Travis Gale — Entrepreneur, Cyclist, Author, Speaker

And once more, it is What's Involved and another guest, a great guest this time, and somebody I've been looking forward to having a chat to. It is author of a book called The Middle, How to Keep Going in Pursuit of Your Goals, which I think we all need right now. It is Travis Gale. Hello, Travis. - Hi, David, nice to meet you, and thanks for having me on your show. - It's an absolute pleasure, mate. So before we dive into the book and have a look at what's going on there, 'cause it's a very exciting book, great title. Tell me a little bit about Travis. Give me an idea, some idea of your background going up, et cetera, et cetera, and how you got to the place where you wanted to write a book. - Sure, well, I'm born and raised in the epic city of Durban, and my journey was that during high school and my trick,

yeah, I was looking to do something different. I wanted to make a difference in the world. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to study, and I was privileged to be asked to join a friend of mine, Stephen Bonacanza, on a round-the-world cycle tour, which had a vision to raise one million rand for children living with and affected by HIV and AIDS, and so that was my post-matric year, my gap year, so to speak. Following that experience, studied at UKZN and wanted to specifically work with people, and following that degree, moved to Thailand, where I had a very interesting or tough experience of being in the middle of the tsunami in 2004. So all things combined, I came back to South Africa with a renewed fervor to work with people, and over the 15 years since my return from Thailand, I've really just been working with organizations and individuals around what it means to reach our goals, what it means to engage in the transformation that we need to engage with, what it means to navigate the challenges that we face on a daily basis, and all of this led me to wanting to write this book at the middle, because all of my journeys have really been an experience of navigating this land that sort of sits between the start and the finish, and I guess I realized just how much I learned on the cycle tour and how that applied to every other journey I was walking, my marriage, my parenting, my journey as an entrepreneur, my journey as a citizen of South Africa.

So yeah, I'm here in Durban with my wife and my two-year-old and I'm leaving an organization called Apple Tree and have developed this brand called The Middle Around the Book as well. - Fantastic stuff. Now you glossed over this little cycle trip that you did.

It wasn't such a little cycle trip though. You sort of cycled, what, just over 16,000 kilometers? - Yeah, so the aim was to cycle, according to the Guinness Book of Records sort of specs, which was I think the minimum of 16,000 across four continents. So we did Jobig to Cape Town as a warm-up leg, and then our route was very simply from Perth to Sydney over February and March, LA to New York. April and May, and then the famous Toronto Groats to Lands and routes in Scotland and England, and then Amsterdam through Europe to the bottom of the Italian boot. And then the original plan was then Cairo back to Johannesburg, which was our starting point, but we were, our plans were shifted off to some terrorist activity up in Egypt. So we had to go up to Israel and then fly to Nairobi and then cycle from Nairobi back to Germany. So that was the route that we had planned for the cycle trip. - Wow, okay. Now you sort of succeeded with that, and you raised around about 1.7 million rand for this fight against HIV/AIDS. But this was in the days before we could really get onto the social media side of it. So no Facebook, no Instagram, no Twitter. How did you sort of publish this? Did you document any parts of your journey at all?

- Yeah, I always laugh about this. I mean, so for example, one of the key items that we had on our trip was an anti-shock CD Walkman. I think you'll obviously be quite familiar with that given your industry, David. And it had enough space or it had enough battery for one CD a day. And we used to wait for that low point during the day to kick this anti-shock CD Walkman into gear and listen to our David Matthews CD or whatever it might be. And yeah, from a social media point of view, we were relying on postcards. So we would get a bunch of postcards from a particular city that we were in. And I remember our team furiously, all these postcards and sending them off to my mom. And she would then distribute them to our friends. And then we would get a bunch of them forwarded or letters forwarded to an address that we were going to reach in a number of weeks' time. So the only mechanism that we had at the time was a website and my job in particular was to use what was then a one megapixel digital camera, which looked like a small laptop, and take photos which I had to then figure out how to remove these photos off this digital camera and send them back to our media team. And the McCourt Hospital, which was the organizing hospital that we cycled for, they used that media to talk about us in newspapers and in other channels that they had arranged.

