Brian: 0:22

All right, welcome back to the Vero Beach Podcast. I'm Brian.

Shawna: 0:25

And I'm Shauna.

Brian: 0:26

And today we are sitting here at Tribe Coffee with Sean Wisdale. Wisdale. Yes. We're sitting here with Sean Wisdale from Tribe Coffee. And actually, I have it right here in my notes, and I just didn't. You didn't answer it. That's what I have notes for, not to look at.

Shawna: 0:41

It's so good.

Brian: 0:42

Oh well, we're so excited to have you on the podcast, Sean. Thank you, Ron. Thanks, Sean.

Sean: 0:47

Welcome here. Yes. Welcome to Trop Coffee. It's really nice to have you here. And thanks for inviting me to come onto the podcast.

Brian: 0:52

Oh, yeah. Well, you know, it's going to be a challenge now because you have this really cool accent. So not everybody's going to be like, okay, I think Sean should probably be the new host. Oh, I mean, hey, yeah, hey.

Sean: 1:02

Mutiny takeover. No, no, we we love, I was saying to you earlier, we love American accents. So you know, any child uh fresh accents are always you know different to listen to. And so hopefully people will listen to it for more than a few minutes. Oh I always say if you're battling with insomnia, just listen to my accent because you'll be asleep in two minutes.

Shawna: 1:22

I don't think so, because your story, I already know part of it. It's very exciting.

Brian: 1:27

Oh, well, Sean, we're we're so excited to be here. And thanks for the coffee. We're sitting here, like, you know, yeah, this is great. Let's tell what we're drinking. Okay, you go ahead and share what you're drinking.

Shawna: 1:36

I have an amazing iced coffee that has oat milk and vanilla. And you make your syrups, don't you?

Sean: 1:42

Margie makes the syrups. You may she handcrafts the syrups, and the the the iced lattes are made with organic cold brew, which is frozen into the blocks.

Shawna: 1:54

Yes.

Sean: 1:55

So the coffee blocks are frozen cold brew coffee blocks so that the drink is not watered down. You get a concentrated drink, coffee drink from the top to the bottom.

Shawna: 2:05

It's genius. And every time I tell people to come here, I say that and they're like, oh, what? Really? Okay. It's like a real selling point.

Sean: 2:12

Yeah, look, you know, cold brew is uh cold, there's there's a trick with with cold brew. To get really good cold brew, you've got to use a certain uh roast of beans, a bean that is likely to medium likely uh a medium roast, because what happens with coffee is the more you roast it, the uh the darker it becomes, the more carbonized it becomes, the more soluble it is in water, it breaks down readily. So what happens with that is if you use a really dark roasted coffee with cold brew, to you leave it overnight to try and steep it, it becomes very burnt and bitter. You get a lot of burnt and bitter flavors. But if you use a lighter roasted coffee, which is more fibrous, and you soak it in water for 24 hours, you get all the flavors, all the compounds, chlorogenic acid, quinic acid into the cold brew. And the cold brew is palatable. Then what you do is if you like cold brew, some people are not fans of cold brew, other people love cold brew. But then what we do is we take that cold brew and we freeze, we we make coffee blocks out of it, and that it's just really, really it's it's amazing. It makes a huge difference to the coffee.

Shawna: 3:17

It really does. And I'm kind of a slow coffee drinker, so it makes an especially big difference to me because you know, getting a real watered-down coffee is so disappointing.

Brian: 3:27

So, Sean, why don't you take about 30 seconds to just tell us a little bit about yourself and then we're gonna really dive in?

