Latest / The On Purpose Podcast / Ep. 350 - Kevin Martin
Transcript
- speaker-0: You are listening to the On Purpose Podcast. Hey everybody, it's Jared Hardy here. If the On Purpose Podcast has sparked something in you, maybe a shift, a question, or a deeper dive, my excellence and leadership course is built to help you act upon it. This isn't just about leading others, it's about leading yourself with intention, resilience, and clarity. Whether you're an individual chasing growth or a team ready to level up. I offer custom coaching and speaking engagements to meet you where you are. Visit teamhardy.net and let's grow with purpose. There's a moment in every man's life, especially for veterans, first responders and men called to lead when the uniform comes off, but the mission doesn't end. Too many try to navigate that transition alone without structure, accountability or brotherhood. That's why I'm proud to partner with Missions Purpose, a community built for men who refuse to drift. Inside the school platform, You get live calls, challenges, frameworks, and disciplined brotherhood that pushes you to rebuild purpose, direction, and daily structure. If you're ready for the next chapter of your mission, click the link in the show notes to join us inside the Missions Purpose Community on School. You were never meant to walk this road alone. What's up, everybody? Welcome to this week's edition of the On Purpose Podcast, where you know it's our job to get you thinking, get you moving. get you maybe questioned a little bit or looking for answers in your life. And this week I'm excited to be joined by Kevin Martin, a writer, long distance hiker and creator of the Substack Unmapped, which is where I found him. And I was telling him off air, I really appreciate the way he writes with the realness, sharing the highs and lows and just the whole journey he's on. And after a 13 year career at Apple, he made the decision to step away, redesign his life from the ground up. And his writing explores what it takes to leave a comfortable path, confront fear with clarity and choose a life that he finds worth living. I think that was when I was reading that and I read that somewhere. was like, man, this is exactly what we're after, right? Not just living life on autopilot, not living life trying to be what everybody thinks we can be, but the life that we actually want to live. So this week I'm excited to sit down with Kevin and explore the strength, the courage it took to walk away from that. and what he's doing next to continue to live this life. So Kevin, my friend, welcome to the show. speaker-1: Thank you for having me. Happy to be here and I think it will be a good conversation. I'm excited. speaker-0: Dude, first off, I wanna thank you for having the courage to share your story, right? And to put it out there and know that people are gonna learn from the story, but they can't learn if we don't share it. So that's the first thing I always wanna thank is thank you for finding the courage to hear your voice and to realize it's worth sharing to the world. speaker-1: Yeah, well, what I'll say to that is I never shared any of my story for my entire adult life. ⁓ I did a bunch of these things that we'll talk through and I never told anyone. ⁓ So I was actually the opposite of that. And then when I was leaving my career at Apple, I talked to a bunch of people and they were like, why aren't you telling people about this? And ⁓ I decided to start sharing just as a way to keep in contact with my old colleagues and hopefully meet a couple of new people. ⁓ I did not expect it to resonate with so many people and kind of take off. So I'm excited to do that, but it wasn't always something that I've done. This is new for me and I'm still kind of figuring it out as we go. speaker-0: But that's the purpose of life, right? It's to always be figuring out as we go. speaker-1: That's it, for sure, no doubt about that. speaker-0: And it's so easy to get ourselves trapped in that comfort loop, right? Where we're like, I haven't done this, so I'm not gonna do it, but I'm real comfortable here. And to just find like, okay, let me share this. And I guess I read that little bit of that story and what I really found awesome was that you had people around you that you were like hesitant to tell because you weren't sure how they would react to you walking away from Apple and not having all the answers but going. And what you found was that most of them actually supported you. They weren't trying to talk you out of it. speaker-1: Yeah, and we can go into the whole detail of kind of how I got there, but I made the decision in my brain that I was going to leave and kind of take this alternate life path about a year ago now. And I hadn't told anyone besides my girlfriend. She was super supportive of me, but like she always would be supportive of me. I was very nervous to talk to her parents and my parents about it because they're you know, more traditional generation above me had taken, you know, work for the same company their entire life. And I figured for sure that they were not going to support it or have some sort of pushback. And universally they'd seen kind of what I had gone through the previous 13 years, just from like a work life balance, whatever you want to call it perspective. And they universally kind of said, Hey, you should do this. This is a no brainer. So, ⁓ I was nervous about that. And then, yeah, it worked out for sure. speaker-0: All right, love it. I definitely want to get into the parents as we move on because I think that's such a big thing for people is just what are the people that are closest to me going to think or say about me. But Kevin, just like your big hikes, you're about to go on, man. I can't put you up to steepest climb right off the bat. I got to warm you up for this. Are you ready for your warm up questions? Oh, yeah, let's go. All right, here we go, Kevin. What's something you've learned about yourself lately? speaker-1: ⁓ something I've learned about myself lately. I think I'm good at storytelling. I think I'm better at writing than what I thought I was. And I think I've enjoyed telling stories through writing more than I expected. speaker-0: That's a good one. All right, what's a small habit or ritual that you've been doing to give yourself energy? speaker-1: I'm a big believer in meditation. I started meditating about 10 years ago, maybe in 15 at this point, and I meditate every morning for 20 minutes. It's a non-negotiable for me. I have a bunch of other habits. I'm a big morning routine habit guy, but that's the foundational one for me. speaker-0: Sure. Yeah, with the big ass calendar behind you and following Jesse, he's all about morning rituals. Well, who we surround ourselves generally dictates kind of what influences we're going to have and how we perform. So there's worse you could do for sure. All right. Who's someone in your life right now that's influencing your thinking or inspiring you to challenge yourself? speaker-1: That's it. Yeah, I learned from the best, right? For sure, yeah. So I'm working with a ⁓ guy named Ryan Dreyer who's an endurance coach. He coaches guys to do ⁓ Ironmans and triathlons and he's documented that and his business growth online. And he's been the one that's kind of been challenging me to be more authentic and tell my story to hopefully help people. So he's definitely been a guiding light for me since I left my