IAM019 – Entrepreneur Takes People on Backpacking Adventure Vacations to Get Fit & Lose Fat

After a long career as a software contractor — it seemed long anyway — Steve Silberberg decided to toss aside nice things and financial security to start Fitpacking. Fitpacking takes people on backpacking adventure vacations to get fit and lose fat. He says, “Taking people backpacking is no way to get rich, but I do live an incredible quality of life.”

• CEO Hack: Help a Reporter Out (HARO) for PR opportunities
  CEO Nugget: Have a contingency plan when you are starting your ventures
• CEO ReDefined: When you become out of touch

Website: https://www.fitpacking.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bigpecs
Twitter: http://twitter.com/fitpacking
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fitpacking/

Transcription

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Gresham Harkless 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place, Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:26

Steve Silberberg hello, hello. Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today Steve Silverberg of fitpacking.com. Steve, it is awesome to have you on the show.

Steve Silberberg 0:39

I am so happy to ask me to come on. I'm honored.

Gresham Harkless 0:43

Awesome, awesome. awesome. Well, what I wanted to do was just read a little bit about Steve, and all the awesome things that he's doing. Hopefully, I haven't taken your time too much but what I want to do is introduce Steve. After a long career as a software contractor, it seemed long away, Steve Silberberg decided to toss aside nice things and financial security to start Fitpacking. Fitpacking takes people on backpacking adventures and vacations to get fit and lose fat. He says taking people backpacking is no way to get rich, but I do live an incredible quality of life. So, Steve, it is awesome to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Steve Silberberg 1:19

I am ready.

Gresham Harkless 1:20
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, what I want to do is just kind of give you the floor or the mic, so to speak, to see if there's anything additional that you want to tell us about your CEO story. And what led you to kind of get started?

Steve Silberberg 1:30

No, I wish I had some great story other than to say my life is not financially better. Now, it's much more rewarding.

Gresham Harkless 1:40

Awesome. awesome. Yeah. And you know, it's funny a lot of times is when we get closer, I think to our purpose and what we should be doing anyways, then life gets a lot simpler and a lot easier, in my opinion. So it sounds like you might have that same experience.

Steve Silberberg 1:52

Yeah, actually, I will tell you an anecdote. So my father died when he was 53 or 54. But he just turned 54. And, I was getting into my 40s. And I thought, you know if I only have 10 years left to live, what am I going to do with it? And so I decided to indulge myself in my passion for being in the wilderness and going backpacking, and I was able to take along may turn it into a business and take people along with me.

Gresham Harkless 2:17

Awesome, awesome. awesome. So I guess I'm sorry, obviously, to hear about your father. But a lot of times when things happen, the true entrepreneur especially usually takes sometimes bad experiences and turns them into something. So seems like you've been able to do that. So could you tell us a little bit more about like what you do from a fit-packing standpoint?

Steve Silberberg 2:34

So Fitpacking takes people on backpacking vacations, and we go out to change. Our stated goal is to alter body composition, lose fat, lose weight to get healthier to digital detox, just to be out in the wilderness. And so, we go to a lot of interesting places like I think they're interesting. National parks and forests, for example, we go we have a trip to Redwood National Park coming up in another week. We go to Mount Rainier, go to Yellowstone, go Yosemite, Big Bend, Grand Canyon, Shenandoah, you know, we hit a lot of the highlight parks that you've heard of, and maybe some places that you haven't heard of like, we're going to Powell River, British Columbia in a couple of weeks.

Now, I want to say it's a panacea. It's just so amazing people come on a trip backpack, go to these wonderful areas, and then find out that they lost fat and that they're healthier. So that usually happens. In fact, most of the time. People lose typically about five pounds of fat in a week of backpacking. But I will say that it's not for everyone. I'm not trying to chase people away. But if you can't be without a Wi-Fi signal for a week, or if you can't be away from electricity and plumbing, it might not be for you.

Gresham Harkless 3:49

Right here's an important reminder to kind of keep in mind yeah, because there are a lot of people who say though, that sounds awesome. But then they're forgetting that they have to have their digital leash, I guess you can call it on them at all times. But that makes perfect sense. And so I wanted to ask you a little bit more about Fitpacking and ask you what you feel makes your organization or your company unique.