Sean: 3:32

I grew up in South Africa, I was born in the 60s. Okay. So uh I grew up in South Africa, I went to a boys' school, I went to firmly educated education systems, English education systems, played a lot of sport, rugby, swam, water polo, very athletic. And then later in life, um I went uh I became a boat captain. Oh wow. I went and sailed in the south of France. Um, then what happened was I came back, I studied film production um formally, and then once and then went into filmmaking, um, started a business in Johannesburg and transitioned. I I made mountaineering my topic. So what I did was I took filmmaking. My my my goal as a filmmaker before I started, before I did television production, um uh uh, you know, is that I wanted to travel all over the world. I wanted to travel a lot. I'd love traveling before that and and and make recordings. I was telling you a bit about make, but anyway, the the the the point is that um so I took this my skills, um, which I I I you know I cut my teeth in in news. Um for I used to shoot for uh um Discovery, National Geographic, the BBC. I was a freelancer, I freelanced in South Africa, and then what I did then was went over uh um and and I I needed to get my teeth into a topic. So I chose mountaineering. And what I did was uh I I uh it came by chance because I was hired to fly into Mount Everest space camp to go and film an interview with uh with the very first South African, uh a woman named Kathy O'Daud, who um who was the first South African to climb Everest in 1996. Before that, South Africans were obviated from climbing because we they you couldn't get a permit. They they wouldn't let you in. South Africans were blocked from traveling into countries that had a block because of apartheid. So then what happened with it was in 96 things opened, and the first South African climbed Everest. We flew into Base Camp and did an interview with this with Kathy O'Donnell, and I found out and established that I was actually quite good at climbing. So I could climb with heavy equipment, and I got into mountaineering as a topic of making films at high altitude, climbing. 30 seconds is up. No, I'm just joking.

Brian: 5:52

I you know what I know. Forget the 30 seconds, there's so much here. Like, are you keeping up? Please keep going. No, please keep going.

Sean: 5:57

We can just stick to good looking and ask it. Anyway, how that turned out was that that eventually um with through filmmaking is that uh I is I moved from filmmaking into becoming in in into climbing mountains and guiding trips on mountains. When I got to the summit of Mount Everest, I've climbed Everest three times. But when I when I got to the summit of Mount Everest in 2003, after that, people asked me to come to take them up big mountains. You know, they be because I had experience, I'd been pretty much you know climbing high-altitude mountains for seven years and flat out, making films about them. So then what happened was we transitioned and we started an adventure tourism company. So we climbed what's called the seven summits, and we took people all over the world, and I guided many people, um, like 34 climbs of Mount Kilimanjaro. I've climbed Mount McKinley Denali to the summit twice in two attempts, which is a very difficult mountain to do. Um Antarctica down to the highest mountain in Antarctica twice, uh uh to the South Pole. I've skied to the South Pole twice. Um, most people only want to go once. Why would you want to go twice?

Shawna: 7:11

It's like you're clearly a glutton for punishment here, yeah.

Sean: 7:14

So we got into all these um incredible adventures, you know, like really like high adventure, and and made a good living out of it as a as a professional. And so for 20 years we ran this adventure tourism company and out of South Africa, all over the world, climbing what's called the seven summits. It's the highest mountain on every continent. That's what the seven summits are. That's the seven summits, yes.

Shawna: 7:35

What are the seven? Can you know?

Sean: 7:36

The seven summits are uh um Mount Everest in Asia, Mount uh McKinley or Denali in North America, Mount Akankagua in South America, um, Karsten's Pyramid in Erienjaya, then Mount Elbrus in Europe, Mount Vincent in Antarctica, and then Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. So those are the seven summits, the highest points on each continent. So anyway, they they're not very technical climbs, but they are difficult because that you climb to altitude. And climbing to altitude is particularly testing, you know. It's a very slow process, you know, because you battle with um, you know, altitude sickness, um with with you know the threats of avalanches, malnutrition, frostbite, you know, the all the mountaineering is a very difficult pursuit. Yeah, I was gonna say, what kind of preparing do you have to do for stuff like that? I mean, that's gotta be you've got to be in, you know, if you're in good shape, you enjoy it more. If you're fit, you know, the fitter you are. And so, like, for example, some of those trips were sponsored. We had really good sponsors. And so we would go on, uh, you know, we we engaged the Sports Science Institute in Cape Town, and we we had like two bio kineticists, a psychologist didn't help much. Um the uh the uh we had um nutritionists, um, you know, and you know, and really went on these incredibly advanced sports scientific uh programs which were designed to maintain your strengths and and strengthen your weaknesses. So, you know, and sports science is really, really interesting. So basically, for 20 years, I kind of operated as a professional athlete guiding these incredible trips all around the world. And um uh my wife Catherine, she helped with all the logistics of that, she ran all of those, and then COVID hit. And when COVID hit, it literally destroyed our business because we had cancellations, you couldn't fly anywhere, we all bookings, forward bookings stopped because nobody knew what they were doing. And anyway, up until that point, I'd also I started off sailing uh before I climbed. So I had a great synergy with rope work, with climbing and with sailing.

