Guest Bio
Tom Williams is the founder of Desert Island Survival, a company that offers unique survival experiences by marooning participants on uninhabited tropical islands. With a passion for adventure, Tom has walked to the North Pole and most recently took part in the survival TV show Alone in an effort to survive as long as possible in the Canadian Wilderness.
Show Summary
In this episode, Tom Williams shares his journey from participating in extreme expeditions to founding Desert Island Survival. He discusses the inspiration behind creating authentic survival experiences, the challenges and rewards of marooning people on uninhabited islands, and insights from his participation in the TV show Alone. Tom also reflects on the importance of resilience, adaptability, and the profound personal growth that comes from stepping out of one’s comfort zone.
Key Takeaways
- ✓ Authentic Survival Experiences – Creating genuine survival scenarios on uninhabited islands.
- ✓ Personal Growth Through Adventure – How extreme challenges foster resilience and self-discovery.
- ✓ Lessons from ‘Alone’ – Insights gained from participating in a survival TV show.
- ✓ Building a Unique Business – The journey of turning a passion for adventure into a thriving enterprise.
- ✓ Embracing Discomfort – The benefits of stepping out of comfort zones to achieve personal transformation.
What You’ll Find on Desert Island Survival’s Platform
- ✓ Survival Expeditions – Opportunities to be marooned on uninhabited islands and learn survival skills.
- ✓ Expert Instruction – Guidance from seasoned survival experts and adventurers.
- ✓ Custom Adventures – Tailored survival experiences for individuals and groups.
- ✓ Testimonials and Stories – Accounts from past participants detailing their transformative experiences.
- ✓ Booking Information – Details on upcoming expeditions and how to join.
👉 Visit Desert Island Survival’s Official Website to explore their offerings and learn more about Tom Williams’ unique survival experiences.
Learn more about Desert Island Survival and connect with Tom at:
https://www.desertislandsurvival.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.
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small podcast for the adventure traveler. This is quite an interesting episode today. We’ve got Tom Williams. He is the founder and creator of Desert Island Survival.
And maybe you can tell from the name of his company a little bit about what that’s about, but I’m sure you’re as intrigued now as I was when I first came across Tom. So Tom, so happy to have you on the show. Welcome.
Tom (03:05.742)
Thank you very much for having me, Jason.
Jason Elkins (03:08.665)
This is very cool. I can’t remember exactly how I came, actually I can. I was on the ATTA, Adventure Travel Trade Association network and one of your colleagues reached out to me, actually somebody that works with you on your team. And I was totally intrigued when I read kind of what she was doing and reached out to you and happy that you were able to join us. So Tom, real quick, give us, we’re gonna go into some of the background and how you got to where you are from where you started.
But just real quick, what is desert island survival? What’s your elevator pitch for desert island survival?
Tom (03:44.238)
Yeah, absolutely. So we are curators of, we’re an adventure travel company that basically create castaway experiences on uninhabited tropical islands. So we rent these picture postcard tropical islands. We have one in Panama, Philippines and Tonga, and we bring in
individuals to first they learn survival skills on the island it’s like a survival light phase and then they have a free day kind of full survival experience but they have little more than a machete and a handful of fish hooks and they have to kind of live out this adventure.
Jason Elkins (04:22.425)
Cool. So anybody that’s listening to this that has seen television in the last 30 years is probably thinking, you know, some names of some TV shows that they’ve seen in the past are kind of coming up. So I’m guessing there was some inspiration there.
Tom (04:39.15)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I used to watch, there was a show called Bear Grylls the Island back in the UK in Channel 4. We actually used that very same island in Panama. That was one of the things that certainly would have planted the seed for me. Obviously, a big fan of Castaway. I just always had this desire to be, you know, on the edge of the map where there’s very little impact and influence from humans and that tropical island and disconnected from society and humanity and yeah.
fending out a survival for myself.
Jason Elkins (05:12.697)
Yeah, that’s very cool. And I know there’s more to that story. So now we’re going to jump back as far to the beginning as you think we need to go to help our listeners understand how did you get to this point? How far back into your childhood growing up? Where do you think was the moment that started all this for you?
Tom (05:31.406)
I mean, we’ll jump all the way back and try and race through it fairly quickly, because it’s kind of interesting, I guess. I mean, I…
Jason Elkins (05:37.485)
Mm -hmm.
Tom (05:39.63)
I was not your classic adventurer or you know you wouldn’t have chosen me when I was at school for setting up Desert Island Survival. I was the fattest kid in my school. Academically I came bottom of my school. Things were not looking good. My nickname was Bum. And yeah I scraped through school. I went and got a proper job. You know what’s expected of you from your family and society. And I found myself living in Maidenhead which is a very dreary…
place outside of London selling software. Before then I’d been working as a snowboard instructor and I’d done a bit of traveling and then suddenly there I was in my cubicle selling software and I was depressed and I was like, goodness me, surely there’s more to life than this. I was drowning my sorrows, drinking a few pints with my mate Paul and he said, mate, I’m thinking about walking to the North Pole next year and I was like, okay.
that is what I need. I don’t want to be pigeon -holed as a software salesman. I need to walk to the North Pole. So I ended up signing up to a race to the North Pole. I trained for two years. I raised money for two years. And eventually when I was 27, I walked to the North Pole and we won the race. We won it by two days. I missed the world record by two hours. And then once I’d done that, I think, you know,
I’d taken such a big leap out of my comfort zone and Pandora’s box was open. It was very hard for me to go back to Inverted Commerce normal life of selling software and being in a cubicle. But I kind of did. I met my wife and we moved to Chile with her job and then the only job in English in Chile I could do was in finance and I found myself selling pensions, working in building investment portfolios.
