Bruce Kirkby's lessons from the wilderness can be applied even in the swankiest office

by David Holt

With blond hair falling on his forehead and energy to burn, Bruce Kirkby has the air of a big kid, except that he is well over six feet tall and fit from years of exploring. Speaking at the 2009 Face to Face conference at the Digby Pines resort, he was dressed in a white shirt and jeans and seemed a little out of place among the suits. Yet Kirkby is an entrepreneur. He defines entrepreneurship as a mixture of laziness (to find a better way) and hard work (to make it happen). He defines adventure as an undertaking where the outcome is uncertain. That's entrepreneurship too.

Kirkby is in high demand as a speaker, writer, and photographer and has a successful CBC-TV show behind him. His theme is adventure and he must live the life. "I get excited where the road ends," he said. While slides of his adventures played in the background, he presented-in reverse order-lessons he learned in the wild that apply to the world of business:

You can't avoid fear, so use it as a compass. Challenge yourself and find the "zone of motivating fear." But be careful; if there is too much challenge, the fear becomes paralysis. On his TV show, No Opportunity Wasted, there was a woman who had been afraid to drive. They taught her to drive a high-powered car on a racetrack, and her newfound confidence and mobility changed her life. "We took away her excuses and kept her in the zone of motivating fear," said Kirkby. "This is where areas of huge growth are to be found."

Everything appears worse from a distance. Kirkby and a friend kayaked and hiked a brutal 1,500-kilometre route on Vancouver Island, including traversing a long ridge. Kirkby, who doesn't like heights, made it by taking one step at a time. When he took his new girlfriend on her first kayaking trip, they paddled out of Hong Kong Harbour into a storm and were washed up on an isolated beach. The relationship survived, and today they're married.

Touch the rock. Sometimes a challenge, such as a climb, may be out of your league. Get close enough to know for sure.

Plan bravely. Knowing they must be self-reliant, adventurers plan in great detail and check their gear obsessively.

Look after yourself. On Everest, many of those who pay outfitters a high fee to get a chance to climb don't finish. They aren't prepared and don't look after themselves en route.

Start and keep going. This is how Kirkby managed to write his first book.

The second day sucks. This is our resistance to doing anything new. It will get easier.

Great leaders create meaning. Kirkby recalls a tough old rafting guide in Alaska who told him, "We are creating ambassadors for the north."

Yes, more struggle and difficulty, please. This gives the process meaning. On a trip in the wilds of Ethiopia, Kirkby's group met a poor orphan who was travelling alone. They offered to take the boy, who was dressed in rags and desperately hungry, along with them, but he declined. He had his own sense of purpose. "It is my destiny to be a wanderer, to see all 22 provinces, then to get a wife," he said. The affluent Westerners were humbled by the boy's vision and spirit.

The penultimate rule: Stay stoked.

Finally: "Ignore the bozos-the pandemic of naysayers." To succeed in business as in life, place yourself in an uncomfortable position and do it your own way. Embrace the fear and create your own meaning.

Later I met Kirkby in the hotel lobby. "You don't need to be tall, strong, and fast to go on expeditions, but you need the ability not to get stressed," he said. Now he has a wife and a young child. So what's different? Well, sometimes he takes his family into the backcountry. "My son was raised without disinfectants and he sleeps happily outdoors on a blanket. I want to raise a kid who's not a bozo-who will have the freedom to do what he thinks is important."

Kirkby knows he's different, and he credits his parents. "I was raised without the need for security and the need to know what's coming tomorrow," he told me. His father was a physicist, a non-conformist freethinker and creator who died young. "He would be so interested in what I do now. It's sad that he isn't here. Since he passed away my mother and I have bonded. We lived through that struggle together. Now she comes on trips with me."

Kirkby lives in a small former mining town in British Columbia that's filled with eccentric characters. He loves travelling in Buddhist countries such as Nepal, Tibet, and Burma. "They have a gentle way of being," he said. He applauds the Eastern influence on the West, including yoga, curry, acupuncture, and traditional Chinese medicine.

At the end of our chat, Kirkby confided that in his presentations he doesn't overtly state his main message. "I'm a secret agent speaking to executives. My message is contained in the slides that play behind me. It is: See the beautiful pictures. Life is a beautiful thing and the world is a beautiful place. Let's not mess it up."

What's his next gig? "I'm about to undertake something that scares me a bit, a five-week solo trip on the West Coast." In all his adventuring, Kirkby has always had at least one companion. This will be a new test.

His parting shot in the lobby of the old hotel: Ignore the bozos.

David Holt is a writer and consultant on strategy and communications. He can be reached at dholt@eastlink.ca.