 I will admit that I'm just used to catching lightning in a bottle. Every business I've started, I have no business plan. I have no idea where the capital is going to come from. I just march into CEO's offices and talk my fire brand and I leave with a check for $300,000. But Ever Walk is this initiative. It's a national walking initiative. We've got a cool app. We've got a great website. But except for private funding, it's kept us afloat. We haven't landed one corporate sponsor. So what am I doing wrong? And you just sort of reminded me of Christopher Reeve saying to me, well, you said all those years ago you were going to live every day so you can't live in a fingernail bed. Is that what you're doing? And I was backed up against the wall. And I said, no, that's not what I'm doing. But I have to pay attention. Do I really want it? Do I want this to make it? And what are the next steps? Because whatever I've been doing has been wrong. This is Startup and Storefront, the podcast where we inspire entrepreneurship through truth. Today's guest is the one and only Diana Nyatt. The author, motivational speaker, and long distance swimmer has swam around the island of Manhattan from the Bahamas to Florida and most famously from Cuba to Key West. She is the first person to have ever done that swim without the assistance of a shark cage. She defied intense currents, venomous jellyfish, and even her own age in order to complete the 111 mile open water swim. Even though Diana is the epitome of the phrase, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to, she'll be the first to tell you that it doesn't always come easily. It often requires heartbreaking failure time and time again before you finally achieve victory. She is very candid about the struggles of running her ever walk foundation, but if her past is any indication of her future, the smart money is always on Diana. So listen in as we cover everything from drawing her inspiration from those who are alive and engaged with the world around them, how she lost her direction in life during her career as a sportscaster, and she even shows off her skills on a bugle. Now back to the episode. Welcome to the podcast on today's show, Diana and I at a national treasure. Thanks so much for joining. We're going kind of big. We are. Just over there, Diego. It's earned. It's earned. Yeah. I wanted to have you on for a couple reasons. I'll start with something that's deeply personal to me and so very few people I view as heroes in my life or very few people have lived a life that inspires so many. And I think as a human, we have this responsibility to do that. We have the responsibility to inspire even, let's say our children or our friends or our circle. And then there are very few people who have inspired a big circle. And I think my mom for me gave me, she lived a life of hardship that made me realize I have a life of responsibility and there's something I have to do on this planet. Obviously that we have everyone has heroes. We all have our own stories. When I hear your story, I just connect with it in a way that says, she's she gets this to a degree that very few people really understand. And the circle of impact you've had is tremendous. And I think in that comes a responsibility for you, a reality of living the stream and telling your story and it's inspiring and it's amazing. And so I consider you one of two people, at least that I've impacted my life in a way or at least your story has that I put in my pocket and say, this is mine. This is something that can get me through whatever I'm dealing with because I'll never deal with what you dealt with. And when I think about my mother's story, I'll never deal with what she had to go through. And in that, it's okay. It's like, let's go. We got this, right? Find a way, kind of a thing. And so thank you for coming on. I know that's deep to open with, but at least that's my story for you. Well, it is deep and Diego, Nick, thank you for having me. Thanks. I'm looking forward to our conversation. But I'll tell you, I think honestly, and I don't know your mom's story, but I can sort of glean a little bit from what you're talking about, what she went through. I think that what happens is you don't sit around and orchestrate. I want to be inspiring to a lot of people. That's my goal. You look within and you live an authentic life. What do I need? What turns me on? What makes me feel alive? And to broaden it, to the nth degree, is that for some reason, I'm honestly not a special human being. I've been lucky and traveled the whole world, been in the interior of Borneo, swam with whales in Antarctica, been in every major city. When I look at the globe, sometimes I think, I just, there's nowhere I haven't been, at least for a short time anyway. During those travels, I find people courageous, engaged, tribes people, people in my neighborhood whom you'll never know, they're never going to achieve any fame, and they're just living an authentic life of what they think is right. And for some reason, I caught on to that young. Most kids in single digits, when you're eight, nine years old, you're not thinking about unless in a very cliched way, oh, one day I'm going to be an astronaut, I'm going to be an Olympian. But you're not really thinking of who you are and what you want to become. And for some reason, I had a fear and a drive very young about this whole life going by too fast. I wrote a little essay for third grade, so you're eight, and the essay was, what are you going to do for the rest of your life? And so most people in my class were, it was simple. I want to be a nurse. I want to help people. I want to be a firefighter. But I wrote, well, I never got to know any of my grandparents, but I understand that they all lived in their mid, to be in their mid 80s or so. So I'm eight now. That means I only have 75 years left. I've already wasted eight. I didn't do enough with that eight. So I've had this ticking of the clock, and now I'm older, I'm 71 now. I'm a pretty vital, healthy 71. I don't put any parameters or limitations on this age. I might at 91, but so far, I don't feel any limitations whatsoever. I was a better athlete when I went back to chase the Cuba swim in my 60s than I was in my 20s in all kinds of ways. But somehow for me, the deepest, deepest drive is an appreciation, a gratitude for this life we get to live. And I'm an atheist, so it doesn't come from a God space, even though I respect anybody who feels a God space. I don't. And so what I feel is somehow I got this lucky organism that I'm living every day. I got this fortunate beginning in life of health and some privileges. So I've been able to chase my dreams, and I haven't grown up in dire poverty. I did go through sexual abuse as a kid, and it was traumatizing to this day. It affects my little girl inside. So we all have something. We all suffer heartache and whatnot. But I think honestly more than, oh, what made you become a champion swimmer? There is that story, but it's a narrow story, honestly. What I'm living is every day I go to sleep every night saying, whew, I just couldn't have done any more with that day than I did. That's my goal. One day might be just to go to the beach with my old dog and take a look at the sunrise. That's good enough. It's not always chasing being a winner. That was younger. That was the ego days. Now my day is just be engaged, be alert, be awake, don't sleep too much, and go to sleep that last final day whenever that comes to say, I wish I had more time. I wish I could have done more. I wish I could have helped more people. I wish I could have experienced more. But what I did, I did the most I could with every waking hour of every day. So that's kind of my baseline. And if that inspires people, if what I've done because of that drive has inspired people, then nothing could mean more to me. It