Jennifer: 0:24

Welcome to another episode of Behind the Dreamers. I'm your host, jennifer Loading, and we are talking to the achievers, the creators, the magic makers and the dreamers. These are our friends, these are your friends and they are living the extraordinary Well. My guest today, I want to say, is a lifelong adventure. He's done so many neat things. He's been a filmmaker and educator. He's worn many hats white instructor, scoop instructor trainer, mentor to numerous emerging film directors and instructor for countless film workshops. He's an accomplished cyclist and has a record. He's a record holder and plans to attempt another world record here in 2025 as a master athlete. So I'm super excited to chat with him. I think you guys are going to be in for an awesome treat today. But before I bring him on, I do need to do a quick shout out to our sponsor.

Jennifer: 1:09

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Jennifer: 1:49

So, with that said, we got to get our guests on Super excited about this, so I just lost my paper, jeff. All right. So Jeff, second door, the doer of many things, owns and operates UTD scuba diving, specializing in comprehensive training and certification. With the lifetime of coaching, mentoring and teaching adults, he brings a unique coaching paradigm to scuba diving. For Jeff, it's not just about getting certified, it's about becoming better, and so we're excited to get him on here. I know he's got a big thing coming up. He's doing some cool things in the community and so, jeff, welcome to behind the dreamers. I'm so excited to have you here today.

Jeff: 2:20

Yeah, great Jennifer, so happy to be here.

Jennifer: 2:23

So where do we start? Oh my gosh, you got so many things going on. You've got like you're a cyclist. You've done all these cool things. You've got this scuba diving certification that you're doing, so tell us what you're working on right now. I tell us a little bit about the scuba diving and what you're working on at this present moment.

Jeff: 2:37

So the scuba diving thing is a company I own. I've had it since 2008. It's unified team diving and we are a global scuba certification and training agency. So that's a core business for me and that's just what I do and you know my particular role. I run it and I run around the world training instructors and instructor trainers. So that's it's a really super fun, crazy fun really fun, fun game. You know I mean. This is the epitome of do what you love and the money will follow. It's like this is super fun.

Jennifer: 3:09

Yeah, and you've traveled quite extensively with the scuba diving. Did I read that correctly? Yeah, yeah, pretty much everywhere, yeah, and we just you're gonna laugh at me Like I have very little knowledge of scuba diving. I've had friends that have done it. I did this like one like scuba diving course in a swimming pool, like we were like training just to use, like the scuba diving equipment. You just got to start somewhere right.

Jennifer: 3:31

So I'm sure you get people like me who come in and like they're like you know, brand new learning this thing, and then you're actually certifying these people now so they can act. Are they training or actually just being certified in scuba diving?

Jeff: 3:42

Well, it's interesting you presented that way, because training and certification are different, and it's the thing that has really set us apart from the other 20 or 30 or 40 training agencies that you know we're much more focused on training than just cranking out a certification, and so that kind of takes the piece of scuba and cycling and puts it all together.

Ad: 4:06

Yeah.

Jeff: 4:07

So it's kind of an interesting. I'll see if I can piece this up for you quickly and then we can go into a little more more in the weeds.

Jennifer: 4:13

You're fine, you're, you're, absolutely fine.

Jeff: 4:15

So the. So I'm a master's athlete, right, I race a bike at a pretty high level for an almost 70 year old guy. So it's in my life as an athlete. I have been coached for a very long time. The model for many of us as endurance athletes and coaching is that I have a coach. I'm in San Diego, he lives in Boulder, but we have this online tool and every week he sets up a calendar for me of workouts on the bike and the gym and the, the, the, the whole thing, and I just do them.

Jeff: 4:51

And I know that if I do this process consistently with structure, then the outcome, my outcome, becomes a little bit inevitable. Right, this is the thing about process oriented training, right, that if you do the process, the outcome generally is inevitable. So in scuba, in the classic scuba thing is take a class and get a certification card, and that card has always been the holy grail for people, and we just decided to try to turn that absolutely on its head. And so now you know we're very well. Since day one, we're very focused on the idea that you pay for training but you earn certification. So the students who come into unified team diving come in with an expectation that they're going to get training and if they reach a particular bar they're going to get certification. If not, we create a path to completion for them that gets them to that goal. But we're very process oriented. It's so much about the process. So what we did was we took those two things and my training director in unified team diving is a triathlete, so you know we kind of run parallel lives. He's about a lot younger than I am but, but doing the same kind of thing, he's still a master's athlete. We took the coaching model that we use in endurance athletics and we applied it to scuba diving and no one's ever done this before and it's so cool.

