Andy Gray: Today, I’m talking with Ken Streater. Ken has lived an interesting life as an adventure guide and entrepreneur; and recently wrote a book called The Gift of Courage. We join our conversation with Ken talking about being introduced to the outdoors and to rafting.

Ken Streater: So, I got into rafting—I went to high school in Southern California. I was the guy that organized the backpacking trips with friends and all kinds of different outdoor adventure activities. And then, my dad took me rafting in 1983. I was working at this sporting goods store that time. I loved working in the parts of this sporting goods store that were related to outdoor adventure—the backpacks and the sleeping bags.

So, it was just in my blood, and then my dad took me rafting on the Lower Current River in Southern California. It was an overnight trip. I’d always enjoyed spending time in the outdoors, but have never done anything quite that risky in the outdoors. Backpacking has its challenges, but it’s not regarded as a risky sport, adventure sport.

I went rafting, overnight trip, with my dad and my sister, and just fell in love with it. It’s a combination of being outdoors, a combination of teamwork in the raft. It was a combination of adventure, because I did enjoy adventure. And, the rest is really history as far as that goes.

I went to guide school the following year, in 1983, and started guiding on the South Fork of the American River, outside of the Sierra, outside of Sacramento/Sierra Nevada. And then, we just kept climbing, and climbing, and climbing in terms of places I would go, and challenges that I’d seek, and people that I’d meet.

I also ended up running a rafting company that’s based in California that trips all up and down the Northwest. I ran that for a couple of years as the General Manager. I got to see amazing places as the General Manager and river guide at the same time. It’s a beautiful, natural country.

And then, I left that company and got hired as the managing guide for a rafting and adventure travel company in Norway. Before I went to Norway, I was able to travel to Africa. I spent some time down there, running rivers down there. I spent several summers leading adventure travel trips and running a company in Norway. It’s just the cornerstone of joy in my life.

We lived on a farm at a series of buildings that were all built in 1500-1600s. There were no toilets; toilets, of course, but there was no running water. A large part of that compound used pit toilets. There was a wood-burning sauna. There were 10 or 12 guides that live there and just built some community around doing what we love. We all loved being river guides.

The other interesting common denominator in that was—and I didn’t realize this until later—everyday, we strapped on a life jacket. That was our tool of the trade—a life jacket, and a helmet, and a wet suit—in order to survive, if we happen to go on a river. I really felt like that was a team building component to it.

Teams evolve naturally in those settings, but when you’re putting a life jacket on every day—watching each other’s back, having each other’s back—it really built a community. And that’s when I recognized the value of this type of commerce, this type of activity, not only relative to the guiding community but also to people that came on these trips, when they build these communities over a two-day or a two-week trip and just have this joyful experience sharing meaningful mornings and meaningful afternoons, where you are awestruck at the setting, facing death—it overstates it a little bit—but facing challenges and succeeding together as a crew.

I just really became struck with the whole value of communities we built there, and that’s carried me forward into what I’m doing today.

Andy: Sounds like a pretty interesting story—that you had this interest in the outdoors, this love and passion for the outdoors, and that translated into guiding. And then, somewhere along the way, that turned into sort of an inward perspective from “I love doing this” to “this is helpful to other people”.

Ken: Yes, exactly. And then, I just applied that love. I literally woke up, every day, excited about what I was doing. Every single day, for years, I did that, where I just so much loved the community that was being built, the impact that we’re having, helping preserve wild spaces; it just completely resonated with me at an occupational level, personal level. My communities were built around that same resonance.

And so, I built my company kind of on that model, where we just empower people to realize their dreams. The metaphor that I use for how to work within my company at river-guiding was running a river—one bank on the left and another bank on the right, and each one of those is represented by safety and professionalism. One bank is safety; one is professionalism.

The goal within my company was to empower people to run the river, as they chose, through the rapids and through the calms, as long as they were respecting the bank of safety and the bank of professionalism. It allowed for this company, which took off. We went from $28,000—our first year in revenue—and that was 1997, to $60,000 the next year, to $125,000 to $270,000 to $500,000-plus.

We’re doubling every year in revenue because what we were doing was making sense to people that we’re joining us—they felt that; they felt the love. Also, the employees were so enamored with their jobs because they work unrestricted. They could live their own dreams. They could live their own authentic life, as long as they stayed between those two banks.