and I was back in a cubicle and I couldn’t believe it because I needed cash and I spent many many a day just kind of daydreaming out the window about being in nature, escaping and disconnecting and I thought about being marooned on a desert island so I was just googling I found one company sort of offering this experience went on their trip and it kind of it felt very short of what I was looking for it
Tom (07:56.984)
wasn’t an uninhabited island, there was a guy living on it, there were lights on the horizon, boats coming past, it didn’t feel disconnected, it was infested with sandflies and mosquitoes which can, they can, you know, they can change the mentality of the most stoic survivor. And the guy teaching it, he was brilliant but he was also quite militant and army in course and a bit misogynistic and I was like, if you just found really beautiful islands and he brought in,
kind of more, a bit more emotionally intelligent sound instructors who get it and can bring a group together. You can create something really special. So I was like, why don’t I do it? So yeah, back in 2017, I kind of bootstrapped the business. I set up for 4 ,000 pounds. Half of that went on hammocks, like expedition hammocks. And I put out a note on Facebook saying, look, I’ve set up this company. Who wants to come on my first trip? I managed to rent this island in Panama from watching the credits of that TV show.
And yeah, four mates were like, yeah, man, we’re up for this. And they invited four of their friends and these eight guys turned up. And, you know, I was like, look, mistakes are going to happen. It’s going to be raw. And they’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what we want. And, and it was, but they were like, dude, you’ve got something really special here. This is, this is, this is, this is exceptional. And, and yeah, we went, we went from there. And I set about learning more and more bushcraft skills. I found an amazing mentor and a guy called Tom McElroy, who’s a bushcraft wizard.
He’s on the island right now in Panama running a trip. And yeah, we run about 20 expeditions a year in Panama, Philippines and Toneth.
Jason Elkins (09:35.257)
That is so cool. And what really landed for me was the first trip you went on where you said the guy was kind of militant and maybe not real high on the EQ level. And I can see where you like, okay, we need to take this concept of life or death type of survival, like militant, like hardcore stuff and turn it into something that’s actually a pleasant experience.
Tom (09:59.342)
Preppers.
Tom (10:05.132)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (10:05.443)
But without making it so pleasant that now you’re at a beach resort, you know, so finding that balance in between I’m sure is Is that kind of a moving target for you guys? Is that something it’s always like final like making adjustments probably on each trip and you also mentioned like
Tom (10:19.278)
day.
Jason Elkins (10:23.833)
for the first group of guys, you’re like, you know, things are gonna, there’s gonna be some bumps along the way. It’s not gonna be, this is our first time doing it, but you can almost get away with some of that stuff with this type of trip, right? Cause that’s, yeah, it’s like, yeah, go ahead.
Tom (10:35.416)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, there’s a couple of things there. So like, it’s is all about finding that tightrope of challenging, but not so challenging that everyone quits. And I’d say about one in 25, one in 30 people quit, they don’t last the eight days on the island. And you know, obviously, we all have a different barometer of what is challenging, and many people have different life experiences. And so one person’s exceptionally hard as another person’s easy. And
We recently had a lady who had never… Every time she had left the US she had stayed in five -star hotels and her son was like, I really want to do this, can you come with me? And so she was so far out of her comfort zone and she ended up quitting after five days. The first five days, you know, you’re sleeping in expedition hammocks, we’re feeding you really well, we’re teaching you all these skills. It’s survival light. But you know, there’s still no toilet. You still not got showers. All of this was just so much for her to comprehend.
Jason Elkins (11:27.705)
Is it?
Tom (11:32.59)
But she went home and she’s message afterwards saying that it was the most impactful experience of her life that it’s opened her eyes and she had suffered from migraines for 20 years and they’ve gone from eating this kind of clean diet and removing things like sweeteners. So even though she quit, it still hopefully was quite a transformational experience for her. So yeah, finding that balance, it is definitely really key.
Jason Elkins (11:59.033)
Actually, what you said makes sense. We tend, in our society, I think we tend to think about you either complete or you don’t complete. And if you don’t complete something the way other people think you should, then it’s complete failure. And the reality is, I mean, I’m just thinking of just life in general, you know? Sometimes we start things and we get the value that we need to get out of those things, and then it’s time to move on to the next thing. You know, it can be the person that takes a job in a finance.
Tom (12:25.486)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (12:28.921)
job, you know, working in a cubicle because everybody told them that’s what they’re supposed to do and they’re supposed to do that until they retire, until their 401k hits a certain number and they can get stuck in that and that’s not maybe right for everybody. And the person that does it for six months and says, okay, screw this, I don’t want to do this and they leave that, that can be a good thing. So maybe somebody that comes and stays on the island for five days out of eight, maybe that’s just where they got to the point. Okay, I got what I wanted to get out of this and.
It’s okay. I don’t know. What do you think?
Tom (13:00.014)
Yeah, 100%. I guess you could always say like an entrepreneur setting up a business that doesn’t make it, but they learn a huge amount from it. And then their third or fourth business does take off because they’ve been growing and building their skill sets from the previous ones. It doesn’t mean it has to be, you know, it doesn’t have to be a massive success. You still learn from it, right?
Jason Elkins (13:16.441)
Yeah, we all have our own kind of barometers or our own, you know, definitions of success. You know, if you’ve been there for five days and then you go home and get rid of a bunch of junk that you have in your house because you realize you don’t need all that stuff and your life gets better, then I guess you won, didn’t you?
Tom (13:34.126)
Yeah, 100%.
Jason Elkins (13:35.383)
I don’t know, interesting. I can’t even imagine some of the things you’ve seen and the stories and the interactions between people. And I want to go that direction because I’m curious, like, when we watch these TV shows where there’s people doing these things trying to survive.
there’s a lot of emotions that get involved. And I know in those scenarios, there’s a lot of a lot on the line, a lot of like money, maybe for winning or whatever that maybe you don’t have on your trips. But I suspect there’s still a lot of emotional interaction. And do people get kind of like mean to each other? I’m just curious, is this like, is it competitive in the sense that people are like, hey, you’re not pulling your weight, we’re going to vote you off the island? Or what is the psychology around these trips?