Jeff: 6:22

So the students who come in to the coaching program at unified team diving come in and we call them clients, even though they're students, and they have a coach who is an instructor, but we call a coach, so there's some semantics in here to make it a little more friendly. So the client has a coach and the coach has this calendar app, which is the exact same calendar I use on my bike with my coach, and the coach sets up a week of workouts in scuba for the client, for the student, and this becomes our training process for as long as it takes, and we have a thousand memes about this, but one of them is that we're slowing the training down from two weekends or four days to maybe six months or a year. We've had people on this program for two, three years, and the magic thing about coaching and I think this is true in coaching everywhere business, sports, now Scuba is that coaching makes you better. Right, I could do an online training program on the bike and I would probably get faster, but I wouldn't get better. My cycling coach makes me better, and this is the beauty of what we do in Scuba is that we took this coaching program and we said we're not gonna just make you certified, we're gonna make you better, and then we're gonna show you how to apply that betterness to the rest of your life.

Jeff: 7:56

Oh, I get it, so it's just not Scuba, yeah, right.

Jennifer: 8:01

Yeah that's good, and I'm listening to you and I think that you know, I think you're right, I think that's like that in every way and I had some words. I wanted to kind of wrap around that because I think it's when you're focusing on the person's coming in and they're learning this. It's sort of like when I went through my I was in Mary Kay and leadership for 22 years I had a lot of hands-on experience. You don't get a manual on how to build teams, right. You learn how to build teams through building teams, right.

Jennifer: 8:27

But when I went through, when I was kind of merging out of that and going into my own practice, I went and got a life coaching certification and it was sort of the same thing Like when I went into it. I went into it to get the coaching experience. It wasn't to be certified in the coaching, it was to go through and learn how to be a better leader. And we actually had to go through. You know, when I started going through that, I thought you know what I'm gonna do this coaching program, but I don't even care about the certification. That's not why I did it. It wasn't to go get the. You can go online and do a coaching certification. You're right, you can just go get one Doesn't make you a better coach or a better leader, right?

Jennifer: 8:58

Anybody can say you know I'm these things without having had the experience. But I went into it and I went in because I wanted to be a better leader, and so I took the course without really having any intention of using it for anything other than to be more effective, communicating with the team that I was working with, and so I think the approach is different. When you come in, you know, with that standpoint of how am I working to be better? Right, then you, those are kind of like the icings on the cake, right, like you get those in the after. Yes, you can go for the certification, but it's really about being a better, whatever it is, in your end, knowing your skill, knowing your craft, knowing how to do it well and being effective, so that, hey, you can also show it and apply it right.

Jennifer: 9:37

And so you see a lot of really good things there, and I think the athleticism is so good in this.

Jeff: 9:41

Was that a good experience for you? Was that a process that led to an outcome without worrying about a certification right.

Jennifer: 9:49

Yeah, yeah, well, in many ways, yes, and I think I've approached everything from that angle. I feel like I do that with everything I do. I, yeah, I set goals for things, but I really, even when I work with my clients, I'm really about I'm not about showing my client here's what I need you to do. I'm about how do I make the client make transformation right, like, how do I get them to make the transformation that they need so it sticks and they can use it in all areas of their lives?

Jennifer: 10:11

It doesn't just apply in what they're doing, because all these principles that we learn like you kind of just said that, right, you took your cycling and you took the things that you learned from that and you moved it into this other practice that you do, right, because the principles are kind of this are universal, right, we just have them a little bit differently within the work, but we learn these skillsets and these things, whatever that is, whether it's, you know, discipline or all of these things that we can apply them in these other areas. So for me, yeah, it's it's when you were saying all this. I can absolutely resonate with all of it, because nothing I've ever done has been about hey, how do we get a certification? It's been. How do we make something effectively where somebody becomes better at what they're doing with it? You know, hopefully it's better being a better human being, jeff.