Brian: 9:47

Okay.

Sean: 9:47

And so I I kept uh in we lived on the east coast of Africa, um, you know, and and I I always kept a very good, you know that the seas in southern Africa are pretty are you know that we get heavy seas down there. Okay. So I kept and looked after a 40-foot monohole for 22 years, Kiga. And I would we would sail all over the Indian Ocean and down to Cape Town and back, and we loved sailing Kiga. And anyway, um Kath, my wife, uh, she wasn't so keen on Kiga. Kiga's a bit of a boys' boat, and it's one of those boats you just go gale bashing in that thing. She was such a great boat, you know, you could take her anywhere in any conditions. She's just like a really, really uh a boat that was made for southern uh lower latitude sailing. In any way, when when uh just before when COVID hit, is um we had lockdowns in South Africa that lasted months. Stay at home for three months. It drove me insane. I can't do it. Seriously, it was like and we'd lost now. Unfortunately, we had some properties and we had um you know tenants, and so we we were okay. We we were heavily hit by by COVID, um, you know, and um and and that you know there was really some really radical draconian um rules and laws that were put in place that like impeded your freedom. And the one thing I am one thing I value, and that's freedom. You know, I value education, knowledge, freedom, family, relationships, good nutrition, good health. And you know, things just when COVID hit, everything just kind of fell through the floor. And so we I said to my wife, I said, Look, our kids were at the time Rob was four and Sarah was nine. And I said to Kath, you know what? I don't know how long this is gonna go on for, but you know what? We need to get going. I'm not gonna stick around here in this. We gotta get on the ocean. And my wife was like, All right, so anyway, I found us a beautiful catamaran. Oh African dream. And um, so I said to my wife, come take a look at this boat. I didn't tell her we were gonna buy it. And anyway, that's how you do it.

Brian: 12:34

That's how you do it. I'm taking notes here.

Sean: 12:36

Yeah, it had it's it had uh four cabins, um uh, you know, it had decent bathrooms, nice hot and cold running water, um, had an air conditioner in it, good engines, had a generator, uh washing machine, um, you know, a coffee maker, like you know, all the creature comforts that you have at home. Yeah. So and then I invited Kat down. I said, What do you uh check this boat out anyway? I didn't uh anyway, about two weeks later, I said, Listen, we need a check. And she was like, For what? I said, for the for the boat, you know. She she was like, Are you serious? I said, Yeah. So anyway, we bought African Dream, we sold Kiga, uh-huh, and then we jumped onto African Dream with the kids, and we left South Africa and we sailed across the Atlantic. It took us two years across the Atlantic.

Brian: 13:22

Wow.

Sean: 13:23

And in January of 2022, we arrived on the shore of uh we arrived in West Palm Beach.

Shawna: 13:28

Okay, West Palm Beach.

Sean: 13:29

Yeah, so it was the 7th of January, and there were temp the the steam, the condensate was rising off the surface of the water. It was so cold. Oh the the the the iguanas were falling out the trees. We've heard about that. So we we were like, I was whoa, this is you know, I've you didn't expect that, right? No, I said to Kath, you know, we we we set out we set out sailing, but we you know, we we were just on a free program. We we uh we kept our property in South Africa and we had our we had tenants in there, and you know, we we were sailing with the kids, boat schooling them, and it was sort of um this is a long 30 seconds.

Brian: 14:09

Yeah, I say I say actually let's pause here for just a second. Okay, so first off, I do want to ask so African African Dream, was that the name of the boat? Okay, cool. I just thought that's the book. That's how that was that's her name, yeah. African dream. Yeah, I want to return to that here in a minute. I guess the question is to ask you, uh, first off, let's go back to mountaineering.

