Jenn Drummond

• The near-death experience Jenn had - and the powerful, three-word question she asked herself afterward that changed her life (8:11)
• The extraordinary things she's seen and done, from summiting Mount Everest to exploring some of the most remote parts of Antarctica (10:20)
• The surprising (yet not-so-surprising) way her children reacted after she set a new world record (29:08)
• Some of the poignant mantras Jenn uses to keep herself "on the right path" both when she's on a mountain and in her day-to-day life (34:19)

FRANK BLAKE: Hi, Jenn. And welcome to Crazy Good Turns. Just out of curiosity, from where are you speaking today?

JENN DRUMMOND: Yes, I'm at my home in Park City, Utah.

FRANK BLAKE: It's a particularly- I ask that for a lot of guests, but it's particularly relevant for you because on your website you actually have a tracker.

So it sounds like you go to lots of different places over the course of a year.

JENN DRUMMOND: I do.

People like to know where I'm climbing or going or all those fun things.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah. Well, I'm impressed by it. You take a lot of trips.

So for our listeners, they need to know, in addition to lots of other things about you, you are the first woman and really one of the very few people in the world who's ever climbed the Seven Second Summits, which means the second-highest mountain peak on all seven continents.

And you have a good description on your book on why that is a particularly challenging feat.

Maybe just start with, why would that be something that someone would want to do or be interested in doing?

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah. Okay, so let's bring it back to the fact that I was not a mountaineer when I said yes to this pursuit.

FRANK BLAKE: Right.

JENN DRUMMOND: I was in a horrific car crash that should have taken my life.

Thankfully it didn't, and instead it kind of woke me up to living.

Who do I want to be? What is my legacy? What kind of life am I living?

And I decided to climb a mountain for my 40th birthday.

And I asked a friend that was into mountaineering and he said, "Climb a mountain named Ama Dablam."

So I said, "Okay." He's like, "It's the Paramount Pictures logo. So every time you go to a movie you can be like, 'I climbed that mountain.'"

Made a ton of sense to me. And when I was training for Ama Dablam, COVID happened.

So now all of a sudden I'm homeschooling children instead of training to climb a mountain.

And one day one of my kids was struggling with his homework, and so I did that parent pep talk that we do. "We do hard things. You've got this."

And this son looks up at me and he goes, "Mom, if we do hard things, why are you climbing a mountain called 'I'm a dumb blonde' instead of a real mountain like Mount Everest?"

And you caught it, but sometimes I'd be like, "Ama Dablam, honey, not I'm a dumb blonde, but thank you."

And it just really opened the door of you know what? Sometimes perception matters.

And if my kid thinks that Everest is the hardest mountain in the whole world, I want to climb it.

And I want to show him that whatever our Everest is, we're capable of summiting.

So I had to hire a coach, and that coach gave me a book about becoming an uphill athlete.

And in the front of that book was a story about a lady who got a Guinness World Record.

And I just remember being in one of those moments where I wasn't feeling like a great parent. Homeschooling wasn't easy.

I don't know, I was just like, "If I had a Guinness World Record, my kids would think I'm cool. Because that's how they learned how to read is on those books, and I could do that because I can suffer."

And so, I talked to my coach and I'm like, "Hey, listen." I go, "If I got a record, that'd be cool."

And he's like, "Okay. Well, I'll think of something. Just give me a little bit of time."

I'm like, "All right, fine. But I don't want to grow fingernails or a pumpkin or speed-eat hot dogs or those kinds of things."

He's like, "Don't worry, I got you."

And then, a couple weeks later he called me and he is like, "Jenn, I have the perfect World Record for you. I think you should be the first woman to climb the Seven Second Summits."

And I'm like, "I don't even know what you're talking about. Seven what?"

And he goes, "No, let me tell you. It's like the Seven Second Summits. It's the second-highest point on each of the seven continents."

He goes, "It's only been done by one male. You'd be the first woman to do it."