Jeff: 10:54

That's what my goal is. That's my goal. Well, you know, you said something really interesting to me in that last moment, which is about learning it by yourself, learning it on your own. And you know education. You know the classic definition is creating a change in behavior in your students. But if you don't add retention to that change, then what's? There's no point, right, if you change behavior and they can do that in your class and then they forget it the next day, it doesn't matter. So what we're doing in the education program and in UDD and with the coaching program is working on behavior change with retention, and that is the piece of this that is so interesting. So in the coaching program in Scuba, none of the coaches live in the same town as their clients for the most part, because the coaches are everywhere. We're all over the world, the students are all over the world and we just put them together using Zoom and phone and this calendar app and stuff.

Jeff: 12:00

One of the things that always sounds like I'm selling snake oil when I'm talking to people about signing up and trying the Scuba coaching program is that it's an it's Scuba, it's diving, it's water, it's like normally you have an instructor and these instructors with you and you go for a dive and they critique you. And in the coaching program, what we do is we send people into a pool with a buddy and a camera and we give them a skill set to work on and then they come back with the video and upload the video for their coach. Now this is where the snake oil thing comes in. It sounds like hooey right, like we're just trying to convince you to take a something weird online Scuba course, which seems impossible. What we found over the years is that so we look at a skill you're trying to do like a back kick right, kicking backward which is a really valuable scuba skill and sometimes it's hard for people to get.

Jeff: 13:03

So they watch a video, we talk about it, go in the pool, try it and then come back with a video and we critique that video. Normally we would just fix them on the spot. I'd move their feet, do like this or this. But in this situation it's like okay, I need you to think about this, right, I need you to think this in your head when you're moving your feet like this. Go try it again. So now we're forcing them to connect their own process to the physical stuff, make a neuro-mechanical change and come back with another video. Basically, what's happening is they're learning it themselves, and that's where the retention part it's a game changer, because we know that retention from learning it yourself is so much deeper than retention from having somebody move your body. So it's a hard sell because nobody believes it until they're in, and then all of a sudden it's like holy crap, this really works.

Jennifer: 14:08

You know what this makes me think of. When you say this, I feel like it makes me think the difference between a consultant and a coach, if you were to differentiate the two. And this is something that I have to talk to people when they come to me, because people will come to me and they say and I'm sure you get this a lot of them want you to tell them exactly what to do what to do, Right Like that's what you're saying in the water move their legs around, right, when it's their idea.

Jennifer: 14:30

And this is where I talk to them about the coach and the consultant. I say, if I told you everything to do, you're not going to buy into it, right, like you're not going to buy into what I'm telling you because it's my ideas, and you're going to go home and be like, yeah, jennifer told me to do that, but if it's your idea, you're going to get behind it. So all I do is facilitate and help you figure out what you need to do. I'm there to give you some suggestions and help facilitate it. But you are so right when you said that to me. That's exactly what I'm picturing, kind of the difference between somebody coming in and telling you exactly what to do and somebody facilitating a process for you to begin to realize it's your idea, your thought, your concept, you noticed it, right, and then you retain it.

Jeff: 15:06

Yeah, and the first time this happens, the light bulb that goes off it says oh my God, you know, with guidance I can learn these skills better. And because our whole goal is to slow the process down, I don't care how long it takes, I don't care if it takes you eight tries to get this skill right, it doesn't matter. Just what we're doing is we're giving ourselves the permission to take whatever time it needs, and it's all because we're getting rid of this pressure of outcome. Yeah Right, the outcome is just inevitable, but it happens. When it happens, you've got to retain. Yeah, I know I get what you're saying totally.

Jennifer: 15:49

And that's kind of that's. I get it because that's sort of kind of the way that you know, when I do my work. In fact, I was just telling I was interviewing some guys before this. I was telling them that I had created a program, a coaching program, and I said one of the things about it that I was trying to do is make it more in a storytelling form, because people, when they can relate things to messaging you know, when they can see you can tell somebody like, for instance, you can tell somebody like have integrity, well, what does that look like To you? It may be something else to me, somebody else, right? But if you can show, this is what I'm trying to show you. This is an action verb of what integrity looks like. Here's a story that shows it.

Jennifer: 16:26

They're, you know, a child. They're going to retain it. They're going to have a better retaining of this than if you just told them this and they got to write that down, you know, and so I like it. I like what you're doing and I can see how that. You know the difference in what you, the model that you're doing, versus hey, let's get the certification. You know, let's get them versed in what they're doing. Get them to be a better scuba dive, get them to retain the skills. Yeah, it's that.