Sean: 14:28

Why why mountaineering? Mountaineering kind of satisfied a lot of things for me, you know, my athletically, mentally, um, practically also, you know, mountaineering is an incredible theater because what happens with it is mountaineering is where people suffer. People die and lose their lives. So it makes incredibly good fodder for for television and filmmaking. So but so simultaneously, but what happens with it is that I would kind of in bed, I would go on on an expedition as the filmmaker, and then what would happen with it is that I would operate independently and I would film, you know, everything that was going on. I was always kind of in the interests of uh, you know, I'm very much about positivity. And mountaineering very much demands that you're in a positive frame. You know, mount mountaineering is is an interesting pursuit, uh literally because it it's kind of linear. You start at the bottom, you gotta get to the top, and then you've got to get back again. Then what happens is with high altitude, mountain high altitude mountaineering is a is about is a game of attrition. It's like you lay siege on the mountain because you can't just go from the bottom to the top and keep moving. You have to go up and down. Because mountain, because the air, the the the the uh the air pressure on the summit of Mount Everest is a third of what the air pressure is down at the bottom of it. You can't simply just move from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain and you and you think you're okay. You pretty much die of hypoxemia within a half an hour. So you literally, while you're climbing and climbing big mountains, is that you're literally dying. What you do is we have an amazing ability to acclimatize because as humans we we're designed to climb. You you raise your hemoglobin levels, your red blood cell counts as you move higher, you naturally increase your hemoglobin levels. Wow. Your body does that. You've got to keep eating, keep up the protein. You get to a certain altitude, you drop what you're doing there. You can't stay there. You get to that altitude, you turn around, you come back down. But you've packed a depot. Now, what happens with it is your body raises your hemoglobin levels, which are the oxygen carrying cells, and they then allow you to go back to that altitude once you've recovered and stay there. Wow. And then what you do is you take a load with you up to there, from that point which becomes your new camp, you move higher. So it's technical, it's scientific. You move higher to the next camp, you drop a load, you come back down, you sleep at the camp that you left from, and you come all the way back down. So it's this up and down process. Wow. Raising your hemoglobin levels as you're climbing to higher altitude until you get to the highest camp. You wait for a weather window, you got to achieve the goal within a certain amount of time. A goal is only a goal when you put a time frame together.

Shawna: 17:16

Yeah, absolutely.

Sean: 17:17

You achieve that goal, you get to the top moment of celebration, okay, massive relief. All right, tag the top, get the photo. That sense of achievement is wonderful, you know, and it's it takes it takes a lot. It and it's a huge thing because all along all along the the way, you know, you're dealing with other personalities, people have got different plans.

Brian: 17:37

You know, this sounds so much like life, it's life, and it's like like there's so much that this all has to be part from training, from even mountaineering, like the way you even approach life. Yeah, because I mean, just from the mindset of saying you have to have a positive mindset, you know, without that, life's tough. How many times in life that we look at and say, if we can get from point A to point Z and that be it, but not have to go back and forth, building up that that mental strength, that physical strength to actually achieve the goal. We just want to go, we don't want to get to the goal right now.

Sean: 18:12

It's very much like that, you know, is it's there's certain techniques and ways of climbing, but we go back to being positive, you know, and that's the the big thing is you know, you when you're climbing really, really big hills um and you're at altitude in the middle of the night, the winds howling like hell, you know, you're at war with like trying to keep your your your hands moving in your gloves, you know, your your toes wiggling in your boots because otherwise you end up with frostbite. And seriously, it'll stop you and stop you in the snow, you fall down, you get left there. You know, at these altitudes, people can't help you. Yeah, you're barely able to help yourself. Never mind, otherwise, someone pick you up and try and drag you down. So the thing with it is really a lot of that is is about playing positive movies in your mind. It's really is it's about, you know, you you know how exhausted you get, you know, you you you get to that state. There's techniques of of managing that so that you that you know that you that that you that you you know you conserve your energy. But more importantly is that you know you need positive uh reinforcement, positive images. Is an amazing thing is when you're climbing, climbing is about breathing, obviously at altitude, because there's so little air, so you're breathing, but simultaneously it's about what you're thinking about. Because if you, for example, start thinking, oof, my foot's hurting me, or my hands are hurting me, or I'm cold, if you start thinking negatively, your rhythm is impeded. And climbing big mountains is about going for hours and hours and hours and hours at the same steady plod. It's like a rhythmic, it's a metronome. It's like tick, tick, tick, tick. And that's how you climb these big mountains is very, very gently and very, very positively. Wow. And so you know it affects your breathing. If you start thinking negative things, seriously, your breathing goes out. And if your breathing goes out, you're you're you're you know everywhere you're stepping goes out. Being positive is is a huge part of mountaineering. It's it's it's a really, really it's it's massive, you know, to to maintain a positive frame of mind.

