HHCIB 022 Patrick Sweeney & The Fear Frontier

How Hard Can It Be?

My guest this week is Patrick Sweeney, an Olympic athlete turned technology entrepreneur turned full time adventurer. Patrick chases adventure for a living, propelled by a passion to help others do the same through corporate speaking engagements and network television appearances, plus an upcoming book in 2017. Patrick grew up a working class Irish kid outside of Boston, and was shaped by a dramatic life experience he’ll share in our talk. He finished 2nd in the 1996 Olympic trials rowing the single scull and won international races from Canada to Norway. After attending a top business school, he built multiple ground-breaking technology companies, earned six patents, wrote two award winning books and appeared on media outlets from CNN to Bloomberg, CNBC, and The New York Times. One day, though, while working the 80-hour weeks and living the intense life of an entrepreneurial leader, Patrick got a wake-up call in the form of a life-threatening illness. When he recovered, he took his first steps toward finding his own adventurer again, unlocking a passion and energy for life all too often lost in the pursuit of material wealth. Today Patrick’s focus is on breaking world records and embracing every day as if it were his last. In Feb 2015 he became the first person to bike to Everest Base Camp in Nepal, and has now become the first to attempt cycling the Seven Summits. His mission is to help millions around the world find their adventurer within, and our second segment today focuses on the process of overcoming fear that’s central to achieving that or any goal in life and in business. This conversation is a fascinating one about breaking through what he calls the “fear frontier,” covering ground from startups to parenting, the limiting functions of our lizard brains, and the journey to find the “genius” we all have at the intersection of our passion and our vocation. PLEASE take a minute to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Overcast, or Pocket Casts, and consider giving us a quick, 5-star review on iTunes. It really helps spread the word and I would sincerely and personally appreciate it. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ?of the Northeast's most accomplished ?entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.?..?? ?People first. How Hard Can It Be is ?also ?sponsored by Actifio?, the world’s leading Enterprise Data-as-a-Service platform. Deliver your data just like your applications and infrastructure... as a service available instantly, anywhere. For hybrid cloud, faster DevOps, and better business resiliency, Actifio is Radically Simple.