Jeff: 16:48

Yeah, it's called playable direction In filmmaking. It's called playable direction, right. If you tell an actor to you know, play, you know you did, okay, but be sexier, right? Well then what the actor says is oh my God, he doesn't think I'm sexy, so let me try to be sexy the way I think he thinks. I think he thinks I should be. But you know, if you tell an actor to do something like you know, play this like the first time you're in the backseat of a car with your boyfriend in high school.

Jennifer: 17:15

Right.

Jeff: 17:16

It's like boom, now I've got a connection, I got a picture.

Jeff: 17:18

I got a picture an emotion, some action, and I can create something from inside myself. That's kind of what we're doing, and I don't think it's unique to our coaching program, because I also coach athletes and I'm a coached athlete, bubba. I think playable direction becomes like this really critical piece of it that says a good coach will give you something that's playable. Yeah, and that's what you're talking about. You're saying let's give our clients a way to learn that they can actually do the learning, not just the repetition. And it's in the doing of the learning where you know now we're starting to repeat ourselves, but that's where they're returning.

Jennifer: 17:58

Oh, I love it. This is so good. I'm glad I even talked to you today, because I never know where these shows are going to go. But I love it because you're basically saying what I'm talking about in different languages. And it's great because you brought in the filmmaking, the biking, the scoop, it's all come together. We're talking about completely different things, but they really all are connected in some way.

Jennifer: 18:16

And it's the method and this is what I tell people all the time when they're out looking for coaches and stuff, because there's so many people that go out in all these fields and they go sign up for a course and they're like, hey, today I'm a life coach and I'm like, can you tell me? But have you had any life? I'm like, have you had, first of all, any life experience? And then I'm thinking, how are you getting your people to retain in them when you're just telling them to go home and like, do this thing repetitively and they have never even been to the gym First of all, never even been to the gym on any given day. And they're going to go now, but seven days for two hours. I used to be a Robus instructor. I know how that works. It doesn't.

Jeff: 18:47

Really they come in on January and the fall and the arm warmers and the leg warmers and the whole thing. Oh, I love that.

Jennifer: 18:53

But then come in and January they pack out the gym and guess what. Six weeks they're gone.

Jeff: 18:58

I know it matters. So I'm going to tell you.

Jennifer: 19:01

We bring different things. Like, I feel like I have these different areas of my life that I can bring in and I'm like I have stories for them. I love it. So your cyclist we talked about that. You've got a big thing coming up that you're working on in 2025. Am I correct? Tell us a little bit about what's going on with this.

Jeff: 19:15

Yeah, you know, I ride and race on the track, on the Velodrome, and I love the track Right, it's probably, to me it's the purest form of cycling. Right, because you're on a confined space. It's just a little oval. It's 250 or 330 meters To it, so it's very small. It's very confined. You can go very fast. The bike has one gear, no brakes. Wow, you can ride against the clock or you can ride against other people.

Jeff: 19:44

So I'll go out and I'll do a two or three hour workout on the track and it's not a meditation, but it's very meditative to me. So it gets me in my own head as a cyclist and track racing is traditionally short events. Often, you know, at the master's level, these, you know, like these pursuits and time trials, are two and a half minutes, maybe three minutes, and I was looking for something longer which sort of suits my body. And you know I got learning about the hour record. And the hour record is such a simple thing, right, it's how far can you make your bike go in an hour. And it's been going on since the 1800s. It's this iconic thing. It goes through waves. Right, right now it's very fashionable to try an hour record Five years ago like nobody was doing, and the hour record is crazy. It's up to 56 kilometers. Wow, I mean, that's like way up in the 30 mile, 30 plus mile an hour range. So in my age group it's about 44 kilometers, about 27 miles. So I'm training to see if I can actually get my bike to go 27 miles in an hour and it's a five year process for me. All of my work on the bike is geared toward that, toward that goal, and we'll see if it's feasible. These people keep coming along and raising it, you know.

Jeff: 21:09

That's how it is right.

Ad: 21:10

Yeah so.

Ad: 21:12

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Jeff: 22:15

And that's what we're doing today. We're doing a leadership game today, ready to shine brighter than other, than life Exciting. I'm 68. I'll be racing at age 70 in 2025. You know, we race on our the whole year. You're born Right, that's your racing age. So anytime after 2025, I can attack this thing at age 70. And we'll see.

Jennifer: 22:36

It's exciting.

