theCUBE + NYSE Wired: Actai Maui | Brandon Scheid, Professional Kiteboarder

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Brandon Scheid

Professional Kiteboarder

Self-employed

play_circle_outline Unlocking Flow State: How Kiteboarding and Group Conversations Drive Problem-Solving in Tech-Inspired Communities

play_circle_outline Experience and lessons learned from recovering from a paragliding accident

play_circle_outline Impact and synergy of group experiences, challenges, and learning in tech and kiteboarding

play_circle_outline Mastering Kiteboarding: The Power of Unity with Your Kite and Building Strong Foundations

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Brandon Scheid, Professional Kiteboarder

Brandon Scheid

Professional Kiteboarder Self-employed

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>> Okay, welcome to theCUBE Pod. We are here at Maui for the ACTAI Global. It's the wind down, final gathering. There's a hot tub party going on, kitesurfing, great photography out there today. Behind us is the end of the day where they have great photography, but also, it's a great event where a mixture of experts are here, diverse culture of contributors, community activists, friends, colleagues, tech leaders all here. Brandon's here. He's a professional kiteboarder and modern kiteboarder. Thanks for coming on theCUBE Pod, being here.

Brandon Scheid

>> Thanks for having me.

>> I ought to ask you, first of all, there is an obsession with kiteboarding here, and this is a kiteboarding crew.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah.

>> This is like, this is not-

Brandon Scheid

>> They're into it.

>> They're into it, and they're good.

Brandon Scheid

>> And they're really into it.

>> They're good. I mean, I'm just getting pro-tips left and right from literally pros, world champions, people here, but it's a crossover because tech is blending in with the same kind of mindset of what it takes to be a pro.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah.

>> Tech athletes, we call them. They're working hard, they're making things happen. They're balancing their life, but also, this community is also changing the world too.

Brandon Scheid

>> Absolutely, yeah. I think there's something that attracts people to the sport because, one, it's freeing. Two, you get to use your mind and body in a new way that's exciting and invigorating. Three, I don't know if you know too much about flow state. Flow state is a brain modality that you can get into that actually suppresses your frontal cortex. It makes you feel at one with the water. It makes you lose sense of time. This flow state is not only something that you can get into on the water, it's something you can get into group conversation. It's something that entrepreneurs and companies would love to have their employees do because you have those aha moments, that's when you solve all your problems. If you can encourage your community to engage this group flow, whether it's on the water, off the water, it's just synergistic with all the businesses and everything,

>> And startups, there's a lot of also investors here too I noticed also, again, great mix of people. That flow state is when companies hit exponential growth or escape velocity. It's like when you learn, you get that, it clicks and you're in the zone or in the flow state.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah.

>> That's nirvana for a tech company.

Brandon Scheid

>> It's phenomenal.

>> And then you have growth pains. You're in that rapid growth. So talk about that, because to master kite surfing, it's not for the faint of heart. You have to have skills. You got to know the gear. You got to know the sail. You got to know the board. You got the balance. You got to know the wind. You got to know the conditions.

Brandon Scheid

>> There's a lot of input going on when you first learn. It's like learning a language. You don't even know how to talk to someone about kiteboarding. What size is going on? Oh, nine square meter, what's the wind blowing? 25 knots. So much going on. You have to onboard so much information outside of even the skill sets. So it becomes, for people who love to learn, they love it because they can just dive into this whole new world of nuance and all that stuff. I think it's sometimes overly complicated. Simplistically, you, the wind, the board, the water, that's all you need, right? To master it takes a long time. Some would say a lifetime or whatever, but ultimately it becomes very simplistic when you're out on the water. You can't really think about too much more except just, can I keep this kite in the sky? Can I keep my trim? Okay, watch out for the turtles. Oh, it's beautiful. It's so special.

