Biggest Best Life

Leaving the 9-to-5 for a Life of Adventure: Dave Fatula’s Story

• Lauren Chapnick • Season 1 • Episode 2

Share episode

What happens when you trade your office view for mountain vistas? Dave Fatula found out when he left his 20-year career as a commercial real estate investment partner to create Guinea Fowl Adventure Company, a full-service hiking business based in Boston.

During the pandemic, Dave found himself spending more time hiking and trail running to maintain his sanity. The transformative moment came during a solo hike in pouring rain, when he realized how deeply happy he was despite the conditions. "I was on a ridge, alone and so happy," Dave shares. "I thought this mental health builder, as well as physical health that you gain by hiking – this is necessary and people need to connect with this."

Dave spotted a crucial gap in the outdoor recreation market. While mountaineering guides existed in places like the White Mountains and Adirondacks, no one was providing transportation, gear, and guidance all in one package for city dwellers. His company now removes all barriers to outdoor adventures, making nature accessible to everyone regardless of experience level.

The name "Guinea Fowl" comes from birds Dave observed at a dairy farm that stayed together in groups for safety, knew no boundaries, and called out to help strays find their way back – the perfect metaphor for his adventure company. A flock of guinea fowl is called a "confusion," which became his company's playful tagline: "Join the confusion."

During our conversation on the trails of Middlesex Fells, Dave speaks candidly about the challenges of career transition, particularly adjusting to not being his family's primary income provider. "A lot of your worth is tied up with your ability to produce," he reflects. "You provide for your family in lots of ways, not just economic."

Dave also offers pointed criticism of modern work culture: "Zoom became a digital leash. People who spent their entire professional lives were losing autonomy." He believes society needs a fundamental shift toward honoring personal time and finding meaning beyond professional identities.

When asked about living your "biggest, best life," Dave's answer crystallizes his philosophy: "It's owning your time and doing what you love. Spend your time with people you care for and who care for you, doing the things you enjoy."

Ready to reclaim your time and connect with nature? Visit guineafowladventure.com to learn more about how Dave and his team can guide your next outdoor experience.

Instagram: @guineafowl_adventure_co


Announcer:

Welcome to Biggest, Best Life, the podcast that dares you to dream big, live louder and step fully into the rockstar life you are made for. You're not too late, You're right on time and we're just getting started. Here's your host, Lauren Chapnick.

Lauren Chapnick:

Lauren Chapnick. Hey friend, welcome back, pull up a chair. We've got a special one for you today. But first, if you want a weekly dose of motivation, something that inspires you to be happier, take action. In your life. Text the word best life, that's word to 833-681-6463. And I look forward to seeing you there Today.

Lauren Chapnick:

I want to introduce Dave Fatula. He is the owner of the Guinea Fowl Adventure Company, based out of Boston, and he will get into why he named his company. That it's a great story. And he will get into why he named his company that it's a great story. And Dave is a perfect example of somebody who was in a corporate lifestyle. He was an investment, commercial real estate guy for 20 plus years, you know, doing the whole 50 plus hour a week grind. And when COVID hit, he decided to follow one of his greatest passions, which was the outdoors. He had grown up mountaineering, hiking, trail running, snowboarding and he took this vision that he had one day when he was out taking a hike he'll tell you the story and he brought it to life and he now offers full service hikes and he takes individuals and groups and kids out into nature and provides an incredible service to people in the Boston and surrounding areas and he's here to tell his story areas. And he's here to tell his story and I had the privilege of joining Dave in his office, which is the great outdoors.

Lauren Chapnick:

We took a hike in Stoneham, massachusetts, at a beautiful place called Middlesex Fells and the whole idea behind this podcast. When I sit down with a guest, I want to connect with them in person, one-on-one, in their environment. So, with Dave, we took a hike into the woods and sat down in this beautiful serene area and chatted, and I'd like to share our conversation with you now, dave. Welcome to the show. Dave, thank you so much for joining me in your office outside here. This is great, so welcome, thank you for joining us on Biggest, best Life.

Dave Fatula:

I'm so happy to be talking to you. Yeah, I'm happy to be here, thank you.