Tom (14:13.582)
It’s…
Tom (14:22.05)
Yeah, I mean, I can tell you firsthand from the TV show I was on and from my friends who work as bushcraft consultants for many of these TVs shows that drama is always injected that naturally, I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book Humankind, but we move away from adversity and competing and stuff will generally all get on really well. And you could also use the example of
the um i’m going to draw a blank now um the guys in tonga in the 60s these um 16 year old kids they stole a fishing boat and they ended up on an island um and it was the rule lord of the flies i don’t know you know the lord of the flies book yeah we all had to read that at school but it was written by a cantankerous teacher who was an alcoholic and hated children and she was like yeah they’re all going to end up fighting but the real lord of the flies was these kids in tonga
Jason Elkins (15:03.449)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom (15:15.118)
that they lived for eight months on an island and they built up structures like if there wasn’t a conflict or an argument between them, one went 400 meters down one end of the beach and the others went to the other 400 meters and then they came back four hours later and hugged it out. And it was incredible to see what happened. And the reality on our expeditions is very much the same. We get people from all different walks of life. Like I’ve had professional footballers, Russian billionaires, and you know,
builders, plasterers and students and the whole spectrum in between and your status, your money means nothing in a survival situation. You’re all back to just a hunter -gatherer. And it truly brings out the best in people. I think, you know, we, I look at how we live now in modern society as being born into captivity. You know, we’re 99 % identical to our hunter -gatherer ancestors. This is our natural state and how we choose to live our lives now is really desperately unnatural.
And so when you bring people back to living in nature, to having a responsibility and a focus on finding their food, you know, that good amount of movement and exercise at sunlight, people start to feel the happiest and best that they’ve ever felt in their lives. And despite some of the hardships, they, you know, they honestly feel like they’re glowing. And so this all culminates to people really getting on very well, a lot of vulnerability around the campfire, people sharing stories and,
accelerating friendships. Within eight days people feel like they’ve known each other for years. So no, it’s wonderful that we, you might get one warded fish every four or five trips, but between the other nine people on the trip or so, it dilutes it very well. Everyone’s always very understanding and people just tend to get on so, so well and forge beautiful friendships.
Jason Elkins (17:05.465)
That’s a, it’s very cool. So, and so what I hear you saying is on the television shows, cause I think everybody kind of wants to see a glimpse behind the screen and, or behind the curtain. And I’m sure that when you go on as a contestant, you probably sign non -disclosure agreements and all this stuff. But what I hear you saying is on some of those it’s, it’s, it’s staged. They, you said kind of inject that drama and create those situations. Cause I believe it when I watch those shows, I’m like, wow, like I can just imagine the producer like, Hey, do you know what so -and -so said about you?
Tom (17:25.902)
clearly.
Jason Elkins (17:35.371)
you. You know, I was just over there videoing them and they said something and this and just like, like, almost that would be a miserable job, I think, to maybe be a producer on one of those shows and to just be there just to like, throw matches onto the fire or throw or throw matches onto the onto the you know, the flames. I’m not sure. Yeah, yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say. So that’s, um, that’s interesting. And the other thing, I
Tom (17:36.398)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tom (17:55.566)
Yeah, stoke it with cursing.
Jason Elkins (18:03.481)
I love what you’re saying about kind of our society is more, you know, traditionally more hunter gatherers, that type of, you know, for millions of years, that’s how it kind of how we evolved. And our society has really gone a different direction where it’s more cubicle, it’s more farming, right? In a sense, whether you’re farming in a field or you’re farming in a cubicle, you’re sitting still, you’re doing the same consistent thing day in, day out with the hopes of.
something happening, you know, at the end of the season, as opposed to going out hunting and gathering where it’s like today, I got to get something today. In the moment. And I’ve listened to some, some conversations or some people that kind of indicated that, you know, there’s a lot of resurgence, a lot of talk about ADD and ADHD in the world.
Tom (18:36.78)
in the moment.
Tom (18:51.086)
Mm -hmm.
Jason Elkins (18:52.505)
And I was listening to somebody I thought was pretty brilliant and they were kind of explaining, well, if you have quote unquote ADHD, you’re actually very well adapted to.
our culture a thousand years ago or 2000 years ago because that’s what ADD is. You know, you can walk out through the woods and you see things and you’re able to kind of perceive a lot of things. So you get distracted by, oh, there’s a monkey or there’s an animal that I got to go after. And it’s that constant energy level that doesn’t work so well if you’re sitting in a cubicle looking at a computer screen all day. So.
Tom (19:30.03)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (19:31.353)
I don’t know how to tie this conversation into what you’re talking about, but help me out here.
Tom (19:33.454)
Well, I could take that. I’ll take the conch. I mean, so I think focus is becoming a very important commodity now and something which you will see more and more coveted by employees, employers and such. Like we have so much cheap dopamine and entertainment in modern society and it’s very hard for us and for kids particularly to hold focus and ADHD.
So there’s all of these ailments and challenges that we suffer from depression, anxiety, the heart disease, the diabetes, to back, backache, to cavities. They’re all what are called evolutionary mismatch diseases. They’re all things that are a consequence of us living unnaturally to our evolved state. And like 80 % of things we die from, even most cancers are all a consequence of us living differently to how we’re evolved to live. And so ADHD is no different. It’s another one.