And he goes, "And it's harder than the first seven. So people that are into mountaineering, it's going to be respected. Because they get it. The public doesn't always understand that the first seven aren't the hardest mountains in the world to climb."

I'm like, "Okay." And he goes, "And then think about it, seven continents, seven mountains. You have seven children. I think it sounds like a jackpot."

And he got me. I'm like, "It does sound like a jackpot, and it does feel like something worthy to sink my time into and see what happens."

So it was a pretty crazy adventure to say yes to.

FRANK BLAKE: Well, for sure. So on the part of Crazy Good Turns, I think we've got the crazy part nailed.

And just rewind for one second, because what a curious response to a near life-ending crash to go summiting, where, as you described in your book, you've had one of your colleagues die.

This is high, high risk. And as you said, this isn't like a childhood passion.

JENN DRUMMOND: Right.

FRANK BLAKE: What do you think took you to mountaineering?

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah. I think there's a handful of things.

And we can only connect the dots when we look back, but for me, I moved to Park City in 2015 and fell in love with the mountains, right? They're around me every day.

I see them, I love them. I also, if I go back to that accident, I survived.

And two weeks later, a girlfriend of mine had asked me to go running with her on a trail in Salt Lake. And I didn't go that day because it was kind of wet out and I was being like a brat.

I'm like, "I don't want to train. It's raining. I only want to train when it's sunny."

And I got a call from her husband later on that afternoon, and for some reason when she went on that run, it was wet out.

She slipped on a rock and hit her head and never came home.

FRANK BLAKE: Oh, no.

JENN DRUMMOND: And so, you have me who's metabolizing this horrific car crash, where I went front flip, end-over-end and then sideways rolls, and ended up upside down in the median, to the point where the cops could not rebuild a scenario where I survived.

And then, you have a friend of mine that's doing something healthy that we're all encouraged to do, doesn't come home. Right?

There's nothing that could place it in my head.

And the only thing that made sense to me is we don't get to choose when we die, but we sure get to choose how we live. And so, are we really living?

And that mantra just really permeated my system and made me say, "Am I living? Am I living?"

And for me, when I would go on a hike or whatever, I loved it.

I loved the time in nature. I loved when you went up to the top and you had that satisfaction.

And then, when you came back down that same trail, there's a million little points where you wanted to quit or turn around or say like, "Eh, this is good enough or whatever."

And when you come back down and you realize that you didn't, that you persevered, that you pushed through, you realize how powerful we truly are and how important it is for us to do these things that get us excited.

FRANK BLAKE: So one of the, to me again in reading your book and just thinking about what you did, the good turn aspect of what you did is there's a bit of a somebody from the tribe goes and does something impossible and comes back and describes for us what it was like.

Did you feel that that was part of what you were doing?

You were experiencing these things, knowing that you were going to recount the tales to others following that?

JENN DRUMMOND: You know at first, I think it evolved, right? So it was really interesting.

The first mountain I did was Ama Dablam because I was holding that promise to myself.

And that's a big mountain. It's more technical than Everest. It's not as high, but there's a lot of pieces to it.

And everything about that first experience was so magical.

And I remember getting to the top of the mountain and taking this huge inhale just to be like, "I'm here" and taking in that moment.

And when I took in that inhale, the world disappeared. I was one with everything. My kids were 7,500 miles away, and it felt like I was right next to them.

And it's just like time just dissipated, distance dissipated, and everything. And I'm like, "This is awe. This is what we talk about when we talk about the word awe."

And so, when I hiked back down, I'm like, "I need to share this. Our life, our planet, our world is magical."

And so, after that experience, it just changes you so much that you can't help but want to share it and get other people excited, because we all have a metaphorical mountain to climb.

Right?

Some of us might be climbing physical ones, but we're all climbing some kind of mountain with the goals that we set.

FRANK BLAKE: Absolutely.

And I, before we get to, you have great advice in your book for folks, before we get to some of that advice though, truly some of your experiences are some surreal, some stunning.

If you were to take the top three that you want to convey to our listeners of, "This was," as you say, "awe-inspiring or terrifying," what would they be?