>> It's a multi-tool sport. You need to have a lot of different things. Like being a leader, you have to have the people skills. You got to understand products. You understand how to grow a company, sell product, and create value and sell that value to the customers, get cash. I mean, kind of the same.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah, I see a lot of crossover between the world of tech and the world of kiteboarding. Kiteboarders love to tech out and talk about their gear. Guess what they love to do when there's no wind? Talk about kiteboarding, talk about all their gear. They're already primed to want to do this kind of deep discovery and deep conversation, so it goes hand in hand. And when you're a desk jockey, it's pretty cool to go on the water and feel like you're like a badass when you're not at the desk so it works really well together.

>> It's a great release, the endorphins are pumping, things are popping. I loved your comment in one of the sessions. I know you sat in on all the talks because we had a talk in the morning here, which when this wind is low and it's a retreat vibe. AI is obviously the conversation, you had a comment on one of the things I thought was fantastic. You're like, "This AI, what does it mean for me?" When there was a demo, it was a little quick hack that Brett did, and you get a comment like, "That's scary," so there's a real fear in tech right now, and I thought that was very cool that you brought that up because that's what people are thinking.

Brandon Scheid

>> I think when you talk about people that are very familiar with the world of AI, all they see are the endless possibilities, go, go, go, go, go. When you talk to my mom, she can be convinced by any amount of AI and she's worried about it. I feel like there's definitely two sides of the coin. There are people that are very excited about the potential. There are people that are very scared about the potential. So I think it's important when you're talking to people that are very excited to say, "Hey, there's a whole other side of this coin that people are worried about." The ethics, the morality, Is this going to be used for malicious and nefarious ways, or is this going to be used to better humanity and we're never going to have to work again and everyone's going to be able to do art and machines are going to do everything for us. I think it's important to anchor still in the humanity of it because we are humans and we don't want to just distance ourselves too far from that.

>> Humanity, trust, human, role of the human. Safety, I mean, come on.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah, absolutely.

>> My voice could be cloned.

Brandon Scheid

>> Well, we're doing this podcast and one of the guys presenting said, "In two years you will need a 10-second audio recording," which we've already done 10 seconds, "and it'll get about a 95% match with your voice." That concerns me being someone that is on the internet all the time, putting my voice out there, does that mean that someone's just going to be able to be me on the internet? And there's the deep fakes and all this stuff. There is privacy and security concerns about that kind of stuff. Your voice and your person is, except for your genome is your last thing. That's actually physically yours and 23andMe is already trying to get your genomes and all that stuff so that's already out the window.

>> I mean, look, it's fun for techies because the endorphins are popping because it's a wave that's coming. We know, but we've got to protect it. You gave a talk here with Sensi, your wife, about your journey. Amazing story. Kiteboarding pro, you've achieved a lot, but there was a setback. Tell that story, I think this encapsulates a lot of things in kiteboarding and life in business where there's an inconvenience, something could happen.

Brandon Scheid

>> Oh, yes.

>> That puts a major inconvenience in your life and you go, okay, how do I recover? In this case, the inconvenience was pretty inconvenient for you. You went through, you had an accident, and then you had to go on a recovery. It marshaled a lot of resources and you had a great story. Share that story.

Brandon Scheid

>> In November of 2023, so about 18 months ago, I was involved in a pretty serious paragliding accident. I had gotten into this sport because flow state is addictive and when you need new novel things to keep getting into that flow state, so I trickled into mountain biking that I trickled into, paragliding that I trickled into just more dangerous thing. More dangerous thing. Flow state comes when there's risk, to up the risk, get more flow state. I actually don't remember, I have no memory of the incident or a couple of weeks before, but someone was there that saved my life, he has told me about it. He actually has it on film. I haven't watched it, but.

>> No, don't watch it.