job. speaker-0: Awesome. All right, one last question, Kevin. When you think about the season you're in right now in life, what word or phrase would best describe it? speaker-1: I would say authentic. When I came into this year, my goal word for 2026 was authentic. I feel like a lot of my life was lived inauthentically because I was doing things I didn't want to do and kind of just punting down the road what I wanted my life to look like. And now I'm finally for once doing what I want to be doing. speaker-0: Have you always been a word of the year kind of guy? How long you been doing that? speaker-1: I have not always been. I probably have been one of the people that have thought of it in the last couple of years and then by February 1 forgot about it, but I'm trying to change that this year. speaker-0: Yeah, we've done that for years. Now my word this year is tenacity. Yeah, well, because for me, it's like you get to a point where like you need information, you got to gather things before you can take action. Sometimes you stumble and like to hold myself accountable this year, it's just been being tough, just being gritty, just tenacity, just continuing to work through and realize you don't always have speaker-1: That's a good one. speaker-0: the answers you don't even know where the hell it's gonna go sometimes but if you keep moving you're gonna end up somewhere. speaker-1: think that's actually something I'm learning live as we go. Like I'm a massive planar analysis by paralysis guy and have every contingency thought out before I make a move. And I'm like slowly figuring out like you just got to keep moving and you're going to figure it out as you go. speaker-0: Yeah, emotion, dude, momentum. speaker-1: That's it. You can only plan for so long and then you make yourself go crazy if you keep planning. speaker-0: Dude, that's so interesting, right? Because we're so, especially, I guess, let me throw this to you, right? Because you had success by being very structured and by being very planned out and thought, thoughtful on things. So then to flip it and go, wait, I need to be less of all these things that got me success to create this new success. What was that like when you first sat down and was like, okay, I gotta go opposite of my normal tendencies? speaker-1: Well, my entire life, I had followed the script and I had overprepared and overplanned and like thought through everything that could go wrong. And that way, when those things happened, I had the answer already before it went. ⁓ And that's not just not the way that life works, you know, like it led to a level of success, you know, in school and in business and in finance and all that. like. deep down I wasn't doing what I actually wanted to be doing with my life. And like, I was just deferring everything to the future. So it was hard. My natural tendency is definitely to over plan and to avoid, like I kind of white knuckle life. Like if I plan it out or not, nothing bad's gonna happen. You kind of have to just release that, understand that I'm not controlling anything that's happening and just trust in the confidence that I can figure it out if things go wrong. And I actually first, thought through that on my first, I started hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2023. And I, I was in over my head for the first portion. I did the Georgia section was about 80 miles. And I was just out there solo for like five or six days. And I just realized I can't control any of this. Like I can't control the weather, where water sources are. Like I just have to be able to adapt and overcome if things go wrong. And like ever since I went out there, I was like, you know what? I'm going to stop like white-knuckling my way through life and just enjoy it and trust that I can figure it out if something happens. speaker-0: And that's awesome. What does that mean to you? Like, what does it mean? Like, what habits or thoughts do you have to do to catch yourself from slipping back to where you were? Wait, I'm not in control of this. Let me just enjoy whatever's happening right now. speaker-1: I still struggle with it every day because my brain wants to control everything. It wants to optimize everything. Like even the backpacking I'm doing, I'm backpacking thousand miles this year. It wants to optimize it. It wants to plan out every single section and have the exact right amount of calories and all that. ⁓ I'm catching myself in real time just by kind of like identifying it and thinking through, hey, this is the over-optimizing Kevin talking, not actually me. ⁓ And just also just listening to my thoughts and doing a lot of writing and journaling and thinking through and Identifying in real time, but I'm I have not mastered it speaker-0: I don't know that the goal is, I don't know that we ever mastered that, right? Like we're always, cause there is a balance, right? Like to be prepared, I have to think about, okay, if something goes wrong, what will I need? Well, I'll need a poncho, I'll need a warming, but you know what mean? Whatever I'm going to need, but it doesn't, I guess the balance is not spending all your time on what could go wrong, but knowing, okay, I'm prepared for the vast majority of things that can go my way. speaker-1: Do you know who Arthur Brooks is? speaker-0: I for sure know the name, help me refresh. speaker-1: He's a Harvard ⁓ professor and his specialty is on happiness and the way the brain works. So he understands how your brain operates. And he's got this questionnaire that you go through that identifies what kind of person you are and how your brain operates. And I'm what's called a mad scientist. And it's basically I have very high highs, but also very low lows. So I'm kind of all over the spectrum. And I've even identified it like in the mornings, in the mornings, I'm super creative. like, I can solve any problem known to man. And then the evenings I start to question myself and wonder like, ⁓ did I make a mistake? And I think I took his quiz and it like gave me an actual label where I'm like, ⁓ this isn't just me being crazy. Like this is the way my brain works. And then once I did that, I kind of understood, okay, if I'm being overly dramatic in one way or the other, I can just think to myself, like this isn't. This isn't real, it's just my brain playing tricks on me. speaker-0: That's fascinating. So what do do then when you catch yourself there? When you make that statement to yourself, do you have to distract from it or do you sit with it for a minute and go, okay, why am I thinking like this right now? speaker-1: I'm more, it kind of takes the weight off of me when I put the label on it. Like I might be laying around before I go to bed worrying about money or the trip, whatever it is. And I might, I'll just tell myself, hey, this is that over planning thing. This is that mad scientist thing that I've already identified. I don't need to make a decision tonight. Why don't I sleep on it and see what I think about tomorrow morning? And then the morning comes, I work out, I feel good, and I have a solution for the problem. You know what I mean? So for me, it's just... recognizing it. speaker-0: Yeah, now I think that's so important is the recognition not to hide from it, not to run from it, not to pretend it doesn't exist. But yeah, to sit with and I think we can do that with a lot of different emotions, right? Like our sadness, our happiness, like why am I feeling this right now? Let me look for a cause here. ⁓ But I don't need to put it away and I don't need to pretend it's not there. speaker-1: Exactly. And you also don't need to always make a decision when you're in an emotional state. know what I mean? Like if you're in one of those swings or whatever, like you don't have to choose. You most likely don't have to choose your next move in that moment. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. I was, was, I forget what I was reading or listening to the other day and I was talking about like the difference between giving up and quitting, right? And like, I'll butcher it, but basically like what they were saying is don't quit at the hardest part of what you're trying to do. Like get through the hardest part. And when you get to the top of it, if you go, Hey, this really isn't for me, it's okay to walk away from it because you didn't quit when it was the hardest. But if you quit, when things are a hardest, you'll never know what you might've found. If you push through that. at least that moment. speaker-1: sure I agree with that for sure. speaker-0: Yeah, so talk to me, Kevin, let's talk about your decision to walk away from Apple and like, as you said, to live the life that really you felt drawn to live. What was that like? speaker-1: So it was an evolution. I worked there for 13 years. And I can kind of walk you through the whole evolution if you'd like, but I started working there in 2013. I was 24 years old when I got the job. It was like a dream come true. I do like to caveat it by saying like when I joined, it wasn't the biggest company in the world at the time. Steve Jobs had just died like 18 months before and there was a lot of questions whether Apple would survive that transition. So. When I took the job, a lot of people acted like it was pretty big risk. In hindsight, obviously it was the right choice for me. But I would say the first five years were a honeymoon phase. I was super pumped. I was in Austin, Texas. It was where I wanted to be. It was making good money. It was just everything that I wanted. ⁓ And I never thought I would go down the corporate path. My goal when I left college was to make as much money as I could possibly make. however it had to be done. And I thought it was going to be being the CEO of a company or starting a business. I did not think I was going to be going down a corporate path. And I took that job and I was super pumped about it. It was like, it just felt good. I was learning, I was being challenged for like about five years. 2018 happened. ⁓ I was on a project at Apple that was a massive failure internally on our side. And I was like front and center, like face of it. I was like one of like the three or four people that was the face of this failure of a project. It was a very toxic environment. ⁓ I lived in Pennsylvania for like 250 nights that year. And it was just a very, very negative toxic experience. And I decided at that point, like I'm getting out of here. I don't want to work here anymore. So in 2019, I took a job in the field in Nashville, Tennessee, and I moved out of the corporate environment. And I viewed that as like my baby step out the door to figure out what I'm going to do with my life. And this was 2019, I moved to Nashville where I'm at now. I was there for a year and COVID happened. I just felt lucky to have a job. My friends were all getting furloughed and laid off, but then Apple was booming. So I was like, you know what? I'm just, I'm lucky to be here. And then... the stock market started taking off and Apple started taking off, the stock did, and I was in a position where I had more money than I expected to have. ⁓ And that caused me, the financial thing just combined with like the overworking of the COVID environment and just an in general challenging workplace just caused me to think like, what do I want to actually be doing with my life? And it took me five years to actually do anything with it. speaker-0: sure. What did you as a thinker, how did you separate fear of making the change from the actual risk to make the change? speaker-1: Great question. How do I separate the fear versus the risk? Well, there was very low risk. ⁓ I was a huge financial person. I was checking my finances like crazy. I had more than enough money to take the leap. ⁓ I got super into fire. If you're familiar with that, what that is financial independence, retire early. We can talk about that. I think it's actually a negative thing. But anyways, I was super into it. had all of the money planned out. It was the psychological leap of thinking like, okay, I've got this great job. If I leave, I'll probably never get it back. I'll probably never make the same amount of money again. And then, you know, your brain tricks you into thinking you'll never make a dollar ever again and you'll end up homeless on the streets. ⁓ It is probably somewhere in the middle, you know? So it took me years to get over both speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: The fear and the risk. There was no actual risk. The risk was low. It was just all fear. speaker-0: Yeah, let's talk about that for a second, because I think you could see it either way. You could see risk, right? Like you say, well, I'm risking walking away. I'll never get this job again. I'll never have all this. Right, because you're kind of doing a pros cons list, right? People like a lot of pros. That would be a lot of the cons. Like, can I ever get myself back to here? and if somebody that's a planner and a controller like you were at that stage, how did you get yourself to go, okay, wait a second, like, I don't, like, this isn't what I wanna be doing. So regardless of this is a risk or a fear, I can step away and I'm gonna find new things to reinvent myself. speaker-1: So I had a very binary view of things and this is something that has been a major flaw of mine. I viewed it as I either needed to make millions and millions and millions of dollars so I never had to work ever again or I had to immediately go into another company or job or something, make more money and there was no in between. So because of that, I was trapped for years and I was going down this financial independence retire early model where I was like saving as much money as I could to get that. ballooned net worth where I never had to work again. And what I found is your brain adjusts to money over time. And what I used to think was a lot of money, I don't think is a lot of money anymore. And you keep moving the goalposts and kicking the can down the road until you just never stop. So I had set a goal financially in 2021 of like, I'm going to get to this number by age 40, and then I'm going to leave and figure out the rest of my life. So I'm 37 last year and The job became increasingly more and more toxic to the point where the pain of staying was worse than the fear and the risk of leaving. ⁓ Apple was front and center of the whole tariff thing last year. And it was just created a chaotic environment that went beyond what I felt was acceptable for me to put, put up with. And I just pulled the rip cord and said, was going. ⁓ but psychologically, my brain wanted more money. It wanted more safety. But I reached a point where I was, basically had like my screw it moment where I was like, I'm just going to figure it out. speaker-0: What were those first few weeks like when you walked away? What were those first few weeks