It should come as no surprise that Cory Richards chose our interview time to get his 10,000 steps in. And that the 10,000 steps would more likely wind up being 20,000. Whether it is climbing to the top of the world or paddling through crocodile-infested waters, the former professional mountain climber and award-winning photographer has thrived on perpetual motion and pushing past limits.
Richards’ career as a restless adventurer is marked with incredible (and literal highs), including climbing Mt. Everest without supplemental oxygen and being the first and only America to summit one of the world’s highest peaks, Pakistan’s Gasherbrum II, in winter. It’s also marked with terrifying near-death experiences, including getting swept away by an avalanche during the descent from Gasherbrum II. (See his award-winning self-portrait taken moments after he dug his way out above.)
Related: 4 Leadership Lessons I Learned From a Mountain-Climbing Crisis
Richards’ latest book, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within, is a memoir that documents his career and travels, as well as the mental health and personal struggles he’s battled throughout his life, like when he was diagnosed with Bipolar 2 at age 14. We spoke about the lessons he’s learned in persistence and how he hopes his journey from a runaway teen to a man who’s stood on the top of the world will help others find their purpose.
In this book, you are extremely candid about struggles in your personal and professional life — some problems you write were self-inflicted and caused others a great deal of pain. What was it like sitting down to write it all down?
In the book Deep Work, the author talks about meaningful experiences starting by making a grand gesture. I was fortunate enough to take a piece of my book advance and use that to go somewhere else to work on it. I realized that when I was in L.A., I’m not writing. So once I got myself out of there, I was able to dive into the process. And it was so marvelous. I loved it. Of course, the excavation of painful history can be hard, but even that seemed to have a true joy to it. It gave me a deep sense of purpose and I think that’s something that I honestly still struggle with. What is my purpose? And so when I have a project or I’m going on an expedition, it drives me because it gives me that purpose.
A lot of inspirational images and memes feature someone climbing a mountain. Having actually done that, do you see any actual parallels between climbing and starting a business?
Climbing mountains is in many ways like an entrepreneurial activity because the outcome is very uncertain. You know where you’re going, you know what the goal is, but then there’s this huge void between the couch and the summit. So it’s a step-by-step thing. You break it down into very digestible buckets. One would be physical fitness, and that comes down to putting in the work on training days. And then you get into logistics. Like any business, you’re going to have conundrums that require a certain degree of creativity to overcome. And of course, you’ve got the financial implications — finding ways to fund this expedition is exactly like finding investors. And then you’ve got the final piece, which is the actual process of putting one foot in front of the other and navigating hurdles like bad weather, rockfalls, and avalanches. All of those things can end the venture, so it’s very, very allegorical to the process of building a business.
Related: The Struggle Climbing Show’s Ryan Devlin on Overcoming Setbacks
In 2011, you and your crew survived an avalanche and you took an incredible photo of yourself just after finding your way to the surface. How does an experience like that change your perspective?
The avalanche was such a visceral, physical experience. It was a sort of devastation because there was the profound fear of dying, which is the totality of loss. You’re getting thrashed, you’re getting thrown, it’s chaotic. There’s no certainty, there’s a sense of helplessness, of extreme discomfort, and there’s a sense of loss of time. Not only the loss of the remainder of your time on Earth, but time itself seems to have a very different quality, a much more infinite quality. When the brain undergoes life-threatening experiences, its capability to process huge amounts of information is awoken. It’s a wake-up, but the irony is that you’re waking up in the final moments.
What changed in your life after that?
The avalanche created the gateway into everything that I’ve started to turn towards and invest in, not only an introspection of self and how the mind works and how the heart works, but also coming back from devastation, from losing the fight. In terms of entrepreneurship, if you’re looking at a failure and thinking, ‘Well shit, I’ve lost everything,’ you have to remember so many stories about the birth of great ideas that came from a sense of desperation. We’re constantly afraid of failure, when in fact failure oftentimes is the doorway to success.
What do you think separates people who are adventurers and entrepreneurs?
I think we’re all entrepreneurs because we are all creatives generating a life around us. And I think the idea of self-worth is tied to that. That can be a good thing or reflect something darker. Oftentimes, people who don’t have a lot of self-worth are trying to prove that worth outwardly. But I think the most interesting creators in the entrepreneurial world are creating from a place of self-worth. They approach things like, “I’ve let go of the need to matter. And that’s freed up the space for me to be genuinely creative.” That’s idealistic, I know, but it is how I tend to see things.