Brandon Scheid

>> And I made a series of miscalculations. In aviation, whether it's flying airplanes or flying paragliders, they have what's called catastrophic events and runaway events, so the decision you made 10 decisions ago led to the terrible decision. It didn't seem like a bad decision at the time, but then 10 decisions later, it cascaded into this really bad decision. I apparently made a couple bad decisions previous that ultimately led to me basically falling off a 200-foot cliff into a big pile of rocks. I was really broken. I was airlifted, I was in a coma. I had lacerations all over my body. I broke my face, my back, my hips. I had two big bleeds in my brain. So basically aneurysms in my brain that thankfully were, nicked themselves up. Well, I didn't actually need cranial surgery or anything like that, but that set off this crazy journey that I was on. I woke up in the hospital, I was like, "Shut up. So I crashed paragliding? This is crazy." Because I couldn't remember anything. Yeah, so it just set me off on this thing that I think the universe was trying to tell me, I need to do some personal growth. I need to do some looking at my life, and the universe was just like, "Hey, you want to learn yet? You want to learn yet? You want to learn yet?" And it was like, "No, we're going to teach you this lesson." It was really hard. It was a lot of physical therapy to do the physical injuries, which I'm a professional athlete. I've been hurt before. I know how to train for physical injuries. It's easy. You go do the PT, you eat well, you take your supplements, you do what the doctors ask you to do. Pretty straightforward. My back was healed pretty fast. That was all pretty straightforward. The aneurysms in my brain led to what's called the traumatic brain injury, and there are lots of different grades that you can get from a minor concussion all the way up to basically you're a vegetable more or less, you'd be alive on machines. Mine was not quite to that extent, but it was pretty serious, and so launched into this whole brain thing, which was so crazy.

>> That's PT that you're not used to. There's no PT for that.

Brandon Scheid

>> There is no protocol. The doctors, if you and me had the exact same aneurysm in our brains, we have two different brains and we're two different people so we have two totally different outcomes. They would be like, "Okay, you have frontal and lateral lobe contusions. You have a pontine bleed. Here's some generalities of what you might deal with." And I was like, "Huh, okay. Well, I have that. I don't have that. I have this."

>> Where's the playbook? There is no playbook, honestly.

Brandon Scheid

>> I was ingesting so much information. I was reading books, I was listening to podcasts. I was talking to anybody and anybody that would talk to me because I had mania and I love to talk and I was just trying to navigate this space as best as I could because as crazy as this sounds, I don't think that healthcare does great for chronic illness. I think they do really great for acute illness. Look, they had me stabilized, they had my back sorted. They had me stop my brain bleed, all that stuff, but then comes months of time where they don't really have a great way to keep you motivated to move forward so I took that all into my own hands and just really controlled my recovery, and it was a whole learning experience. It was really, really powerful.

>> Well, congratulations. You look fantastic. Great to chat with you. And this is resilience.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah.

>> This is what makes people who they are.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah.

>> And what was the learnings that you took away from it? I mean, if you could share, what was the big takeaway? Because you had a lot. You have depression. It's all roadblocks after roadblock, the persistence. Did your athletic achievements, did you draw on that?

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah, absolutely. I know what it is to struggle to learn a new hard trick on the water thousands of times working at it. You don't just get it one day. So I know perseverance and persistence is the way to deal with these things. I also know that big goals, if you look at how big the goal is, it's intimidating, but if you just chunk it down into small, what can I do today to get me one step closer to that goal? So you just bite off what you can chew, which is right in front of you. That was really helpful. I learned that time is very valuable. It's your most valuable resource that you're given. Don't waste it. Do not waste it. Invest it in great relationships with people that matter, and invest in doing things that you love because look, I did a paragliding accident, I did that to myself. Almost everybody else in the brain injury place was there from car accidents. So everybody that drives a car is at liberty for this same thing, and everyone just doesn't think about it because they're just driving on their cell phone or whatever. You don't really think your car's going to get called until it gets called and then all of a sudden you're like, "Uh-oh. Got to deal with this."

>> Well, it's a huge accomplishment. Again, congratulations. Super inspiring story. I have to ask you about the event. As a participant who's not a techie, but you are an accomplished individual, you're an athlete, not a tech athlete, but you're an athlete nonetheless. What was your takeaway? What was the vibe? Share what you thought of the weekend here.

