Outlier TV Full Interview With Nathan Faavae 6 Time World Adventure Racing Champion
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Andrew McCombe:
Hi there. I’m Andrew McCombe and welcome to Outlier. In this week’s episode, I’m in beautiful Kina beach, in Motueka, New Zealand, where I’m going to be speaking to Nathan Faavae, he’s a 6-time World Adventure Racing Champion and he’s also a renowned entrepreneur.
This episode is going to be incredible. I’ve been looking forward to it for a while. Let’s go and meet Nathan. Nathan. Welcome to Outlier.
Nathan Faavae:
Thank you. Thank you.
Andrew McCombe:
Kina beach, upper Nelson area of New Zealand and another Outlier destination. What brings you here?
Nathan Faavae:
We came out to Kina beach about 20 years ago and it was largely just to get away from some of the crowds and live a little bit more rurally. And Jodie and I had started a family. We had one young child and we just really wanted our kids to grow up on a beach actually, and to experience the lifestyle that you can buy by living on the coast.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, It’s funny you do all these world adventure races all around the world and it almost seems like the perfect destination. You’ve got the water here. You’ve got the environment behind for the climbing and the running and the mountain climbing and mountain running, etc. So it’s almost like a little microcosm, isn’t it?
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah, it is. Where I live is ideal for training for the adventure racing that I do. We’re really lucky. We’re surrounded by a number of national parks in this region. And living on the beach for me is amazing because one of my passions is ocean paddling and surf ski padding.
So to be able to walk off the front of the property and go paddling is a real treat, but there’s lots of variety around. We’re quite lucky. We are in one of those places where you can literally be up in the snow one day and back at the beach that the same day really. So, yeah, it’s a great part of the world.
Andrew McCombe:
Now, Nathan Faavae hasn’t reached his potential, is what your school teachers used to say. And now you’re a 6-Time World Adventure Race Champion. How does that work? Where does all that begin?
Nathan Faavae:
Well, I guess they were right. I guess the teachers were right back then. Yeah, I think growing up my parents would say I was always an adventurous kid. I was always curious and always exploring, but I think for many years, I wasn’t quite sure what my pathway was. I hadn’t really figured out in life what I wanted to do; was probably the big thing, but I’ve always enjoyed being outside. And as a family, we would often go away on camping trips and just camp on beaches and our dad would take us fishing and snorkeling and doing that sort of thing. And I guess looking back on my childhood, I’ve always enjoyed those outdoor experiences, always look forward to going away camping, and I think that was because of the adventure that provided the simple living and I was always keen to try and light fires on the beach and go forage for food. And so that was probably the beginning really. As a young person just realizing that I was interested in that stuff, but it certainly wasn’t until I was a teenager when I really got my teeth into adventure sport, I guess you could say.
Andrew McCombe:
So were you always into sport growing up ? How were you as a teenager? You were born here in Nelson. So was it was a good lifestyle growing up? Or did you get in a bit of trouble or…
Nathan Faavae:
So growing up in Nelson when I did back in the eighties, it was a pretty conservative town and it’s got a lot to offer for the outdoors, but I think as a young Polynesian growing up in Nelson it was quite challenging and unfortunately, what tends to happen and in a lot of those environments is you get together with a bit of, riff-raff and certainly me and my mates, when I was a teenager were all adventurous. But we were probably a little bit bored and I think we were actually kind of more menaces to society. So I got in a bit of trouble when I was a teenager and yeah, nothing too bad but enough for me to kind of realize that the path I was on wasn’t a sensible one. It wasn’t going to take me anywhere really. And so I was lucky enough to have some opportunities to make some changes when I was quite young. I’ve always been pretty active as a kid; like my father ,he was a sportsman, and my brother and sister both very sporty. I was as well when I was a kid. I grew up playing rugby, soccer and kind of dabbling a bit of cricket. And I enjoyed that. I enjoyed being active and being part of the team. But as a teenager when we started to have drugs and alcohol and parties and driving around in fast cars and stuff, I think I just went through a period there for a few years; I was a bit confused as to what I actually wanted to do, but thankfully, I came out of it in a good way.
Andrew McCombe:
I’m from Dunedin. So I totally understand that. For me, I’d have to say I was pretty depressed growing up as a teenager. And if it wasn’t for my sport, I would have been… well who knows where I would have been? But you mentioned the opportunities that came along, what were some of those that got you out of that and more into the sports side of things?