really couldn't, Diego. Thank you for opening with that. You know, okay, here we are to kind of talk about me and my life and my philosophies. But you know, it's hard to just gloss over when a man says to you two people have inspired me in my life. My mother, who had a lot of hardship, she overcame a lot. And so I'm sort of like, well, am I just going to leave that dangling somewhere? What do you mean? Your mother, what happened? And so to some extent, I mean, in the fifties, my mother was born in 53. And she was really born into a family of privilege in the sense that my grandfather was in the political scene. My grandmother was the first woman city council member of Lima, Peru. And so trailblazers at the house, you would often see political fundraisers for the president. The president of Peru at the time was my mother's godfather. And so very close. And so you can imagine at that time, given historical context, most women were never, like, she wasn't going to be raised to work, right? Or even seek political office. And so she met my father, who was a military man, and really in Peru at that time, you were in the military, and that was your ascension to continue on and become involved with politics. And my father gets assassinated in 86 when I'm 28 days old. You just, so you never knew your father? No. This throws my mother's life into a completely different thing. And mind you, at the time, it's not only that this just happened, but it's like there's a terrorist group going on, and they're seeking political targets. So it's like the whole family's on alert. And so my mom leaves the country with two kids, right? She had gone to an all English high school, and so to some extent she knew the language. But it wasn't like she ever thought she was going to really need it. And so she moves to America, decides Massachusetts. So we ended up growing up in Massachusetts, my sister and I. And I remember being a kid, and we would sit. Her first job was cleaning motel rooms, and so I remember sitting in that motel room on the carpet, super shaggy carpet, watching Care Bears. And I loved it. I loved it. It was like every day we went to some new adventure. And then she got a job in the probation system when we become a chief probation officer. And we had a great life growing up, amazing life. But I think about her life, and I say this often at our family events. I often say, we'll never have that problem. I'll never have the problem of having to raise two children in a foreign country and have to learn the language and figure out. And having your husband assassinated. The trauma that comes with that. The survival of that. And so I really put that one, that one's personal to me. It's personal in the sense of, one, I think she's, I mean, that's amazing. It's amazing that people can do that. But it also shows that humans can do a tremendous amount, right? So I just take a step back and go, I'm so lucky that I have her as my mother. But this also shows what we're all capable of. And how many people really figure that out or really are even interested in taking a step in that direction. Whether it's mental toughness, whether it's some sort of physical activity. And I think that's the thing, right? And so for me, when I first got here, the problem was how many Peruvians do I know who are successful? And if you look around, you don't, it's hard to find one, right? And so I needed like an uncle or I needed someone to be like, this is how to make it in America, per se. Whatever fashion that was or was professionally or financially, whatever it was. It was hard to find. And so it's like, that's what I'm gonna do. That's my why. That's the whole reason. And so I'm gonna do things in life that I'm sure people can say, I wanna swim the marathon and then they can look at you and go, let me teach you something about that. Let me tell you some hardships you might go through. And so I've always just wanted to be one of those people that someone can look up to and say, this is an example of someone who has done something really amazing. And that's always just something that is in the back of my pocket all the time. And it's just like this constant driver. I hear you. And the story of your mother sparks to my mind that people ask me all the time, who do you admire? Who's the list of your top ten people you've admired, dead or alive? And I say, well, yeah, of course, like anybody, I could list the Nelson Mandela's of the world. Of course, on the other hand, it's so hard to relate to. And the truth is, people who engage, who have no world stage in front of them, people like your mother who did, who was brave enough to do what she had to do. For her two kids to lose her husband in that dramatic, horrible way assassinated. I mean, not many people on earth have lived through that and decide, I'm getting out. I'm going somewhere, I speak some English, I don't know how it's gonna go. But see this little boy and girl? I'm taking there some, so I'm gonna give them a life. There's a woman in my neighborhood, first of all, to back up a little bit. There's a man who lost his wife young, she was 38 to cancer. And he had three kids and they as a couple had made kind of the old school deal that a lot of American couples made that he would be the breadwinner. He'd be the one who went to the big MBA and work hard and make a lot of good money. And she would take care of the home and the kids. And then when the kids were up and out and gone to college, she would get a chance to choose. And he would support her, whatever she decided to study become. Well, the kids never got there by the time she died. And she was 38. Well, then forward the story a little bit. There's another woman in my neighborhood who's a single mother of three kids. Working two jobs, just not doing the job for her kids that she'd like to do. She's just working her butt off all the time. And she decides this guy is having a lot of trouble. The other guy, raising all of a sudden these kids by himself. He's got the money to hire somebody, but he wants the kids to have a parent at home. So the second woman makes out a big sheet on the clipboard and goes around to all the people in about six streets square in our neighborhood. She comes to my house and she says, okay, Niaad, you're like the little rock star in the neighborhood, but that doesn't matter. What we're gonna do for two years, we're gonna get dinner together every night for Steve and his three kids. Like a good home cooked meal. Don't be going to Kentucky Fried Chicken, I don't wanna hear that. I wanna see vegetables and we put a giant cooler on this back stew. So every day by 6 PM and here are your dates. If you can't do it, get somebody else. But you are in charge of that dinner for these days. That woman with few resources, very little time, her own pressured life. Well, to me, that's a hero. To me, that's someone who's talked about engaged in her neighborhood. Whereas a lot of people lock the door and I'm not judging. Sit on the couch, watch some bad TV for maybe 8, 10 hours a day. They don't know who's suffering down the street. So my barometer of who I admire are people who are awake and engaged. Whether it's Nelson Mandela engaged in the world at large, making it a better place. Or my neighbor, making one guy's life and one set of children's life a little bit better when they had it kind of bad. And your mom falls right into that category. There's an interesting component where it's like also the hard part, right? And maybe you deal with this where it's, you know what the human is capable of. You know what you're specifically what you're capable of in a lot of different ways. Not only is it just in a physical setting, but it's also in a mental. I mean, there's a real mental toughness that you have to find. Like you lose yourself to find yourself, you've done that. And so what happens is for