Matt Bowles: My guest today is Dom Francks. He is a wilderness guide, leadership coach, and the founder of Vivify, a regenerative leadership program for adventurous professionals that blends leadership coaching with an off-trail wilderness backpacking expedition.
Dom has held leadership roles at multiple climate-focused tech companies. And has also led to wilderness immersions in remote locations around the world, ranging from Patagonia to Alaska. He is on a mission to blend personal vitality with ecological harmony and empower people to enhance their own aliveness and presence while creating a deep and lasting relationship with nature. Dom, welcome to the show.
Dom Francks: Great to be here, Matthew. Really appreciate you having me.
Matt Bowles: Man, I am really excited to have you here. It has been quite a pleasure going through a lot of your content, learning about what you’re up to. I am a big fan and I’m excited to get into it. But before we do that, let’s just start off by setting the scene and talking about where we are recording from today and the fact that we have agreed to make this a virtual wine night. So let’s also talk about what we’re drinking. I am actually in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Asheville, North Carolina today, and I have just opened a bottle of Cotes du Rhone from France that I will be drinking through, throughout this interview. But where are you Dom and what are you drinking?
Dom Francks: I am in Jackson, Wyoming at the moment. I’m in my mobile podcast studio here, also known as the van that I currently call home. And I am drinking this wine that is called Gnarly Head. It seems to be affiliated with some member of the Grateful Dead. And the reason that I picked it out is that I’m not actually much of a wine person, but the first time I ever came to Jackson, I was 11 and we came here with My dad’s best friend who was a huge fan of the Grateful Dead. And I remember listening to the Grateful Dead on the drive down, I think maybe for the first time when I was 11. And so when I saw this one, I was like, ah, that’s clearly the wine that I’m supposed to be drinking for this night.
Matt Bowles: Well, share a little bit about this van life and the context of what you’re up to right now.
Dom Francks: I know this show has a lot of digital nomads that travel around the world and I’ve done quite a bit of that as well, but I’d say mostly I’ve been nomadic around the Western half of the U S and over the course of the last few years, sort of ended up almost accidentally buying a van and then realizing that at least for me at this chapter in my life, all of the glitz and glamour of the van life thing is actually warranted. Like it is really incredible. I’m able to like do my work with Starlink. I have four pairs of skis in the back. I ski toured for five hours this morning and then worked in the afternoon. And so, it’s been a really amazing chapter of being able to literally take work calls and run my business from the trailhead of a backcountry skiing route, which has been really, really fun.
Matt Bowles: Well, your life has had a lot of different chapters in it and a lot of different pivots and transitionary moments, which I would love to go through. And I feel like a good place to start, would be at the beginning. Can you share a little bit about where you grew up? And I think what I want to start with is as you were growing up, can you talk about the role that sports played in your life?
Dom Francks: My dad was very into sports and I believe the apocryphal story is that he was putting a baseball in my left hand when I was a baby because left-handed pitchers are rarer and they get paid more. Not that he was just focused on the money, but he was definitely encouraging me to pursue athletically from a very young age. Yeah, I’ve fallen hook line and sinker. I had the entire lineup of the Seattle Mariners memorized when I was, I think, three. Yeah, so I played baseball from a very young age, played basketball from a very young age and then picked up golf when I was in middle school and that turned into actually the sport that I took the furthest. You know, I think when I look back on my, experience growing up with sports. There’s really two things that stand out; one is a lot of people talk about like being in their body these days and like building a relationship with your body and being embodied. And I think in a certain way, though, not always growing up, spending so much time playing sports gave me a really strong sense of my body awareness and its capability. And rooted me in the physical world and the counterpoint to this is my parents didn’t let me play video games, which was enormously challenging in middle school when, as I recall, the only thing that any other male students would talk about were video games. So I just couldn’t really make friends, but it also forced me to engage with the physical world, which I think overall is really helpful. And I think I also grew up with these legends mostly shared with me by my dad of how you could just have incredible results if you were willing to just put your head down and work hard. And the glorification of like Kobe shooting in the gym at like 4am or like all of these stories of Really being able to do things that were great in the context of sports through exceptional effort. And those sort of myths, honestly, really stuck with me.
Matt Bowles: Well, let’s talk about your golf trajectory. You were at one point in high school, ranked in the top five golfers in the country for your age group. And you then went on to become the captain of the division; one Stanford golf team and were on the verge of going professional. So, I’m wondering if you can share a little bit about that journey. And if you reflect back on it now, if you can talk about lessons on getting to that level on mastery on peak performance and on achieving that level of excellence in something and what you’ve taken from that.
Dom Francks: Yeah, I appreciate that question. Pretty irrationally, in eighth grade I chose to throw pretty much all of my energy into golf. I played golf six days out of seven, pretty much every waking daylight hour that I wasn’t in school for about a decade. And when I was in especially early high school, I was maniacally focused. And I think there’s benefits to that because I think a lot of people have a really hard time in high school. And for me, I had a very clear sense of what I was up to and what game I was playing and what my purpose was. And at some point, that work really paid off and I sort of went from being a relatively pretty mediocre golfer to a really exceptional one ranked on the national level, competing with a bunch of folks who are on the PGA Tour now, and then in an incredible stroke of luck, ended up being able to go to Stanford and play for the Stanford golf team. And I think looking back on that journey, I learned a lot about the ability of systematic focus to bring results, even when the results aren’t immediately obvious. My experience was putting my head down, working hard, not getting better for about a year and a half, and then all of a sudden, overnight, everything just clicked and all that work paid off. And so I had like this embodied experience very young, a sense of navigating frustration. With something and not seeing immediate gratification. And I also just think it was looking back like I have no regrets about not being a professional golfer, just not the path that I’m supposed to walk on this planet. But I do really miss the clear sense of possibility of being really world class at something. And depending on how you define it, that could still be available to me. But that real intense focus of competing at a high level is something that is, I think, kind of difficult to replicate, outside of that.
Matt Bowles: I’m curious about your reflections on the difference between playing team sports. As you mentioned, when you were growing up, it was very baseball, basketball focused. And now it seems that you’re obviously still very athletically engaged, but it seems that a lot of your passions now are more individual sports like skiing and golfing and running and rock climbing. And I’m wondering if you have reflections on the difference between team sports versus individual sports and why maybe you gravitated in that direction.