So I was I was fortunate enough to take part in alone the TV show so we can go on we can talk about Contrived TV shows alone is considered within the bushcraft community as the survival Olympics It is the the one true non contrived show out there You genuinely are dropped into the wild with just a camera and there’s no film crew and you have to survive as long as possible in the wilderness and the only the only thing that I
is at all can drive to say what occasionally when they gave me new batteries and new data cards, they would basically say, Tom, please, can you talk about this because they want to, you know, they want the emotional backstory. Otherwise I’m just talking about fishing. And so that’s literally otherwise every seven days, we got a medical for 20 minutes, which is incredible to see another human. In fact, a lot of people quit after they have that medical because you feel this absence of humanity, this, you know,
really this calm down after this incredible high of talking to another human. So I guess bringing that back to cheap dopamine, I mean, that was one thing, this huge dose of oxytocin, the kind of hug drug we get from a hug and love and when a mother sees her child, but also dopamine, like there was no other source of dopamine out there for me other than fishing and eating. And I would live to fish. I would spend four hours a day out there just casting, railing, casting, railing. And it was,
Tom (21:52.526)
very akin to being in a casino and pulling the arm of a fruit machine, a one -armed bandit, every cast would be a little dopamine. Am I going to catch a fish? And then, you know, it might catch on the river bed and you get this, Oh, was that a fish? There’s rush. And then when you actually catch one, your whole body is like pulsating with energy and adrenaline and dopamine. The thrill is exceptional. It would keep you out there. And that’s what these mechanisms were for. And, you know, that’s why we have dopamine. It’s this reward system to keep us out there hunting.
Foraging to to find new things and it was such a privilege to live in the wild within this baseline existence and notice what the brain chemistry is for and Yeah, honestly, it’s changed me dramatically And yeah, I could talk about other ways. It’s changed me physically as well. But um, yeah, it’s I’m basically I’m gonna be writing a book about this whole thing. It’s a two -year process and it’s terrifying But I’m writing a book called you are an animal
to help people to change their lens of who, you know, how we are and what simple things we can do to reconnect with that and to live happier, healthier lives. I’ll stop ranting, but one last thing. I was astonished in my research to learn that most primates in zoos, for example, are on antidepressants and bears as well. There’s polar bears on Prozac and chimpanzees on Xanax because, you know, and we’re not too dissimilar except we’re the zookeeper, but we choose to.
Jason Elkins (23:06.457)
Mm -hmm.
Tom (23:17.646)
confine ourselves and to feed ourselves these diets which are unnatural and anyway I could run about this for hours but yeah.
Jason Elkins (23:23.513)
No, I think it’s fascinating. I think we can do a whole podcast episode or old series of podcasts. Just, you know, I listened to a lot of this stuff about the dopamine and psychology and, and it all resonates. And for our listeners that, you know, don’t have the opportunity, I’m sitting here looking at you on a screen. So I see how excited you are about this as you’re, as you’re getting all the energy amped up and the dopamine flow and all that stuff. So I’m looking, looking forward to reading, reading that book. Yeah, it’s.
Oh boy, so as far as, there’s so many different directions I wanna go and cover, as far as your guests that you typically see.
Is it, I don’t want to label them, but I mean, who’s the typical person? Is there a typical person? How would you describe the people that generally want to do this? And then how would you describe the people, I guess, different types of people and how they show up when they get on the trips? Is there, have you come to any conclusions around that?
Tom (24:29.422)
Yeah, I mean, so our trips are designed for people that have never practiced any bushcraft, who may have never been camping before. They’re just people that want to come and live this experience and feel alive and reconnect with, I guess, that inner hunter -gatherer and nature. So with that being said, I would say that if we had to give our avatar, our typical guest, probably about 70 % male, we are seeing more and more females joining now, which is fantastic.
and they tend to be from the UK, Europe, US, they’re probably mid -30s. They’ve got a decent job, but they feel like they’re not good enough a venture in their life. They feel just they need, they’re not living, they’re just killing time a bit. And so, yeah, I think that’s our typical person. But we’ve had a 78 -year -old, we recently did our first family one last year, which had 11 -year -olds.
We’ve had, as I said, we’ve had billionaires, we’ve had all sorts of different people come on our trips. And we’ve had people that, they really didn’t kind of want to necessarily do this, or they’ve had a friend, like this mum I was saying about, who has brought them along, and they tend to be the people that have the biggest impact if they see it through. Because it’s just such a giant stride at other comfort zone. I like to say that the further you go out of your comfort zone,
the more you have to grow to accommodate it. And then when you come back in and you have day -to -day challenges in life, maybe you got an eight hour delay at the airport, you’re just like, whatever, I just survived on a desert island. And it’s another muscle that needs working. And I think the more we do these things, the more we push ourselves, the easier the challenges are to deal with in life. And so we’ve had this lady who’s from New Zealand, she had never left New Zealand before, never really done any traveling.
And she was very overweight, probably, I don’t know, like 240 pounds in American. And she’s ended up losing, like, I don’t know, over 50 % of her body weight. She now runs marathons. She travels the world. She just did a second trip with us. It just, I don’t like to label our trips as transformational travel, but for many people, it’s the first time they’ve kind of got off the hamster wheel of life and stopped and looked around and gone, shit, why am I happier?
Tom (26:51.854)
Now I’ve got literally nothing on the desert island than I do with all my creature comforts back home. And it kind of refines things for them to get a bit more clarity and perspective, which is really nice.
Jason Elkins (27:05.113)
Yeah, I love that. And it’s interesting because I was I was fortunate growing up by my dad used to go we used to kind of go do that. That’s what we did. You know, my dad would take me up in the mountains and in the snowstorm and, you know, give me three matches and say, OK, you’ve got, you know, you’ve got two hours. Figure it out. You know, and he just kind of stand back. And this was like when I was like 12, you know, or whatever. I mean, it was that’s just the way I was brought up.
Tom (27:13.996)
Yeah, yeah.