me, the hard part is I want everybody to do that, right? Part of this podcast is inspiring entrepreneurship through truth. Is I want everyone to go explore what they're meant to do. And I put that responsibility on everyone, probably unfairly. But I do that, I've done it to make a million times. And so it's this thing of like, it's hard, right? Like for you, is that, is that something you deal with? Well, you know, it's funny you bring up something where I say, does everybody want to explore their potential? Does everyone want to, you know, open their eyes and figure out what life is all about and what their life is all about? I'm not sure. My buddy Bonnie, who Nick is a Yukon graduate. So, you know, gotta throw that in there once. Fellow alumni. She's a husky. She's a husky. I say Bonnie, honestly, and it doesn't mean, I mean, she was by my side as the head handler, the head of the Cuban expedition through all these things. She was very focused and she was the number five racquetball player in the world for a long time. So I can't say she hasn't been somewhat driven and chosen things and worked at them. On the other hand, day to day, whereas I wake up just in a, in a froth. Every day I just wake up, I play my bugle. I play ravele, like get up, go chase the tail of the tiger, you know? Bonnie wakes up with peace and love, like go out, smell the flowers, take her dog for a sweet little stroll. She doesn't think that her life is all about becoming everything she can be. You know? She has more peace to her than that. And I'm attracted to people who are not necessarily chasing that dream. But what I am glad to service, if I can, is people who want to chase that dream. They feel they've got passion and they've got discipline, but they're not even sure what, what dream to chase. A lot of young people say that to me. You know, kids who are just out of college or whatnot, they hear me speak somewhere and say, I've got that kind of fire. I do. I, I would throw myself, but I don't even know what to throw myself at. And I try to use that old gir to sort of a, you know, phrase of, there's magic in beginning things. You don't have to know every step you're going to take. But rather than sitting still, take a step somewhere. Maybe it's the wrong thing. Maybe you start some PhD and you figure after a while, it's not for me. And there's no shame in dropping it, dropping back. But at least you've gotten your momentum going somewhere. You'll, that will lead you to taking another step and another step. And, you know, two years later, you're going to be saying, I came on it. Just because I tried, I tried this and this and this. You know what means the world to me is springboarding from what you said in the beginning, Diego. And that is that I didn't swim across that ocean to inspire other people. But we all work on multiple levels at one time. And there was even the Cuban-American connection. I got to go to Cuba with President Obama in his entourage in 2014 because I was an emblem of someone who went off one shore and touched the other shore. Couldn't we come back together? So there were a number of things happening during that swim, besides the actual swim. But what means the world to me is when I do finish a talk or people write me, you know, maybe a fan letter type of thing. And they have nothing to do with swimming. They have nothing to do with sports at all. Can't relate to it, aren't involved in it. But they've been through cancer or they've been raising a disabled child or they've just been in a difficult life situation. Somebody's been in prison for a long time and they're out. And they're free but they don't know where they're going. They're lost. So when people write me and say, you know, just the nuggets of your story and I'm not a proselytizer. I'm just, you know, Tony Robbins has made a lot of money. Maybe I should have gone in that direction. But I don't. I don't stand up and say, now here's the way to live a winning life. You know, number one, you do this. Number two, you do this. And number three, and then you're there. So I just tell my own story in a kind of organic way. And hopefully that, you know, has tendrils that go out. But it sounds like a sports swimming story. But in the end, it really has to do with dreaming big and failing, you know, the courage to fail. If you shoot the bar high, you might not make it there. But on your way there, that journey, you discover everything you are. And maybe you will make it there one day if you just don't quit. So there's another part of it that people, there were thousands of people on that beach at the end. 25 million people followed the final swim across. And you know what, they weren't sports fans. Very few wrote me and said, oh, yes, I followed the other swimmers who tried this before. And no idea. But what they wanted to witness was an individual and a team who refused to give up. Every time we failed, almost died one time, no hyperbole, we didn't say never doing that again. Never going back there, dangerous. We got the next level of the learning curve, the science, the technology, how to tap the human spirit maybe better the next time. And all of those precepts, you know, you fail, you get back up. But you don't just go in the ring with the same knowledge you had before, you got to up your game. And when you go in the next time, you might fail again. Then you up your game again. And eventually you get there. So that's the story. And it's the real story that I lived out loud. And I like to think I live it out loud every day now. That swim, honestly, in my 60s was meant not to break that record, that's nice. But you know, I don't care if somebody else breaks it now. Maybe I do a little, I'll probably follow that. But that swim, I did to wake myself up, to say to myself, am I living the largest life I can every day? I'm not. I've kind of receded back into a just take it as it comes. But I knew that that swim, because I know that swim, is the toughest swim in the world. The best have been trying since 1950. Men, women, young, strong, fast. Nobody's ever made it for a lot of good reasons. That swim woke me up to putting myself into my life every day. So I'm retired now, again. And I'm not gonna do ocean swims. I could look at the four fifths of the globe as blue. And I could say, well, you could swim there or there or there, 1,000 million places you could swim. I just want to live that same life of never give up, dream big, have the courage to fail, you know, be awakened, alert every minute of every day. That's the life. And that Cuba swim woke me back up to that. That's what it was all about. Well, that's an interesting paradox of the more individualized a story is, the more universal it becomes. Because there's something that can resonate with just about everyone, no matter what it is. Like you said, all these people who wrote to you and followed the swim, it's not that they were huge swim fans or anything like that. It was that what you were doing, the perseverance that you showed, the dedication to what you were, the goals that you set, the fact that you were so willing to see it through in any way, shape or form, that resonates with a lot of people because people have their own internal goals that they maybe fail from time to time. And a story like that where you tried four times and failed four times, but on that fifth time, you finally got it. That resonates with people because they can see, okay, I may not succeed now, I may not succeed tomorrow, but I'm gonna keep going and I'm gonna make it and I'm gonna eventually reach my goal. That is that fire that we all have inside of us that can be tapped into, whether, you know, like you said, whether your idea of seizing the day is just spending a day at the beach with your old dog or whether it's getting up at the crack of dawn, playing your bugle, swimming for, you know, 50 plus