So it was a very, I guess, primitive mechanism of communicating. But yeah, we didn't have the benefit of loading up an Instagram shot to our Facebook page and keeping in touch with our audience and followers.

- It's amazing. And it's amazing that you did what you did because it sounds kind of, you read the book and some of the stories, et cetera, et cetera. And it's kind of like, yeah, there's a couple of thousand kilometers. The going at some stages was incredibly tough, wasn't it? - Yeah, no, I mean, that's for sure. Look, I mean, when it comes to a cycle like that or a journey like that, there's a range of factors that you have to deal with. And obviously the physical challenge of pushing a bicycle forward is one thing. I think that the mental and the emotional side of it is another, you know, you have to keep your mind in the right place, especially when you're dealing with another, I think in particular, about some of the long stretches across Australia where it was very arid terrain. I mean, one of the longest roads that we had to cycle without a turn. So just a dead straight road was 150 kilometers. And the outback between road houses where there's nowhere really to stop and nowhere to go and grab a drink or something to eat. So you have to navigate that. And then of course, you've got to navigate the relational challenges. You know, you're spending time in close proximity with whoever you've chosen to cycle with.

You're dealing with people all the time as well with regard to the host that you're staying with and the places that you are talking. You used to talk quite a bit around what was happening in the cuisine in the town with HIV and AIDS. And then just the homesickness, you know? So I think that those things are flanked by the incredible adventure, seeing new places, meeting new people. And the bicycle is an incredible way to travel because it causes you to be very connected with the environment. And it's very different to traveling in a car and that you really are in touch with the people and the smells and the context that you find yourself. And I found that people are very open to wanting to engage with you when they see that you're on a bar and invite you to stay and invite you into their homes and into their coffee shops. So that was the kind of mix of challenges and highs that you had to navigate. - Yeah, and I would imagine trying to do something like that today wouldn't be quite, I'm not gonna say easy, but it would certainly give you a whole bunch more challenges in today's times. But let me take a step back. Travis, if you don't mind. What on earth? I mean, I know that you cycled for a great cause.

Were you a cyclist? Were you into fitness? Did you have to train for this? - Yeah, I think that's the really great thing about my story is that I was by no means a cyclist. I had actually ridden a grand total of 16 kilometers before Steve asked me in that year. And I'm a trickier. I wasn't a first team rugby player or a first team hockey player. I was a very average sportsman. I mean, I wasn't even a great academic. So when people asked Steve why he asked me to do the tour, because when I met Steve, Steve had done a number of cycle tours already. He had done drove it to Cape Town, drove it to, to Durban, Durban to Cape Town, actually resides in Cape Town now and he does a lot of cycle tours still. But he asked me because I just had this sort of self belief in the fact that no matter how ordinary we are, we can do these extraordinary things. And I had no CV to ride home about, but I had the kind of, I guess, just the aptitude and I suppose the character that he was looking for in a cycling partner. And I had to then develop the kind of physical strength and the emotional and mental capacity to be able to take on a tour like this, not having the ability to draw from long endurance activities prior to the tour.

So not a glamor CV at all, David. Just a willingness to get out there and give it a go. - Yeah, you know what, if I think back in my life, I mean, there's so many times I think back and somebody asked me to do something where I'd gotten involved in something and the immediate response is, yeah, sure. How difficult can it be? And then generally I found out quite painfully how difficult it can be. - Yeah, and I mean, these things all have to be broken down. I think if I had to think about the overarching goal of cycling 17,000 kilometers and raising 1 million rand, it can be daunting, but as soon as we broke it down to a daily plan and I was able to just plot out how I was going to engage with this, then the challenge was essentially made a lot more surmountable. - Alrighty, my special guest is Travis Gale, author of "The Middle", how to keep going in pursuit of your goals. When we come back, I want to talk a little bit more about what led up to the book and, you know, how long does writing a book like this take? This is what's involved.