Tom (27:27.182)
Fantastic.
Jason Elkins (27:34.105)
And I’m not saying I’m a desert island expert. You should not invite me to teach any bushcraft because I don’t know it. But it made an impact on me. And then later on I ended up joining, I was in the military. I did some survival school in the military. And you’re right. The sense of accomplishment, the sense of just feeling a little bit more independent, a little bit more confident that comes from getting through those experiences is huge.
Tom (27:34.638)
That’s a
Tom (27:57.006)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (28:01.721)
And not everybody has those opportunities in their regular life. You know, if your regular life is get up in the morning, make breakfast, go to work, sit meetings all day, come home, hang out with your wife and kids. I mean, there’s things you can do, yeah, that you might label as successful, but.
It’s everybody else around you is doing the same things too. And it’s just kind of, I don’t know, I’m kind of rambling, I guess, but I’m curious about teenagers. That’s why I brought that up. Okay. Teenagers. Go ahead.
Tom (28:32.206)
But yeah, I think it’s wonderful that your father did that and that you spend that time at that formative age. And I feel very strongly that teenagers and more people need to do that. So again, involutionally speaking, when you’re a teenager, you have a lot of pent up energy. I think a lot of it was maybe to leave our tribe to, you know, spread genetic, genetics further afield. We have, you know, have this energy and it’s now,
of misspent for a long time you went to war or you went down the mine or you went to the factory now that you know you fight you drive cars pass you do drugs it’s rare that it’s channels channels for good and so i i truly believe that um it will all you have to do is look at all the different tribes around the world that independently have realized that rites of passage coming of age experience are really very important.
And so you’ve got all these different rituals independently have come about, but in the Western world, we don’t have that. And I think at that formative time in life, having kids have to do challenges and build up that self -belief and self -confidence and use that energy for common good and development is critical. And I really would love to see more more rite of passages kind of experiences growing in Western society.
Jason Elkins (29:50.009)
I remember reading something that, like you touched on, evolutionarily, like when we get to puberty, we actually like, our chemistry and everything actually changes to the sense that we want to get away from our parents. We want to create that space. We don’t like our parents, basically. It’s kind of, you know, use another words, you know, others might argue, but it creates this thing where I don’t want to be around them.
They’re obnoxious, they’re stupid, they’re old, they’re whatever, and they’re gonna create space. And how are they gonna create space? Like you said, they used to go do other things. And in this world, how do they create space? They pick up their phone and they, you know, or they go to their room for hours on end, or they, they’re…
doing drugs or, you know, I’m not saying all kids at this point, you know, in our generation are falling apart, but they’re going to do something to get away from their parents. And so why not? Yeah, exactly. I don’t, yeah, I don’t think anybody will listen to this. Can’t at least say, yeah, there were times I wanted to get away from my parents and create space and that, you know, it’s an interesting thing. And have you had many? I don’t know how you define this, but.
Tom (30:44.782)
Yeah, I did it. Sneak out the window, go and get blind drunk.
Jason Elkins (31:03.993)
I’m imagining people showing up with their kids on your trips. They’re teenagers. And they’re teenagers, and they’re teenagers are like, I don’t want to be here with my dad. So.
Tom (31:07.534)
We, yes, only women say.
Tom (31:14.062)
Yeah, we normally it’s 18 and above, but we have done when we’ve done private trips, we did one recently, five Canadian dads and their five sons and they were amazing. And it was like a coming of age experience and the dads were sharing stories they wouldn’t normally tell their children. And it was just like, they’re all treating them like adults. And then they did the five days training together. Then they broke away into two tribes, the dads and the sons.
And the dads were like, can we have some more rum? Can we have some food? We can’t be bothered to go and catch fish. And the kids were like, amazing, absolutely amazing, hardworking. We’re going to prove them wrong. Caught so many fish and yeah, like put their dads to shame.
Jason Elkins (31:53.721)
That is very cool. Alright.
I want to go back to walking to the North Pole because that was kind of your first big like holy cow doing that. She said you trained for it for two years. What did you learn about yourself? Either in the training or either in the training or just through the whole thing. What did you, what’s the biggest thing you learned about yourself?
Tom (32:14.602)
So
Tom (32:21.038)
I guess it was the first time I built any self -confidence. Before then, I just thought I was useless, fat, stupid. When I did that, I came back with a bit of self -belief. I think it helped to justify why I’m worthy to set up this company, for example. We often don’t allow ourselves to take any child. We give ourselves labels. We allow labels to identify.
and to define us and you know, they’re all completely in our head and so much of our what holds us back is just limiting beliefs and so it really helped me to redefine kind of belief in myself to to go forth and do things and then it really built up my mental resilience as well. I think we in those two years of training we we learned about the kind of the rule of 40 percent like when you
you want to give up on something when you’re running along and you just want to stop and it hurts, you’re basically at 40 % of your physical limit, you’re mentally giving up so many times we just give up because it hurts. And we mentally give up. But you know, your body you’ve got so many more gears that you can engage that we and so we always did every exercise kind of the instructor said if you’re hanging from a branch and certain death awaited below you, you wouldn’t just go, I give up and open your hands.
You would hold on until every sinew, every muscle was screaming and your finger slips and yet you would eventually fall. And that’s how we approached every exercise. And so then when we’re actually walking to the North Pole, we never ever mentally gave up and said, I can’t do it anymore. I physically gave up. And it’s the only time in my life where I’ve physically failed, where I’ve literally fell asleep twice walking and just fell into the snow, kind of reached that total failure of the body.
And so again, like kind of blowing up this balloon going so far out of your comfort zone, come back in and then day to day adversity and challenges, just that little bit easier to kind of deal with.
