Cathy O’Dowd Joins Us On The Steve Jobs Inspired Join Up Dots Podcast
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Introducing Cathy O’Dowd
Cathy O’Dowd is today’s guest joining us on the Steve Jobs inspired Join Up Dots podcast interview.
She is a lady who could literally be singing “I’m on the top of the world, looking down at the creation” every-time she jumps out of bed.
Since University, she has had a fascination for climbing.
She took part in her first mountain expedition to the Rwenzori in Central Africa at the age of 21.
And something clicked in her.
Was it the challenge?
The camaraderie?
Or simply the thrill of doing something that so few people have seen or done before?
How The Dots Joined Up
Whatever it was since that first climb Cathy O’Dowd has tackled mountains across southern and central Africa.
In South America, in the Alps and of course in the Himalayas when she stood on the top of the world and made history.
Becoming the first woman to reach the summit from the North and South peaks.
But though her days on the worlds highest peak now seem to be at an end (in her words “I have no intention in going back” )her thirst for adventure seems unquenchable.
In spring of 2004 she joined British woman Rona Cant and Norwegian Per-Thore-Hansen on a dog-sled expedition.
Travelling 650 km through the remote wastes of the Norwegian Arctic to the most northerly point in Europe.
With all these experiences just bursting from her, its no surprise that Cathy O’Dowd has also climbed twice to the top of the book charts too, with her two self penned books Everest; Free To Decide
and Just for the love of it “
Well let’s bring onto the show to start joining up dots, as we discuss the words of Steve Jobs with the one and only Cathy O’Dowd
Show Highlights
During the show we discussed such weighty topics with Cathy O’Dowd such as:
How she believes that we shouldn’t focus on the goals in our lives, but focus on our values instead!
How she wasn’t a naturally adventurous child and couldn’t have dreamt the life she would go onto lead!
How she knew that there was no way that she could ever work a conventional 9-5 job!
How conquering Everest was not about the quest, but was more about the process!
The life and death decision making that you have to make sometimes on the worlds highest point!
And lastly……
How she has become a trivia question on the South African version of Trivial Pursuit…..quite a claim to fame!
Products By Cathy O’Dowd
How To Connect With Cathy
Return To The Top Of Cathy O’Dowd
If you enjoyed this episode with Cathy O’Dowd why not check out other inspirational chat with Felicity Aston, Roz Savage, Huzefa Kapadia and the amazing Jason Lewis
You can also check our extensive podcast archive by clicking here – enjoy
Audio Transcription Of Cathy O’Dowd Interview
Intro [0:00]
When we’re young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be. But somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. join up dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here’s your host live from the back of his garden in the UK David Ralph
David Ralph [0:26]
Yes. Good morning to you. How are you? Oh world, every listener out there in internet land. Welcome to join up dots, Episode 88. And we’ve got a marvelous guest today is one of those guests actually about when I sort of look at her history and the things she’s done. I do feel slightly ashamed. But all I’ve done is get on the train and go up to London, five days a week, she really has created an existence which is a bit of a well, she’s a lady who could literally be singing on the top of the world looking. That’s enough of that every time she jumps out of bed because since University, she’s had a fascination for climbing and took part in a first mountain expedition to the ruins Zoe, I do apologize if I’ve said that wrong in Central Africa at the age of 21. And something clicked in her Was it a challenge the camaraderie or simply the thrill of doing something but so many people just don’t get to see or do whatever it was. Since that first climb. She’s tackled mountains across seven and Central Africa, in South America, in the Alps, and of course in the Himalayas, when she stood on the top of the world and made history by becoming the first woman to reach the summit from the north and south peaks. But both her days on the world’s highest peak now seem to be at an end in her words. I have no intention in going back. First word adventure seems unquenchable, and in spring of 2004, she joined British women Rona camp and Norwegian pair tau Henson on a dog sled expedition of 650 kilometers with a remote waist up in Norwegian Arctic to the most normally point in Europe we’ve always experienced is just bursting former is no surprise that she’s also climbed twice to the top of the book charts to with her to self pen books. Everest free to decide and just for the love of it. So before I mispronounce any more words and names let me say gives me a great pleasure to bring onto the show to start joining up. The dots are made her life but one and only Kathy O’Dowd. How are you today? Happy?
Cathy O’Dowd [2:28]
Very good day but it’s lovely to be talking to you.
David Ralph [2:30]
Honestly, did I miss pronounce that name ruined Xavi?
Cathy O’Dowd [2:34]
No, you caught it spot on for the English pronunciation. I don’t think any of us are going to try the local pronunciation.
David Ralph [2:41]
So your life is is a well, isn’t it? It’s it’s one of those lives but is is kind of got Indiana Jones elements to it. You know, I couldn’t do what you had done in any shape or form. I just haven’t got it in me. So if we went right back to sort of the early days, which is what joining dots is all about. You smoke a five year old 10 year old was was this kind of adventure in you were you the kind of tomboy girl who was always climbing up trees and running around having an adventurous
Cathy O’Dowd [3:13]
I’m not sure that it was terribly obvious. I was the only child at home, the brothers were much older. And we had a huge garden. And I certainly spent a good deal of time, deep in the in the corners of the garden, living out adventures in my head. But I don’t think anyone would have pegged me to be you know, the first South African to climb Everest, for example. I was quiet and shy and bookish and hated sport at school and wasn’t getting good at any of it. I don’t connect records with balls all that well. And so No, I don’t think it was in any sense. obvious. And I certainly wasn’t spending my childhood dreaming about something Everest, I mean, I never even occurred to me. Well, I
David Ralph [4:04]
don’t think it occurs to many people. And to be honest, I have thought a lot about you. Before you come on the show today. Because I you know, we all know where Everest is. And I don’t want the whole conversation to be about Everest in any shape or form. Because that’s that’s really not the interesting part about yourself. But I wouldn’t even know how to get there. I know where it is. But do you is a nearby airport? Or do you have to fly in to India and then transport everything across? How do you actually get to somewhere like that?
Cathy O’Dowd [4:34]
Well, it’s changed enormously over the years. I mean, the old days of taking a ship from Britain to India and then setting out on foot to not being quite sure wherever it was. You know, that’s where we were in 1924. By the time I got there you fly to Katmandu, they do take a small plane into look LA, and then you walk for about a week to get to the base camp. These days, they’re taking a helicopter to camp today, six and a half thousand meters and starting from there. So it’s it’s changing. It’s the the nature of the adventure and the challenges industry changing. Did you
David Ralph [5:09]
feel like saying to people, oh, it wasn’t like my day we had to put effort in to get there.
