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Episode #199: Jack Fleckney

Founder

Legend Expeditions | Tanzania

Episode #199: Jack Fleckney
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Guest Bio

Jack Fleckney is the founder of Legend Expeditions, a Tanzania-based company specializing in guided Kilimanjaro climbs and African safaris. A former Royal Marine Commando, Jack combines his military discipline and extensive expedition experience with a deep knowledge of East Africa to offer well-supported, carefully planned adventure travel. Fluent in Swahili, he has led numerous successful climbs to Kilimanjaro’s summit and has completed remarkable endurance challenges such as rowing across the Atlantic and kayaking the Okavango Delta.

Show Summary

In this episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast, host Jason Elkins speaks with Jack Fleckney about his journey from a Royal Marine Commando to a respected Kilimanjaro expedition leader and founder of Legend Expeditions. They explore the unique approach Jack takes to guiding climbers, emphasizing acclimatization, comfort, and rigorous support to maximize summit success rates.

Jack shares insights on the challenges of climbing Kilimanjaro, including the importance of pacing, hygiene, nutrition, and the mental demands of summit night. He also offers a detailed look into the local team’s roles—from guides to porters and chefs—and how the company’s commitment to fair wages and support is central to both the client experience and community well-being.

The conversation touches on Jack’s personal adventures, such as rowing across the Atlantic and kayaking through Africa’s wild landscapes, and the balance he’s found between pursuing big challenges and building a sustainable business and family life in Tanzania.

Key Takeaways

  • ✓ Maximizing Kilimanjaro summit success depends heavily on proper acclimatization, which includes strategic route choices and rest days.
  • ✓ Providing climbers with quality sleeping arrangements, nutritious meals, and hygiene facilities significantly improves their chances of reaching the summit.
  • ✓ The “climb high, sleep low” technique, including trekking to higher altitudes and returning to sleep at lower camps, helps the body acclimate more effectively.
  • ✓ Summit night requires mental toughness supported by experienced guides walking alongside each climber at a personalized pace.
  • ✓ The team supporting climbs includes guides, porters, chefs, and logistics staff, all of whom play vital roles in safety and comfort on the mountain.
  • ✓ Legend Expeditions maintains a high staff-to-client ratio, ensuring personalized attention and support throughout the climb.
  • ✓ The Kilimanjaro Porter’s Assistance Programme (K-PAP) helps regulate fair wages and working conditions for mountain staff, and Legend Expeditions is an audited member.
  • ✓ Tanzanian culture is characterized by warmth, kindness, and a genuine hospitality that often surprises first-time visitors.
  • ✓ Jack’s background as a Royal Marine Commando and his endurance challenges have shaped his disciplined yet empathetic approach to guiding and business.
  • ✓ Building a sustainable adventure business in East Africa involves balancing client experience with supporting local communities and fair labor practices.

What You’ll Find on Legend Expeditions | Tanzania

  • ✓ Expert-led Kilimanjaro climbing experiences designed to maximize summit success through careful acclimatization and support.
  • ✓ High-quality camping setups including beds, mattresses, hot water bottles, and hygienic facilities like flushable toilets and showers on the mountain.
  • ✓ Small group sizes supported by a large, experienced team of guides, porters, and chefs to ensure personalized care and safety.
  • ✓ Authentic East African safaris, providing clients with opportunities to explore wildlife and landscapes beyond the mountain.
  • ✓ A commitment to fair wages and working conditions for all staff, certified by adherence to the Kilimanjaro Porter’s Assistance Programme.
  • ✓ A company culture that values local expertise, community support, and delivering memorable, well-organized adventure travel.

Learn more about Legend Expeditions | Tanzania and connect with Jack at:

https://www.legendexpeditions.com

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Podcast Transcript

This transcript is auto-generated on recording, and has not been edited by a human. It may contain lots of mistakes, crazy words, and stuff that makes no sense. The host and the guest are not responsible for the accuracy of the transcript.

Jason (00:00.996)
Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Big World Made Small podcast for the Adventure Traveler. So happy to have each and every one of you back today. I’m also very excited. We’ve got a great guest today. He’s really the adventure guy that kind of goes along with Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast. And his name is Jack, Jack Fleckney. He is the founder of Legend Expeditions. Jack, it’s a real pleasure to have you here. Thanks for joining us.

Jack Fleckney (00:26.2)
Thank you very much, Jason. Good to chat with you.

Jason (00:28.888)
So the first thing people are gonna notice is your accent and they’re gonna just maybe make assumptions of where you might be at in the world. We’re gonna discuss how you got to where you are, but let’s at least let them know where you are, and then we’re gonna talk a little bit about what Legend Expeditions is.

Jack Fleckney (00:45.774)
Of course, yeah, so it’s 9pm here. I’m sat in Moshe, which is a town basically on the foothills of Kilimanjaro. So it’s where our small home and office is located from the front garden. We can see the top of the mountain. So I’m sat here this evening in Tanzania, although I share time between here and the UK.

Jason (01:04.963)
Very cool. Well, and one of the things you mentioned was obviously it’s later in the later in the day there, so you’ve got a little less light than I do here in Colombia at the moment. But also you said, you know, we’re a small town, Tanzania, who knows about the internet. So so we’re gonna we’re gonna see how if we can make it make it through here. Yeah, no, that’s okay. I get that. I’ve I’ve lived in a lot of different places and I’ve had those similar experiences. so let’s let’s tell our listeners not how you started Legend Expeditions, but what

Jack Fleckney (01:19.448)
Yes, my apologies if it does cut out.

Jason (01:34.948)
What is Legend Expeditions? Who do you serve and what is kind of your bread and butter?

Jack Fleckney (01:40.27)
Yeah, Legend Expeditions is a company based in Tanzania and we specialize in Kilimanjaro climbs and our speciality is, well it started off as having as high summit success as possible. So we wanted everyone that comes out to give them the best chance of reaching the summit of Kilimanjaro, just because historically, know, the summit success is sits in between around 70 to 80%, depending on what route you’re doing on the mountain. We were trying to increase those numbers.

And the result of that is we’ve become a little bit more luxury. So we talk about sleeping setups, the things we take up on the mountain, the way we look after the team that works with you. and alongside that, we also do safaris. We didn’t start off doing safaris, but that evolved as more customers travel with us and then wanted to go out into the bush and see the Serengeti or just see particular wildlife. And then I started guiding and leading some of those trips as well.

Jason (02:29.818)
Okay, very cool.

Y I heard you say we kinda started out or initially it was about getting the success rate up as high as possible. And then I heard you say it kinda shifted into a lot more luxury and and kind of how we do it. So I’m curious, did the initial goal of increasing the summit rates change or does or is the way you’re doing it with the luxury and the care you’re taking, does that increase this the summit rate success rate? I don’t know. I’m just curious what the kind

Connection is there.

Jack Fleckney (03:02.441)
Now you’ve nailed it, Jason. So I’m ex-military and when we started working on the mountain, we looked at every single detail of the climb that we could improve and do a little bit better. And in result, give people a better chance of reaching the summit. normally people don’t reach the summit because of acclimatization. So the first thing we looked at was routes on the mountain. We looked at how many days they have to acclimatize, the altitude profile when they’re climbing on the mountain and start to create the best option there. And then we were like, well, people need to sleep really well.

hydrate really well, eat really well to acclimatise better. So the sleeping then was, well, let’s not lay on the floor in a tent, let’s bring in stand-up tents, let’s bring in beds, let’s bring in some thick mattresses for them to sleep on, pillows, hot water bottles we’ve introduced, know, all the things that are gonna make people sleep as best as possible. And then I suppose the other side, so it was hygiene, so.

Again, you you’re climbing a mountain for potentially eight days sometimes more and it’s very easy to get poorly on the mountain because it’s a little bit unhygienic. So we’re like, how do we improve that? So we started off by doing hand washing stations where they have dinners every time they’re on top of that. And they’ve got public toilets up on the mountain, but they are like, they’re squatting toilets that are just huge holes really. Like, so you can fall into them, Jason, right? So.

Jason (04:16.442)
Uh-huh.

Jack Fleckney (04:18.093)
and they’re not very hygienic at all. So we were like, well, let’s bring up our own toilets. So we bring toilets up on the mountain with us and they’re like flushable toilets that we clean and empty out. And I suppose the final addition is, which we kind of introduced as we’ve been growing the business, which was showers. So we had these, in the military, we had these showers that you could just transport alongside with you, heat some water, fill it up and then just have a shower. So we, a bit like solar showers. I’m sure lots of your listeners know about solar showers.

Jason (04:42.586)
Mm-hmm.

Jack Fleckney (04:44.353)
So we introduced that now as well. So it’s just another way that people can stay clean on the mountain. But I suppose that’s just like the customer facing side. On our side, we’ve done lots in terms of medical safety, oxygen cylinders, all sorts to try and look after people and give them a better chance of making it to the top.

Jason (05:01.274)
Okay, so what I got out of what you just said is if they stay hygienic, so clean, not not getting sick, well fed, well rested, feeling good about life, the chances of them getting to the top are higher. That’s basically what I boiled down. What you said, is that pretty much the the deal. Was was that a as a f we’re gonna get into your background, but ch since you mentioned already being, you know, a military guy

Jack Fleckney (05:16.493)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly that.

Jason (05:29.838)
Probably I was in the military as well. I was I was in the army, I was an infantry paratrooper guy, and so we slept on the ground a lot we didn’t always have tents and stuff like that. So I’m curious, was that a challenge for you to kind of get your well here’s an example. When I got out of the military, I went the first job I had out was managing a fast food restaurant.

And I was, you know, an NCO in the army and if you didn’t show up on time you did push ups. If you showed up without shaving, you got sent you know, you were in trouble. So I remember dealing with these guys, most of my employees were still in high school or college and here I’m showing up like, you need to go home and shave or get that earring out or you know, do push ups and it just i it didn’t work very well. So when I hear you say, we were figuring out the routes and how to climb and get to the top and all this stuff, I can imagine that some of these comfort stuff

were probably a secondary thing for you. So was that a challenge? Where I’m going with this, is was that a challenge for you to get your head around that not everybody is comfortable sleeping in the dirt and waking up in the morning and eating a eating a meal out of a can?

Jack Fleckney (06:35.981)
Yeah, I was very lucky actually because I left the military and I think there’s two differences. I think the UK military is probably a little bit more relaxed with with I’ve worked with the American military. I used to work with the US Marines and the SEALs a lot in out in the California and Harvey Desert. I think it’s called and and yeah, I yeah, oh, there you go. know well, Joseph. So so I saw the difference in the way you do those things. But the lucky thing for me is I left and I learned those lessons before I set the business up because

Jason (06:51.643)
yeah.

Jason (07:03.276)
good for you.

Jack Fleckney (07:03.405)
I left the military and yeah, I left the military and I was really into training. So I set up a gym. remember the first session I ever took was for like a PT session for a lady who actually raced motorbikes. And she started, I mean we did like a 500 meter run, she started crying in the middle of it because it was too hard. And I remember standing there and thinking, what do I do with this situation? Do I shower? Just tell her to carry on going? So I had a number of years before.

Jason (07:26.506)
Yeah.

Jack Fleckney (07:32.993)
setting up this company. I kind of, we call it Civvy Street. I don’t know what you would say, Jax, we call it Civvy Street as in like you leave the military and go into Civvy Street, civilian life. And yeah, it was a big mental shift for me. I remember the first staff appraisal that I did with a staff member that joined our business. And I was just so way too direct and just way too honest, which did not go down well. So yeah, I’ve learned those lessons through many mistakes.

Jason (07:33.612)
Okay. All right.

Jason (07:41.06)
Yep.

Jason (08:01.112)
I I I get it completely. That’s like, yeah. And I’ve got enough time now where I look back and I think, wow, I was so young dumb and just full of stuff and it was yeah, it was a challenge. all right, we’re gonna we’re definitely gonna get into that. I do have a couple questions. I’ve had a few conversations with people about Kilimanjaro, but don’t really know that much about it. I know that it takes some time to acclimate. I’ve heard that

Jack Fleckney (08:11.318)
Hehehehe

Jason (08:31.098)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve heard that the summit of Kilimanjaro is similar to base camp at Everest, but the difference is that people going to base camp take longer to get there or I I don’t know what the deal is. But the the altitude is is a real thing. So just let’s talk about that a little bit for people that aren’t that don’t know what we’re talking about.

Jack Fleckney (08:49.256)
yeah.

Jack Fleckney (08:53.066)
Yeah, of course. I’m extremely passionate about the mountain and the area around it. Kilimanjaro is based in Tanzania and it’s just on the border below Kenya, so up in northern Tanzania. actually, the first people that came across it were actually German explorers. And they were trying to spread Christianity, but they also doubled up as explorers and would go back writing stories about different things they’d seen throughout.

you know, animals, tribes, different things that they as they’re traveling through East Africa. you know, people, if you think about this, a Scottish guy called David Livingstone is very famous. They all came across, number one, looking for the source of Nile and number two, looking for different tribes and wildlife. And one German explorer came across Kilimanjaro, which was about mid 1850s. Obviously spent months traveling back home to tell everyone and said, look, I’ve seen this mountain in Africa and it’s got snow on it. And no one believed him.

And it wasn’t for another 20 odd years until they sent another trip out that actually came across it and went, okay, no, this is real. And it was Germans that were the first to properly climb to the summit in the 1880s. So you’re right that the mounting is very, very high. it’s just below 6,000 meters in feet. I think that’s around 19,000 feet.

So it’s a very, very high mountain. So there is huge consideration for acclimatization. And if you look at most reasons why people don’t make it to the top, it’s just because they don’t acclimatize correctly. So that might mean they’ve either gone up too high. It might just mean their body’s not very good at altitude. It might mean, you know, a lot of different factors that affect how people acclimatize as they go up the mountain. And there is thousands of companies that offer Kilimanjaro climbs and all of them are slightly different, but there definitely is a, like a set way that you climb the mountain and there is.

four main routes. I suppose the most popular route currently is one called the Machame route, which goes up from the south of the mountain and you climb it over six or seven days. That summit success is in around 80 to 85%. Then you’ve got one called the Murangu route, which is famous because it’s lower days, so it’s five to six days, but you actually sleep in huts on the way up. That route has the lowest summit success. So the true summit success of that is probably 65 to about 72%.