Dom Francks: I mean, one answer is that basketball is still one of my favorite things to do with my time, full stop. And it’s just something that is difficult to find. I was living in LA briefly last fall and found a basketball team. And that was like the highlight of my week. And when I was living in San Francisco, working as a software engineer years ago, playing organized basketball is the highlight of my week. And yeah, so many of the memories. I played basketball through high school. I was actually all state at one point. I kind of forgot that.
And those memories are really deeply embedded in me. And there is something that I really miss about that. But where I’ve transitioned now is actually more around like moving my body with physicality and athletically while immersed in nature. And those are the things that really inspire me. And the downside of basketball is that it’s inside. So, this morning I’m skiing out on Teton Pass. It’s a beautiful powder day. I’m out there with friends. I get to be immersed in the snow-covered trees. I get to feel the wind on my skin. I get to be amazed at the beauty of the sharp granite peaks around me. And like that sense of, yeah, movement through the natural world and also a sense of like connection to the animal that I am is really what has driven me more into skiing, climbing, running, all these pursuits.
Matt Bowles: Well, I also want to ask you to think all the way back and reflect on the development of your awareness, interest, and passion around the issue of climate change and climate justice, and climate solutions. Can you share a little bit about where that came from?
Dom Francks: Yes. So similarly rooted pretty young for me. So, I was in sixth grade, we watched the movie An Inconvenient Truth in science class, which was like an original climate change documentary made by Al Gore. And that movie scared me so badly that I fainted. Like I woke up on the floor of the classroom and I remember this image on the screen of waves crashing on shore, and that’s like the last thing I remember. And making sense of that now that movie was in an era of like climate change communication, where we thought that if you showed people the facts and scared them enough, they would change. And that worked for me, and it didn’t work for most people. But my recollection is that my sixth-grade body just couldn’t handle the intensity of that sharp of a realization because I think my experience up until then had been, yeah, like the adults mostly have it under control, and the world’s mostly okay. And if I follow the rules and get good grades, and everything’s probably just going to continue. And this film was saying, like, no, that’s not true. It felt like the rug being pulled out from under my understanding of what the world was and also what, my life might look like, and that was a lot to handle in a one classroom session in sixth grade. And so my body just shut down and that’s really influenced me almost every day since.
Matt Bowles: Can you talk a little bit about the trajectory from there and your career path into working professionally in the climate-focused tech space?
Dom Francks: So, at Stanford, I studied more or less Renewable Energy Engineering major had a different name but that more or less it was then I minored in Computer Science. So, asking myself the question, what can I do about the climate crisis? This is how I would have phrased it the obvious answer coming out of Stanford is to go work for a startup. So, I went and worked as a software engineer at a solar finance company called Mosaic. And my initial time there was both inspiring in terms of the mission, but really uninspiring in terms of what I was really asked to do every day. Sort of this experience of having been really focused on playing professional golf up until late my junior year of college and then deciding not to turn pro. And then essentially being, well, I don’t, what’s the other option for an adult life? And then getting into the rhythm of like going to the office every day, writing code, all of these things. Nothing was acutely horrible. I wasn’t burned out. I enjoyed my coworkers. The work wasn’t that hard, but I felt super stale, and I just couldn’t see myself doing something like this for the next 30 or 35 years.
Matt Bowles: Well, I am definitely interested in your trajectory and some of the pivots that you’ve made. I know one of the things that you did is you started eventually integrating wilderness guiding as a paid endeavor into your professional career trajectory. And I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about where that came from and what led up to that.
Dom Francks: The other part about my upbringing is I grew up in Washington state and I grew up spending a lot of time outside, a lot of time camping, a lot of time hiking. My parents, and I think particularly my dad’s friend, Carl, who has inspired this wine tonight, will tell you that I complained about it a lot of the time, but I did definitely build a sense of it is safe and generally okay to be outside. And then at some point in college, my dad invited me to go on this mountaineering trip in Washington. And I just felt totally back in love with the experience of the mountains, having spent some time away from it in high school when I was spending every day in hours playing golf. And when I was working as a software engineer, so about a year after graduating college, I remember being at a party, I remember this conversation specifically being at a party and talking to a friend of mine. And She was asking me how work was going, and I was like, I feel really frustrated. I don’t think I want to be a software engineer. And she’s like, well, what do you love about your job? And just earlier that week, I had the opportunity to like give a presentation and teach the rest of my team about something I’d built. And I had so much fun doing that. And so I was like, I love teaching and I love sharing about what I built essentially, I love being a facilitator and she’s like, “Well, what else has been lighting you up recently?”. I was like, oh my God, I went on this incredible backpacking trip and you know, I love being outdoors and I would really love to build a life where I get to do that more. And she essentially looked at me and she’s like, “That’s a career!”. Like being an outdoor educator is a thing that you can do. I had never considered that.
From that conversation, I went and did some exploration, ended up finding this organization called NOLS, which is the National Outdoor Leadership School, which is like a real leader in the world of outdoor education. And I took a month long outdoor educator training course with them in 2018 and just fell completely in love with wilderness education. And I remember like we spent a month in the North Cascades and I didn’t want to leave. I don’t need a shower. I’m just, I was just having such an incredible time and I was so inspired by my instructors. So from there, I, again, fairly irrationally looking back, decided I was going to become a wilderness guide, at least partially, and got all the certifications and then ended up being hired by Outward Bound the next season. Outward Bound is a similar school like Knoll’s running wilderness trips. Mostly for teenagers. And yeah, and then I ended up being an hour bound instructor and my wilderness guide pathway sort of took off from there.
Matt Bowles: Well, I want to ask you about some of your wilderness experiences. Some of them, obviously you’re guiding other people into them. Some of them you’re doing yourself and you’re traveling to some really epic places to do them. The first one, I think I want to ask you about is the Grand Traverse. For people that have never heard of this. Can you talk about what it is, where it is, and what your experience was like doing it?
Dom Francks: The Grand Traverse is a ski mountaineering racing race, also known as Schemo, which the best description of it is generally European people wearing spandex on really tiny skis, sprinting up mountains. But the sport has been slowly making its way to America. And one of the races that has been around for a long time is this race that runs from Crested Butte in Colorado across the Elk Mountains to Aspen. And it’s 40 miles long, has about 8, 000 feet of up and down, goes across some incredible backcountry terrain. And it also starts at midnight. So, you start in the middle of the night because of avalanche safety concerns, because as the snow gets warmer, generally conditions get scarier. So it does have a safety consideration, but essentially what it turns into is many people take it really seriously. And also many people like me and my partner last year are just sort of out there to see what it’s like and to finish it. It is a wild experience. I will say that I was attempting to sleep from 5 PM to 10 PM. Didn’t sleep at all, so I was doing the entire race on essentially zero sleep. But one amazing thing about it is you just get to see the sunrise, which I’ve seen many sunrises in the mountains. But I think seeing the sunrise after already having been skiing for seven hours was an incredible experience.
