The Gstaad Guy sits down with Henry Cookson, the polar record holder turned founder of Cookson Adventures, to explore what actually constitutes a life well spent. Henry left a prime brokerage desk at Goldman Sachs with no cold weather experience, entered a race to the magnetic North Pole against Arctic warfare instructors and Everest veterans, and won it. He went on to lead the first team in history to reach the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility using human power alone, and built a company designing frontier expeditions for people with the means to fund science while they travel.
The conversation moves from the trading floor on 11 September to the statue of Lenin at the centre of Antarctica, from lion collars and the discovery of an unknown species of orca to a hard look at greenwashing and the kind of company money attracts. Henry argues that being a rich guy is no longer a legacy because someone bigger always follows, explains why he deliberately got out of the elevator on the third floor, and makes the case that a crappy fishing boat with people you like beats a 150 metre yacht with people you do not. He is equally direct on the commercial side, describing why bespoke travel is a terrible business model and why he turned down a family who had sent the same five year brief to three of his competitors.
Filmed at The Badrutt’s Palace Hotel in St. Moritz.
(00:00) Intro ✨🎙️
(01:07) Discovering An Unknown Species Of Orca 🐋🔍
(02:47) Goldman Sachs, Kenya And The 9/11 Trading Floor 📈🌍
(06:25) An Overweight Banker Wins A Polar Race 🏔️❄️
(09:02) The Pole Of Inaccessibility And The Statue Of Lenin 🧭🗿
(17:08) The Anticlimax After The Record 🏆😔
(18:55) Prince Harry, Sycophancy And The First Big Break 👑🎯
(20:26) Funding Lion Collars & The Birth Of A Model 🦁💡
(26:14) Greenwashing & The Friends Money Attracts 🌿💰
(31:35) Losing Local Culture To Globalised Luxury 🌍💎
(33:40) True Nourishment 🌱🛗
(39:49) Advertising, Rolex Scarcity And 72% Of Wildlife Gone ⌚🦁
(42:18) Being Rich Is No Longer A Legacy 💰🔮
(53:20) Why Bespoke Travel Is A Terrible Business Model ✈️💭
(58:58) How A Frontier Trip Gets Designed 🗺️🔍
(1:03:41) À La Poubelle vs. Fantastique 🗑️✨
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