Jeff: 22:37

It's about the process. Yeah, definitely, I would never do it, but the outcome becomes less important. I want the outcome, you know, I want to be successful at this, but the process is the thing that makes me feel like what I'm doing on the bike applies to my life. You know, if I go and do a super hard workout that I think is almost too hard to complete and I finish it, then I come back and I solve some. You know, a piece of paper problem on my desk, whatever it is, it's like, well, you know, I just crushed the idea.

Jeff: 23:09

I crushed, you know, a threshold workout on my bike, sitting here and figuring out this little paper website thing, email, it's like nothing, right, yeah, so applying the process of something really, really hard which is what this bike thing is to being, you know, a better husband, a better grandparent, better cook, better, you know handyman, whatever it happens to be, you do and you like, right, yeah, I just try to take all that stuff on the bike better business owner, for sure and apply it to all these other things. And that trickles down to me as a coach, saying my goal for my clients is, yes, to make you better on the bike or, yes, to make you better in scuba, but, most importantly, to give you the tools to take that betterness and stick it on something that matters to you, maybe more than the bike, right? Yeah, like being a parent or being a grandparent, or being a spouse, or something like that. That's good.

Jeff: 24:18

So that's kind of why all that connects for me and it's why I love the process so much.

Jennifer: 24:25

Yeah, it's really neat that you say all that too and I always say, you know, like I was, I feel like how we do one thing is sort of kind of how we do all things.

Jeff: 24:34

And so I would think, huh. It's a good way to look at it.

Jennifer: 24:37

Yeah. So I kind of feel like you know, when, you know, like when I kind of I always feel like when people seek out and I'll talk about like coaches, specific you know they'll seek them out for certain reasons, like that we have a crisis in their life or they want to grow their business or something, and really, at the core, we have to go back to making them a better, a better. I was, I hate to say, like human because I've had people go what if I'm already a better human? Like, trust me, none of us are better humans. We're working on that every day.

Jeff: 25:03

That's the process.

Jennifer: 25:04

Right, you can't say that to people, but I know deep down if we're trying to work on a business, there's probably some leadership things we got. There's things we got to work on right. And so I love what you're saying about this whole exercise, because that is really kind of sort of how, like when I went even in this, I didn't realize that that was really my entryway into how I got to where I even today. I went in initially because I just wanted to exercise and then it became about how does the exercise transfer to my life? How does it make me a better mom, coworker, entrepreneur how does it transfer into that? And so I've been working out. I put a post up the other day that I, you know I've been actively doing some kind of working out for like 20 something years. I started in my late 20s.

Jennifer: 25:46

I'm in my fifties now and I went from teaching aerobics. I've done marathons, I've done different things. There's not a day, really, that goes by unless I make a conscious decision and I say today I'm going to rest, I'm not going to exercise. That doesn't happen very often. I exercise pretty much every day. If I almost walk my dogs every day, if I'm not, I'm running, I'm at the gym because for me it's just part of what I do every day and, like you said, you know the problem that you're solving. I feel like it does. It allows me the ability to get through all the other things that I need to do, whatever that is in that particular day. And so I know even psychological guys say, if I don't work out like, you don't probably want to be around me because I could kind of be crazy.

Jeff: 26:23

Yeah, yeah, I knew it. You know it's funny. I know I've known writers who have said the best part of writing is having written. This is a really interesting thing to me and I talk about this a lot, you know, with clients, because what that means is they hate the process, they want the outcome. Right, yeah, finishing writing takes one second right, you just push, send Right the five years it took to write the book, the screenplay, the thing, whatever you're doing, if you hate that process but you want the outcome so badly, you just threw five years of life into, like this hell bucket.

Jennifer: 26:58

That one thing.

Jeff: 27:00

Yeah, for the point of this, one little thing, and who knows if it'll get accepted, published, blah, blah, blah. The whole point of this is you've got to just take the process and embrace it, no matter what. It is no-transcript, even if the outcome is not successful. Right, like on this hour thing. If I get to a point in 2025 and we look at the record and we look at my physiology and my time, my budget, my training and all this and we say, look, you're two kilometers away from this thing, don't waste the next 20 grand to go do it, I'm gonna say, okay, it's like, okay, let's change direction, so let's not waste the money.

Jeff: 27:36

I did a great job. I enjoyed the five years. It was really good. I learned a ton. Let's go a slightly different direction where I can be successful with an outcome, but we'll continue in the process, right? So if I can't do it at 70, I'll do it at 75. I can't do it at 75, we'll do it at 80. It doesn't matter to me.