Cathy O’Dowd [5:17]
There is a little bit of that. But then I appreciate that when I climbed at the people who 10 or 20 years earlier, were in a position to say exactly the same thing. And it was true. The way I did it in the early 1990s was easier than what was happening and say 1975. And that’s just part of growing older, is standing there and realizing that the world shifts under your feet, that the new generation have a different perspective, from what you had, you start to sort of our mental apology to some of your elders who you might have been a bit short with when you were young and thought you knew everything. But you also realize the world has to change. It’s one of the things that lets us move on is the capacity of each new generation, hopefully to let go of of grudges and old hurts and move forward to their own vision of the future.
David Ralph [6:10]
I don’t know what your childhood was like. But I feel a deep regret that my kids are not having a childhood but I had now I grew up in the United Kingdom in the 70s. And I’ve mentioned this numerous times in in the shows, because it’s something that kind of is a bugbear of mine, where I was always out and about on my bike whizzing around what time do I have to be home mom be home for dinner or be home when it’s dark. And that was it, we just cleared off. And nothing ever really happened. We might have broken a bone every now and again. But now there seems to be this kind of vibe, but the kids only have to go down the road and they’re going to be taken and you never see him again. And I think in that way. Progress isn’t good that there’s a there’s a connectivity of fear by mobile phones and the media that stops people have been the kind of adventures which probably you know, I can’t see a lot of the kids in my environment, even contemplating doing what you’ve done because so in their bedrooms on their Xbox having that kind of life.
Cathy O’Dowd [7:14]
I agree with you up to a point. So I also had a childhood that had far more adventure in it than it is allowed now. I spend hours on my racing bike wandering through the suburbs, I remember being about 13 and a girlfriend and I from school, we headed off into the felt with so our sort of wild grasslands around the age of the suburbs, we grew up in Johannesburg. And we just disappeared off into the field on these dirt tracks on our racing bikes, which of course are the wrong bicycles. But they didn’t have mountain bikes back then. And eventually of inevitably, we managed to puncture the tires on our racing bikes. So we started walking home. And you know, after a number of hours, Gail’s mother eventually got slightly worried that we haven’t been seen for a better. And I think we got it sort of got pointed out to us that wandering through the filters to 12 year old girls might not be the best idea in the world. But you know, it was it was a great adventure. I remember it with pleasure. And certainly when I went on my first proper expedition to the ruins, sorry. So that Central Africa, we headed off into what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. They were just two of us. I went off with a young man, mostly because they’d meant to be a bigger group, but everybody else dropped out. And eventually Stephen and I were the last two left standing and we were determined to go. I barely knew Stephen. All I knew was he was the ex boyfriend of a friend of mine. And he’s broken our heart, which wasn’t a great introduction. But he was a good climber. So off, we went into Central Africa, no telephones, no blogging, no social media. My mother just waved off her only daughter and youngest, I have to disappear into Central Africa for six weeks. And she just had to trust that I’d come back. And I didn’t, in the sense that there was this was just before the Civil War broke out that is still rumbling in Central Africa. The flights from Sabina from Belgium got canceled, we had to scramble to get ourselves on new flights with somebody else, maybe Air France, I turned up two days late. My poor mother didn’t know what was going on. But she just had to put up with it. But I think it’s a mistake for us to get some kind of golden nostalgia about how our childhood was wonderful and modern childhoods or you know, they’re just different. I will tell you that growing up in South Africa, you know, we only got TV when when I was about seven, and we didn’t even get it in my house, I had to go to a friend’s house to see a TV. This was South Africa under sanctions. This was South Africa under a puritanical, restrictive, and morally flawed government. There were so many ways in which our lives were restricted in which our knowledge was suppressed. Because we just didn’t have access to other ideas. There’s so much I’ve learned even as a middle aged woman by getting on the internet, and being able to look at what’s being talked about in other countries, in other communities in different social groupings. I wish I’d known some of that stuff, particularly as a young woman, particularly in a puritanical society, there’s a great deal of good coming out of this interconnected society. And I don’t think we should do sight of that.
David Ralph [10:45]
I agree with you. But there’s still there’s there’s that freedom, there’s that natural freedom, but is being lost.
Cathy O’Dowd [10:54]
There is but recognizing it is a step towards that. And even if parents have a hard time, not hovering over their children, particularly, there seems to be a certain judgment from other parents, you hover because you’re afraid people will judge you for being a bad parent, if you don’t harbor. But, you know, maybe the children eventually can, you know, turn the phone off and disappear off into the wild and see what they find. Or he’ll keep the phone on disappear off into the wild and post your photographs to Instagram. It’s fun. You know, again, there’s, it’s a different way of living. And I think we simply have to embrace that. So So let’s go back
David Ralph [11:37]
to that moment, you in university, Stephen says, Let’s go off into the Rubens already. Did did your mum not kind of go? What the hell are you doing what was because as a child, you were saying that you weren’t naturally adventures in any shape, or form. And then suddenly, you’re doing this kind of trek into the unknown was they were kind of surprise element in your family, but daughter was suddenly doing this?
Cathy O’Dowd [12:04]
Not exactly. Partly, I have a great day to thank my parents for. And partly, that’s a bit too simplistic. I mean, I went off to summer camp from the age of about 12 in the dragons Burg, which is a big chain of mountains. And although I was you know, I wasn’t disappearing out there on my own and camping wild and things like that. I thoroughly enjoyed being in the mountains. As soon as I got to university, I joined both the outdoor club and the rock climbing club, I gave up on the outdoor club because I drank too much. But I really liked the rock climbing club. So the the moment my parents were probably slightly taken aback was when I came back at the age of 18, and announced that I told rock climbing was a great sport. And I’d be off on my weekends rock climbing with the club. And they sort of said, Okay, how does that work? And okay, I mean, how safe is this? And then, okay, if you think that sounds like a good idea. And my parents, despite being very suburban, and not doing any adventurous outdoor activities themselves, apart from a little bit of walking. And despite my being the only girl, the youngest child, and they’d already lost a son in a car crash, they knew what it meant to have a child die. All they ever said to me was, okay, how can we help? Whether I was going rock climbing, whether I was heading off to Central Africa, when I took off to Europe for a year between university degrees to go climbing in the Alps. And eventually, when I announced that, Oh, look, I’m on the first South African Everest expedition, be this sort of Skype silence as they absorbed it? And then it be okay. How can we help. And for that I owe my parents an enormous debt of gratitude.