Jason Elkins (34:18.041)
So what I hear you saying, so if we give up mentally before we get to the point of physical exhaustion, but we need to use our mental capacities in order to acknowledge that, to recognize that, to remind ourselves of that. I heard you say one thing is like, okay, what I heard was, okay, maybe imagine a scenario that’s not really what the scenario is. So if you’re hanging over, you know, if you’re hanging from a rope or a bar,
you imagine that, okay, it’s certain death below. I mean, how do you do that? I guess that’s what I’m saying is how do you use your mind to, no, no, I, yeah. Yeah.
Tom (34:54.766)
That’s just an analogy. Like if you were, if you were hanging, you wouldn’t just give up. You’d be like, ah, and I guess the, like recently I’ve started doing ice baths with my wife. We’re doing one tomorrow. I fucking hate it. It’s horrible. Honestly, it’s excruciating. It’s like my calves were seizing like I had cramp, but you know, I could pride myself on being mentally strong. So I’m like observing the pain, telling myself that this is just my brain telling me.
that I’m in pain and then it’s okay. And after about two minutes of just trying to ignore the pain, then you enter this different kind of almost bliss like state. The first time I gave up after two minutes, it was just so painful. Then the second time after two minutes, the pain dissipated and I was able to, I got visuals and stuff as I just sat there, but the pain went away and I lasted seven minutes and you know, the water’s like zero degrees. And it’s, again, it’s like, it’s a mental challenge of just pushing past kind of that, that, that.
that pain threshold and you know, the mind always gives up before the body. And I think just recognizing that when you’re running and going for a jog, just you go you find yourself stopping, you go, you just mentally gave up and picking yourself up on that. I’m mentally giving up. I’m not physically giving up. Being aware of it.
Jason Elkins (36:06.969)
So you’re using your mind to, by being aware of it, you’re using your mind to overcome your mind, which is a challenge. So what I’m reading into this is, and I believe it myself, is that when you do overcome a challenge, then it helps you realize, oh, wait, maybe I can do this. So then the next time you can go a little bit further. And it’s dependent on actually doing something that you didn’t think you could do, really.
Tom (36:14.606)
Hmm.
Jason Elkins (36:35.417)
Right? Do something you don’t do something you don’t think you can do. And then your barometer changes or your limit changes. And you realize, oh, wait a minute. I walked to the North Pole. I can, you know, maybe, maybe I can sit in this ice bath a little longer or even get in the ice bath. Cause like most people wouldn’t even do that. Um, and then yeah. And it’s like, okay, I did it for two minutes next time I can do it for. So.
Tom (36:35.662)
Yeah.
Tom (36:46.542)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (37:02.521)
guess where I’m going with that is what I’m hearing is just repeated pushing your limits helps your lim – changes your limits, right?
Tom (37:11.278)
Yeah, and there’s a podcast recently I was listening to with Andrew Huberman and David Goggins and he was talking about a new part of the brain that they’ve only identified in the last two years. I can’t remember what it’s called, the secondary hippo flippo campus, et cetera. But it gets bigger when you do things that you don’t want to do. When you have that turn on the cold shower or go to that workout at 5 a .m. or whatever it is, every time you force yourself to do these things, it gets bigger and it’s almost basically the willpower part of the brain.
Jason Elkins (37:24.377)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom (37:40.302)
As soon as you start enjoying that thing you were doing, it doesn’t grow. So you literally have to be pushing the envelope further to be things. As soon as you start enjoying your crossfit or whatever, it’s not growing. But it’s, and there’s also a strong correlation between people’s will to live later on in life as well. Like it’s, it’s a very useful part of the brain, that kind of willpower area to be nurturing and growing.
Jason Elkins (38:03.545)
It’s all such fascinating stuff. I have a feeling you and I listen to a lot of the same broadcasts. I can tell we do already. And yeah, it’s fascinating stuff. Do you have, like when you’ve got a group on the island, how much of the training involves kind of mindset?
Tom (38:09.922)
Yeah, for sure.
Jason Elkins (38:25.163)
because I think that’s such an important part of it. Are people open to that when they show up or do they just like, I just want to learn how to make a fire, I want to learn how to build a shelter or are they open to this, these conversations like you and I are having right now?
Tom (38:37.902)
Yeah, I don’t think they’ve come to the experience expecting there to be much coaching there and growth there. And I’d say like 80, 90 % of what we teach is bushcraft skills, you know, making fire by friction by rubbing sticks together and weaving and, and this, but I do a one -on -one I teach and when my instructors teach, I do a kind of lecture on, on psychology and examples of what, what it’s for me on the TV show alone and North Pole and stuff. And so there’s absolutely a chapter on it.
but it’s not a huge, huge part of it. But it is mentally important. So like a challenge I did alone, I would say is exactly 50 % mental, 50 % skill -based. And you see it time and time again that the people that survive in these adverse situations survive because of their mentality, not because of their skills.
Jason Elkins (39:29.305)
So if you were going to train somebody to go on alone or to walk to the North Pole or something like that, you’re going to spend a lot more time working on the mindset stuff. Obviously, you need some of the bushcraft skills to do some of those things, but that’s what I hear. And yeah, I’m.
Tom (39:45.582)
Yeah, unless you have the right mindset, you’re not going to win. You can have the best push -cross skills in the world, but you’ve got to have the mindset.
Jason Elkins (39:52.153)
I’m seeing like a blended trip of kind of like Desert Island Survival with all the bushcraft skills and all that and like a Tony Robbins event combined or something where it culminates with, you know, the fire walk to the deserted island or something like that. But it would probably take, you know, three or four weeks or something like that. But anyway, that’s it’s all very cool. What?
Tom (40:02.51)
Nah.
Tom (40:12.842)
Maybe we need to go there.