There’s also a really cool aspect where you have to do it with a partner for safety reasons. So you’re really in it with this other person. And you get to, in contrast to many other ski races that take place in resorts, you get to see some incredible parts of the Colorado backcountry. And when I did it last year, the weather was incredible and the stars were so crisp and it wasn’t that cold and it wasn’t particularly windy. And the whole thing just felt very blessed and so while I think we finished in 12:59, so just under 13 hours, that was one of the hardest single push things I’ve ever done. It was also just an incredible experience to both push my body and really be immersed in the sheer beauty of that place.
Matt Bowles: That’s amazing. Yeah. I mentioned to you that last year I hiked Mount Kilimanjaro and summited that. And on the final summit day, it’s a similar thing to what you’re describing because what happens is you hike seven hours in the day to the base camp, then you take a nap for a few hours, then you get up and you leave at midnight to do the summit push. And it’s about a nine hour hike up to the summit so that you get there around sunrise. And then of course you have to go back down, and so you end up biking for somewhere around 24 out of 34 hours, which is a really intense adrenaline push, especially at that altitude, especially in the subzero weather and all of those types of things. But it was really an extraordinary experience that I will always remember. And I have been talking about it ever since.
The other thing that I know you do a lot of is downhill skiing and you travel for that and you’ve done some really epic ski locations and I’m wondering if you can share some of those. I feel like for me, some of my most epic travel memories are some incredible ski trips that I have intentionally done because of how beautiful I knew they would be. And I don’t do the level of skiing that you do, Dom. I want you to talk about the type of skiing that you do. I like go down the blue squares, intermediate level kind of thing. But if you do that at the right place, it can be. A mind-blowingly gorgeous experience, like I remember I went to ski the Matterhorn Glacier Paradise in the Swiss Alps. And then I went to Bariloche in Patagonia in Argentina, in the lake’s region, and I skied the Andes in Argentina and stuff. And some of those places are just some of my most memorable moments, I think, connecting with nature and some of the most beautiful nature that I’ve ever seen as I’m skiing down those mountains. And I’m curious for you, can you, first of all, talk about the type of skiing that you do and then what have been some of your most memorable, beautiful, transformative, epic ski experiences?
Dom Francks: First of all, I learned to ski as an adult. So, a lot of this is new for me. I didn’t grow up skiing and I have such an appreciation for it because. It allows you to access some of the incredible mountains of this world in the winter and also in the spring, which there’s just something about snow covered peaks that really speak to my heart and that are so aesthetic. And there’s also just a magical aspect to the way of traveling on skis. And so what I spent a lot of time doing is backcountry skiing, ski touring, ski mountaineering goes by many names, but essentially where you walk up the mountain outside of the resort. With these things called skins on the bottom of your skis so that you can walk uphill and not slide downhill and then you get to the top, pull the skins off and ski down just like you would in the resort and this really allows you to ski a ton of incredible snow in the world and also to have the awesome experience of getting to like really exert yourself and get like the human powered adventure.
I think the story that immediately comes to mind was last spring wasn’t a particularly long travel experience. It was on Long’s Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. And we probably started at like three in the morning, which is generally where you have to start for big, long days like this. And we got to the top of this peak, which is about 14, 200 feet up. And it was totally calm, which never happens particularly in Rocky Mountain National Park, which is a very windy place. And I was just up there and had the space, which sometimes you don’t have when you’re skiing to take some time to thank the mountain. And so I actually took a moment to really offer my gratitude to that place and that this place exists on this earth. And I was drinking a lot of mate and I had prepared a little, uh, yerba mate to have on the summit. And I buried a couple of leaves of mate in the snow. I’m sure that land and the native people of that land have their own specific rituals and protocols that they use to honor that place. I don’t know them, but I was trying my best. And then I just turned around and got to ski probably four or 5, 000 feet of almost perfect conditions, which truly never happens. And as we were going down, my friends and I were just like, “How did we get this lucky?” We timed this descent to within the 10 minutes that we needed to drop. And if anyone out there knows the show; Hamilton, there’s like a recurring lyric that goes, look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now. I was just looking at the GoPro footage of me skiing down that shoot and I’m just screaming those lyrics totally off tune. But that was really how I felt, it was just a blessed moment to be alive, frolicking in the mountains.
Matt Bowles: Well, another experience that I want to ask you about is when you were riding dog sleds across the Boundary Waters. For people that have never heard of Boundary Waters, can you talk about where that is and then what your experience was like on the dog sleds?
Dom Francks: Yes, so this was when I was an instructor for Outward Bound. The Outward-Bound school that’s located in Minnesota, in like the northern part of Minnesota, would run a trip for the staff from other Outward Bound schools that was a weeklong dog sledding expedition across the frozen lakes of the Boundary Waters in February. And it was like getting Taylor Swift tickets to get a spot on this trip, like you had to like reserve it at the exact time. And fortunately, I got really lucky and got in. And so I went out there and one of the first things that they did is tell us, we did some training on like what happens if the ice breaks and you fall in the lake and we were like, okay, we need two volunteers to get in the frozen lake water with all of your clothes on and then have the rest of the group like learn how to warm you up. And I was like, okay, I’ll do it. And so, I think within like two or three hours of being at the sour bound base, I was in the middle of the night, completely covered in soaking clothes, being like wrapped in a sleeping bag to see if that would warm me up. So, we would have some practice in dealing with that if it were to happen out there.
But then we took off on this trip and there was something incredible about being able to travel with and work with dogs and to have them be like a part of the team. They were pulling this giant sled that if the dogs had a problem where they didn’t have enough food, we would have been screwed. And so it was amazing to have that partnership with them.
And also, when we got to camp, we probably had like five more hours of work because we had to go into the forest, we had to cut down a tree, then we had to saw the wood into logs so we could build, like they told us we needed a Volkswagen bug size of wood for the fire that night to be able to melt water, cook our food, and keep ourselves warm.
And so, it was two hours of gathering wood, then we had to set up our tarps, which involved putting ice screws into the ice on the lake. Meanwhile, it’s well below zero. It would get down to negative 20 this entire time. It was one of the most physically uncomfortable, not exhausting things, but just cold and a lot of work and a lot of things to manage things that I’ve done. But yeah, really special and unique experience up there.