Jeff: 27:56

And actually, finally, at one point I was talking to a sports psychologist about this it's like what is the situation if you get too into process, right? This was a really interesting conversation because I had drifted down this road where outcome didn't matter, process was everything, and I found what was happening to me was I wasn't working hard enough in the workouts because the outcome didn't matter. It's like, well, I'm supposed to do a three hour ride today, but if I do two, so what it won't matter. I take it a little longer to get to my goal. What I learned in the working with that amazing person was that outcome can drive your energy into the process and make the process that much better. It changed my whole perspective on outcome and it got me to a point where I made the process harder and better. It was a really interesting circle and it was like in front of me but, I was so holier than now about oh no outcome doesn't matter, winning doesn't matter.

Jeff: 29:04

Nothing matters. What matters is that you do a great job as your training, and that's just all bullshit. You need to have a reason to do it. And then I think, you can go back and say, okay, I love the process.

Jennifer: 29:16

No, I agree with you and it's interesting that you even brought that up about the book.

Jennifer: 29:19

I just interviewed a hip hop rap artist that just released like a graphic novel book and he got it picked up by Dark Horse, which I guess is kind of a big in the comic deal, and he was talking about that.

Jennifer: 29:33

It was a five year process to do this and he's talked specifically about because I asked him what did you love about all this, like what were some of the challenges? And they were talking about taking on this project and how long it took and really enjoying the process and now kind of seeing the fruits of their labor now happening. But had they not enjoyed that process because they had released the book and then they basically relaunched it again. So they went through a whole another process of that. So I think there's so many great takeaways in this and I'm with you on all of that. I think that we you know I always compare it to like having a baby or running a marathon I say you work so hard to get those two things and if you're just waiting for that day and not trying to enjoy it, you're gonna be absolutely miserable when you get done.

Jennifer: 30:12

You're gonna come out of that marathon, cause I know I've done it. You're gonna come out and you're gonna be like why in the hell did I do that? Cause that sucked right. It's about trying to find the victory and the win in that. And I do agree with you, too, on having the goals too. You don't want to be so where you're just well, I don't care if I reach a goal, because I'm just enjoying all this, you know, cause then you just kind of don't get there right. You want to be able to figure out where the goal is and enjoy the process with it. But I'm with you on all of that.

Jennifer: 30:37

I think it's important, I think we get sometimes so hell bent on having the goal that we miss all the silver lining. Really, we miss everything around us, and I think it was Jordan Peterson that talked about that. Where you like, it's so laser focused on the goal that you don't see even the opportunities that come around you, because you're so, you know, looking at the end and not able to stop and smell the roses every once in a while. You know.

Jeff: 31:01

It's balance. Right, it's balance. Yeah, it's just balance.

Jennifer: 31:04

Absolutely good stuff. So you mentioned that you're doing you told me this off camera you're doing some community work. Did I get that correctly, or you're?

Jeff: 31:11

on the. I mean, what else to look about that? I'm involved with the Parkinson's community in San Diego. My wife is medical and her whole practice is Parkinson's. So I have a hundred friends with Parkinson's and so I've chosen that basically as the place to put as much of my energy as I can, you know, socially. So you know I do, I just do a lot of work for that organization in terms of, you know, content and newsletters and video and stuff like that. It's really fun, it's really satisfying.

Jeff: 31:43

And then I started this little passion project called the Institute of Purpose and it came up because I love the name, I just think it's the coolest name. And I was having coffee with a friend of mine. He said I got this name, I don't know what to do with, and he told me it's the Institute of Purpose. Oh, my God, we have to do something with that because the name's amazing. And then, you know, sometimes when I tell this story I talk about it like remember in high school when somebody had they named their band before they had the band right. So we've got this cool name for a band but now, yeah, we don't have a drummer, we don't know what kind of music we're playing.

Jeff: 32:18

Yeah, we don't know anything, we can't read music, but they have the name, right. That's kind of what the Institute of Purpose was. So for about two years now we've been kind of honing this into something, and where it is right now it's a simple website and it's just got a collection of very short videos of people talking about what is their purpose? Why do they get up in the morning? What happens when they lose purpose? What happens when they discover something outside of their normal purview that says, oh my God, just doing this gives me purpose, right? My wife leads international tracks every other year to all over the place, to crazy places for people with Parkinson's.

