EPISODE OVERVIEW
Duration: Approximately 48 minutes
Best For: Trapped entrepreneurs who spend all their energy on things that drain them and none on what actually matters
Key Outcome: Listeners will understand how to redirect their energy toward what moves them forward and begin building a life where business success does not come at the cost of health, relationships, or presence
He built multiple thriving businesses. Then a car crushed him on the pavement and doctors said he was 70% disabled.
THE BOTTOM LINE
You are exhausted. Not from the work itself, but from the weight of carrying everything. The emails at 5am. The decisions only you can make. The nagging feeling that you have built something that now owns you. Erik Berglihn knows this trap intimately. After being run over by a car and told he would need painkillers for life, he chose a different path. Through breathwork, cold exposure, and mental practices, he rebuilt himself. Then he went further. He restored an abandoned mountain farm into an award-winning destination. He created a kids island programme serving 500 children each summer. He launched a distillery that won silver in London. The thing is, none of this came from working harder. It came from working differently. From refusing to spend energy on negative thoughts that lead nowhere. From understanding that most business owners know more about their mobile phones than their own bodies. This episode is not about doing more. It is about directing your energy toward what actually creates the life you wanted when you started this whole thing.
WHY THIS EPISODE MATTERS TO YOU
You will discover why spending energy on negative outcomes guarantees you will never escape the trap you have built, and what to focus on instead
You will learn how Erik built multiple successful ventures after a devastating injury by refusing to engage with what could go wrong
You will understand how reconnecting with nature and your own body can restore the clarity and energy you have been missing for years
You will see the real cost of staying disconnected from yourself, your health, and your family while chasing growth that never satisfies
KEY INSIGHTS YOU CAN IMPLEMENT TODAY
Erik explains that negative thoughts require 4 to 6 positive ones to counterbalance them. The trapped entrepreneur who dwells on problems, complaints, and worst-case scenarios is draining the very energy needed to escape. The consequence of shifting focus to what could go right is that you actually have the mental fuel to pursue it.
When your team member or partner consistently fails at something, expecting different results is a waste of your limited energy. Erik learned to stop being surprised by patterns that repeat. The thing is, accepting reality does not mean accepting defeat. It means directing your energy toward solutions rather than frustration.
Most business owners are electrically unbalanced from spending entire days on concrete floors in trainers, surrounded by screens. Even a few minutes barefoot on grass each day can neutralise this. The consequence is more energy, better sleep, and clearer thinking without any complex protocol.
Erik sold his kids island programme not as a summer camp, but as good conscience for working parents. He positioned his offer around what people desperately wanted to feel, not what he was technically providing. Trapped entrepreneurs often undersell because they describe features rather than transformations.
One afternoon per month, Erik runs a programme just for men. No agenda beyond connection, challenge, and growth. The highest suicide rates in Norway and globally are among men who feel isolated despite outward success. Creating space for genuine connection is not a luxury. It is survival.
GOLDEN QUOTES WORTH REMEMBERING
"If you are into neuroscience and how things work, you see that negative things are important for us not to get killed too fast. But since negative is so fundamental, you need 4, 5, 6 positive things to weigh out a negative. Bringing too much effort on the negative will bring you nowhere." - Erik Berglihn
"I don't sell it as a summer camp. I sell it so that parents who have to work can have a good conscience. I'm the good guy. I'm selling them great stuff for the kids so they can stay at work and the kids come home totally exhausted, having the greatest days of their lives." - Erik Berglihn
"Many people know more about their mobile phone than they do about their body or brain." - Erik Berglihn
"One day where I'm not outside a couple of hours is a badly spent day." - Erik Berglihn
"It's not the greatest product that wins. It's the guys that communicate the best." - Erik Berglihn
QUICK NAVIGATION FOR BUSY LEADERS
00:00 - Introduction: Meeting Erik and his remarkable range of ventures
03:45 - The Mindset Shift: Why focusing on what could go right changes everything
08:20 - The Accident: Being run over and told he was 70% disabled
12:30 - The Recovery: Using breathwork and mental practices to rebuild
18:15 - The Kids Island: How selling good conscience created a thriving social enterprise
24:40 - The Mountain Project: Turning an abandoned farm into an award-winning destination
32:10 - Energy and Nature: Why most business owners are electrically unbalanced
38:45 - The Future Programme: A 12-month reconnection journey for trapped entrepreneurs
44:30 - Men's Health: Why isolation is killing successful business owners
47:00 - Conclusion: How to connect with Erik and take the first step
GUEST SPOTLIGHT
Name: Erik Berglihn
Bio: Erik is a Norwegian entrepreneur who has built an extraordinary portfolio of ventures including an award-winning distillery, a glamping destination, a gourmet restaurant, and a kids island programme serving 500 children each summer. After recovering from a devastating car accident through Wim Hof Method practices and mental training, he now helps business owners reconnect with nature and themselves through immersive experiences in Norway.
Connect with Erik:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erik-berglihn-b4252a13/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erikberglihn/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/erik.berglihn.5
YOUR NEXT ACTIONS
This Week: Spend 10 minutes barefoot on grass each day. Notice what shifts in your energy and clarity. This costs nothing and requires no planning.