Shawna: 20:10

That's fascinating to me because, you know, if you would have asked me, and I have absolutely no experience with mountain climbing, I don't even know anyone who has mountain climbed before. So I would have thought it all comes down to willpower, to like the willingness to like be in pain for long periods of time and like just like a rough kind of like, no, I'm gonna do this no matter what. But like I've never heard anyone talk about it the way you have. It's fascinating.

Sean: 20:35

Yeah, well, you know, it a lot of it does go down to well, our bodies are amazing, you know. But the the you know, to keep your body moving, you've got to be you have a you have a constant intake of energy, you've got to be constantly hydrated. You can't let your body temperature drop below 37.5 degrees Celsius, standard body temperature. That isn't Fahrenheit. But the thing with it really is there's the maintenance of all of those systems. Willpower is is not a kind of uh a concept. It willpower is a combination of many different systems, and one of them is being positive, another one is making sure that you're looking after every part of your body, the other is you know, is making is feeling like you're in control of your environment. You know, uh you know, when you when you feel like you're out of control, like you you're swimming in the sea and suddenly you get taken out by a rip current. You know, people feel, you know, you people drown, but they get taken at a rip current because they feel that they're they you know they can't, they they it's they're out of their control, so they panic and they run out of energy, run out of breath, and then that you know, until a lifeguard gets there and helps them and goes, listen, just swim over there 10 feet and you're out of the rip, and then just keep it calm. And these skills are are learnt. It's very much the same as sailing across an ocean, crossing the Gulf Stream. Um, you know, any of these in any of these these these situations is you you you know, use the data that you have at your hands. You know, nowadays we have incredibly good access to so much data. Yeah, you know, really, I mean, more so than ever before in history. And kind of manage your environment. If you you manage your environment well, it's it's it's just another element in that uh that makes up that you know that recipe for success.

Brian: 22:24

So you guys get on the African dream. Yes, you load up on a boat and you just started sailing. You wind up on, you said was it Palm Beach? Is that you said, or West Palm?

Sean: 22:34

Yeah, we we sailed over two years. We sailed across the Atlantic. Two years. Yeah, we pretty much we ended up in Grenada for six months during the hurricane season. We went, we we sailed across the Atlantic, we went up to Cintelina, Ascension Island, we landed in Brazil where they wouldn't let us in because the border was closed, and then so we uh you know we could just provision and then we had to leave. Then we crossed the intertropical convergence zone where my wife, Kath, she uh the the what happens with it is you refuse things behind the scenes stories is Kath and I we've done a lot of paddling, okay, like canoe canoeing on big rivers in South Africa. That's kind of how how I met Kath was was through through uh uh through paddling and rowing. Uh we paddled two seat uh double skis, and so we entered a couple of uh of big events, paddled some big rivers and things like this. And so I you know, um I think that's pretty much where my wife built a lot of trauma.

Shawna: 23:35

Okay, so before you continue, I was gonna say, does your wife have as strong of a hunger for adventure as you didn't do?

Brian: 23:45

Okay, listen. Let's stop right there. Yeah, I think we're gonna wrap up this episode and we're gonna because we're gonna go we're gonna go right in this second episode with a soon. So with this, uh, you guys, we're totally off our notes, but this is awesome. Like, so better. We're gonna end episode one and we're gonna start back on episode two and take right back off this story. So if you guys are enjoying this episode, make sure you leave us a review uh so other people locally can find your local podcast.

Shawna: 24:10

And with that, catch you next time, neighbor.