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah. Looking back, I think a significant time in my teenage years was the outdoor education program at the school I was in. Because I’d always been interested in the outdoors , even when I was juggling, the parties and the drinking and playing out with drugs and things, the outdoor education program at school held interest to me as well. And I got involved in that, and that was probably my first taste of really starting to understand what is in the mountains, kind of behind where we live. Even though I’d grown up in a family that was sporty and that was into camping and things, we hadn’t really gone into what I consider to be the real back country or beyond the front country. And the school program introduced me to that. And I started to realize that this world, there’s this big wild world of wilderness, just literally one range behind where I’ve grown up. And so that kind of fascinated me. And then when I left school; I left when I was 16 years old and I tried to make it in the world. I had a few jobs and different things and that didn’t go all that well, to be honest and halfway through the year, I reached a bit of a bottom probably the lowest point I’d had in my life. I was 16 and a half years old, I was out of home. I tried to work in the real world and hadn’t been that successful when I was in trouble with the police for a period. And I had this opportunity to go and do an outdoor adventure program for Youth at Risk. And I thought, ” Great, that sounds fun. That was certainly a better alternative to what the other option was.” And that course that I did was a major turning point for me because not only did I get exposed to more outdoor adventure possibilities, but what I really got to see was that there was people who made a career out of working in the outdoors. And for me, that was the big light bulb moment that was like, “Actually, that’s what I want to do. I’d like to be an outdoor instructor or work in the outdoors in some shape or form.” And up until that point, I had no idea what I wanted to do prior to leaving school or for a career. And so for me, that was it. I ended up going back to school and ever since then, I have just basically been on a pathway of working in the outdoors and really just doing things that interest me and things that I enjoy.
Andrew McCombe:
And so what was your first foray into a more challenging sport. Was it straight to adventure racing or how did it work for you?
Nathan Faavae:
So I guess with my involvement in getting into the outdoors more; lots of tramping and I started kayaking and rock climbing and snowboarding and skiing, I pretty much did everything. And I started to have quite a fascination into how far you could actually push yourself. And I guess it’d be fair to say, or my wife Jodie will say this quite often is that I don’t tend to moderate things that much. So if I get into something, I get into it in a pretty big way. For me, it wasn’t about let’s just go and do this nice tramping trip, for me, it was like, how far can we go on one day? Or why do you have to stop at the end of the day? Why can’t you just walk into the night? We’ve got torches. And so I always had this fascination of endurance and I realized that quite a young age, that I got a lot of satisfaction from really pushing myself quite hard and doing hard things. So I started doing endurance triathlons as a teenager as well. So I started running marathons and doing one day multi-sport races. You’re running through mountains and kayaking down rivers and biking here and biking there. And that introduced me to the world of endurance sport. And that became a big part of my life, well it still is really.
Andrew McCombe:
And mountain biking, was that your first foray? From what I’ve read in your book, New Zealand mountain biking team?
Nathan Faavae:
Mountain biking was my first real competitive sport. I got into mountain biking in the late eighties, early nineties and for me it was amazing kind of discovery because bikes were exciting. It was innovative, they were new , you could go into jumps and skids, but for me, the biggest thing was, is that you could just explore so much in such a short time. I started riding my bike hours and hours a day with a few of my mates and then a race came to Nelson and a few of our friends and I got into the race and were like, “Oh yeah, I’m doing lots of riding. I’ll go and do that.” And I went and did it and actually won the race and then realized that man, I’m actually pretty good at this and started to do more racing and that fast-forwarded into a pretty successful career in mountain biking. I was in the New Zealand mountain bike team for five years. I qualified for the Olympics in 1996. My best national ranking was number two in New Zealand for cross country riding and I got to travel. I managed to travel to a number of places in Australia, North America and Asia with sports. That gave me a taste of what it’s like to be a semi-professional athlete and also gave me a taste of what it’s like to travel the world doing your sport something you’re passionate about.
Andrew McCombe:
Did you get to the Olympics? Did you compete?
Nathan Faavae:
I didn’t end up racing the Olympics. I qualified for Atlanta in 1996 and it was a middle or a demonstration sport and I was actually over in the states training for the Olympics in 96. I was in Boulder in Colorado, and we got a fax ,back in those days; pre email, we got a fax from the New Zealand Federation saying fortunately for the sport of mountain biking, it had become a full medal sport because sport had started in the United States and it was very popular. So they decided to make it a full medal sport which was great for the sport, but what it meant for a lot of riders around the world was that mountain biking was no longer a demonstration sport. It was now an official sport. So it came under the code of cycling. What that meant for me was that the New Zealand cycling team was already full. They already had the road, track and time trial riders, and they had no room for anyone else. So myself and the number one ranked New Zealand rider at the time didn’t get to race in the Olympics because there was no room in the cycling team.
Andrew McCombe:
Even though it was a specialist event; mountain biking.
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah, because a country like New Zealand is only limited to a number of riders. So I think in the New Zealand team that year for men, they were limited to about probably 30 riders or may have been less and in order to take the mountain bikers, they would have had to drop some of the roadies or the trackies, and that was never going to happen.
Andrew McCombe:
So they dropped the sport.
Nathan Faavae:
From a New Zealand perspective rather than drop them.
Andrew McCombe:
Because they’re very good at the road cycling and and that, aren’t they?
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah, and I think it was just at that time, they just weren’t prepared to reduce the road cycling team. And I understand that. And the other thing too, is that for a lot of cyclists at the time, mountain biking, wasn’t seen as a real serious sport. Thankfully our top female rider, who used to live close to here, she got to ride the mountain bike race in the Olympics because she was also in the road cycling team. So she got to ride.
Andrew McCombe:
Very good. So was that a disappointing moment for you that put you on another path? Or you kept going in the sport or..?