Brandon Scheid

>> Well, first of all, I think it's a super rad... If you think of Bill Tai like a giant planet, he has all people in this orbit around him and all these people get drawn to the gravity and they're all just around here orbiting, and it's just like everyone's having a great time. There's so much synergy. There's ideas. There's businesses being created on the fly. People are making tokens to fun, nature, conservation. It's crazy what could happen when you put a bunch of smart people in a room and they're really motivated. That's the morning vibe, great food, super fun. And then you go on the water and share these wonderful experiences with all these people. It's often things that they're not good at, so to take people that are really savvy business people and then stick them in the inferno and be like, "Sorry, you're going to struggle for a little bit."

>> It's like jumping in the deep end of the pool. Hey, thrash around for a while, then you find it and you go, "Whoa, all right, let's go."

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah. I think humility-

>> Especially guys like me.

Brandon Scheid

>> Humility is really important, and to have people that are really well off get humbled by this sport sets the tone and makes it really level playing field-

>> It reveals a lot of character.

Brandon Scheid

>> Well, I'm in the meetings. I'm just like, "Everyone's talking about these crazy things, so many acronyms." I'm just like, "Yeah, I know what that is for sure," and then we go in the water and it's the opposite. Everyone's being humbled by us, so it's a fun trade of dynamic. I find it really interesting.

>> It's fun. They had a thing called Floatopia, which I love that name, where you had the floating party of guests hanging out in the water and then everyone's kiting around and you were the anchor. You were like the caboose. Did you have to herd everyone together and you felt you were herding everyone?

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah, so you just want to make sure everyone's doing okay, no one needs any assistance. We want everyone to make it to the end happy and smiling. Maybe they guzzle a little bit of saltwater, but that's fine. That's part of the experience. It's so fun to share these experiences because they're what bond people together. People will remember that for a really long time, and it'll be something they talk about in the future, and it's just like group community is super fun.

>> I love how this group is comfortable with ambiguity. They're comfortable with being uncomfortable. Like me, I'm learning. I love it. I love the water so it's like I'm doing the drag thing, I'm learning. It's fun. It's fun to learn. I have to ask you because my podcast, what's the tip for me as a beginner, and there's a lot of beginners out there in tech that are going to be kite surfing. What's your advice?

Brandon Scheid

>> My number one advice is to spend time with the kite. You and the kite need to become like one organism. It's how it pulls you around. It's how it lifts you into the air. It's how it can throw you across the beach. The power of the wind, you harness it with this structure so it becomes an extension of you. So the more time that you can spend becoming intimately comfortable with the nuance of the kite and not being scared and being like death grip on the bar and really starting to come into a little, almost like a dance with the kite, the better off you're going to be because, look, the kite is one thing, the board's another thing, the water's another thing. It's not tons of people out here, but sometimes there's hundreds of people on the water and you're navigating people flying the kite, dodging turtles. There's so much going on.

>> I mean, the turtles are big.

Brandon Scheid

>> They are big.

>> They're not tiny.

Brandon Scheid

>> No.

>> I said to Bill Tai, I'm like, "Yeah, turtles, how far?" "No, they're right off the beach." They're monstrous. Yeah, it's hitting a rock.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah. I think my number one skill is to really intimately become one with the kite and take it with a grain of salt and just go with what speed you can go. There's no rush to, I have to be up and riding. If you want to take 10 hours in body drag, great. Get comfortable, and then you'll... The best way to build the pyramids or a really tall Empire State Building starts with a huge foundation. If you have a good solid foundation, you can build a huge skyscraper, so start and build your foundation really big and strong, and then the sky's the limit.

>> I was talking with Jeff Kafka and I water-skied and wakeboard, and he's like, "The kite's the boat." I'm like, "Bingo. There it is. Okay, got to get that kite down."

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah.

>> Because that's what's doing all the work.

Brandon Scheid

>> Absolutely.

>> Brandon, I'm really inspired by your story, impressed by you, and thanks for coming on and sharing. Yeah, thanks. Appreciate it.