Jack Fleckney (11:07.764)
And you’ve got one called the Lemosho, which is kind of what we have as our bread and butter up from the west side of the mountain, where the summit success, which you climb over seven or eight days is up over 90%. And then there’s one final one that’s well known called the Rongai route, which climbs to the north, which is a little bit quieter. Summit success again is in the high eighties. So most people, when they go to book, they look at these routes and go, right, which one do I fancy doing for what reason? And a lot of the consideration for most people is days off work.

What can I afford to have days off work to come out and climb and come and go up the mountain?

Jason (11:41.185)
So I I see there’s a little bit of a dilemma for some people. If time is an issue, you’re thinking, well, I need to do it in as few days as possible. If actually summoning is the priority, maybe you need to do it a little slower. Because basically what I heard is slower is better. and I also I had spent a little bit of time working with a client where I was put working out some itineraries on a couple of those routes. And what I recall is that there’s days where you you know.

Jack Fleckney (11:55.605)
Exactly.

Jason (12:11.45)
climb up but then you come back down. So they’re climate acclimatiz what’s the word? Climatization? Acclimiz Acclamation. Acclamation. That’s the word. That’s because it’s too hard to say acclimatization. That’s got too many syllables. But anyway, that there’s days where you might actually, you know, stay in camp and get up in the morning and hike up.

Jack Fleckney (12:18.646)
Well, we say it differently, Jason. Yeah, you say acclimation, I say climatization.

Jason (12:35.212)
And then actually come back down. Is that right? Is that pretty consistent across all the routes? That there’s some at least one day like that?

Jack Fleckney (12:41.056)
Yeah, it is inconsistent. It depends on what route you’re doing. suppose the route that has the most opportunities to do that is the Lemosho route. So what you do on that route is, you know, you’ve got a number of days where you’re going higher than where you’re sleeping. And what that does, it kind of tricks the body because you go up to that height, your body starts to acclimatize like you’re a hat that high, but you actually drop down. So what we tend to see on our climbs is there’s one point where you go do a trek up to Lava Tower.

on the fourth day of your trip as you’re climbing the mountain. And that lava tower day, they go from 4,000 meters up to 4,600 and then drop back down to 4,000 again. And if people get through that day, they only get stronger for the next 48 hours before they go for the summit. So it’s a really good opportunity to kind of trick the body and climatize a bit quicker. And I suppose…

you know you are still climbing the mountain what we call Alpine style so you’re going up to the base camp which is at 4650, 47 and then you go from the summit and come straight back down again so we’re acclimatizing as best as possible without having to spend too long on the mountain and just going back to what you said with Everest Base Camp you’re so right so Everest Base Camp is a little bit lower I think it’s maybe four or five hundred meters lower than Kilimanjaro

And it’s a trek through the valleys up to Everest Base Camp and then you return back again. So they are two very different, but they have similar heights, but the whole dynamic of how you do the trek is very different.

Jason (14:14.522)
Okay, I got it. I’m just being honest with you, what comes to my mind or what I the question I really want to ask you is okay, so I grew up in the mountains and you know spent time in the military and I don’t know if I’m lazy, but I think it was my dad taught me never go up unless you need to go up because you’re gonna waste energy. So the first thing I think is like if you tell me, okay, we’re gonna walk up today, not and you know

900 meters or whatever, and then we’re gonna come back down and then the next day we’re gonna get up and go back again. I’d I think I’d give you some pushback. So I’m curious, do do clients do some clients have a little bit of a why are we doing that? That’s dumb. I if I make it up there, I don’t want to come back down and have to go up again, or are people pretty good about accepting that okay, this is just the way we do it, and it’s overall it’s advantageous for me.

Jack Fleckney (14:49.78)
you

Jack Fleckney (15:08.095)
Yeah, that’s a really good point. And remind me not to get you on our trips then Jason, if I see your name booking him for one. But yeah, so you know, you’re very true. think we’re very lucky with the nature of the mountain on Kilimanjaro that it’s a continuous route that you happen to go via these points that go up and down. So it’s not a up and back to the same point, say on that Lemosho route. It’s a journey around the mountain. So…

you feel like there’s purpose to why you’re doing it because you’re trying to get to the next camp and in order to get there you do have to pass through some of these points. So that does probably change it but you you look at there is a route called the Moranguru route where sleep, the ones you sleep in the huts. If you want to spend more time acclimatizing that is what they do, they send you up on it, you trek up and actually come back down to the same hut you were sleeping at the night before and the whole purpose of it is just trying to speed up the acclimatization.

Jason (15:37.73)
Okay. Okay, I could deal with that.

Jack Fleckney (16:02.123)
When when do we not do it? We’ve only do on a very small amount of times and it might be safe for instance We’ve got a customer that’s climbing with us that they’ve not reacted very well to the altitude quite early on and just often that is Usually it’s something genetic. It could be level They’ve got like they’ve got an illness already that they didn’t know off You know, sometimes you can be a slightly ill like or like a start of a flu that starts to happen You can we can see the difference of that when they’re at altitude and if we spot that we might skip

doing one of those climb high sleep low days if we can. And the only reason being is not just to put too much pressure on their body, just to try and make sure they can be a bit more gradual and we’ll try and look after them a bit more. But majority of the time, if they can, we’ll get them up to that height and then back down again. Because that lava tower day that you do on Kilimanjaro, there’s so many people know of, if they’ve climbed before, listen about it. When you climb up to that 4,600 meter point.

you get there and have some lunch at the top and it’s really tiring. Like a lot of people want to fall asleep. A lot of people feel that they might have a slight headache and then they descend down to 4,000. They actually feel much better again. And what by doing that, when you get to the final camp before you go for the summit, you’ve got rid of that issue. So you’re not getting to the final camp before you go for the summit and feeling that tiredness, feeling that headache or you know, those symptoms you might be feeling, you feel okay. You’re used to it. Your body’s acclimatized to it. And then mentally you’re ready to go for the summit, which you know.

Jason (17:07.098)
Mm-hmm.

Jason (17:13.635)
Okay.

Jack Fleckney (17:25.631)
The whole trip very much is like a holiday until the summit day and then you have to, you know, then you have to earn the summit as we say to the clients.

Jason (17:32.729)
Okay. it’s interesting that you said that ’cause the next question I wanted to ask you was you you mentioned holiday. I guess the question is do people like if I was at the bottom and people are coming down, they just finish summoning and they’re coming down.

say to them wow was that fun would they say yes it was fun or is is like no it wasn’t fun it sucked but I did it I feel good about myself so I’m curious is that does it depend on the person or does it suck for everybody?

Jack Fleckney (17:58.732)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, it does depend on the person. I think it depends how good your knees are when you’re coming downhill. I think, yeah, I think for most people on that descent, they’re obviously very tired because you’ve hit the summit, you started to descend off the mountain over a period of about 36 hours, you descend off the mountain. So a lot of people are very fatigued and tired coming down the path or the track back down to the very bottom gate before you get picked up. So…

I think most people are really looking forward to getting a beer or a Coca Cola when they get down to that last gate. But usually what happens is once they’ve done that and they’ve got back to the hotel and settled in and unpacked their bags and got sorted, then they’re very much like, wow, what an experience. And then they look back on it and we’ve got WhatsApp groups that we have to keep open from like three years ago because people still chime up and talk about it. We have one today, one of the groups go, we’re chatting away from, they climbed with us in February and they’re still chatting away at the groups.

Yeah, but I do think it depends on the person, know, because if you’re going to be spending eight days on the mountain camping, you have got to, you know, you’ve got to enjoy it to some capacity. But some people go there because they see it as a bucket list opportunity to go and climb a mountain that high that requires no technical skills. And by the end of it, they’re like, I’m very much looking forward to, you know, not being in a tent or, you know, having some privacy again.

Jason (19:06.234)
Yeah.

Jason (19:20.312)
Yeah, yeah. I c I I can I’ve spent enough time in the mountains and the military to to appreciate that. I remember, especially in the military, just times you’re you know, when there wasn’t much happening, you’re just sitting around with your buddies talking about what you’re gonna eat when you get back. You know, we’ve three three more weeks Yeah. You just sit there and talk about pizza for three hours. Like what kind of what kind of pizza are you gonna get? You know, it’s like, okay, well, interesting, but

Jack Fleckney (19:35.871)
my god, that’s the main conversation, wasn’t it Jason?

Jack Fleckney (19:48.075)
Yeah, my one was always Burger King. don’t know why. Whenever I was away somewhere, especially in the military or on my own expeditions, you’d be craving something, wouldn’t you? You’d be thinking about it. Always it’d be a conversation piece. For some reason, it was always like a greasy burger from Burger King. So I have no idea why. Not for any nice, fresh food, anything like when you’re eating rations. It like, give me a Burger King.

Jason (20:10.554)
Yeah, yeah. I and I get that. It’s it’s funny that you specifically said Burger King because I remember my my wife at the time, actually she wasn’t my wife at the time, she was my fiance at the time. Her and I managed a lodge off the coast of Belize, a fishing and diving resort. And it was it you know, it was thirty miles offshore.

Jack Fleckney (20:27.572)
I will.

Jason (20:31.924)
If every once in a while we’d go into Belize City, there was a subway restaurant in Belize City. That was like we always we’d go to Subway just because it was the most I it’s like comfort food in a sense, but not r not great comfort food. But I remember she went back on to for a week to visit family or something. And I asked her, I said, When you before you leave the airport in Houston, would you go to the Burger King and get me a double?

Cheese. So she got a double whopper cheese, brought it in her carry-on bag. Of course, by the time I got it, it was three, four hours later, but it was amazing. It was so good. Because I’d been on the island probably for five months, and you know, it was like, wow, Burger King. It’s it’s weird what we th what we miss. But anyway, do our

Jack Fleckney (21:05.805)
no.

Jack Fleckney (21:12.221)
wow, okay. Yeah.

Jason (21:22.916)
guess I I I do wanna ask the well a couple of things. You mentioned it’s really not that technical, but help our listeners understand what technical is. So I guess the question is, can I get all the way up the mountain without ever putting my hands on a rock? Or can I just walk or do I need to actually are there spots where I need to climb over stuff?

Jack Fleckney (21:42.111)
Yeah, that’s a really good question. So there are routes that you can do that just require you to trek all the way up. There is one section for some of the routes which is called the Branco Wall, which you still walk up it, but there’s one or two sections of the Branco Wall that you have to use your hands on some rocks. There’s one section called a Kissing Rock. You kind of edge around a rock and have to put your hands on the rock. And there’s one section where you kind of have to use your hands to get up over the top. So that’s probably where some people say they’re slightly scared of heights or scared about that.

that side, we have to make sure we’ve got people next to them throughout the whole time they go through the Branco wall. takes, you you walk in most of it, it takes like maybe about an hour to get over the Branco wall with those two or three what we call choke points where kind of there’s just a one way to get through and you have to use your hands a bit. But the rest of it is a walk, especially on the summit night, it’s a walk all the way up to the top. kind of zigzag your way up a scree slope and it’s kind of like a set path through the scree slope all the way to the top. So.

When we say technical, think no need to use ropes. There’s no need for you to have any previous skills at all. we get, I’d say actually majority of our customers that come to us have probably never been up a mountain before and this is their first real experience of doing it. that kind of tells you what you need to know.

Jason (22:53.466)
Okay, yeah, no, that that absolutely does ’cause it sounds like even if you don’t have, you know, ’cause some people might think, climbing, they worry about upper body strength or, you know, stuff like that, but it sounds like that’s not too much of an issue. Okay. And I know that some of your past guests are gonna listen to this, some of your future guests are gonna listen to this. But I’m curious, are there people that just like kinda

Physically maybe they can do it. You know, they don’t get injured, they don’t get sick, but just they kind of bid off a little bit more than they can chew and get to day three, day four, day five and say, you know what? Either straight out I don’t wanna keep going or

gonna say develop some sort of mysterious injury that that they can’t keep going. So just share whatever you’re willing to share about that. Is that is that even a thing or because you know because again both you and I were in the military. We we had mysterious injuries that would pop up sometimes when people just I don’t know I’m not gonna say it needed a break.

Jack Fleckney (23:45.406)
Yeah, okay, yeah.

Jack Fleckney (23:56.554)
Yes.

Jack Fleckney (24:05.294)
No, I know you’re getting to. know you’re getting to. Actually, I was just trying to think in my head, have we had any of that? No, we haven’t personally. It’s very rare because actually the amount that trek that you do throughout on Kilimanjaro is actually really, really engaging. So every day is very different. You get some people that will miss home a little bit, especially you’ve got children that come up on the climb and we’ll try and facilitate, look after them by finding them signals so can speak to home.

It’s very rare on those lead up days that you get that where people are just like wanting to tap out and be like, no, this ain’t for me. Because like day one of the climb, you’re going through a rainforest, you see some different species of monkey, like the blue monkey, black and white colobus monkey as you’re going up. Then you go through the moorland zone, then you go into this alpine desert. So every day feels so different and very engaging. And you you’ve got chefs making your food, you’ve got hot drinks on tap.

I say to people, I literally live on Milo and tea on the way up to Kilimanjaro every time I climb. And so, you know, I don’t think that, but you do get on summit night. On summit night, you do get some people and we’ve made the mistake previously before probably not being, what do I say, honest enough or probably brutal enough, probably brutal enough, probably a bit too nice, but people are a bit like, I don’t want to carry on going now. you know, there’s a section called Stella Point, which is the top of the crater. So you get up to

Jason (25:03.522)
Yeah.

Jack Fleckney (25:28.758)
You basically spend all night through the darkness going up to get to the summit and you get on top of the crater and we try and plan for you to get there for sunrise, literally at sunrise. And you get there and you feel like you’re at the top, but actually you’ve got another hour around the edge of the crater to get to the actual highest point, which is called a Huru. And when people get to Stella, sometimes we’ve had it in the past where they get there and are no, I don’t want to carry on, I’m so tired, I can’t carry on.

where we know they’re okay, know their O2 stats have been okay, we know from watching them trek throughout that night and how they’re reacting and talking they’re okay. But we’ve been a bit too nice and been like, okay, if you don’t wanna carry on, whereas we’ve learned our lesson now and sometimes because we know they’ll get back down off the mountain, regret not doing that 45 minutes, hour extra of trekking to get to that next point.