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah, so after the Olympic kind of saga, I was really disillusioned with mountain biking and I decided that was it. I quit. I’d put so much into trying to get to the Olympics and had got there and then that didn’t happen. I was just like, “Ah” That’s me I just couldn’t be bothered with it anymore and I wanted a sporting challenge and I’d always been intrigued, always knew that when my mountain bike days were over, I’d go back to racing the coast to coast. I’d done that a couple of times, pre mountain biking and it’s such an iconic race in New Zealand and in many ways it probably interested me more than just being a specific mountain biker. I like the idea of being a mountain runner, downriver paddler, and a cyclist. So yeah, I decided to go back and try and win the coast to coast. So I made that a goal for a couple of years. Got pretty close. I got a third and a second. Then I decided that it wasn’t that important to me to win the coast to coast. What was more exciting at that point was to get into adventure racing. So pretty much in the space of about three or four years, I went from being a committed mountain biker, a couple of years of racing coast to coast and then I went into adventure racing and that’s been the last 20 years.
Andrew McCombe:
For all our viewers sake, what is adventure racing and why is it different to other multi-sports?
Nathan Faavae:
Adventure racing is a multi-discipline, multi-day event. In New Zealand we have multi-sport, which is essentially like Triathlon Ironman, but we replace the swim with kayaking. So instead of having swim bike run, we have a lot of events in New Zealand which are kayak, bike, run. The other difference between multi-sport and Ironman is that Ironman is generally an urban event. You’re running on streets and cycling on roads. Multi-Sport races are generally in the wilderness areas. So you’re normally running over mountains or through mountain passes and the kayak stages are usually either on wild ocean or down white water rivers. So they’re pretty exciting sort of events if you’re into that thing. Adventure racing kind of takes multi-sport and multiplies it by five or by 10. So you take an event like Coast to Coast, which is a one day event. A good athlete will go through therein 12 or 13 hours, or maybe less. Adventure races winning times are normally designed to be about a hundred to 120 hours. So race is normally four to five days. Another big difference between adventure racing and multi sport, and a thing that appeals to me, is that adventure racing is a team sport. It’s a small team, but it’s a team. It’s four people and the team must be mixed gender. So that adds a really interesting dynamic to the team as well. I think for me, having grown up doing team sports, rugby and soccer, primarily, and then going and racing as an individual athlete for quite a long time. Seven or eight years of being a mountain biker and multi-sporter, the appeal of getting back into a team was quite strong for me, and when I got back into adventure racing in 1999, that was one of the things I really enjoyed was being on the start line as part of a team, as opposed to standing in there on my own. Adventure racing pretty much combines any non-motorized sport, and depending on the country we are racing in, we can be doing anything, but the core sports are mountain biking, kayaking, rafting, trekking, or hiking tramping, mountaineering but added to that, we can do a number of different things. I’ve done races that have got sailing, inline skating, kayaking, horse riding, lots and lots of different things. So yeah, it depends what part of the world we’re in really what can be in the race.
Andrew McCombe:
I read in your book, it’s in the introduction, you’re talking about, you’re on the barren West Coast of New Zealand back to when you were about to win your first world championships. The oceans coming in from across in a massive swell and a feeling of euphoria, you’ve been awake for 120 hours or whatever it is with minimal sleep. You’re about to win your first world championships. What does it take like from someone who gets into it from the first decision to I’m going to get into adventure racing to that point. Like, it’s obviously like for me as a novice in that situation, I’m thinking, where do you even start?
Nathan Faavae:
If I look at myself as part of adventure racing world champion team and work backwards from that and go, well, how did I end up in that situation? I think a big part of it was that for many years of my life, not only in my sport, but also in my career, because outside of my competitive sport often working as a outdoor educator or outdoor instructor or an outdoor adventure guide. I think without realizing it for many, many years, probably more, probably almost a decade, I was actually training for adventure racing without realizing, and what I was doing was becoming very proficient at the skills that are required for adventure racing. So just being out there in the mountains and being out there on the ocean and traveling down all these rivers that I’ve done all these adventure trips that I’ve done not as training, but just for recreation is you learn so much in the outdoors from those experiences that lend themselves so well to adventure racing, and it can be little things. Well, perhaps they’re not even that little, but I remember tramping, learning navigation as a young teenager and misreading a map and saying to my buddies, “We should be at the hut in two hours.” And then six, seven hours later, you arrive at the hut and you sit around the hut at night going, well, how did we muck that up? And then we realized, we thought we were here. We thought we were at this river junction, but turns out we were at this one. So you’re learning all these things, but not only you’re learning. That example is what has happened to me a number of times. Learning navigation and how to be more accurate with your navigation, but you’re also learning how to cope with going beyond what you thought you needed to and all of a sudden, what might’ve been eight or nine hour day, in the hills has now turned into 15, 16 hours a day. And I think you get confidence from that. And then just being on missions you go away on a sea kayaking trip for five or six days, and the weather forecast is great, but then it changes halfway through and next thing, you’re dealing with high winds and heavy rain and all these things. So I guess you build a whole lot of resilience and adaptability and skills and how to manage yourself in those environments. I combine that with my mountain bike racing and my multi sport racing and I line up at my first adventure race of 1999. And I’m like I totally got this. This, shouldn’t be that hard. This is not that different to what I’ve basically been doing just in life. That was how it transpired. Our team won the first major race we did. We qualified for the world champs. We were on that road pretty much from day one.
