We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sean Glenn. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sean below.

Sean , appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Type3Life provides Wilderness Trips for Men that Build Community, Challenge Limits, & Inspire Change. The idea of Type3Life was first formed in the mind of my partner, Paul Ronto. This is something that he had been thinking about for several years.

We first discussed the idea on a multi-week rafting trip down the Grand Canyon…which is a perfect place for an adventure travel company to find life. Both Paul and I have experienced adversity in our lives. most notably, Paul lost his father as a young man and I am an Iraq war veteran. Although each of our past experiences were very different, we found a common bond through shared adversity in the wilderness. For many years, we have tackled challenging outdoor adventures with close friends. The modalities of these journeys have varied; backpacking, hunting, skiing, motorcycle trips, multi-day rafting, and some mountaineering. What they have all had common was that they challenged us individually and as a group. As we floated down the Grand Canyon in the spring of 2021, we coalesced around this concept that shared adversity and connection to nature has been significantly healing for both of us. And with that, the thesis of Type3Life was born: accomplishing hard things in the natural world builds personal resilience and strong community.

Over the next several months, we refined our thesis into our core objective: The objective of Type3Life is to create an experiential adventure-based product for men seeking motivation, leadership skills, community, confidence, and a way to get past what’s holding them back.

“Why only men?” That has been a common question for us. First of all, men NEED this! Our personal experiences and observations of other men show us that the responsibilities of a man’s life tend to crowd out their capacity for deep connection with other men or their ability to self-start a wilderness adventure. Men tend to go “lone wolf” and internalize their struggles and dreams. As we canvassed the landscape of like-minded companies, we found a lot of offerings for kids, women, veterans, and other niche communities. Ironically, it appears that the every-day man is actually an underserved population for wilderness adventure and growth products. With that in mind, we set out to create an experience tailored for men, with their needs and considerations at the forefront of what we do and how we do it.

Now, in our third year of operation, we have proven our thesis and we have seen the impact that Type3Life experiences can have on men. to say that it’s been fulfilling would be a gross understatement.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Sean Glenn and I am a Colorado native. I grew up with amazing wilderness access that fostered a deep sense of appreciation for the outdoors. I earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering Colorado State University where I definitely spent more time camping in the summer and snowboarding in the winter than I did studying!

After school, I went on to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps as a logistics and artillery officer. I had the fortune of having incredible mentors that helped guide me as I took on more significant leadership assignments. I deployed to Iraq in 2005 and again in 2006 during combat operations in Al Anbar Province. I left active duty in 2007 but remained in the active reserves until 2011.

When I left active duty in 2007, I began working for a large aerospace and defense contractor in the Denver area and in 2008, my wife and I had our daughter, Amelie. The responsibilities of a young family, and my relentless drive to be “successful” precipitated an unhealthy work ethic, an atrophy of my friendships, and an abandonment of my sense of adventure. I also began to see that my time in the Marine Corps was not absent of trauma or tragedy and I had never been trained to manage my experiences. in 2012, I found myself divorced and a single father to a beautiful 5 year old girl. This period of my life was harder than anything I had been through before. I knew something had to change.

by 2013, I had embarked on an incredible journey of self-exploration and growth. First of all, I challenged myself to be the best father I could be…this challenge will remain in place for the rest of my life. Second, I sought out a coach who helped me understand myself better than I had ever thought possible. I learned ways to overcome my patterns and tendencies and replace those with intentional behaviors. Finally, I set out to rebuild my friendships and build a community with the men in my life because I had learned that trying to go it alone was not a successful strategy for me. I couldn’t wait for other people to plan experiences and hope I would be invited any longer…I had to create my own community!

For the next decade, I instigated and volunteered to join all manner of challenging things. I once heard someone define satisfaction as “the joy of achieving something difficult” and I’ve been a satisfaction seeker ever since. I planned or participated in challenging backpacking trips, a ton of skiing and snowboarding including helicopter drops in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, tough western big game hunts, and multi-day self-supported dirt bike trips riding hundreds of miles in unfamiliar places. As time went on, my ability to plan and execute these adventures safely and effectively became mature. During this time, I recognized the value of the coaching I had received su much that I had sought out coaching training of my own and had started to form a vision of one day being a coach and using my experiences to serve others. Even better, I fell in love again and in 2018 married my wife, Lainie, in a jungle Villa on Mexico’s West Coast with 50 of our closest friends.

So, in 2021, as Paul described his vision for Type3Life on a raft floating down the Colorado River surrounded by the desert walls of the Grand Canyon, I was instantly in! What he described was the journey that I had walked for the last decade. We got to work later that year and launched Type3Life in 2022.

Since we started, we have run backpacking and mountain biking men’s trips in Utah, Colorado, and Alaska each with 6-12 men. Our experiences blend unique excursions in special places, physically challenging activities, and intentional moments of exploration and connection. We have found that this trip design is exceptionally effective at building community. By getting men out of their daily routines and placing them in an environment with little or no connectivity men are given the ability and permission to be truly present to themselves, their surroundings, and the men they are with. We design our trips to be challenging so that teamwork is required and men can rapidly build trust with one another. Finally, we insert intentional moments of reflection and conversation to give each participant the opportunity to let their guard down and connect with the group on a deeper level. Not to be confused with wilderness therapy, Type3Life simply creates an inspiring space in inspiring places for men to have real experiences together.

What we routinely see as a result of Type3Life experiences is that our men have a realization that they are more capable than they thought before the trip and when they get back to their everyday routines they have a community of men that they trust to have their backs and support them.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

Our core objective is community. Therefore, it’s important for us to maintain engagement with the men who participate in our trips. We use groups on WhatsApp to keep men engaged in the community after they return from our trips. To keep men engaged in the group, we post discussion topics, podcasts, articles, etc. each week to foster an ongoing dialogue and connection. By staying current and present in our participant’s lives, they are more likely to serve as our ambassadors as we begin new recruiting cycles for upcoming adventure trips.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to unlearn as we started Type3Life was to shift my mindset on structure. With my military and corporate background I’ve been conditioned to believe that a process is necessary for everything and documentation is critical. I spent a lot of time and energy trying to put structure in place on a startup that is inherently fluid and dynamic. I have had to learn to get more comfortable operating in an undefined environment. One day we may need greater process and documentation, but that day is not today.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.type3life.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/type3life/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/type3life
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/76566764/admin/feed/posts/