Matt Bowles: I mentioned my experience in Patagonia and how blown away I was spending time in Bariloche on the Argentine side. I have been to the country of Chile, I spent about a month there, but it was only in Santiago and Valparaiso. I have not yet been down to Chile and Patagonia. I can tell you that Torres del Paine has been on my bucket list for quite some time and the hiking the ‘W’ circuit and all of that stuff, really high on my list. I know you have guided in Chile and Patagonia. Can you talk about where and what you were up to there and then describe that for folks who have never been and maybe never even seen pictures. What is it like there?
Dom Francks: So I’ve spent probably three months now total in Chile and Patagonia. First time was down there with my dad when I was, still a software engineer before I was ever a wilderness guide. And we hiked something like the ‘W’ there was a bit of some mishaps with the reservations, but more or less we were in the Torres del Paine area. The two times since then, I was guiding for a company called Chulengo expeditions run by my friend Nadine Lenner. And I was guiding in a place called Aysen. So one, it’s like 800 miles north of the Torres del Paine. Patagonia is massive because Bariloche is another thousand miles north, something like that.
So it’s all these places are really spread apart. If anybody out there has seen the movie Wild Life or knows the story of Doug and Chris Tompkins, who one was the founder of the North Face, one was the long time CEO of Patagonia. So these two philanthropists bought a bunch of land in Chile and then over the course of 20 some years rewilded it and then gave it to the Chilean government so that it could be a national park.
Very complicated, very beautiful conservation story. Anyways, I was guiding trips through that national park. It’s called Patagonia National Park and was created in the last 20 years by the Tompkins Foundation. So, yeah, I have been fortunate to spend a lot of time down there, both guiding, uh, largely trips with business school students, which has been super fun to work with adults and to, yeah, offer a pathway and connection to nature for a lot of folks who have been kind of nose to the grindstone in the corporate world for a long time. And also I’ve done a bunch of personal trips in Patagonia, did a ski traverse on part of the Northern Patagonian ice field and some exploratory climbing down there. And yeah, it’s a really beautiful and truly wild place.
Matt Bowles: Well, I know one of the other places that you have guided trips is in Alaska. Can you talk about where in Alaska you were guiding? And again, for folks that have never been to Alaska, what is it like there?
Dom Francks: I’ll say that I have a lot more to explore in Alaska. I mean, it’s a gigantic place and a truly wild environment, and I have spent actually pretty little time up there. The guiding that I’ve done up there was also at Chulengo. So Chulengo runs trips in Patagonia and Alaska, sort of Alaska and the northern hemisphere summer, Patagonia in the northern hemisphere winter.
And I was in Alaska guiding a trip with some business school students up there. We went through Denali State Park, which is not Denali National Park, but it has incredible views of Denali if you have good weather. So we were there for a whole week. It rained the entire time. It’s like 45 degrees and raining.
Never saw Denali, only saw Denali from Anchorage because it was perfectly clear the day we left and perfectly clear the day we came back. So classic Alaska experience. And that was one of my favorite trips I’ve ever guided because it was one of those things where like the weather was so bad that everyone just sorts of had to laugh about it. And I have this incredible video of all of us huddled under a tarp, trying to cook dinner and making ramen and experimenting with like putting cheese in the ramen and people are having to like drain the water off of the top of the tarps because it’s gathering so much and but everybody has this massive smile on their face because there’s like an ongoing or like a recurring thought among many outdoor instructors that bad weather makes great courses. Like bad weather really brings people together in the absurdity of it all. And that course was an incredibly fun time, even though we essentially got rained on for a week straight.
Matt Bowles: Well, the other place that, of course, I have to ask you about, is the High Sierra. Can you talk about your special relationship with the High Sierra, the transformative experiences that you have had there, and why it is your favorite place in the world? And maybe just a start off for folks that have no idea where it is, describing exactly where the High Sierra is and then what it’s like?
Dom Francks: Well, this is the amazing thing about the high Sierra is that it’s in California. And yet, I feel like so many Californians don’t even know that it’s there. So, the High Sierra is like probably everyone or many people know about Yosemite. So, Yosemite is in the Sierra, but the High Sierra is sort of the higher mountains south of Yosemite. They’re generally like above 10, 000 feet ranging up to 14, 000 feet. And they are, yeah, my favorite place in the world. I actually first got to explore them in 2020, I believe. So, it hasn’t actually been that long, but it’s been a lot of time there since. And the reason that they captivate me so much is particularly the East side of those mountains is it feels so wild and so stark. There’s a Valley floor called Owens Valley. That’s about 4, 000 feet. And then the peaks are at 14, 000 feet. So there’s this massive 10, 000 foot gradient that you can see. And that’s really rare in the lower 48 of the U S in particular, only maybe like Mount Rainier has that same level of prominence it’s called difference from baseline. They also, the Sierra have these gorgeous high alpine basins. They look like bonsai gardens, Japanese bonsai gardens. And interestingly, there are also places like this in Japan that inspired the bonsai gardens. You walk through there and there’s these beautiful grass lawns and flat granite countertops and little, tiny trees. And it’s almost like these high, Alpine meadows are like a little museum. Every little nook is slightly different. The series are also called the range of light. And there’s a particular way that the light tends to glance off those mountains. And the sky is so blue because you’re so high. And then the last thing that I’ll say is they’re incredibly easy to walk through.
Matt Bowles: Well, I also want to ask you a little bit about some of the trainings that you have done. Can you talk about your experience with the Animus Valley Institute and the year-long “Soulcraft immersion” that you did there and the impact that that had on you?
Dom Francks: The Animus Valley Institute was founded by Bill Plotkin, and he has written a bunch of books. I was reading one of his books actually on that plane ride to Alaska for the very rainy course, and it was called The Journey of Soul Initiation, and it was essentially about how we can discover rather than figure out our role that we have to play within the ecology of this planet. So, he defines the word soul with a capital S as your ecological niche.