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah. So I'll start with Mount Tyree.

That's the second-highest point in Antarctica. And just by getting, Antarctica is not an easy place to get to. Right?

FRANK BLAKE: Right.

JENN DRUMMOND: Okay? Getting to Antarctica is a journey in and of itself.

FRANK BLAKE: Right.

JENN DRUMMOND: And then, when you're in Antarctica, to get to the actual mountain that you're going to climb is a journey in and of itself.

And then, when you get to the mountain, you realize, "This mountain has only been climbed by about 15 people in the history of documented history."

FRANK BLAKE: Serious?

JENN DRUMMOND: Yes.

FRANK BLAKE: So is the mountain, out of curiosity, is it sort of in the middle of the continent or is it on the coast?

JENN DRUMMOND: It's in a little mountainous range or whatever, but it just hadn't been climbed. Right?

FRANK BLAKE: Right.

JENN DRUMMOND: And so, we didn't have notes. Right?

There's no GPS that says, "Hey, go this way or go that way or here's the trail or here's what you do."

And we're just reading other people's handwriting of what they took as ideas and things.

And you're at the South Pole, so it's not like your compass works perfect because of the magnetic pole and everything.

So we're-

FRANK BLAKE: And I would take the landscape is pretty much wanting.

JENN DRUMMOND: Barren. Yeah.

That's one thing, when you come back from Antarctica, it is such a shock to your system on so many levels.

One, there's smell again. Right? There's no smell in Antarctica because there's no life.

There's no plants, there's no bugs, there's absolutely nothing.

And then, from a visual aspect, you have the blue sky, the yellow sun, some rocks, and white snow. There's no pink, there's no purple, there's no red, there's no green.

And so, when you come back and you see a traffic light, you're like, "Oh my gosh, there's color again." Right?

It's the funniest thing to be, that deprivation, and having it return.

So when we were climbing in Antarctica, we're looking at handwritten notes and we're taking photos and we're writing notes, and we're documenting as much as we can because we want to help the next team that's going to do this and just learn from our process.

And I think the biggest lesson that I took away from Mount Tyree was it doesn't matter if you summit.

I think we put so much emphasis on the summits of our lives.

The journey is so significant and the collecting of notes and the taking of detail of, "Here's the rope we carried, here's the food we ate, here's the clothing we wore" so that when somebody else wants to do this thing, you've helped them so much and they can do so much more than what you could have done.

FRANK BLAKE: All right.

JENN DRUMMOND: So I think that's one of my favorite memories.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah.

JENN DRUMMOND: Another one of my favorite memories was climbing Mount Kenya.

So Mount Kenya is the second-highest point in Africa, located in Kenya, and it is a rock climb with an ice climb at the end.

You're not hiking.

You have a harness on, you have rope on, you have rock shoes on. You're crawling up the side of this mountain.

And I was nervous about going, just all the things.

But here's what's interesting.

I went to Mount Kenya earlier in my journey than I had planned, because I had advertised that I was trying to set this World Record.

And because I had on social media, "Here's what I'm trying to do," a charity reached out to me and said, "Hey, are you going to Africa soon? We see that you're trying to do this climb. Would you be willing to partner with us with this project that we have going on there?"

And I was like, "Oh, of course I'm willing to partner with this project you have going on. Are you kidding me? This is amazing."

And so, I went to Kenya earlier because this was at the end of COVID, and this charity here had raised enough money to bring an ambulance to a town that would help people get medical resources in places and dah, dah, dah, dah.

So I start connecting with these people.

I learn about period poverty over there, where women will not go to school for a week out of the month when they have their period.

So then, I start raising money here to help with the period poverty, because that's the cool thing to be a part of.

And so, I get there, and it's all these adventures that I never would've had or never would've experienced or would've never been able to play a part of had I not had this other goal that I was willing to say, "It's not accomplished. I don't know how it's going to be accomplished. Here's what I'm trying to do."

And because I kind of waved my flag and said, "This is me. This is where I'm at."