Lauren Chapnick:

Yeah, absolutely so. Take us back to life before Guinea Fowl. What were you doing? What was your day-to-day like?

Dave Fatula:

Yeah, life before Guinea Fowl, I was a partner at a private equity real estate investment company. I spent about 20 years in the commercial real estate investment business and ended up there after starting my own business and eventually partnering with somebody else at their business. We did a lot of opportunistic real estate investing, which was a lot of fun, got to travel a lot, worked with a bunch of really great people. I was still actively trail running and actively hiking, but it was all you know, obviously part of my recreational life. My regular career was, you know, my 45, 50 hour a week, what I did. But my day-to-day was basically like most other people going into an office working at a computer or on a phone all day, traveling for work when I had to.

Lauren Chapnick:

And how is life different now?

Dave Fatula:

It's completely different. It's pretty crazy that I actually hike for a living and get to spend my time professionally outdoors. You know, when I started Guinea Fowl, the whole point was to not be behind a desk anymore and to be outdoors and to be helping other people get outdoors, and so I get to do that now. Every day we do a lot of youth programming, which is really getting kids outdoors and off screens.

Lauren Chapnick:

That's great.

Dave Fatula:

They spend the majority of their life on screens now, whether it's laptops for school or their phones for socialization, and just being outdoors without any devices and connecting with other kids and connecting with nature is like a big part of what Guinea Fowl has become. So the fact that I get to do that every day is I couldn't ask for anything else.

Lauren Chapnick:

That's so great. It's so important for just starting young too, so they'll do it when they're grown up.

Dave Fatula:

Yeah.

Lauren Chapnick:

So what happened? Like what made you go from this corporate life to where you are now, like was it something you had been thinking about? Or what happened? Like was there a moment where you said no, I'm going to do, I'm going to make this bold move and do something different?

Dave Fatula:

Yeah, it was a culmination of a lot of things, the first part of it being that during COVID, obviously there wasn't a very robust commercial real estate investment market.

Dave Fatula:

You don't say yeah, it was pretty challenging. So we weren't raising money, we weren't making new deals, and so I spent a lot of time and I, I mean and I should say too, like I've always spent my time outdoors recreationally racing, hiking, mountaineering, snowboarding, so I've always done this stuff. It's kind of why I felt confident being able to go out and start a guiding business. But what happened is we couldn't make investments and during that time I spent an inordinate amount of time outdoors, hiking and trail running. It was kind of what I did to keep sane. I couldn't just sit in a house or be quarantined. It wasn't ever going to work for me, and so I kind of used the outdoors as a way to keep sane. And I remember a specific hike I was on and it was pouring rain and I was on the back of a ridge and I was alone and I was so happy.

Dave Fatula:

You know, it was like one of those things where you'd think, oh, you must have been miserable yeah, I wasn't, I was so happy and I just thought you know this kind of mental health builder, as well as, obviously, physical health, that you gain by hiking and trail running and just being outdoors in general, this is necessary and people need to connect with this.

Dave Fatula:

So I remember that hike specifically because I remember driving home thinking like more people need to be aware that they can do this and more people need the mental and physical health benefits of being outdoors and connected with nature. And no one's doing it like in the city of boston. No one's doing it like if you go up to the white mountains or if you go to the adirondacks or if you go to other mountainous regions. There are mountaineering guides, there are hiking guides, but you have to get there, you have to know who they are, you have to call them, you have to set up an appointment, you have to do all the things and most of them can provide gear if you need it for an extra fee, but they're not. No one's providing transportation and it just came to me like nobody's doing this thing and there's a huge demand for it. There's a huge demand for getting outdoors, being in nature and creating a full service business that literally takes all of the obstacles out of your way, so you can just go do it.

Lauren Chapnick:

That is great. I think people do need that, and your vision has come to life, and that's incredible. So how did you? How did you do it? How did this even work? Did you have to quit your job? Yeah, what were your obstacles? Did you have support from people around you?

Dave Fatula:

Yeah, I had amazing support from my wife first. That's huge, yeah, so she kind of I mean, I won't say she got the ball rolling, but she kind of did, because the biggest issue that I had with starting the business was I wasn't sure how it could be profitable.