This Month: Identify three things you consistently complain about or expect to change that never do. Write them down. Decide to stop spending energy on them.
This Quarter: Book one experience that takes you completely off grid, away from your phone, and into nature. Not a holiday. A challenge that reconnects you with yourself.
EPISODE RESOURCES
Wim Hof Method - breathwork and cold exposure training mentioned throughout
Danish Department of Health Science - mindfulness and pain management programme Erik completed
Norwegian Meal Competition - the biennial awards where Erik's products have won recognition
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
READY TO ESCAPE THE TRAP?
Take the Freedom Score Quiz: https://scoreapp.atpbos.com/
Discover how trapped you are in your business and get your personalised roadmap to freedom in under 5 minutes.
Book a Free Strategy Session: https://www.atpbos.com/contact
Let's discuss how to build a business that works WITHOUT you.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST, ROY CASTLEMAN
Roy is the founder of All The Power Limited and creator of Elevate360, a business coaching system for entrepreneurs ready to scale without burnout. As a certified Wim Hof Method Instructor and the UK's first certified BOS UP coach, Roy combines AI automation, wellness practices, and business operating systems to help trapped entrepreneurs reclaim their freedom.
Website: www.atpbos.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roycastleman/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@allthepowerltd
Here today with my good friend Eric and what a
2
:pleasure it is to have him here. Eric is in
3
:Norway where it's currently all dark and he is an
4
:entrepreneur of some massive skill set. Eric has
5
:a so many things that he's doing at the moment
6
:that I'll try and give it some justice here. Eric
7
:has a distillery, he has a glamping place, he has
8
:a restaurant, I might say award winning distillery. He has
9
:an island project where he helps young kid every young
10
:kids, 300 kids, 500 kids each summer and so many
11
:other projects. So I'll hand over to Eric and just
12
:say thank you very much for joining us and I'm
13
:looking forward to diving in and discussing some of these
14
:things. But more at this new project which is quite
15
:exciting. Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here. Yeah.
16
:So let's just first maybe you can do a little
17
:bit more just to some of those things I've spoken
18
:about. I know you were also doing the rewilding program
19
:for. For fish and so tell us a little bit
20
:about Eric. I grew up in the late 60s, beginning
21
:of the 70s and I have this very clear mindset
22
:about not to be an adult, not to be a
23
:grown up. I love it ever. And. And when we
24
:were in Norway we had just one TV channel and
25
:we have all these influence from America and movies and
26
:films and stuff. And the only guys I think was
27
:any kind of interesting to become was a
28
:native American riding around at the prairie and doing all
29
:this wild stuff. So that was me. And when everyone
30
:else was to into football or sports I was more
31
:into spending time outside. So my mom told me that
32
:from about 2, 3 years of age it was just
33
:to open the door in the morning and then hopefully
34
:the kids came back in the evening. We have a
35
:free upbringing in a way which was good. And from
36
:there on I played around with a lot of different
37
:projects and at one time I thought I should become
38
:serious and take a good education and I took some
39
:of it. But it's. It's a lot of trial and
40
:error. But always look at the addis as
41
:a way of what could possibly go
42
:right, what could possibly be a good outcome and
43
:not. I had some which was not so good but
44
:it's. I think it's all about the mindset and it's
45
:about not spending too much time on negative thoughts. Because
46
:if you are into neurod science, brain science and stuff
47
:and you dig into this neuroscience and how things works
48
:and connected and stuff then you see that negative things
49
:is important for us not to get killed too fast.
50
:But at the same time, since negative is so fundamentally.
51
:It brings. It says that you need 4, 5, 6
52
:positive things to weigh out a negative. Yeah. So
53
:bringing too much effort on the negative will. That's my
54
:opinion, will bring you nowhere. I agree entirely.
55
:The. So much of my formative life, the entire world
56
:tried to bring me down to the negative and I
57
:always go back to the positive. And it's real skill
58
:set trying to avoid all the noise and all the
59
:things out there. I don't watch tv. Tv, I don't
60
:watch the news. I just. Yeah. What I consume with
61
:my eyes, with my ears, that's just so powerful into
62
:what I become and what I. My view on the
63
:world now. We met. Yeah. Through the WIM HOF method.
64
:You're a WIM HOF instructor as well. And this is
65
:such a powerful method. I think we both got so
66
:much out of it. And there's a bit of a
67
:story around that in terms of you also had a
68
:substantial accident that left you with the world telling you
69
:you couldn't and you said no I can. So tell
70
:us a bit about that. Yeah, it was as I
71
:didn't say so much about. I did. I've been working
72
:with a lot of great projects over the years. I
73
:restored five old buildings at a deserted island, made a
74
:gourmet hotel, small one getting high end customers from
75
:all over the world coming in their private shoppers and
76
:things. Actually it was owned by the city but they
77
:didn't care. The crown princess came and when she wanted
78
:it. Of course it was a little bit of turmoil
79
:there because I didn't want to give it to her.
80
:But then. Okay. And I worked with projects that people
81
:said ah, this is not going to be a good
82
:project. And that was the stand up paddleboards. And I
83
:said, you guys, that was in 2006. You guys, you're
84
:all wrong. You don't understand it. You can. You. You
85
:don't have perspective so you don't look. Have some visions.