We ended up doing trips in the Northwest. We ended up doing trips in Baja, Bolivia, we did the first decent up at Rio Sand Crystal Ball in Bolivia. We did trips in Norway and Iceland. We expanded into Alaska. We were just an international company, with up to 50-60 employees at one point, and ran great wilderness trips around the world.

Andy: It seem like often, when we talk to people, there is this perception that it’s really hard to make passion and career line up. There’s this sense of, “Oh well, that’s great that you love being in the outdoors,” but how we’re you able to create a bridge between, “I’m passionate about the outdoors and adventure”, and believing that, “You know what? I can actually support myself and my employees by building a business around this”?

Ken: I think the key to that is recognizing that good has to be supported. In some way, shape, or form. And, if it’s a church and you’re doing good, then it’s supported with parishioner’s tithing. If it’s a rafting business, then you need to recognize and honor the bottom line as the important element in doing good. If you’re doing good and you don’t survive, you basically stop doing good. And so, that essence was communicated to the guides, to our office staff, and to our shuttle drivers that, “You know what? Nobody’s out here to make a killing. We’re out here to be able to live a lifestyle that we love and to perpetuate what we’re doing.”

And so, it turns into a business model, where you do pay attention to the bottom line just because you recognize that you want to perpetuate the good you’re doing. That’s how I bridge passion and purpose with a business client.

There were definitely times where the profit was taking the far, far backseat, and I sweated winter after winter—getting through the winter—because of cashflow problems. But in the end, we managed to make it profitable.

Unfortunately—or fortunately, because of where I’m at today—I reached a point where I thought, “You know, I’m just not in a position to support a whole, young family doing this.” Part of that was financial, but of it also was this pure logistics. If I was gone for a week or two to Alaska, if I was gone for a week or two to Norway or Iceland—I was gone on multi-day trips somewhere in the Pacific Northwest—I just didn’t feel like I wasn’t being there for my family.

I remember one trip in particular, where it really was the final recognition that I had, that I needed to do something different, and it wasn’t related to money as much as it was my time away. I was on a plane going to Alaska. This was in early June. My son was nine months old, my first born child, nine months old. Every year prior to that, I thought, “You know, I’m so excited about going to this place or that place. It helps at this operation upper to run this river.”

I’m on a plane in the middle of the night, heading to Anchorage, Alaska, and it just broke my heart that I wasn’t going to be home. That’s when I knew that my priorities have shifted and I needed to divest myself of the international adventure and travel business.

And so, gradually, I sold pieces off, and that’s when I picked up the commercial real estate opportunities, courtesy of my office manager at the time—letting me know that as I was buying these different real estate locations around the Northwest primarily, in order to facilitate our operation, because I was really becoming taken with the whole investment real estate business.

She said, “At some point, you’re going to be a broker.”

And I said, “No, I’m never going to be a broker.”

And she said, “No, I’ve worked with you for eight or nine years; you’re going to be a broker. I can just tell.”

And lo and behold, I became a broker.

And so, I left the adventure travel business and became a broker—wondered in there for a little while—without feeling any passion about my job, at all, for the first couple of years.

I take that back. Periodically, I would help somebody buy a home, and it felt great to help them get into their first home. I was honored by that. But, I didn’t have the passion. I didn’t wake up every single day loving my job like work. That’s when I began to realize that I was not leading the authentic life that I had as an adventure travel outfitter.

I began to reshape my purpose, reshape the time that I spend doing things, in order to add to what I was doing—stuff that really mattered to me. That’s how I got into writing my first book, The Gift of Courage.

Andy: That’s such a difficult transition, where you’re living your life in a way that does feel authentic for so long. You can hear the passion in your voice when you’re talking about your experience in adventure travel and guiding people. Then suddenly, your priorities started shifting. You felt that in order to be more present to your family, you needed to make a change. How can you make that change successfully, in embracing one thing that is authentic to you, and let go of another piece of that?

it was important make a lot of money in order to have a thriving family. The irony in that was that we were in the worst financial shape we had ever been in, which was courtesy of me making some bad investments and courtesy of the economy, leading to my business not being sustainable and thriving.

