Larger Than Life People

I consider myself to be a fairly tough guy. However, next to Vibeke Andrea Sefland I'd probably resemble a Chihuahua next to an untamed African Lion.

And yes, before you ask, that's Vibeke at Mount Everest. Vibeke has done 7 of the 8 highest peaks on Earth, in addition to all the highest peaks in Antarctica, South America, and even Afghanistan - The latter where she had to maneuver mine fields and hide from the Taliban to climb 7,500 meters above sea level.

I guess the Taliban frowns upon chicks climbing Mount Everest without a Burka ... 🤪

In her "spare time" she's opened half a dozen of orphanages in Nepal after the earth quake to help children in need, and she's rescuing dogs in and around the Himalayas to find homes in Europe and North America.

The above is of course just her "hobbies", since professionally she's a marine corps teacher, helping the toughest guys in Norway how to survive at 24,000 feet above the sea level, with little to no oxygen, in minus 50 degrees Celcius, resting her arms during free climbing some 3,000 feet vertical wall, hanging from her left pinkie, while simultaneously doing pushups 😂

OK, admittedly the part about her pinkie was made up for dramatic effect - But everything else is true - And more!

Some people

Today I met Vibeke randomly only a plane, and as we started talking, I quickly realised this wasn't "your average chick". When she started showing me photos from her expeditions in the Himalayas I became so baffled I simply had to ask her if I could take a selfie. It was like one of these moments where you felt like you had to have a selfie to make sure you weren't dreaming or making the whole thing up later.

My weakness

I have a weakness; I talk to strangers. For most others this is "a weird thing to do", but golly gosh it allows me to meet interesting people every now and then. And the stories some people have to tell, wow! Such as the story when Vibeke was climbing some 24,000 feet tall peak in the Himalayas, with her (!!) 84 year old friend, and her friend broke his leg, and told Vibeke to finish the peak, and pick him up on her way down! 😂

True story! Seriously, there's no way in hell I could have made up this shit even if I tried!

Anyway, so I had the most incredible entertainment you can imagine on what would any other day be considered a boring flight from Oslo to Evenes.

Story telling

I told Vibeke what I did, which of course isn't 0.1% as interesting as an average Tuesday in Vibeke's life. However, as I did, she told me she needs sponsors, and then she told me the story about Black Yak, one of her sponsors, and how the name originated from its founder having survived some climb in the Himalayas, because of following a black Yak down the mountain and such surviving the death zone.

Why am I telling you this? Because I want to help Vibeke with something she needs, in gratitude for her sharing from her life with some random dude sitting next to her on an airplane to Narvik, and I want to prove a point. And the point is as follows ...

All great marketing is story telling, and you can get to tell the better story if you wish, with a little bit of help from Vibeke

Your logo on K2?

You see Vibeke is looking for a sponsor. She needs roughly $30,000 to do K2, which is the last peak on her bucket list before she's done like everything above 8,000 meters in the world (or something). And you can have Vibeke tell the next guy about (insert your company here) the next time she meet some random dude on an airplane, and he asks her about her life, and have your company logo on pictures taken from the summit of K2, next to the toughest chick alive, capable of making even Arnold Schwarzenegger question his masculinity.

That way you can get to write your company into the history books, while helping Vibeke become even tougher than she already is, and get some nice footage of your company's logo from one of the tallest peaks on earth, with one of the toughest girls to ever having walked it.

I've got no other reasons to tell you this than simply because I love the fact that there are people like Vibeke in this world, and to pay her back for sharing her incredible stories with me, making my flight super interesting, instead of incredibly boring. So if you want to become an official sponsor of what might possibly be the toughest girl alive, head on over to Vibeke's website and contact her such that she can do the last peak on earth she still haven't done (yet!)

And if you made it this far into my article about Vibeke, please pinch my arm, because meeting girls like Vibeke is simply so surreal, it's almost difficult to believe it actually happened. But it actually did, and I've got a selfie to prove it. Below is Vibeke at the top of Mount Everest. I can't make it up there, but I am incredibly grateful for girls like Vibeke making it up there, and I'd love to do my part to help her reach whatever peaks she wants to climb, simply because it makes life more interesting, and because we "owe it to the Taliban" ... 😉

Have a nice trip girl 😊