86
:And then of course in 2000 and which it was
87
:11 to 1011, I had a big car accident. So
88
:I was run over by a car. I was on
89
:my bike on the pavement. I was side of the
90
:road so everything should be safe. But the car managed
91
:to hit me quite hard. So I got some really
92
:chronic pain. A lot of things was broken. And then
93
:I got permanent brain injury which gives me
94
:a lot of headaches, nausea, difficult to concentrate and eats
95
:up your energy. And I was laying around at the
96
:sofa. The medical guys said There was like 70% disabled
97
:and I could be treated with painkillers. And
98
:then I knew that, okay, if I'm going that way,
99
:I'm going to be a drug, drug addict really real
100
:soon and feeling sorry for myself and laying around and
101
:then kids would keep a distance, my wife would move
102
:out, my house would be sold and things would not
103
:go as planned. So I thought, okay, I have to
104
:do something. So actually I find. I was searching the
105
:Internet and I found a program at the Danish Department
106
:of Health Science and Health. And I went on that
107
:and they had a lot of focusing on meditational practices.
108
:Very much of this mindfulness focus, how to help to
109
:kind of rewire your. The way you feel about pain
110
:and how your brain acts, actually perceives pain and
111
:how you can change the outcome. With training
112
:for not one week, but actually a couple of years.
113
:So after about two years doing that and things got
114
:really well and had continued to do that. I also
115
:was looking in, into the breathing and a little bit
116
:too cold. I found Wim Hof and the guys and
117
:then I joined in and the first kind of instructor
118
:event thing we had up in the mountains in Poland,
119
:it was cold, wild and cold. And the funny
120
:thing was that we teamed up, we teamed up with
121
:other guys and the other guy, he was a guy
122
:from, I think it was from some desert early area
123
:in America and he was really skinny. So
124
:when things started to get really cold, I have to
125
:give him all my down gear, everything I packed to
126
:keep warm. And I would say that after the third
127
:dip that one day and we have to just be
128
:in the woods to keep warm in wet shorts and
129
:nothing else, snow. And after the third times in the
130
:water and I think every time we went in the
131
:water it was like something between eight and 10 minutes
132
:because you go out and all the others come out
133
:and then you go in again then. And I have
134
:to say I, I thought my balls would just break.
135
:For sure. I thought it just shattered like glass. Oh,
136
:Jesus. But we, we went through it and, and kept
137
:on doing a lot of breathing exercises, mental practices and
138
:yeah, ran just for speed ahead. Yeah, it's
139
:amazing, it's so amazing the power of the body and
140
:the mind that we, we are not aware of. I
141
:always say I was 49 years old when I learned
142
:how to breathe. And it just astounds me to this
143
:day that we don't teach this in clot, in schools.
144
:We don't teach us to youngsters, we don't. There's so
145
:much resistance to these things. That are essentially free, that
146
:are our birthright, that we can hold is free. Especially
147
:in Norway. Especially. Yeah. I, I made a. I have
148
:this couple of different schools I have been working with,
149
:joining in, just doing. And I ask them because I
150
:worked with a lot of troubled kids before and then
151
:I said, okay, can I design a program for you
152
:guys? And we did. And now the headmaster is now
153
:asking if we could do it again. And one funny
154
:thing was that they have. Of course every school has
155
:this one or two kids that everyone hates and everyone
156
:gets sick if they have to work with them and
157
:blah, blah, blah. The funny thing is that I don't
158
:understand why people are not prepared. Yeah.
159
:If you know that your partner is totally
160
:out of it when it comes to certain things, you
161
:can be very irritated, angry and you can keep
162
:on doing that for a century and maybe it's not
163
:going to happen anything and it's not going to change.
164
:And every time you are tired because he or she.
165
:I'm getting exhausted because you don't blah, blah, blah, blah.
166
:And they. But after a couple of while, a couple
167
:of times, you should expect that this is how it
168
:is. He's not able, she's not able. This is not
169
:going to happen. So why do I expect something that's
170
:not going to happen? It's God's going to tear you
171
:down, eats your energy and it takes away all the
172
:kindness and love and all the things you get angry.
173
:And I just said it. That's totally waste
174
:of energy. Yep. It will never bring you forward. And
175
:I think that's a lot of the things that I
176
:work with doing my project. Use your energy wisely,
177
:not think about should I do this, should I do
178
:this? But when I do stuff for me, after we
179
:went to these courses, learning breathing, I did a lot
180
:of mental practices and got back in shape or kind
181
:of a sort of mental shape. And then I think
182
:so many people are wasting time and energy in things
183
:that doesn't matter. Yeah, agreed. Think about worrying to be
184
:worried about something. It's not going to help you anywhere.
185
:It's not going to change the outcome. It's not going
186
:to do anything. Good for you. So I think I,
187
:I spent. That doesn't mean I don't care, but I
188
:just spend more energy on what things could be, could
189
:become. And I think my projects are going full
190
:speed ahead because I only spent or I'm
191
:guess I'm trained more in this, but I spent my
192
:energy on things that kind of work better. I
193
:don't look back and Say, oh, I don't. I try
194
:to not do the same mistakes again and again, but
195
:at the same time to use this breathing, to use
196
:the cold, to use mental practices and to have a
197
:positive mindset that will bring you a lot of
198
:the things you want. I love this. I love the
199
:concept of energy because we do spend our energy incorrectly.