David Ralph [13:53]
But that must be down purely to the way they raised you, you know, but they had faith in you to make the right decision at the right time.
Cathy O’Dowd [14:03]
Oh, I think it’s a real nature and nurture debate. They certainly exhibited that kind of faith. But childhood is always a mixed bag, we take lessons from our parents of the things we admire, and we take lessons about things we absolutely not going to do in our own lives. And so yes, I took away from my parents a strong sense of a base and have good support, of being able to try things. And then if it didn’t work out, I trusted my parents kind of offer a safety net. And that’s a huge help in life. I think a lot of middle class people fail to appreciate how much easier Our lives are if we had a good safety net, while we tried things, particularly when we’re young. But on the other hand, it was a very conventional upbringing, I went to a school that tried to produce, you know, well educated, nice young woman, good week, we were expected to have careers but we were expected to have quite conventional careers. And I regret feeling I regret paying, it’s safe. I regret spending so much time trying to be a good girl, and please, my parents and my teachers, and therefore not trying anything where I thought I might fail, because that might result in somebody being disappointed. I also looked at my parents and took away two very strong lessons, which, you know, eventually go into the whole idea of how do you how do you join up the dots of your life, from my father, I took the lesson of I do not want a corporate job, nine to five, you know, 50 weeks a year in your suit of to some anonymous office. I mean, he was a very successful businessman, but it just didn’t resonate with me. And from my housewife, mother, my very able, frustrated housewife mother, I took the lesson that a woman needs to pursue her own dream, not just the family tree, and she needs her own money, she needs to earn and control her own money, because money helps with with freedom and choices.
David Ralph [16:11]
I agree with you with your nine to five, I did the nine to five for many, many years, I was the Superman and I was getting on the train going up, getting on the underground around London doing it doing it doing it. Now, I’m not doing it. It is like I put new glasses on. And I think to myself, how, how did I do that for so many years, if I have to go up to London, now just going on a day trip, it feels like a, it feels like a working day just getting better, let alone actually been doing nine or 10 hours in an office and then coming back again. So the deal is, it’s amazing how so many of us still have that mentality that we come out of university and corporate land is the only opportunity to earn an income and have a living. And we we kind of migrate through the same life that our parents have done previously.
Cathy O’Dowd [17:00]
I think the really important thing is to understand what you are passionate about crossed over with what you’re good at, I do think it’s a bit of a waste of a life to be terribly passionate about something you’re truly terrible at. So I wouldn’t does anybody who’s working their way up the corporate ladder, you can make some big changes in the world, when you have a big team behind you, and you have a lot of resources at your disposal. So if that’s what excites you, there’s nothing there’s nothing to be ashamed of in pursuing the corporate job and climbing the corporate ladder, you can be very effective in your life. And my father was enormously effective. In his life, he ran the social responsibility program for South Africa’s biggest company. And he changed thousands of lives through the distribution of money, particularly under apartheid South Africa when there was no government social welfare into black communities. So what I think is important is to say, You, who are you? What do you want, what are you good at, and then extricate yourself from a set of expectations that says, Well, people have your class, your gender, your color, your nationality, whatever it is, are expected to do A, B, and C. And you know, x, y, and Zed are not appropriate. So it’s not just saying, Well, I’m going to dump the corporate job, and I’m going to become the self employed entrepreneur, I’m going to sell a million books, and I’m going to have a million listeners to my podcast, or, or whatever it is, all of those are great. But you could also turn around and say, you know, I’m just going to wander off into the mountains for a bit and see how it goes.
David Ralph [18:52]
Yeah, absolutely.
Cathy O’Dowd [18:54]
Sell a billion books. And I’m not going to have people who know my name, I’m just going to live a quiet life doing things that really enrich me, or I’m going to stay at home and have a passel of kids and roll around the my carpet and have great fun being a stay at home parent, or I’m going to check it all up and go and you know, I did a live in a cave in the Himalaya and be at one with my my inner self or something. There’s so many possibilities. And I think what the shame is, when we shut down people’s sense of possibility, I wouldn’t, as anybody’s choices, you want to make choices that are true to yourself without damaging other people, and then have the freedom to God and give it a try.
David Ralph [19:39]
I agree with that totally do agree with her. Certainly in my situation, I was on a route where I didn’t have the passion, I was just doing it because I didn’t know what else to do. And I think that’s the shame. And that’s the thing that we’re trying to get across on these shows about, you know, there’s a million different ways of living your life. But if you’re just going through the motions, and you’re working nine to five, because hey, you’re not willing to take action, or you’re not willing to take a risk, or, you know, if you are in a job and you love that job, brilliant, that’s all we want for you. But if you hate every minute of it, well, a lot of the guests I’ve been speaking to have been in corporate land, or I had been in some kind of job or relationship that really was just just kidding them, then you’ve got to take responsibility. And the tagline for the show is connecting our pasts to build our future. Because I’m a great believer, as you were saying there. But if you look back to all the things that you really enjoyed, or you and naturally good at or you had the passion, and you group them together, you’ve got a pretty good chance of having a life which is which is fulfilling.
Cathy O’Dowd [20:48]
Absolutely. But I think that needs to be done with a certain amount of self honesty. And it’s quite hard to do it to yourself. And that’s why it can be terribly useful. You have other people you can turn to, and kind of compare notes about what you think you’re good at and what other people think you’re good at. Because we we sometimes we often underestimate ourselves, sometimes we overestimate ourselves. Either way, it’s quite useful to have an external, I don’t know a balance, because it’s about what we’re passionate about. But it’s also I think about building on the strengths that we have. And that’s a combination of natural talents plus, what the environment we’re in has given to us. I mean, one of the things I do is work as a as a motivational speaker, not in the sense of telling people to stand on their chairs, and you know, start shouting rah rah, but in the sense of, of using my experiences on Everest to talk about teamwork and leadership. So the idea is to take some kind of lessons of life from a very unusual situation that relate back into people’s everyday challenges, whether it’s the work or the marriage, or life, anything. But, you know, in that environment, there’s a lot of young people come in, join our professional association, the professional speaking Association, and go, I want to be a motivational speaker, I want to stand on stage and talk about myself and get paid like, Yeah, okay. It’s fine. But what are you bringing to the audience? This is not just about what you’re passionate about? Being a motivational speakers at what you’re good at? What do you have to share? What do you have to say? And so I don’t believe in you know, sort of the shortcuts about Oh, if you dream it, you can do it, and you can do anything you want. And no, let’s be reasonable. Everyone has certain weaknesses and certain strengths, you’ll make your life easier if you play to your strengths. And then get out there and see, look for the story point, it’s the same as when we try and raise money for expedition project, there is the thing that you absolutely want to do, and nobody else cares about. There is the thing that the company wants to sponsor and you think is boring as hell, or you know, just really tacky or it’s been done before or it’s a gimmick, what you’re trying to find is the sweet spot between what you’re excited about, and what you can get paid for by a sponsor. And when you find that spot, that’s where you go. And I think the same goes with this kind of follow your passion idea in your life, you’re looking for the sweet spot between what you’re passionate about what you’re genuinely good at, and about what will realistically pay the bills in whatever way you feel your bills need to be paid.
