in that zip line that, you know, OSHA's not there. Well, OSHA's not a lot of places, but we need to be doing that. You know, my sister-in-law on her first trip to China,
00:27:12
Speaker
She was in southwest China, and she went bungee jumping, and this was a long time ago. China has developed a great deal since then, so I would not be worried about it now. At the time, however, the sign out front said in English, bungee bump.
00:27:30
Speaker
not bungee jump and I'm like, you don't want there to be a bump at the end of the slide. No, so they're going to a place to eat tacos and it says like bacos or something, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's the stakes are high in adventure, you know, when the people leading it are not really good and professional at what they do.
00:27:54
Speaker
So that's the second. The third is we are the culture bridge. I think the ethnic diversity of our team and the ability to not just take people to something in a logistically efficient manner, but to be able to be that culture bridge, to even help the client,
00:28:19
Speaker
almost interpret for themselves what they're experiencing, because they're the outsider experiencing something very new. And we live in between. And our own culture has actually been the melding of the outside experience and what the people are experiencing locally. That isn't something that just comes overnight. If a new adventure travel company showed up on our doorstep tomorrow, I would not be too worried about them.
00:28:44
Speaker
It takes decades for that type of thing to develop And so our people have that and and it's it's tremendous when you combine those type of distinctives together And and it just flows most people don't even know how to label it when they're on the experience All they can do is say wow. Wow, you know
00:29:09
Speaker
And then the fourth one is a strong leadership team, which you don't take for granted, especially in 2020, which I love that you have that. Okay, so here's the deal. How do you help others now think strategically when they're thinking about what they want to do for the rest of their life? How do you specifically turn into an uncommon wealth partner advisor and help them?
00:29:33
Speaker
Yeah, so of all the things that probably do scare me a bit, you know, you talked about that a moment ago, man, when somebody young,
00:29:44
Speaker
You know steps into a room with me and it's like I Help me do this thing. It's like oh man, you know It's a responsibility now. It is definitely a responsibility But I think you know My confidence in that again is I'm not telling them what to do I'm just leading them down a path of discovering what it is they want to do now
00:30:09
Speaker
I've paid enough stupid tax along the way to hopefully bring the curve down and maybe save them seven years along the way. That's not my own term. That stupid tax comes from a good friend of mine. We've heard it several times.
00:30:28
Speaker
Yeah, you probably know the friend. But it's so appropriate, right? Because you learn from your mistakes. And there's some things that people are just going to have to mess up on their own. And we're going to have to help them through that. And there's going to be a great deal of character building and value gained from that. Now, it is important to have somebody to help you through it and pull you out of it at times.
00:30:55
Speaker
But being able to take people through a process because
00:31:01
Speaker
I am a lifelong learner. I love studying things and I'm not afraid to study like myself, the things that I'm doing. And, um, and that's usually where you're, you're learning from your mistakes, you know, not looking at it, but like, I did all of this right. Everything I nailed it. I've nailed it for 20 years. Never once have I said that, by the way. No, no, no, no. And so, so as I do look back and try to learn from,
00:31:30
Speaker
this long journey. There are a lot of things to learn from. There are a lot of mistakes that have been made and there are some successes along the way too and I think we can identify
00:31:43
Speaker
why did that work and that not? Or what was the key lesson learned in that? And it's just a matter of passing those things along. But doing it in a way that we've actually boiled this thing down to, there's a lot of principles at play. There's a lot of certain actions that need to be taken along the way that it doesn't matter if you're in China, if you are in Africa, if you're in the Maldives.
00:32:09
Speaker
These things are going to transfer. I'm not going to export adventure access to someplace off of the Tibetan Plateau, not as it exists in its current form. Why? It wouldn't work. We would probably have to adjust the model, even if we chose to stay inside of the adventure travel industry. Because adventure access is a solution for the Glorioso family in eastern Tibet.
00:32:38
Speaker
And that's not going to exist anywhere else, because if we're talking about consulting with someone else, well, one, they're not the Glorioso family. And two, they're probably not in Eastern Tibet. And so, but there is still a lot out there that can be helpful. And, you know, my job as the visionary in
00:33:00
Speaker
Adventure Access is at that level to work with government relations, to work with industry relations, and also to help other people. I would love to see an entire ecosystem of
00:33:15
Speaker
Strategic enterprises, you know Around this concept and specifically within the Tibetan Buddhist world. That's just our knits. That's where we're good at working And you know if there is time and margin to step outside of the Tibetan Buddhist world and and help people in other places we do that, too We're very careful and and who I'll take on and just in terms of time But it is something that we do
00:33:43
Speaker
You've mentioned the word model several times today. I'm a huge proponent of business models and it's a big part of our podcast and we kind of break it down into the seven sources of residual income and helping people monetize their passion in different ways, whether it's real estate. We've talked a lot about kind of now like the subscription model that's become very popularized.