Andrew McCombe:
How do you select a team for these things. Cause obviously there’s not probably not a lot of people lining up for this thing. It’s pretty extreme for most people, isn’t it?
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah. I think just selecting a team for adventure racing, there’s a couple of things. The first thing is that you need people that can go the distance. There’s no point in getting someone in your team at whatever level race you’re doing who’s not physically capable of getting through the challenges. So whether they be in mountain biking challenges or hiking or paddling, you need people on the team that can actually do what is required with the event. So that’s the first thing. The second thing really is getting a combination of people together that will essentially create a high performing team or a functioning team. Most teams don’t finish adventure races. The reason for that is because normally they misjudge those two things. One is that they’ve either got someone or people in the team that are physically not capable of actually doing the challenge in the first place. They’re just not ready, they’re not trained for it. They don’t have the skills. And the other thing would be that the teams, at some point during the race become dysfunctional and they basically fall apart. There’s a really high attrition rate and in a major adventure race I’ve done races before where as little as less than 10% of the teams have actually reached the finish line. That is normally because the teams will have a fallout out there and it’s just not working for them. So it’s really important to get a group of people together that are on the same page and share the same goal. For me, the level that we’re racing at, our team has been hugely successful internationally. We’ve won six world championships as a team and in most of the other major events that take place around the world. For us , in order to keep achieving at that level, we need to be totally committed to functioning as a highly performing team. I think the important thing is getting a group of people together that gel and get along. Obviously there’s some pretty common values that need to be in there. We need to be able to trust each other. That’s a really big one. You want people that can respect each other and that are honest communicators, and I think you need people that have, good control of ego. I think ego is a good thing in sport because often it’s what will motivate a lot of people. So I don’t see ego as a bad thing, but I think it can be negative if people’s ego or putting themselves before the team. So you definitely need people who I think in a team who are willing to put the team first and make decisions based on what is best for the team or other individuals in the team, less than themselves really.
Andrew McCombe:
You’re the captain of the team, the Team New Zealand, they’ve also named you as a Lionel Messi of adventure racing. So you’re like the guru, right? You’re the main man. Obviously that comes with a lot of respect and when you’re selecting or creating your team, what would you say are those core values of the team that you look for in your teammates?
Nathan Faavae:
What I’m looking for in the teammates is a number of different things. I think what’s important to me is that first of all that everyone in the team has got what I consider to be a healthy perspective on what it is we’re doing. Perhaps sounds a little bit crazy given that I’ve been adventure racing professionally for a number of years. I’ve had a very interesting career of 20 years, but I think that a lot of people just take their sport and recreation just way too seriously and for me, it’s really important that when we go and race, we do our best and it’s important that we represent our sponsors and that we go and have a good time, but at the end of the day, just remind ourselves that it is just a sporting competition and it should be fun and we’re making these choices to come and do these challenging things because they’re interesting and it’s what we like. What I don’t want is people who are just so obsessed with racing and results and outcomes of the races that that becomes a big focus of the team. It’s not really my style. I think it’s quite important and it keeps the team environment quite relaxed and composed because people are a bit more even keeled. So that’s important for me. Certainly having the skills is critical, like across the collective skill level of the team, making sure that we have expertise in whatever it is that we’re going to experience in the race and it may not mean that everyone in the team is an expert at something, but at least one person has got a lot of knowledge in this particular area, so that we’re not floundering or trying to figure out how to do something while we’re out on course or out during a race. I think the underlying thing for me, what I keep in the back of my mind is that my ideal teammates are people that if I’m in their city where they live, that they are the kind of people I’ll actually message and go and have a coffee with. And it sounds simple and you’d think that that would be normal, but for a lot of teams, that’s not the case. They actually get together for the races, but socially they don’t really have that much in common. So there’s lots of things for me. I really see my teammates as family in that environment, and yeah, I think that that’s quite important.
Andrew McCombe:
So I guess you get to see a lot of participants and athletes over your career. So you’ll know who is probably in alignment with the values of the team and the skill base that you’re looking for.
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah. Within New Zealand, we’re pretty lucky. We have a lot of athletes that are physically and mentally capable of doing the expedition races around the world, occasionally our core team will have some changes; some will decide they don’t want to race anymore because of career or family or whatever it may be. So it’s every so often we do have to make some changes to the core team or bring someone else in. For me, it’s not just about bringing in the next fastest strongest person, that’s kind of at the front of the line. Sometimes I’ll actually look further down the line and go, well, this person may not be the strongest or fastest person, but I think they’re going to fit into our team culture much better and they can probably get faster or stronger if they need to, but their personality and their values and how they are, I think has got to compliment the existing team members. So, yeah, I’m really mindful of that. Putting a team together is not just about having the highest horsepower. It’s getting a group of people together that will work collectively successfully
Andrew McCombe:
You say, if there’s certain races where they are only having 10% completion rate and that’s because they’re capitulating the teams internally, that’s probably probably proof isn’t it. It’s not about the physical necessarily. Obviously it’s an important part, but it’s also the mental, emotional intelligence that under pressure allows you to stay calm and focus on the goal.