Lauren Chapnick:

Yeah.

Dave Fatula:

You know, something great about hiking is that you can go out and do it by yourself and it's free, yes, so how do you then? You know, how do you showcase value?

Lauren Chapnick:

They're paying for you and your knowledge.

Dave Fatula:

Yeah, and that was the thing I actually had another person say to me wait a minute so you can take me where I want to go, you can give me all the gear I need, you can guide me safely and you can bring me back home, and he was like I'd pay a lot for that.

Lauren Chapnick:

Yeah.

Dave Fatula:

So I was like, okay, well, wait, now there's a value proposition, right, as opposed to just being like, oh, I'm going to grab a backpack and head out. So then I started doing all the real research, like how to get you know permits to be a guide in the White Mountains, what kind of insurance did I need? How do I find the vehicles, especially during COVID, which was next to impossible? You know, what training should I have that I didn't already have? Like I became a wilderness first responder, didn't already have. Like I became a wilderness first responder. I did a lot of the upfront leg work of making sure that what I offered people was going to be a high quality product and a high quality service before actually launching into the grabbing people and taking them on hikes. So it was about a year of research, getting my insurances, getting my permits, getting my certifications and then feeling really confident. I already knew the trails, I already knew where to go, how to hike, how to help other people hike.

Dave Fatula:

It was more about kind of checking all those other boxes that would make clients comfortable knowing like hey, this guy isn't just somebody who decided to buy a van and go hiking Right Like a legitimate business. But it was that first year from leaving the real estate business that I was a partner in and doing all that work until we actually had our first hike and that was kind of the you know the kickoff.

Lauren Chapnick:

Was it scary, Like did you have things that you were scared about, like health insurance or job security, things like that?

Dave Fatula:

Candidly, the hardest thing to get used to was not bringing in revenue to my family. A lot of your worth is tied up with you know your ability to produce.

Lauren Chapnick:

Yes, who am I if I don't provide for my family?

Dave Fatula:

And you know, one of the things I found out I guess realized I shouldn't have had to realize it but you provide for your family in lots of ways, not just economic and you know. But there's a very strong societal cultural belief that like you're worth how much you're bringing in monetarily. So it did. It did take me a while, like I was kind of like I'm not doing anything today, I'm not making any money today, like what is going on? And there was a bit of a fear there that like well, when am I going to actually make money? When am I going to be able to like provide right?

Dave Fatula:

But it was more of like a conscientious shift. I had to shift away from thinking like oh, you're not adding any value because you're not bringing in a paycheck, like I add value in tons of other ways. So that was sort of a thing I had to get used to. And it's funny because since I've started getting found that a lot of people ask me like hey, you, you left the corporate world and did this thing, and like I'm thinking about doing the same thing, and then a lot of people say they have that same. That's like maybe it's not a fear, but it's just a hesitation, like well, how? Like cause you? You see yourself in a certain way right, and then all of a sudden, that big chunk of that value you're adding just yeah, it's a mindset shift.

Lauren Chapnick:

So once you decided to do it, did you like waver back and forth or were you set?

Dave Fatula:

I was pretty set. It was a risk, but I never worried that I couldn't just go back to doing what I did if it didn't work out. So it wasn't one of those like the kids aren't going to eat, the mortgage isn't going to get paid. It was like, well, if it doesn't work, worst case scenario, you go back to that thing you used to do. But no, I didn't ever have any trepidations about like wavering whether I wanted to do it or not.

Dave Fatula:

And I remember specifically the first hike we ever did. I was up on a ridge with a bunch of people and it's this cool hike. It's called the Welch-Dickey hike. It's a 4.4-mile loop in the White Mountains and you summit two mountains and then you're on a ridgeline the rest of the way back, so you can like see everywhere you've come from and you're above treeline and it's this beautiful hike and I had all these people up and I always get to this one point right before you summit the second mountain where you turn around and you see back to the first peak. And so everyone turned around. They were like whoa, and I texted my wife at that moment and I was like I know I'm doing the right thing.

Lauren Chapnick:

I love that story. So what would you say to somebody who's feeling stuck, who's feeling like the people that come up to you and say I'm feeling stuck in this corporate role, I want to do something different? What would you say to them?