Ad: 32:59

Oh, wow.

Jeff: 32:59

So we've taken people with Parkinson's to Mount Everest Base Camp, to Machu Picchu, to the community of Santiago, to Dolomites. Next year we're going to the Kamano Kodo the pilgrimage in Japan, and this is people doing more than they can even imagine they could do. Yeah, and it's an incredible purpose-driven project for her. So for me, the whole purpose thing was kind of about well, let's just see if we can create a place where people can go look and listen to people talk about their purpose, and it's just been this really interesting thing. So I don't know, there are 20 or 30 little short videos. When you listen to them, there's a spoiler alert. When you listen to them, they're all the same. They're all are.

Jeff: 33:50

My purpose is to help other people, but the road to that helping is different. 20 times Right, and it's fascinating to hear how people have discovered ways in their own life to help other people and use that as a way to have purpose. So it's just a place where it's like I don't know, I wanna do something good for the world. I don't know what to do. Well, check out these videos Now here's a dancer, here's a coach, here's a this, here's a that, here's a medical whatever, and listen to how other people have kind of found ways within their own work, family, lifestyle, to either within or without of their comfort zone, to help others, and it's just been a great project. So I encourage everybody to go take a look at the Institute for Purpose, yeah it sounds amazing.

Jennifer: 34:43

Yeah well, and you said something good because I wanna ask you this next question and I've got a couple phone ones I wanna ask you, and this one is one that I ask a lot of people, and they all kind of say the same thing to me in very in just different words, but the messaging is always the same. I would love to know and you kind of said a lot of this already to me in different parts of this clip but I would love to know how you, as an entrepreneur and a creator and doing all these different things you do, how you define success, like what does that look like in your world?

Jeff: 35:13

You know, we were trying to find a metric for scuba diving. Right, because in cycling there's power targets, in running there's splits, in sports, it's easy to come up with a metric right. We were trying to come up with something in scuba like what is the metric in scuba diving? Is your buoyancy perfect? You know, there's no way to measure it. So one of our instructors we were talking about this a few months ago he said I think the metric is satisfaction and I just think that when you take that into a more global thought, the fact that I feel successful in my life because I feel very, very satisfied with how my days go right I get up this morning I went to the gym.

Jeff: 36:13

I had a great workout, you know. I've got all this cool stuff to do. I'm meeting you, which is fantastic. You know. I've got a bike ride this afternoon. I'm going to wrap this day out with a glass of wine tonight in front of a fire, thinking this was a really satisfying day and to me that makes it successful. So I think it's internal. I think success is internal and I think you have to come up with your own metric for it. But when there's no measurable metric, right, a successful bike ride for me is can I hit my numbers? Did I do a good workout? A successful day for me was am I satisfied with how the day went? Do I feel good about it? Did I help someone? It's simple, yeah.

Jennifer: 36:58

I love that question. That's why I said I feel like we all kind of say is sort of the same thing, Everybody just has a different spin, kind of like your stories.

Jennifer: 37:06

Everybody kind of says the same message, but how they find it is different. I interviewed a girl once. I'll leave you with this, and then I have a couple of questions. I interviewed a girl once who lost her husband. They both got cancer. He got pancreatic cancer, died within, I think, six weeks.

Jennifer: 37:18

So she traveled all over the world to basically look for these 14 things that she defined as love, and she said every time she would go to look for the one thing, she'd find it in a different way, and so it kind of made me think of that, that she sort of had this metric. She was fine, but it was always this heart centered thing like it would change her whole perspective of how she went about finding it. Kind of like we've said throughout this whole thing about you know the way we've been learning and getting people to. We think we're going to get it this one way, but it ends up really being a different way. That we're getting that across, that how we're making them better scuba divers, a better person, however that is, then everything in this whole thing has been about this, the same messaging, but we're we're helping them find it in a different way, yeah, no, it's really cool your filmmaking has come into play so much with this, because I'm like this was such a great analogy for me.

Jennifer: 38:02

all of this, because I'm like, oh my gosh, this is what I'm talking about, but you just put a different spin on it, so it was all good. I love it.

Jeff: 38:08

Okay, great.

Jennifer: 38:09

It was good. Okay, have a couple fun questions I want to ask and then we'll wrap this thing up. So because? You are an athlete. I love to ask this question to my athlete people because they're like me. They probably eat pretty good most of the time, so I would love to know. Maybe just one guilty pleasure, food like what's the one thing that you're like? This is not good, but I love it.