Nathan Faavae:
Often adventure racers are won in the last few days. So imagine a five day race, they’re generally not won in the first two or three days. So people need to be quite patient. You need team members that are willing to play the long game and be mature about that kind of racing and I think a lot of that comes down to having trust and respect of each other. I think for me having raced for as long as I have and been team captain, and perhaps some of the other sports that I’ve done, strategically, I tend to make suggestions about how we should race a particular race or what our strategy should be and what’s really important in that environment is that my teammates have got trust in my decision-making, and it’s not to say that, what I say, this is how we’re going to do it. It’s more about, this is what I suggest, but luckily most of the time my team mates will go, “We trust you on that. If that’s what you think then lets give that a go, because historically you’ve been pretty accurate in calling races,” and I think the other thing is actually having the trust and faith to execute that. I think a lot of teams will start a race with a pretty solid plan but they don’t stick to it. Somewhere along the way they come up with some other idea that’s perhaps not so well thought out, they change their race strategy, they change their plan and things kind of go bad for them from that point on.
Andrew McCombe:
So there’s a lot to be said about that. Isn’t there? So once emotion’s up intelligence is down and they make decisions that were really, under no duress, were pretty clear cut. But once the pressure goes on… Have you personally had meltdowns yourself that have changed the course of a race? And how did you deal with it? And then also have your teammates had meltdowns? And then how did you deal with that?
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah, I think one thing that’s quite important to acknowledge is that our team has been hugely successful. We can’t deny that. We could try and be humble, but if someone actually looks at our results. They go, “Man, this team’s actually won everything they touch.” The context of that is that all the things that we are using to win the races that we’re winning these days, or that we have won, are learnings from mistakes for races that we lost or haven’t performed well. So for the first 10 years of my career it was frustrating. We were making some dumb mistakes and we were in that classic situation, post race going, we should have won that race, or we were winning that race, but we kind of threw it away. So we’ve learned the hard way. Like a lot of our racing strategies and philosophies now are things that we’ve learned from making mistakes ourselves but I think it’s really important to have that discipline, to know that when you have a race plan to actually trust and follow it through. We still have that. I remember in the world champs with our team in 2016, it was in Brazil. We went into the race as defending champions. In fact, I think we just won the previous two world championships to that. And on the first day of the race that night, I started getting really frustrated because I felt that our team wasn’t racing to the strategy that we had spoken about in our pre-race planning and I challenged them on that a few times and said, “Hey guys, I don’t think we’re doing what we said we were going to do.” and it actually came undone a bit at the end of the day, we did have a bit of a meltdown as a team, but we are professional athletes. We know what it takes, we’re all good mates and we were like, “deep breath, everyone, let’s just settle down, get back into things and get back on track.” So it still happens to us, we can still get caught up in the excitement and the emotion of a race and kind of unravel a wee bit. But I guess we’re experienced enough to know, just to pull it back together pretty quick.
Andrew McCombe:
And I suppose there had been a few lost friendships over the years whether it’s in, I’m not sure about your team, but obviously if 90% of teams aren’t finishing races that you probably don’t see those people in your team if you’ve gone away from each other.
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah. I think unfortunately with some teams the other day doing that, being dysfunctional and often that is just conflict between people and teams or personalities, and thankfully for me, I’ve never had any real major ones. I’ve definitely had some teams before we’ve had to make some team changes, but yeah, I think sometimes people will line up in with probably the wrong team and have a negative experience.
Andrew McCombe:
And so with your teams, from a training perspective, they’re not all based in the same location, are they? They’re all around New Zealand. So how do you formulate a plan for that from an overall training plan for everyone?
Nathan Faavae:
Our core team is spread out throughout the country. We actually don’t really train much together or see each other that much during the year, but we just have a complete faith and trust in each other that for a major race that people will go away and do the training that’s required.
Andrew McCombe:
Periodization. You plan it out weeks in advance. What does a typical training day look like for the team?
Nathan Faavae:
I’d say for most of the teammates that a typical day is usually around four to six hours of training. If I was to throw a blanket over it. 20 to 30 hours a week is what most of the top adventure racers will be looking at doing, building up to a race. When I say building up, I mean, that would be probably a minimum of six weeks out or perhaps 12 weeks out. I think adventure racers by nature, people naturally stay fit because they’re often out doing lots of adventure sport just because that’s what they enjoy doing. It’s usually only in the period leading up to a race where people will really focus on the race itself and start to do things. A training day for me is typically two disciplines a day and I guess I’m trying to do about four hours a day to make up a 20 hour week, and you’re doing some longer sessions in the year as well. What that probably looks like if I was to say real simply is it’s probably doing three to four kayak sessions a week three to four bike rides and three to four mountain runs or trekking sections. So that’s what it would shape up like.
Andrew McCombe:
Nutrition. How important is that?
Nathan Faavae:
Nutrition is really important. I think it’s the age old adage that, the only training you’re going to benefit from is the training that you can recover from, and for me, recovery is two things it’s basically sleep and nutrition which I think is quality food and hydration. I’m really mindful of that. Especially as I get older, the training that I’m doing, I just need to be a hundred percent sure that the recovery is there. Because, life’s busy, with work and family and the other stuff that’s going on. So it’s really important that I’m eating well and I’m getting hydrated as well. I think dehydration can be a real block for a lot of athletes.