FRANK BLAKE: You were sought out.

JENN DRUMMOND: I got sought out.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah.

JENN DRUMMOND: Right?

And then it changed me where I'm like, "Okay, now every one of my climbs, I want to have a charitable component to it. Why not?"

And prior to that, I didn't even think about it.

So it's truly these things that just evolve because you're evolving.

FRANK BLAKE: That's phenomenal.

And let me, and what was the scariest moment?

If you said, "This one just, I was, 'Why am I here? Why did I do this? I take it all back? I wish I weren't on this trip.'"

JENN DRUMMOND: Oh. Okay.

Well, one, you say you take it all back every day, just let you know that every day you're going to say that.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah.

JENN DRUMMOND: So expect it, and just know it and then get it out and keep going.

When I went to K2. So K2 is known for being a dangerous mountain.

And you read about things, but then when you're there and you're like, "Oh, this is a dangerous mountain."

Different level than what I thought.

And it was just a scary time to be there the first time I was there, because Pakistan borders Afghanistan.

And when I first went there, the United States pulled out of Afghanistan.

And so, then they're losing cities by the minute next door.

And here I am like a blonde Am-. It's hard to hide me. I can try as best as I can. I stand out in those cultures, for sure.

And so, it was just one of those things where there is so much human risk, not just nature risk and what this is going on.

And on that particular climb, I lost a friend. And I talk about it in the book.

We had an avalanche. The avalanche took his life, and it just made it real.

You can read about things, but then when they happen to you, you're like, "Okay, now I can't discount it and whatever."

And so, instead of climbing a mountain, I ended up burying a friend.

And the interesting thing is, is I had the choice to continue to climb on this particular climb, too.

And I remember going in, and this is a quick hit for everybody that's listening.

When you set big goals, you need to be very clear on your values.

Because the summits pull us. They do. You get summit fever.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah.

JENN DRUMMOND: Whatever your goal is, and then you kind of forget your values because you're really close to the top.

And for me, I was two days from the top, my teammate dies.

And one of my values is, "People over peaks." I think the goal, I think the peak will always be there, but who we are as people is way more important than what we achieve.

And so, I always need to make sure I'm putting people first.

And so, when this other team asked me, "Hey, do you want to keep climbing?"

Yeah, there's a part of me, I definitely wanted to keep climbing.

But I'm like, "That's not my value. I need to go down and take care of my team and make sure my teammate gets buried and has all this kind of stuff happen."

And so I do that, and I turn around and I know it's the right thing to do, even though it doesn't feel a hundred percent right.

Sometimes the right thing to do only feels 55% right. You still do it. You do the right thing.

And so I came home and now I have to go back. Right?

Now I have a whole year.

And almost when you have time and you know what you experienced before, it makes it scarier.

And so, I have this year to train, I have to raise money again. I have to say goodbye to my family again.

I'm on this mountain that kills 25% of the people that try to climb it.

And so, now I'm on it for the second time, which is not helping my odds of surviving.

And I was going, but I wasn't excited until I got a phone call a couple weeks before it was time to go climb.

And this phone call came from a female that I'd met the year before, and she was training but didn't have the resources to make it happen.

And so, she asked if I could help. And I'm like, "Yeah, we have gear up the... I have so much gear, it's embarrassing."

So I bring over a whole bunch of gear, and she's like the same size as me, and she's on my team. And we have success, thank goodness.

So July 22 of 2022, I become the third American female to stand on top of that summit, which was cool.

But the cooler piece was 30 minutes later, the first Pakistani female stands on top of her country's prized peak, right?

A Muslim female, that now all these little girls throughout the world see somebody that looks like them in an environment that maybe not be normal.

And that stirs up curiosity, and it allows them to say, "Well, wow. What does that mean? And how do I place that?" And it just opens so many doors.

And I share that story because it was one of my hardest experiences, and it was by far my most rewarding, because we just don't know how the universe is using us.

And if we surrender to our values and trust the process, things bigger than we could have ever imagined happened.