Jason Elkins (40:20.697)
I’m curious about your relationships with other people, because sometimes people that work in this adventure travel space, doing stuff like you do, sometimes it’s hard to find other people that are on the same wavelength or understand it, get it. So I’m just curious, how has your journey impacted your relationships in your family, your life in general?
Tom (40:44.686)
Yeah, I’m very, very, very picky about the instructors who run our trips. And, you know, they have to be special people that not just have an array of incredible bushcraft skills, but they have the right mentality and they can also be able to tell the engaging stories around the campfire and notice when someone goes in on themselves and quiets. And so finding the right instructors is really challenging.
So we’re really picky there. We’re very picky about islands and instructors and that’s the cake. Everything else is the sprinkles and the chocolate fudge. If you get those two things right, amazing people and amazing locations and nature, then people have a wonderful experience. But I think your question was different, right? It was more…
Jason Elkins (41:25.881)
Okay, I’m, yeah, it was more a little bit about kind of your interpersonal relationships just outside of work. But before we go there, like you just said something that just I wanna touch on. Because you said, picky about the instructors you hire. It needs to be a good blend of bushcraft skills, ability to teach emotional intelligence because.
Ultimately, you’re working in the tourism business. You need to be able to connect with people. And when you said that, I thought, hmm, I have this story in my head that the person that’s really interested in survival stuff that would like actually go out and learn all this stuff.
maybe by nature wouldn’t be the most social, outgoing, friendly person, because I’m thinking survivalist mentality. I’m thinking, I don’t like people. I want to learn how to live out in the woods without anybody. That’s just my story in my head. So I’m inviting you to challenge that.
Tom (42:22.958)
Yeah, so I think there’s a danger when we say survival of thinking of preppers who are stockpiling food and they’ve got a load of guns under their floorboards. And I think bushcraft and primitive skills is very much, it’s hippies and people that are living in nature. And I think spending decent amounts of time living with adversity in nature smooths down the rough edges of people wonderfully and it creates a lot of time for introspection and
And it just on some of the most remarkable people like all of our instructors are in their own right, extraordinary, fantastic humans who have done a bit of work on themselves. And so yeah, they I guess many will be naturally caught. I’m introverted, for example, many, many of you quite introverted, and they’ll need their time to decompress. They can, you know, but they can turn it on and they’ve got the interpersonal skills as well.
Jason Elkins (43:14.873)
Cool. I’m happy to ask that question just for, for any, anybody else that might have any stories in their head, kind of like I might. Um, but okay. Well, the other thing, you know, I did survival training in the military, so my instructors there were not a bunch of old hippies that have worn off the rough edges. They still had quite a few rough edges. So I probably created that story, uh, by looking at those instructors. Um, yeah, yeah. So you’re not.
Tom (43:17.166)
Yeah.
Tom (43:36.782)
Yeah.
That’s what we try to distance ourselves from. It’s not boot camp. It’s hard, but it’s not boot camp.
Jason Elkins (43:46.329)
So you’re not hiring a lot of retired green berets coming in Navy Seals. Okay. Not that there’s, I mean, I have a lot of respect for those guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, very cool. Okay. So now on like, where you like, so for example, where are you in a relationship? Um, when you decided to walk to the North Pole.
Tom (43:49.998)
No, we don’t have any extra data tree.
No, no, no, they’re still remarkable, you know, remarkable people.
Tom (44:09.932)
Yeah, so I’ll tell the story. I met my wife a few months before I was going to the North Pole. I was in Goa on the beach in India and I was like, hi. I was in a bar chatting her up. I was like, my name’s Tom. I’m walking to the North Pole. And she’s like, oh, that’s nice. My boyfriend is walking to the South Pole. It’s harder, isn’t it? I was like, what? What?
the chances that you’ve got a boyfriend is walking to the South Pole. And then we like added friends on Facebook as you did back then. And she invited me to a house party and she happened to live four roads away from me in London, despite us meeting in India. We literally lived up the same road. And she told me that she had broken up with South Pole that day. And the reason she broke up with South Pole.
Jason Elkins (44:30.797)
way.
Tom (44:58.99)
was because he was bipolar. I mean, North Pole, South Pole, bipolar. Not to make light of mental health problems, but it’s just too perfect.
Anyway, so I got with her and we moved to Chile. And then I set up as an island survivor while she was pregnant with our son, Edward. And so we kind of set ground rules of like, yeah, you’re not gonna be away more than 50 days a year. So she’s very understanding. My son’s very understanding. Like when I went away to Canada, it was for a minimum of two months. So we managed.
But they also can join me on some lucky trips. We went to Indonesia and survived on an island as a family last year in August. And my son watches the YouTube videos that we’ve done and he’s really into it. And, you know, it’s my wife for independent and my yeah, so it’s it works.
Jason Elkins (45:56.761)
That’s very cool. So she’s on board. So because I mean, I’m sure you can imagine scenarios where there’s a lot of people out there that would not be such a good fit for somebody that was doing what might be defined by some as, you know, crazy or, or whatever, but.
Tom (46:13.228)
Yeah, she’s not worried about the risk. And that’s the one thing for clarifying that Desert Island survival sounds risky and dangerous. The most dangerous thing is coconuts falling on people’s heads or someone cutting themselves in the machete. But there’s no lions and tigers and…
Jason Elkins (46:27.481)
I was thinking more like walking to the North Pole or some of the things that I know that you’ve done being on a loan. Because I’m sure there are safety measures there, but still, I don’t know. Let’s talk about that. What are the risks of doing something like a loan? Or, well, that’s the one you get.
Tom (46:33.1)
Okay, yeah.
Tom (46:41.55)
Yeah.