David Ralph [23:46]
Well, I think that’s the perfect part of the show to actually bring in the words of Steve Jobs. Now, Steve Jobs back in 2005, said this speech, and it resonated greatly with me. And it’s been resonating greatly with 99% of the guests. Not everyone’s liked it. But I’m going to play the words now. And I just want to get your feelings about these words on whether they relevant to you. So this is Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs [24:09]
Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards, 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future, you have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leaves you off the well worn path. And that will make all the difference.
David Ralph [24:45]
How do you feel about those words, and I true or not?
Cathy O’Dowd [24:48]
They certainly resonate with my life experience. Definitely.
I think
I’ve never really believed, kind of looking forward and having this sort of 20 year plan, I think when I was younger, and goal setting was kind of a new shiny idea in the self help market. And there was a lot of sort of long term goal setting and all this stuff about the zoo dies and your goals in order to achieve them. And I always thought but how am I supposed to know? I mean, I didn’t know who I’m going to be in five years time. And I certainly don’t know what opportunities will have come my way between now and then how am I supposed to make a plan that doesn’t allow for all the the wonderful in weird ways in which life offers you the unexpected opportunity. I’ve always thought my life has been more like a river. So I’m rafting down a river full of rapids, and I’ve got some control, you know, I can make decisions about grinding down the center line through the rapids, I can go off into an ad to get my breath back, I can try and pick my line based on what I can see. But in the end, I don’t know what’s coming around the corner. rapids will take me by supplies, the boat may flip, and I have to scramble my way back into it. Your life, life runs forward. And I can’t actually stop that. So I’d much rather ride it and you know, try and get the most fun out of it, controlling what I can, and just accepting the wrist. So I’m much more about about the journey, and about taking what is with you currently grabbing those opportunities, trying to play to your strength, trying to steer towards the things that interest you. But accepting that you don’t have total control. Things happen. Things happen to your personal life, things happen to the economy, things happen to the country you live in, you can’t control.
David Ralph [26:51]
Do you think that that is a fundamental part of your character? You know, thinking I do want to get you on to Everest because it is something that I know our listeners will be fascinated with. But the thing that would scare me about going up Everest is the fact that I wasn’t in control of it. I could be up there and the weather would change and bang, that would be it. But you seem to be more at peace with the fact that hey, it’s going to happen, I will deal with it when it happens.
Cathy O’Dowd [27:21]
Yes, I guess I am. Actually Do you know a fair amount of what might be called extreme sport or, or sort of risk sport, whether it’s backcountry skiing, ski mountaineering, the high altitude alpine climbing rock climbing mean, honestly, you do not have to be on Everest to kill yourself, you don’t have to fall down 2000 meters, you’ve just got to fall down about you know, five meters that’ll do. So risk is not only existing on Everest, and I’m interested in risk. I like the process of trying to manage environments not in the sense of seeking total control. Because you don’t have total control. You don’t have it on Everest, and you do not have it in your everyday life, whatever you’re telling yourself is a great deal that’s out of your control. So what you’re trying to do is understand your environment, and then walk a path through that environment in a way that is both safe and satisfying. But and hundred percent safety is not particularly satisfying.
David Ralph [28:26]
But how do you understand an environment but you’ve never been in before the first time that you go up Everest. And there must be you know, I can only I’ve never been there. I’ve only seen it on telly. But I imagine for the first maybe five days or whatever you’re when you’re walking across quite nice sloping hills and stuff until you get to the bit but but starts really going up. But how to accept that environment when it’s the first time it must take you by surprise, even with the most, most sort of unfocused view of this could be terrible bowl, when it becomes terrible is there must be shocking.
Cathy O’Dowd [29:06]
No, no, not I see it. I’m
not at all. But I think Everest is not super exceptional is not as if you’ve been parachuted onto a completely strange planet. Everest is an extension of what I’ve been doing since I was 18, which is being out in wilderness environments. So I went on to Everest with a big body of knowledge. It wasn’t complete, it can’t be complete. The whole point about trying something you haven’t done before is it’s interesting because it’s not complete, because you’re about to tackle the unknown. But you walk into it with a skill set. And it’s a practical skill set. And in the sense of I know how to use crampons and ice axes and ropes. And I know how to judge weather and I know how to Judge Snow slopes, it’s not the same in the Himalayas, whether it’s a different The snow is a bit different. The kind of of technical challenges I’m going to face are different. That’s why it’s interesting. But I have a practical skill set. And I have a mental skill set. I’ve put myself in situations already, or I am tired, where I’m making decisions after hours of effort late at night when I’m cold when I’m stressed, etc, etc. And that’s what I like. And that’s actually why I wouldn’t go back to Everest, for example, I’m more interested in taking the skill set and moving it forward, then in repeating the same old comfort zone and Everest can be a comfort zone just as much as anything else can. You know, when you’re on your 15% of Everest by the same route, it’s a comfort zone. So it’s Everest is not different. This is the same as anybody who’s standing there thinking I’ve got a skill set of practical learned skills in my job or my environment, and of mental skills that I built up over the years. Now do I have the guts to take that skill set into a new challenge, and see if I can, you know, adapt, survive and hopefully succeed. That’s where life gets interesting.
David Ralph [31:16]
But that’s interesting. And I take your point totally, that we can take these skill sets, and we can put them in a different environment. But so many people out there, the listeners of the show have got no skill sets, and they’re unwilling to try even in environments that aren’t going to kill them. You know, you go from one office to another, you go from one job to another, you go from one situation to another, the worst case is in their mind. But you must have, you must have had those doubts in your mind. And you’ve also got the the situation you’re in, you know, the weather the people have died constantly over the years and years and years. That makes you a different base, doesn’t it? I honestly, when you say the things like your code and you stressed and all that, I would think will don’t do it, then that, to me, it’s not that I would love to go to the top of it. But I would like to be dropped on it, have a quick look round and flown off again, I could not possibly go through the hardships and the discomfort that you’ve gone to test those skill sets out. I’m fascinated with your mind.