So, there was a lot of soul-searching, a lot of laying awake at night, at 3:00 in the morning, broke and unsatisfied, and feeling like my life was an oxymoron, in the sense that I wasn’t myself. I literally was not myself. I knew who I was, knew what I loved, courtesy of having done that earlier in my adult life, as a guide and an outfitter. So, I knew that something was missing. It took two years of soul-searching.

Ironically, what triggered it was I still owned a small part of the rafting business, and I had wanted to do a fundraising trip for a friend of mine, a river guide friend of mine, who became paralyzed in the waist-down and her therapy bills were exorbitant, and I thought I’m going to run a couple of fundraisers for her and send all the proceeds to her rehabilitation account. And, nobody signed up for these fundraisers, which was down to one company at the time in the outfitting business working fulltime as a commercial real estate broker, and then my office manager for 12 years was running the rafting side of things.

Nobody signed up for these benefit rafting trips for a friend of mine. Her name is Kelley Kalafatich. And so, I started to ask myself—how else could I help her? I began to realize that that mattered a whole lot to me—it was helping her and helping others. That’s when I got attached—or reattached—to what really was authentic for me, and that was helping people realize their dreams. I’d done that as an outfitter, with guides to clients; and that was my essence. I like to help people know who they were, know what their purpose was, to help them realize their dreams.

And here was Kelley Kalafatich, who had been a mentor to river guides, to young women guides, indigent natives and Africa and South America; and she was no longer able to live her dream of wanting to continue work as a river guide around the world. And so, I decided to write a book about her and use those proceeds in order to help fund her rehabilitation.

I segued, from a job that’s passionate to me, to a career that really didn’t feel authentic. And then, in that two years of soul-searching—recognized, found, crystallized exactly what mattered to me; and that was helping people realize their dreams.

So I wrote a book about courageous people. It’s called “The Gift of Courage“. It’s about eight people from all different walks of life, from all different parts of the country, who on one level or another have courageously embraced their passions, and by extension, then lived their dreams; and in doing so, made a huge difference to the community.

That’s where I am today. As an author of a book like that; as an author of another book, which is going to talk specifically about how to realize what your passions are and how to create the life you dream of—a purposeful and meaningful life you dream of—courtesy of being courageous and taking a stand, or your conviction, or your authenticity. And then, the extension of that has been speaking engagements that I am helping organize as well.

Andy: Wow! That’s quite a jump. It’s an amazing story to go through that ebb and flow—that kind of dark period, it sounds like—in your life, and to have that actually be something that crystallizes what your next step is. I think it takes a lot of courage, in and of it itself, to be willing to stand in that fear, in that unknown, and to be able to engage in what that next step is.

Ken: Yes—I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t think I was being courageous. I thought I was being inauthentic. I thought I was a phony. I thought people looked at me and realized that I wasn’t doing what I love to do. And of course, I put on a great mask to cover that. And so, the only person that really noticed that I wasn’t doing what I love to do is me. And then, it took me some time to recognize that I had power to go back to what mattered me.

It stared incrementally. It started by just writing about Kelley Kalafatich. It started by going for walks in the morning for half-hour/forty-five minutes on a quiet road, and just getting really clear on what made me happy and recognizing that a friend of mine, Eric Plantenberg—he’s been on your show—helped me recognize this; that if I lost it all, it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. I fought for so long to work through our financial challenges and to embrace commercial real estate.

It was because I was afraid of losing it all. Through a conversation with Eric, I realized that that really wasn’t what would happen if I had more financial, greater financial catastrophe. And so, I relaxed on the debt and recognized that I was going to be able to get through this. The thing that mattered most was having a simple roof over my family’s home, being able to ensure their love everyday, and doing something that I love to do.

That’s what forced me, forced in a positive way, to look at where my life was and to recognize what mattered to me; and bit by bit, built on that. I started with writing a chapter about Kelley Kalafatich; finding others, writing their chapters.

I got buoyed. I got lifted by the people that I was writing about. And then eventually, I ended being in the place I am today—from totally stoked out—the work that I’m doing in the personal development world, and I’m actually totally stoked out ironically—the work I do in the commercial real estate—because I know it helps support what really matters to me.

Andy: Kelley gave a great thread talk that I was privileged to see, and I really found that inspiring. Why, specifically, did you find Kelley’s story so inspiring to you, personally? And, why did you orient your next steps around supporting that work?

