How Success Happens · 2026-11-01 · 9 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
30 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Forrest Galante, an explorer and wildlife filmmaker, delves into the operational complexity of producing content in some of the planet's most inaccessible locations. He describes recent expeditions to places like Zimbabwe and the Sea of Cortez in Baja Mexico that require 20+ hours of driving, boating, and creative transportation logistics just to reach. Galante explains how his company has grown to include dedicated logistics personnel who manage the intricate choreography of getting him and film crews to remote destinations, though weather, equipment failures, and unforeseen delays regularly derail planned itineraries. He emphasizes that his core field team - guys he's worked with for a decade since starting at age 27 - remains tight-knit, creating a "traveling fraternity" dynamic that makes the chaos manageable. A safety advisor from Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible productions praised this approach as refreshingly fun compared to larger productions. Galante then recounts a humorous cautionary tale from Zimbabwe where he accidentally ingested crocodile sewage during filming, leading to an embarrassing on-camera incident captured during a show opening. He notes that despite eating unusual foods - rat, hippo, five-day-old squid - across the world, it's often the environmental hazards and water sources, not the food itself, that cause digestive problems.
Hosted by Entrepreneur Media. The show scores 57.0/100 on substance across its analysed episodes. See the full show profile.
He drives from his home in Santa Barbara to the location (20+ hours) plus boating, with no planes available. His company employs dedicated logistics personnel to coordinate transportation sequences involving trailers, canoes, boats, and other jerry-rigged solutions.
He accidentally ingested crocodile sewage while filming in the Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe, and woke up with severe stomach issues. During a show opening where he was riding a three-wheeler on camera, he only made it six words into his intro before having to run into the bushes with his pants down - all captured on film.
He maintains a small core field team of guys he's worked with for 10 years since age 27, while building a separate office-based infrastructure team for logistics, finance, and legal support. He acknowledges not being as close to the office staff as his field crew.
Weather, equipment breakdowns, and transportation delays regularly derail planned itineraries. Forrest notes that while schedules look good on paper, real-world complications mean being 12+ hours behind by hour two is common.
He's eaten rat, hippo, and five-day-old squid without major issues, suggesting he either has an iron stomach or is careful about cleanliness. He notes that contaminated water sources and environmental hazards tend to cause problems more than the food itself.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode contains almost no actionable business insights or novel thinking for B2B operators. Nearly all content consists of anecdotes about film production logistics and travel mishaps (crocodile water contamination, diarrhea stories, motorcycle crashes), which have no bearing on business strategy, operations, or decision-making. The only tangential business content - briefly mentioning a core team and office infrastructure - is delivered as casual asides without depth or specificity.
The crew team that I have now are guys that I've pulled with me for the last 10 years from one production entity to another
I've built a in house company to support that field team
The entire episode recycles entertainment-industry platitudes about team chemistry, adaptability to chaos, and the importance of flexibility. There are no contrarian claims, first-principles arguments, or fresh frameworks presented. The discussion of 'a bunch of guys having fun and filming it' and core team retention are unremarkable observations that appear in countless media and entertainment narratives.
this is just a bunch of guys having fun and filming it and somehow making that work as a TV show
when you're a traveling fraternity like that, you can kind of just get away with it
Forrest Galante is a legitimate practitioner - a wildlife filmmaker and TV personality with real operational experience scaling a production company. He has demonstrable expertise in field logistics, team management, and content production at scale. However, the episode does not leverage this caliber effectively; the host fails to dig into his actual business building or operational decision-making.
I started this enterprise, this, this, this path when I was 27 years old
I've got a lot more people that you're kind of responsible for
While the episode contains specific anecdotes (Zambezi Valley, Sea of Cortez, the motorcycle incident, 10-year tenure with core team), these are narrative flourishes rather than evidence for business claims. There are no metrics, financial data, timelines tied to business outcomes, employee counts, revenue figures, or concrete examples that illuminate how decisions actually shaped the business. The logistics discussion stays vague ('20 plus hours of driving plus boating'; 'hour two, and you're already 12 hours behind').
We were in super remote Zimbabwe this year
I just got back from the center of the Sea of Cortez in Baja, Mexico, which was 20 plus hours of driving plus boating
The host asks soft, open-ended questions ('you go to some incredibly remote places', 'how do you kind of deal with all these facets?') and allows long, tangential storytelling without follow-up or redirection. Questions about meals are playful rather than probing. The host rarely challenges the guest, dig into business specifics, or steer the conversation toward substantive operational lessons. The overall dynamic is a friendly chat rather than a structured interview.