So, you know, literally we had a briefing with the team about it a few weeks ago about actually, you know, recognise when it’s a medical issue and we have to turn them around, but actually recognise if it’s just a mental issue and we can push them a bit. Silly things, literally just holding their hand and being like, no, come on, we’re going to carry on going and just holding their hand, they’ll keep going with you. Or, you know, we take their bags off them and try and get them out of there. But we have in the past had people, you know, on that summit night where…

Jason (26:32.376)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack Fleckney (26:39.434)
they start going up and it’s scary in middle of the night going up to the highest free-standing mountain in the world trying to get up onto the summit and it’s cold. I’m talking in degrees here, but minus 15, minus 10 degrees. it can be for people that never done anything like that before, it’s extremely scary. So yeah, we have had one or two people that might have not had the fitness levels or the mental capacity to go up. They’ve been like, no, turn around and go back down again. majority of the time people are pretty good. They’re pretty impressive. Most people impressed me on summit night.

with that grit and determination just to keep moving.

Jason (27:13.102)
That’s very cool. And I I like what you’re saying about finding that balancing act between encouraging someone to push themselves and achieve something, but at the same time they paid you a bunch of money to be there. You’re working for them. So i I I’m curious, have you do you do this? Do you think it’s or is it something that maybe came out of your meeting recently is

maybe have that conversation with guests before they even start or at the first night maybe about kind of what to expect so that when you say one more mile they like they expected you to say one more mile and they’ve already had some time to think about it as opposed to just, wow, I’m much tired than I thought. I I feel like I’m gonna die.

Jack Fleckney (27:43.198)
Yeah.

Jason (28:00.335)
But then Jack, you come over and say, remember when I told you three nights ago that at some point you’re gonna feel like you’re gonna die? That’s normal, everybody does, and we’re gonna go one more mile. Just curious, does that?

Jack Fleckney (28:11.168)
Yeah, yeah we do. We’ve tried different methods and I suppose the one we found works really well on Kilimanjaro is, know, if I just tell a bit of a story of this, people, you know, they come on the plane and they look out the window and often the flight route into Kilimanjaro airport, you go past the mountain in between Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru. So go between the mountains, you can look out and see them and a lot of people look at it, am I allowed to swear on this? I don’t know, what’s the rules Jason? You’re allowed to swear.

Jason (28:37.707)
yeah, I just I have to just check the explicit box when I upload the video.

Jack Fleckney (28:40.615)
Okay, well, I won’t say them, but people look at it and go, people look at it and go, my God. And, and you know, they suddenly, cause it’s, it’s just this massive mountain out of nowhere. It’s not connected to any of the mountains. It’s on its own. And so people start to get nervous and they start stressing when they, when they get to the hotel and see it. And it’s a pretty, like a wow factor. So when we do our briefing, we, really transpire. We talked through, you know, dealing with altitude, what the camp looks like introduction to guides. They get, they’re going to be climbing with.

Jason (28:52.09)
Uh-huh.

Jack Fleckney (29:09.469)
You know, all the different routines they see on the mountain. But even before that, we actually send them things out. So we send them emails with all their information, right down to like some Swahili words they can learn to speak to some of the team. And then we do a video call like this one, but we do it before they arrive in Tanzania to go through those. I tell them a little bit about the Summit Night, but the main thing I say is, look, know, the Summit Night is the biggest challenge you’re going to have on the whole climb.

We don’t tell them too much about it until we get there because otherwise people start to overthink it and stress. And actually I’ve found in the past people stressing actually result in having more issues with altitude, with illness, with worry and not eating properly and all those things that, know, it’s like a, it’s like anxiety, isn’t it? If you have a bit anxiety, if you let it grow and grow and grow, it just spirals out of control.

Jason (29:52.825)
I get it.

Yeah, ’cause if you tell if you tell somebody on Monday, Saturday’s really gonna suck. Then by Wednesday you’re totally psyched out and you’re like, my gosh, what am I doing here?

Jack Fleckney (30:01.865)
Yeah, get ready for Saturday, it’s gonna suck!

Jack Fleckney (30:10.056)
Yeah.

Jason (30:13.594)
Issues. I also imagined you guys I don’t know if you know the name Tony Robbins. There’s probably a few names, but Tony Robbins they kinda call him a motivational speaker or whatever, but I can imagine you guys playing a Tony Tony Robbins soundtrack or something that night before you start going or you know, some sort of motivational you can do it, you can do it. But anyway.

Jack Fleckney (30:19.709)
Yeah.

Jack Fleckney (30:31.069)
Yeah, yeah. Well, the weirdest thing about that is, you know, we’ve done that before. We’ve played some music or do, like, a quick chat with them. But it’s quite comical because obviously you walk up Kilimanjaro very slowly, like, you know, you say Polly Polly in Swahili, which means slowly. And, you know, you give that big motivational speech, you know, right, let’s go. They just set off at, like, this one mile-hour pace for hours through the night. So it kind of, like, wears off very quickly.

So what we do on that, what we say to people on that summit night is we’re like, you know, we try and make sure that they understand what they’re to go through. They don’t worry too much if things happen. And we’re very lucky. We have a big team that go up on the summit with them. So let’s say Jason, you’re climbing with 14 other people. And as it says, 15 of you. In our team, there’s probably going to be around 18 people climbing in our team with you, alongside you. So that’s going to be a mixture of mainly guides.

of which majority of the guides that are in our business have summited, I think our average summits over 150 times. And then the other people that are helping will be aspirational guides. So people that are porters currently that are usually younger and they have this aspiration to become guides in the future. So what we do is we say, well, look, if you want to climb to the summit, we’ll pay you extra so you can build your experience. And, you know, for those people that come up on the summit and help clients as well, they’ve always summited more than 10 to 15 times.

So we’ve got a super experienced team that go up with them and that what that allows is say you feel fantastic and you’re like, Jack’s walking way too slow for me. I need to keep moving it because I’m starting to feel cold. You can, you got for your pace. And then we should communicate on radios throughout the night as you’re, you know, as we’re climbing up to the top. But yeah, you know, we try and we prepare people as best as possible, but then we have to kind of in the moment, really look after them and just make them feel as safe as possible just to keep taking one step at a time.

Jason (32:23.834)
So basically what I heard there is you’ve got enough staff and guides and people that have summoned that pretty much every guest could potentially have somebody to walk with them and encourage them and is that did I get that math right? So

Jack Fleckney (32:38.121)
Yeah, yeah. So we introduced quite early on when we were operating because, know, the biggest outlay for us as a business is staff. And that’s where you, one of our biggest challenges, our company, if I talk about, you know, for me, look at the business side is our price point is a little bit, is a little bit more than the average. And that’s because we’re how much we pay the staff and also have these staff members climb with us. Um, you know, if you, if you, if you book with a really, what we would call a cheap operator.

The reason they’re cheap is because the staff situation. it might be staff numbers or it definitely be staff pay. So, for us, you know, on the mountain, that’s something that is really important. You don’t want to be climbing with a small amount of support team because if certain individuals have to turn around and go back down again, you’re only making that support team smaller and smaller. And, you know, we’ve, we’ve noticed so many situations on the mountain with other teams, we’ve had step in and support them, whether it be with oxygen, with medical support, because they just weren’t prepared for that. you know, then they’ve got these.

group of clients with just a number of support teams. So that’s what we’ve introduced it. And I suppose the other reason we introduced it was just for pacing, because some people are great at attitude and want to walk at a normal pace and not get too cold. Other people need to walk really slowly. You know, think the slowest, the average from the base camp to the summit is usually probably about seven and half hours. I think the slowest I’ve had is 14 hours. So that gives you, you, you know, perception of what we can see there in terms of time range. Now that is a bit of an anomaly, but we can.

We can often go up to about 10 hours. we just need to be, we try and make sure we do everything we can to get that person to the top as long as it’s safe.

Jason (34:10.744)
I I’m happy that that came up because it reminds me of some conversations I’ve had recently with operators that do, you know, other type of trekking or actually I just spoke with someone that does swimming vacations. And the the common thread is when people sign up to go on a group trip that has some physical challenges of I think a very common concern is I don’t want to slow everybody else down. I don’t wanna be the slowest one, I don’t wanna be the one

Jack Fleckney (34:24.168)
Okay.

Jason (34:42.138)
you know, waiting for me because if you’ve ever climbed anything with i other people, there’s always that person that moves fast and they get to the top and or not to the top, they get a third of the way up but they stop and they wait for you. And then when you finally catch up with them, they’re like, okay, let’s go. You’re like, wait a minute, I need a break. So so do you do you see that with your inquiries as well? Do you get people that are like, hey, I’m a little concerned, I don’t want to be the slowest one. And it sounds like you figured that out by having enough staff.

Jack Fleckney (35:01.01)
Yeah, yeah.

Jack Fleckney (35:12.52)
Yeah, yeah, we do. We don’t get a lot, like a lot of people that tend to want to come and do this relatively have quite a lot of self-confidence. But yeah, we do get a handful of clients that come to us and that is a big concern for them is they want to join a group trip, but also don’t want to feel that they’re going to be the way dragging them, dragging them back, you know. So yes, yeah, we do, we do. And I suppose, you know, what we try and do there is give them a lot of support beforehand, give them training programs to help them get physically prepared for it. But most of the time, as you probably notice in your head more than anything, so

Yeah, we are lucky with Kilimanjaro because the whole thing built around is poly poly, know, people literally have on their t-shirts and it’s like, go slow, go slow to acclimatize. So our team are often setting the pace to, you know, to make sure that you are acclimatizing. And actually a lot of the people that we see have issues on the mountain, the ones that try and speed off too fast, probably push their bodies a little bit too much early on in the climb and then then have to either really slow down because they’re getting so tired.

or the attitude just starts to slowly chip away at them a little bit and they’ve been pushing their bodies too hard. So I usually say actually it’s better to go slower. The slower you go, the better you’re going to acclimatize on the way up.

Jason (36:23.994)
I’m curious if if I were to poll, maybe I should a week after. So they’ve they’ve come back down, they’ve had their beer, they did whatever, they they sat in the swimming pool at the lodge or whatever. maybe a few days later, and then I were to go poll everybody, and the only question I asked them is: what was your favorite part? Is there a cons consistent answer? Like like most people would probably say?

Jack Fleckney (36:47.132)
Yep.

Jack Fleckney (36:50.48)
Yeah, yeah, and it’s not the summit. Yeah, it’s not the summit, which, yeah, yeah, it’s not. There’s some people that do, and we do say to people when they get onto the summit, because often you’re so tired, you’ve been awake all night, you’ve been awake and not slept whatsoever, and you’ve been trekking for nine, 10 hours, and you’re at high altitudes, so just slightly walking gets you out of breath. So, you know, up on the summit, we do tell people, as long as they’re medically okay, we don’t need to turn them around and bring them straight down again. We do tell people, literally, get away from the sign.

Jason (36:53.752)
I had a feeling it wasn’t gonna be, that’s why I wanted to ask.

Jack Fleckney (37:20.422)
away from everyone, go and sit down over there and just take these views in for 10 minutes, because you will forget them. If you don’t, you’ll get down and be like, it’s such a blur. But I think, you know, I think for a lot of people, if you ask people what the favourite bits are, it’s often even small things like the time in the mess tent in the evenings, we have those dome base camp mess tents that we bring up the mountain with us. So it’s the time of the evenings having drinks and playing cards and chatting and laughing and then getting to meet other people.

I actually think one of the ones that people really love is the views. The beauty of Kilimanjaro is because you have the rainforest that surrounds it, the cloud level is often lower than you are. So a lot of the views that you are spending on the mountain is you’re above the clouds looking down on them. And most people haven’t experienced that before because I suppose the only time you might do is if you’ve experienced cloud inversion in the lower hills.

So yeah, think that’s the other one. A lot of people go, look, wake up in the morning and looking at your tendency and that is, there some of favourite moments. And I suppose one more, which resonates with me as well is the lack of signal. So people can really disconnect from life, from their phones and everything. And I suppose just go back, I say go back to how it was.

when you didn’t have your phone buzzing off every few minutes, know, and distracting you and you know, you can really just switch off there and just take it all in and go back to having normal conversations and which I think is often, you know, it’s changed quite a lot in our lifetime.

Jason (38:47.106)
I a little bit earlier I had a question pop into my head, it drifted away and then it just came back in and I it’s we’re gonna backtrack a little bit to when we were talking about, you know, use the word I don’t know, discovered, the German team that discovered the mountain. And of course, if we look at this from a global cultural conversation

somebody could say, What do you mean they discovered it? There were people there already, weren’t there? so maybe we could say the discovered by Western explorers or whatever, but obviously there were people in that area, long before the Germans ever got there. So and I’m not questioning your use of the word discover. I know I know what you mean, I get it. And do you do you know enough about the the history like

Can you imagine that maybe locals used to climb the mountain for some reason? Is there any way to know that? Is like ’cause we tend to talk about who’s the first person to summit it. And it’s usually a German, a Swiss guy, an English guy, you know, that type of thing. But I’m curious, is there any reason to believe that perhaps other people climbed it before the white man showed up?

Jack Fleckney (39:44.401)
Yeah.

Jack Fleckney (40:01.0)
Yeah, there is. I suppose there’s no evidence of it whatsoever. And I suppose if I go back and talk about the history of the mountain, there’s the main tribe in and around this region, and still is now, is the Chaga tribe. So there’s about a hundred, there’s just over 140 tribes all throughout Tanzania. Obviously at that time there wasn’t really a Tanzania. It was weird lines drawn on maps and there’s tribal sections. So was a Chaga tribe that were located at the bottom of the mountain.