Ken: In 1986, November 1986, I was in Africa. I was in Kelley’s boat. It was a busman’s holiday for me. She and I were friends; casual acquaintances but not great friends at that point in my life and her life. I went to Africa to visit some friends of mine and to run rivers over there.

I was at her boat, and she rode the biggest white-water in the world. At that point, that was the biggest single day of rafting I’d ever been on. It was treacherous class V rapid, highest possible on the scale of difficult. Hippos and crocodiles in the water —so just all these amazing challenges.

She turned the oars over to me at the end of the trip. She had run all the big stuff, and we had stayed upright, with this group of six or eight guys from Europe and guests. I probably went into this tiny wave train at the end of the day and flipped the boat, and she was so graceful and humble about that.

I came off the trip, and another good friend of mine took me to side and told me that my father had died back in the States—sudden heart attack in his 50s; nobody saw it coming. And so, I spent that night at a tiny hut in Zambia, with Kelley and a couple of other friends of mine, coming up to me throughout the night, comforting me. I pretty much cried on my way through that night, and so I never forgot that—that I had vowed to do what I could to help her, if ever I was given that opportunity. So, that was part of it.

The other part was that here was a woman, who had just made such a huge impact on the rest of the world through her physical and spiritual strengths, and she had that taken from her as a result of her ingesting a waterborne parasite at the first descent in the Blue Nile River. She lived with that parasite in her body for a couple of years. One day, felt tingling in her legs, then her legs started going numb and she had trouble urinating, and so she checked herself into a hospital, and she never walked out. She’s in constant pain now, from lesions on her spinal cord.

So, I just realized how much power, how much positive impact, how much life changing energy somebody has, as the result of my friendship with Kelley; and was from me observing what she did with clients and training guides and what she did with me that night in Zambia. I’ve just been so touched by that—so much that I wanted to help her.

At the time, I didn’t realize when I was getting to writing a book, writing a chapter about her, when I wanted to help her realize meaning in her life again.

And, I didn’t realize—at the time I started to write the book that it had gone so far away for her. But as I became very close with her, became very good friends with her, I recognized that I had the same power that she had, which was to give people the chance to live their dreams and to realize a meaningful life.

The irony in all of that was for eight months, in early 90s, I laid on my back for 20 or more hours a day, with severe disrupture, severe sciatica, where I could get up and walk maybe 5 minutes, or I had to lie back down because of the nerve pain that was feeling.

And so, this amazingly beautiful web, connected web, to Kelley and I where I can, at least to some degree, appreciate the pain the she’s in, and realize as well from that that I was just distraught in feeling like my life is over—that there’s somebody out there that could help me back up and give you some strength, give you some additional reasons to live—and that’s why I wrote the book about Kelley. In the end, it was to help her realize that she still had a ton to be of help to people. And, her speech at that TEDxBend—that was a reflection of that.

Andy: Sounds like a great symbiotic relationship there. So, you set out to write this book about Kelley, and the scope expanded to talking about several other interesting stories. What are some examples of the things you learned in that process?

Ken: Oh, it’s an amazing… I’ve come up with some life rules that came from writing that book. It’s everything, from just having conviction in what you believe in, in what you do, and having that be what propels you day after day to make the world a better place; to resilience, where if you got knocked down, you got to pick yourself back up. You have to try and try again.

These different characteristics all came out of finding these different people, who are now subjects of the book “The Gift of Courage“.

Martha Ryan was one of thirteen children—Irish-American family in the Bay Area; didn’t have a lot of money—dedicated herself to improving the lives of Africans as a nurse, an unlicensed nurse at that point, that was a nurse in Africa, where she recognized the value of community, and womanhood as a positive force in community and motherhood. She came back and started the Homeless Prenatal Program in San Francisco. And now, 3,000 families have come off the street and have productive, safe lives. If she hadn’t stepped in, they could very possibly still be homeless families on the street.

And then, there’s Josh Kern in Washington, D.C., who was a corporate lawyer. He had to teach a class called “Street Law” in conjunction with his education. He taught at a high school that had absolutely, to him, very little hope among the student population, because it was in the most violent neighborhood in the country, and people were more concerned with survival as opposed to thriving.