hours, doesn't matter what it is, we can all internalize that. And what I'm interested in is that kind of living in the present, like I think of people, they can fall into two categories. They either live in the future where they're always thinking about like the next thing that comes down the line, like I have an aunt who every time we get together, she's like, oh man, when's the next time you're coming back? I was like, well, I'm here now. Let's enjoy this. Like let's not think about the next time, like we're in the moment and I try and do my best to always be present, maybe not to the degree where I'm waking up every morning, like on fire, chomping at the bit, but it's something to aspire to. And so I wonder, like you said earlier, that there was a moment where you felt yourself kind of getting away from that and that swim brought you back into it. How long did that moment last, do you think? Yeah, it's a good question, but let me ask you something, I'll get to it because I know just where you are now. You said something right off the top, Nick, of your comment about something about the specificity of a story often leads to the bigger sort of philosophy of the story. How did you say you put it? Yeah, the more individualized it becomes, the more universal. There you go. And that's a good way of putting it because I mean, honestly, if you think about it, you couldn't get more eccentric. Let's take not my story, let's take Helen Keller's story. Sure. How could you get more eccentric in terms of disabilities and bad luck of birth? Just name it all, blind and deaf and all that stuff. And somehow, yes, her teacher, that was a big part and we all learned that, but nevertheless, there was some spirit going on in there that knew that life was more than what she could do. And she winds up, you know, graduating from college, I mean, impossible. So we listened to her story to say, well, how am I gonna relate to someone who can't move, who can't speak, who can't hear, who can't see? That's not a story for me, but when you see underneath that it had to do with desire and wanting to live a life and the drive to do anything, to become more normal, shall we say, it's universal. You know, your word universal is really great. For me, I'm gonna backtrack to tell you a story. It's one of the stories I love of my life because it's real and it comes out with a little moment that I use and have used through my life. And I was not a great sprinter, I was a good sprinter, I was the best in the state of Florida and it's a big swimming state, but I wasn't the best in the United States or the world and the chances of my making the Olympic team, 68 Mexico City were just about zero. But I worked for eight years, 4.30 in the morning, every morning, that's a swimmer's life. And I don't need to tell you, Nick, although as a real 50 meter sprinter, it's hard to find respect for you. Trash it, trash it, this is good. It's the old conflict between the sprinters and the distance swimmers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was a decent sprint swimmer and I had a little chance at least to go to the Olympic trials, not the Olympics, the Olympic trials, and there was that last 100 meter backstroke. After eight years, 1,000 sit-ups every night, never 999. I was a truly driven little sprint swimmer and I didn't know yet that my talent as an athlete lay out in swimming the curvature of the earth, you know, in the ocean and swimming almost as fast as I swim 100 meters is what I swim 100 miles at that same pace. So it's the night, one more 100 meter backstroke I've qualified for the finals and the top three in this heat is actually was by time. The top three times are gonna go to the trials. I'm walking down that pool deck with the weight of the world on my shoulders. Eight years, this night is either it or I'm going on to the rest of my life, whatever that's gonna be. Sexual abuse by my coach whom I adored and had on a pedestal and I was so confused. How did that happen? I was silenced and I was a fiery, sort of, you might even call me combative. I was a tough little teenager. I was silenced by this man because the shame and the humiliation and the confusion were so extreme that I just was in a state of paralysis through these years of sexual abuse and he did it to many kids of my era. He's in the international swimming hall of fame, by the way. So I don't wanna spend my whole life undoing that injustice but I will do something about it. Any case, I'm sorry, I went off on a tangent. I'm walking on the pool deck toward this 100 meter backstroke and I'm thinking my brother and sister gave up some of their dreams because my dream was so big. Everybody in the house has gotta be quiet when I go to sleep because I'm the one chasing the Olympic fire and I'm walking to the pool deck, a buddy of mine, Suzanne, she has her own chances in the butterfly. She shakes me and she says, what is wrong with you? You look like you're in the days. This is the most important race of your career. What are you thinking about? And I started in with all the sacrifices and she said, stop it, now's not the time for that. We're not in the big picture perspective right now. You're in it. You have one more race, you're in it. So come on, get up there. And when you blast off those blocks, why don't you dig in with the shoulders that you've built for eight years? Why don't you summon that character of yours that made you, none of the rest of us did a thousand sit-ups every night, you did. Why did you do it? Swim this race with all of that. And when you touch the wall, don't look around at the time. Don't see what the results were. Close your eyes, close your fists and say to yourself, I couldn't have done it a fingernail faster. She says, if you do it that way, it'll be okay. No matter what happens, what more can you do? So I thought, that's what, I got a vision now. I got more focused, I got up there and I blasted off with my shoulders and my character. And when I touched the wall, I closed my eyes. I had no idea where I finished. I closed my fists, I closed my eyes and I said, I couldn't have done it a fingernail faster. I knew it. And I looked up, I didn't make it. And I went on to the rest of my life. And I walked out, I remember it, that's a lot of years ago now for me, high school up to age 71. But I remember it like it was yesterday, it was night. The stars were out. I walked out onto the pavement in the parking lot and I looked up and I said to myself out loud, I just stood there, I threw my bag down and I said, no matter what you do, no matter where you go, you do every day of your life so you can't do it a fingernail better. You'll never have a regret. And so I was in that and then there was marathon swimming in my 20s and there was graduate school, there was love, there was life and all that. But I wasn't in sort of that dramatic world of one race, don't leave a fingernail behind and so it trailed off. It diluted after years and years and I started working as a sports announcer. I could say, well, I always worked on the national stage. I had a pretty good career, I made some good money but from 30 to 60, I was not living so you're living a fingernail better and I met Christopher Reeve, you know, who had gone from Superman to a quadriplegic in a hundred thousandth of a second falling from his horse. He loved sports, he loved sports stories. We were behind a curtain, that's something we were both appearing at. He was the big fish and I was a little speaker and he said, tell me your athlete story from all those years ago when you were a swimmer, you know. I told him the fingernail story and he said, I love that story, I'm gonna tell my son Will tonight that story, do everything so you can't do it a fingernail better but the clear question to you, right here, standing here today, that was a lot of years ago. Have you kept your promise to yourself? Is that the way you're living your life? So every day you can't live a fingernail better and I said, whoa, not even close. Hardly am I living like that. Doesn't mean that I wasn't trying, keeping in shape, whatnot. That's different than not a fingernail better, which I think I live now. And so that, my mother dying, announcing, kind of standing with the microphone saying, well, you know, the field looks pretty strong behind me here today. It looks like Diego's the favorite so we'll just have to see how it turns out. Then I go to the side, then they do the race and I come back on and said, what Diego got beat today? Nobody expected that. Well, everybody have a good weekend. It was just, there wasn't storytelling, there wasn't, you know, you're just a face and a lot of people work hard to be that on camera face and they live by it. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it. After the end of 30 years of doing that, I thought I am not living anywhere close to a fingernail better. And I started flirting with the idea of the Cuba Swim. That was what was gonna draw me back into focus, discipline, desire, put it all out there, make it or not, do it so I couldn't do it a fingernail better. And we did, we did it that way. Our team, we did it that way for four years. Not a fingernail better every single day. And that's why we made it. Hang on, hang on. If you're not subscribed, can you go ahead and do that right now before we get on with the video? Helps us out tremendously. That's all we ask. And we're back. That's a tough conversation to have with yourself. To realize that this is way too harsh to say like you were failing what you had set out to do. But it's more like you weren't living your truth. Like I see you now and it's like this is your persona. You just embody this carpe diem mentality. And it sounds like you weren't embodying it back then. And that's not one, that's not an easy conversation to have as an interior monologue, but two, it's almost like you really did take that to heart, that not one fingernail faster. You know, when you finished that last swim at Olympic trials, having gone through that last race myself, I had like this crisis of self afterwards. I didn't know what was next. I had always thought of myself as an athlete first and then didn't have a plan B or anything to fall back on. And so rediscovering who I was after that race took some time. I don't know that I can say, and this is kind of sad. I don't know that I can say that I finished my last race, like not having been able to go on a fingernail faster. And maybe that's kind of what played into the rediscovering taking a longer time. But with you, I see after, after you finally completed the Cuba swim, I was curious just as a spectator of how you adjusted to life after the goal that you had worked years and years to achieve. And was it as easy as I did it that's over and with onto the next project or did it take some time to be like, well, now what, what comes next? It's a complex question with a complex answer. And that is, I think every world-class athlete, every who retires and unlike other professions, you retire when you're young as a general rule. That's sports. Although I had this resurgence of my 60s. So I wasn't so young when I retired the second time, but there is a drama and a black and white sort of lifestyle to sports. You know it, Diego from tennis, is that you don't say, I'm gonna be the best investment banker in the world. Who's gonna decide that? Whereas if you wanna say, I'm gonna win Wimbledon, we have a very concrete goal in front of us and we know just what to do to get there, whether you can or not. So I think there's a depression, not only in being the best and being lauded. Michael Phelps has gone through a lot of depression. Well, he's admitted in his chemistry he has depression but also to be, can imagine, to be that, the king of the world. And now, all of a sudden, you're just in the airport with thousands of other people. Nobody really knows who you are, maybe with him, you know, they do. A little bit different, yeah. They do, but as a general rule. So I admit that for five years, which is a very long time after someone who's just done a solo event, usually when we see the Phelps of the world, I mean he's winning, you know, multiple medals over multiple Olympics. This is just epic. Whereas I did hold a number of world records, but to the world at large, I was sort of a big deal at the end of the Cuba swim in my 60s. And for five years after, I was on a rocket. I was doing three speeches a day, flying by helicopter here and there, going international, just, you know, jet setting, telling my story, writing the memoir. People were doing a documentary film. I did an off-Broadway show, which I've always wanted to do, my own act it all out and all that stuff. So I was just on a rocket ship at the end of five years, what you're talking about next started to settle in. I'm not chasing that dream anymore. I'm not even kind of dealing with the aftermath anymore. I'm on to what's next, what is life? And probably never will I have something that concrete, that dramatic to chase again, but I realized that what was at the bottom of it was the pursuit, was the pursuit of my potential. So Diego will tell you how laughable this could be, but honestly, I started playing tennis at the age of 68. I'm never gonna be anywhere in the category, for instance, of Diego's wife, Natalia. I won't be, she's a superstar on the court, and she's nowhere near going to Wimbledon. So there's a big gap between the ceiling of what's great, but I have a sport now. I have a pursuit of a sport. I have a little training center in my garage that's all tennis oriented. I'm a little slow off the mark, like a lot of swimmers, so I have to make up for that somehow. I play seven days a week, you know? I just try to learn from all the greats at our club even and watching on television, but I'm so thrilled to be back in the pursuit of my potential at a sport, which is very different than pursuing your potential as a business person. It really is, it has, as I said, it has a more black and white defined, you can write down in your notebook, what is it this month I gotta improve at? That follow through on the forehand, I've got to get that going. So I think there is a depression and a difficulty when an athlete steps away from their sport. Are they gonna feel that talented at anything again? Are they gonna feel that passion at anything again? Maybe not because sport lends itself, you know, to bring out your talents and seeking your passion, you know? But I like to think that everything I do has a bit of a vision and has a largesse to it, you know, that inspires me. I wanted to touch on something. So in my head, you mentioned something which is how I kind of view or would like to kind of reframe the entrepreneurship game, which is something around not so much starting something, but just chasing momentum. Like I think there's a lot of pressure that society puts on, let's say, launching a company, starting a company, or even your swim, right? But I think if people just looked at it like, I don't know if I'm gonna start a company, but I'm gonna move in that direction to your point. I'm just gonna chase the momentum. And in that, I always tell people that procrastination be your guide. Like if you're not into it, like just stop doing it, right? If it doesn't get you through the next day or if you don't wake up the next morning with this zest and move on from it. And I think business has a way of inspiring us to keep moving forward and then keep those improvements going. We're all like constantly chasing improvement. In business, the approach I take is kind of one that Ray Dalio takes, which is Ray Dalio basically gives everyone on his team, his entire company, a baseball card. And that