The Chagat tribe are very, very famous for being very entrepreneurial. Now, 100 % they were going up onto the mountains. So they were hunting in the rainforest. They had monkeys for food, so blue monkeys for food. Colobus monkeys were used for witchcraft. Their tails were used for those things. But then also they did farm upon the higher flatlands of what you call the Shura Plateau. So you have that tribe. So they were going up onto the Shura Plateau. Now, there’s still speculation where the name comes from.

Mlima in Swahili means mountain. So that’s where the Kalima, they think the mountain comes from. Um, Amjaro, you know, has kind of historic elements in Chagra and Swahili of, meaning like white-ness, the mountain of whiteness. So that’s where they think the name comes from. But a lot of the Chagra tribe used to think that the mountain was like cursed. So wouldn’t really want to go and wouldn’t climb up, up high, high on the mountain. So I think that’s probably one reason why they might not have done in the past.

But I definitely know 100 % that they were up on the mountain exploring that Shirah Plateau. They used to farm their cows there and actually an interesting story. The reason it’s called Shirah, an old word meaning war, is because the Maasai, which is a very famous tribe. I’m sure you know Maasai. They come from Ethiopia and came south and the Maasai tribe are very, very famous for looking after, well, basically cows mainly. So they do goats and things.

They have cows and their main belief is that their other tribes should not have cows and if they come across other tribes with cows they would kill them and take the cows. And there was a big war on the Shura Plateau between the Chaga and the Maasai because the Maasai came from Kenya over onto the plateau and came across these Chaga tribe with cows and then decided, well let’s go to war. So there was definitely activity on the mountain, 100%. And I suppose…

Jason (42:08.442)
Okay.

Jack Fleckney (42:25.831)
Yeah, you’re totally, totally right. I think there’s a really important element there of understanding what the local tribes and local, you know, I suppose your local tribes in the area, how they lived on the mountain, what they explored. I suppose, you know, when, as you said earlier, when we say discovered, we mean that this mountain’s knowledge was passed up into the into the Western world. So, yes, yeah, yeah.

Jason (42:46.938)
It’s interesting how we look at things in in in life sometimes. I g I get what you’re saying, yeah. but what I hear you saying is you you don’t think or your best guess is that probably none of the locals at the time would actually summit the mountain for any particular reason and that maybe they would actually resist the whatever desire because of spiritual or or other other reasons. Is that right?

Jack Fleckney (42:51.771)
Mm.

Jack Fleckney (43:04.027)
Yes. Yeah.

Jack Fleckney (43:12.687)
Yeah, that’s correct. Although when they did climb, they did climb with local teams. So wasn’t just them that summited. And actually there’s even still now there’s like a, there’s a family line. So the first, we’ll say Tanzanian now, the first Tanzanian to summit and his family line, there is still now one guy that operates on the mountain, which I think is like the great, great grandson of the person that guided the guy on the mountain going up. So

And also there was multiple failed attempts of climbing Kilimanjaro before it was actually achieved. So that again also tells you there’s no previous knowledge of how the mountain was climbed. But I haven’t got a clue. You never know do you? I’d like to think there’s probably a pretty cool story of someone going, you know what, lived on the foothills, I’m just going to go up that over the next week or two and just see if I make it to the top and did. It’d be a pretty cool story if they did.

Jason (44:05.87)
Well, you you gotta wonder you gotta wonder because there’s obviously a lot of people in the world now and for at least last hundred years or so that looked at mountains and said, We should climb that for no reason other than we should climb it. So is it maybe a little bit strange for us to think that

Jack Fleckney (44:21.488)
Yeah.

Jason (44:28.206)
People couldn’t have had that same thought five hundred years ago. Maybe. I don’t know. But who are who are we to you know, who are we to guess? I just

Jack Fleckney (44:32.167)
Yeah, that’s so true. So true. Yeah. Yeah. I think the, I suppose the only counter argument I have there is just the cultural differences. So for us, for instance, you know, if you look at the Western world, it’s very exploratory in terms of, want to, you you want to go out and find these different places and find new areas, explore, try and climb these mountains you come across. Um, uh, what would I say is the culture here is like complete contentness. So they,

They are so content with life. And actually, they call what we call white people coming into Tanzania or throughout certain areas of Africa, the word is Mzungu or Wazungu for multiple. And Mzungu means, direct translation is like a wanderer of no purpose. So, yeah, so it’s like a really funny translation, which is actually quite true because…

They’re just like, what are doing? Why are they going up that mountain? Honestly, I’m sure we’ll get a chance to talk a little about our team. They’re one amazing people, they’re the kindest people and extremely strong. And then they are just so content, like so, so content. And I often think it’s a real contrast for me traveling between the UK and here, where you go to the UK and it’s like, go, go, go, more, more, more.

better cars, better bigger house, that. You go here, you’re here in Moshi, Tanzania, and it’s so different. They’re just so content. If they’ve got food and they’ve got friends, they’re happy. They’ll be happy to sit under a tree and they’re just so content with life. And I think there’s actually something to be learned from that as well. For me, I’m trying to build a business. You have to keep working, but there is an element of actually just enjoy your time whilst you’re there.

Jason (46:26.362)
I’ve had a few conversations with people that are from outside of Africa that moved to Africa, started businesses and yeah, I I see some common threads. I’ve spent a little bit of time in Africa and yeah, it’s but the same thing that you know you can love about a culture can also be the same thing that’s very frustrating. I know even even here in Latin you know

Jack Fleckney (46:47.824)
Yeah, most definitely,

Jason (46:49.88)
Even here in Latin America I love that the family, you know, is so important that people just they just spend a lot of time together and they move slow and they like to talk and all this stuff. And I love that about them. But then when I’m on a sidewalk behind a family of

eight that are all covered, you know, completely fill on the sidewalk, walking as slow as humanly possible, and just rambling on about this and that, or their kids rolling around on the sidewalk and I just gotta get around them. And I have to remind myself, I’m like, but this is what I love about them. So I suspect there’s a the same you let’s let’s take a

Jack Fleckney (47:23.225)
Yeah. my god, yes.

Jason (47:27.002)
Yeah, you can relate. Let’s if if you’re ready now, let’s take let’s discuss your team a little bit, ’cause I still want to get into your personal history, but I wanna make sure that we kind of, you know, not not finish where we’re at on this, but I wanna talk a little bit about your team. Seems like a good opportunity to do that, and then we’re gonna go back to your childhood and dig into your traumas and figure out why you’ve done all these things you’ve done. How does that sound?

Jack Fleckney (47:51.539)
Sounds great, we haven’t got long now I don’t think to go through all that. Where do you want to start Jason? I talk a little bit about the team and what we have experienced here?

Jason (47:52.834)
Sounds great, doesn’t it? That sounds fun.

Jason (48:02.968)
Yeah, yeah, I’d love to know kind of how how you built the team, what are some of the things that y that you learned along the way and yeah, just whatever you want to share about your team because I know that you can’t do it without them.

Jack Fleckney (48:16.271)
Yes, exactly that. Yeah, it’s probably a real passionate point for me. And actually for me now it’s a big driver for growing the business. I suppose when you set a business up, there’s usually a purpose for you doing it, which is, you know, what you’re trying to build it. But there’s also a selfish factor, which is you want to build it for yourself as well. So I started like that with a company and then it kind of changed pretty dramatically once you got to know the team and build relationships out here. I built the company here with a fellow Tanzanian.

And, and, know, we started off a very, very small team because we only had small bookings and we could operate with a small team and a limited amount of a kit and equipment. And obviously as it’s growing, we’ve been building the team as we go. So I suppose the story for most people in the area and actually throughout Tanzania, some of our team are from like Western Tanzania. So they’re traveling, like, you know, traveling 10 hours to come and do work on a bus and to come and work on a mountain and travel back again, back towards Lake Victoria. So.

It’s a big work opportunity in Tanzania and Tanzania has, I’d probably say, bizarre economy in the sense of the economy is relatively strong, but actually there is not a huge amount of job opportunities for the growth in the population. So a lot of people are quite entrepreneurial. They will be trying to buy and sell things on the street. They’ll be setting up stands on the streets, try and sell things in markets and any way they can, they’ll try and find a way of making a little bit of money to be self-sufficient.

What the mountain has done is offered a massive opportunity for work. So when you first climb Kilimanjaro back in the day, you could just rock up. We could rock up with backpacks and go and climb it, get your permits, go and climb. Whereas now there is a rule where you have to climb with a local company. when we were, I suppose, looking at that, that’s the best thing about the opportunity is it means if you’re paying to come and climb Kilimanjaro, it’s not just a selfish factor of I’m going to go and climb the mountain. You’re also giving a lot of people work.

And for me, building the company now and offering more more climbs, the more we can offer, the more work we can give the team. So it’s real win-win for us. So the team’s responsibility on the mountain is you’ve got different levels. You’ve got guides. So guides, 99.99 % of the time start as porters and they work as porters. They maybe start to learn English, then they go to guide school, then they start to get employment as a guide until they’re a really well-established guide with experience.

Jack Fleckney (50:43.012)
So that’s the kind of pathway they’ve gone through to become that guide. And they’re really usually experienced. like I said, lot of our team are over 150 summits. I think we’ve got one or two team members that are over 250 in our team, which is pretty incredible if you think about it, especially when they’re not even that old. So they’ve been on the mountain a lot and climbed a lot. And then you’ve got chefs. Yeah.

Jason (51:03.396)
Hey Jack Jack, can I ask you a question about th the guides and maybe this is a more general question about just the people that work on the mountain, which we’re gonna discuss. But so like in the US, at the point in time when I decided that I wanted to be a guide, it was

Like I wanna be a guide because it sounds fun, it sounds it’s sexy, it’s like cool, and I won’t make very much money, but I don’t care. So, like when I told my family I’m gonna go be a guide, they’re like, Well, how the heck are you gonna make a living out of that? What’s wrong with you? Da-da-da. You’re so smart you could go do other things. It’s just what I heard, okay, from my family. and and I’m imagining that maybe in Tanzania it’s like

Just like when you just say the word porter, that just sounds like a hard job, right? But you’re saying it’s good you know, there’s not a lot of other great jobs and it’s a good opportunity, it’s a it’s a it’s a boom for them and their families. So I’m imagining a family with a a bunch of kids and one of them says, I got a job as a porter on the mountain. It’s like, that’s awesome. And the guy’s like, Yeah, I’m gonna make money, I’ve got money. My job is really hard because I gotta carry stuff up a mountain.

So it’s so those seem like a contrast. Is that really is what I’m saying kind of r is it relevant to this conversation?

Jack Fleckney (52:30.01)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, it definitely does. It definitely does. With guides, what you tend to see is people want to become guides often because it’s a better financial opportunity because the pay scales are higher for you doing a guide versus being a chef or a porter. So naturally, if you think you have the capacity to guide and learn English and speak and look after clients at a higher level, then yeah, people are like, you know, that’s the big aspiration for people. The biggest, the biggest, like I suppose roadblock for them getting to that point, and they’ll always be able to afford guide school.

So paying to go to guide school is very expensive. So the porter wage doesn’t quite translate well to guide school. So often they’ll need a sponsor or they’re have to save very well, which is more more challenging to do. that’s the biggest step and issue that you see with people becoming guides. And then obviously once you become a guide, getting your foot in the door of a company to actually be able to guide consistently. Otherwise you might have to go back to working as a porter on the side.

as well as doing guide jobs.

Jason (53:35.195)
You you mentioned ’cause you mentioned earlier that the people there tend to be very kind of content. so and don’t seem to be worried as worried about like status and and things like that. So I’m curious the i the typical mountain guide that is well employed, you know, he’s he’s doing fine as far as financially. If you go to them and say, Okay, would you rather be a mountain guide or would you rather be

trip San Arusha and you make the same amount of money what do you what kind of response would I expect to get from the typical guide? Because because I say that I say that because like fly fishing guides are like I’m a fly fishing guide, you know some mountain guides from the in the US would be like I’m a you know senior mountain guide, da da da I’m a you know I I get to go to the bar and people ask me what I do. I’m a guide I

Jack Fleckney (54:15.782)
That’s a really, really good question,

Jason (54:35.406)
I take people up that big ass mountain back there and they it’s it’s almost an ego driven thing, which maybe, you know, you and I can relate to people like that, maybe even we’re a little like that. I don’t know. But do you get that same type of thing in in Tanzania?

Jack Fleckney (54:42.0)
Yeah.

Jack Fleckney (54:50.182)
You don’t tend to get the ego driven side of things. do get the comparison there of what kind of trips you want to deliver as a guide. So for instance, Safari guiding is quite well sought after, but it’s a lot harder to get into. If you go through the proper Safari guiding score, it’s three years. And then you’ve got to somehow try and find a vehicle to guide out of. So those stages are much more difficult. So you’ve got that. then with the mountain, I would say, if I asked our team,

Would you rather be doing the one day trips in Arusha or in Moshi? Or would you rather be on the mountain? They would say the mountain. They genuinely love being on the mountain and working on there. And I think they’re very proud of being guides as well. But not in the ego sense driven word. It’s like, you know, they’re proud because of what they’ve accomplished or what they do on the mountain. A lot of them are very proud of the history of the mountain and their tribe. you know, I suppose a bit like the honor it gives them and their families when they, you know.

You know, one of some of our guides, one called Nelson, I know that he’s really proud because he’s got three children, he’s got a son and two daughters and he can, you know, he can show them that he’s working hard and prove to them that they can accomplish something as well. So I would probably say you tend to fit into your niche that people like to do. So if you’re doing your one day trips in Arusha and Moshi elsewhere, you tend to probably be very good at English and you’re happy to dot around and do the odd one here then there, but then people…

I think if you work on the mountain, you usually are pretty much set on the mountain unless, you know, like, you know, your knees start to go and then they might move down to the bottom of the mountain and be taking some more day trips rather than being, you know, six, seven, eight days up there.

Jason (56:30.456)
Yeah. Okay, cool. I appreciate I appreciate that. So and and let’s discuss so we’ve talked a fair amount about the guides. I don’t know if there’s something specific or somebody specific else you want to discuss, but also you were starting to talk about, you know, the the sh I don’t know if you call them chefs or cooks or or whatever, but the other type the other people on your team, I’d love to learn a little bit more about more about that.