A bee’s ecological niche is in the pursuit of nectar, for their energy they end up pollinating flowers. So, it’s the role that a creature plays within an ecosystem. And the hypothesis is essentially that each of us, each human has an ecological niche and part of our role in our life here is to discover it. So, I was reading this at a moment of big transition. I had just left another climate tech job and was really trying to figure out what was next for me. And I remember this book just hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like, “Oh, my God, this feels so right.” This feels like how the world works. And I remember I bought the Wi-Fi, looked on their website, and was like, “How can I study with Bill?” The applications for the year-long program were due in two weeks and I downloaded the application and started writing, right there on that flight. And I was fortunate enough to get in. And so, I spent a year and a half on five different weeks plus long retreats with Bill and an amazing community of teachers and other students. With the Animus Valley Institute and this whole program was built around deepening our what they called our psycho-spiritual relationship to the natural world and also exploring through vision fasting and other practices, how we might discover that ecological niche and to keep it pretty simple. The Animus Valley Institute’s influence on me was really deepening my experience of my connection and fundamental belonging here on this planet as an animal. So, when I came to the Animus Valley Institute, I was already a wilderness guide. So it wasn’t that it was new for me to be in the wild. It wasn’t that it was new for me to be camping. It wasn’t like all this stuff was very familiar. And yet the perspectives and practices and rituals and teachings that animus offered me, meaningfully deepened and changed the way that I viewed myself and viewed the more than human world around me.
Matt Bowles: Well, I also want to ask you about the training you did with the Conscious Leadership Group. Can you talk about that particular coaching program and the impact that training had on you?
Dom Francks: The Conscious Leadership Group, there’s a book called The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, which is the best way probably to get involved or learn about them. I think this book is an incredible Trojan horse of really profound teachings of how to live and it’s not confined to any conception of leadership. It’s really like 15 Commitments for Conscious Living. Essentially, it’s a Trojan horse of these beautiful, profound teachings in what looks like the most business book of all time. And so, a friend of mine recommended this to me would have been four or five years ago. And I read it and immediately felt the sense like, wow, all these frameworks are really applicable and useful and helpful for me in just figuring out how to navigate my life, figuring out how to relate to myself when I’m having a really challenging day, when my inner critic is really loud, when I’m unsure about what to do next, when I’m feeling really in a state of comparison. All of these challenges that come up for all of us, the Conscious Leadership Group has offered me and has offered my clients a really powerful way of working with those issues.
So, I did a two day long coaching training with them in 2021 and that have just really deepened from there, working with clients and also being coached by folks that work from that framework. And what I really love about the combination of the Animus Valley Institute and the Conscious Leadership Group is that they go together beautifully well. So, Animus Valley is really phenomenal at asking and answering questions of why are we here and what are we here to do? But I would say it’s not as helpful with how the Conscious Leadership Group is not as opinionated about why we’re here or what we should do but is phenomenal at helping us be effective in moving through the world and how we navigate things. And so, I think the combination tends to be really, really powerful and holistic.
Matt Bowles: Well, I want to talk a little bit more about some of the challenges that most of us face. Can you start off explaining the concept, which I believe was coined by E.O. Wilson and explain what the “eremoscene” is? And what he was talking about with the age of loneliness and why that is really important?
Dom Francks: Your listeners might be familiar with the word, the Anthropocene, which refers to this, I believe this is the consensus scientific term for the geological epoch or geological era that we’re in. And Anthropocene means that humans are the driving force behind changes in the climate. Anthropos means human.
O. Wilson, amazing biologist, came up with this phrase that’s, it’s not a scientific phrase, it’s more of a concept. So “eremoscene” means instead of the age of humans, it means the age of loneliness. And what he’s pointing at here is twofold; one, as we continue to cause extinctions of other species and just diminishment in the numbers of other species, we as humans feel lonelier. We are essentially removing the other amazing quote by Francis Weller, which I’m going to butcher, but it’s something like we are replacing the multicolored tapestry of life with a relentless monotone. Both of humanity is not monotone, but we are all the same species in the sense of humanity and also a lot of the same culture.
Right now, I’d say human culture is more similar globally than it has been ever. And so, we are replacing a lot of the biodiversity with that. And the other aspect of the eremoscene is that we as individual humans are removing ourselves from a sense of embeddedness in the natural world. I, right now in this van, I’m sitting in a square box, separated from any other forms of life around me. You’re in a square box of a room. Many of your listeners, some might be outside, but we separate ourselves for most of the time that we’re here. We spend 90 percent of our time inside. The hypothesis here is that there is a loneliness that we feel because of our estrangement from the full texture of the ecosystems on this planet. I really think the framing of the eremoscene really hit me hard the first time that I read it. And I think it’s an important lens to keep in mind when we’re thinking about why we have so many call them mental health challenges.
Matt Bowles: And you also break down four different pieces, I think, that a lot of us as human beings in today’s society experience, and I’m wondering if you could maybe speak to them. One of them is that we are distracted, another one is that we are overwhelmed, another one is that we are disempowered, and another one is that we are domesticated. Can you talk about how those four things manifest in a lot of people’s lives?
Dom Francks: This is me just offering some perspectives, not trying to prescribe and say that every person everywhere is all of these things, but these are all things that I have felt to varying degrees at different points in my life, and I think tend to be pretty prevalent in our world.
Maybe I’ll step back and say, I have a complicated relationship, a challenging relationship, I’d say, with the modern world as it’s constructed. There are these miraculous pieces of technology like the Star Link and the internet that are allowing us to talk right now. There are also some incredibly destructive aspects of the modern world, both in the ecological world. And I think on our human psyches like we’re running an experiment on ourselves, that the outcomes are uncertain. So, talking about distraction over being distracted, being overwhelmed, being disempowered and being domesticated. So, I’ll start with distracted. Many of us are spending a lot of time on our phones, our attention span is lowered. We feel like it’s more difficult to focus. We feel like we might be out of control with the way that we relate to phones, apps and social media. And so, this is really pointing to, do you feel like you’re able to direct your attention towards the thing that is most calling for your attention? Are you able to be fully present with your child, with your partner, and if you’re out in the wilderness, are you able to be fully present when you’re in the natural world?
And then the overwhelming pieces I think the modern world asks more and more of us while giving us less and less time. I mean, so many people that I talk to, particularly who work in the professional world, whether it’s like tech or finance or something like that, feel like there is this constant sense of like too much to do, not enough time and just feeling a little bit behind on everything perpetually.
The disempowered piece, what I’m really pointing to there is that we have many crises in our world. Some people call it the meta crisis, which means a crisis made of many crises. I think that it’s very easy for us to feel like our actions and our voices don’t matter. And I think the tricky thing to hold here is that we both cannot fix it alone and what we do does really matter at this moment on our planet. That’s the disempowered piece.