Yeah, so…
Tom (46:49.262)
I mean, the biggest, the biggest risk might be that you were to cut yourself with your axe into your femoral artery and unable to get a tourniquet on there and you’ve got four minutes and you bleed out. But you know, you’d be pretty unlucky to do that. But if you do do that, you’re not coming back. But the one that people, most people consider.
is obviously bears. We had we were firmly in bear territory. I saw I only saw one had a lot of bear prints and a bit of scat around my my camp, but I never really got bothered by them. But some other competitors did. We carry bear spray, bear bangers, and air horn. So you always have these things on your person. At the beginning, I would not cook near my shelter, I’d go like 200 meters away, and I was very cautious and you become more and more
like a day’s a call about it as it goes on and I ended up keeping dried fish in my shelter and doing all the things you’re not meant to do. But yeah, you do have to be mindful, bears are risky. Moose can be very dangerous as well because they’re big as a horse but are the size of a walnut. And so if you get between them and where they want to go, they’re going to trample you. But in general,
The risks are mitigated. You phone in every morning at 9am and 4pm and say, I’m alive. Sorry, you send a message.
Jason Elkins (48:12.377)
I’m curious, did they, because like I grew up in the mountains and was a guide in Montana and I’d learned that there’s difference between black bear poop or scat, I’m gonna call it scat, black bear scat and grizzly bear scat.
And they taught us how to tell the difference was the grizzly bear scat always had bear bells and it smelled like pepper. That’s how you could tell the difference. Like pepper spray. I should have said pepper spray. That makes the joke a little bit better. It has bear bells in it and it smells like pepper spray. So anyway.
Tom (48:41.582)
Wow, interesting. I did not know that.
Tom (48:50.638)
Okay, so sorry sorry, fat pals. Sorry.
Jason Elkins (48:57.017)
Just that’s a bad joke, but maybe I’ll edit that part out. But anyway, fascinating conversation. I think you and I could just go on forever. And Tom, what did I forget to ask? What should I have asked? Or what do you think our listeners really need to know about you, your company, or any parting thoughts on adventure travel or kind of what you’re doing in general that you’d like to share with them before we wrap it up?
Tom (49:20.686)
I mean if they want to check out Desert Island Survival it’s desertislandsurvival .com. I’m also putting together a new company which is going to be a kind of collection of just really seriously cool bushcraft adventures around the world in different environments. So we’re doing stuff in Sweden, Botswana, the Amazon, Guyana, Canada, similar kind of concepts but different environments that will be coming soon.
If you go to TomWilliams .tv, I did a blog about my time alone and shared a lot of the kind of behind the scenes and epiphanies. I think one thing I didn’t really touch on is, so I was saying about this kind of low dopamine and that impact it had on me when I was just living in the wild. The other thing that’s crazy is, you know, I only had, I only ate fish and leaves and berries for 35 days. So I was just on my own eating what I could find from the land.
And it was amazing the impact that had on my body. I used to suffer with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, IBS, and that went away. And I thought it might come back, you know, when I introduced wheat or dairy or something. And it hasn’t come back two years later. It’s like my gut biome had a total reset through living, again, the food that we were designed to eat. And my body was less inflamed. I don’t suffer. I used to get some anxiety that hasn’t come back.
I just generally feel so much better from this kind of time away. So I’m looking at creating another experience called the Primal Reset, where it allows people to, before their experience, to have their kind of gut biome checked. We do epigenetic age test and VO2 max and all that stuff and your blood works. And then you go and we’ll teach you the survival skills. You can live out in the wilderness for three weeks. Then we come back and we see how big an impact that can have on you. And…
From my experience, I think it could be tremendously impactful for people. So that’s kind of what’s on the horizon. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (51:20.793)
That sounds very cool. Yeah, that sounds very, very cool. I can, I suspect you’ll do really well with that. I think there’s a lot of people interested in that type of thing. I’m curious, did you, you mentioned that you thought maybe when you came back and kind of added some things back to your diet that you might, those problems might return, but I suspect you didn’t go right. I suspect you made some changes to your diet anyway that stuck, right? Like.
Tom (51:49.966)
Yeah, the first week you have your diet controlled by a dietician, so you can’t just have whatever you want anyway. Because you’ve had such limited food that certain minerals and stuff can damage you through a spike. So we were refed. And then, yeah, it took me, I think I didn’t have caffeine for two months. I did have beer because we went out and had beer and the woman gave us a shot of tequila or something two days after we came out in the bar. But,
Jason Elkins (51:50.201)
You did.
Jason Elkins (52:02.489)
Wow, okay.
Tom (52:19.854)
But generally, I drink far less. I’m much more kind to my body, I think, after this experience, after I’ve felt this significant difference and realized I’m an animal more so than I did before. But yeah, I’ve definitely made much more conscious with my food choices. I don’t necessarily believe exclusively in paleo because paleolifically, we lived all around the world from kind of Inuits to Savannahs of Africa, but much closer to that.
far less sugars, far less starch products and carbohydrates and a wide variety of vegetables and lots of protein. Lots and lots and lots of protein. So yeah, it’s definitely made me more mindful of what to eat.
Jason Elkins (53:03.129)
That’s very cool. I’m happy that we touched on that. So yeah, thank you for bringing that up because it’s an important part of life, what we eat and that exciting. Yeah, I’m going to keep an eye on what you’re doing. And when you get all that set up, let’s have another conversation. So come.
Tom (53:09.518)
Yeah.
Tom (53:17.294)
100%.
Jason Elkins (53:18.521)
I appreciate you being on the show. We’re going to have your website linked right there in the show notes. So anybody listen to this, please do click through to the website. He’s got some cool stuff going on. If you’re listening to this and you go on one of Tom’s trips, I want to hear about it. I want to bring you back on and I want to include you in an episode as well. So anybody listen to this, go on a trip with Tom and then let’s chat about it. So Tom, thank you so much for joining me on the show here. You have a great day.
Tom (53:44.27)
Thank you, Jason.
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