And yay for me, but I'm so much prouder of being a part of her story than I am of even my own.

FRANK BLAKE: Right.

And one of the things I really enjoy about your book is you have a lot of what I would call very compacted advice, great pithy statements.

One of them, you've already mentioned, "People over peaks."

I was going to go through some of them and maybe you give some of the backstory to them, but one of the others was, "If at first you don't succeed, learn," which I think is a great phrase for people to keep in mind.

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah.

FRANK BLAKE: Give us a little bit of the background on that.

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah, definitely.

Even yesterday, I went for a hike and I'm like, "What am I, a newbie?" I made so many errors again because I hadn't been hiking in a while.

I wore brand new white socks, which you never do when you're hiking because they turn brown after your first time. Right?

I forgot sunscreen, I forgot Chapstick.

Silly things that, it's just funny you can get out of habit and you're just like, "Okay. Well, make my list again to make sure I pack correctly the next time I come."

FRANK BLAKE: And I give another one of, "You can't always predict a storm, but you can prepare for it."

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah.

FRANK BLAKE: And I assume that was through lots of trial and error.

JENN DRUMMOND: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

And if you look at the obstacle as a possibility to solve versus as a thing that's supposed to stop you, it just opens the door and allows you to get creative and figure out, "Okay, I didn't expect this, but I have enough bandwidth to handle it. So let's keep going."

FRANK BLAKE: An interesting thing in preparing for our interview, because your book is so full of, as I say, really great concise advice, I looked up mountaineering quotes.

And I find that there are some brilliant ones, and it must be something about mountaineering that sort of lends itself to that.

So I'm going to give you two and ask you for your comment on it.

One is, "Life is a bit like mountaineering. Never look down." Do you agree with that or disagree?

JENN DRUMMOND: Yes. Well, I don't know if I agree with it a hundred percent. Right?

FRANK BLAKE: Right.

JENN DRUMMOND: I think you do look down eventually to see the progress you're making. Right?

So sometimes for me, when you're on this mountain, you're like, "I don't know how much further we have to go."

You need to look behind you to say, "Oh, I've built all this momentum. Okay, I'm making progress. I'm okay. I am still going."

Because that progress allows you to get that energy to continue.

Sometimes when things feel so far away, it's like, "I don't know."

But yeah, no, for the most part, just keep your eyes on the prize, my friends.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah.

Then another that actually seems reflected in your book, the quote is, "Your faith can move mountains and your doubt can create them."

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah. Very much, very much. I don't know a better way to say that.

That's magic, so we'll go with that quote. But it is.

If you believe in yourself, it's possible.

Whatever you believe is possible, and that's the most important thing you can do.

And if you start doubting yourself, you're making mountains that don't exist.

FRANK BLAKE: And so, what's an example from your experience?

JENN DRUMMOND: Okay. So here's an example.

I land in Russia to go climb this mountain called Dykh-Tau, and they lost my luggage. Okay?

So now I'm making this story up. "I can't climb this mountain. I need to go home. I don't have my stuff. I ordered 20 pairs of gloves to find that perfect one pair and sent 19 pairs back. And now you're telling me I don't even have my gloves?"

And so, I was making this huge drama of, "Well, I'm not going to climb."

And the guide came up to me, he is like, "Jenn, we need to go now or you're not going to go because this is the weather window. We can go to the rental store and we can go rent gear."

And my mind kept telling me, "We can't rent gear. This is a technical climb. My gear matters."

And then I got as wise enough to say, "Okay, I'm not going to summit. That's fine. But if I at least go to the mountain, now I'm going to have more beta and more information so that when I come back with my gear to summit, I'll know more and be better prepared."

So I changed my goal and I continued on.

Well, life would have it that we summited in rental gear, in a storm. Okay?

And it was such a bad storm that there's parts of this mountain I butt-scooted down, not pretty for a nice documentary. Right?

This was an ugly situation, but no one cares. They care if you got to the top.

No one asks, "What did your clothes look like? Or did you have to..."