Dave Fatula:

I know so many people who are in careers or jobs that they just don't like and they're miserable every day, but they're doing it because they feel this obligation, whether it's monetary, whether it's to their profession, profession and you know, life's too short. Like you're not think about all you're losing in other aspects of your life if, every day, you spend most of your waking hours in a place where you're miserable, like. So, if you're feeling that way and you're feeling stuck and you feel like you need to change, like honor that, honor that feeling and don't push it down and start doing some research. Like start figuring to change. Like honor that, honor that feeling and don't push it down and start doing some research. Like start figuring it out.

Dave Fatula:

Like, well, what do I think I need to do to make these changes? Like, what direction do I want to go? Like, like, like I said, I started looking at certifications, permits, insurances, vehicles, like those are all things I could do without any risk, and that's all risk-free research, and then you start spending incremental dollars on getting those things, so that, okay, hey, in the back of my mind, if it works, that I can do this new thing, I've started taking these small steps and that's not going to harm your career, it's not going to harm anything else in your life. It's actually going to probably make you feel a lot better because you're doing something new you haven't done in a while and that's going like reinvigorate a spark that maybe you've been missing.

Lauren Chapnick:

Yeah, I love that. I think a lot of people do stay stuck in a place because they do feel obligated and they stay miserable. Had you thought about doing this before, or do you think it came to you at the perfect time during COVID, when things were changing in your career?

Dave Fatula:

It all sort of aligned. It did come to me at the perfect time. But, yeah, it all came together Like I'm telling you that hike that one day. I was just like more people need exposure to this. And then you know, it's probably been in the news a lot, or at least it was at the time.

Dave Fatula:

Outdoor recreation exploded during COVID Because nobody wanted to sit in their houses or sit in their apartments or be quarantined during COVID. Because nobody wanted to sit in their houses or sit in their apartments or be quarantined. So what they do? They got outside and they started going. So it was great to see more people out there.

Dave Fatula:

But I also saw more people out there unprepared or not sure what they were doing or not carrying the right gear or being on a hike that was way out of their league. And I thought, you know it's great that the mountains and the trail systems are getting more use and that people are doing this for themselves, but there's got to be a way to give them some guidance and give them some help so that they do it responsibly and do it safely. So that thought, along with the idea of everybody should have the mental and mental and physical health benefits, plus you know the the career thing where I was going to leave my private equity firm. Plus it was COVID and's like oh my God, how do I do something? It all just came together in a perfect storm. I was motivated to try something new, I was motivated to be outdoors, I was motivated to help other people get outdoors and it all just came together.

Lauren Chapnick:

Yeah, I love that. Tell, tell me, tell us a little bit more about guinea fowl specifically. How did you come up with the name? What's the significance?

Dave Fatula:

that was also an active dairy farm. They were a chocolatier and they kept guineafowl on the grounds, because guineafowl eat ticks and eat bugs and they roam in these packs and they're loud, they're vocal, they talk all day and you hear them long enough and it actually sounds like they're saying the pack, the pack, the pack, the pack. And so these birds are just running around this beautiful like home-built hacienda, yelling the pack all day, and my friends and I are just there and we're looking at them and I'm just thinking you know, you've heard the term before like hashtag squad goals, yeah, stuff like that. That's just I was like there's something here like this is like hashtag squad goals. I'm gonna have to figure out a like. Somehow I'm going to figure out a way to use guinea fowl and whatever I do next, like it was always part of it.

Dave Fatula:

And then I went home and I researched them and they can fly and they can run long distances. They know no boundaries and they stay together in small groups for safety and if one strays from the group, one of the members of the group will let out this shrill cry which is super loud Anybody who's ever seen Guinea fowl will know it and it alerts the stray how to get back to their group. So I was like this is the absolute epitome of small group activity. Right, you can go further, you know no boundaries, you're together for safety, and then there's a social aspect to it as well. And so I was like this is it? This is Guinea Fowl Adventure Company, and one of the funniest things about it is do you know what a flock of guinea fowl is called?

Lauren Chapnick:

A confusion.

Dave Fatula:

Yes, you're like the only person who knew that.