baseball card on the back of it has what you're good at and what you're not good at. And so then there's like a real formation. Let's say public speaking, let's say you're a 10 at public speaking. But let's say in Microsoft Excel, maybe you're not that great. And then- Trust me, I'm at the bottom of the pocket. And so in that, this is what your baseball card would say. And then it becomes, okay, what is this team gonna pursue? And so now we decide to pursue something. And then on the, so someone on your team would be maybe a 10 at Excel and maybe a two at public speaking. So now you're bringing on these experts. And I think what gets lost, and I'm speaking directly to our audience in this is the ability for people to create teams and how important teams can be to moving everyone forward, right? And on your swim in particular, you had a team. And those people we could argue and you'd probably say are the best in the world or are the best in the world at what they do. And without them, who knows if it's possible, right? And even at that stage, all of you are learning together. You're all learning together. So you have to iterate. You're constantly trying to figure new things out. The jellyfish, how do we deal with this new problem as a team, as a team of experts? You've achieved it all. How do you kind of view the next thing that you wanna do, the momentum you wanna move into? Maybe this is where we talk about your new foundation, the Ever Walk program, and the team you decide to bring in to kind of achieve this next step for you. Yeah, I'm gonna reach out to both of you right now. Because here I come in here sort of to be lauded and say, wow, look what you've done and look what you mean to a lot of people. And that means something to me. It's not shallow. And on the other hand, I will admit to you, and because you guys coach entrepreneurs and because entrepreneurs are listening to your podcast, I will admit that I'm just used to catching lightning in a bottle. Every business I've started, I have no business plan. I have no idea where the capital's gonna come from. I just march into CEO's offices and talk my fire brand and I leave with a check for $300,000. But Ever Walk is this initiative. It's a national walking initiative. We've got a cool app. We've got a great website. We've got pretty cool little programs within it. But except for private funding, it's kept us afloat. We keep open, the doors open with our private funding. We haven't landed one corporate sponsor, no capital raised in the corporate world. And here we're in this world of walking. And I'm a pretty good spokesperson. And Bonnie's right on my coattails with that. She's better sort of with the public, like if we're at a park, she's got them all doing yoga and starting walking. Whereas I'm giving the philosophical speech about walk the curvature of the earth the way I swam the curvature of the earth. And people are like, yeah, I wanna walk the curvature of the freaking earth. So Y has no company. We have three different brand managers. All of them have a terrific track record companies who took us on a year at a time. We paid them from pretty good money out of what we had. And not one of them landed a corporate sponsor. You know, we're just talking about a lousy, maybe a 200 grand, you know, for the year to keep our doors open. So what am I doing wrong? And you just sort of reminded me of Christopher Reeve saying to me, well, you said all those years ago, you were gonna live every day. So you can't live at a finger to a bed. Is that what you're doing? And I was backed up against the wall. And I said, right away, no. That's not what I'm doing. So you just said, you're going after something. Do you recognize that you're not waking up with the fire in the belly? That you're kind of letting it slide? Believing maybe some white knight's gonna ride through town and save you, give you some money, put you on the map? Or are you working at it because you're so excited? And I have to admit, since maybe about January this year. So that's, we're gonna be half the year. I've been sort of stalling, hemming and hawing, not figuring out what to do about it. Upset and not sleeping well because I want ever walk to make it. I believe that we should make it. But maybe I'm just tired. Maybe I needed to refresh the batteries and I've let it go for a minute. But I have to pay attention. Do I really want it? Do I want this to make it? And what are the next steps? Cause whatever I've been doing has been wrong. I'm not catching lightning in a bottle on this one. It's gotta be more of a grassroots, and build it up and get 700 people here to walk in with us and then another thousand there and build it. Cause you know, I want millions of people walking with an ever walk brand on them and participating virtually and real with our walks. But we've done a lot. I'm proud of what we're done, but we have to say we're not making it. And I need to figure out the next step. Before that, because you're pushing me to it today, Diego, I need to figure out is if that's what I really want the next step or do I wanna let it go? You know, no shame in letting it go, but it would hurt, you know? Yeah. I mean, you could still be the spokesperson. You could just maybe give it away. Well, yeah. You know, if I could give it away if somebody wanted it, that would be a partner already. We don't have that partner, you know. Tell everyone a little bit about what it is. We don't have the capital to hire. Okay. So in the beginning, the reason we called it ever walk, the reason that's the trademark is because that ever walk, you know, it means everybody every day, you know, sort of the human race has been a walker. We've walked everywhere. And if you travel to Europe and South America and Africa, people are walking everywhere and it's starting here, a lot of it's COVID driven. It's the one thing we could do and walk. But not really, you know, people in this town still drive a quarter of a mile to get a newspaper. The length of an oval of a track, they'll drive there to get a newspaper. So our sort of thing is why don't we turn America, there are all kinds of statistics on how sedentary we become. We become, you know, sitting is the new smoking is the phrase du jour. So our idea and there are lots of walking groups, great groups, we like to be in with them, mostly raising money for, you know, sort of disease prevention, you know, the Susan B. Coleman walks for cancer, that thing, which is great, we support all of them. Ours is more like, why don't you just walk for yourself, walk for your life, be a walker, you know. Even if you walk to a lousy mile a day, you know, that's not really your great exercise. You know, someone who plays hard, intense tennis like you walking a mile would be ridiculous. But if it were part of your everyday life, you just say, that's what I do, I walk a mile every day. You know, after a while, some days you walk five miles, you have more time, some days you know, you and Natalia wanna walk all the way to the beach, make a day out of walking. But if you walked a mile every day, if Americans said, that's what we do in America, we don't sit around on the couch and watch television all day long, we all walk a mile, that's what we do. That's who we are, that's who we wanna be. Well, look at the blue sky, you know, take it all in, come back, having waved at your neighbors, having seen the Lending Library and the Little Tree and get your endorphins going a little bit, just walk a mile every day, walk more if you want. That's kind of in a nutshell who we are and what we wanna be to the whole nation at once. Do you have a dream sponsor, like someone you would really like to have on board? You know, there are so many, but honestly, number one is Adidas because under our umbrella, we also have an organization called Oceans Commit to walk and raise money