Jack Fleckney (56:47.545)
Yeah.

Jack Fleckney (56:52.417)
Yeah, yes, you get the chefs and they tend to be again, often people who are porters, but then they’ve built their cookery skills to then be able to operate and work on the mountain. So we’ve got one staff member that we’ve been building up towards being a head chef. So he’s basically as a, I think you call it a sous chef, you? being a second in charge chef of supporting the head chef as they’re climbing. So that’s usually the pathway you go there. And again, if you’re going to do that job, you’ve got to a real big passion in cooking.

and be very, very skilled at it because it’s not like you’ve got a full kitchen set up to be cooking good food, especially because we’re like, you know, yeah.

Jason (57:27.77)
I I keep I keep complaining because you know as as we discussed earlier, I I do the digital nomad thing, so I’m in Airbnbs. And my like biggest complaint is these Airbnbs they only have two pots, two pans, maybe two forks and maybe a spoon and I and I talk all this stuff, but you know what? I don’t have to carry it in I don’t have to carry any of it up a any of it up a mountain.

running water to work with. So yeah, I can imagine that’s that’s a skill set.

Jack Fleckney (57:57.894)
Yeah, totally. we, you know, they have a gas cylinder, which they then obviously basically have a cooking pan over the top of it where they can boil water or they can fry. And, we’ve really worked on the food on the mountain because we wanted to try and make sure it was food that when climbers are coming out, and a lot of our climbers are from the US and from the UK, they have food that they’re used to, so it’s not too different for them. Again, everything we’re trying to build everything around them to summit.

So like, know, we had a meeting a few days ago with all the chefs to build a bit more of a set menu for the climbs. And we were discussing that actually one of the big things we wanted is during that summit push. So the day before and the day of the summit push, we give them food that’s like, you know, they’re really, really gonna want to eat and they’re excited to eat. like chicken and chips, the team, like, you know, Kennedy, our head chef, he makes pizza on the mountain. He actually makes pizza with just the gas and the, know, so.

Jason (58:51.034)
Nice.

Jack Fleckney (58:53.765)
Really, really impressive. And Kennedy is very famous for his soups. They have soups on the mountain, which we implement each day for lunch and dinner, which is extra hydration. It’s basically secret way to get more fluids on board. So the chef’s a really, really pivotal part. And if you can’t get a chef’s dry, it does really make a big difference on the climb. And then I suppose then you have the porters. And amongst the porters, there’s lots of different job roles they can do. And they’re usually either previous experience in those individual roles.

or they offer up to do it because we offer, you I suppose the lowest, what we say the lowest level entry job is to be a porter where your job is to carry your gear to the camp, drop the gear, and then you can go and lay down and chill out for the rest of the day. Then on top of that, you get porters that want to do extra to earn extra money. So there’s like extra jobs they can volunteer to come and do. And they’re from all sorts, from basically looking after the tents to, you know, look at sorting the toilets out, to building the showers and managing the showers.

to literally waiting and looking after the clients when they arrive in camp. Often there’ll be future aspirational guides because they want to have face-to-face time with the clients. We’ve got a camp manager called Pascali and his job is basically to make sure that no kit gets left on the mountain, no rubbish gets left on the mountain, it all gets transported off. And he’s the logistical manager basically with all the porters that he gets in next camp safely. We even have a runner.

So we have a runner, Jason, which is like someone that leaves 24 hours before the rest of the team leave for the next camp. And they carry lightweight. They don’t carry very much, just enough for themselves to have food and dinner and everything when they get to that camp. And their job is to claim what we would call is the best area on camp. And they get that particular campsite. the main reason being is because we’ve got a footprint in terms of big tents, mess tent, toilet, showers.

that we have to make sure we’ve got a nice area that they can have all their camp set up in, it’s nice and flat. So, you know, all these different jobs are kind of pre-planned in our team. got a whiteboard behind the screen here and we plan everything out to a T of what we require from the team. So because of all those different things we do, there’s a six, we have a six to one ratio. So there’s 10 people climbing, we’re going to have probably 60 to 65 staff members going up the mountain with them to get them to the top of the mountain.

Jack Fleckney (01:01:09.733)
So, you know, yeah, that’s really good because it’s given more work opportunities for the team as well as increasing the service that people are getting when they’re climbing.

Jason (01:01:10.298)
Okay.

Jason (01:01:21.914)
I have a couple logistics questions just because I’m curious. So when I hear you say we’re gonna send somebody ahead of time 24 hours to basically stake out a spot so that we’ve got it when we get there. And then I’m imagining there’s other operators kind of doing the same. Does it get confrontational? Because I imagine the scenarios where, okay, we’ve got our runner now going three days ahead of time, and he’s gonna sit there for three days to guard a spot before we get there, and and I could see where that could just kind of get out of

Jack Fleckney (01:01:47.065)
Yeah.

Jason (01:01:51.878)
control. Do they have rules and regulations that that keep you guys from fighting over that stuff?

Jack Fleckney (01:01:53.348)
Yeah.

Jack Fleckney (01:01:57.401)
Yeah, they every year they do reviews actually to Napa, which is like the the organization that manages Kilimanjaro National Park. They do do meetings and they come up with different ideas to improve the services or what we do. So there are things like that. But no, you don’t tend to see any confrontations whatsoever. You know, and I suppose some operators do it, you know, I suppose I’d probably say a small amount of operators do it. Most don’t. They’ll just rely on their whoever their fastest porter that day will get to camp and choose.

choose where camp is that day. But there is enough space on the camps, I suppose it’s probably a little bit more important for us, just so we don’t have to break the camp up in different areas of different camps, just everyone’s all together. Yeah, confrontation, very rare. Everyone’s pretty much like one team on the mountain. We have a policy on the climb, that if we come across other porters that are struggling, we don’t leave them, even if they’re not in our company.

we’ll help them. So we’ll either move their gear for them to help them get to their next camp or we’ll just help them. Just because, you know, I think we started doing it because one of my first experiences climbing, I came across a lady called Mary, who she was a mum, she was about, I think she was early 50s, never climbed the mountain before, but she’d kind of been pulled off the street for offering a job to Porter. And she was just like, yeah, I’ll do it because I wanted the money. And she was given a 20 kilo gas canister to climb up the mountain with.

So on the first day I came across her and she was really struggling. We’re only maybe 10, 15 minutes into the trek. So I said, look, I’ll take it. And she walked with me and we got chatting and told me about our family and things. And then the next day she went off ahead. She had gone already. was obviously with another company and we came across her again. I helped her. And then I said to her, you know, I was with some clients that were walking quite slowly. So said, look, you go off back, go to camp. And then when I get to camp, you can come and grab your gear.

Jason (01:03:21.166)
Yeah, cheese.

Jack Fleckney (01:03:47.557)
And she’d come and grab it and it was a really joke because she came to grab it and she said, thank you. And so I hear she said, thank you, I’ll see you tomorrow. Because I think she was happy with the ride she was getting. But I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she was a lovely lady. Exactly, exactly, exactly, exactly. And she was a lovely lady. But I remember seeing her and just thinking literally like my mum is the same age as her and I couldn’t imagine my mum.

Jason (01:03:57.211)
This was great. She was getting paid, she and someone else was carrying the stuff. It wasn’t so bad.

Jack Fleckney (01:04:13.592)
on the mountain, trying to drag that up there. So just to try, suppose, spin a bit of a positive on that. I’ve actually come across Mary a number of times on the mountain now. And obviously now she’s a bit more experienced and I think hopefully she’s getting looked after a bit better as well. And she’s now doing really well and work on the mountain. So it’s a positive, you when we have new porters join the team, whether it be male or female, we don’t give them as much weight to carry. We try and help them build up.

So we tend to be giving them half the weight that everyone else has to carry and we make sure they stay with some of our team. They’re not on their own going up the mountain, purely for that reason, because number one, you’ve got to deal with the altitude for them as well, not just the clients. And you want to make sure they’re safe as well. yeah, the team are the heartbeat, Jason, of the whole climb. I don’t need to be on the mountain. The team are so effective and so strong.

You know, very inspirational, actually. I feel very, very lucky to work with the team that we have and how good they are. We’ve got a team that summited this morning, actually, with Nelson, a guy I talked about earlier. They’ve just summited this morning and then, you know, I didn’t even have to worry about them. I knew they were going to be so well looked after going up onto that summit and, you know, they’ll be off the mountain tomorrow morning. So I’ll drive over to go meet them at the gate and probably have a few Kilimanjaro beers ready for them. I think they’re very much looking forward to a few when they come off.

Jason (01:05:36.441)
I’m sure they I’m sure they are. Hey, what it so the person that’s never been to Tanzania, maybe has never even been to Africa, they have no real idea of what the personalities are like. We talked about content, we talked about strong, we talked about entrepreneurial. But as far as if I’m a client that wants to go spend six, seven, eight, nine days with

Jack Fleckney (01:05:49.412)
Hmm.

Jason (01:06:00.037)
Tanzanian guides and porters and and chefs and all that stuff, I have no idea what to expect as far as personality. there’s some countries in the world that people claim were very friendly, but it’s hard to really connect with them. They will say, our whole culture is about hospitality, yet they won’t smile at you. Now they mu the Well, I’m not mentioning any names, but I’ve traveled around a little bit.

Jack Fleckney (01:06:21.188)
Come on then, what countries are these Jason?

Jason (01:06:27.808)
And and then I you know, and then okay, well once they invite you into your house, then yes, they’ll put all kinds of food in front of you, they’ll take great care of you, but they just generally don’t smile very much. So I’m just using that as an example. So what sh what would you like to people to know about Tanzanians in general when it comes to that stuff? Or or another way to put that is what what surprises people the most when they show up there and they’ve never been there about

Jack Fleckney (01:06:47.288)
Yeah.

Jack Fleckney (01:06:54.468)
Yeah, think, you know, when you think of Africa, for a of people that have never been out before, they’ve got that stereotypical view of what it’s like. When people first come out, they’re often very nervous about integrating with local cultures and meeting people. And I think because of that, it’s created this thing where Tanzanians are quite shy when they first meet people. But very quickly, probably less than 24 hours later, they’re your best friends.

and they’re literally, you know, they’re the kindest people in world. So, I’d probably describe it like that. And you see this journey through the mountain actually, when people first meet the guides and the team, they get on the bus to head over to the mountain, you know. To be fair, you our team are pretty outgoing now, they’re lot more confident, but they’ll be quite quiet and they’ll say a few words and chat. Obviously, you’ve got to remember English is in their first language. But then the following morning after they’ve climbed for the first day, they know their names, they’re like, hey.

You know, they’ll be saying Jumbo and shouting at people and saying a shout in a kuna matata, giving people high fives and all of a it evolved into this whole thing. And we see at end of the mountain that people are really emotional saying goodbye to the team. Yeah, I’m, you know, we book a restaurant at the end of the climb for all the team to have lunch with the clients. So often you’ve got like 70 people all having lunch together. And the reason is we do a quick team picture, but it’s a chance for them to say goodbye to everybody.

Jason (01:08:11.074)
Yeah.

Jack Fleckney (01:08:17.569)
And it’s usually pretty emotional for a lot of people because you build these bonds on the mountain. The Tanzanians are super friendly, know, very chilled out people, but really, really kind hearts. probably say that’s the best way of describing them.

Jason (01:08:31.94)
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t as I probably mentioned earlier, I don’t know Tanzania yet. I’ve been to what Zambia, South Africa, Namibia and everytime people ask me, Well, what was your favorite part of Africa? It’s always the people. I saw some amazing animals. I mean the the the wildlife, the nature is incredible.

But it’s immediately it’s the people. And I know Africa’s a big continent, so I’m not saying that people in Namibia must be exactly like people in in

Tanzania, I’m not saying that, but it in my experience, the the few places I’ve been in Africa is just they were so warm and gracious and just fun. They were just like I don’t wanna say funny because I don’t want in in any diminutive way, but they’ve got kind of a funny sense of humor that sometimes comes out when you least expect it. And I just I don’t know, I just I’ve I’ve so I can imagine that. And that’s why I wanted to mention that. So anybody that hasn’t been

To Tanzania, I suspected you were gonna say something like that. So alright, that’s very cool.

Jack Fleckney (01:09:31.748)
Yeah, it’s nice that you’ve experienced that because I’d probably say Zambian culture is very similar to Tanzanian. Very like individual tribes, know, in Zambia, I think it’s 74 different languages are spoken. So it’s very English is the the now the main language in Zambia, but it’s very similar to Tanzania. I suppose Tanzania culturally has got a little bit more Arabic, because a small Arabic mix because on that coastal plain there, but it’s very, very similar. So what you probably experience there in Zimbabwe is not far off what?

Tanzanian areas as well in terms of the people and I’ve traveled through all those countries and I think I’d probably say it’s very, very simple.

Jason (01:10:09.892)
Let’s discuss the if you’re ready to we’ve been going on and on and on about a lot of really, really cool stuff and we haven’t even touched on it how the heck you got there. So let’s go look at childhood traumas. We don’t and I say that j kinda jokingly, but at the same time, I know enough of your history to think, wow, there’s some reason that caused you to go do all this interesting stuff. But let’s go back to let’s let’s go back to when you’re ten or twelve or so, what was going on in your life? Where did you grow up and what was that like?

Jack Fleckney (01:10:30.403)
Yeah, I I did, yeah.

Jack Fleckney (01:10:39.031)
Yeah, I grew up, I had a really good upbringing actually. I grew up in a place called Northamptonshire, which is in the very middle of England. So it’s probably, very far away from any hills or mountains and also from the seaside. So it’s very easy, you probably say well known for farming. Very, used to be very, very famous for shoe making until it obviously all got exported out to China. So that was what Northamptonshire was famous for. I grew up with both my parents until I was about, I think about seven years old when my mum and dad split up.

And then I grew up with my mum and my stepdad moved into the family and introduced me to a sport called rugby, I kind of, I suppose, did I quickly fall in love with it? I suppose I just enjoyed it to begin with and then kind of built these goals and aspirations to try and become a professional rugby player. And yeah, it’s kind of dedicated a lot of my childhood to that.