And then, the domesticated piece is essentially like we spend 90 percent of our time inside, much of it sitting behind screens, and climate-controlled rooms in environments that are physical human animal bodies were not designed to evolve in. And so, we’re incredibly overstimulated in one particular way, but we’re incredibly under-stimulated in so many other ways in terms of the feeling of like the cold wind on our skin and the smell of the grass. And so, the domestication pieces we’re just a little bit too comfortable, a little bit too sedentary, something like that, which we’ll talk about more in a second. But as I was really envisioning what is Vivifying, what is the point? A lot of it is like a pathway to thriving in the modern world.
And so when we look at those four; this is not an exclusive or exhaustive list, but these four challenges of the modern world, what are the antidotes? How can we move through those? So, can we go from being distracted to being the term I like to call rapturously present? And what that means is people talk about like, I need to be more present. I think that term gets pretty watered down. And I really think that there is a profound depth of presence that’s available to us. The Greeks had these two terms for time. They had Kronos and Kairos. Kronos is like normal time that moves in a linear fashion. And Kairos is the eternity in one moment that opens up when you offer yourself fully to it.
And so within rapturous presence, my perspective and hypothesis, I suppose, is that committing to that is a key part of the antidote to distraction. So then there’s moving from being overwhelmed to being creative or like playfully creative. And I think this is a piece that I love from the conscious leadership group is so much of the practices that they offer are really built around play and recognizing that when we hold our problems really seriously, we tend to get a little bit constricted and like things. We start to get blinders, we’re not seeing as many creative possibilities, and so within my coaching practice, working from these principles, we’re able to like, just play with our problems and hold them a little bit more lightly. And then magically, all of sudden new possibilities tend to emerge for us.
So, this is really around the creativity piece within Vivify is not necessarily like, okay, you’re going to write an album or create a painting, that style of creativity, though you very well might. It’s really around being able to hold your problems a little bit more lightly and find playful solutions. The piece about disempowerment and feeling like we don’t have the agency to take action against the challenges in our world, I really think courage is a lot of the antidote here, and I think that’s a word that I remember hearing a lot more growing up than I hear in the discourse now.
And to take a little bit of a tangent, I have been recently really obsessed with the bombing crews that were flying missions over Germany in World War II. There’s a show out right now called the Masters of the Air that’s about these crews. My grandfather was a ball turret gunner under those B-17 bombers. And just diving deeper into the experience of these men and just the unbelievable courage they displayed. Just putting their lives on the line again and again and again with no control over the outcome, really has been bringing home to me the question of what type of courage is really being called forward out of us.
And so, within Vivify, we really create a space for members to really ask that question. What is my courageous life look like? How can I live a life? In the context of all the challenges we face in the modern world, how can I live a life that both I can really love and show up for and that my grandchildren would be proud of, that I would be proud to tell my grandchildren about? That’s really the courage part.
And then finally, we have domestication versus wildness, and this is really the part that I would say lights me up the most because this is about reclaiming our animal joy of just being and moving through wild landscapes. This is being up in the high Sierra on an amazing backpacking trip. This is being backcountry skiing, just experiencing the miracle of the ecosystems and the elements and the other beings on this planet. And reproving to ourselves that we belong and are capable of embedding ourselves and moving through the ecosystems that our ancestors evolved in.
Matt Bowles: Well, I know that another centerpiece of the Vivify program is this concept of regenerative leadership, can you talk about what that means?
Dom Francks: Regenerative means how can we as humans become a life-enhancing force on the planet rather than a life-destroying one? From the perspective of the other species on the planet, regardless of your opinion on humanity, I think it’s pretty fair to say that the other species on the planet so far have not benefited from the dramatic expansion of the human project. And so how can we as humans become a true ally to the well-being of other species on this planet? How does that relates to individual people? I think there’s two pieces to this; I think there’s personal regeneration, which is committing to living and leading in a way that replenishes and amplifies our own energy. So not burning ourselves out, not putting our nose to the grindstone, not martyring ourselves, but instead of working in a way that really lights us up and is sustainable. And then being committed to collective regeneration. So being committed to that project of helping humanity become, yeah, life-enhancing force.
Matt Bowles: Talk a little bit more about the Vivify program, can you give us a little bit of the origin story of it and what led up to it? Why did you found it, and what does it include?
Dom Francks: Vivify is really a blending of a few threads that I’ve been following for a long time. So, I’ve been a wilderness guide for five or six years now and a few years ago really started diving deep and growing my coaching practice. So, I work with clients who are looking for more clarity and aliveness through deepening connection with the natural world. So, I was doing this one- on-one client work, I was doing this wilderness guiding work, and what I was seeing is that both sort of were holding the key of what the other was missing. Like, when I was doing wilderness guiding trips with their standalone either week or two-week-long trips, it was incredible, but without the opportunity for more preparation and integration, I think the experience of being in the wilderness tended to become something. Wow, that was that really cool thing I did a couple of years ago in Patagonia, but it doesn’t really have any effect on my life. Whereas the one-on-one coaching I was doing, I often had the experience of, wow, I really just wish I could spend a week in the wilderness with you and go really deep and have some space from these challenges and these things that we’re working with and I think we could make some real progress. And so, Vivify is a blending of those two things to offer the best of both worlds. So, Vivify is a three-month-long wilderness-based coaching program that is built around a week-long off-trail backpacking trip in the high Sierra. So, we meet with group coaching and individual coaching for the three months both leading up to and after the program. The program’s two-thirds of the way through so the two months leading up to and the one month after and then the sort of culmination or big in-person experience of Vivify is this backpacking trip in the High Sierra. The origin story of the ‘why of Vivify’ is the previous sort of navigating the challenges of the modern world. The origin story of the way it’s structured the way it is what I was seeing in my work as a wilderness guide and a coach.
Matt Bowles: So, talk a little bit about exactly how it’s structured. For somebody who would want to potentially do the Vivify program, can you break down the components and talk about The Leadership Coaching Element, the Vivify Community Element, the Wilderness Immersion, and what that eight-day experience in the high Sierra actually looks like? And then after that, the integration and the stabilizing as a regenerative leader portion of the program.
Dom Francks: Vivify will this year start on May 6th, and that’ll be sometime the week of May 6th will be our first group coaching session. So the first two months of the program are a combination of group coaching, which will be an opportunity to dive in with a group of six to 12 with practices from the Conscious Leadership Group, from the Animus Valley Institute, from other organizations, essentially pulling out a bunch of tools in my toolkit to deepen your experience of the Vivify curriculum and prepare you for the wilderness trip up in the High Sierra.