I was wearing Scooby-Doo underwear because my underwear was gone, and so we had to go to a store and the little boy's underwear is what fit me.

And so, I'm like, "I'm climbing a mountain in Russia in rental gear with Scooby-Doo underwear. Really? This is my life right now?"

And so, that doubt could have made it a mountain where I didn't even get a chance to go.

Or my faith in, "Hey, whatever happens, I can handle it. It's going to be fine. I'm just going to learn," can allow me to climb the mountain.

And the crazy thing about this experience is six months later, Russia closes. Right? Because they invade Ukraine.

So had I not gone and done this thing, I would not have the record right now because I wouldn't have gone back to climb the mountain because you climb it between July and October.

FRANK BLAKE: That's amazing. At what point did you decide you were going to write a book about this?

Did you know it pretty much from the start? When did you decide?

JENN DRUMMOND: No, I was not writing a book. Oh, my goodness.

A book is a hard thing to write, people who are listening right now.

FRANK BLAKE: Right.

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah. So what happened was, is I was telling a friend some of the stories of the experiences.

And my friend knows me from the business world, not really the mountaineering world, and they're like, "You need to write a book, because these stories are business principles that you experienced in the mountain. And you could have a big impact on people, because a lot of times when we see things in black and white, they become aha moments. And if they're gray, then we might not catch on to them."

And I'm like, "Yeah. You know what? I should write a book to at least document what happened, share some of the experiences, and see if I can help somebody."

FRANK BLAKE: And if you were talking to our audience and saying, "Here's either the advice that you might get from the book or why you might want to pick up the book and read it," other than for the great stories because they are great stories.

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah. I think we find each other in each other's stories.

So when you read this book, I bring you to the mountain, I highlight a lesson that I learned, and then I give you some points to think about about yourself so that you apply it to your own life.

So it's a story, but it's a bit of a workbook.

And it's definitely going to help you achieve something that if you've been struggling with or if you've run into a roadblock or whatever, you're going to maybe be better equipped to handle that when it comes up.

FRANK BLAKE: Now I'm curious with your kids, we got the beginning story of your comment from one of your children that drove this.

What was the reaction from your children?

JENN DRUMMOND: Oh, my gosh.

FRANK BLAKE: And your spouse?

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah. This is so children.

For everybody that's listening, you can just roll in, your body's laughing already.

So I set the World Record. I feel pretty good about myself if I had to be honest. And I'm on a flight home and my kids are going to meet me at the airport.

So I meet them at the airport, they're there, balloons and all the things that kids do.

And I give my little guy a hug, and he's like, "Good job, mom." I'm like, "Thanks so much, honey."

And he goes, "Mom, you have bad breath."

I'm like, "I was on a plane for hours." Right?

So they thought it was cool, but I'm still their mom and life goes on, carry on. Who cares?

FRANK BLAKE: Right. That is funny.

You've said you came down from this experience, came down from the mountains, a different person.

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah.

FRANK BLAKE: Can you explain that?

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah. I think every mountain that we climb, the journey changes us.

And we learn something about ourselves and then we integrate that into who we are, and we take it on our next climb.

And for me it was, just, there was continuous learnings.

Every single time, I was like, "Wow. Wow." It gets addicting, right?

Because you have all these revelations. But yeah, no, I'm an entirely different person than who started.

FRANK BLAKE: I was struck in reading your book by how much you expressed gratitude to the people who were helping you in your journey.

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah.

FRANK BLAKE: Go through some of that.

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah. Okay.

So big mountains take big teams. So if you have a big goal, it's going to take a big team to make that goal happen.

And that came so apparent to me in my climb of Mount Everest, because I used Mount Everest to train for K2. And so, when I was going to Mount Everest-

FRANK BLAKE: Wait. In some ways, you need to stop right there. For people to say, "I used Mount Everest to as a training mountain," that's a pretty amazing comment.

Sorry. Sorry to interrupt.

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's good. And I'm a mom, so all moms are going to relate.