He knew he could do better, and so he had quit his job as a corporate lawyer and started a charter school in the worst neighborhood in Washington, D.C., which makes it one of the worst neighborhoods in the country. And now, every single senior—and it’s been this way for years—every single senior graduates and goes on to college, and then returns to their community and helps make their community better.

There are all kinds of stories about these different people, who use their own unique strengths, their own personal strengths, to make the world better. And in many cases, as with Kelley Kalafatich, in the face of such a searing debilitating pain and limitations.

Andy: So, you created this remarkable book, The Gift of Courage—and what’s going on now? What projects are you involved with in your world?

Ken: One is writing the book called “The Courage Compass“. I realized, as a result of feedback that I got from folks who had written a book, or who had read The Gift of Courage”, that they were very inspired by these people, who were leading meaningful lives where their passion and their heart was what guided them, as opposed to their pocketbook or constraints that we all feel, from society, to perform in a certain way.

These people said, “God! I wish I could be like that person. I wish I could be like that person; and I so admire that they’re following their heart and living their dreams.”

And I thought, “You know, I went through the process of not living my dreams and living my dreams. I’ve become somewhat of an expert on people, who were purposeful, powerful, community-oriented folks.” So, I thought, “Well, maybe I’ll write a book about how to live a passionate and purposeful life,” and that’s one that I’m working on now, The Courage Compass. I expect to have that done some time in 2014. That’s going to use some more examples of people in the real world who are leading purposeful, passionate lives, and then, also have a template for others to follow in wake up every morning, feeling like their life is meaningful and embracing what they’re going to go out and do.

The other thing that I’m doing is a spin-off of The Gift of Courage. We created a speaking event program. There’s one scheduled in Bend. There’d be one in the Bay Area in February; Sacramento in April. It’s called an “Evening of Empowerment”, and the people that are in The Gift of Courage are speaking at these events, and literally, in live form, raising the energy level of inspiration in the room, as a result of them simply telling their story and encouraging others to be powerful, meaning community members.

Kelley’s going to be speaking at the one in Bend, on November 5th, as is Eric Plantenberg, who I had talked about earlier. He’s a motivational expert, personal development guru; he was also a subject in the book. And then, Jeff Leeland, who was the founder of Sparrow Clubs—which is an amazing organization dedicated to helping the sick youth and their families—will be speaking as well.

The goal simply is to have people come together, be inspired; and all of the proceeds from the ticket sales are going to go to local non-profits, that are kid and family-oriented, in order to make our community better.

Andy: Sounds like a couple of amazing projects and very consistent with the goal of A Congruent Life.

Ken: It’s an honor to hear you say that. I hadn’t realized it as threaded together as it is. But yes—every single one of those projects are so meaningful to me. The book, The Gift of Courage; the book, Courage Compass, and an Evening of Empowerment—they literally make my heart feel alive when I’m engaged with them and when I think about what I’m doing.

Andy: How can our listeners engage with you, Ken?

Ken: Websites—I’d love our folks to visit the website Evening of Empowerment, or the website The Gift of Courage . They can reach me via the phone numbers that are on those websites. I would love for folks to come to an Evening of Empowerment, in Bend, at the Tower Theater. I would love for those folks who are listening from outside the Central Oregon to consider coming to the one in San Francisco or Sacramento. We’re also going to do one in Seattle some time in 2014.

I’d love to meet people in person. I’d love to hear stories of people who are living their dreams, who are leading congruent lives; or those that are headed that direction, and allow me to humbly maybe help them along that path.

Andy: That’s great. We’ll be sure to link to all of those things in the show notes for this episode. Ken, do you have any final thoughts that you’d like to leave our listeners with about authenticity?

Ken: The one that pops up first and foremost is right on to you and what you’re doing; and helping people share their stories of living authentic congruent lives is changing the world. And so, it’s an honor for me to be in your company and to be a part of your program.

It’s a perfect example, Andy, of what every single one of us could to do to elevate the state of the world, by simply peeling back the layers, uncovering what matters most to you, and then doing that. It doesn’t have to be a life-changing event, a life-changing process. Just bit by bit, peel back the layers, and bit by bit, do what you love.

Andy: Ken Streater, thanks very much for sharing this time on the show today. Thanks for all the great work that you’re doing in the world and the gift of your book.

Ken: Thank you, Andy. I look forward to continuing to follow your program and to be inspired by the people who you’re bringing to us.