like, Kevin, when you walked away? speaker-1: I think I lost you for a second, but hopefully I got you back. ⁓ My first couple of weeks when I walked away were fantastic. was amazing. ⁓ Everyone told me like, hey, you're gonna have all this trauma and like, it's gonna be like, you're gonna have, go through stages of grieving and all that. I think I did all that last year. I think I did it before I left and I think I over planned so much that ⁓ all that. went away. I immediately my anxiety went from like a 10 out of 10 every day to like a zero out of 10. I much more healthy. I sleep better. I'm happier. And maybe it is a honeymoon period. I'm only a hundred days into this, but I feel infinitely better right now. speaker-0: Let me ask you the people that were saying you were gonna go through all that stuff, right? That were telling you like you have these lows and all that. Had they walked the path you were walking or were they still at the job? speaker-1: I think they were probably, I think all the people were still at the job. Like they hadn't taken the action. My dad did something similar when he was my age, a little bit of a different story. So I listened to a lot of what he had said. But yeah, I think most of the advice I was getting was from people that hadn't done the move. speaker-0: Right. And that's one of the things I'm always very, I'm very careful about taking advice from people who haven't done the thing they're given advice about. speaker-1: Yeah, that's where I struggled is like I didn't really have any peers or anyone that had done this. Like it's kind of a crazy thing to leave your career in your 30s. You know what I mean? So I didn't really have anyone to go to. So I just, I ultimately had to just trust myself. speaker-0: And I think that's kind of what attracted me to your story and stuff, because we did the same thing. say we, me and my wife, we walked away in our early 40s. And we've just been traveling the last five years enjoying the world, you know, and, ⁓ but nobody in our circle had done that. Right. So if I listened to their advice, like nobody would have done what we did. speaker-1: you'd still be working there and you'd miss out on all those experiences of traveling the world and you'd have more maybe have some more money but like at some point you got to live your life you know speaker-0: Yeah, that's always thing though, because you said it earlier, that I think is so true, is we get accustomed to how much money we have to make and it's always moving. And if we're chasing that dollar sign, I don't know many people that ever find happiness when the dollar is their metric for everything. speaker-1: I don't think you will because I think, I mean, there's been studies on people that have up to like 1 million to 100 million net worth and they all want double what they have. So it's like, you could have a hundred million dollars and that guy wants 200 million. You know what I mean? So it's like, if everyone else is kicking the can down the road, like at some point you gotta optimize for something else besides money. speaker-0: Well, let's go back for a second because you mentioned it in a warm up that your parents were supportive. I would like to explore that for a second because having raised adult kids, I have ideas on parenting and yours is interesting, right? Because your parents were from a generation like you said that worked one job, wanted a stable retirement. You have all those things. So to hear their son come home and go, wait a second, I'm going to go opposite. talk me through what that conversation was like and just what came out of it. speaker-1: So my dad worked for the same company for 25 years, very similar to what other people in that generation had done. ⁓ Had a lot of success and he had like his own view of the world of sticking with the same company and working through hard times and all that. At the same time though, they saw the environment that I was working in. I was available 24 seven for 13 straight years, every holiday, every family function, every single thing that we ever did. Like I was out in the parking lot in the phone Christmas. Thanksgiving, like all that. So I think that they saw, this isn't normal. Like his job isn't normal. ⁓ And I didn't do it on a whim. they saw that progress over the course of 13 years. And then I finally had enough. I thought for sure they were going to be like, hey, you're crazy. You shouldn't be doing this. You're too young. Like you need to make better financial decisions, yada, yada, yada. But they were overwhelmingly supportive. ⁓ knowing that I would figure something else out. Like I'm not just going to sit around and not work the rest of my life. I'm going to do something else. It's just going to look a little different for me. And I was financially disciplined enough to buy myself some time to figure that out. speaker-0: Yeah, that's interesting, right? Having a conversation with parents or people that you respect that have different viewpoints and maybe haven't been where you've been, think is important. But also, I don't want to say that, putting up filters to where their opinion doesn't necessarily carry all the weight it did at other stages of your life. speaker-1: Yeah, I think I'm trying, I like to think through like if they were adamant that I was making a bad choice, but I've still done it. I think in this case I would have, but it was a lot easier though they supported it. You know what I mean? speaker-0: Yeah, for sure it's easier when you're like, man, they actually support it. Cause we, we had a mixed bag. We had some that supported us selling our stuff and just, hitting the road with others. We're like, you guys are fricking nuts. You've worked your whole life to have this. But ultimately like at the end of the day, you got to answer for your happiness. speaker-1: For sure. And what I did is I looked ahead. I looked at people that were 20 years, 10 years ahead of me and like the ones that stayed didn't really have that great of a life. They had a lot of money, but they weren't healthy. They were divorced. Their kids, they weren't around for their kids. And it's like, do I want to be doing that? And the answer was no. speaker-0: Right now that's so true. That's so true. Not only do you not want to be doing that, but I'm also not going to take advice from those who are stuck in that. Like for sure. Yeah. I mean, you can have your opinion and I'll be respectful and listen to you if you're in that position, but it doesn't mean I'm going to give it a ton of weight. speaker-1: 100%. speaker-0: Yeah, dude, that's so awesome. And I just love that you did it and I love that you're sharing it. Right. So other people go, wait a second. Like, let me look at this. Do I, do I have to continue on the same path I'm on? And here's what I'll tell you, Kevin, cause we've done it. We've been out now like 10, 10 years traveling five, meeting people all from all around the world. And two things. One, there's way more nice people in the world than you're led to believe. Right. Most people are nice. And two, we've had nobody tell us, you guys should have kept working and waited 20 years to do this. Most people tell us, we wish we'd have done what you guys are doing when we were young. speaker-1: Well, and I get that from everyone. Universally, everyone's like, ⁓ I wish I could do that. I wish I would have done that. How lucky is that? But for some reason, no one actually