Jason (01:11:28.74)
Let me let me ask you this, ’cause a lot of people that grow like maybe the area of the United States that would be similar would be kind of the Midwest, I don’t know.

Jason (01:11:42.597)
stuff like that. And those places in the US are pretty good at producing football players. And a lot of it has to do with I want to get the F out of here. I want to be a professional athlete, a singer, a something so I can move on to get closer to mountains or or the ocean or something like that. Do you think that had anything to do with your desire to be a professional rugby player?

Jack Fleckney (01:12:05.347)
Well actually where I’m from is probably quite well known for rugby. I think in the UK and England specifically football is the most popular sport or what you’d say soccer in the US. because of that, where I live, football wasn’t the dominating sport, probably rugby was because the local team, Northampton Saints is a very good team.

Jason (01:12:11.321)
Well

Jack Fleckney (01:12:33.699)
In fact, they won the top league, the premiership they won this year. that was definitely more rugby team opportunities for me to go and play and join. I think a lot of it for me was complete luck as well, just because my stepdad was into rugby. I never heard of it. And he took me up to the local rugby club and started playing it. It’s probably the first thing that I was actually any good at. So think that’s probably why I suddenly went, right, I’m going to try and become a professional rugby player and start doing that. And yeah, I actually really enjoyed it. And I did have the opportunity to play at a higher level. I did go and play.

for a team called London Wasp, we moved down to London and played there on a contract for two years and they were in the Premiership as well but I was in their youth set up. I was still, I think I was 15 and tiny, I remember I joined and they were like, right, you’ve got to put on 20 kilos over the next two years if you even want to think about moving up into the first team. So I was drinking protein powders literally three or four times a day and then in the gym.

Jason (01:13:27.876)
What was this a was this a scenario was this a scenario you where you went and lived in London while you were part of this program?

Jack Fleckney (01:13:35.296)
Yeah, was. Yeah. So I got given a trial to go down there to, you know, to, think, I think I’d written a letter. I so I, I’d gone and done what we call representational rugby. So for different levels and was doing relatively well, but I hadn’t broken into doing the highest level, which is like the England age groups. And I was kind of slightly in there with Northampton Saints, the team local to me, but not quite. And I suppose, you know, for a number of reasons, I think probably number one, not being good enough sometimes.

with rugby in the England, a lot of it’s built around the private school system, which is paid for schooling. And I didn’t go to a paid for school, so you wouldn’t get as many eyes on you. And obviously I didn’t play rugby at school, I only played for my local club. And then I saw this opportunity at Wasp, they were trying to basically recruit players into their team from all around the world. So I wrote a letter in and I got invited down to the trial. And I remember going down to the trial and there was, I think I was 15.

and I’ve walked into a room with all these other, well I’d say kids, but some of them have beards and facial hair and I couldn’t grow a thing on my face and I hadn’t even hit puberty yet and there was like guys from New Zealand that had tattoos and like, you know, down their arms and I was looking around thinking, gee, and I didn’t have a muscle on me. And yeah, over that, and there was 60 of us, I remember we sat in the room and they went, right, we’re looking to select three. And I was like, well, that’s my chance, it’s gone, then I’ve got no chance. then somehow I was one of the lucky few that got.

Jason (01:14:39.318)
Jason (01:14:47.501)
Yeah.

Jack Fleckney (01:15:03.287)
hit and then yeah, it did me moving down to London. my parents obviously financially propped that whole situation up and what I did was I had a room with a family. So a family basically rented out their room and I lived in the room there and the family would cook dinner and I would have their dinners and things with them and then I would obviously spend most of my day at the club or at school. I’d be switching between school and club throughout the day.

training and trying to do some education which didn’t go that well and then you know, suppose yeah

Jason (01:15:34.564)
Well, I w I was I was gonna ask about that. was there were you doing school because you ’cause that’s kinda you kinda have to at a certain age, or was there anything in school that you were interested in? Or another way of saying that is, what was your plan B? If r if rugby didn’t work out, what were you gonna go be when you grew up? There was no plan B? All right.

Jack Fleckney (01:15:54.57)
I didn’t have a plan for you Jason at all. was like, yeah, what did you say? Young, dumb and yeah, I was like, yeah, so I was just like, yeah, I’m just going to become a player. So, know, yeah, my job literally just, was very, I’m pretty gung ho still now. I’m very much like tunnel vision, right? We’re going for something that’s going to do it. So was like a rugby. It wasn’t until towards the end when I kind of, you knew I got towards the end of my contract and I knew I was just like, I’m not, I’m not just quite good enough here. So.

Jason (01:16:02.294)
huh.

Jack Fleckney (01:16:22.435)
So I had to make a decision of what I was going to do. I’d got my A levels and so the next step was either to go to university, but as you said there, I had no idea what I wanted to do and I didn’t really know what I wanted to study if I was going to go off to university. And also probably the educational system probably wasn’t quite right for me. I always found school hard and difficult, even though no matter how hard I tried. So then I’d been reading some Andy McNabb books. Have you heard of Andy McNabb?

He’s like ex SAS soldier. He was quite famous back in the day and he’d written a load of like books about his stories. And I’ve been reading a lot of those books and I was really interested. My stepfather was also ex military, he was in the Navy. So it’s kind of a small link there as well. And yeah, I was a bit like, well, you know what, maybe I can join the military. So I had my final meeting with the rugby team where they were just like, look, you know, we’re not quite good enough to continue on. We’re not going to give you another contract.

Jason (01:16:50.978)
it doesn’t ring a bell. okay.

Jack Fleckney (01:17:18.787)
I don’t know that afternoon, I went straight into the careers office and I was actually looking at joining the paratroopers. So probably a very similar job role to what you did, as you said at the start. I got the paperwork, then I walked past the Navy careers office and I saw this big poster and it was a Royal Marines commando poster and the poster literally said 99.9 % need not apply. apparently it was a terrible advertising campaign for them because their recruitment dropped.

Jason (01:17:28.314)
Jason (01:17:40.068)
Need yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack Fleckney (01:17:48.323)
But for me, that sounds pretty cool. I remember I got the paperwork and didn’t really know too much about it, but signed up and said I’ll go through selection and you go through select to go and join.

Jason (01:17:57.946)
Okay.

Jason (01:18:01.531)
Do you remember the first conversation you had with your mom after you signed after you did you well let me back up. Did you make a commitment? Did you sign something that was kind of got the ball rolling before you discussed this with your mom?

Jack Fleckney (01:18:18.626)
Well, I think I had to get them involved because I was under 18 when I was going through that process, I think I was 17. So I think that they had to be involved with it, I think. So yeah, my memory is not too good. And I often say that’s because I got knocked out too many times playing rugby. yeah, think that to be fair, I involved them and I think they were fully supportive of doing it. I suppose probably when I started to deploy away, that got a little bit more difficult because it obviously horrible for my mother.

Jason (01:18:25.242)
Okay.

Jason (01:18:33.658)
All right.

Jack Fleckney (01:18:47.874)
to have to worry about me when I’m away. So yes, and then yeah, I signed all the paperwork and then started selection, which was nine months long to try and become a commando.

Jason (01:19:01.952)
So you I I think there could be a whole episode about you know the the selection and the training of being a a commando. so it’s Royal Marine Commando, is that the official title?

Jack Fleckney (01:19:17.162)
Yeah, everyone means commando. Yeah. So, so yes. Yeah. As an organization that was, was, you know, nowadays it’s designed for probably more modern combat in terms of raids. you know, you basically do work in smaller teams and do things very fast. So you’re part of the rapid reaction force in the UK. So it’s, we were like basically on call. So if anything happened around the world, we had to be there in under 24 hours. So, so that was kind of our main job role.

Jason (01:19:20.011)
Commander.

Jack Fleckney (01:19:46.787)
but we are an offshoot of the Navy, so there is still a nautical element, what we did. So there’d be boats. We would do elements, all sorts of elements, we’d be parachuting in, boats, raids. One of the sayings, the Latin saying, was by, I think it was by land, and air. I might have gone the wrong way around, but that was the job role. So a very, very broad job role, but very, very interesting as well. I was very lucky to going.

go and do lots when I was in and experience that. And was fantastic for me because, how old were you Jason when you joined the military?

Jason (01:20:20.442)
Geez. 19, I think. I went in at probably about 19, did about five or six years myself. So a Royal Marines commando with that for it’s basically the equivalent, it sounds like the equivalent of the Navy SEALs. Is that and I don’t want to put labels, I don’t want to start a c debate about anything about who’s, you know.

Jack Fleckney (01:20:23.712)
Yeah, yeah, so similar to me.

Jack Fleckney (01:20:40.93)
Yeah, I suppose it’s a…

Yeah, think it’s difficult to do that because no matter what you say, you’ll get someone to say it wrong. I’d probably say similar to the Marine Corps and also the Navy SEALs.

Jason (01:20:51.948)
well, yeah. But you’re part of the navy. But you’re yep, you’re part of the navy. specialized rapid reactionary type of stuff, selection process yeah, I mean it kind of sounds similarities as far as maybe the role. Yeah, yeah.

Jack Fleckney (01:21:08.29)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we didn’t have to hold boats over our head during that, what was it called? was a hell week, you have to do the seals and watch the videos of it, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, proper, eh? Yeah.

Jason (01:21:14.231)
Jason (01:21:19.298)
I I had a I had a buddy when I was I was in the Hundred and First Pathfinder Company, s we did just Pathfinder stuff, that that’s irrelevant. But I had a friend who had left the Royal Marines at some point, I think Royal Marines Commando I don’t know exactly, I don’t want but

He had come over and joined the no, he met his wife, Andego Garcia, and she was in the US Air Force. So they they got married. He became a US citizen and then went and joined the army and was in my unit and and so he used to share some stories about his time in the the Royal Marines and yeah, so anyway. But

Jack Fleckney (01:21:43.168)
I thought you were okay here.

Jack Fleckney (01:21:54.435)
Well, he would have done exactly the same as me then. And if he was in Diego Garcia, then 107 because that was the base the Marines used to go to. And that deployment, if you got sent to Diego Garcia, it was a very cushy role because you got to be on the beach and in the sunshine all day long. it’s very, we used to be very jealous of everyone. you know, they’d be like, right, Tony, you’re going Diego Garcia. David, you’re going Scotland. And it’s like, oh, for God’s sake.

Jason (01:22:20.602)
Well, that’s funny because I remember many most of our training was in

Kentucky and Tennessee and the summer was hot and muggy and the winter is just cold and miserable and I remember so many missions, training missions we’d go out, we’d be out for two or three days, just the two of us, because that’s kind of the way we operated. And it’d be he and I cuddled up in a poncho liner together. So now that you just now that you just described what Diego Garcia was like, I’m sure he was second guessing some of his life choices.

Jack Fleckney (01:22:49.728)
Yeah, he’s like, what have I done?

Jason (01:22:53.196)
Anyway, so after after the training how long did you stay day active duty and then kind of walk walk us forward to help us understand? What’s that?

Jack Fleckney (01:22:57.986)
I did similar to yourself. Yeah, I did about five years. So I did very similar to yourself. So I did about a five year stint. I did two deployments. deployed out to, well, my first deployment was very early on when I joined and it was when the whole civil war was happening in Libya and we got deployed out in the Med on like a, what you call an RFA ship.

ready to basically go in and get nationals out if it really got worse. That kind of calmed down and then we went through the Suez Canal and did some anti-piracy work and some training elements with different forces, like Saudi Special Forces and Omani forces up in the hills there. So that was my first deployment and then I did an Afghanistan deployment, which was later on during what you call Operation Herrick. And I suppose our role there was really kind of command control of the area, but also hand it back to…

Afghan army and Afghan police to try and take over the area themselves. So I did those two deployments and actually came back from the Afghan deployment. I was still playing sport in the military, so I was playing what you call the army-navy rugby matches and some other representational sports. And then I came back and I think I’ve kind of done what I wanted to do to be honest with I’m not sure what was like for you, Jason, when you decided to leave, but I’d done what I wanted to do and was like I’m looking for something a little bit different now.

Jason (01:24:21.338)
Pretty much the same.

Jack Fleckney (01:24:23.392)
Yeah, and you know, I suppose there’s elements.

Jason (01:24:25.466)
It’s well it’s but I’ll tell you what though, Jack, your f your five your five years was probably a little bit more intense than my five years.

Jack Fleckney (01:24:33.994)
Really, because you know, I was always so shocked, Jason, with the US military of how long you’d be deployed away from home. Even if you were in the US, how far you… I could not believe it. I’d meet people and it’d be like, I haven’t been home for nine months. And I’d be like, so different to being in the UK military.

Jason (01:24:42.274)
No.

Jason (01:24:46.734)
But but I think it was just the timing. I went in right after Desert Storm, the first Desert Storm, bec b you know, because I watched all that and I was like, Okay, fine, I’m gonna go do my thing and and then there was a slowdown, not really too much happened. I

Jack Fleckney (01:24:54.804)
Okay

Jason (01:25:05.898)
So and then by the time I was out it was before the you know, before Afghanistan and all that stuff. So but it so anyway, I understand you got to the point where you’re like, Okay, what did what did you think you wanted to go do? Did you have a plan at this point or just I just didn’t want to do this anymore?

Jack Fleckney (01:25:19.17)
Yeah, I had a small plan. I got really into competing at CrossFit whilst I was in the military because in the military it was quite prolific, it was growing quite quickly, so it spread from the US military. I was actually working with some Navy SEALs who introduced it to me. I was in Afghanistan working with them and they introduced me to CrossFit. I tried it was like, jeez, it’s very difficult and I just got a bit of a bug for it.

started to compete and got quite good at it. I suppose I was probably maybe top 10 in the UK and maybe top 40 in Europe. So, and I just really loved it. And then I started, I started really getting into it and was like, well, maybe I can leave and set a gym up. And then I handed my notice in and then, you know, I had to work a year’s notice. And during that year, I spent a lot more time, most of time, trying to think what I was going to call the gym. And then I realized, I haven’t actually done any of the business planning. And

But if we fast forward through that, did, I ended up leaving and set a gym up for a number of different hardships, but set a gym up and then just slowly grew that, you know, I set it up because I was really into training myself and then really kind of saw this whole thing of we can make a big difference in people’s lives here. So I decided to kind of take a step back from my training and really concentrate on building the business. And then we built it up to have in, I think we have five sites, five different sites dotted around England before.

