Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [111]
Inspired words. And it changed the way I spoke publicly from then on. Keep it short. Keep it from the heart.
Men tend to think that they have to be funny, witty, or incisive on stage. You don’t. You just have to be honest. If you can be intimate and give the inside story – emotions, doubts, struggles, fears, the lot – then people will respond.
I went on to give talks all around the world to some of the biggest corporations in business – and I always tried to live by that. Make it personal, and people will stand beside you.
As I started to do bigger and bigger events for companies, I wrongly assumed that I should, in turn, start to look much smarter and speak more ‘corporately’. I was dead wrong – and I learnt that fast. When we pretend, people get bored.
But stay yourself, talk intimately, and keep the message simple, and it doesn’t matter what the hell you wear.
It does, though, take courage, in front of five thousand people, to open yourself up and say you really struggle with self-doubt. Especially when you are meant to be there as a motivational speaker.
But if you keep it real, then you give people something real to take away.
‘If he can, then so can I’ is always going to be a powerful message. For kids, for businessmen – and for aspiring adventurers.
I really am pretty average. I promise you. Ask Shara … ask Hugo.
I am ordinary, but I am determined.
I did, though – as the corporations started to pay me more – begin to doubt whether I was really worth the money. It all seemed kind of weird to me. I mean, was my talk a hundred times better now than the one I gave in the Drakensberg Mountains?
No.
But, on the other hand, if you can help people feel stronger and more capable because of what you tell them, then it becomes worthwhile for companies in ways that are impossible to quantify.
If that wasn’t true, then I wouldn’t get asked to speak so often, still to this day.
And the story of Everest – a mountain, like life, and like business – is always going to work as a metaphor. You have got to work together, work hard, and go the extra mile. Look after each other, be ambitious, and take calculated, well-timed risks.
Give your heart to the goal, and it will repay you.
Now, are we talking business or climbing?
That’s what I mean.
CHAPTER 103
During the year before Shara and I got married, I managed to persuade the owners of a small island, situated in Poole Harbour, to let me winter house-sit the place in return for free lodging.
It was a brilliant deal.
Chopping logs, keeping an eye on the place, doing a bit of maintenance, and living like a king on a beautiful twenty-acre island off the south coast of England.
Some months earlier, I had been walking along a riverbank outside of London, when I had spotted a little putt-putt fishing boat with an old 15 h.p. engine on the back. She was covered in mould and looked on her last legs, but I noticed her name, painted carefully on the side.
She was called Shara. What were the chances of that?
I bought her on the spot, with what was pretty well my last £800.
Shara became my pride and joy. And I was the only person who could get the temperamental engine to start! I used the boat, though, primarily, as my way of going backwards and forwards to the small island.
I had some properly dicey crossings in Shara during the middle of that winter. Often done late at night, after an evening out, the three-mile crossing back to the island could be treacherous in bad weather. Freezing waves would crash over the bows, threatening to swamp the boat, and the old engine would often start cutting in and out.
I had no nav-lights, no waterproofs, no lifejacket and no radio. And that meant no back-up plan – which is bad.
Totally irresponsible. But totally fun.
I held my Stag weekend over there with my best buddies – Ed, Mick, Neil, Charlie, Nige (one of Shara’s uni friends who has become such a brilliant buddy), Trucker, Watty, Stan and Hugo – and