Mike Woodmansee's The Billionaire of Living Brought 100+ Adventure Partners to His Book Signing
“If you feel really good about your past and you're really excited about your future, I'd say you're in the right place. And money had absolutely nothing to do with any of it.”
Mike Woodmansee, Author of The Billionaire of Living
Mike Woodmansee spent his career as a chief financial officer, close enough to the very wealthy to see what their money did and did not buy them. In his seventies he wrote The Billionaire of Living with Scribe Media to show what a rich life looks like instead. When it launched, more than a hundred of the people he had shared adventures with showed up to his local book signing.
The CFO who watched the very wealthy up close
Clip · Mike on the very wealthy · 15s
Mike's working life was accounting, a master's in business, and the CFO's chair. That put him at dinners and on business trips with people worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. What he noticed surprised him.
“And what I realized is they weren't especially happy. They weren't especially organized. They weren't especially fulfilled. They weren't especially nice to other people, often quite the opposite.”
— Mike Woodmansee
Meanwhile, Mike had spent decades on pursuits that cost very little: a sub-2:50 marathon that took him ten years of work, qualifying for the Ironman in Kona, hiking every trail in Washington longer than 30 miles, leading a climb of Denali in 1985, and two months on Mount Everest. The title is meant to provoke. A billionaire may be living a life, Mike argues, without being the billionaire of living.
Why he wrote it: a normal person can do this
Clip · Mike on why he wrote it · 11s
Mike had published once before, a 2003 trekking guidebook full of trail details. This book is about the experiences themselves, and it exists because of a gap he saw. Elite climbers rarely run marathons. Elite runners rarely climb. Mike was never elite at any of it, and that is the point.
“A normal person can do what I did. It's only extraordinary in maybe the amount and duration, but not the things. They are doable.”
— Mike Woodmansee
“And that's what I hope my book is to people, a description of how you go about it.”
— Mike Woodmansee
Life goals and the risk of spectacular failure
Clip · Mike on Everest · 10s
The engine of the book is what Mike calls a life goal: something big enough or far enough outside your experience that it takes years, changes how you spend your time, and needs the people around you on your side. It also means putting yourself where everyone will know if you fall short.
“And the wording I use, you have to put yourself out there enough to be exposed to what I call spectacular failure.”
— Mike Woodmansee
The best example in the book is the summit he never reached. In 2000 Mike spent two months in Nepal, went through the Khumbu Icefall ten times, and reached the South Col twice without standing on top of Everest. He still calls it the best experience of his life.
“And I guess what I didn't do is this. I didn't let the disappointment from not standing on top ruin everything else.”
— Mike Woodmansee
Making the book with Scribe
Clip · Mike on working with Scribe · 7s
A book about experiences needed the pictures to go with them. Mike has around 20,000 photos from his adventures, and Scribe made room for more of them than originally planned.
“And the book I have, you know, Scribe told me I could have 25 pictures. They let me push it to 35, which I appreciated.”
— Mike Woodmansee
He also narrated the audiobook himself, which meant listening to an audiobook for the first time in his life: his own.
“And it was a great experience. But that was a challenging experience. It wasn't a life goal, but I tell you what, I had to work at it. But it was very fun. And I'm very glad I did it.”
— Mike Woodmansee
The launch: a hundred adventure partners in one room
Clip · Mike on his book signing · 14s
The book lists nearly 700 people Mike has shared adventures with, many of them beginners he led up Mount Baker, a mountain he has climbed 35 times. When the book came out, they came back.
“And I had a book signing locally and more than a hundred of these people came. And the oldest person to show up was 90 years old. And it was a person I hadn't done anything with for 45 years.”
— Mike Woodmansee
The Billionaire of Living is out in print, ebook, and audiobook, and local bookstores where Mike lives are carrying it. He is already planning what comes next: walking the Camino from Porto with his granddaughter and great-niece, and a three-week trek in the Himalayas in 2028 with friends who said yes.
“I authored the book to enable people to have an example of how, you know, an average motivated person, what about creating a life that can measure up against anyone's. And it's just setting some goals and going after them. Not like frantically, but with purpose.”
— Mike Woodmansee
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