Brandon Scheid

>> No problem.

>> All right.

Brandon Scheid

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you very much, okay.

Brandon Scheid

>> Wonderful.

>> We're here at ACTAI Global. It's a group of people coming together, changing the world, making things happen, building things, talking, sharing ideas, and of course, having a lot of fun. Thanks for listening.

Brandon Scheid, Professional Kiteboarder

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>> Okay, welcome to theCUBE Pod. We are here at Maui for the ACTAI Global. It's the wind down, final gathering. There's a hot tub party going on, kitesurfing, great photography out there today. Behind us is the end of the day where they have great photography, but also, it's a great event where a mixture of experts are here, diverse culture of contributors, community activists, friends, colleagues, tech leaders all here. Brandon's here. He's a professional kiteboarder and modern kiteboarder. Thanks for coming on theCUBE Pod, being here.

Brandon Scheid

>> Thanks for having me.

>> I ought to ask you, first of all, there is an obsession with kiteboarding here, and this is a kiteboarding crew.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah.

>> This is like, this is not-

Brandon Scheid

>> They're into it.

>> They're into it, and they're good.

Brandon Scheid

>> And they're really into it.

>> They're good. I mean, I'm just getting pro-tips left and right from literally pros, world champions, people here, but it's a crossover because tech is blending in with the same kind of mindset of what it takes to be a pro.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah.

>> Tech athletes, we call them. They're working hard, they're making things happen. They're balancing their life, but also, this community is also changing the world too.

Brandon Scheid

>> Absolutely, yeah. I think there's something that attracts people to the sport because, one, it's freeing. Two, you get to use your mind and body in a new way that's exciting and invigorating. Three, I don't know if you know too much about flow state. Flow state is a brain modality that you can get into that actually suppresses your frontal cortex. It makes you feel at one with the water. It makes you lose sense of time. This flow state is not only something that you can get into on the water, it's something you can get into group conversation. It's something that entrepreneurs and companies would love to have their employees do because you have those aha moments, that's when you solve all your problems. If you can encourage your community to engage this group flow, whether it's on the water, off the water, it's just synergistic with all the businesses and everything,

>> And startups, there's a lot of also investors here too I noticed also, again, great mix of people. That flow state is when companies hit exponential growth or escape velocity. It's like when you learn, you get that, it clicks and you're in the zone or in the flow state.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah.

>> That's nirvana for a tech company.

Brandon Scheid

>> It's phenomenal.

>> And then you have growth pains. You're in that rapid growth. So talk about that, because to master kite surfing, it's not for the faint of heart. You have to have skills. You got to know the gear. You got to know the sail. You got to know the board. You got the balance. You got to know the wind. You got to know the conditions.

Brandon Scheid

>> There's a lot of input going on when you first learn. It's like learning a language. You don't even know how to talk to someone about kiteboarding. What size is going on? Oh, nine square meter, what's the wind blowing? 25 knots. So much going on. You have to onboard so much information outside of even the skill sets. So it becomes, for people who love to learn, they love it because they can just dive into this whole new world of nuance and all that stuff. I think it's sometimes overly complicated. Simplistically, you, the wind, the board, the water, that's all you need, right? To master it takes a long time. Some would say a lifetime or whatever, but ultimately it becomes very simplistic when you're out on the water. You can't really think about too much more except just, can I keep this kite in the sky? Can I keep my trim? Okay, watch out for the turtles. Oh, it's beautiful. It's so special.

>> It's a multi-tool sport. You need to have a lot of different things. Like being a leader, you have to have the people skills. You got to understand products. You understand how to grow a company, sell product, and create value and sell that value to the customers, get cash. I mean, kind of the same.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah, I see a lot of crossover between the world of tech and the world of kiteboarding. Kiteboarders love to tech out and talk about their gear. Guess what they love to do when there's no wind? Talk about kiteboarding, talk about all their gear. They're already primed to want to do this kind of deep discovery and deep conversation, so it goes hand in hand. And when you're a desk jockey, it's pretty cool to go on the water and feel like you're like a badass when you're not at the desk so it works really well together.