Talk to me about, I mean, you go to some incredibly remote places
How do you. How do you kind of deal with all these facets?
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Forrest Galante has eaten rat, hippo, and squid so old it should've filed a complaint. None of it gave him any trouble. Crocodile-infested water did. On this episode, the wildlife filmmaker takes Dan Bova through what it actually takes to get a film crew to the middle of nowhere, trailers, canoes, borrowed boats, and an itinerary that's fiction by hour two. Despite the chaos and the long days, Forrest explains why his core crew has stuck with him since he was 27. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: At cla, we're in your corner and on it. We coach tax strategies and little league first base. We help you adopt AI data tools, and we adopt Rescue's name buddy. We walk your factory floor and jog the local 5k, though sometimes we walk that too. Wherever you're coming from, we're right there with you. Wherever you're going, we'll get you there. CLA CPAs consultants and advisors. Learn more@claconnect.com with you.
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Speaker C: I keep thinking that's going to end and it keeps not ending. So, you know, look, I mean, we're all over the planet. Uh, we, we were in super remote Zimbabwe this year. I, like I said, I just got back from the center of the Sea of Cortez in Baja, Mexico, which was 20 plus hours of driving plus boating to get there. No, no planes to take you. So I literally drove from my home here in Santa Barbara. Um, and, uh, you know, it's just the logistics are a huge part of the. Part of it. And there are people now at my company who just handle the logistics of, okay, how do we get forest and the crew from point A to point B as efficiently as possible? And what you learn is it really doesn't matter what you write on paper, when you're dealing with, you know, weather and airplanes that may or may not show up and boats that may or may not be working or broken down, and it all sounds great every time you look at the people piece of paper that says, this is your itinerary,
Speaker B: right? And
Speaker C: then you get there, and it's. You're literally hour. Hour two, and you're already 12 hours behind somehow, and you're like, yep,
Speaker B: this
Speaker C: isn't right. But, you know, I don't mind it, because that's part of the fun. And in a lot of our shows, we show that, too. Yeah. You know, well, I'll turn the camera on, the camera guy, and I'll be like, hey, what do you think of the fact that you've been sitting in this canoe for six hours and we haven't left yet? You know, and, like,
Speaker B: yeah,
Speaker C: you know, we just. We just do that. And it's just, you know, I think, interestingly, Dan, um, the show I was just doing on Humboldt Squid in the Sea of Cortez had this, like, safety advisor Divemaster with us, uh, as mandated by the network. Not something I typically take with, um, super nice guy. And he said to me, this is a guy who's worked on Tom Cruise's productions, like, big Mission Impossible films, uh, you know, River Monsters and Bear, uh, Grylls and all this stuff. And he said to me, at the end of our last 10 days together, which was just about, you know, 48 hours ago, he said to me, you know what, Forrest? You know what makes this more fun than any other project I've ever been on? I said, what's that, Stephen? And he said, this is just a bunch of guys having fun and filming it and somehow making that work as a TV show. And I was like, that's what it is. It's a bunch of bros cruising around with a shared passion that have diverse skill sets. And. And when you. When you're a traveling fraternity like that, you can kind of just get away with it, you know,
Speaker B: like,
Speaker C: you have each other to lean on.
Speaker B: That. Uh, that's awesome. Well, that. That's a huge compliment, I think, to. To your leadership style as well. Uh, you know, as your business has expanded so much, you've got a lot more people that you're kind of responsible for. How do you. How do you kind of deal with all these facets?