Andrew McCombe:
So being an extreme sport, it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of energy and it takes a lot of effort. So for the viewers primarily out there, because you’ve made it work, how does it work for you financially? And then also from a work-life balance perspective with family and other other interests that you might have?
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah. It’s not easy. It does require a lot of work and I have a lot of early mornings, a lot of late nights, and I think what that comes down to though is that, I like to be busy and I like to be productive. Life’s interesting when it’s dynamic and there’s exciting things happening. So I do seek that out. I like to fit a lot into a day, into a week into a year. When I did the outdoor course as a young person, many years ago, one of our tutors said to us a little adage that I really like and that was “decide what you like doing and find someone to pay you to do it”. And for a lot of my life that has been the case. As a young teenager, or sorry, as a teenager, my first job was a sea kayak guide in a national park. So I was out there sea kayaking around for the day and I was getting paid to do it. And then I was working in the ski industry and in the outdoor industry. And then I think I’ve just kind of carried that on. I’ve always felt like, what is it I want to do? How can I have this financially work for me? And with adventure racing, the same thing really. It’s like, I really love adventure racing. I wanna do a lot of adventure racing. How do I actually turn that into a career? Well, you get really good. You become a professional, you win prize money, you get sponsored. There’s all these kind of roads into it once you decide, what you want to do.
Andrew McCombe:
If you take other sub businesses out of it, is it a lucrative career and are sponsors lining up for that sort of thing and how does it work?
Nathan Faavae:
Adventure racing financially is not great. There were some golden years back in the two thousands, we were racing for pretty good prize money. We were fully sponsored team, we’re professionals. So that was my job. I was actually paid to train and travel and adventure race, which was fantastic. We were making pretty good money back then. Nothing compared to golf and tennis and those things, but for outdoor adventurers we were doing, pretty good and from there, I guess it’s more about the opportunities that you leveraged off. So I think it’d be fair to say that , I’ve probably been one of the few adventure racers in the world that has actually really made it into a career, and that’s been by design. I think I’ve probably been just a bit more creative and well probably just tried harder than most to figure out how I can actually make this financially sustainable and provide a platform for my family; whatever I need to do, I need to justify it somehow. So adventure racing has been very good for me. I’ve managed to do really well out of that. And it’s been a combination of sponsors, endorsements and sponsorship wage, winning prize money, but just leveraging off everything else really to kind of maximize that. So I think it’s just about being creative and I guess quite entrepreneurial as well about here’s this opportunity, how do you make the most of this?
Andrew McCombe:
We talked about nutrition earlier, and obviously when you’re out in the field for six days on the course. Food’s extremely important, and you’ve managed to turn that into a successful adventure racing food business. Would that be one way of putting it?
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah, I think there’s a bit of a theme with me in business, throughout things. Like the first example was that I was a sea kayak guide. That was my first job, in the outdoors, but after being a sea kayak guide for a number of years, I decided that to really make money in a sea kayak guide company you actually need to own the company. You can’t just be a guide. So I started my own sea kayak company and it was a very successful business. We won a New Zealand business award in our first year, and we built that business up and then sold it on. So for me, I’ve always been that type of person or that thinker, going, “Hey, I love Sea Kayak guiding. It’s great.” But then I look around and go, well, “Who is actually making the money here?” I’m on a guide’s wages, which is kind of fine if you’re 18, but when you’re 22, 23, I don’t want to be one on a guide’s wage. So we started a company and I guess that’s the same with adventure racing, like I got into adventure racing. And it was like, “I’d love to go and do some races, but I actually want to make this into a career somehow. If I’m going to do a lot of this, it needs to be feeding back in and so, I’m going to be the best in the world. I’m going to be a part of the best team that the sports ever seen and we’re going to be real successful. So that’s my way of thinking.
Andrew McCombe:
So you are designing that before it even starts, like it’s part of the decision process.
Nathan Faavae:
Absolutely.
Andrew McCombe:
It doesn’t just happen by luck.
Nathan Faavae:
No, no, not at all. No. So when I get into that, it’s like, I’m not just going to go there to make up the numbers and have this experience. I’m going to do this. We’re going to go right to the top. And our freeze dry food company is pretty similar really because seven or eight, nine years ago we were starting to use quite a lot of freeze dry food in our racing, we started to realize that the freeze dried technology is the ultimate way of carrying high quality nutrition while we’re out on our competitions, because we can have so much lighter backpacks. But then I realized, well, we’re buying a lot of this freeze, dry food. Well, why not start a freeze dry company? And then kind of transpires and now, we have our own freeze dry food company. So I guess, whatever it is I’m doing, I’ve always been thinking, well, how do you actually maximize this?
Andrew McCombe:
So you’re almost an experiment for yourself. You use it for yourself, then you’re leveraging it and going, well, how do I turn this into a business that helps others at the same time?
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah, absolutely. Yes. It’s about, how do we make this bigger and better and create all these other opportunities and the other business we have is our sporting events company, which is a similar thing. I’ve been involved in sporting events all our life as a participant. And it’s like, well, it’d be nice to go full circle on that and be involved in sporting events, but as the provider or the creator of those things. That’s a big part of what I do now as well.