200
:I know if I get up in the morning, I
201
:do my morning routine properly, I have more energy for
202
:the day. And what the breathing does for me is
203
:it actually clears off the emotional baggage from the day
204
:before. Yeah. So it does that. What the ice does
205
:for me, it actually gives me a real boost of
206
:energy. It gives me the dopamine that I need. It
207
:makes me me see that I can do a difficult
208
:thing because every day it's still difficult. Every time I
209
:get in the ice, it's still difficult. The meditation helps
210
:me with just opening up to what's actually really what
211
:I'm struggling with today. So having this means that I
212
:can focus the energy for today on today. And when
213
:I focus the energy for today on today, I don't
214
:give the energy away to tomorrow, worrying about things that
215
:haven't happened yet. And I don't give it away to
216
:yesterday. Being depressed about things I can't change anymore. I
217
:just focus on today. The outcome is so much better.
218
:Yeah. That's why I think I. I've done or I
219
:still have involved in quite a lot of projects. I
220
:today I come from. It's about 100km away in a
221
:city where a river. When we're working on trying to
222
:restore it. And then there's a couple of guys who
223
:want to. And there's always this one guy who don't
224
:want to and then use. And then I tried to
225
:was it find a middle way. But I have. About
226
:15 years ago I was looking into this. I thought
227
:that kids were inactive and not so capable.
228
:And since my kids have been out at the islands
229
:learning stuff from early age into skiing, climbing, whatever. Even
230
:my daughter, she's an authority. She said, dad, you learned
231
:us too much. The only thing I don't know how
232
:to do is welding. That's the only thing I don't
233
:know. But all the kids I made, all the guys,
234
:they can't do anything. They don't know anything about how
235
:to make this and how to do and how to
236
:carpentry and whatever. And then you learn with everything. Well,
237
:I thought, I love it. I just, I think it's
238
:great. But I thought all these kids that. That should
239
:learn more. They should Be more capable. Yeah. And then
240
:I made the island project, the kid island project. And
241
:everyone said, oh, it's not going to be a good
242
:thing. And I said maybe. And then say I
243
:want to do this as a special social entrepreneurship. And
244
:at that time everyone thought that social entrepreneurship was about
245
:applying for fund from the government. And I said it's
246
:not about that. It's to run a balanced business when
247
:you get the rich people to pay for the poor
248
:ones and then you use your energy in a good
249
:way so that everyone is quite happy. So what I
250
:did was I presented it as the kid Ion was
251
:a summer concept, five days a week at daytime. And
252
:I didn't sell sell it as a summer camp. I
253
:sold it so that parents that have to work can
254
:have a good conscience. Yeah, good plan. Yeah. So
255
:I sell good conscience. I'm the good guy. So I'm
256
:selling them great stuff for the kids so that they
257
:can stay at work and the kids could come home
258
:totally exhausted, having the greatest days of their lives and
259
:everything was good. And their parents must love you for
260
:that. They do, they do. And the thing is that
261
:I only sell 80% of the spots and
262
:that covers the the whole thing. And there is 20%
263
:of the restoring spots are given away not to announced
264
:poor people, but together with schools and social teachers and
265
:others in the area, they find the kids that need
266
:it. Yeah. So everyone gets a ticket. So now when
267
:they come together the first day, they are just in
268
:their, what should I say? A life west and shorts.
269
:No phones are allowed and. And everyone is just equal.
270
:So if you're a millionaire kid from this area of
271
:the city, or you are totally the opposite from the
272
:other, no one cares. So I put that together. And
273
:then we also have this other project because in Norway
274
:it's. If you're in foster care, your foster kid, your
275
:foster parents, can they have the right to have a
276
:couple of weeks of vacation from you. So if you
277
:are 16, live in foster care, life is not great.
278
:And then your foster family said, oh you, we are
279
:going to send you somewhere because we want to have
280
:vacation from you. That's not a good thing. So instead
281
:I said, we make a special summer job. We incorporate
282
:these kids into our team of people work, we make
283
:them assistants, we put them into course and training before.
284
:And instead of you guys, since you live so far
285
:ahead, then when you're working with us, you have to
286
:live at the on the island. So then we don't
287
:have any problems with being sent away or some shitty
288
:place that you hate. But you getting a job, you're
289
:working together with great people, you're getting full salary and
290
:you get references and you get everything. So lift them
291
:up. And the thing is that this is not hard.
292
:This is effing easy to do. Just if you want
293
:to be a little bit, show a little bit of
294
:kindness, be a little bit flexible. Works like a dream.
295
:I'm going to say something because it's not hard for
296
:you, Eric. And this is the joy of the entrepreneurial.