I wasn't worried about me climbing Mount Everest. I was worried about being away from my kids for so long.

I'm like, "How could I be a good mom and be away from these children? This is my number one priority and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

All the stories that are trying to keep you stuck.

And so, I sat with that. I'm like, "Okay. Well, I'm going to make sure my kids are a hundred percent okay."

So grandma came to visit, I had nannies sent, everything was dialed in.

And so, I called the kids' school and I talked to the teachers. I'm like, "Hey, I'm just letting you know I'm going to be gone for about three or four weeks. I'm climbing Mount Everest. And everything is set up at home. But if you guys could just give my kids a little bit of grace, I bet they're going to be off because mom's not there."

And one of the teachers came back and she's like, "This is amazing. Would you mind coming in and teaching the kids about setting Everest-like goals?"

So I do. I go into the classroom, we talk about setting an Everest-like goal.

These kids color little hikers, and they say, "I want to make a black diamond ski team" or "I want to make the travel soccer team" or "I want to be able to bike to my grandma's house this summer," all their little goals.

We decorate the hallway. Then, in the front of the school, we put up a mountain, which is Mount Everest.

And then, we have me, and I have this tracking device that we talked about at the beginning.

And so when I'm at Mount Everest, the kids can move me up and down this Everest at their school so they know where I am.

And with technology these days, I'm able to Zoom call from basecamp into the school and talk to the kids.

So I Zoom call into the classrooms and I answer questions like, "What do I eat and where do I poop?" and things that kids care about.

And I'm climbing this mountain, and I realized, "I'm not climbing this mountain just for me. I have this entire school and this entire community that's watching and tracking and supporting and cheering and all these things."

So I get to the top, it feels amazing. I come home, I talk to the kids.

And the biggest gift was my kids felt so seen and so loved and so supported by people outside of me.

And it changed just all of it in such a good way. Right?

And you climb Everest, you have people that help make you food, they move your tents, they decide the weather.

There are so many people involved for me to climb that one mountain that it's silly that it's like we even celebrate that I'm at the top.

I'm like, "There's a thousand plus people that were involved for me to be standing here right now. So I don't even know how to get all of you up here, but this flag's for you."

FRANK BLAKE: Well, so I do just, I want to call you out.

It is such a nice note in your book, that you do recognize all of those folks, and where it does seem that a lot of people do make it all about them, quite honestly.

JENN DRUMMOND: There's just no space for it. If I had to climb Mount Everest by myself, I'd get nowhere. I wouldn't know how to navigate the ice fall.

It just would never happen.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah. So if you were to say to someone picking up your book who is thinking about taking on a big goal, what are some of the first things they need to be having in mind?

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah.

I think one of the biggest things that I learned is that if you're taking on a big hard goal, there is no room for you to be hard on yourself.

You have to be so kind to yourself and so loving to yourself and so supporting of yourself, because the thing you're doing is hard.

So you can't have two hard things and be balanced.

You need to be this kind, loving, supportive person of yourself and let the environment be hard so that together you come out balanced.

So I think that's one of the biggest pieces, is when I would make mistakes or I would do things wrong, I wouldn't be like, "Oh, Jennifer" or "Oh, Jenn, of course you did that."

I'd be like, "Okay, now we learned" or "Now we're better" or "Thank you for teaching me this."

The language you use for yourself is the difference between getting to the top or not.

FRANK BLAKE: That's such a great point.

When you think about the next five years for yourself, are you anxious about setting new goals? Are you pretty comfortable with where you are?

Tell us about the next chapter.

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah. For me, my goal right now is to be.

It is really easy for my personality to be a human doing.

I love the accolades. I like the external validation. It can get addicting and all that kind of stuff.

But my kids are watching.

And if I don't teach them how to have a season of winter and not be in the spotlight and not be doing and just metabolizing what's already been done, I don't know where else they're going to learn that.

Because our society always like, "What's next? What's next? What's next?" And part of enjoying life is being present and celebrating what is.