Speaker C: Well, what's interesting is, as every business is different, of course, but as my business has grown to having more and more employees and personnel, that's Really a lot of the behind the scenes people, people in the office, logistics, financial, legal, so on and so forth. The crew team that I have now are guys that I've pulled with me for the last 10 years from one production entity to another, to side projects, to you know, can we film a video on these shoes for Instagram to make enough money to, to get to this next shoot for this month. And now they're all fully full time employees at my company, but they're guys that I've, for lack of a better term, grown up with. You know, I, I started this enterprise, this, this, this path when I was 27 years old and they also are all 20, were all 27 and 28 years old at the time too. And I'm still have the same group of guys with me so we've added a couple members here or there along the journey. Um, but for the most part it's the same core group and it's all of the. So, so that's why it's tolerable when you're dealing with all these delays and everything's crazy and you know, you have to bribe people and you lose money and blah blah, blah. But then the, the, the infrastructure in order for that little core team to travel and do all these things and make it efficient, that's what's really grown and changed and I do manage that. But it's not like you know, I don't know their kids and I wasn't the best man at two of their weddings like I was at two of my camera guys weddings. You know what I mean? Like it's a whole different, I don't even know their wives names, you know what I mean? Like it's a whole different world. So I've built a in house company to support that field team. That's great but they're not my best friends like my field team.
Speaker B: Yeah, got it, got it. Um, so you do a lot of travel and uh, as we record this there's something in the news that is two uh, words. Explosive diarrhea. You can't, you can't look up uh, any website without seeing news about explosive diarrhea. I
Speaker C: didn't
Speaker B: uh. Well, welcome back to America. I'm wondering in your travels any meals in far flung places that have uh, left you feeling not so hot?
Speaker C: You mean this week or. Because I mean I had said, said ailment 72 hours ago. So it's
Speaker B: not.
Speaker C: To me this is not news. I'll give you a good story. Um, this isn't the one that just happened. But we were filming in the Zambezi Valley about two months ago, right? And we'd been there for three or four days, and we were all settled in, and we were getting ready to do this big crocodile thing. And I was like, all right, I want to do the open of the show where I'm on this little, like, three wheeler motorcycle thing with a trailer behind it, and I'm cruising down this dirt road with the savannah and the baobabs of Africa behind me. And, uh, everybody's like, yeah, yeah. I'd been in this filthy, filthy water filled with crocodile poop the day before, and some had splashed in my mouth. And. And this isn't a meal, but I'm telling you the story anyway. And, uh, so I know I've ingested just absolute croc sewage. And, uh, I wake up, my stomach's rumbling, right? And it's like. And I'm like, I'm not feeling good. I'm feeling a little green by the gills. But, you know, sometimes this happens from jet lag and heat and bad food and everything else. And so, anyway, we set up this whole thing, and we're going to do this amazing show open, where the pickup truck drives in front of me, and they hold a camera at eye level, and I'm going to ride this motorcycle thing and. And set up to the camera on the back of the pickup truck in front of me. I'm Forrest Galante, and I've come to the Zambezi Valley to study, blah, blah, blah. And so we're all set. Everybody's in place. And my, uh, cameraman, JQ again, one of my best friends, he goes, all right, Forrest, let's go. So they start rolling with the pickup truck, and I start driving. And now my stomach's going, and I'm. I'm driving. I'm sitting on this three wheeler. I'm m Going over these bumps, and I go, I'm Forest Galante, and I am going to shit my pants and jump, um, off of the motorcycle and run into the bushes and pull my pants down, down. And they've got it all on camera. And it's utter blackmail that I don't know what they're gonna do with at some point in
Speaker B: time,
Speaker C: but it literally. I didn't even make it. Six words. And I had to run off of the motorcycle. Motorcycle crash. And I flew into the bushes at my pants, around my ankles.
Speaker B: Oh, my God.
Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, Dan, when you do what I do, this happens a lot, man.
Speaker B: That is incredible. Wow. Wow. Did not see that coming, but neither did you, I guess. But, uh. All right,
Speaker C: so
Speaker B: croc poop, not a good, uh, not a good appetizer. No,
Speaker C: but you know. Look, Dan, I don't want to over talk you, but we. We've eaten rat, we've eaten, uh, hippo, We've eaten like five day old squid. I mean, we've eaten some gross stuff in different parts of the world and most of it does not really affect me.
Speaker B: You
Speaker C: know, I don't know if I have an iron stomach or I'm just smart about the cleanliness of it. It's those other things that end up getting you sometimes.
Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker A: At cla, we're in your corner and on it. We coach tax strategies and little league first base. We help you adopt AI data tools and we adopt rescue Use name buddy. We walked your factory floor and jogged the local 5k. Though sometimes we walk that too. Wherever you're coming from, we're right there with you. Wherever you're going, we'll get you there. CLA CPAs consultants and advisors. Learn more at claconnect. Com with you.