You’ll also have the opportunity to do individual coaching with me. This will really bring the curriculum of Vivify right to where you’re at and make sure it’s most applicable for what’s going on in your life. Then, the Wilderness Immersion up in the High Sierra is this epic 8-day experience built around a 6-day backpacking trip in some of the most incredible terrain up in the High Sierra. And my co-guide for the trip will be Nadine Lenner, who is just an incredible mountaineer and leader on her own. She’ll just have gotten done guiding the all-female ascent of Denali, which is the highest peak in North America up in Alaska. So the wilderness trip will be really an opportunity to go deep into your own wildness and also have the space from your daily life to find more clarity on what’s most meaningful for you. You’ll have the opportunity to have a 24-hour supported solo. To have some time alone up in the mountains, will summit of 13, 000 foot peak, and we’ll really explore some corners of the Sierra that most people don’t get to. And then after the wilderness trip, we have an integration portion where both during the program and after we have specific curriculum that’s designed to help you make sense of what happened for you up in the high Sierra so that you can make the changes in your life and really walk away from the program, feeling really clarified, really alive and with a sense of what are your authentic next steps to take.
Matt Bowles: Dom, who did you have in mind when you were creating the Vivify program? What type of people is it best suited for?
Dom Francks: Yeah, so what I’ve been finding is that Vivify is most resonant with sort of three buckets of people, which are all very complimentary, and some people are all three. One is folks who are already working in climate or nature or have a desire to move their career in that direction. So these are folks that really feel. yearning to dedicate the professional portion or some portion of their lives to ecological health and working on these issues and want a space to be able to ask the questions of how to most meaningfully and sustainably do that in deep relationship with the natural world.
The second category is folks who had a really powerful experience with nature when they were younger, which I find is many of us, like many of us have a story of growing up and there were those woods behind their house, or they went on that amazing trip their freshman year of college with their dorm, but then, like, never did it again. And so I talked to a lot of people, Oh, my God, I felt so alive. I felt so good. I want that again, that’s another group that Vivify is really well suited for.
And then a third group is folks in transition and folks who are really at a moment of the way Charles Eisenstein talks about. It’s like a space between stories. A part of their life is coming to a close or they’re sensing that a change needs to be made, and they’re looking for a community and a curriculum and an adventure, really, to help them ask the questions of what they’re being called forward into in their life in the most authentic and courageous way. So those are sort of three buckets of people that Vivify is great for.
Matt Bowles: I’m a big fan of the program, man. And so for any of the Maverick Show listeners that are interested in learning more about potentially doing the Vivify program. What would be the next steps for doing that? And can you offer our listeners a discount on the program?
Dom Francks: I would love to offer anyone listening to the Maverick podcast here, $500 off the program. You only have to do is just mention that you came from the Maverick podcast, cause I will have a conversation with everyone that expresses interest or wants to join Vivify. And yeah, so the next steps would be to check out domfrancks.com/vivify, and you’ll see more information there. You can reach out to me through that website, or you can also reach out to me directly on any of the various social medias. But yeah, the next step is just to get in touch with me, let me know you’re interested, and we go from there.
Matt Bowles: We are going to put a link in the show notes for this episode. So, you can just go to the show notes for this episode, there you’ll find a direct link for how to schedule that call with Dom as well as we’ll link up everything else. You can get more information about it, he has a very detailed explanation of the full program and the itinerary and all that kind of stuff, so you can get more information.
Dom, I want to ask you for a few final tips and reflections at this point in your life, how do you currently see the relationship between our activism for climate solutions and climate justice in the macro? How do you see the relationship between that and our individual connection to nature as human beings?
Dom Francks: I think both are necessary and I think that we need to, yeah, really cultivate a pathway towards committing to both in our lives. But I do think that our activism or the actions that we take in service of ecological harmony are going to be more sustainable and coming from a more grounded and rooted place. The more that we are grounded and rooted in our connection to the natural world.
Matt Bowles: When you reflect back on your journey, can you share a little bit about how your relationship with nature has evolved over the years and what impact that’s had on you as a person?
Dom Francks: I think my relationship with nature when I first started as a wilderness guide was one of wonder and appreciation, but it was also one of sort of separation and distance. It’s like nature was out there and I was over here and yes, I loved to sort of move through nature, but I still sort of felt myself as separate and human is other than nature. I think largely through my work with the Animus Valley Institute, I can really experience the fact that there is essentially nothing that is outside of nature, and that includes me, and that includes you and in the house that you’re in right now, and that includes me in this van.
There’s nothing that’s not embedded within an ecology, and the degree to which we can really feel into that and recognize that, I think, is really critical for us being able to show up most fully and with the degree of compassion and conviction with how we navigate this world.
Matt Bowles: One of the things that I have heard you talk about that I’m hoping you can share with the audience is this concept of the nature pyramid and the three thresholds associated with that. Can you share about that?
Dom Francks: So, this comes from a Neuroscientist at MIT, and there’s a bunch of studies on what happens to our brain and our body when we spend certain amounts of time in nature. And to keep it simple, you can sort of think of it as a pyramid. So, at the top of the pyramid is 20 minutes. So, if you can spend 20 minutes walking through a wildish place that could be like a park near your house that has some trees without your phone and essentially just allowing yourself to be immersed in that place. It has a meaningful physiological shift on regulating your stress hormones, allowing you to come up with more creative solutions. And that’s something that ideally you could work in every day. But you know, three or four times a week is going to be really helpful. Then there is the next step down the pyramid is five hours and if you can once a month go for a longer hike in a state park near you and really allow yourself to again be immersed for a longer period of time, that’s a really helpful checkpoint to allow you to like break up the rhythm of your days and have some time to like really return to self in context of the natural world. And then the bottom of the nature pyramid is three days, and this is something that’s called the three-day effect, which has been something that I’ve heard Knolls and Outward Bound instructors talk about forever on the third day of a course, something special happens, and the people and the group really settles in. There’s a sense of like an exhale, like; Okay, this is what life is like now, we’re just here as a group walking through the natural world. And that same thing happens when you’re alone or with a small group out in the wilderness. And so, every day that you can spend out in the wild beyond three days is really deeply powerful because you’re in a meaningfully different state of mind. And this is something I’ve experienced personally and experienced when I’m guiding. But the hard thing about that is that it’s longer than a long weekend. So, you have to really go out of your way to have trips that are long enough to really access that three-day threshold. So, what they say in the study is like, if you can do that once a year, that’s great. Obviously, more is better, but that’s the nature pyramid.