Cathy O’Dowd [32:23]
It’s not the same thing at all. And
one of the things that I do run into because I use Everest as a metaphor in my corporate speaking work is that people assume that the metaphor is conquering the matrix is goal achievement. Clearly the metaphor is about standing on the summit. But honestly, this you spend about 10 minutes on the summit, and it’s a part of slow. And yeah, the views are nice. But they’re not actually all that different from the views you had 200 meters lower.
David Ralph [32:53]
Is it not? Even at the top?
Cathy O’Dowd [32:55]
No, it’s no, it’s a cap of snow. So good to predict
David Ralph [33:00]
Don’t be wobbly?
Cathy O’Dowd [33:03]
Well, it is it is wobbling, I mean, not very slowly. It’s both managing to grow very slightly year by year, because the Himalaya are still rising. And the snow itself is sort of slowly sliding off to one side is a tripod up their left by the Americans. And it’s very slowly sliding down the side of the mountain. Because the one question
David Ralph [33:23]
I’m not going to ask you is what it’s like to be at the top? Because I bet you’ve had that question millions of times. But I am interested in how big is it at the top? is it like? are you hanging on to each other? Or is it as big as a football field or something like that?
Cathy O’Dowd [33:39]
It’s well, it slopes off reasonably gently to start with, and then pretty steeply. But the true highest point is, you know the size of a dining room table. It’s it’s a very much a pointy peak. It’s not a tabletop. So there’s a real sense of being on top. But the point I want to make is that that’s not what it’s about. And this is so counterintuitive. It’s an I guess this doesn’t work for everybody. Some people are goal oriented. And I understand that I don’t get it, but I understand it. I’m process oriented. I’m there for the journey. I’m interested in everything it took to get up and everything it takes to get down. It’s not over because you’re standing on the top. And people do tend to forget that one.
David Ralph [34:26]
Well, that’s the thing. I wouldn’t forget that. And I don’t think I could enjoy myself. But I put myself through so much effort to get to the top and then potentially as opposed to dangerous bit because you’re you’re already absolutely exhausted, is getting back down again, I don’t think I could enjoy my self up there.
Cathy O’Dowd [34:45]
But yes, clearly, it’s not your thing. And it’s a good thing to know about yourself, you’re not going to waste your time, you know, having your midlife crisis by signing up for an Everest expedition.
David Ralph [34:54]
Me, you’ve nailed me in about 35 minutes.
Cathy O’Dowd [34:59]
You know, and it’s good to know that about yourself, you know, the things I know about myself, including the fact that I couldn’t stand a nine to five corporate job. So I’m not going to try despite the fact that I get twinges of envy, when I sit at some big corporate event. And there’s some man or woman who’s the CEO of a big division and has thousands of people under them and and has budgets of millions of dollars and can make all these big changes and the younger than me, and I think, oh, you’re that success? And I think No, no, it’s it’s, it’s their success, it’s not my success, I can be briefly envious, well, knowing that and knowing why I chose not to do that. But what I’m trying to say is that Everest, I do enjoy that stuff. In the moment, being cold is a pain in the ass, but in the bigger picture, knowing that I can deal that I have coping strategies that I can work through that because by getting through those cold moments, I will arrive at somewhere that I’m truly excited about, I’m really passionate about, I will get to do things and see things and be part of things that are so wild, that you simply can’t be done without putting up with the tough stuff. And, you know, being cold is is like really obvious tough stuff. But anybody who’s successful is wading through a whole bunch of tough stuff to get there. Success is pretty much tied up in hard work. And the hard work can be hard to see. I mean, it’s not just you know, the, the drag of corporate life or the the fear of falling off a mountain, raising children? Well, there’s a lot of hard work and there’s a lot of head banging frustration there. Almost anything that is done really well has involved hard work, discipline, just teeth clench determination to get through something because you need to get the good stuff. And I think, you know, it’s a mistake to underestimate that anything worthwhile will have required sacrifice, determination, discipline, grit. And we shouldn’t shy away from that. It’s part of what makes the the successes, the outcomes, the places we arrived. So, so fulfilling to us, because we’ve worked for them, we’ve earned them, we own them. That’s why climbing a mountain is interesting. And that’s why it’s worth it. Even though in truth, there’s a high probability that you’ll fail, you must be capable of failure on a mountain, the person who tells me winners never quit. It’s like, dude, you’re gonna die. There’s situations where the mountain becomes too dangerous, you must back off, I’m not going climbing with people who are not prepared to back off.
David Ralph [37:53]
How do you know that moment when it is too dangerous?
Cathy O’Dowd [37:57]
You don’t. And it’s exactly the same as anybody who’s out there being an entrepreneur thinking, Oh, Jesus Christ, when do I give up on the stream? When do I cut my losses and move on. And there’s, you know, situations with dead obvious, this isn’t working. The situations where it’s really obvious, this is great. Push on ahead. And there’s a massive gray area in the middle. And there is no magic moment for entrepreneurs or for mountain climbers or for anybody else who’s facing failure. There’s just previous knowledge, there’s learning from other people’s experience. There’s your own gut instinct. And then you got to make a choice and live with it. And I think fear of failure, you know, is holds people back really badly. I was listening recently to a rather good podcast from Freakonomics about, you know, why quitting is a good idea why quitting quickly and efficiently and you know, with complete commitment can be very useful. And the same goes for mountains. There’s a point at which you look around you think? No, no, no, no, let’s go home. Let’s leave this one for another day. And don’t second guess yourself, just get out of there. And you may be wrong. Other people may go on and reach the summit and dammit, they were the success and people look at you and think you are a failure. You didn’t have the courage, you didn’t have the determination or something, whatever. You made your choice, you learn something by making that choice, you move on to the next project. And when you make the next set of choices, they’ll be informed by what you know, from the previous round.
David Ralph [39:45]
How do people know that you’ve reached the summit? That’s an apologist? How do you just not go three quarters up and being say, I’ve been there? Is there an honesty about I’m not seeing here?