297
:Yeah. One thing I've learned is that when I see
298
:things as easy. Yeah. And then I just have this
299
:total. Why can't everybody just do this? It's because there
300
:isn't the vision, because there isn't the drive, because there
301
:isn't the tenacity that's required to make it work. Once
302
:you have this vision, you need to push forward. And
303
:I'm gonna, I'm gonna change now slightly because we can
304
:talk literally for hours about all the projects that you've
305
:got. I want to come back to the, the feeling
306
:that you have the understanding that you have about nature
307
:and our connection to nature which the modern world is
308
:really not giving us correctly. Because I'm really inspired by
309
:your future project of taking people that are high performing
310
:business owners that are owning companies that are stuck in
311
:a job that's really taking a lot of the time
312
:and energy and they don't see, to use a phrase,
313
:the word for the trees. You've had, you have so
314
:much experience with the kids. You've had so much experience
315
:with other people as well through the WIM HOF method
316
:and bringing people together and just showing them the power
317
:of nature. So let's talk to that for a bit.
318
:Yeah. As I went in the woods from early age
319
:and then hopefully came out in a way. But for
320
:me, one day where I'm not outside a couple
321
:of hours is a badly spent day. I have, I
322
:think from early age this kind of some kind of
323
:link that says to me a little bit unconsciously that
324
:get the outside. And I have been taking or been
325
:asked a lot of times to bring clients out and
326
:people have come from all over the world and now
327
:trying to make a little bit more systematic. But the
328
:thing is everything is energy, everything is vibrations. And then
329
:if you spend too much time inside, I
330
:think the energy becomes less vibrant and more kind of
331
:dead. Not giving you, it's not keeping the momentum.
332
:And I see that many times when people know more
333
:about their mobile phone than they do about their body
334
:or brain. Yeah. And Then we know after
335
:scientists have tested and we see on the YouTube and
336
:Facebook that everything is energy. We see that special devices
337
:put on tree give sounds or flowers. We see that
338
:a bumblebee would. The flowers that the bumblebee
339
:gets, their nectar has had one positive and one negative
340
:way of signaling. So when it's full, it has one
341
:signal and then when it's empty, it's got another one.
342
:But most people don't pay attention, so
343
:they look always for something else. It's
344
:always searching for the solution but never looking inside. Yeah.
345
:And then I think for me it's when I just
346
:put some electrical, sometimes devices on people and I say
347
:that, okay, if you're on your feet, walking on concrete
348
:floors with your sneakers, every day you are getting bad.
349
:Electrical energies are piling up. So only to go
350
:a few minutes outside on the lawn every day would
351
:neutralize that will give you way better energy. We know
352
:that everything around us is alive. And to go outside
353
:and be able to sit down there and then just
354
:think that. Now sometimes people have been asking, oh, so
355
:what you got to do today? And I said, oh,
356
:I'm going to concentrate. I'm doing absolutely nothing. Yep. Yeah.
357
:And the thing, the funny thing, my mountain project, from
358
:the old saying, all the stories and so on, the
359
:story said that my. My farm, little farm up there,
360
:that's that it was described for 6, 700 years as
361
:being the gateway between the worlds. Okay. And then
362
:I don't know if this is true, but it's like
363
:when I'm sitting there by the river and just trying
364
:to be. It's always something in the corner of
365
:the eye. Not a negative thing, but it's something. It
366
:feels some kind of energy. It's some kind of. I
367
:don't get it. Right, but it's good stuff. But it's
368
:when you pay more attention to the things around you,
369
:I think you get more aligned with yourself, you get
370
:more happy, you are more relaxed. I went to the
371
:doctor last week. I tried to go once a year.
372
:Haven't been there for 10 years. I haven't had the
373
:time. Yeah, I know that one. Yeah, but. And
374
:then he said, ah, blood pressure, perfect. No medication. No.
375
:And you're almost 60. Yeah. And then your pulse is
376
:50. Yeah. Was that possible? And I said,
377
:how is it possible that everyone else got sickness eating
378
:pills and doing all that? Everyone should be like me.
379
:Yeah. So I think to be outside, to grasp the
380
:nature, to don't always look at the time, so you
381
:actually go out at night, see the Stars feel the
382
:wind. Especially in the spring when this. All the flowers
383
:come, you smell it and you step outside and sometimes
384
:even your comfort zone. And I think you get from.
385
:Feel that it's more rich. Yeah. And you don't
386
:focus so much about everything. That's not okay. Because
387
:it was like when I had my accident, or it
388
:wasn't an accident, it was a guy driving over me.
389
:So I. I don't think he'd done it on purpose,
390
:but it was. It was not me doing something. But
391
:what happened is that. Okay. I had to leave my
392
:work. I had to say goodbye to a lot of
393
:stuff. I had to sell my house in the Pyrenees,
394
:which I made from an old winery. And I had
395
:to let go. But it's sometimes just
396
:get away. Instead of thinking about all that and think
397
:about what's unjust and shouldn't be and unfortunate, it's
398
:just come outside and be present. Can
399
:I ask you something with that accident? I had my
400
:big accident as well where I was run over by
401
:a drunken driver. And I honestly see that accident as
402
:one of the best things that happened to me in
403
:my life. Yeah. Yeah. That
404
:just allowed me to live in the moment. It allowed
405
:me to do everything I wanted to do instead of
406
:putting it off to tomorrow. And allowed me to appreciate
407
:that the worst possible thing you can die with is
408
:regret for things you haven't done. That's true. That's true.
