This Is How An Everest Guide Gets Nearly Every Climber To The Summit
Fellow Riskologist,
In the world of mountain climbing—particularly on Mt. Everest—there’s one person who gets the lion’s share of attention. His name is Russell Brice, founder of Himalayan Experience, and he’s been guiding on Everest since 1974. A few years ago, the Discovery Channel even made a documentary about him.
Russell is an excellent guide, but that has little to do with why he and his company have an impeccable reputation in the Himalayas today.
What really drives his success? It’s the top-notch team he’s built around him.
These days, Brice rarely leaves base camp during expeditions. He doesn’t have to because he has the best in the business running almost everything for him. He succeeds today not because he’s a great guide, but because he’s a great leader.
His lead guide, Phurba Tashi, is one of the greatest climbers to ever live. Phurba has summited Everest 21 times—the current world record. He trusts Brice to handle the complicated logistics so that he can focus on being an incredible guide.
Brice hires talented physicians with unmatched mountain-care skills to monitor the health of his climbers. These doctors sign up because they know Brice runs a tight ship and Phurba Tashi is going to lead the climbers with great care.
He even invests in the best chefs to prepare great food for his clients. The chefs are happy to work for Brice because they know the other details of the voyage are being handled by experts who can deliver.
These talented people on his team improve all the little details of his clients’ experience and, as a result, he has one of the highest summit success rates of any guide on the mountain.
As a Smart Riskologist, there’s plenty to learn from Russell’s story.
If you want to create something incredible, you need great people in your corner to help you along the way. But how do you attract them? How do you get them to join your team?
You do it by becoming the best you can be at what you do and letting other amazing people own the things that they do well.
A-players want to associate with other A-players. You don’t have to be the best at everything—that’s what your team is for (or will be for once you assemble it)—but you’d better focus on becoming the best at something. To get great people on your team, they have to trust you’ll deliver tremendous results at the thing you do.
This is why so many talented people struggle to get their big ideas off the ground. They try to control too much of the process, doing everything themselves. As a result, important things don’t get done and what does isn’t good enough to attract quality partners.
If you have a mission but are having a hard time getting high quality people to help you with it, you might be trying to control too much and wearing too many hats. This makes talented people uncomfortable because they can’t rely on you. If something goes wrong, their reputation is now also on the line.
But if you loosen up a bit and focus your attention where your natural talents lie, you’ll find it easier to get A-players on board because you can instill confidence that you do great work.
If what you do is important, you’ll get more traction by playing a bigger game and focusing your efforts where your talent lies than by trying to wear all the hats and making yourself look amateur. Look and act the part you want to attract in others, and you’ll be more likely to get it.
Homework: What can you let go of and focus more on to attract talented people to your corner? Your mission depends on it.
Yours in risk-taking,
Founder, Riskology.co
P.S. I’m off the grid in Antarctica right now and unable to reply to comments, but feel free to talk among yourselves. See you soon!