goes on to do it. And I also think it's kind of an American thing. ⁓ so we were, there's this small Dutch Island in the, in New York, South America called Bonaire. It's a scuba diving Island. Have you ever heard of that? Okay. So we were down there last year on a scuba diving trip and I had gone to a CrossFit gym and I got paired up with this guy to be my partner and he was my age and I. He's like, oh yeah, I just, I live down here. And I was like, okay, where'd you come from? And he was like, well, we lived in the Netherlands and my wife and I moved down and I'm a scuba diving instructor and she works at, you know, wherever. And we just lived down here. And I was like, wow, that sounds like an amazing life. And he's like, yeah, it is an amazing life. And I was just thinking like in America, that would be a failure. Like if, you know, if you, if you just went and worked and did a job just to pay the bills you'd be looked at as a failure but he was there living the dream and that kind of opened my eyes for sure. speaker-0: Yeah, that's such a, I actually just did some stuff on this topic that we have a flip in our society that what we do is a lot of times more important than who we are as people. And I'm challenging us to go the other way. Like who you are is way more important to me than what you do to make money. Cause we can all go do a million things to make money to get through the day. Yeah, dude, that's so awesome. ⁓ So Kevin, help me understand how to speaker-1: It's just a job. It's just a job. speaker-0: backpacking tie into this? How did that become something that was going to be this reinvention of yourself as the backpacking aspect? speaker-1: So it kind of backed into this. So if we zoom out and look back about 10 years, I was struggling in my job, super demanding job, and all that I did was work. Worked Monday through Friday, on the weekends went out and like partied or did whatever with my friends and that was it. It was kind of a hollow life. And then in 2015, at the end of 2015, one of my new friends had challenged me to climb Mount Rainier with him. And I didn't even know what Mount Rainier was or anything. for those that don't know, it's like a huge glaciated mountain in Washington. It's a very serious mountain to climb. And he had challenged me to climb that and I didn't know anything about it. And I just agreed on the spot. I was like, let's do it. I need some, some adventure, some craziness in my life. So over the course of eight months, I got myself into super good shape, worked out like crazy, lost about 40 pounds. And I went and summited that mountain and that was like a life-changing moment for me because I realized like, there's all these amazing adventures out there that I can go do. And it gave me purpose outside of my job at Apple. Instead of worrying on the weekends or whatever about, you know, the meeting the following week or whatever was going wrong. I had something else that I was focused on and it actually made me a better employee. So I did that in 2016. I submitted Rainier and then really the way it's worked out is every year since then I've done one major outdoor challenge and I call it like my one big thing. So. For the first five years, I climbed some big mountains. I've ran ultra marathons. I learned a whitewater kayak. I started section hiking the Appalachian Trail and then I left my job this year to backpack a thousand miles. speaker-0: Why a thousand miles? speaker-1: You know, I always thought I was going to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, which is 2200 miles. So when I was 18 years old, I was like, I'm going to thru-hike the AT. When I was 25, I was saying that. And then when I turned 35, I remember I was on a vacation. I was thinking through what am I going to do this year? And I thought about the AT and I was like, I'm never going to do that. I'm never going to actually go out for six months and live out in the woods. And it was kind of like this painful realization to me that like this lifelong dream is just never going to happen because like I didn't want to go away. Even if you gave me millions of dollars, I didn't want to leave my home for six months. So I thought, okay, what if I, what if I backpack 150 miles per year? How long would that take me to hike the entire Appalachian Trail? And the answer was 15 years. So that year, rather than like deferring the goal of hiking the entire 18 one go, I just started immediately that year and did 150 miles and I'm still doing that and I'll finish by age 50. ⁓ But why a thousand miles this year? Because I don't want to spend six months away from home backpacking, but I want a big enough goal that pushes me to be uncomfortable. So I'm doing a couple of smaller trails that I'm doing the entire trail. So I'm through hiking it. I'll do my first one. I'm leaving in three weeks. This is a 300 mile trip and I'm doing a couple of those to equal a thousand. speaker-0: What's it been like, your time on the Appalachia Trail? speaker-1: Absolutely incredible. Like the best thing I've ever done. ⁓ Outside of even just the scenery and the challenge and the self-sufficiency of being able to do it, the people are just incredible. I've had so many good stories of supportive people that, you know, go out of their way for no reason to help you out and drive you places and give you free food and just give you their shirt off their back kind of thing. speaker-0: Let's talk about that cuz I read one of your stories that really I thought Encapsulated just how good people generally are in the world and I can't remember the man's name But he's the one that you had talked about had been clearing the trail with his chainsaw. Yep, and a storm comes in and you need a ride speaker-1: Yeah, so Steve is a shuttle driver in Irwin, Tennessee. So Irwin, Tennessee got destroyed by Hurricane Helene in 2020, I guess it was four. So completely destroyed. So this guy lives up there. He's a shuttle driver, meaning he'll pick up AT people on the side of the road and drive them into town to get food or whatever they need. He's also a trail maintainer. So he'll go out and fix sections of the AT. And I can't even put into words how destroyed the trail was. Like the last hundred miles I've gone on the trail, it's like... ⁓ tree graveyard of like thousands and thousands and thousands of trees down so this guy just has gone out and just devoted his life the last 18 months to Chainsawing all these trees and getting the trail open and it's still closed in certain parts but this guy has devoted his entire life to supporting hikers and also to You know making sure the trails back in condition to be able to for the thru-hikers to go through speaker-0: What about the storm? That was the one I found interesting. speaker-1: Yeah, so you mean just tell what happened? speaker-0: Yeah, if you don't mind, just the fact that you... Steve's there. speaker-1: Yeah, so I got a shuttle from Steve down to the, I was going to do like 50 miles or a hundred miles or something on the AT. He drove me down and we had like an hour long conversation. Super good dude, like just great guy. I didn't expect to talk to him again. Um, on my last day, it was, I guess it wasn't supposed to be my last day, but it turned out to be my last day. We knew a storm was coming, like all the hikers out there. We all knew that this big storm was coming and there was this huge mountain we had to get over to get to the next. next