Cathy O’Dowd [40:00]
Well, in the very practical sense, yes, that’s an issue. In the old days, you took a managers word, so to speak. These days, it’s all more commercialized, there’s more money involved, people have sponsorships, etc, etc. It matters, people have lied. It’s known that people have claimed to have climbed mountains that they didn’t, there are certain set of a sense of mountains, which are in doubt, some people believe them, some people don’t. It’s, you know, it’s a good idea to have a clear record, it’s a good idea to have photographs and video and preferably a witness. But in the end, if you get caught up in one of these situations where your camera fails, and your video camera fails, and you climbed at solo, and you got to the top in the midst, and everybody goes, I just don’t believe you’re that good. Why were you climbing? it, you’re climbing only for public recognition, then yes, it’s a failure if you can’t persuade people of the truth of your claim. But if you’re climbing because you get something out of just being out there. Yeah, it’s hurtful if you’re not believed, or it’s hurtful if you criticize, but the other gains you made are still there, and they’re still real, and you take them with you. I think it’s really important when people do anything, whether it’s climbing a mountain, or or setting up their own business, or just trying to live their daily lives. Why are you doing it?
Not in the sense that maybe you shouldn’t be doing it. But in the sense of
what you get out of it, that really matters to you that really enriches your lives. Because you will be getting those things, even if other people are criticizing you, or even if other people aren’t understanding you. Yeah. And if you’ve got a certain clarity, it makes it easier to do it despite fearing failure, despite being worried about what other people might think of you. If you can look at it and say, yeah, just by trying this thing, by taking part in this, I will enrich my life, even if it doesn’t work out. Even if I don’t reach my summit. My stated goal, then yes, it’s worth doing it anyway.
David Ralph [42:21]
Because I was chatting to a gentleman called Niall Doherty, on episode 72. And he’s traveling around the world east. But he’s not allowing himself to fly. And he got to the Atlantic Ocean, and he had to get a cargo ship across. And I bought as most people apparently thing, but that’s the cheapest way of doing it. And you you pay X amount of pounds or dollars or whatever, and you’ll be on this cargo ship for a few weeks. But he said it cost him like four and a half thousand dollars. And he was on the boat for four weeks, not seeing anything, just water all the way around him. And I said to him, you know, why didn’t you just fly him and tell people that you’ve done it? And then you could have had a nice holiday at the upper end and stuff? And he said, because I would have known. And that’s what you’re saying there? Isn’t it? You? Ultimately you’ve got to live with that, with that guilt, that consequence of mental torture that you will have every single day having people think that you’ve done something that you haven’t.
Cathy O’Dowd [43:17]
Well, yes, I think that’s true.
It seems very odd to be setting out to do a particular challenge, and then lie about it. But that’s not actually my key point. I mean, that’s kind of a negative thing. That’s about a we don’t do it before the guilty conscience. I’m interested in the positive side of it. I understand why it doesn’t fly, why puts up four and a half thousand pounds, because he’s interested in this particular challenge is interested in whether he, as an individual can make this work. And the cargo ship is what makes it work. So he gets on board the cargo ship and sees how it goes and thinks Jesus Christ. There was a high prayed price to pay. But yeah, hell, I’m still on my feet. I’m still moving. That’s great. What I’m saying is when people do things, it’s helpful to get a keep you on track, if you really understand why you’re doing it, I have no idea why he’s excited about going around the world without an aeroplane. I understand the underlying impulse, I don’t know particularly understand is the exact challenges set himself. But everybody, you’ll be doing something that other people don’t get, you’ll be giving up the nice corporate job to go freelance other people don’t get that
David Ralph [44:33]
job, sometimes they
Cathy O’Dowd [44:35]
probably did that the true we doubt ourselves, people will be giving up the entire bloody success, rat race, to kind of stay at home, you know, work minimum wage and spend time with their children or just chill out work on their art or whatever it is. And a lot of people will, will look down on those decisions. It helps enormously if in a positive sense, you know, this is why I’m doing this. This is what I’m getting out of it. This is why these choices, fulfill my potential, meet my passion, enrich my life.
David Ralph [45:07]
Talking about choices. I’ve been reading a lot about you over the last few days, as I said, and there was a fascinating tale very harrowing about you going up Everest, getting to about 250 meters from the top, which surprised me when you were saying it was going to take five hours to go 250 meters. Oh, my God, it really, you know, really must take it out of you. But you found a lady who was close to death. And you had that decision whether to carry on or try to save this lady’s life, which it seemed to me from reading it. She was like, past the point anyway, of being saved. But you had that decision to continue with your own personal quest or give up. And that was fascinating to me. But you’d made so much effort, so much financial expense to get to that point, and you were willing to give it up? Or a human being. But you didn’t know.
Cathy O’Dowd [46:09]
Yes, well, I mean, to be clear, didn’t work. She did die anyway.
But
I think it would be no, I can’t imagine stepping over someone and just keeping going. I mean, that’s not the point. I’m not on the mountain in a all or nothing quest for the summit. I’m on the mountain because I enjoy the process of climbing, I enjoy the process of the expedition. And one of the things that happens in climbing just as in real life is that we are a network. We’re connected in the most basic level by our humanity. Within the climbing community, we’re connected by our passion for climbing. And although we we do try and be self sufficient, and we do try and be safe, and we we don’t go on to mountains, assuming that we can do anything we like and then just expect strangers to save us. We also accept the things go wrong, we do not have total control, you can be trying to run a really efficient, safe, careful expedition and still have it go badly wrong. And then you hope that your teammates or your friends or in the end, other strangers will as best they can help you. And you give that forward. You help other people you hope that other people might help you if you ever needed. It’s the golden rule you do for others what you hope will be done for you. But there seemed to
David Ralph [47:41]
be a group pressure in that situation from from your colleagues or people that had seen the lady the day before. That was saying, Come on, let’s just leave her you know, she’s gone. But you weren’t having it. You were saying no, I’ve got to stay here but to do something.
Cathy O’Dowd [47:58]
Yes, I do want to make a clear, though, that this isn’t as simple as saying, oh, there were some, you know, awful callous people. And then there was me fulfilled with, you know, human righteousness or something. It’s not that I was right. I was I wasn’t right. In a sense, the Sherpas particularly who are the most level headed in the setup, we’re right, there was nothing we could do for her. So it didn’t change anything to stop. And we did lose the summit by stopping and you know, our sponsors weren’t particularly happy. You know, it wasn’t, there was no terribly good choice there.
And yet, I wouldn’t want to not stop.