>> It's a great release, the endorphins are pumping, things are popping. I loved your comment in one of the sessions. I know you sat in on all the talks because we had a talk in the morning here, which when this wind is low and it's a retreat vibe. AI is obviously the conversation, you had a comment on one of the things I thought was fantastic. You're like, "This AI, what does it mean for me?" When there was a demo, it was a little quick hack that Brett did, and you get a comment like, "That's scary," so there's a real fear in tech right now, and I thought that was very cool that you brought that up because that's what people are thinking.

Brandon Scheid

>> I think when you talk about people that are very familiar with the world of AI, all they see are the endless possibilities, go, go, go, go, go. When you talk to my mom, she can be convinced by any amount of AI and she's worried about it. I feel like there's definitely two sides of the coin. There are people that are very excited about the potential. There are people that are very scared about the potential. So I think it's important when you're talking to people that are very excited to say, "Hey, there's a whole other side of this coin that people are worried about." The ethics, the morality, Is this going to be used for malicious and nefarious ways, or is this going to be used to better humanity and we're never going to have to work again and everyone's going to be able to do art and machines are going to do everything for us. I think it's important to anchor still in the humanity of it because we are humans and we don't want to just distance ourselves too far from that.

>> Humanity, trust, human, role of the human. Safety, I mean, come on.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah, absolutely.

>> My voice could be cloned.

Brandon Scheid

>> Well, we're doing this podcast and one of the guys presenting said, "In two years you will need a 10-second audio recording," which we've already done 10 seconds, "and it'll get about a 95% match with your voice." That concerns me being someone that is on the internet all the time, putting my voice out there, does that mean that someone's just going to be able to be me on the internet? And there's the deep fakes and all this stuff. There is privacy and security concerns about that kind of stuff. Your voice and your person is, except for your genome is your last thing. That's actually physically yours and 23andMe is already trying to get your genomes and all that stuff so that's already out the window.

>> I mean, look, it's fun for techies because the endorphins are popping because it's a wave that's coming. We know, but we've got to protect it. You gave a talk here with Sensi, your wife, about your journey. Amazing story. Kiteboarding pro, you've achieved a lot, but there was a setback. Tell that story, I think this encapsulates a lot of things in kiteboarding and life in business where there's an inconvenience, something could happen.

Brandon Scheid

>> Oh, yes.

>> That puts a major inconvenience in your life and you go, okay, how do I recover? In this case, the inconvenience was pretty inconvenient for you. You went through, you had an accident, and then you had to go on a recovery. It marshaled a lot of resources and you had a great story. Share that story.

Brandon Scheid

>> In November of 2023, so about 18 months ago, I was involved in a pretty serious paragliding accident. I had gotten into this sport because flow state is addictive and when you need new novel things to keep getting into that flow state, so I trickled into mountain biking that I trickled into, paragliding that I trickled into just more dangerous thing. More dangerous thing. Flow state comes when there's risk, to up the risk, get more flow state. I actually don't remember, I have no memory of the incident or a couple of weeks before, but someone was there that saved my life, he has told me about it. He actually has it on film. I haven't watched it, but.

>> No, don't watch it.