00:34:07
Speaker
you know, looking at it, because you are, you know, from America, you're in America now. And kind of the traditional, you know, wealth management, building wealth as a business owner in America. What are those principles or models that you see translating maybe not even, not only in China, but just, you know, you're helping lots of people in lots of places. What are those principles in terms of the model building wealth, you know, that are that you're seeing that translate all over the world?
Designing Value-Aligned Business Models
00:34:34
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so even though I'm from the US, I grew up here and we still come back here, uh, to visit every year or two. And this year we've spent almost the entire year here. Um, I'm still very much a newbie when it comes to things in the US. In fact, um, our CPA here probably thinks what in the world is this guy do doing OA in a business because you know, the US is, is a strange foreign place to me in terms of how things work.
00:35:06
Speaker
But I think I understand Your question like and so when I talk about model You know because it that has come up several times today
00:35:20
Speaker
I'm thinking about just that design. If we were to try to put this idea down on a canvas and actually draw it out, especially in something visual, not just a bunch of words on a whiteboard, but what does it look like? What does it materialize as? And I think that you can monetize that thing in a way that
00:35:46
Speaker
Is not Shady or that you're taking somebody for a ride because and I think it helps Values actually help that because we have a value matrix at adventure access that actually is one of the tools we use to determine yes or no on on Strategic directions, you know, for example China is a big place. There's a lot of really
00:36:16
Speaker
profitable destinations in China. But you know what? It's not in our wheelhouse.
00:36:19
Speaker
So when we apply our values-based metric tool on decision-making, it keeps us in our wheelhouse, it keeps us close to home, which is why we're so stinking good at doing tours there anyways, is because we've not spread ourselves a mile wide and it's deep. We say no to a lot of options so that we hold on dearly to the important ones.
00:36:45
Speaker
Um, and you know, it's hard especially in the startup phase to say no to business, right? But you know, it's gonna sink you if you don't um, and so You know, it's it's it's having that that values based model. Um, you know that we have uh, we call it our our company focus and it's kind of like a venn diagram with the overlapping points and we've identified these
00:37:12
Speaker
these few things as being this is important to us and where they all intersect in the middle is where we try to keep the sights of our business directed towards. Here's the thing, our desire as a family and our staff, we love the Tibetan Plateau. We want to be on the Tibetan Plateau, not just because that's where our clients want to go, but because we like it.
00:37:38
Speaker
you know if we have time we want to go up there those are our friends those are our neighbors that's where we want to be you know when i think about a mountain to climb i want to climb one of those mountains you know um and so that that is not the fact that we've identified that for ourselves though does not mean that
00:37:58
Speaker
we're trying to trick our clients into choosing that just because we want it. When we're executing on the things that are valuable to us is when we are at our best for our clients. They have those wow experiences
00:38:16
Speaker
whenever we're operating 100% within the things that we have identified as being what we want. Now, does that mean every adventure traveler needs to come to that? No, they may not want what we want. Which is fine. And that's okay. Totally fine. Thank you.
00:38:36
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah, because you're gonna be miserable while you're there. Right, right. And so, you know, there's, it serves both parties so well in that it helps us and it helps them. And you can figure out your core values and you don't stray for them. It's like, hey, not everyone needs to like me, right? I don't need to be a chameleon to try to get you to like me. It just works.
00:39:00
Speaker
And you touched on something here about passion. And I love when people are like, I'm not a salesman. I'm like, yeah, you're just not passionate about what you're selling. Does that make sense? Like if you are passionate about whatever it is, underwater basket weaving, let's just throw it out there.
00:39:15
Speaker
You are the best salesman, because you're passionate about it. Because you love talking about it. Like, we get to see this time and time again when we sit down with somebody, we just try to get them to be passionate about whatever they're talking about. Two hours later, we'll ask them, how long have we been talking? I don't know, 15 minutes. No, two hours, because you were passionate. And we love it. And that's what you get to do. You get to be passionate about what you do. All right, I got a question for you. What kind of adventures can people go on with adventure access?
00:39:45
Speaker
probably a lot more than you think, because I think people assume or equate Tibet with being very extreme.
Adventure Travel Demographics and Contact Information
00:39:53
Speaker
The first thing that comes to mind is probably Mount Everest, you know, people can't breathe. You know, I have to be 27 years old, chiseled out of stone and, you know, just killing it, you know, in every way. The largest demographic of adventure travelers around the world
00:40:15
Speaker
ages 50 to 70. And so the biggest sector of adventure travel is actually what would be labeled as soft adventure. So it's not the extreme thing. In fact, we don't lead clients on commercially guided big mountain expeditions. Now we'll do them ourselves. We've actually given logistical support to some, but that's not what we're doing for our clients who are coming through.
