- 5 months ago
Jeremiah Gardner likes to get deep. He’s an underwater cave diver who uses lessons learned beneath the surface to help leaders and businesses survive and thrive in uncertainty. In this episode, he shares his “Gold Line” framework for moving forward boldly without losing your way. Plus, why learning fast matters more than failing fast.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I have to tell you, it really called to me. And I've talked to cave divers around the world,
00:05and they kind of describe the same experience. It calls to you. I needed and wanted to be more
00:10in that environment. I don't know why. I mean, it's a bunch of wet rocks at the end of the
00:14day,
00:16and that's all it is. But it just called to me. It's just an incredible, incredible
00:21environment, and it doesn't make any logical sense. You know, I talk to my skydiving friends,
00:26and I think it's crazy to jump off of a perfectly good building or a perfectly good
00:31airplane. And they think I'm crazy for, you know, going underwater in a cave.
00:39Hey, welcome to How Success Happens. I'm Dan Bova, writer and editor at entrepreneur.com.
00:46So, you know, a lot of guests come on the show and talk about getting comfortable with being
00:52uncomfortable. But today's guest brings that to a whole new level, an incredibly claustrophobic one,
01:00I might add. Jeremiah Gardner is an innovation expert who speaks with leaders at companies like
01:06GE and Nike and Unilever about transforming discomfort into bold performance. And he knows about this
01:14intimately because he is one of the few qualified underwater cave explorers in the world.
01:23So, good Lord, I don't know what that means, but it sounds terrifying. Welcome, Jeremiah.
01:30Hey, Dan. Great to be here. And yeah, I can't wait to talk about underwater exploration and
01:35where those things match up into business.
01:38Yeah, absolutely. You know, so we connected because I met your awesome and lovely wife,
01:46Jessie at Entrepreneurs Level Up event and she's shown me these videos of you like squeezing into
01:54these. I was having a panic attack watching these videos. So before we get into the business of it
02:00all, let's get into like the cave diving of it all. Like talk to me a little bit about it.
02:05How did you
02:06get into it? And tell people who think they know what it is, what it is.
02:11Yeah, absolutely. I love to share this world with people. And I have to say, you know, I got into
02:16diving as a hobby and really it became my kind of environment for my relaxation and all those sorts
02:25of things. And I remember it was years ago, I happened to be in Mexico and I was just exploring
02:31different types of diving and found myself in a cenote diving through a little, I wouldn't call it
02:37truly an overhead environment, but a little overhead environment. And I have to tell you, it really
02:43called to me. And I've talked to cave divers around the world and they kind of describe the same
02:48experience. It calls to you. I needed and wanted to be more in that environment. I don't know why.
02:54I mean, it's a bunch of wet rocks at the end of the day and that's all it is. But
02:59it just called to
03:00me. And so I went on a training journey to get myself trained and qualified to actually make those
03:07types of dives. And it took about two, two and a half years to get to that level of being
03:12able to
03:12make my first real cave dive. And for me, you know, it's an incredible, incredible environment
03:19that very few people get to see. And what lights me up about it, I think the most is just
03:25understanding, you know, obviously the primacy of fresh water to our lives and to our environment on
03:32top of the world and to see where those, you know, springs originate from and how over thousands and
03:39thousands of years they've carved these underwater cave systems and how the water flows through that
03:45and the amazing discoveries that we make in opening that environment up for other people to follow us.
03:52And it's just an incredible, incredible environment. And it doesn't make any logical sense. You know,
03:57I talked to my skydiving friends and I think it's crazy to jump off of a perfectly good building or
04:03a
04:03perfectly good airplane. And it's got it. And they think I'm crazy for, you know, going underwater in
04:08a cave. So it doesn't make logical sense. I can't explain it. It's not an adrenaline rush thing.
04:14It's that that environment just calls and sings to me almost like a siren song. And so I've done
04:19everything I can in my life to go and explore those environments at a very deep level.
04:25So what do you like, what do you, um, what do you see? What, what, what do we, what are
04:30we looking
04:30at when we start to get deeper into these caves? Yeah. So what's, what's incredible is, is you start
04:37to see how the water has cut through the limestone and there's all different kinds of experiences there.
04:46Uh, you can go through everything like, like, um, I'm sure you've seen, you know, squeezing through a
04:50tight restriction to rooms that you could fit, you know, 20 semi trucks in up and down all around,
04:57um, stacked on top of each other. And so there's all different kinds of formations from, you know,
05:02in, in the caves in Florida here in the U S. Um, you know, there's a lot of, uh, big
05:07boulders and
05:08breakdowns and things like that. And chamber to chamber room to room, you may have differences,
05:14you know, some that have rolling Hills of silt, some that are completely flat, sandy bottom,
05:19um, to where you look in Mexico and the, you call these more of a drip cave where you can
05:24see the
05:24stalagmites and stalactites and columns that, that have formed over years. And in fact, uh, you know,
05:30the, the Mayans believe that they were, the cenotes were portals to the other world. So they threw
05:35sacred things into the waters there and divers have discovered those things, everything from bones
05:41to, you know, cultural artifacts and things like that. Uh, in, in Florida, it was all seabed.