Lauren Chapnick:

I read your website, oh, okay.

Dave Fatula:

Nobody ever knows that. So our tagline is join the confusion, and my daughter made that up. I love it. And it's on the back of a T-shirt and my daughter's like I made that up.

Lauren Chapnick:

Yes, so yeah, that's where Guinea Fowl came from. Yeah, it's such a great name and it has such significant meaning. I love it.

Dave Fatula:

I mean it's perfect, it is. It's quirky, but we're also trying to like we don't take it ourselves too seriously, right, like we're out in nature, exploring, having fun, and I want that to be the mood. I want everybody to know. Like you're here to enjoy yourself and to have fun, and we're trying to remove all those obstacles that make you stressed out. So, like if we can embody a little bit of fun in that too, like that's what we want to do yeah, I love it.

Lauren Chapnick:

I mean, you're providing such an amazing service to people. You're really changing people's lives. Is what you're doing? You're taking somebody who maybe has never been on a hike before and introducing them to something and being in nature. You know it's meditative, it's so healthy, it's. It's such a great thing that you're doing. So what does the future look like for your company, for you?

Dave Fatula:

Yeah, it's funny, I started the business because I wanted to be outdoors, so I really don't ever want to get back to a place where I'm again behind a desk business development dispatching guides, and never getting outside myself. So I intend to always be a guide in the company myself. So I intend to always be a guide in the company. But as we grow I need. I've got eight part-time guides that work for me, so as we grow I'll continue to hire more guides who will do that work. But part of my work is always going to make sure that I'm getting outside and still guiding, so that I'm not losing the whole reason why I did this in the first place.

Lauren Chapnick:

Yeah, that's great, and you offer multi-day trips.

Dave Fatula:

We do. We do day hikes and multi-day trips. We actually I've got a bunch of wonderful female guides and we just actually one of my guides just got back from a female-only presidential traverse, which was awesome. But yeah, we offer everything from a hike in your backyard, like here in the Fells, where we are, which is 10 minutes outside of Boston. We do half day and full day hikes here and we do everything from multi-day traverses up in the whites.

Lauren Chapnick:

That's great. Is there anything else that we didn't cover that you wanted to share discuss?

Dave Fatula:

discuss. You know, I sort of take issue with where we are societally from, like a work-life balance standard. I think that the 9-to-5 workday for most Americans is gone. Everybody's working longer, doing more and I feel like I mean it seems disproportionate to me and I think that the whole work life balance tagline is kind of a bunch of crap, because I don't think most businesses actually care at all and I really I mean again the perfect storm of covid happening when I did all this was also right in the time when Zoom became a thing, right, and I saw Zoom and I can say that I personally didn't get impacted by it that much, which is great.

Lauren Chapnick:

Yeah.

Dave Fatula:

But you know, I felt like Zoom was a digital leash Right, and I felt like people who spent their entire professional lives were losing autonomy because bosses wanted to make sure that you were at your computer and because they had no way of seeing that, because you were no longer in an office, they tied you to a Zoom meeting every half hour just to make sure that you were doing what you're doing, because they didn't trust you enough to actually have autonomy and get your job done. And then you fast forward, like the year and a half that we got through COVID, and businesses were like, oh my God, people are actually more efficient and do greater work when they have more flexibility and when we give them autonomy. And then the idea of like, well, now everyone has to come back to the office. And it was like, well, you can't have it both ways, right, you can't be tied to a Zoom leash and be tied to the office and be tied to your cell phone and be tied to your laptop and be expected to return work calls seven days a week.

Dave Fatula:

Like I feel like our society as a whole in that way has gone way overboard, and that was part of why I did what I did too, from a transition perspective, because a healthy work-life balance is actually a real thing that people should focus on and you should be okay if your job says you're done at five, walking out of the office at five.

Dave Fatula:

You should be okay if you're supposed to work four shifts a week and you didn't pick up that fifth one. Like there's really a lot culturally that we've done to like harm our ability to like actually do the things we want to do versus just define ourselves by our work role, and I just wanted to share that because I think that we need to change that. I think, structurally as a society, we need to realize that people's own personal time off of a device in nature or maybe that's not how you like to spend your time, maybe it's playing basketball, maybe it's doing something with your kids that has nothing to do with nature, like it's not for me to say, but just decoupling with work and kind of culling back some of those hours that you've given away I just think it's a big thing societally. I'd really love to figure out how to help change.