And we're back with what's involved. Travis Gale is my special guest. He is the author of the book "The Middle", how to keep going in pursuit of your goals. So talk to me about the book, Travis. When did this idea start about maybe writing a book? - Yeah, so as mentioned, when I got back from the East, I was working in the corporate setting as a soft skills trainer. Our business really helps organizations shape and sustain what we call good culture. And because so much of our work was around workshopping and coaching, I found that I was sharing stories from the cycle tour constantly. And I was linking those stories from the cycle tour to insights that would support individuals and teams to navigate any challenges that stood in their way or any middle that they were looking to have to move through in order to reach the goals that they set for themselves or the collective goals. And so 15 years or so of doing this, I realized I was sharing constant stories, seven or eight constant stories. And I decided that it would be a good time to take those stories and to put them into a book format. And so I sat down and I plotted out what I call the middle journey. And I began writing the stories from the cycle tour and the associated insights.

And that became what was to be the middle book. That journey probably took me about three and a half years of writing, mainly because I didn't take out big blocks of time to go away and have like writing breakaways. But it was a really great experience for me to actually just consolidate these stories and these insights into a manuscript. - Okay, three years is, you know, that's a fair amount of time. But every time I do chat to an author, I have to take my hat off to you guys because I know that for a lot of people, writing doesn't come naturally. And this book has clearly had a lot of thought and a lot of passion put into it. Did you experience struggles and challenges that dreaded writer's block while you were busy with this? - Well, funny enough, the journey of writing the book was almost the same as cycling around the world. I mean, I think cycling around the world was possibly easier. So the same things applied. You know, you stand at the start line and you have a grand vision for what you want to achieve and you picture the book being an exclusive books one day and how awesome it's gonna be, and then you start. And that wasn't dissimilar to me starting the cycle tour and picturing all the adventures that I was gonna have.

But as the first chapter of the book speaks about, we reached these day five moments, the fifth day on the cycle tour was a moment when I all of a sudden came face to face with the reality of what I signed up for and it wasn't what I expected to see. It was this idea that my expectations for the journey and my reality weren't lining up and I found myself in a very dejected space full of doubt around whether I was gonna be able to do the tour. So writing the book was exactly the same. I had that day five moment where I realized just how much it was gonna take to write a book. And having to deal with the writer's block, where you sit down, you've got some time, you've got some space. You know, my daughter was one when I started writing. My oldest daughter was five, so you've got some space from the kids, but now you can't find any inspiration. And then there were other times where it all flowed nicely and came out. So it was an incredible experience to actually apply the insights that I had been applying in the middle journey into actually writing the book. And those insights helped me navigate what I call the territory that sits between the start and the finish, obviously in the middle, to finish the goal of actually writing the book.

So I had to use the theory to finish the actual book itself. And it was certainly a significant moment when I was able to hold it in my hands and go, okay, this goal has been reached, you know? - Which as you say in and of itself is an incredible story. I mean, just to go back to your day five, I mean, you're right about sitting there going, will this get better? How did I get there? How did I get here? Why did I start this in the first place and then, and this is my favorite 'cause I think so many people can relate to this. You say, where can I go to escape this reality? And this is the thing and the challenge, I guess, about any sort of goal setting is, you hear a lot of people talking about goal setting and then they say, you know, you've got to set these big, audacious, hairy goals and you just sort of plan it all out and you imagine it and you see it as if it was really there. And off you go and in the beginning, it's brilliant. I mean, you're so revved up, you get so excited about this thing. And then as you say, the reality strikes. So in terms of you dealing with people and talking about your journeys, et cetera, et cetera, why did you decide to concentrate on the middle? Because to me, it was a stroke of genius because that's something nobody really talks about, you know?