I suppose I think the biggest learning I took away from that business was I probably grew the business to a, I put myself into roles the business grew into something I wasn’t very passionate about in terms of running that business. My passion was in training and wasn’t in coaching. It wasn’t in building a gym business. So I got to the end of it and I was a bit like, I’m actually a bit bored doing this. I don’t wake up and feel the buzz anymore.

I decided to sell the business and then was like, right, what the hell am going to do now? that’s a very quick fast forward through those four years doing the business.

Jason (01:27:17.326)
But you you did you’ve done some I don’t know if you call them athletic endeavors. I don’t know, but I know you did a few things that I think our listeners I know our listeners would be interested in knowing about. but I don’t I don’t want to say the wrong thing or plant plant the wrong seed. But I’m curious where those fit in. Something about the Atlantic Ocean, something about North Africa. Is that stuff that you were doing while you were running the gym or did that come after the gym?

Jack Fleckney (01:27:43.778)
It was a few of them were before whilst I was running the gym. the first one was, it started off by just doing some stupid challenges just cause I wanted, you you, you notice like Jason, when you’re in the military, you get pushed all the time and like physically, mentally, and you know, you, you end up like wanting that adrenaline, that adrenaline, that push. And, and I was looking for that and I couldn’t get it from just running the business. So I started to do some charity challenges. So it started off, did, I did like 24 hours on.

what we call an assault bike, which is where you cycle and the arms go at the same time. And then I did like, I did like 2000 burpees for charity and just as quick as possible and did a lot of different things. But then I suppose the one that got recognition was, was 24 hours on a ski erg, where, you know, I actually properly went for it and tried to get the world record, which I did get the world record. did like 280.

three kilometers or thousand meters in the 24 hours. And that was the one that really kind of like made, you know, that got a bit more recognition on social media and on news and things.

Jason (01:28:43.876)
What the heck is a y it’s called a ski erg? Is that right? What is it?

Jack Fleckney (01:28:47.521)
Yeah, so the ski urks, so know the concept two rowers, know like everyone, think most people know what those rowers are, the rowing machines. It’s like one of them, but it stood up against the wall and you got the two handles and you’re basically simulating cross-country skiing. it was during lockdown during COVID, so we’d given all the equipment out. I was actually supposed to sell the gym and then COVID hit and then it was a big delay to me selling the business and I had to run it through COVID before I could pass it over.

So, you know, I was running it. We’d rented out every single… my God, yeah, so I had time in my hands because we could actually run a gym. So it was like empty. So I’d rented all the equipment out to all the members. They would obviously keep paying their membership and keep the doors running, not doors open, but the business running and staff. But the only piece of kit we had left was a skier because it was bolted down into the wall and the floor.

Jason (01:29:19.854)
See you at time on your hands.

Jason (01:29:32.148)
that’s a good idea.

Jack Fleckney (01:29:39.33)
So that’s why we only had it. And then at the time I was supporting some different charity things that we were doing in and around the local area. And then that was where the idea came from. thought, if you want to get donations, someone knows 24 hours is pretty tough if you’re to be doing that for that duration. yes, did that. And that was really cool. I enjoyed doing that. actually really enjoyed the training for them because you kind of start off not knowing how you’re going to evolve to get to the point of doing 24 hours. But then over months, kind of just…

suddenly see it and yeah so I’ve done a few others did like 24 hours of pull-ups or chin-ups that was horrendous that was actually a lot harder I thought it was gonna be and then I at the same time whilst I was setting that business I’d already stepped back from it I started to do things that I wanted to do which was going back to what I did the military the expeditions so that was you know like you said there I did I did a race across the Sahara which is like 270 kilometers across the Sahara

like self-sufficient, just carrying all your gear to survive. And then did my own trip, pretty much following where you’ve been. I went through, crossed through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana, but doing like some particular different challenges in each country, raising money for some different causes there. So I suppose the most recognizable one was the Okavango Delta. So kayaks the length of the Okavango Delta from top to bottom, which was, I can tell you now, was the closest I’ve been to dying.

way closer than being out in Afghanistan, I can tell you that. Mainly because I was getting chased.

Jason (01:31:09.56)
Is that is a is that yeah, I was gonna ask, is that because of w wildlife weather? When you tell us more about that.

Jack Fleckney (01:31:15.265)
you

Yeah, so wildlife. was very naive getting into it it was the end of this big project where I’d been away for like three months on an expedition. I think it three months, maybe two months on expedition. yeah, I had a friend of mine called Mark who lives in Mound, which is in the south, is the main town next to the Delta. So anyone that goes on safari in the Delta lands in Mound and goes off. He’d always said to me about wanting to do it. So I said, well, I can meet you.

the way three six and we’ll go and do it and I was so naive I hadn’t really done much kayaking so you know and what I had done was very leisurely down some rivers back at home so I got there and we drove up this like 10-hour drive up off-road to get to the start point and it was just getting to the evening and we said and Mark you know he’s actually experienced kayaking he was like let’s jump in the kayak and just practice together to get our timing right and we got in the kayak and started to get the time right it was one of those thin kayaks that very easily tips over.

And I’m not joking, we literally got like 30 seconds in this kayak and this croc comes out the reeds and starts chasing after us. And we had to like sprint to get away from it. And then, yeah, but it was the hippos. It was the hippos. I’ve got some footage somewhere of these hippos chasing us. And it was like, it was crazy. Like, crazy to the point we had to like ditch the kayak at one point and get away, run away from them. And we had a boat that was following us. had an American journalist on the videographer on there as well that was capturing some of the things.

Jason (01:32:14.65)
Uh-huh.

Jason (01:32:20.526)
Ha ha ha.

Jack Fleckney (01:32:44.518)
and their boat got attacked by hippos like properly.

Jason (01:32:45.902)
So so they would so they’d have good video for TikTok of the the f the Royal Marine Commando getting eat by the hippo, yeah, in Botswana that

Jack Fleckney (01:32:51.422)
Yeah, yeah, for TikTok and all sorts, exactly that,

Yeah, yeah, they can live stream it and get some views. Yeah, no, the, know, I remember the first experience we turned this corner quite early on and it took five days to cover the distance. It’s about 400 kilometres. And we turned this first corner and we saw these hippos and you just feel this adrenaline going all of sudden because the river’s not that wide and there’s loads of hippos. And you basically had to try, it was like a game of Mario Kart, you basically had to try and dodge around them.

get through and they will go for you and if you know the river is their home so they will they will they’re very territorial so they’ll try and attack you and yeah the only tactic sorry

Jason (01:33:33.242)
Do they do the I was gonna ask, is yeah, is the tactic there to move really slow? Or is it get there through there as quickly? I mean, are they attracted by the motion? Like I what do you do when you’re ch when you’ve got fourteen hippos and you gotta weave your way through them?

Jack Fleckney (01:33:52.833)
Yeah, you’ve got to try and keep distance from them is the main thing. Speed doesn’t make too much difference, especially if you’re keeping away from them, you know, because they because of territorial there, if you’re going into their area in their space, they’re going to go for you. So what would happen is you would either see them on the land in a few hundred meters in front of you and then they would see you and they would then go running into the river and just disappear because they can stay underwater for about five minutes. So they would just disappear.

And then your game was when we need to get out, they would go to the deeper part of the river. So we would have to try and get away from that deep part and try and find out where it is. But we, but we had a few scenarios where, because they would just dip into the water to get away from you. But we had a few scenarios where like, you know, one of them was we were trying to get around this pod. Didn’t realize there was actually a hippo right underneath us. And I was cracking and I, and I went to hit the water and it was solid. And I thought I’d hit a rock and turn around and we’d hit a hippo. it was coming up for us. So.

Jason (01:34:48.181)
Peace.

Jack Fleckney (01:34:51.55)
Yeah, we used to joke, we were joking during it because we’d have to find some dry land to camp each night and set a fire up. And we were joking saying, well, the worst thing about being attacked by hippos, they won’t even eat you. They won’t even use you for energy. They’ll just, they’ll just kill you. And because they eat grass, they graze us. So, so, so yes, that was, that was a really incredible, incredible journey. There, as I said earlier, sorry, the, the support boat, the river is a swamp. So it’s not very, it’s not very deep, some sections of it. So sections where the support boat was bottoming out.

Jason (01:35:03.578)
Just kill ya. Mm-hmm.

Jack Fleckney (01:35:21.376)
So I would actually have to get out the kayak and go up to them and try and push the boat through the river or swim up to them and push the boat through, which was obviously, you know, back now, I it was pretty stupid, but we had to get them out of that situation. you said about what scares the hippos, all the noise wasn’t very good from the engine of the boat. So in the end, we had to tell them to go ahead of us because then we went for an area which the locals called Hippo Alley, know, a direct translation, Hippo Alley.

And it was just, can’t tell you how dense it was with hippos. just everywhere, like pods of hippos everywhere. And we told the boat, go ahead of us, go through, get ahead of us, away from us, because we need to be able to go through here quietly without scaring them. And they went off ahead and actually, you know, when they were, they got a few kilometers ahead of us, stopped. And then they thought they were completely away from the hippos, which they were. And one of the hippos came underneath their boat and headbutted the bottom of the boat.

and then nearly flipped the boat over and the guy was actually videoing at the time, so the shot of the boat being thrown and him dropping the camera. And then we came up to them and they were just completely lost their head. They literally screaming for help. So we got them out of the situation and then ended up calling a helicopter in for them to go back. And then we finished off the journey on our own, which was a lot easier because you haven’t got, you know, when you do those kinds of things, it’s really difficult when you’re worrying about other people because you need to really concentrate on what you’re doing.

Jason (01:36:44.9)
Well that’s that was actually the question that was occurring to me was was the support boat really doing you any favors other than just having somebody there to cat to catch footage of you guys getting eaten by a croc or a hippo? I mean it’s

Jack Fleckney (01:36:56.292)
No. Yeah, no, no, no, not at all. No, was, you know, the journalist, the journalist was writing stories for a number of different pieces out in Africa and wanted to come and join to capture this. You know, Okavango Delta is stunning and it’s super diverse. I think they regretted that decision afterwards. I don’t know, maybe they might look down. I’m sure they look back now. I think it’s pretty cool. There’s a lady called Summer Rylander. And yeah, so, you know, once they got the helicopter out, they’re all right and, you know, fine. But it was pretty crazy, pretty crazy.

Jason (01:37:08.762)
Bye bye.

Jason (01:37:24.438)
It it sounds like what you were saying, it sounds like you didn’t quite know what you were getting yourself into. I hadn’t really thought it out very much. I think is what I heard you say. Your buddy, did he it was was did he more I don’t know what say comfortable, but like did he have a better idea what to expect than you did, or was it kind of the same thing? Yeah, okay. And then the

Jack Fleckney (01:37:32.224)
No, no, no, no, no.

Jack Fleckney (01:37:45.288)
Yeah, he did because he is from the area.

Yeah, yeah, he was from the area. So he kind of knew the wildlife already. He knew kind of what to expect. I think he’d attempted it before, but didn’t finish it. So, you know, but he didn’t tell me that. He generally didn’t tell me until afterwards. And actually, I didn’t realize.

Jason (01:38:03.576)
I wanna know what I wanna know what I wanna know what happened to the other person that attempted it with him the first time because you notice that person did not come back and do it with him again. okay.

Jack Fleckney (01:38:10.527)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, that’s very true. this is why need you with me to start asking these questions next time I say yes to something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, exactly that. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, it was amazing. It’s actually one my favorite ones.

Jason (01:38:21.434)
I’m pretty good I’m pretty good at the what if type thing. Well, what if? Have you thought about this? And then I still do it anyway. I but anyway, yeah. All right, so that that sounded like a big adventure. Doesn’t doesn’t sound like something but it doesn’t sound like something you’d be super excited to go do again, or would you?

Jack Fleckney (01:38:43.135)
I would do now, although I’ve got a little boy now that’s six months old, so my decision’s a little bit different.

Jason (01:38:47.234)
yeah, I was I was just gonna say before you answer this, recognize that your wife might hear this conversation, so maybe maybe you should not say yes to that. All right. And what else? You did what

Jack Fleckney (01:38:57.906)
Yeah, I think, no, you know, I definitely, oh, sorry, sorry to jump in there. There’s a bit of a lag then, but I, you know, definitely seen a mindset shift in the way I look at things now because I have to have a craving to go and do more expeditions or more things. Ever since we’ve had Leo, you do change your mind a little bit. I’m bit like, you know, actually quite happy to be at home and not doing those things so much now.

Jason (01:39:20.932)
You know, it’s it’s interesting that you brought that up because we talked a little out a bit about getting to that point where it’s time to leave the military. I actually remember the day when I when it clicked for me. I was stationed in Alaska and my thing was on the weekends I was or pretty much any time I could, I was going fishing. And I had a young daughter that was probably six months old or so at the six months to a year old, and I was out fishing and I saw a guy that looked like

version of me 20 years older and he was fishing but he was in a wheelchair so he’s very limited as to where he could fish. He was in a wheelchair and his young daughter with probably seven or eight was there with him. And I it just kind of clicked this whole jumping out of airplanes type of thing. Like I wanted to have that opportunity to fish with my daughter and not be limited to the place that I can you know get my wheelchair up to. And I remember thinking

Maybe I should quit jumping out of airplanes. Yeah. Things things change when you when you when you have a kid. So what else did you do be between that Okvango trip and and getting to to kind of where you’re at now? ‘Cause I I want to touch on you know how you met your wife, how that went, and I understand she’s now living there with you in Tanzania. We discussed that a little bit before I hit record. So walk us forward a little bit and help us figure all that out.

Jack Fleckney (01:40:24.255)
Yeah, because historically it doesn’t end very well, does it? Yeah, that’s very true.