Andrew McCombe:
Tell us about that. That’s the Spring Challenge? Is that the only one or you’ve got multiple forms.
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah. So our events company has a number of different events and some events we’ll just pick up and run for a few years and then drop them or just modify things. But our core event, our flagship event is the Spring Challenge women’s adventure race and that’s a major event. We started that event 15 years ago and it has grown into a really big event. It’s women only, it’s an adventure race and we can have up to 600 teams racing some years, which is 1800 women in one adventure race, which is huge, which not only makes it the biggest adventure race in the world but it’s also women only. So yeah it has global significance in the sport of adventure racing.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, I guess it’s the best in the world. It’s the biggest in the world, You wouldn’t have it any other way. Would you?
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah. Well, that’s true. That’s right. Yeah, yeah.
Andrew McCombe:
And so with your own training, that’s going on in your own racing, how do you have time to fit that in as well? Or do you have a great team around you to support that?
Nathan Faavae:
Fitting everything in is just a juggle and it’s something I’ve got pretty good at. And it’s just being really well planned, really well disciplined. I think for me, it’s a lot about making sure that what I do is quality. So obviously the training that I do I really need to make sure that I’m getting the returns from the training. I can’t afford to go out there and just waste hours. And yeah, it’s really just about efficiency and making sure that, I’m organized really and doing those things. So I’m very protective of family time. So we do a lot of adventures with our kids and I’ll just block out windows of time that go, “Right, this is going to be focused on doing stuff as a family with our kids.” And that’s really important for us. So we do that. Then obviously I’ve got my sport that I am protective with a certain amount of time and then our businesses require a certain amount of time. I think as long as things are kind of fairly planned. There are moments of chaos, but that’s how we like to live as well.
Andrew McCombe:
Would you say in your racing, that is your key role as the strategy and the design, and then that’s how it naturally migrates to other areas?
Nathan Faavae:
Yeah, I think so. I think in our team I am definitely the strategist, but I’m the manager as well. So I guess for me, I deal with the sponsors and the media and the event organizers leading into these sort of events. I’m the big picture person and come the race itself allows me to take a bit of a back step and let my teammates come forward, who are in some ways more the executor’s of the race in terms of the navigation and obviously they bring a set of skills, energy and fire power to there, but it’s the platform that I’ve set up, I think, is what we’d race off. And yeah, often for me, the hardest part of the race for me in many ways is actually the pre-race stuff. Once the race starts, I can actually sit back and just take a bit of a back seat, which I enjoy.
Andrew McCombe:
So if we’re thinking about the young Outliers out there who are looking at the start of their journey, and they’re looking at someone like you going, “Oh my God, I’ll never be able to do that. That seems like so much hard work and effort and time.” And time in particular. Cause it’s not just a overnight success thing. Right? Most people think it’s overnight success. It’s actually a process or a journey. What advice would you have for them when they’re starting that journey to, to assess whether it’s potentially even worthwhile or not?
Nathan Faavae:
Yes. I’ve got a model that I’ve used quite a lot. It’s a basic triangle and on the point of each triangle, I mean, is it a pretty easy thing to some scribble on paper, but the top of the triangle I’d have the word passion. And then on one of the other corners of the triangle, it would have a dollar sign, which actually represents, “does this produce an income” and in the other remaining part of the triangle would be, is that a skillset that you possess? So you’ve got these three things: there’s passion, there’s money and there’s skills and what I would encourage people to do. And this is what I’ve done with any thing I’ve done in terms of business or just direction in life is put something through that model and really what you’re wanting to achieve or it’s probably more than that actually. It’s like, I wouldn’t actually go near anything unless I’m ticking all three of those things off. Now, if you break those down, it’s very easy to come up with lots of ideas that might hit two of those things. So if you’re thinking about, like a new project or a business, or heading off on some directional change, then you want to be sure that what you’re doing is actually ticking all three of those things. So if you look at it piece by piece, most people will come up with things that they’ll have skills in and that they’re passionate about. So they’ll go, “Oh yeah, I really love this. I’m good at it. I’d really be keen to work in this field, but if you ask the question, how does that generate money? Well then a lot of the time it won’t or not enough? So then you go, well, that’s probably not going to work. I mean, that’s great you’re doing something you’re passionate about. I really admire that. I think it’s important. You’ve got skills in that area, but it’s not making any money. So how’s that going to work? It’s not sustainable. Or you switched the corridor and lineup two other things. You go, well, someone say, look, I’m really passionate about this. I love this kind of thing. And it makes money. I go, well, that’s great. Excellent. Have you got skills in that area? And then they go, if they’re honest, they go, well, actually I haven’t. So it’s going okay, well that might work for you, but you need to go and up-skill, you need to get skills and experience in this area before you take this on. And then the other one is that a lot of… And this is probably the most common one is people will go: I’ve got skills in this area. I can do this. It makes money, but I’m actually not passionate about it. And for me, that collapses that as well. So what I’m looking for is things that’ll have all three of those things. So for me, I’ll literally will go into a project or look at something and go, is it ticking all three of these boxes? And if it does, then it’s great. And that is, I’m passionate about this, which basically means I’m excited about it. I’m going to wake up in the morning early because I want to get my teeth into this project. Like I’m really engaged by it. The other one is I’ve got skills and experience in this area. So I was like, this is using my skillset and I’m in control of this. I am still learning, but this is something I can do. I’m into it and I’ve got skills in the area. And the last one is, if this works. It is financially rewarding. Like it is actually making a profit or injecting money into the fund, I guess you could say. For me my advice to any Outliers out there, looking at those projects, if you’re not ticking all of those three of those boxes, move on.