00:40:45
Speaker
um the adventure access door so it is open to a full range of people i mean we have families who have elementary school aged kids you know we have you know 70 something year olds and everything in between um and so it's it is a bigger spectrum than you probably would think
00:41:08
Speaker
you know, when you initially hear the idea adventure travel and Tibet. And so, like I said earlier, you know, you've got hiking and mountain biking is very common in those activities. Some of China's best
00:41:24
Speaker
national parks are right in our backyard. I mean, it'd be like the equivalent of having Yellowstone and Yosemite an hour and a half away from one another. And they're right outside of the town where our operations base is. And so you've got those things.
00:41:41
Speaker
I mean, there's a handful of UNESCO World Heritage sites that are also right in the backyard. So this is the kind of thing that a lot of our trips are quite long, especially for inbound travelers. It's not uncommon for us to get clients from Europe that are going to come, and they're going to spend six weeks in China.
00:42:01
Speaker
And we will plan their entire experience and they land in Beijing, they visit and they spend time there. They're going to spend time traveling through Xi'an to see the Terracotta Warriors. That's all kind of pre-tour experiences where we have partners that we've established there that we know are going to operate at the same level of service that we expect of ourselves.
00:42:22
Speaker
Then they get into the core of their trip, which is two to three weeks on the ground in Eastern Tibet with us, where we're going from point A to B to C to D in a very carefully crafted way so that it's actually creating a seamless narrative to experience all the different aspects of culture, whether it's religious life to nomad life to time on the trails, hiking, and these kinds of things.
00:42:47
Speaker
culminating in time in Chengdu, which is the culinary center of China. You've got those food experiences all throughout. Sign me up. I am all about. Next question, family of five. How much is it going to cost me?
00:43:05
Speaker
Well, and there's a range there. You have to decide what you want to do. China is not as cheap as it was 20 years ago when you had a lot of backpackers working their way through. That China has gone. It has modernized. It's phenomenal. Now, some of that modernization has actually made travel affordable. You can hop on a high-speed train
00:43:30
Speaker
and cover the same distance on the ground, you know, in the same amount of time that used to take you to fly and do it for a quarter of the price, you know, because you're sitting on a train. So there's some advantages there. But you know,
00:43:43
Speaker
It would be hard to do it for a whole family. You're still probably going to be in the reins of about $100 a day per person. After you get over there. After you get over there. That's on the ground. Yeah. That's good. But we have some experiences and services, and they're actually quite regular, that they're wanting to stay. They're willing to rough it, and they want to rough it because they want to be pushed out of their comfort zone.
00:44:13
Speaker
But they want that to be selective. When they're not roughing it, they want to be staying in the four seasons. And so it's that combination of things. Well, you start getting into things like that. You're looking at $250, $350, $400 a day per person, usually based off of their accommodation choices. Exactly. Which they can go up or down. People can do.
00:44:39
Speaker
How would our listeners find out more about you, Brian, uh, more about adventure access, like just more information? Yeah. I mean, just our, our website, you know, is, is probably the, the first place you'd want to go to is just www.adventure-access.com. Um, and that's going to get you to our website. Uh, if you want to.
00:45:04
Speaker
Be tempted, you know to come and visit then you definitely need to be on instagram So the photos that they just my team keeps pushing out there. It's it makes me homesick, you know, like i'm like you're killing me Um, you know, so if you're looking for that real visual, like what does it look like there? You know social media definitely does a good job of that, you know, and you can find all of that via the website uh, if people are wanting to be in touch with me, like you said just as it relates to how do we
00:45:34
Speaker
make a way overseas, you know, and live by design and choose an interest in strategic enterprise. And I mean, it's going to need to reach out to me via email, which is brian at adventure-access.com. Perfect. With an I. Brian with an I. Brian with an I. Because we do have a Brian with a Y. Yeah. When do you get to go back? Do you have an idea of what that looks like to return?
00:45:59
Speaker
No, that's the short answer. That one's tough. Most of the world is still not traveling. If you try to find a flight from the US to China right now, it's almost impossible. The world is not moving right now. As soon as it does, we're going to go.
00:46:16
Speaker
Yeah, Brian, I appreciate your time you took with us today. I just really am encouraged. I hope you're encouraged about what you're doing and in any way that we can help you. But I love how you're just intentional and you're the chief steward of what your life looks like and to be intentional with it. So thank you for all the lives you've impacted, the lives you're going to impact. And if there's any way that Uncommon Wealth Partners can help you in your future, we would love to be there for you.
00:46:44
Speaker
You've been listening to the Uncommon Life Project. I'm your host, Phillip Ramsey. And I'm Brian Dewhurst. Tune in next time. Until then, go be in common. Thanks, everybody. That's all for this episode of the Uncommon Life Project, brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners. Be sure to visit uncommonwealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.