section or whatever. So I got up at like five in the morning that day to hike and my plan was to hike for as many miles as I could before the rain and the storm came through. ⁓ And I knew that about 10 a.m. the storm was gonna happen. So I got to the last point. It was around noon where I could bail and it was like a road, roadside conditions where I could call someone and bail before I had to climb this 3,000 foot mountain. And it was noon, the rain hadn't come. And I had no reason to bail. So I was like, I'm going to keep going. It was a mistake. News flash. was a mistake. So I kept going. I climbed up this mountain and it just turned the weather. It just turned so quickly. Just started dumping down rain, freezing cold. Um, it was the middle of the summer. I, I had clothing that was like layers and all that, but I wasn't prepared for snow or anything like that. Long story short, I get to the top of this mountain. under a tornado warning. it's crazy amounts of rain that's going to potentially turn to snow. And it's like in the twenties up there. It was me and these two other girls in a shelter up there and it was like freezing, freezing cold. And I had a one bar of service. So I texted Steve and I was like, Hey, I'm going to sleep up here tonight. I think I need to ⁓ bail in the morning. Like, can you meet me at whatever location? And he responded like immediately. And he was like, Hey, you shouldn't be up there. It's not safe to be up there. You're going to get snow like. you need to keep going, I'll come get you right now. So at this point, I'd gone 18 miles on the day and I had to go nine more miles to meet him. So it ended up being a 27 mile day, but I get down there and like poetically, as I got in the parking lot, the lightning started striking, water started dumping from the skies and he was right there and he drove me back to hotel. speaker-0: Now flip that Kevin to your corporate life. Go back to, you know, pre transition Kevin. Would you even think a guy like Steve exists? Right? No. We didn't pay for that. speaker-1: Cuz of that. I mean, I know. I mean, I did pay him, but like he would have done it for free. speaker-0: Yeah, but I mean, that's his thing. Like he's just doing this because he loves seeing the journey of the Appalachia Trail. He takes ownership and pride in that. That's his community and you're going to see it as you come through. speaker-1: And think about how fulfilled his life is to have a purpose and something bigger than him that he's serving and helping people rather than working for a huge company where all they care about is like, does the presentation look good and do the numbers look good? And if not, why? And you're just a cog in a wheel that, and they don't actually even care about you at all. speaker-0: Imagine the stories he's heard and that he's been part of. speaker-1: Yeah, I cannot imagine. speaker-0: Like just the fact that like you and I just met, we're sharing stories and Steve's part of the story that we're gonna share to everybody that listens to this deal. Like that's the impact you, and that's what I always try to stress to people is that's the impact you make when you just do things. Not because they necessarily have a monetary reward or it's gonna improve your status, but just because it's the right thing to do and you actually care about. speaker-1: You know, the crazy thing is I actually, I went out like two months ago on the same section and he shuttled me again a year later. ⁓ and he was telling me that he was, he wanted to go travel the country with his wife in an RV. And he was like, I just can't turn my back on the backpacking community. Like, I don't know if I can leave and like, leave it behind. And I'm just thinking like this guy has devoted his whole life for free to helping this thing out. Like, of course he deserves to be able to go travel the country. Like 99 % of hikers are just taking, they're just going and hiking, or is this guy's done nothing but give? And that was just a crazy, crazy thing to me. I was like, of course you should go. speaker-0: Yeah, if I can get in touch with them and help them out man, let me know. That's what we've been doing for five years. Kevin, was there a moment on the trail or any of the trails you've been on since you left that you're like, okay, I did the right thing. Like I invested in me. I'm in right where I'm supposed to be for this time in my speaker-1: I did the Georgia section of the Appalachian Trail. It's 80 miles. ⁓ I went into it thinking, ⁓ it's just a walk in the woods. I'm good. I've climbed Mount Rainier. don't need to train for this. And I got my butt whooped. I carried way too much gear. My pack was too heavy. like, it was a grind because you hike nine hours, you get up the next day, you hike nine hours and it just keeps going. I remember I got done with that and I did this all solo. like, In the past, when I had guides and stuff, like if something went wrong, like the guides would fix it. Whereas now if something goes wrong, like I got to fix it. There's no one else out there to do it. I got to a gas station when I was leaving on the way out and like, just looked up at the mountains and I was like, I just walked through there for 80 miles and I did it all myself. And I just thought like, that is so amazing. ⁓ and it was just like, I remember thinking like, I'm just going to. I enjoyed it so much, I just remember thinking like, I'm gonna enjoy my life now. Like I'm not gonna keep waiting for the future. Like this feeling of accomplishment and like, I felt like I was where I was supposed to be and I just remember telling myself, I'm just gonna start enjoying my life. As weird as that sounds. speaker-0: No, it doesn't sound weird at all. sounds like that's something. speaker-1: I've been waiting like, when I get to X money, when I get to age 40, when I get to this, I'll be happy. And that was the moment where I was just like, no, like today, like right now, I'm just gonna start enjoying my life. speaker-0: Do you think that comes from the ultra running and the backpacking and the hike through hiking that getting to enjoy each step verse? I'm just gonna try to get to this point as fast as I can. that not only made sense in my journey. speaker-1: I think it's all about the journey and all about the process and not anything, it doesn't have anything to do with getting to the end of the run or the hike or whatever. It's just all about the process. And actually I was driving out to a, I did one on a hiking trip like two weeks ago and I drove through this area where It was like a five hour drive and I drove through the place where I ran my first ultra marathon. drove through the place where I learned to whitewater kayak. And I drove through the place where I did my, Georgia AT section all in the same drive. And I just had all these memories of the people, like the Airbnb's I stayed at, the people that were there with me, the things that went wrong, the funny stories. And I was just like, wow, this is like such an incredibly nostalgic moments. And like, I built all those memories by doing these hard things that at the time I didn't think I would remember that and then looking back on it's just such a fulfilling life to be able to do that. speaker-0: Hit on a theme that I think is so important that is doing hard things in our lives trying to Not be comfortable at all cost But actually going out go what is hard and what I enjoy doing