You talk about somebody setting their goals and then afterwards they tell you, look, I achieved this, they have the dream home, the dream job, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But the middle part seems to get skipped out. What are the difference for you? - I think it's because my passion is to see people reach their goals. I see a lot of people pitching up at start lines and I also see a lot of people talking about wanting to pitch up at a start line but never really getting onto that line and getting going. You know, there's obviously a lot of goals which are just personal goals that people set for themselves through their lifestyle or their finances or their careers. But I think from a more meaningful space, I guess there's also a lot of goals that I see people have that are gonna benefit society. And perhaps living in South Africa, we rely on great people thinking up great ideas and making them happen for the benefit of our society and for the benefit of our country. So, my passion is really to see people endure the challenges that often come our way when we are working towards these ambitious goals that will make a difference in other people's lives. And what I realized was is that a lot of people didn't necessarily have the framework or the tools to actually lay down how they were going to navigate the middle.

Or I saw that they were dealing with something in the middle that I dealt with on cycle two and the many other middles that I faced, but they weren't able to name and articulate that. And so, by giving, for example, the term day five, we can talk about our day fives and we can talk about how that's a very real part of our journey, but then we can also talk about what to do with our day fives. 'Cause that one in particular is where a lot of people give up and I don't wanna see people give up, but I wanna see people abandon the goal because some of the most incredible goals that are really inspiring, it can be so inspiring, it can be so incredible, but it doesn't mean that you aren't going to come up against that raw, difficult, needs to have to dig deep and the absolute dejection that can come from having to try and move towards our goals within our economic landscape, within our social landscape, and then just within our own personal space. So, I really believe that human beings are designed for tough terrain and the more that I can encourage people around the fact that they can navigate tough terrain, then hopefully this book just encourages more people to reach the finish and that's gonna benefit all of us.

- Absolutely, and again, this resonates with me because so often I've set out on a project or something that I'm doing and I hit my own personal day five and suddenly the prospect of do something else, do anything else because I'm after that dopamine rush, that thrill of excitement of another beginning and I think that can be a massive stumbling block because if you keep on changing, you're never really gonna reach your goals and that's why I find this whole concept of the middle so fascinating. Is that something that you went through as well? - Yeah, it's, the propensity to want to give up is real,

the propensity to want to throw in the towel is exceptionally real and I think that that's where the day six chapter becomes incredibly important is that many people find themselves in a space where even if they can't afford to give up, they just are curating it up. They're literally pushing day by day to, and on what human beings call the hamster wheel. So, it's not just about curating through the journey to reach the finish, there's also the elements of really needing to enjoy the journey, to find fulfillment and satisfaction in the journey and I suppose that's linked back to your previous question as well, we don't just want people that are reaching the finish, we want people that are enjoying the journey toward the finish as well. If you think about our marriages and our parenting and our entrepreneurship journeys and our projects and even our sports and endeavors and whatnot. And so that second chapter on the day six is, how do we leverage on our story? And I think that that for me was a really pertinent part of encouraging myself to keep going is, why have I decided to write this book in the first place? What is the vision that I have for this book and what values am I drawing from?

As I think about putting my pen to paper. Because that from a cycle to a point of view was what in essence kept us growing is reconnecting with our story. And every time we rode on our bikes connected to our story, I found that I was able to deal with the environmental challenges that came my way far easier than when I was riding disconnected from my story. - Wow, okay, fantastic stuff. My special guest is Travis Gale, author of "The Middle", how to keep going in pursuit of your goals. When we come back, let's start chatting a little bit about this concept of goals and setting goals. We'll do that when we come back, it is what's involved.

And we're back with my special guest, Travis Gale, author of "The Middle". So Travis, when we talk about goals, because let's be honest, there's everywhere you look, there's books on goals and goal setting and there's software that you can get that will help you and planners and all sorts of things. How do you look at setting goals? - Yeah, sure, I mean, there is so much on how to set goals, it's spot on. One of my favorites, and unfortunately not my line, but a really, really powerful statement that was written by an author by the name of James Clear, who wrote a book called "Atomic Habits". It really jumped out at me recently and said, "We don't rise to the level of our goals, but we fall to the level of our systems." And so essentially what's going on here is that what human beings are good at doing is at setting goals, that's the easy part. And we can laugh about the New Year's resolutions, we can sit down and we can dream about what we want to achieve, where we want to get to. But what we don't do is we don't then consider the system that has to be put in place for us to reach the goal. So if I think about the SACO tour, for example, we want to SACO it around the world, we want to raise a million around, that's an easy goal to set.