When as soon as I saw her, I suspected there was nothing we could do. But I still wanted to try to make quite quite sure that we were right. And in the end, we did have to leave before she actually passed, for which I’ve been heavily criticized. But we’re having established to our own satisfaction that we really couldn’t see any way in which we could save her life. Staying with then put our own lives in serious danger. And your doesn’t help it. Everybody sits down and dies with her. Probably not. So we left I went down, I just couldn’t refine the passion. That makes me climb in that situation. I’ve had enough. And that’s okay. situations where life hits you hard. And you say, All right, I’m done for a bit. I’m going to go home and try and regroup, refine myself in this situation. So it’s not as simple as saying I was right and someone else was wrong. It was a horrible, messy situation with no good answers. And other people might have made different choices. And I think I’d support the right to make those choices.
David Ralph [50:04]
But the point I was making more than anything was your mental strength, your mental strength to stand for something that you believed whether the people around you believe the same thing or not. Bear in mind, but your sponsors were annoyed, as you say, but you didn’t quite make it to the summit. And it was almost in the greatest sense, touching distance it was you know, I imagine if it was clear, you could almost see it. But you still had that that mental strength to go, I’m going to do what I think is right.
Cathy O’Dowd [50:37]
I think what works here in a life is not to be driven by goals, but to be driven by values. Goals are useful. Certainly in my life, I’m actually inherently fairly lazy. And goals, get me out of bed in the morning, you know, goals give me focus. Otherwise, I could just wander around the house drinking cups of coffee and not getting much done. So gold, keep me you know, moving forward. But I’m not entirely invested in the goals, my life doesn’t fall apart, if I fail to reach them. My Existence isn’t validated by achieving those goals. The goal is just to keep me moving. What I think is more important, is working towards a set of values. And that’s almost easier because you can carry the values through very changing situations where you may lose the goals, because the weather changes, or you get caught up in someone else’s disaster or the world economy tanks, you know, there are a lot of ways in which your goals are out of your control, but your values you carry with you. And I don’t want to be the person who walks past someone who’s in trouble. I have to accept that I may not be able to help but I want to have tried. And the same goes for the mountain climbing. I don’t want to climb mountains like a tick list. I’ve done a couple of 8000 meter peaks. Well, I’ve done two and I’ve been on three. And a lot of people say Well, clearly you must be doing the 814 8000 isn’t, you know, well? Well, no. Because I’m interested in each specific expedition and each particular mountain. I’m not actually just interested in a checklist and taking the easiest route and a commercial expedition and but you’re employing a guide and outsourcing the decision making. That that doesn’t do it for me. I want I want to make the decisions. I want to only do project where I’m genuinely excited about that particular thing. I think that see, some people do sort of go through life being just being buffeted by the forces around them without really thinking through what the underlying values are what matters to them, not just right now, but in the big picture. When you look back on your life, do you want to say I lived it as a believed in living? Do you know what do you believe as a in a live life? Or you’re just going to go back and say Jesus life happened to me.
David Ralph [53:10]
Just before we put you on the Sermon on the mic, and send you back in time to have a one on one with your younger self, which I think is absolutely the right moment are for those words. You were just saying, Ben, I’ve just got two questions. I would be it would be wrong for me not to ask. And one of the ones is about Everest, I always see that people go up the north and the south. But can you not go up east and west? Or is that just something I haven’t read?
Cathy O’Dowd [53:36]
Everest is actually a three sided pyramid. So there’s the Southwest face, The North Face and the East face. And then and then three major ridges. They’re actually I think 15 routes on Everest at the moment. 15 different ways up. And there’s potential for at least two more, although there in credibly difficult and dangerous, which is why they’ve never been done. So no, there are other ways of Everest. And again, you know, I’m serious when I say that even something is apparently extreme as Everest can become a comfort zone. People do the two classic routes. The route Edmund Hillary took up the South East ridge and the route George Mallory took up the North, the north and northeast bridge, know the North Ridge. Because we have so much information about them now that they’ve become quite a lot easier. They are the two easiest ways up the mountain. And the fact there are a lot of teams on the makes it easier as well. You’re not on your own, the work is shared as a great deal of information available to you.
David Ralph [54:44]
There’s literally hundreds of people going up and down each day, I understand
Cathy O’Dowd [54:48]
not each day, but in a season, they will be a number of hundred people on the mountain. And some people say that the somehow the values Everest, but you don’t have to go in the season yo that we’re talking about spring, April, May, you can go in autumn, you can climb Everest in winter, it has been done, you can take one of the other 13 routes available, you can go and try and climb those untamed routes on the east face. It’s not Everest that’s been devalued by these crowds. It’s our wish to get adventure and achievement without actually putting in the work and dealing with the uncertainty of trying the rarely difficult challenging option. It’s not the world that selling a short we’re setting ourselves short by trying to get the big return while taking the easy route towards it.
David Ralph [55:46]
And I think that is the the strap line for this show. Really, if anyone is listening to the show, and I know there’s millions of people listening to this show, rewind that bit and jot it down and write it on your arm. So you can look at it five times a day because that is the key words to it. When when you’re laying in bed, Kathy, because as I say, I contacted you and say would you come on the show? And you very kindly said you would. And I have been thinking about you were the first woman to do something.
Cathy O’Dowd [56:15]
I have never ever met
David Ralph [56:17]
somebody who was the first. You know, I’m the first in my house to get out of bed each morning. The first on earth? Does that. blow your mind? Because it blows my mind, I still can’t quite grasp. It’s the same thing as like Usain Bolt. If he raced anyone on earth, He would win. And you think my god, you know, anyone that comes up to him and says, I’ll give you a running race, he will highly likely win. And you were the first person and that is your mark. And when you are gone, you will be in the history books. That’s amazing, isn’t it?
Cathy O’Dowd [56:53]
Your maybe but when I was the first woman, I wasn’t the first person,
David Ralph [56:57]
the woman moments a person?
Cathy O’Dowd [57:00]
Well, well, yes. But
I mean, it was fun. It was fun. And it’s no doubt it’s been useful. It’s helped in my career, since it’s made it that much easier to raise sponsorship, it’s helped with the corporate speaking that I do. And you know, it’s helped to sell a book and that kind of thing.
David Ralph [57:18]
Why are you so humbled
on that, because that That, to me is mind blowing, you want to first no one was before you, you your band, no one can rub your name out. You were the first woman to do that.