05:47And so you're looking at sea urchin, um, you know, remains, I mean, they're not rains, they're
05:52fossilized in the sides of rocks. Uh, you can imagine, wow, where I'm, you know, so far from the
05:58sea yet this was seabed at some time. So there's all kinds of, of amazing discoveries and things that
06:04are in these. Uh, but at the end of the day, Dan, it's just wet rocks. Uh, that's all it
06:09really is.
06:10Uh, and, uh, and darkness if you don't have a light. Right, right, right. So, um, I mean,
06:17it sounds amazing. It sounds panic inducing. Um, well, we could start to get into, uh, you know,
06:25where this, you know, uh, unique hobby, I don't know if the hobby seems too light of a word,
06:32but this, this pursuit of yours, how it has, uh, bridged into helping business leaders, uh,
06:40navigate through what often feels like a dark, wet cave of business. Um, and you, you have this,
06:50uh, developed this thing called a gold line framework. Can you explain what that is? And,
06:55uh, then we could get into, you know, how people can apply it to their businesses.
07:00Absolutely. So, you know, a little bit more about me. I, I really was cut my teeth in the startup
07:05world before all the cave diving and all of those sorts of things. And so I kind of experienced
07:10everything from, you know, my middling success to complete failure. That was my fault. Uh, and,
07:17and out of those experiences really came a book. Uh, I wrote a book called the lean brand, uh, back
07:23in
07:23the day with a guy named Brett Cooper. And that led to speaking and teaching and, and helping some of
07:31the organizations that you mentioned things like, you know, companies like Nike and IMG, um, GE, so on
07:39and so forth, develop their innovation programs. And so I, I've been the architect, uh, or a primary
07:45architect behind a lot of those programs that have produced, you know, faster velocity, customer-based,
07:52true innovation and innovation, not meaning, you know, something new and fancy for new and fancy
07:58sake, but truly creating new value in the customer's eyes. And how do we practice empathy? How do we
08:05practice experimentation? How do we make decisions based on evidence? And so that was kind of my
08:10career, um, leading up. And I always felt like there were these two worlds. There was this diving
08:16recreational world and caves and, and there was the, the innovation, um, growth world kind of solving
08:23uncertainty. And it dawned on me a few years ago on an expedition I was leading in, in, um, in
08:29Florida
08:30actually, that, uh, as I'm swimming along, there is this, this line. One of the major rules we have in
08:36cave diving is that we have a continuous physical line back to where we came from. Because if something
08:44goes wrong, we can't go up anymore. We have to go back out the way we came. So no matter
08:49where we're
08:50exploring, if we're going down this side chamber, or we want to see where this particular passage goes,
08:55we always have a physical line as a reference point that we've either laid or that, uh, you know,
09:01local divers have laid. Um, and we call that line the gold line. And it's just referred to as that.
09:08And sometimes it is gold. It's a yellow line. Sometimes it's not. Um, it depends on the system.
09:14It depends on who put that line in there, but metaphorically we call it the gold line. And it
09:19dawned on me in a moment in that exploration that, wow, you know, this line is both a safety,
09:27a comfort in the sense that I know I can get out, but it also pushes me forward because I
09:33know I can
09:34get out that safety net exists. It pushes me to go explore that chamber or that passage or that area
09:39that, that I don't really know what's in there. I don't, uh, know exactly how to get out of there
09:44without that line. And it kind of snapped underwater that, oh my gosh, my whole life,
09:50these two things are, are the same disciplines, whether it'd be innovation and startup and business
09:55growth, or it be cave diving. They're the same discipline. It's, it's exploring and embracing
10:03uncertainty for the sake of discovery. And, and that's where the gold line really came out of was
10:08that, wow, I can combine these two parts of my life that are really important to me. And they're the
10:14same discipline, just different applications. Uh, I love that. And as you're talking about this line,
10:21of course, I'm in my head going, what if the line breaks? What if somebody snips it?
10:28Exactly. Exactly. Uh, true. Um, so I wonder, you know, when you talk about innovation, it's such a
10:35big, all encompassing word. Can we get a little granular with that? Like, can you give an example
10:43of, of a gold, how a gold line can lead to innovation, but like in very specific terms,
10:51you know, maybe it's someone specifically that you helped or someone who's listening to this
10:56could use it. Say my sales aren't where I want them to be. Yeah, absolutely. So when I say the
11:03word innovation, I mean something specific and I think you're right. It's a big umbrella word.
11:08You know, we pack a lot of different things in it. And oftentimes, you know, if you ask people
11:13or entrepreneurs, what's the, the, you know, picture you have in your head of innovation,
11:17what's the symbol you would come up with? They, they come up with, you know, the light bulb almost
11:22always. Right. And they say, okay, who invented the light bulb? Well, Thomas Edison, of course.