409
:And I think that. I think life, it's full of
410
:opportunities. And the thing also is that my
411
:mountain project, if I were to ask my parents or
412
:my brothers or in a family, they would. I would
413
:say what could possibly go wrong? And they would mention
414
:a lot of stuff. Sure. But
415
:then if I say what could possibly go right by
416
:then and they don't know so much. And the thing
417
:was that we rebuild or we restored an old mountain
418
:farm which no one cared about for 50 or 60
419
:or 70 years. And now I think it's the most.
420
:At least in the Norway sense, it's the most rewarded
421
:place, both from UK and other countries. We actually.
422
:We took a lot of things that people consider as
423
:a weed. You know, they want to put poison on
424
:it and get rid of it. And we put those
425
:things doing special processes and we deliver it to the
426
:Norwegian meal, which is a huge competition, which is every
427
:second year. Yeah. And it's like a Norwegian Oscars into
428
:food and drinks. Yeah. And. And we won first. And
429
:I made gin. Never done it before. And of course
430
:I would training and courses and stuff. And then we
431
:Have a silver medal in London this year, which is
432
:a good start, I would say. And then. Very good
433
:start. Yeah. And one late evening, for about five years
434
:ago, very late evening, alcohol was involved.
435
:And next morning my friend called and said, did we
436
:buy a hotel last night? And
437
:I said, no, we didn't buy the hotel, but we
438
:decided that we should build a distillery. And
439
:that was four or five years ago. And now we
440
:have this two big wooden buildings, the one log buildings.
441
:The one is one of them is from the 16th
442
:century, which contains the distillery, 17 meter long, 8 meter
443
:high. And yeah, we put it together and then we
444
:have another one which we haven't finished yet, but now
445
:we have a working distillery. And then I'm going off
446
:this weekend and making a great batch which I want
447
:to try to sell for the Norwegian market next year.
448
:And we just play around and sometimes. Yeah, I think
449
:that it's so important that people hear you and hear
450
:your stories because the inspiration for everybody here is if
451
:you bring the right positive energy into your company. We
452
:go out in the world as entrepreneurs and we see
453
:a problem in the world and we try and fix
454
:that problem. Yeah, that's what drives us. That's what gives
455
:us energy to push us forward. And as you. Yeah,
456
:you show us and you demonstrate in what you do
457
:each thing that you've been passionate about, if you just
458
:bring the right energy, if you just bring this commitment
459
:to understanding that things aren't always going to go well.
460
:And that's fine because that's the nature of how we
461
:learn. Right. We don't learn if they go all the
462
:time. You can't learn this stuff in books. You've got
463
:to go out and try it. You've got to be
464
:not sitting there regretting, if only I had that idea
465
:five years ago. And now somebody's making millions. And it's
466
:not because of the idea. It's because they decided to
467
:step, step and go. They decided to get off their
468
:reins and go and try and be prepared to fail
469
:a little bit and be prepared to learn and be
470
:prepared to understand their own power. It was like a
471
:couple of weeks ago, that was funny. I was asked
472
:by a gun of guys, a bunch of guys, to
473
:have some inspirational talk. Yep. And I did. I said,
474
:oh, sure could do that. And then it was in
475
:the church and. And no worries about that. I grew
476
:up with a very kind of Christianity all around and
477
:stuff, but. And then I stopped to. To talk about
478
:inspiration and everything. And then I said, a lot of
479
:the time it's about paying attention. And I told about.
480
:I was 9, 18, 19. I went to America, everyone
481
:California. And then all the money ran out. And then
482
:I said, then I got a job. And I said,
483
:Jesus, how did you get the job? And I said,
484
:I put an ad in Los Angeles Times telling about
485
:a 18 year old Norwegian with driver's license could to
486
:be a handy guy. And I got about 85 answers.
487
:84 from single wives or single mothers. Oh,
488
:maybe not. And then this last one from, from a
489
:lawyer. And he used to be the lawyer for the
490
:family Marcos on the Philippines. So he was loaded and
491
:he wanted a little bit of rock and roll. So
492
:when I sat in his big Rolls Royce and he
493
:said, here's the keys, jump in. And I was like
494
:18. What the. What I did. And then the test
495
:actually was I was driving down 101 alongside Malibu with
496
:he and the other guys in the back seat. And
497
:I said, okay, now the final test comes. And the
498
:test was if I could roll them joints by driving
499
:this car was in the back seat. Amazing.
500
:And I was, okay, I did that. I could do
501
:everything. And I worked there for about six months. There
502
:was a lot of crazy things happening. And then I
503
:thought, oh, maybe not too much of this, but I
504
:think it's about paying attention. I introduced bungee jumping to
505
:Norway, or I guess I was the first in Scandinavia.
506
:And it was because a friend of mine showed me
507
:a picture that was from somewhere outside
508
:Australia, somewhere out on some of the islands when some
509
:of these locals were jumping off the platforms and doing
510
:this. And we can do that. And then I put
511
:together some gear. I did a lot of climbing before
512
:and we found a bridge jump off worked pretty well.