Brandon Scheid

>> And I made a series of miscalculations. In aviation, whether it's flying airplanes or flying paragliders, they have what's called catastrophic events and runaway events, so the decision you made 10 decisions ago led to the terrible decision. It didn't seem like a bad decision at the time, but then 10 decisions later, it cascaded into this really bad decision. I apparently made a couple bad decisions previous that ultimately led to me basically falling off a 200-foot cliff into a big pile of rocks. I was really broken. I was airlifted, I was in a coma. I had lacerations all over my body. I broke my face, my back, my hips. I had two big bleeds in my brain. So basically aneurysms in my brain that thankfully were, nicked themselves up. Well, I didn't actually need cranial surgery or anything like that, but that set off this crazy journey that I was on. I woke up in the hospital, I was like, "Shut up. So I crashed paragliding? This is crazy." Because I couldn't remember anything. Yeah, so it just set me off on this thing that I think the universe was trying to tell me, I need to do some personal growth. I need to do some looking at my life, and the universe was just like, "Hey, you want to learn yet? You want to learn yet? You want to learn yet?" And it was like, "No, we're going to teach you this lesson." It was really hard. It was a lot of physical therapy to do the physical injuries, which I'm a professional athlete. I've been hurt before. I know how to train for physical injuries. It's easy. You go do the PT, you eat well, you take your supplements, you do what the doctors ask you to do. Pretty straightforward. My back was healed pretty fast. That was all pretty straightforward. The aneurysms in my brain led to what's called the traumatic brain injury, and there are lots of different grades that you can get from a minor concussion all the way up to basically you're a vegetable more or less, you'd be alive on machines. Mine was not quite to that extent, but it was pretty serious, and so launched into this whole brain thing, which was so crazy.

>> That's PT that you're not used to. There's no PT for that.

Brandon Scheid

>> There is no protocol. The doctors, if you and me had the exact same aneurysm in our brains, we have two different brains and we're two different people so we have two totally different outcomes. They would be like, "Okay, you have frontal and lateral lobe contusions. You have a pontine bleed. Here's some generalities of what you might deal with." And I was like, "Huh, okay. Well, I have that. I don't have that. I have this."

>> Where's the playbook? There is no playbook, honestly.

Brandon Scheid

>> I was ingesting so much information. I was reading books, I was listening to podcasts. I was talking to anybody and anybody that would talk to me because I had mania and I love to talk and I was just trying to navigate this space as best as I could because as crazy as this sounds, I don't think that healthcare does great for chronic illness. I think they do really great for acute illness. Look, they had me stabilized, they had my back sorted. They had me stop my brain bleed, all that stuff, but then comes months of time where they don't really have a great way to keep you motivated to move forward so I took that all into my own hands and just really controlled my recovery, and it was a whole learning experience. It was really, really powerful.

>> Well, congratulations. You look fantastic. Great to chat with you. And this is resilience.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah.

>> This is what makes people who they are.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah.

>> And what was the learnings that you took away from it? I mean, if you could share, what was the big takeaway? Because you had a lot. You have depression. It's all roadblocks after roadblock, the persistence. Did your athletic achievements, did you draw on that?

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah, absolutely. I know what it is to struggle to learn a new hard trick on the water thousands of times working at it. You don't just get it one day. So I know perseverance and persistence is the way to deal with these things. I also know that big goals, if you look at how big the goal is, it's intimidating, but if you just chunk it down into small, what can I do today to get me one step closer to that goal? So you just bite off what you can chew, which is right in front of you. That was really helpful. I learned that time is very valuable. It's your most valuable resource that you're given. Don't waste it. Do not waste it. Invest it in great relationships with people that matter, and invest in doing things that you love because look, I did a paragliding accident, I did that to myself. Almost everybody else in the brain injury place was there from car accidents. So everybody that drives a car is at liberty for this same thing, and everyone just doesn't think about it because they're just driving on their cell phone or whatever. You don't really think your car's going to get called until it gets called and then all of a sudden you're like, "Uh-oh. Got to deal with this."

>> Well, it's a huge accomplishment. Again, congratulations. Super inspiring story. I have to ask you about the event. As a participant who's not a techie, but you are an accomplished individual, you're an athlete, not a tech athlete, but you're an athlete nonetheless. What was your takeaway? What was the vibe? Share what you thought of the weekend here.

Brandon Scheid

>> Well, first of all, I think it's a super rad... If you think of Bill Tai like a giant planet, he has all people in this orbit around him and all these people get drawn to the gravity and they're all just around here orbiting, and it's just like everyone's having a great time. There's so much synergy. There's ideas. There's businesses being created on the fly. People are making tokens to fun, nature, conservation. It's crazy what could happen when you put a bunch of smart people in a room and they're really motivated. That's the morning vibe, great food, super fun. And then you go on the water and share these wonderful experiences with all these people. It's often things that they're not good at, so to take people that are really savvy business people and then stick them in the inferno and be like, "Sorry, you're going to struggle for a little bit."