Ad: 38:28

That's a hard one.

Jeff: 38:29

It is because it means I have to admit something, right, sorry, no, no, no, it's good because I have this whole thing about nutrition that I try not to eat food I can't pronounce. That's kind of my metric on nutrition, right, if I can't recognize I can't pronounce it, I try not to eat it. So, although if there's ice cream in the house, it's a goner.

Jennifer: 38:51

Yeah, I like ice cream, that's fine too. I'm not a big junk food eater, but there are certain things. Yeah, I like chocolate too. I don't eat a lot of it, but yeah, there's a couple things.

Jeff: 39:00

It's probably the same for everybody, right? I mean, we all try to be holier than thou about nutrition, yeah, right, and of course that's no fun.

Jennifer: 39:09

I know, I know, not fun, All right, is there a favorite? Maybe like a favorite, I want to say a favorite book, like one that had a profound effect on you, anything that stands out in your mind. Yeah, I hope you got it.

Jeff: 39:22

Where is it? Oh, I can never find this thing when I need it. Okay, it's a little tiny book by a guy named George Leonard, called Mastery.

Jennifer: 39:33

Mastery. Okay, it's a short little read.

Jeff: 39:36

It's kind of about the education process. It's where I've learned a lot about plateau learning and how we function on plateaus and how the plateau is the cool place to be and the jumps to plateau are like necessary evils to get to a place where you can just have learned something new and live that new. So yeah, I'm sorry, I couldn't find it.

Jennifer: 40:02

It's fine. This is how I get a book list. It's good, All right. One last question I want to ask you. So when you got one more, I got one more.

Jeff: 40:08

Okay, there's a book by a woman named Annie Duke okay, who is a poker player called.

Jennifer: 40:14

I know this one.

Jeff: 40:15

Yeah, called quit, probably one of the best reads I've ever done. It's this fascinating, fascinating psychological story on quitting In business, in sports, in poker, in life.

Jennifer: 40:28

I feel like somebody else told me about this one. I feel like I've heard this one.

Jeff: 40:31

You gotta read this book. This book is just it's life changing. It's amazing.

Jennifer: 40:36

Yeah, yeah, thank you for bringing that up. Okay, one last question. I want to ask you when you trained, because I know how I am when I train for my run and all that stuff. Music or no music?

Jeff: 40:45

No, music, no music.

Jennifer: 40:47

Okay, yeah, you said it's because it's like your meditation.

Jeff: 40:50

Meditative.

Jennifer: 40:51

Meditative yeah. My husband so he runs these long endurance, and he does not do any music either. That's his time to kind of fight. So I get it.

Jeff: 41:01

Yeah, my wife does podcasts when she rides her bike. She's a beast on the bike, but I am. I like pedal stroke.

Jennifer: 41:10

Yeah. You like to zone in and just be into the thing.

Jeff: 41:13

Yeah, just get focused right, I get it.

Jennifer: 41:15

I get it All right. Well, very cool. This has been so much fun, Jeff. So if our listeners want to get in touch, maybe they want to figure out about the scuba program, maybe the passion project or any of these things. Where do we want to send them so they can find you?

Jeff: 41:26

So the scuba thing is utdscuba divingcom Okay, that's easy. And the Institute of Purposeorg, okay, is the fun place. Okay, and if anybody wants to do a story, or you if you'd like to do a little 30 second video about purpose, we'll just record one and I'll drop it on the website.

Jennifer: 41:46

Yeah, yeah, fun. Okay, we'll make sure too, when we get all this together, we'll make sure we get those websites in there, so people know how to find you too. I get my editor's pretty good. He'll get everything in there, so it's been a lot of fun.

Jennifer: 41:56

I want to thank you for sharing with us and talking about all the cool things you got going on, and congratulations on your world record and the project coming. You know working on the one that's coming up in 2025. It'll be fun to see all this happening for you, so yeah thank you for all of that. It's been fun.

Jeff: 42:12

Thank you, it's been great to talk to you.

Jennifer: 42:14

Awesome. We do want to say, of course, to our listeners if you enjoy the show, head on over to Apple, give us a review over there. You can hit that subscribe button on YouTube so we can keep sharing all these fun stories. And, as I always say, in order to live the extraordinary, you must start. Every start begins with a decision. You guys, take care, be safe, be kind to one another and we will see you next time.