Cathy O’Dowd [57:33]
I don’t know, I guess I have an underlying feeling that a life that gets too hung up on one thing is a life that has somehow been stalled. And this is particularly difficult. I think for anybody who’s achieved a great deal when they were young. What are you going to do with the next 30, 4050 years? It’s hard. Any addict, the athletes, anybody who’s been really good, really young, I mean, Usain Bolt, other people will run faster, he will slow down, he will get injured, he will have many, many years ahead of him in which he’s not this incredibly famous runner. Or he’s kind of, he’s known for something in the past. I don’t think we should ever let a life get hung up on any one moment of success or any one moment of failure. When you look back at the at this at the finish line, whenever it happens. The life is an accumulation of all the moments lived all the successes you had all the failures, you survived all the every day is when you just got through the day and hopefully enjoyed that day. I think that’s why I feel slightly uncomfortable when people to find my life by the summit of Everest. You know, honestly, I probably spent what, 3545 minutes of my life on the summit of Everest.
David Ralph [58:54]
First, I’m gonna first I’m going to say that to everyone I’m going to say to you
Cathy O’Dowd [59:00]
it’s enough to be on the end goal of who I am or what my life is about.
David Ralph [59:03]
I just hope that I’m in a pub one day doing a pop quiz and your name comes up. And everyone will go How do you know that and I can tell the story of when I tried to beat you up and he wasn’t having any of it.
Cathy O’Dowd [59:16]
When I do that, I do believe that I ended up being a question in the South African version of Trivial Pursuit. So there you go. There you go.
David Ralph [59:23]
I’ve never met anybody who could say that over. That’s two things. Okay, just before we let you go, this is the very last part of the show. And this is what we call the Sermon on the mic. And this is when I send you back in time to have a one on one with your younger self. And if you went into a room and saw the young Cathy, running through the fields of South Africa, or just embarking on your first climbing trip, what kind of advice would you give her so I’m going to play the music. And when it fades out here Ralph, this is the Sermon on the mic.
We go with the best bit of the show.
Cathy O’Dowd [1:00:19]
Taking take yourself seriously, that’s my strongest message I’d like to send back to myself, as a teenager was a very young woman. You’ve got talent, and you’ve got determination and you’ve got grit and you’re surprisingly obstinate actually, about sticking to the things you want to stick to and you don’t give easily to peer pressure and you you work you walk your own path, but you’re kind of timid about it. And I’m not quite sure why I think some of it is about being being a woman in a somewhat patriarchal society, where success is a is a more more of a man’s thing. Some of it is about a strong instinct to be a good girl. And please people please parents, please teachers, you know, get do things, right. And that’s partly because you actually quite bright, you get very good results in school. But it does make you afraid of failing, you don’t like failing. And that means you don’t try things. And when success starts to come your way. Things like the first time that a bureau phones up and said, You know I’ve got corporate clients will pay to hear you talk about your Everest experiences. You never claim that success for yourself, you always think of it as being luck, you think of it as being at the right place at the right time you think of it as something that could have happened to anybody. And even as you begin to build your career, particularly as a professional speaker, because that’s the one thing that will actually pay your bills. Even as you begin to, you know, try writing books, you always tend to think of your successes, luck, you don’t own it. I wish I’d taken myself more seriously all the way through my career. I wish I’d seen opportunities and thought Yes, this is mine, I own this. And now I can work with us. I did do all of that. But I I couldn’t be more effective, I could have done it more. In a more fully committed way. I feel the same about some of my my sporting ability. I mean, I’ve done a lot, I’m I’m fit and I’m strong. And I have an enormous knowledge base in the mountains. And I’ve got out there and done all sorts of things. But dammit, when I was young when I was in my early 20s, and I was I got fit so fast, and I stayed fit and I had such a natural strength. I wish I’d done more. And again, I think I need to, to believe in myself more strongly to take myself more seriously, to be less concerned about possible failure to be more proactive about my own possible success.
And I think there’s one other thing I tell myself,
which is to be less concerned about criticism from other people, be less concerned about pleasing other people, and about not offending other people and be more responsive to your own gut instinct. When other people tell you that something is a bad idea. You don’t necessarily need to listen to them. You can just move on. When your own gut is telling yourself something is a good idea. Trust yourself. There are situations you could have caught yourself out of earlier. If you spend more time listening your own gut and less time listening to own your to other people. have more confidence in yourself. Own your success. take yourself seriously.
That would be my message.
David Ralph [1:04:13]
And that’s a message to all our listeners out there that that is a master class. Do you know as you were saying that? I was thinking Tino David I’m the first person I know who’s had a conversation with Kathy O’Dowd, I’m going to claim but I’m going to claim that as my number one right. But how do people connect with you, Kathy?
Cathy O’Dowd [1:04:33]
Oh, I’m out there on the internet. I have a website at Kathy O’Dowd dot com. I run an open Facebook, which you’re welcome to join Cathy or dad Everest. I’m on Twitter, Kathy O’Dowd, and LinkedIn and Google Plus and Instagram and you know, flicker and all those good things. I like storytelling, I share photographs. I share stories. And I’m always interested in in chatting to people connecting with people.
David Ralph [1:05:00]
Well, all those links will be on the show highlights that will be coming out. And I understand that you’ve got an offer for our our listeners.
Cathy O’Dowd [1:05:10]
Well, yes, in the interest of enjoying sharing stories. I did write a book about my years on Everest, which is called just for the love of it. And it’s available in a new edition as an E book with a new chapter that isn’t in the print book. And I’m offering five free ebooks, either e pub, or mobi, for kindle, whatever you would like. And what David and I have agreed to give podcast listeners a chance to listen to this is we’ll keep this open for a month. And the five most interesting tweets that come into my account at the cat to doubt about this podcast, will receive a free copy of the book. And David and I together will decide on the five most interesting so it’ll be kind of random but not exact. Inspired, tell us how you enjoyed this, why it inspired you what you took out of this. And we’ll take the five most interesting and give you a free book and return.
David Ralph [1:06:11]
Well, I’m writing my tweet already to send I’m gonna I’m gonna set them up to go out every 20 minutes and bombard under. I’m going to have all of those books. Kathy, thank you so much for spending time with us today. Join me on those dots of your life and done Please come back again when you have more dots to join up because that’s the beauty of this show. Our histories continue to go forward. So we’ve always got more dots to follow. And I really do believe the only way to build our future is by connecting our past so Cathy O’Dowd, thank you so much.
Cathy O’Dowd [1:06:42]
it’s been an absolute pleasure. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you
Outro [1:06:47]
David doesn’t want you to become a faded version of the brilliant self you are wants to become. So he’s put together an amazing guide for you called the eight pieces of advice that every successful entrepreneur practices, including the two that changed just head over to join up.com to download this amazing guide for free and we’ll see you tomorrow on join up dots.