in the name of reducing plastics in the ocean. And Adidas now, with their Parley brand, you know, makes most of their sneakers out of plastic bottles. So they're big in the, and because they make a walking shoe, you know, you use a running shoe, it just makes so much sense. And they have sponsored us to a degree, they've made t-shirts for our events, things, but we haven't landed a big financial contract with them, but they're number one. It seems like a marketing no-brainer, at least from my perspective, and I think about this. I know me too, water. I mean, you could think of so many different things. Anyway, you know, when you two become my partners, I'd really, really appreciate it. I'd give you 25% of the entire business. Yeah. We're on Shark Tank now, for 50%. Oh, I see. Okay, okay, I see I'm easy in negotiating, okay, 50%. Has there been friction from their side that they've at least told you, like, as to like, have you had the negotiation where they've been like, well, we're happy with the t-shirts, but we are just not ready to do, like, move to this next step. Have you gotten any kind of feedback? There has. And that is that, you know, I'm not some huge celebrity, and unfortunately, or fortunately, I just haven't spent my time with social media. I have a social media manager. I have about 80,000 people who follow me on, particularly Facebook. It's more my generation than Instagram and all that. So you could say, well, that's not shabby, but it's certainly not Kardashian numbers and whatnot, but EverWalk, for some reason, my fans haven't followed me over to EverWalk as much as I talk about our events. We've done these wonderful epic walks. We walk from Boston to Maine, and we walk from Philly to DC and from Canada down to Seattle and from here to San Diego. We've done these epic walks, but they've only affected 200 people who've come with us. They haven't been a big news event. It's not like some incredible thing. No one's ever walked from Boston to Maine. So we haven't developed a huge following for EverWalk. We literally only have about 20,000 people, you know, who are constantly on the website and part of it. The leaders will say, build up your numbers, you know, get up there, get a couple hundred thousand people who are following you, and then we come in and we say, you come in and help us build those numbers up. I don't know anywhere to turn to anymore in terms of come on out and walk with us on Saturday. You know, we have our group and that's who we market to. I appreciate you being vulnerable with us. I mean, that's another part of this podcast. Like you're literally in the midst of starting a business and you're wondering how to figure this out and you have this chicken and egg problem, which is what everyone who ever started a company deals with. As a developer, this is always my problem. It's always, I need this to get that and that can't happen until I get this. And it's this thing of like, I have to go chase both. I love that problem. To me, a person like that excites me the most. That problem only because I know how hard it is, but it means everything, right? It's like, so let's pretend like you do get a celebrity on to endorse walking maybe like someone like Kevin Hart or somebody like that. Somebody who really valued athleticism, but with a big name. Then now it becomes a no brainer for someone like Adidas. Now all of a sudden you're setting terms, right? And so that seems to be- That's a good idea. The problem, yeah. And I know, I mean, there's plenty of people that exist and your mission is so, like the beautiful thing about, well like how I view what you're doing, you have you and that's it. Like you have you, you see? That's when I say, I don't understand why we're not bigger. I mean, you look at, there's so many walking groups, programs, initiatives, but none of them have a sort of a tried and true, known, inspiring personality by them. They just say, hey come walk with us every Saturday morning, virtually, we do two miles over there. And some of them actually, frankly, most of the big walking movements don't have big numbers either, but they're not looking. You know, like our board says to us all the time, it's you guys are doing a great job. Your website looks great, the app looks great. You're offering all these different things. We have a naturalist and she's a, you know, PhD and naturalist and if you're on your walk and you take a picture of a rodent or a flower or a tree and send it into our app, she will quickly come back to you and say, oh no, that is a Cooper's hawk. And the female gets about a third bigger than the male. It's the only hawk where the females bear. So, you know, we've got fun stuff, you know, while you're walking to lead into. But, you know, so far because our numbers are low and you're right, Daniel, it's always this chicken and egg, chicken and egg and I want it to be just solved. I want to walk into someone's office and them saying, we love it. We're going to put EverWalk on the map. You and Bonnie are going to be the coaches for United Healthcare and we're going to have our 240,000 employees walk in the EverWalk mile downloading their calendar. So I made all those proposals and I haven't gotten a signature on the dotted line yet. Yeah, we entered the attention economy. That's what it's all about now. What'd you call it? The attention economy. Where it's all around social media numbers and the pull you can bring in from that. That's the thing that these companies need the most. That's what they need. And so I keep saying, you build it with us and we'll get there. You know, you have incentives you can offer them. United Healthcare has deals with Apple Watch, all kinds of things. So if they were, we were going to be the coaches of all their employees for this walk, they say whoever gets 30 or 31 days every day, they're going to get an Apple Watch and they'll give it to them. I'm almost thinking about this like it could be, I'm just solving this problem on the fly. Please do. There's another part of it where it's almost like you could reach out to smaller brands like Art of Sport comes to mind. Art of Sport came on the podcast. Basically they make deodorant, body wash, soaps. Kobe Bryant was the founder, co-founder of this company. Skincare were designed with the athlete in mind. But like James Harden, so they heavy, heavy, heavy in terms of the NBA. And so a lot of the NBA players are both investors and also they use all the products. Participants, yeah. But in that, it's like you can get a smaller brand which leads you to get the bigger brand later. But the smaller brand gives you credibility and then all of a sudden now you have the firepower that's called the social media that you need that's required that checks that box and the bigger brand. So the thing is all these smaller brands are always being watched by these bigger brands. And so it creates a safe space for them to start to communicate, which probably lends itself to a future acquisition. But in the interim, it's a way to collaborate and everyone uses their own resources. So it's safe. Well, you know what they say. I don't know what the statistic is now, but pre COVID is an American, if you're starting a small business, the chances are you'll be out of business in five years. You know, very few make it and you know, are in the black or is it the red are in the profit after five years. And if you want to start a movement, so it's not even income oriented in any way. Now you're really marching uphill. But Dan, what I love about your story and you know this so well, and this is something that I tell myself every day. It's like you create your own data. I throw that away. When people tell me like, oh, you're gonna like five years, you might be alive. I throw it away. I go great. That's why you're not doing anything, right? Good for you for looking at that