Andrew McCombe:
No matter how hard that would be? Like for some people, it might be quite tough, especially if they’re really passionate about the cause. Wouldn’t it be?.
Nathan Faavae:
Absolutely. And I think that’s the thing is when you tick that passion box, it’s really hard to let go of things. But yeah, if they look back, I think if anyone was really honest and look at the things that have been successful for them in the past, they’ll find that they would have hit those three things and the things that they probably haven’t, probably one of them was missing, I would say.
Andrew McCombe:
And so a big question is, so you’ve looked at your history and you look at outdoor adventure and you look at adventure racing. How much do you see a six day race being a reflection of life in general for people. It’s like a microcosm, right? In six days, you’re going to find out a lot about yourself and your teammates, aren’t you? Do you think about it to that depth when you’re doing it or is it you’ve gone past that by now because you’ve done it that many times?
Nathan Faavae:
I think with any sporting event you do or a journey, there’s a lot of learning that can apply to life if you take the time to reflect on that and try to extract it. Adventure racing has often said that it is like condensing a year of emotion and intensity into one week which I think has some truth in it. But for me, one of the things I’ve really learned about adventure racing is the importance of not focusing on the finish line. And I did a race in 2000, which started in China and Tibet and went through the Himalayas across Nepal and finished in India. It was about a 1000 KM race. And on the start line of that race, I couldn’t really see how it’s possible that all the teams there really were going to travel through such challenging terrain and finish that course in the timeframe that was kind of available.
Like I just didn’t see how it was possible, but what I learned from that race and then subsequently learned from other races I’ve done, is that what’s actually important is to focus on the process and not the outcome or the result or the finish line, the end game. I think it’s important to know where that is and what ultimately you’re aiming for, but on a day-to-day level what’s really important is focusing on the process. So what that means for our team out there, adventure racing is that in a typical adventure race there might be 12 or 15 stages, but what’s critical or I think is vital for a team’s success in that sport, is that you just focus on the stage at hand. So you really are just living in the moment. So what that means is if a race starts with say a 55 kilometer mountain bike ride, then what’s really important for our team is that we get out there and just do that stage to the best of our ability. So we’re looking after each other, we’re encouraging each other, supporting each other. We’re navigating well, we’re riding sensibly, so we’re not risking damaging our bikes. And we just get through the stage as quick as we practically can and as best we can, and then when that stage finishes, then we go onto the next one, which might be kayaking 30, 40 kilometers across a lake or something. So therefore, now our job is to kayak as best we can and do all the things that essentially define good kayaking. After a while, by doing that, just focusing on the moment, the stage you’re on and the process of doing all those things as best you can, the stages just tick by the days tick by, and then sooner or later you’re on the stage, it takes you to the finish line.
And it’s like, well, here we are, we’ve arrived at the finish. But you actually haven’t been focusing on that finish line much at all. Until that point. And I’ve learned that through the business stuff I’ve done, like with our freeze dry company, yeah we’ve got goals, we’ve got an end game that we would like to get to a finish line where we can kind of see where we’d like this company to finally get to, which is obviously to be a hugely successful business and yeah, create lots of employment and supply all these amazing adventurers with great meals out in the outdoors. But that takes time, to build a company to that size and scale. And if I was to day-to-day, be thinking about that end goal, it would actually just be demoralizing because it’s so different from where you are at any given time. So with that company, like I’m very mindful of going well, “what’s important right now?” What’s important is we run the factory to its production kind of efficiencies on a day-to-day basis. And then it’s about having a really good season. It’s a seasonal business for us here in New Zealand. So focusing on this summer or this financial year, and the next thing you know, four or five years have gone past, and you can look back and go, well, we’ve actually achieved a whole lot. We can be really proud of. We are actually moving through this course really well. We’ve still got a way to go, but we’ve actually come a long way and it’s about celebrating that. And so, I really encourage people to have ambitious goals and dreams, but really it’s the stages in between that you really need to focus your energy on.
Andrew McCombe:
Nathan, the rain’s about to fall. We’ve had a fantastic time. Just looking back in time to the start of your journey. What would you say to the teacher who said “hasn’t fulfilled his potential”?
Nathan Faavae:
Well, I’d probably say, yeah, thanks for the advice. I mean, I think he , gave me something to think about and sent me on a path to prove him wrong, I think.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, Nathan, you’re officially an Outlier. Thanks for coming on the show.
Nathan Faavae:
Thank you.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, guys, there it is. I hope you enjoyed this inspiring Outlier episode with Nathan Faavae for more videos, resources, and information, visit www.Outlier.tv or connect with us on our social media pages below I’m Andrew McCombe and here’s to living the Outlier life, outside of the comfort zone. I’ll see you soon.
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