>> It's like jumping in the deep end of the pool. Hey, thrash around for a while, then you find it and you go, "Whoa, all right, let's go."

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah. I think humility-

>> Especially guys like me.

Brandon Scheid

>> Humility is really important, and to have people that are really well off get humbled by this sport sets the tone and makes it really level playing field-

>> It reveals a lot of character.

Brandon Scheid

>> Well, I'm in the meetings. I'm just like, "Everyone's talking about these crazy things, so many acronyms." I'm just like, "Yeah, I know what that is for sure," and then we go in the water and it's the opposite. Everyone's being humbled by us, so it's a fun trade of dynamic. I find it really interesting.

>> It's fun. They had a thing called Floatopia, which I love that name, where you had the floating party of guests hanging out in the water and then everyone's kiting around and you were the anchor. You were like the caboose. Did you have to herd everyone together and you felt you were herding everyone?

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah, so you just want to make sure everyone's doing okay, no one needs any assistance. We want everyone to make it to the end happy and smiling. Maybe they guzzle a little bit of saltwater, but that's fine. That's part of the experience. It's so fun to share these experiences because they're what bond people together. People will remember that for a really long time, and it'll be something they talk about in the future, and it's just like group community is super fun.

>> I love how this group is comfortable with ambiguity. They're comfortable with being uncomfortable. Like me, I'm learning. I love it. I love the water so it's like I'm doing the drag thing, I'm learning. It's fun. It's fun to learn. I have to ask you because my podcast, what's the tip for me as a beginner, and there's a lot of beginners out there in tech that are going to be kite surfing. What's your advice?

Brandon Scheid

>> My number one advice is to spend time with the kite. You and the kite need to become like one organism. It's how it pulls you around. It's how it lifts you into the air. It's how it can throw you across the beach. The power of the wind, you harness it with this structure so it becomes an extension of you. So the more time that you can spend becoming intimately comfortable with the nuance of the kite and not being scared and being like death grip on the bar and really starting to come into a little, almost like a dance with the kite, the better off you're going to be because, look, the kite is one thing, the board's another thing, the water's another thing. It's not tons of people out here, but sometimes there's hundreds of people on the water and you're navigating people flying the kite, dodging turtles. There's so much going on.

>> I mean, the turtles are big.

Brandon Scheid

>> They are big.

>> They're not tiny.

Brandon Scheid

>> No.

>> I said to Bill Tai, I'm like, "Yeah, turtles, how far?" "No, they're right off the beach." They're monstrous. Yeah, it's hitting a rock.

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah. I think my number one skill is to really intimately become one with the kite and take it with a grain of salt and just go with what speed you can go. There's no rush to, I have to be up and riding. If you want to take 10 hours in body drag, great. Get comfortable, and then you'll... The best way to build the pyramids or a really tall Empire State Building starts with a huge foundation. If you have a good solid foundation, you can build a huge skyscraper, so start and build your foundation really big and strong, and then the sky's the limit.

>> I was talking with Jeff Kafka and I water-skied and wakeboard, and he's like, "The kite's the boat." I'm like, "Bingo. There it is. Okay, got to get that kite down."

Brandon Scheid

>> Yeah.

>> Because that's what's doing all the work.

Brandon Scheid

>> Absolutely.

>> Brandon, I'm really inspired by your story, impressed by you, and thanks for coming on and sharing. Yeah, thanks. Appreciate it.

Brandon Scheid

>> No problem.

>> All right.

Brandon Scheid

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you very much, okay.

Brandon Scheid

>> Wonderful.

>> We're here at ACTAI Global. It's a group of people coming together, changing the world, making things happen, building things, talking, sharing ideas, and of course, having a lot of fun. Thanks for listening.