Conan talks to Phil in Vermont about organizing adventure-based team building activities for kids. Plus, Phil runs the Chums through a group emotional exercise. Wanna get a chance to talk to Conan? Submit here: teamcoco.com/apply Get access to all the podcasts you love, music channels and radio shows with the SiriusXM App! Get 3 months free using this show link: https://siriusxm.com/conan.
Chapter 1: Who are the main hosts and guests in this episode?
Hey, Phil, welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan.
Phil, how are you?
Hey, Conan, Sona, Matt. How's it going? There's no particular order to the way I said your name in terms of hierarchy.
Chapter 2: Where does Phil live and what is his background?
It's fine. I feel bad. It's fine, and it's nice to talk to you. Phil, tell us a little bit about yourselves. I like to, you know, get the parameters of a man before we continue speaking. Where are you right now?
So I live in Vermont. Yeah, you've got that Vermont accent. I was almost going to say it, and you said it for me. I know. This traditional Vermont accent.
Yeah. Where are you from originally?
I'm originally from a town called Ipswich in England on the East Coast.
Okay.
Very nice. I felt I should experience New England, and so that's where I live now.
It's so funny, I grew up in New England and really believed when I was a boy that England had stolen the names of our towns.
I really believed that. Is that what they tell you?
No, I just was, I found out that, you know, because I grew up in Boston and there's Cambridge and just on and on and on. And I just thought, you know, Sturbridge. And then I started to hear about these places in England and thought, well, why can't they get their own names? Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What kind of work does Phil do in Vermont?
I would say the beauty. It's gorgeous. It's a beautiful state. And it also happens to be Howells, the location at which I work. So it was through work that I ended up in Vermont. It wasn't necessarily a choice, but... I am very glad for the choice. It's a beautiful state to raise a kid in.
I like New Hampshire. I like Vermont. I've spent a lot of time in both. And I'm curious what you do. You mentioned a job. What is your job?
Yeah, so I work for an organization called High Five Adventure Learning Center. And I use adventure-based activities for team and leadership development from fifth grade kids all the way up to the Boston Bruins. So a spectrum.
It's very interesting to me that it's the same principles if you're talking to someone in the fifth grade or if you're talking to a professional athlete. It's the same principles, I guess. Leadership, how to work together, how to have fun.
And I would say I'm unique in that I get to take people on a ropes course in Vermont. Yeah. You know, we bring participants up to 40, 50 feet in the air and kind of have stretch moments for them. So really have kind of really extreme experiences really that allows them to kind of develop more as a team. And it doesn't matter if you're a fifth grader or you're a professional athlete.
The heights is the great normalizer or the great equalizer.
Yeah. Now, okay, let's get into the safety of it because you send a fifth grader up a pole. How many feet in the air?
Let's say 40, 40, 50. Sure. Anywhere within that range.
Is the child tethered or is there a good chance the child could fall to his or her doom?
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Chapter 4: How does adventure-based team building work for kids and professionals?
I would assume that were one to have an untethered child, that if found out, one would be discovered and one could be in trouble. I think you have untethered children. And I think kids are falling like apples. Apples in October. I think they're tumbling and you're just catching them.
We start to get calls from parents immediately after this. No, they're on a rope. We belay them. And I would say that I've seen you climb. I believe there was a Colonel Moscow episode where you climbed. Yes. Incredible physique. Mastered the climb.
Hey, I like you, by the way. You're fantastic. And clearly you don't have a very good television screen. But I, yes, I did climb. I did a rock wall.
Yeah.
In Thailand, I believe. Yeah.
the, the differing factor I would say for our programs is we actually teach our participants to do the belaying. So, um, that is that demonstration of team and leadership development is actually giving them a skill and allowing them to be responsible for their team members.
Oh.
And so that is something that I really, I think that the, the, the free of you bring Eduardo, bring play, but, uh, teach Sona how to belay and then have Sona in charge of Conan.
Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What safety measures are in place for ropes course activities?
So is it all climbing?
It's critical for all teams. Is it all climbing? What other things would we do? So I would say we range it from ground initiatives. They may be problem-solving activities on the ground. There is connection activities to get you more connected as a team. And then we focus on the development of your trust and your responsibility and your decision-making.
And then you bring you to that point of belaying each other. Really, that's that ultimate point. We'll get you there, right? But Phil, let me ask you a question. I have 100% faith in my abilities.
Phil, I have a lot of faith in you, Phil. Wow. Is it possible that it's our dysfunction that makes this podcast popular? That it's our inability to get along, our childishness, our peevishness, our just overall, I don't know, just refusal to act like... Yeah. Good people.
Yes.
That might be the glue here.
That's right. It's that we don't have a balance. We have a like equal amount of repulsion for each other. We're pulling on each other with equal amounts. So we stay tethered.
Yes. Yes. Is that possible?
It's highly possible. And actually, I've listened to all of the episodes, and from my professional lens, I would say you're a really high-functioning team, despite the repulsion. I think that repulsion could be there, and your team could still be successful. I like the head nods and the…
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Chapter 6: How does Phil teach belaying and team responsibility?
I've often heard, often, I've heard aviation experts describe a helicopter as a machine that wants to pull itself apart, but it's engineered in such a way that it doesn't, and that's actually what gives it its integrity. That's the analogy, yeah. I think we're a helicopter that desperately wants to fly apart. Rotors zipping in every direction.
Adam Sachs walking into the room, his head being lopped off. Carnage, massacre, flames, but something keeps it all together. And because of that, we're able to fly around through the air and give the local traffic report. Yeah.
So everywhere around you is destroyed, but this group stays intact. Yeah. Wow, beautiful.