Lauren Chapnick:

Yeah.

Dave Fatula:

And I think, just perspective on it and thinking about it and like saying it out loud, yeah, hopefully other people feel the same way and start thinking like oh, yeah, like what can I do to kind of call back some of that time that you know, maybe even subconsciously I've been giving to my, my job that I didn't even realize I was doing.

Lauren Chapnick:

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think self-care is something that's thrown around a lot and it's kind of like a frou-frou word. I think like, oh, it doesn't mean like take a bubble bath and like go get a massage, it means own your time, that's yours.

Dave Fatula:

Yes.

Lauren Chapnick:

So, and I think you just stated it so clearly and so eloquently and well, and you're exemplifying it with what you're doing, so I think it's contagious.

Dave Fatula:

Yeah, I fully agree with you. I mean, again, I'm super lucky to have the support structures that I have that allow me to do this, and so, you know, someone could be listening and be like, oh yeah, it's super easy for you, Right? But again, that's also timing, right. Like I almost like cultivated that ability from spending like 20 years in a professional real estate investment career. You know, obviously, like you know, by luck or whatever you want to call it having a wife who's also really successful in her career and is able to support the household while I was starting this business up. Like all that, yes, it all plays a role, like it all comes into play, like not everybody's in that position. Right back to the like timing part of that. So, yeah, I don't want to like be jumping down throats and saying, well, everybody should leave their job and go hike in nature, but but there is, there's a little.

Dave Fatula:

There's little things that everybody can do right, everybody can take back some of their own time and and start kind of putting more of a focus on those things they love outside. And hey, like, look, a lot of people love what they do. And now it's like it would almost be like hypocritical of me because now I started a business literally to do what I love. So if I'm focusing all my time on my business now, am I spending too much time on my business?

Dave Fatula:

yeah well, here I am outdoors, right um. So again, I don't mean it to be preachy or anything like that, but I really do. I mean recreation, you know, whatever you're passionate for outside of your job, like, take some of it back and and do that and start to like really honor yourself yeah.

Lauren Chapnick:

So um two questions. I ask everybody what do you think it means to live your biggest, best life?

Dave Fatula:

Oh wow, I think we talked about it. I think it's owning your time and doing what you love. You're not here. I mean again, it's perspective, I guess. Maybe you are here to make as much money as possible. Maybe that's what you love, so great, go do that.

Dave Fatula:

If that's your thing, go do it. But not all of us are here to make as much money as we want and have that be our goal in life. Your goal in life is to do what you love and use your time. Spend your time with people you care for and who care for you, and doing the things you enjoy. Living your biggest, best life is like knowing that you do as much of the things you love with the people you care about as often as you can.

Lauren Chapnick:

Great. Complete this sentence.

Dave Fatula:

Happiness is. What would he say to that? Happiness is good family, good friends, friends, good food and the great outdoors dave, thank you so much.

Lauren Chapnick:

That was so much fun to get out there with you. Take a hike and sit down and hear your inspiring story. Thank you for sharing it with us. Guineafowledventurecom is where you can find Dave and his team. I will link that in the description of the show, as well as his social media links. And if you live in the greater Boston area, get out there with Guinea Fowl and take a hike and get outdoors. If not, send Dave an email and tell him how much you enjoyed listening to his story and, if you like what we're doing here, share this episode with a friend. Give us a quick rating and review. It helps us so much to get the show out there and into the hands of people who need to hear it. Until next time, make it an awesome day and we'll see you the next time. Bye-bye next time. Make it an awesome day and we'll see you the next time.

Announcer:

Bye-bye. Thanks for tuning in to Biggest Best Life. If today lit a fire in you, follow, review and share it with someone who needs the spark. And remember to text BESTLIFE one word to 833-681-6463 to get Lauren's weekly dose of motivation straight to your phone. Now go out there, live boldly, love wildly and never settle for less than your biggest best life.