Steve Silberberg 4:09

We are actually, so if you want to go backpacking, you can sign up for a trip to these adventure places that will say they're gung ho, they say we're going to hit every summit, we're going to hike 25 miles a day, we actually cater to people who are maybe not interested. You know, our hook is to get people to lose weight and to get fitter. So we have our mileage, as our daily mileage, we are more moderate than other places. So more people can do it. Our trips are attainable by people who are less fit. And I think that's what differentiates us from the other outfitters. What differentiates us from the other weight loss places is we do it through activity through exercise almost exclusively, as opposed to restricting calories, which you know, that works too, but it's no fun to starve yourself.

Gresham Harkless 4:58

Not that I've heard so. Never had to do that. So important points because I think a lot of times when people hear about, you know, Fitpacking or backpacking or anything, they think they have to, you know, have a CrossFit membership or something like that. But in reality, because you have that goal of helping people to become fit. A lot of people who may not be able to do that still have attainable goals, get to have fun, and get to have that experience. So I think that's important to kind of keep it.

Steve Silberberg 5:22

You know what, you would think that there would be a lot of overlap between CrossFit and Fitpacking, we actually do a lot of have a lot of the same ideas, but we don't typically get a lot of CrossFit people. Now you look, you look like you're in pretty good shape. Do you do CrossFit or any?

Gresham Harkless 5:36

I don't, I don't. But I do work out on a regular everyday basis. I just ran a 10k this weekend. So yeah, it hurt me more than I think I hurt it. So. But it happens all the time.

Steve Silberberg 5:47

Do you run all the time? Or is it Did you just go out to do that cold?

Gresham Harkless 5:51

I started the longest I ran, I ran a 10 mile, I want to say two years ago or last year. So that was the first time I ran, I never really liked to run, but I'm getting more into it. And I think as I'm getting older, it's probably one of the best things that I can do not only from a physical standpoint but also from like a mental standpoint, just as usually when I have more stress, I do more running. I don't know if I'm running for health or running away from our problems sometimes. But the important part is I have to always come back home. So it doesn't make a difference.

Steve Silberberg 6:17

It's okay to do either.

Gresham Harkless 6:19

Ya, very again. So what I wanted to do was just kind of ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this is something that you might do on a regular everyday basis. It might be meditation, it might be an app, or it might be a book that you use on a regular everyday basis that you feel makes you more effective and efficient as a CEO. So what would be your CEO hack?

Steve Silberberg 6:38

It's kind of trite, but I say I scour the HARO to Help a Reporter Out every single day and find anything and everything that's pertinent to the business and even things that are not pertinent. Because if your business appears in the Romaine Lettuce Today blog, well, nobody's going to sign up for your trip or, patronize you because you happen to be in this blog, but the Google crawlers and all the SEO, index that and say, Oh, he's in Romain, but let us blind. I guess that's a computer voice. But they say that you've got all these placements, and then they ascribe you more importance. So that's my hack.

Gresham Harkless 7:18

No, that's a great hack. And that's actually how we connected. We featured you on one of our roundups, and we had an opportunity to kind of talk a little bit about some of the awesome advice that you had. So that's a phenomenal hack for anybody that's looking to try to get any type of publicity or notoriety. But keep in mind, it also provides a lot of SEO benefits as well. The next thing that I wanted to ask you was a CEO nugget. And this might be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice that you might have for other CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners.

Steve Silberberg 7:45

Well, so one of the things is people like to hear some entrepreneurs tell it, it's all great everything like you should drop whatever you're doing in order to start your own business because it's going to be great and successful. But what I would say is, make sure that you have enough money that you and your family can live on for a little while, like don't put your kids in danger of being out on the street, just because you have this whim of making microprocessor based carpeting where you know, yes, follow your dream. But, you know, do it wisely. Don't just go out without any kind of contingency plan, I guess.

Gresham Harkless 8:24

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So you want to make sure that you have all your ducks in a row, especially not realizing how risky it can be to start a business. Even if you have all the money in the world, and the best plan in the world, sometimes it doesn't work out. So making sure that you're not sacrificing your entire family or the loved ones in your life to kind of chase this dream that you have is important.