That's nice. Where did you first become interested in all of this, Phil? You're a young boy. You're living in Eastern— Young boy. I'm saying he's a young boy. He's in— Eastern coast, I'm imagining, of England, the salty air, sausage for breakfast. Please. You know, also some beans, the ever-present beans. And some tea. With milk. Milk, yeah. Syrup. Yeah. And then something.
Please, you're getting me very heightened. Right. Yeah.
I thought we were talking about Vermont. And then suddenly you get into team building. Was there another plan along the way or was this always the plan, do you think?
So my education is in teaching, and so I was going to become a teacher. And I came over to the States to do a summer camp program. It's a rite of passage, it seems, for a European to enter America and work a summer camp program. So I felt like I had to do it. And at the camp, they had a ropes course, they had team development, and they did year-round programming. And I kind of just fell in.
They said, you've got to teach a degree. We'd love you to stick around. And they sponsored my visa. Oh, very cool. And 18 years later, I'm still here. Oh, wow. So I've yet to find my way home.
Well, I think you're thriving. It's reminding me, I went to summer camp in Freedom, New Hampshire. Yeah. And there was a camp there called Cragged Mountain Farm. And we had, I had a, one of my counselors was from Britain. And I remembered climbing the Presidential Mountain Range and there was this gentleman with a British accent who would tell us to move our asses, get up that hill.
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Chapter 7: What challenges arise when participants hesitate on the ropes course?
We're clearly not trying to learn anything. Well, I will answer your question and give you the knowledge you need to the three idiots to be begun pushing and electrifying the pole.
I'm wondering if I'll find myself in a situation where I have to push a kid down a pole. I don't know, but I'm eager to hear how to do it.
This is the next career path for you, Matt. So either we have adequately prepared the students so that we're not having people up who shouldn't be up there. We don't force them up.
Oh, so there's a lot of training before they go up the pole.
Yeah, I would say there's loads of sequencing, planning. It's part of the risk management thing. But the other component is that I teach, as well as teaching the team building stuff, I also teach rescue training for those kind of scenarios. So we can have participants go up to height or staff members, sorry, go up to height and then help pick a participant off the course.
So there are there's like a spectrum or a range of rescue scenarios that we can do. And I teach those two. So from a like a risk management lens, I would say you're in safe hands because not only can we deal with the with the mental side of how to help people, but we can also deal with the physical component of getting someone down if necessary. We wouldn't want to push someone, though.
No, no, no. You berate them?
That would be terrible. I think electrifying much better. I think berating is good, too.
This little pussy.
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Chapter 8: How does Phil's background and path lead him to team building in America?
I would say that regardless of anything I do to try to reduce that from happening, that will probably happen in some way. Yeah, kids will be kids. I would say the worst people, if there's a school group, sometimes the worst people are the teachers. And if it's a family group, the worst people are the parents. They're the ones who are screaming the obscenities sometimes.
But for the most part, I think that we are very calm and relaxed about the way that we talk with our students. And we attempt not to shame people if they were to fail or come down. Phil, can you pretend like you're our teacher?
Because I understand you have a little game for us to play. Work with us. Okay, we've just shown up in Ipswich, Vermont. Our car broke down. It overheated. It was a 1977 Hyundai, which didn't even exist.
We weren't even planning on going?
No.
No, we were driving through.
We're on our way to a yard sale because they have a ton of those in New Hampshire and Vermont. You probably noticed that on the weekends. Everyone just puts literally toilet seats on their yard and says it's a yard sale. I beg to differ, Vermont. But anyway, and please, no angry letters. I won't read them. So... We come wandering in and we need your team building. What would you have us do?
So first I would say you're in the wrong place because there's no Ipswich, Vermont. But after you... Son of a bitch.
He just shamed you. You just shamed me. And all the other kids are laughing. It does come from the teacher. Loser.
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Chapter 9: What emotional and group exercises does Phil conduct with the team?
Okay, so 17 is angry.
Oh, my God. Piece of cake.
All right, hang on. No scenarios yet. And you've also experienced... Embarrassment. How have you both angry and embarrassed alongside your chill chums? Today?
Oh, well, I mean, yeah, excluding just now and the interview we did before this. Listen, I talked to some, you know, I worked hard to become, you know, a fairly well-known celebrity. And then these two are coasting on my coattails. I'm often sitting here with some of the biggest names in the business, or if you're a bumblebee, the buzzness. Oh, God. Out of control. He's out of control.
I'm angry about that.
I'm embarrassed about this answer. I'm here with these two. I mean, you were my assistant, and somehow you were elevated to the top of the showbiz pile. Yeah. Matt Gourley is in a zither band. He plays some of the coolest, you know, spots in Pasadena. And he haunts the Rose Bowl swap meet. And I've put both of them in rooms with Harrison Ford, you know, some of the biggest stars in the world.
All of the Kardashians have been here at the same time. And, you know, do I sometimes get angry about that and feel embarrassed that they lack the skills that I've spent years in the minds of comedy working? Yes, I do. I feel both of those things. But I'm going to specifically name a time.
I think it was one of our, just pick one, but I think I was angry and embarrassed when you guys, both of you, became intoxicated in one of our Chill Chums shows. One of? Yeah. Well, it's happened several times. Every time. And I, you know, I pride myself on being a professional. And of course I imbibed little, but was still in plenty of, I know my levels, my tolerance very well.
And so I still was in control and I was ashamed. I'm going to add ashamed to embarrassed and angry. I was angry, embarrassed, ashamed, and I felt superior to both of you. I'm adding that one too. I'm also adding. Yeah. Okay. So I just, I guess I won that contest.
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