513
:A little bit thin, I guess my body got two
514
:centimeters longer. And then after getting adjusted and then next
515
:week 100 people was on the bridge wanting to, to
516
:jump. Wow. And then I thought, ah, then we're going
517
:to rearrange. So within the next week I was going
518
:from jumping off a bridge for about five pounds to
519
:this late 80s, beginning of the 90s, late 80s. So
520
:I went from five pounds jumping off a bridge to
521
:50 pounds working jumping off a mobile crane. And
522
:we made the concept not like an Ike, which said
523
:just do it. We have big T shirts. But I
524
:just did it. Yeah. And the business was
525
:all over Norway. I. I have never earned so much
526
:money on such short time ever. And it was kind
527
:of people where it was about this sensation. It was
528
:this feeling, it was this solution of something, all this
529
:comfort and all, all, everything and they want to challenge
530
:and. But at the same time they want to feel
531
:safe. It wasn't that safe, but okay, that was. But
532
:I think what we do as entrepreneurs, it, we give
533
:good solutions. And if the solution is so
534
:good that you actually feel almost a chill or you
535
:get this, yes, this is it, then you have a
536
:great product. But you don't get to that point without
537
:training. And I think people forget to train, they
538
:forget to test, they forget to develop. They are entrepreneurs.
539
:We have a product that we think is great. So
540
:everyone else in the whole world should also think it's
541
:great. But it's not the greatest product that wins. It's
542
:the greatest. The guys that communicate the best. So that
543
:was why when everyone told me that the kid project
544
:was not a good thing and I said, look about
545
:that. We'll, we'll have a look and see who's right
546
:or wrong. And also up in the mountains we went
547
:for a fairly not so good concept. And
548
:we'd done this before also at the island before. We
549
:had to stay one night at our places up in
550
:the mountains. There was like £100 something a night
551
:about now the prices, people, a lot of people do
552
:book come in and they pay as a storing fee.
553
:They pay about €400 a night. Yeah. And
554
:then food and drinks is extra. But you've taken, but
555
:sometimes you've taken it on a journey. Right. You have
556
:an initial concept. You put the concept out there. You,
557
:in order for you to understand it works, you go
558
:through that process of learning. You then understand how you
559
:can make it better and how you can make it
560
:better and how the whole thing can appeal to the
561
:audience you're appealing to and you get to a balance
562
:point. Yeah. And I see you that will probably become,
563
:I mean you've just had two big articles and big,
564
:big reporters coming across and yeah, I see that going
565
:up to the thousand pound a night kind of place
566
:or whatever, there's this connection coming as we go. We
567
:go into this AI era and we'll talk a little
568
:bit about that before we go into this AI era.
569
:And the biggest single pain point I have with AI
570
:is that it doesn't. People aren't looking at as a
571
:way to give them time back and to be more
572
:human, to get out into nature to undo the things
573
:they love to do. This is what it should be
574
:about. We've come up through this entire evolution of where
575
:we are and now we have something that can give
576
:us five, six, seven hours back a day. Yeah. And
577
:then we don't want to use that to do the
578
:same thing again. Excuse me, we want to use that.
579
:This was like I do sometimes I have a little
580
:bit extra time and then I write some articles for
581
:the newspaper and I write about things that I think
582
:about or evaluate a little bit. And then I had
583
:an article I sent on Sunday, which came into the
584
:biggest regional newspaper today. This morning. I didn't know, but
585
:I just sent him in and I said, maybe this
586
:is something. And then they said, great story. And then
587
:I brought about sustainability because I think that most
588
:companies and people are more interested in the batch of
589
:sustainability than actually do sustainable things. Right? Yeah. And
590
:they use 99 of all the money on. All on
591
:concepts. That makes them maybe a little bit more. Less
592
:pollution, maybe a little bit, but no actually impact. Yeah.
593
:And then I also said, you guys, do you actually
594
:believe that the UN sustainability and all the science and
595
:measurement, do you believe in it? Do you think it's
596
:true? And every businessman say, oh, yeah, we think so.
597
:And then I say, so how can you guys still
598
:run after uncontrolled growth when
599
:UN says that your country has used up all your
600
:energy or resources long before the year is gone and
601
:you still talk about growth, you still talk about more
602
:and more. Maybe you should actually do what
603
:you say you believe in, try to make a more
604
:balanced way. Yeah, yeah. Because if everyone is
605
:asking for more salary, everything is going to be more
606
:expensive. If everyone starts to say, we actually are fine,
607
:it's okay. And then you, you can have a little
608
:bit less pressure on economics. You can have more time
609
:to say, but actually now we are 75% more productive
610
:than maybe we were, I don't know, in the 70s
611
:or 80s or whatever, when we have to use the
612
:typewriter and everything. And then maybe
613
:you can take half your time together with your family.
614
:Maybe you can get, you know, get to know your
615
:kids. Maybe you still can think
616
:your wife is great, not just by a nagging or
617
:anything. Maybe you can lower your shoulders. Not
618
:getting so many kind of illnesses and sickness and stressed
619
:out. Maybe you don't have to pay for all these
620
:hours at the therapist. Maybe you can just go to
621
:Norway instead. Amazing. Amazing. And I, yeah, I,
622
:as I said, I've been to Norway a lot of
623
:times now. I love the general approach, you know, I
624
:love the way that everybody's got a little shed out
625
:in the countryside that they go to. There's a real,
626
:that we as a society, we can learn a lot
627
:from Norway. And as a, as an entrepreneur society, I
628
:Think we can learn so much more from the method
629
:that you're bringing into this and this concept of connection
630
:connecting you back with nature so that you can get
631
:away from the stress and so that you can actually
632
:learn a bit more about yourself. So I want to
633
:just end this by asking you to give an idea.