this? speaker-1: Yes. And it doesn't have to be climbing Mount Rainier. can be any version of whatever. It can be one level beyond what you're comfortable with, wherever your comfort level is currently. speaker-0: Yeah, whatever it is that excites you, and that's why I tell people, whatever it is you keep thinking about that keeps coming up in your thoughts when you're not occupied, when you're just time with yourself, that's what you should probably go do. speaker-1: And what I think people need to think about more is the non-binary thinking because that was the trap that got me like, I have to wait until I'm 40. I have to wait until this. Like, what if you have that thing in your brain that you've been thinking about for 20 years? What if you just found a way to start a baby step now, like today, like this year? Like instead of waiting to hike the entire Appalachian Trail, I was like, what if I just do 150 miles to this year? And here I am and I'm working at it. Otherwise I would have just deferred that dream. until I was too old and I never would have done it. speaker-0: Think about that, You defer dreams repeatedly. That becomes a habit. Subconsciously, that just becomes something you do on autopilot that you don't even recognize until probably it's too late. Then you can't live out those dreams. speaker-1: And then you give it up because there's seasons of life as well. And now is the season where like physically I'm in good shape. I have my health. I'm not going to walk by these years and wait and I'll be in my seventies or eighties and be like, ⁓ man, I wish I did that. Like now this is my window right now and I'm going to take advantage of it. speaker-0: Yeah, that's so true. know for me, I recently took up ultra running like maybe two years ago now. I know that when I go on runs and I make it a point to enjoy each step and just be present in the steps, those are the fun runs I come back and I'm like, man, I saw this and I saw that. When I go out and I'm like, okay, I just want to get to the top of this, get to so many miles, flip around and race back to see how fast I can do it. those generally aren't as enjoyable, right? Because I'm focused on getting somewhere and getting back as quick as I can. Not, what's each step do for me? speaker-1: I spent years, whether it's hiking, running, whatever, listening to podcasts, listening to music on everything and like just kind of zoning out the whole time. And I don't even take my phone with me half the time anymore when I'm doing this stuff. And if you can just be out in nature, even if it's, doesn't have to be in the woods, preferably in the woods, but like, if you just go out without your phone and go do these things, your brain is just able to think so much more clearly and you'll come back just. flooded with creative ideas, or least that's what happens to me. speaker-0: No, for sure. I understand. agree. Now, the only thing I will say is I usually have to take my phone so that my wife can look at my dot and where the hell I am because I'm notorious for being like, I'll be back in two hours. It's like three and a half because I find some other trail to go explore on. speaker-1: It works too though, but it's like I try to get away from just, if I'm going out for three hours, listening to three hours of podcasts, if that makes sense. speaker-0: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, most of the time I even have my headphones anymore, yeah, dude, that's awesome. Let me ask this as we get closer to the end. What inspired you to start your unmapped riding on Substack and sharing this journey with everybody? speaker-1: Yeah, so I had never shared anything about my personal life anywhere online ever. And when I was leaving Apple, I had dozens and maybe even like a hundred connections I'd made over the years that I remember thinking to myself like, man, I'm never going to speak to these people ever again. It's just kind of like this weird thing where I had a decade experience and I'm just never going to keep up with them. ⁓ And I just thought, okay, well, maybe I'll start writing on Substack and just use this as a way to update people on what I'm doing. And if they want to keep up with me, great. And, you know, if I can keep up with one person over five years from now, it would have been worth it. So I launched my Substack to do just that. ⁓ Did not expect anyone outside of my former colleagues to read it. And then, you know, it's caught on way more than I expected. People are resonating with the story and I'm just enjoying. ⁓ explaining what's happening and kind of using it as a way to refine my thinking and practice my writing and storytelling as well. speaker-0: What themes have you noticed that in your writing kind of resonate with people or keep showing up for you to where you're like, man, I didn't really expect to see this, but it's just constantly popping up for me. speaker-1: I think most people want something different than what they're doing in their current life and they don't really know where to begin or how to get there. And I think the key theme that I figured out that I didn't have this problem, but I think a lot of people do is they don't know what they want. haven't actually sat down and thought like, what do I want my life to look like? They just know that there's currently pain and they want out, but they haven't taken the step yet to say, this is what I actually want to have happen. speaker-0: Interesting. What would you say to that person if they're listening today? speaker-1: that person needs to spend time today immediately thinking through what do they actually want their life to look like if money wasn't the primary obstacle? Like what would you be doing with your day? Who would you want to be with? Where would you want to be? And like, what does that lifestyle actually cost? Cause a lot of these people that I talked to, especially the high performing people in the tech world that have a lot of money, they could leave right now, but they just don't know that because they have not figured out. what they actually want to be doing. So I have like, if we got a second, got two things that I would tell people to do. ⁓ So there's this guy named Tim Urban. He's got a blog called Wait But Why. Have you heard of that? speaker-0: I have not. speaker-1: Okay, so he's got this thing called Your Life in Weeks that just, and some people may have seen this, but it shows the average human life, how many weeks you have in your life. And someone has a calculator online where you can type in, was born in 1988, I'm 37 years old. It's gonna map out how many weeks of your life are out there and how many you've already used. So you can see visually, okay, this is how much time I have left. So I did that and I'm like, okay, wow, this is eye opening to actually see like on paper what your life, how much time you actually have left. So I would do that number one. And then number two, what I like to tell people is if someone gave you $10 million today and you went out and did all the fun stuff, private jets, whatever, and all that stuff's gone, six months from now, what would a normal Tuesday look like if you didn't have to work anymore? What would you do all day and like actually map out? Like what time would you get up? What would you do all day? Who would you be with? Where would you be? And what would that life look like? And what I think people will find is it doesn't cost that much