Jack Fleckney (01:40:48.232)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, well, I did, you said there about the expedition and another one which was rowing across the Atlantic. So that was leaving from the Canary Islands and rowing across the Caribbean. So it was about three, three and a half thousand miles. I think we did a bit more than that because the route we had to take, but about three and a half thousand miles, which to be honest with you, that was just pure luck. As in there was three guys, you know, all very successful businesses. They’d bought this ocean rowing boat and wanted to row across. And then they were looking for another team member.

to join to kind of, I suppose, head up the team and lead the logistical and the getting across side. So they had someone that knew me and there was a bit of a link there and they contacted me and said, what would be interested? And I was like, yeah, definitely. I’ve got a history of like, I read all the old exploring books and you know, look back in Vikings and Arab travel as well by boats. And I was always really intrigued by, you know, how people would just travel across oceans. So when they asked, I was just like, yes, I did even ask.

about when it was or how it was going to happen. I was like, yeah, I’m in. So I did that and that was a really cool experience. I suppose the isolation of it and the challenge of map reading and trying to get across successfully was a big challenge, physically and mentally, but also look back now and think how awesome it was. It was such a cool experience.

Jason (01:41:51.129)
Jason (01:42:10.148)
How long were you?

Jack Fleckney (01:42:12.665)
It took 39 days to get across in total.

Jason (01:42:16.194)
So you and three guys who you probably presumably met shortly before departure, or did you spend some time with them before?

Jack Fleckney (01:42:21.695)
Yeah, I actually knew them a little bit before because we had about nine months, but we didn’t really know each other that well, although we’re very good friends now, luckily, because I think it goes one or the other way, right? So I’ve heard stories of the complete opposite happening.

Jason (01:42:37.316)
Well, when you talk about I didn’t know them that well, but contrasting that to after thirty nine days on a boat Yeah, you’re right, you didn’t know them that very well.

Jack Fleckney (01:42:44.319)
I knew them very well. Yeah, well, I used to have to see them taking a poo in a bucket every single day. So I know them very, well. Yeah.

Jason (01:42:51.59)
Okay, that’s enough of that. But I get it. I I I get it get it completely. All right, and then what was the next step after that?

Jack Fleckney (01:42:55.825)
Yeah.

Jack Fleckney (01:43:04.159)
Well, during that row, actually, that was the spark for setting this company up because obviously I’d sold the previous business. I’ve done a lot of charity expeditions and challenges, but I was just watching my bank balance just disappear. I say that, still watching it disappear now, to be honest with you. know, what I realized was from the sale of the previous company to what I’ve been doing, I’d lost a bit of confidence in myself. And during that row, it gave you so much time to think about things yourself.

in your own head with no distractions. It was fantastic. So, and I remember speaking to one of the lads, we in a storm, we hit a big storm. I say hit, the storm hit us. We can get out of the way of it, we’re too slow. And the storm, we had about 24 hours of being locked in the cabin, like with all our stuff tied down. And I was chatting to one of the lads called Dan and I was asking about why he wanted to do it. And his reason was he wanted a different story to tell.

So he wanted this story to tell and I remember just this spark come in and they were successful business owners and very self-confident and I feel like I learned a lot from being around them as well and I just had to get this idea in the head. was like, well, literally like I love guiding. Like I’ve been working doing freelance guiding already for other companies but maybe I could do this myself because every time I guided for another company there was always something that I was a bit like, we could do that better. That could be much better. And I was like, maybe I could do this self but I think I’ve been.

delaying it because I’d been lacking a bit of confidence to try it. So when I got back I literally remember got to Antigua and I got my notepad out and started making some ideas of what I was going to do and how to create it and then yeah they obviously got back to the UK and started planning and originally the business was going to be all over the world so I’d already built a few trips and guided quite a lot in different places like Borneo, the jungles there so been over to Borneo and then

Iceland did like a crossing of Iceland on big mountain fat mountain bikes, fat tire mountain bikes and done stuff in Africa. So I was a bit like, want to do trips dotted around everywhere. what I really, well, you know, if we fast track a little bit, I realized that because we were delivering every aspect of every trip, we couldn’t actually compete against the massive organizations that sell trips all over the world because they do everything on, they can do everything on such tight margins because they run so many trips and have such a

Jack Fleckney (01:45:21.854)
hold on the market. So I was a bit like, actually, we need to become specialists here. Where that was going to be, I didn’t know. But actually had some clients contact me that I knew and guided before. And they said, would you come and guide Kilimanjaro with us? So I just said, yeah, definitely. Like, I can do that. And then we formulated the team. We did the first trip. And I was just like, OK, we’re onto something here. I felt like my passion, you you just feel like your heart belongs somewhere. I felt that in this area here.

And then, you know, we’ve then gone through all that process that we talked about right at the start of the call about how the business was, we’ve slowly developed it, we’ve built the team, you know, we’ve brought in the guides that we wanted to. And then I suppose, you know, the biggest thing I’m proud of is how we actually look after the team now in terms of pay scales, opportunities for them, you know, outside of work as well that we’re trying to fuel. yeah, you know, and then that’s probably, that’s a very, very quick overview of how we’ve got to where we are.

Jason (01:46:17.238)
Out of at what point during all of that did you meet your wife?

Jack Fleckney (01:46:22.884)
I met Jess actually when I selling, when I sold the gym, think I’d sold, just sold the gym business. And I had maybe just completed that, what I say completed it. I just scraped myself through the 24 hour chin up challenge. And then it was around that time and we got introduced by a mutual friend.

And you you just meet someone and it’s just like, bam, know, that’s, just know, I just knew straight away. And then here we are now. Now I’ve dragged her out for guilt out to Africa with our newborns. yeah.

Jason (01:46:46.968)
Right.

Jason (01:46:55.778)
I’m trying I’m trying to imagine the conversation. You’re like, okay, well I’ve been a gym owner, you know, prior military I’ve got this gym, I’m selling the gym. And I can just imagine the conversation, probably one of the earlier questions she would ask you, so Jack, what are you gonna do now? Do you remember what you told her?

Jack Fleckney (01:47:16.446)
Yeah, yeah, I’ve got no idea. It’s probably the answer I gave her. Yeah, yeah, she stuck around. Yeah, no, she’s, I tell you what, I’m very lucky. I tell you that now. I know for a fact I’m very lucky. yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew I was going to go into some form of venture, was where I was going be guiding. I was guiding for other companies at the time. So I was working a little bit here and there, traveling around. so she’s…

Jason (01:47:22.408)
and she stuck her own. Okay.

Jack Fleckney (01:47:43.391)
been part of that since we got together. So she knows, I suppose she knows the game. What I’m trying to do now with the business, especially now we have Leo, is not be away too much. you know, whereas before often would be away for a few months now, you know, that’s not what I want to do anymore, which is why we’ve been building this business to, you know, and build and really work on the team to be able to deliver every aspect of what we do on the mountain now for that reason.

Jason (01:48:09.08)
I I’ve heard you say we, but I also realize you’ve got other people on the team, but I’m curious, is Jess involved in the business? Is this something she’s excited about as well?

Jack Fleckney (01:48:16.496)
Yeah, yeah, Jess helped actually. So Jess runs our social media because I’m not very good at that and she’s really talented at that. She does our social media and she has had to, she did start to step in and help a bit more more recently because basically we were getting too busy and a lot of the work was coming through me, all the comms and organisation and I was just getting to the point where I was working too much and couldn’t keep up. So she stepped in and started to help with some administration but you know.

It’s still relatively difficult now because Leo takes up a lot of her time in the daytime. So we’ve been, when I say we, you know, we’ve got a team, it’s not just me. So we’ve got, we’ve got myself, you know, in terms of our headquarters team, we’ve got myself, we’ve got Jackson, who is kind of like the mountain, you know, he’s, he’s spent so much time on the mountain. He makes sure that all the mountain delivery goes really well with my input. And then we have Happy who’s recently joined the team.

Jason (01:48:51.556)
Yeah.

Jack Fleckney (01:49:12.478)
who works here at the office and her role is basically more organisation, permits, paperwork, lots of things that would usually take me a lot of time that she stepped in to start taking over that now. And then we’ve obviously got all our mountain team, which at a minute is, know, we’ve got about 120, maybe 120 staff members now that are in that working with us.

Jason (01:49:34.436)
Jack, I I have to ask you. Okay, so I’m just imagining the conversation between Jess and her parents or family. And it’s like, yep, I met this great guy, Jack. We’re gonna, you know, then she gets pregnant and now she’s in Africa with you. And I’m I’m think like, how supportive are her parents? what’s whatever you’re willing to share. They might hear this, but

Jack Fleckney (01:49:56.03)
Oh yeah, her parents as. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I’ve actually really really close with her parents, they’ve been super supportive. You know, they’re FaceTiming a lot and speaking and you know when I say we’re out here we’re sharing time between both so this time around is the first time we’ve got Leo out with us so it’s very much a trial to see how that’s gone. So we’ve got another I think four or five weeks out here now before we go back.

And it’s kind of like a building trial to see how Jess finds it and whether we want to share time between the both. you know, I will be very much dictated on what Jess and Leo want and I will follow that path and we’ll work that out. But yeah, I’m very, very, I’m actually, I feel incredibly lucky because she’s super supportive. If I just said, right, I’m going to stop doing this now and going to go and do something else, she’ll be like, yeah, cool. Okay. What do we need to do? You know, so I’m very, I’m very lucky. She’s, she’s my number one supporter, even when I come up with some terrible ideas.

Jason (01:50:55.574)
If I if I had a dating and relationship podcast, I would want you to come on and and help our listeners figure out how to meet a woman like that. You you you’re you’re a very, very lucky man. Jack, we’ve just we’ve discussed a bunch of things. you’ve been gracious to share an awful lot of your time. I know more time than we probably thought. I and I also recognize we could probably keep going for another couple hours.

Jack Fleckney (01:51:06.126)
I don’t know how though, that’s the problem, I don’t know how.

Jack Fleckney (01:51:11.89)
Yeah, I am.

Jason (01:51:24.196)
But I’m curious, out of everything that maybe I missed or what do you wish I would have asked you, what do you think, you know, what else do you want our listeners to know about you, about Tanzania, Kilimanjaro, life in general or anything like that before we wrap up?

Jack Fleckney (01:51:40.478)
I probably think, know, if you’re, it’s probably just for anyone listening that’s wanting to come out and travel out to East Africa is, you know, there’s massive differences in kind of like what you can come and do out here. And I think probably the biggest thing you should all be looking for is how the team are looked after because there’s a lot of people that work in the tourism industry in East Africa and all throughout Africa, to be honest with you, that are earning very, very low wages that are enabling these cheaper trips. So I think it’s probably, you know, when you

If you were going to ask me about what do I think are some of the issues I see in the future for tourism out here, it’s definitely that. It’s pay scales for individuals working out here. And then, I suppose, the other question which I love to talk about is geopolitics throughout East Africa. But we haven’t got enough time for that and we’ll probably save that for another one.

Jason (01:52:32.708)
You know, you did you something though that I I recognize as a consumer if I’m wanting to book a trip, I can hear what you’re saying, you know, work with somebody that pays their staff well and and is res responsible and all this stuff.

But I also recognize I could call an operator and I can say, geez, why is your trip twenty percent more expensive? And they say, Well, we pay our staff well. Okay, really? How do I how do I really know that? Because if I was an operator, wanted to make an extra twenty percent profit and didn’t have any scruples, I could say that all day long. Our expenses are higher.

Jack Fleckney (01:52:56.135)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack Fleckney (01:53:07.312)
Yeah, that’s actually a massive issue in the industry because there’s not much auditing for that. We actually had a meeting with someone about that a few days ago here because he got a lot of operators that will just say, you know, yeah, we’re doing this and this, but we know they’re not because we’ve hired their former staff members that have moved across to us. but there is an organization here on the mountain that’s worth spotting, which is called K-PAP.

So the Kilimanjaro Porter’s Assistance Programme. I would definitely, if you ever want to come and climb the mountain, try and climb with the companies following those rules and there’s part of that badge. Actually, we’ve been getting assessed by them for the last two years and we’re going to be getting our badge. What is it? I’m looking at dates now. Next week we officially get our badge, which I’m really happy about.

So, you know, that badge will, what that means is every time we go on, we actually have someone that comes and audits us on that climb to make sure that doing really silly things you wouldn’t expect. So, you know, that you’d expect a normal. like making sure the team are getting three hot meals a day, making sure their sleeping setup’s correct, making sure they’re getting paid the highest level of wages. So, you know, look at, suppose stage one is look at that. Like if, you know, that’s the one audited factor on the mountain is the K-pop. So.

Yeah, in terms of the safaris though, it’s very, very difficult. It’s very, very difficult because as you said, a lot of it’s not audited at all.

Jason (01:54:32.832)
imagine and I appreciate you mentioning that because that is the challenge. People can say I want to work with somebody who’s paying their people well, but how do I know how how am I gonna talk to Jackson, your your team guy, you know, and figure out, hey Jackson, or how are they treating you? How are they paying you? I’m you know, Jackson, you know, that’s that’s impossible. So it’s good that you’ve got at least something that you can point out to people. So

Jack Fleckney (01:54:49.895)
Yeah.

Jason (01:54:57.966)
Jack, this was just super fun conversation. I knew it would be. I love connecting with a a former service person. Thank you for your service. And just thank you for showing up and sharing so much with our audience today. And I’ll let you get back to your family. I know it’s late, they’re probably already asleep, but thank you so much for sharing your time. Let’s Yeah, yeah, you’re man. It’s well

Jack Fleckney (01:55:15.419)
Yeah, think it’s like 11pm now here, yeah. Yeah, 11pm has gone 11 now, so yeah, I’ll be straight off to bed. And what time is it for you now? It’s the afternoon, is it for you?

Jason (01:55:26.048)
It’s yeah, it’s only three. I’m good. But I’ve heard you say you can do things for twenty four hours straight that are pretty exhausting. So we can just keep going. But anyway, Jack, th thank you so much. Great great pleasure to meet you and I look forward to working on some projects together in the future.

Jack Fleckney (01:55:42.813)
Amazing. Cheers, Jax. Thanks for your time. See you later.

Jason (01:55:46.126)
Thanks. Bye bye.

 

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