And you can set and you can dream around that. But at some point, you've actually got to sit down and say, "Well, what is the system that's going to support our ability to get there?" So it's taking a big goal and it's working it backwards and it's starting to ask the question, what are the inputs? What are the things that are going to be required? What are the next steps? What are the elements that need to be sorted out? What does the whole ecosystem look like here that's going to support our ability to actually reach that goal? So that's the long way around of saying that human beings find goal setting quite easy, but the system that they put in place, the framework to get there is the one that doesn't get the consideration. And unfortunately, the stats show that there's a very high percentage of people who set goals, but because of the lack of the deployment of an effective system, don't really get out the starting blocks or get out the starting blocks, but that middle is compromised very, very short, very, very soon into that journey of trying to get there.

- This fascinates me because I started off at a very young age with this goal setting and I read all the wonderful things and how to do it and I discovered mind maps. And most of the time, when I was doing this, I failed miserably. And every time I came up against that failure, it was more of a blow to my ego, to my self-worth, and I was going, oh, you know, maybe you shouldn't try and do these things. Maybe you should just kind of, you know, not everybody's designed to do wonderful, awesome, amazing things. Maybe you should just, you know, retreat into your corner and be quiet and be happy. And for some reason, I could never do that, but it was incredibly frustrating. And I think long-term, you know, yeah, I've managed to figure out my own way around it, but it did a lot of damage. So when you talk about a system, can you expand a little bit about that system? - Yeah, and I think that's focused on that idea of failure as well. So we'll break it down into two parts. So for example, a system is what? So when we talk about a goal, it's really an output. And I guess the sporting world is probably one of the best analogies. They spend a short amount of time performing, and then they have a very specific goal, you know?

So when they perform, they want their performance to work out in the right results, and that will then help them achieve their goal of winning the games or winning the series or whatever it might be. But if you dive into the world of sports, you're gonna find a very clear system. The system will improve inputs. It will include nutrition. It will include physical training. It will include the various disciplines that they go through in order to make sure that when they do perform, that the output that they're looking to realize is gonna be reached. So if you think about the cycle tour, for us it was about the route, the visas, the equipment. It was about how we were going to tackle our own kind of relational side of things. Those things all have to be considered as we went into setting ourselves up to cycle around the world. When it comes to my entrepreneurship journey, I'll put together a goal to develop a certain brand or to develop a certain offering. I've then got to sit down and I'll take out an Excel spreadsheet and I'll break it down and say, "Okay, well, the system is about number one. "What do I need?" So from a resource point of view, I need to look at my resources. That then helps me decide which resources I've got and which resources I need to acquire from somewhere else.

I look at who I need to work with in order to get to that goal because the middle is best navigated with others. It's, you know, sometimes it's hard to do it independently. Then I look at the kind of behaviors that I'm gonna need to bring into my ability to reach that goal. And sometimes that also means that I have to look at inputs such as skills. Do I need new skills to reach the goal? Do I need to develop myself in any areas? Do I need to learn something that I haven't got as part of my landscape to be able to reach that goal? And then it's also about just looking at, you know, your surrounding context and being very clear on those day five factors. Identifying what are some of the things that I think are gonna stand in the way. You know, if your goal is within a particular industry, are there factors that people in those industries come up against on a regular basis that you have to overcome? How will I overcome those things? And so those are just some examples of the systems that you put in place and some of the elements that go into the system. But it just means that it's a far more considered approach to actually navigate in the middle and reaching a finish. And David, if I can say, so for example, in the book I read about the fact that one of my goals was to reach the summit of Kilimanjaro.