data. It does nothing for me. I'm gonna go create my own data. And if I fail four times, well, on the fifth, it's gonna be pretty exciting because you've created your own data. You know, and I think your story captivates all of it. It is failing. That's part of it. But the end of it is so much sweeter, right? And that's what I like about it. I like this. This is good. It's sparking me. Like my wife, my wife is terrified personally to have like children. She's like, oh, cause she runs, she has her own company. What am I gonna do? All this stuff. All of my friends, I Googled this. These things might happen. We could get divorced. That's a lot of pressure on business owners having, you know, children. And I'm like looking at her like, or you just create your own data. Like stop Googling. My mom created her own data. Diana created her own data. Well, and we say that these are the things what I need to do then is find partners who aren't thirsty and bound to social media numbers. That's not there because so far that's the only road we've been traveling. And that's the negative response. Even the science, right? So the science today says the same thing. Like the science says every American should walk 15 minutes a day at minimum. If they want to have a good life when they pass, you know, past 65 now. And so forget the big brand community. Now there's even the scientific community that can say, hey, look, this is for the future of humanity. Like this is so much bigger than Adidas, right? This is about the planet. This is so much better and bigger. This is about keeping your grandparents alive. And so I even think like these things can be part, it's a different direction, but it's totally, directionally correct, you know? Yeah. So again, as we're thinking about this out loud. I will not give up on ever walk. I'm in love with our movement and what we stand for. And I can speak it out, you know, well, but so far I haven't been able to fund it well. But you're giving me a lot of good ideas to think sideways. We've been going after the exact same, you know, down the same road each time and knocking up against the wall each time. Everything in your life has been non-linear. If you think about it, you've done things that don't make any sense, right? Like that Cuba Slim is a very non-linear thing. And I always tell people like, get out, stop, put your Excel sheet away, get off the linear path. Linear path being go to school, get good grades, get a job, keep that job, get your 401K, so linear, so boring, not living. Do something completely left, take a left and then go exponential, right? And you'll figure it out. That to me is like the most exciting thing about, you know, our podcast and everything we've done. As soon as someone's doing a linear sort of thinking, I'm out. Like I'm like, no, you have it wrong, go left. Well, you know, I guess the last thing I'd like to discuss with you guys is, I hate to say that, you know, the words because we're just getting off the linear path, but the formula for success, the nuggets that create success, I find in different worlds, they're not necessarily the same. You know, because I'm so clear in a sports world, you know, how to pursue. And I've become because of, I won't call it failure, but you know, Bonnie and I still haven't spent a dime of our own money. We haven't lost any money on Everwalk in five years, but we're not at the numbers and the capital, you know, to bust out and do many more events and launch things that we'd like to launch. So we haven't been a big success yet. Let's put it that way. So I'm sort of curious as to why I'm hired to stand up in front of thousands of people by the end of each year to tell my story, which as we started to come full circle in our conversation extrapolates to people living any kind of life they're living, you know, being parents, whatever they're doing, and they extrapolate what, you know, my courage to fail and all those precepts, then why have not those precepts worked for me in this, so far in this movement, this Everwalk movement? And I think that's what I have to start, you know, grappling with and saying- You're just at the jellyfish stage. You're totally where you need to be. You think? 100%. This is just part of it. You're at the jellyfish stage. All right, well I wish Bonnie had come today. I'd like to hear this too, you know? Yeah, I'll tell Bonnie. That's the thing, this is not linear. This game is not linear. It's not what's required is so much different. You had a whole team and you had to retry four times, which to me, in my head, like when I was watching your documentary, I went, that was just training. No one realized it. Or until later, right? Until like, this is what was required for us to ultimately be successful. And so there's a jellyfish stage in any business, for sure. There's a moment of like, do we really want to move forward? You start judging yourself. Imposter syndrome sets in. Yes, yes. Am I really capable of this? What am I doing? I've never done this before. Can I get back in the pool? I was safe for them. That's when you're alive. The struggle is when you're happy. I mean, I've had imposter syndrome multiple times and what I realized was, I'm just being selfish in this space. The world isn't getting better. No one's walking, right? Nothing is moving in this space. Let me get out. Yeah, we're not there for sure. Some people are moving. And for those people, you've impacted them on a very positive note, but it just takes a while for it to trickle down. It takes a while for them to share it with their friends and say, hey, my life has gotten better since that walking a mile a day. And especially in today's culture and climate, that might take some convincing for the general public at large, who is not used to it. I think of infrastructure problems around the US as a big catalyst for why more people don't walk. And I say this because having traveled around the country on various TV shows, one of my favorite things that I'd like to do while I was in a hotel in some random small town, I'd like to go for a run. But I found that to be more often than not, very, very difficult to achieve because it's all like many highways and no sidewalks, no infrastructure for pedestrians. Certain areas of the country do this very well, but most do not. Well, yeah, no, we've discovered all of this for sure. You don't just tell a kid from the inner city or a mother from the inner city, just let your kid go out after dinner in the South Bronx and walk around. So it's a little apple pie idealistic. Let's everybody, all of everybody walk a mile a day, but there are millions who could. There are. Anyway, thank you, thank you for that. I hope I gave you guys something, but I'm really taking something away. 100%. Yeah. Life is such a gift by many. I'm very thankful to have you on the show. So, like I said, I wake up every day at dawn and I go in my gym, I have a neon sign, I click it on and in orange letters, it says persist. Because you know, any of us to do well in our lives, you need some talent at what you're trying to do. You need a team around you to support you and you can rely on. You need some luck, you need some timing to come together at the right time. But more than anything, you need to persist. You need to just wake up and do it again and again and again until you get there. So at four, it depends on the day, but like today was 4.45, I get on my gym. My neighbors, it's dark. My neighbors are all soundly asleep as they should be in their beds. And I play. Which means get up. I yell it out the window, get up. Don't sleep your lives away. And they all yell back, shut up. Sorry, I had the first couple of notes were off there. No one's gonna judge you for that. No one's ever. I'm not a professional horn player. Great note to end on. Yeah, thank you for having me, both of you. Thank you very much.