So that is definitely on my radar to be conscious of that.

I'm traveling, giving speeches to companies.

I absolutely love going into businesses, sharing the story, relating it to something that they're doing, and having the language that they can use to pursue their goals.

And then, I also live in Park City, and sometimes companies will come out here.

And I'll get their employees outside and we'll do an experiential thing like taking a hike and just getting to unplug and meditate and just do that kind of stuff that allows them to go back into the hustle and the busy when they go back to work and just learn how to take that break for themselves.

FRANK BLAKE: So I ask this to all of our guests.

Who is it in your life who's done a crazy good turn for you?

JENN DRUMMOND: Who's done a crazy good turn for me?

My children are constantly doing crazy good turns. They're so good at trying something, letting it go, trying something again, changing who they want to be.

One of them wanted to be a DJ, and now he's really big into mechanics.

And they just flow through life so well that it reminds me to let go of what I think it should be and just allow it to be what it is and enjoy that process.

FRANK BLAKE: That's terrific. That's terrific.

I don't want to leave without mentioning your podcast.

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah.

FRANK BLAKE: Maybe you want to describe your podcast a bit.

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I have a podcast called Seek Your Summit, and I share stories of resilience, of reinvention and of inspiration. And it's just so fun.

You love that, right? You get to talk to people.

FRANK BLAKE: Right.

JENN DRUMMOND: And hear their stories, and the how and the who and the why and their thought process.

And it's such a gift to be able to do that.

FRANK BLAKE: It is a great thing. Are there a couple of things that stand out for you?

I think it's always unfair people ask, "What's your favorite podcast?"

And there isn't a favorite one, but are there are a couple of things that stand out on your learning, from your part?

JENN DRUMMOND: Yeah. One of my favorite guests was named Glen Stearns.

This guy had a journey, right? He sold-

He got his girlfriend pregnant at 14, came from alcoholic parents, went across the country, learned about mortgages, ended up starting a company named Stearns Lending, sold it to BlackRock for millions and millions of dollars.

BlackRock took it apart and destroyed it.

So he is watching that happen, does a comeback and starts Kind Lending.

And is just this story of setback and triumph and setback and triumph and resilience and all these things.

And listening to his story just reminds me, anytime something bad's going on, I'm like, "This is a brief moment in time. I can continue to go."

And so, Glenn is a person that stands out in general, but these people who come from foster care or these environments that you're just like, "How?"

And they do things like invent cauliflower crust or turn into network marketing businesses and change the trajectory of their lives, and you're just like, "Yay, people. Let's do it."

FRANK BLAKE: Exactly right, exactly right.

Well, this has been just a phenomenal conversation. Thank you, Jenn.

And we're going to give away copies of your book.

JENN DRUMMOND: Oh, good.

FRANK BLAKE: And I hope all our listeners take the time to either ask to get a free copy or go buy a copy because it's a terrific book.

It's an amazing set of experiences.

And it's been a pleasure talking with you. What's the best way for our audience to learn more about Jenn Drummond?

JENN DRUMMOND: Yes. Okay, so I have a gift for your audience.

If they text the word Everest to the number 33777, okay, you're going to get a video sent to you.

And it's a video of the Milky Way Galaxy going over Everest Base Camp.

FRANK BLAKE: Oh, wow. Wow.

JENN DRUMMOND: And it is like, I keep it on my phone.

And I do it because anytime life gets overwhelming or crazy or hard, I just look at this video, which is like 19 seconds, and it reminds me that I'm this little human on this little planet that's circling the sun, and it's not a big deal. Right?

And so, I love sharing that with people.

FRANK BLAKE: That's brilliant.

JENN DRUMMOND: And when you text Everest to 33777, you'll get into my network.

And you'll be able to know what I'm doing, you can follow me on social or my website, Jenn Drummond.

And we can stay in touch, so please reach out.

FRANK BLAKE: That is brilliant. Thank you very much, Jenn.

It's been an amazing pleasure and privilege. Thank you.

JENN DRUMMOND: Thank you.