Steve Silberberg 8:44

Yeah, I'm fortunate to be able to feed my family based on this. And that's great. And but you know, so I have a 10-year-old car and I don't care. You know, I guess some people get wealthy but haven't been there for me.

Gresham Harkless 8:59

Well, a lot of times people say health is wealth so,

Steve Silberberg 9:02

That's true,

Gresham Harkless 9:03

Maybe one of the healthiest people that people know. So I would definitely agree with that. So one of the next things I wanted to ask because we have a lot of different CEOs on this podcast. So everything from people that are starting their business, from their home, people that have you know, big, huge fortune 500 companies wanting to kind of redefine, like what it means to be a CEO. So we're asking everybody that's on the show, like what is being a CEO to you. So, Steve, I want to ask you, how would you define being a CEO?

Steve Silberberg 9:29

So actually, we spoke about this a little bit. I feel like a bit of a fraud, calling myself a CEO. So yes, the business has, we have a couple of employees and I employ about a dozen 15 guides. So yes, I'm not only providing a service, I'm providing some employment for some people. So that's kind of a business owner. I don't know at what point you become a CEO. I think when you get out of touch is in my mind when you're a CEO, but I like that you're redefining it and I think that makes a lot of sense. You know like you said, you can, when you think of a Fortune 500 company, that's when you think of the CEO. But, you know, I guess, as smaller businesses, we are CEOs.

Gresham Harkless 10:10

There you go. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And that's what we're definitely kind of hoping to do to have different types of quotable CEOs on the podcast. So definitely you being able to provide all that opportunity for people that are working with you is definitely something that we have seen that a lot of people say, demonstrates you being a CEO. So thank you for doing the awesome stuff. So, Steve, I appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule, what I wanted to do was just kind of give you the mic so to speak, and see if there's anything additional, you want to tell us as far as your business or any pieces of advice or words of wisdom that you can get for other CEOs. And lastly, want to know how best people can get a hold of you.

Steve Silberberg 10:44

I wish I had some real, real awesome words of advice for people, but I really don't, you know, I can tell you what works for me. But ultimately, whatever works for you is going to be better. You know, one of the things that people told me is, Oh, you got to read all these business books, and you got to, you're gonna see how other people do it. And while I think there's value to that, obviously, knowing how to do accounting is valuable, but you really have to be true to yourself. And, I think that, especially as a small business, as an entrepreneur, you are what makes the business special.

You know, if you have a, if you're opening up a dry cleaner, for example, and you're just like all the other dry cleaners nothing separates you. So do go with the ideas that you have. So that's my advice. You know, obviously, when you become a Fortune 500 company that goes out the window, then you have to do what the market says. Let's see. So when to contact me is emails best steve@fitpacking.com. But if you go to the Fitpacking website, and then have one roller will remember that. So our business is also called fat packing, which kind of says what it is. And if you look at Google AdWords, it doesn't lie twice as many people click on fat packing as they do on Fit packing. But once you've been with us, nobody wants to tell their friends. I'm a fat guy.

Gresham Harkless 12:07

There's a better way to draw them

Steve Silberberg 12:09

You know what people will not admit to what they click on, I imagine.

Gresham Harkless 12:16

Yeah, that's what they do in the privacy of their computers, or their phones. So they definitely don't want people to know that. But it's important. And I think it's a great point that you recognize that that's what draws people in, but they may not necessarily say that.

Steve Silberberg 12:29

Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 12:30

I'm going backpacking today. So that's an incredible insight.

Steve Silberberg 12:35

Thanks.

Gresham Harkless 12:36

Awesome. Well, Steve, I appreciate all the awesome things that you're doing and how you're helping out by providing opportunities for so many people. And thank you for like taking some time out of your schedule to kind of speak with us. And I just hope that you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Steve Silberberg 12:50

Well, thanks Gresh. When this is over, I will spam my massive social network of 48 people.

Gresham Harkless 12:57

I appreciate that. Have a good rest of the day.

Steve Silberberg 13:03

Thanks.

Gresham Harkless 13:04

Okay.

Steve Silberberg 13:05

Bye.

Gresham Harkless 13:06

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 media tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE And leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Thank you for listening

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