634
:We're still formulating, we're still going through the initial stages.
635
:You've done a lot of this with people already. But
636
:give an idea of what your future project for this
637
:is going to look like. I'm building a system that's
638
:a 12 months program slowly progressing, ending
639
:in a trip to Norway I'm now working on with
640
:two companies in the Netherlands, big businesses on week incentive
641
:trips for teams. And we are, I'm
642
:calling it into the Wild or the beach mountain concept
643
:or we're working on titles on that. But it's a
644
:little bit of getting out in different environments and
645
:have some very nice exotic challenges in the island where
646
:I have a rowing boat which it's not a Viking
647
:ship, but it takes 14 people. Wow. And some
648
:years ago we rode, we went all the way to
649
:Oslo in that boat. And you can easily do a
650
:mountain crossing to Denmark. But I don't think most people
651
:have challenges with rowing in tune. So we keep it.
652
:Or we have this, a deserted lighthouse which, which says
653
:to be spooks out there or ghosts and stuff. It's
654
:a little bit exotic but it's all the way as
655
:far out in the ocean that you can. So we
656
:go out there for a day or two. I put
657
:them with wetsuits on. We, we put our own, we
658
:pick our own food with oysters and big crabs. Go
659
:back on shore up in the mountains, have some luxury
660
:and then into the mountains again with more kind of
661
:off grid, no cell phone coverage. Making everything from the
662
:ground up. You're not getting matches. You have to learn
663
:how to do without. Wow. And you have to put
664
:up a tent, working a team. You have to skin
665
:your fish which is from the lake if you're lucky
666
:and then if you've caught one. So I want to
667
:challenge people in a way which also challenged their
668
:feelings a bit and more on a fundamental area and
669
:get them a little bit more connected to themselves. So
670
:reconnections from every day and mobile phones and all that
671
:stress and then taking them down to what nature is
672
:and, and take them off the path. And then this
673
:is my plan is to have a one year concept
674
:where you every month get small tasks which are not
675
:so difficult. It's not, it's like when people. There's a
676
:lot of people in the world who have been eating
677
:everything they should to become ill. Yeah. Or fat or
678
:out of tune or things like that. So the thing
679
:to make a real change, you have to do changes
680
:on several levels. It's not if you're a troubled kid
681
:and they send you to the shrink and maybe you
682
:have all these troubles because you don't have good eating
683
:patterns, you don't sleep well, you don't have good people
684
:taking care of you. But they want the shrink to
685
:talk you into. To wellness. But
686
:I think we need another approach where we actually doing
687
:something for your brain, we're doing something for your body.
688
:We prepare you. And that's what Wim Hof has done
689
:with cold kind of learning techniques to prepare you for
690
:challenges. And then when you are prepared, you can
691
:do the challenges in a good way and grow. Yeah.
692
:And that's what I would like to. And then of
693
:course I would like people to like to show them
694
:Norway and all these beautiful places and also get connected.
695
:I have a little program, I have a little program
696
:on my free time one one afternoon a month for
697
:men. And that's only for men. It's not for ladies.
698
:And we said this is just for guys. And a
699
:lot of guys are feeling troubled. They feel alone,
700
:they feel outside society. In Norway, the highest
701
:death rate, people taking their own life is among men.
702
:Yeah. Worldwide it's a. Yeah. Suicide
703
:amongst men. This is society. Even if we love women
704
:and say women, blah, blah, blah. The thing is that
705
:it's not in tune, it's not balanced. Yeah. So what
706
:I'm trying to do. And now I'm trying out my
707
:theories and my methods on groups of guys. And
708
:I do it as one, one once a month. And
709
:we have Men's Health, which I talk to them. We
710
:had the last Monday we had Everyday Gourmet. Yeah.
711
:And all these guys, they were. This is the ingredients.
712
:Jesus. The only thing I can make is cook water
713
:and make associates. This is it. And then. Yeah. Where's
714
:the recipe? We don't have one. Where's this? Oh, don't
715
:you have to work in team and I think challenge
716
:people, then you grow. Yeah. 100. So what an amazing
717
:concept. Amazing way forward. I think we're definitely going to
718
:have you back on here as we go through this
719
:journey of building out this new entrepreneurial journey for you.
720
:Thank you. What does that look like? So how can
721
:people get all of you? What's the best way to
722
:get hold of you and I'll put the contact details
723
:for you below as well. Oh, I have a email,
724
:which I sent you. And then. And just send me
725
:a mail and then I respond fairly quickly if I'm
726
:not outside or in our distillery at the moment making
727
:gin. Actually, for next year, we have this product with
728
:a sailship that only goes in the Arctics. So we
729
:need a big barrel, which is going to be shipped
730
:out to that ship and just sail in the Arctics
731
:for a year before we're getting it back. So think
732
:of doing. It's about being open. If you are open,
733
:if you're relaxed, the world comes to you 100%.
734
:Eric, thank you so much for joining us and for
735
:sharing. It's been a pleasure talking to you and we'll
736
:speak again soon. Thank you very much. Right.