And that was a goal within the broader goal of cycling around the world. And I failed to reach that goal. But what I see in people is that even though they've developed the right system and they're moving towards the goal, if they have a failure in the midst of moving towards that goal, it can derail them completely. And that failure can override the many successes that they had up until that point. And it was incredible for me to realize that failing to reach Kilimanjaro almost canceled out the success of having cycled across three continents to get to that mountain. But all a failure does is it sets us up to learn what we need in order to go back to the place that we failed and to continue the journey. - And I think that is what is so vitally important about this whole goal setting and objectives. I've now tricked myself by not using the term goal setting. I use well-formed outcomes now and it's just semantics. But there are times like that. And in the book, one of the things that you do talk about in one of the chapters is your day 36 and the many milestones. And I love the part where you say think big, clan small, talk to me a little bit about that. - Yeah, and this links very strongly into the system.

So your day 36 was a cycle, a kilometer cycle. And that was when we experienced that road that I mentioned earlier, the 146.6 kilometer cycle along Australia's longest, straightest road. And just because of the external environment wasn't stimulating, what I found myself is I had to navigate this road and keep myself mentally going and emotionally in a good space to be able to navigate that particular challenge. And these blue 5K markers were presence on the side of the road and I ended up just looking to cycle from one blue K marker to the next blue K marker. So the power of that experience was that I realized that I had to break down the order goal of sucking 150 kilometers, such as that straight part. I was able to break that down into smaller chunks, i.e. 5K intervals, which meant that I had to cycle 30 blue signs rather than 150 kilometers. Now I know the distance is the same, but I found that I have deployed this in many other areas of my life. And if I have to take the book, for example, I'd set the goal, write the book. Then I would deploy this day 36 kind of insight and go, well, let me break this down into 5K markers. So what's the first marker? I need to find a title. What's the second marker?

I need to script out chapter one. What's the third marker? I need to find someone that's gonna help me sharpen my writing skills. What's the fourth marker? So every time I looked at the broad goal, I get inspired, but then what I'd need to do is come back to my 5K markers and look at those many milestones and work towards the next milestone. And then once I get there, and this is important, celebrate having reached the milestone because that supports all the good feelings with opening rush, et cetera. And then look at the next milestone and move towards that milestone. At some point, you're 10 or 20 milestones down the road and you've actually gone a long, long way. - Yeah, and that is so important. And I was actually gonna bring that up is that celebrating your mini-achievements, your mini-goals that you've achieved because it's so easy for us if we caught up in that bigger picture thing to ignore those mini-milestones. And that can lead to ultimately also just to giving up on it. And I love the way that you put that. It's 150Ks, but it's broken down into those mild markers. Travis, as always, we're starting to run out of time. When we come back, I wanna just wrap up a little bit about the book, about the end part of the middle, if we can.

And then we'll find out where the book's available and where people can get hold of you as well. It is what's involved. And we're back. Travis Gale is my special guest. And we're talking, as we wrap up now, about the end part of the middle because you talk about detours as well in your book, which is, I think, vitally important in any goal setting because we know this, but we don't seem to kind of totally grasp it in terms of goals, is that the best laid plans of mice and men. Things can go to hell in a hand basket. What happens then? Talk to me about that in terms of detours. - Yeah, so you can have a very well-thought-out goal. You can have a very well-thought-out system. We just can't thank for the unpredictable nature of the environment around us. And so that story, Day 97, embraced the detour, links back to the planned routes across the USA along the northern states, and then reaching a point where we're in the middle of very, very tough snow blizzards. And the decision for Steve and I was whether or not we just pushed through what could be a ready-to-be-dangerous situation or whether we changed the plan. And I think that this is important because when we come up against challenges, we have those two choices, either phosphate and push-through, or we adjust the plan.

And a lot of people remain too attached to the original plan that they set out. Of course, there's certain goals that you have to stick to the same plan. If your goal is to summit Everest, for example, you can't just find another route around the mountain. But for a lot of us, with the goals that we've set, there are many routes to get to that goal. And it's about being present in our circumstances and then agile in moving, if we need to move, into a different way of doing things in order to reach the goal. And if we remain too attached to our plans, then we might not see the possibilities that exist around us for potential detours that are actually full of adventure. And for Steve and I navigating down south, that was full of adventure. And if I look at my entrepreneurship journey or my other journeys, there's certainly been so many times whereby something has come up that has put a no entry sign in front of me. And I've been upset about it and dejected about it, but as soon as I've just opened my eyes, the abilities of a new turn, gone down that route, found an incredible adventure on that route. And I've still moved towards the kind of overarching goals that I've set for myself. So yeah, we seem to be open-handed with the plans that we've put in place and not make a plan the plan.