Matt Bowles: Dom, let me ask you for one more piece of advice, and then we’ll wrap this up and move into the lightning round. Going through a lot of your content, I’ve really been convinced about the importance of connecting with nature to help avoid burnout and create more aliveness and vitality in our daily lives. And I’m wondering if you can give folks, a piece of advice, especially maybe for really busy people, they live in urban areas about how they can more consistently connect with nature. And maybe just some simple actionable tips that all listeners can start using in their own lives right away as soon as they finish this podcast.
Dom Francks: One powerful one is a daily offering. And this comes from the fact that from my understanding, pretty much every nature based or animist tradition out there has some framing of offering to the natural world being really powerful. So, within Vivify and what I would invite your listeners to do, we ask every member to make a small offering to the natural world every day. That could look like you’re walking down the street to a coffee shop or to your office, wherever you’re going, and you pause, put your palm on the trunk of a tree and just take a couple of breaths and just remind yourself of your inherent connectedness and commitment to recognizing your connectedness to the natural world. That could also look like something that I did on the top of the summit of Long’s Peak, like burying a couple of leaves of tea or a little bit of food in the ground as an offering to the natural world. And then the second one, which is maybe a subset of offering is I am a huge proponent of singing to nature. I recently through the Emerald podcast heard the phrase that enchanted land is land that’s been sung to its land. That’s been enchanted to the degree that we can allow ourselves to sing to the land around us. And it doesn’t need to be like a song that, you know, the words do. It could be a totally improvised series of sounds really, but just offering your voice in praise and connection to the land is something that’s obviously you want to be sensitive about the people around you, but it’s, it’s pretty accessible to most folks and can be an amazing way to shift our mindset.
Matt Bowles: All right, Dom. I think that’s a great place to end the main portion of this interview. And at this point, are you ready to move into the lightning round?
Dom Francks: I’m ready. Yeah. Let’s do it.
Matt Bowles: Let’s do it. All right, what is one book you’d most recommend that people should read?
Dom Francks: So, the one that I’d recommend is a book called The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. I think it’s an incredibly well-written and well-argued piece of why we are too comfortable and it’s making us unhappy in general. Yeah, that is one that I would fully strongly recommend.
Matt Bowles: All right, Dom, who is one person currently alive today that you’ve never met, that you’d most love to have dinner with just you and that person for an evening of dinner and conversation?
Dom Francks: You know, this is a pretty cliche one, but I actually think the Dalai Lama, and the reason for that is that a friend of mine, who’s a deep Buddhist practitioner, the other day, was really drawing my attention to how Incredible the Dalai Lama’s life story and also like cultural perspective is. This is someone who has been trained since childhood they’re going to be the spiritual leader of an entire lineage. And not only that, but a lineage that’s been dramatically oppressed by the Chinese. And yet the Dalai Lama still continues to be deeply committed to his spiritual practice, engaged in the world, and shows up fully on issues like climate and human rights, and shows up with like profound joy and presence. He just really seems to be a leader that walks the walk and is operating on a different state of mind than your average human. So yeah, I would love to meet him.
Matt Bowles: All right, Dom, knowing everything that you know now, if you could go back in time and give one piece of advice to your 18-year-old self. What would you say to 18-year-old Dom?
Dom Francks: I didn’t realize that school was about learning and not about getting good grades until after I was out of college. And I think if I’d approached university with the understanding that my goal here is to learn, not to get good grades, because for me, those things are very different. It’s very easy for me to get good grades without actually learning anything. That’s the thing that I would tell my 18-year-old self. It doesn’t matter what your GPA is in college. It matters what you actually learn, like focus on that.
Matt Bowles: Dom, of all the places that you have now traveled and experienced, what are three of your favorite destinations you would most recommend other people should definitely check out?
Dom Francks: So obviously the High Sierra, I won’t say any more about that, but incredible place. The only comes to mind is I really loved the Northern coast of Columbia. I spent about two months traveling through Columbia in 2018 and really loved the Santa Marta, Minka area, just found that place to be really magical. And then the last one I’d say is the Black Rock Desert for the Burning Man Festival. And the reason for that is that place is just truly unlike anywhere that I’ve ever experienced. I’ve been there six times, it’s been really meaningful in my life. And I think if you’re okay with physical discomfort, I think most people should go once and just experience how mind-blowingly overwhelming and incredible I think Burning Man is.
Matt Bowles: All right, Dom, what are your top three bucket list destinations? Places you have not yet been highest on your list you’d most love to experience.
Dom Francks: So, these center around mountain ranges, never been to the Himalayas, would love to do like a combined trip to the Himalayas and India and possibly Bhutan, somewhere in that realm of the world. I’d love to do a combination of the Andes and Amazon trips. Never been to the Andes, never been to the Amazon, would love to experience those two ecosystems. And then the last one is the Norwegian fjords. I would love to do a sailing and skiing trip in Norway. I had a friend that did that last year and it seemed absolutely incredible.
Matt Bowles: All right, Dom, I want you to let folks know at this point how they can find you, follow you on social media, definitely read your blog. You’re putting out some really incredible content. And then once again, let folks know how they can learn more about Vivify and then come into your world.
Dom Francks: Beautiful. So yeah, social media; I’m just Dom Francks everywhere. Should be pretty easy to find me on Instagram, Twitter, I suppose, LinkedIn, and Facebook, but yeah, Dom Franks is everywhere. And my blog is domfrancks.substack.com, it’s called Integrated Wildness and then Vivify. If you go to domfrancks.com, you’ll see the link for Vivify. So essentially if you can remember Dom Francks, you’ll be able to find me. Yeah, I would really be really excited to welcome any Maverick listeners or speak to you about joining Vivify. So please reach out. And we’d love to continue the conversation.
Matt Bowles: All right, we are going to link all of that up in the show notes, folks. So just go to the show notes for this episode. There you’re going to find direct links to everything we discussed, all the things Dom recommended, as well as the ways to follow him on social media. Read his blog and learn more about Vivify. Dom, this was incredible, brother. Thank you for coming on the show.
Dom Francks: Thanks a ton, Matthew. This was a real blast. Yeah, and I really appreciate the time. The wine definitely has gone to my head, and I feel a little, uh, well, I’m up at altitude here.
Matt Bowles: It must be time to sign off then. All right, good night, everybody.