money. It costs less money than they think. And then if they look at it from the lens of this is how many weeks I have left based off of that chart that I was talking about, then it will prompt them to take some action rather than just waiting. speaker-0: Yeah, what was that like for you when you saw it like as a visual guy because you got a big-ass counter So I'm assuming you're a visual guy you like to see things laid out When you saw how much your life is spent verse how much is left to live? I'll to you speaker-1: Yep. So the actual life of like the finiteness of life I had thought about quite a bit. So that wasn't the thing that kind of broke my brain. What did break my brain was I'm super into climbing mountains and running ultras and doing all this super active fit stuff. I plotted on that same chart. Okay, if I don't do this stuff after age 60, let's just say 60 is the last year when I can do this stuff. and I'm 37 now, what does that look like? And that chart shrunk even shorter. Like I only have this small window to do this stuff. And actually the math said that every year that I waited, every year that I deferred was 4 % of my active life. So if I would have stayed one more year at Apple, that's 4 % of the time I have left to go do all this crazy stuff. Now I've had a lot of people that are over 60 reach out like that are unhappy with me picking that number. So I wanna... I want to call out that I just arbitrarily, I just guessed a number. It could be 70 or 80 or whatever, but like either way, the story is maybe I'll live to 100. I'm probably not climbing Mount Rainier at age 90, if that makes sense. speaker-0: Dude, that's so funny you said that because as soon as you said 60, I was like, wait, that's not too far off for me. I can still do it. speaker-1: I've had a lot of comments about that. So maybe we'll say it's 80 or whatever, but either way, if you're a super active person, like you're on the clock. speaker-0: Well, no matter what you're doing, you're on the clock, right? If you choose to spend your day today watching TV, reading the newspaper, watching the news, believing the world's full of evil, that's your day. Either way, you're not getting it back. speaker-1: Yeah. So let me tell you one more story if we have time. So I did 50 miles on the Appalachian Trail. Let's just call it a month ago. Went out there. I didn't have cell phone service the entire time. The world's crazy, like you said. I had this whole war stuff happening. I didn't even know this was happening because I had no cell phone service. So I'm out there and like when you're out in the wilderness, like all that matters is can I find water? Do I have enough food? Can I find a place to sleep? speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Those are only three things that matter. So I'm out there, the world's going crazy, unbeknownst to me, and I'm out there and I didn't see anyone for 50 miles, not a single backpacker, not another human for 50 miles. But I got to an intersection and there was this truck parked there and I saw there was, you know, these, the old school Gatorade coolers that like middle schools used, like the yellow and red ones. Like there were those in the back of the truck and there were some like. beach chair set up behind it. And I was like, that's weird. Cause we were out, I was out in the middle of nowhere and I get to this road and I'm kind of looking around like, is, is this something sketchy? What's going on? And this old guy yells, yells out. He's like, Hey hiker, Hey hiker. And I was like, Hey. And he was like, do you want some trail magic? And trail magic is like when people give you food and stuff to like make your hike easier. So I was like, sure. So I go up to his truck and he opens up the bed of his truck. He's got lemonade, water, Gatorade. He's got brownies, he's got chips, he's got apples, clementines. And he's just loading me up with food. He asked me to fill out his log with my name, how many miles I went, where I went. He was asking all about me. So this guy was like 80 years old. He'd been doing, and I asked him, how often do you do this? And he'd been doing it for 27 years. He'd been sitting there. giving away free food to hikers that go through. And I was like, 27 years, like what makes you do this? And he's like, well, if someone's going to hike all the way from here to Maine, the least I can do is give them a Brownie. And like, was just, that was all he was doing. He wasn't even a hiker. hadn't throughhiked the AT or anything. And he was just there like. 100 % just giving and that's such a cool story to me. And then I get back to the real world and like we got this war and all this crazy stuff going on and it's like at that moment when I was out there like none of that was even real. speaker-0: Yeah, and yeah, you mentioned this earlier. I think people getting out into the woods getting out in nature and just connecting with it would reset us so much more and I think change how we view a lot of things verse being caught up in the consumption mode of media and whatever else you're taking in every day speaker-1: When I got back from that trip, it literally, there was like a 24 hour grieving period where I did not want to turn my phone back on and I did not want to get back on the computer and all that because it was like my brain was just at peace and I knew the second I turned it back on, I would be flooded with everything that we all see every day. speaker-0: Yeah, Kevin, as we wrap up, where can our audience connect with you to follow along on your journey, my friend? speaker-1: Yeah, so Substack is the main place. it's unmappedyear.substack.com or at Kevin John Martin. speaker-0: Okay, awesome. One last question for you, Kevin. As you look back on your journey and you look at the point that Kevin, that you were the most doubtful and uncertain that you could make all this work, what would the Kevin here today tell that version of yourself? speaker-1: Oh, that's a great question. So the most doubtful and the hardest point for me was the first couple years out of college when you're still a college kid, but you're out in the real world, you don't have any money, you don't have any skills. I think that was a really tough time for me. And what I would tell that person is don't put all of your eggs in the business and money basket. Put a lot of it in the business and money basket, but also do something physical outdoors that will... ⁓ yield benefits in other parts of your life from beyond money standpoint, if that makes sense. speaker-0: Yeah, for sure. Kevin, thanks so much for joining us today. It's been an honor to talk with you. We're excited to watch your journey, my friend. speaker-1: Yeah, thank you for having me on. It's been a great chat. Enjoyed it. speaker-0: When you're training with purpose, your fueling can't be an afterthought. That's why I use NeverSecond, the simplest, most reliable system I have found for staying energized, hydrated, and steady through their long efforts. Their C-Series carbs take the guesswork out of performance. No stomach drama, no complicated mixing, just clean, consistent fuel that actually works when the miles get long. If you want to train with more intention and recover without feeling wrecked, check out NeverSecond. Click the link in the show notes to get dialed And remember team, life is far too short to live any other way than on purpose. We'll see you all again next week.