- Yeah, so many people fell with that. And yeah, I saw something the other day about people often say that when one door closes, the other opens, but never underestimate the possibility of an open window. - Exactly, it's a good one. - So definitely something to think about. The other thing that you speak about quite a lot, and this is something that certainly helped me when I discovered it, is creating your tribe. Because setting goals and achieving goals in isolation can be incredibly difficult. - Yeah, this is so important. So it's, yeah, I don't think I've reached any goal or navigated any middle without a tribe. You know, the cycle tour, you would say, it's two guys on a boat cycling around the world, but it was so much more than that. It was our team at home, it was the people that we met, it was the communities that we found ourselves and I think if all of us reflect on our journeys, if we are able to navigate our middle with people who know us, who encourage us, who know what we're about, then the middle is so much more satisfying and it certainly enables us to reach the finish. I think what was very interesting for me when we pitched the idea of the cycle tour to friends and family, that a good portion of people were very discouraging about the idea.

And I see a lot of people base their decision on whether or not they're gonna pitch up at this dot line and move forward on other people's logic or even on other people's concerns for what you're gonna do. So your tribe is the group of people who know you, who know what's inside of you and who are willing to go with your crazy ideas and get behind your visions despite the fact that there is good logic and reason for not doing much, you know? And sometimes your circle is a lot smaller and the circle that encourages you compared to all the people who've got good reasons for you to stay at home, keep things safe. - Yeah, I've had that one as well before and people look at me with that, it's humor, the crazy guy, but we really don't think that you're gonna be able to do it. But Travis, we're now reaching the end of our chat. The book is out. I'm assuming it's available in most good bookstores. Is it available online as well? - Yeah, so it's on Amazon, so you can get a Kindle version of it and then, as you say, bookstores around the country. - Fantastic stuff. Now, what is next for Travis Gale? You're building the business and you've got the book published now. What's next? - Well, as I said in the conclusion, every finish you reach is just a small transition into another middle.

And so I finished the book and then I received the book and then, of course, I was transitioned into another start, which is, I guess, doing what I'm doing now, taking the book out there. But my key focus has been turning the middle into a brand and I have been taking people through this framework and just working with them to apply the framework to their specific journeys that they're on. And I've really enjoyed working with individuals and also with corporate teams as we've also gone out and created many journeys. And what I mean by that is it's a condensed version of life. So, for example, if you can create a journey that sits between the start and the finish over a 36 or 48 hour period, it's incredibly meaningful to apply the insight on an actual journey and to learn more about how to navigate the middle of other areas of your life as you navigate a challenge or a journey such as that. So, for me, it's really about expanding this brand. It's about working with people. It's about supporting organizations to navigate the middle well, to reach their goals. And I'm just looking for as many ways as I can do that, David. - Well, fantastic stuff. We wish you all the very, very best. I take my hands off to you for both the cycling journey, the entrepreneurial side of it, and naturally the book as well.

Travis, if somebody wants to get hold of you, whether they are an individual or a small business, my passion being small and medium businesses, and they're stuck in the middle, would you talk to them? And if so, where's the best place to go to contact you? - Absolutely. I would love to talk to them. We're all in the middle together. Travis at the middle, that's it at today, is one way of reaching me. And then most of my social media handles are the middle journey. And so between that email address and the various social media platforms, you should be able to find them. - Awesome stuff. So that's travis@themiddle.co.za. Travis Gale, thank you so much for taking the time out and having a chat to us. As I said, we wish you all the best. - Thanks for having me, David. - There we go. It's another fantastic guest. Do yourself a favor. Go out and get the book. It is a fantastic read. Travis Gale, The Middle. how to keep going in pursuit of your goals.