11:27Well, so what, was it the idea of the light bulb that popped in his head? And now, you know,
11:32we have light and it's changed our culture into a nighttime culture and everything else.
11:37When you dig into the story, the real story is not that he had the idea for the light bulb.
11:42He
11:42actually had a ton of people in his lab working on making it safe to bring inside.
11:47The filament that's in there. And so to me, the work of innovation is not the work of ideas,
11:55which sometimes we call innovation. It's also not the work of invention, which can be something
12:01that new technology or something like that. Innovation is the work of, of creating new value.
12:07And that value means not value to us as a business, but value in the eyes of the customer. And
12:14of course,
12:15we need to be able to capture that back as a business. That's, that's the transaction that
12:19occurs, but the discovery delivery and development of new value in the customer's eyes is truly
12:26innovation. And when you think about that, you know, the answer is that everybody in the organization
12:32has a customer. If I sit within HR, who is my customer? Well, it's a diverse group. Yes,
12:38it's the employees, but are we talking about, you know, the, the new onboarding employees? Are we
12:44talking about people that have been there for 20 years? Are we talking about new managers? Are we,
12:49who, who's the specific segment we're serving? If we're talking about sales, we're, we're talking
12:54about a different set of clients than necessarily who the users would be of what we sell. And so
13:00defining who the customer is, is, is the first step in truly creating innovation. And,
13:06and that means being specific. I call it being uncomfortably narrow in our ability to define
13:13the customer. Most people, when they think about, let's say sales are low, or, or we have this new
13:19product we want to bring to market. If we think about a bell curve of adoption that almost every
13:24new product of technology goes through, when we're thinking about it, we think about hitting the middle
13:29of that bell curve, the center of it. And the reality is no product has ever started that way.
13:35They all start with an early adopter segment or an innovator segment. And we have to be
13:39uncomfortably narrow in that growth back to that segment, right? Back to the, who, who we're going
13:44to start with first. And it kind of goes back to the old adage of, you know, um, I need
13:48a hundred
13:49customers. And you ask the entrepreneur, how many do you have now? And they say, well, zero to no,
13:53you need one customer. And then if you can do that, you can get to two and, and then two
13:59to four.
13:59Um, so I think the first discipline is, is really defining in an uncomfortable way, um, in a narrow
14:08way, who are we serving and what is the pain point that we're actually addressing? That is where we
14:15start to see true innovation or growth. Um, or, or, or in my words, the search side of the house
14:22start to create value for the business. So when you say, uh, uncomfortably narrow,
14:28does that, you know, is it that, uh, I'm not trying to find all kinds of different people who
14:38are going to love this thing? It's, it's a very specific person. Is that what you mean by uncomfortable?
14:44Yeah. If we, so let's take a, a, a backwards track into Facebook. Um, and it's a good example
14:50in some ways, uh, of, of this adoption curve. And if we think I'm old enough, and so I'm, I
14:56guess
14:57I'm dating myself now, but I'm old enough to remember, I don't know about you, Dan, probably
15:00not. But when, when, uh, Facebook was just for Harvard, right? Harvard.edu, you had to be there.
15:09And then it started to open up to the Ivy leagues. And then eventually I was still in college when
15:13I
15:14remember my university got, um, access to Facebook. So if you had a.edu, uh, TLD to your,
15:22to your, uh, email address, you could get on Facebook. And I remember it being the coolest
15:27thing. Like, oh my gosh, all my friends. And, oh, there's some people that are next door in the
15:32dorm. And then, and then it opened up a little bit more where your high school friends were on there
15:36and it started to go up that curve a little bit. And then at some point, I don't remember what
15:40year
15:41it was, but like your mom got on Facebook and you're like, no, I can't believe it. You know,
15:47it just, and you can see that's the top of that, or the top of the bell curve now, you
15:53know, and now
15:53all of a sudden it's not cool anymore. Right. Um, and now you have these laggards on the back end
15:58of
15:58it where now, you know, grandma and grandpa are on it and, um, you know, posting political memes all day
16:03long. And that's what it is now. So if you think of that adoption curve, uh, who's the narrow
16:10segment? Well, it was, it was Harvard and it was actually a personal problem, right? Uber was the
16:16same way. It was black car executives only in, uh, San Francisco. And if you retrace the steps of,
16:23of what we see as successful startups or successful businesses, I mean, Amazon was a bookseller in
16:30Seattle. That was it. You could buy books. And so being uncomfortably narrow is not about the fact
16:36that your vision is small. It's about deciding where to start. And that's where the pain is
16:41greatest. And whenever we're creating something new, wherever we're, we're exploring uncertainty
16:46in that way, being more narrow gives us stronger ability or a stronger ability to separate signal
16:52from noise and grow from there. So when we talk about the gold line, uh, as this kind of safety
17:01device, can you, can you give like, how does that work with business? It's, you're not going too far
17:08in one direction that you, you abandoned something that was working. Like, can you define that a little
17:13bit? Absolutely. And I think there's kind of two paths to this. There's a personal gold line
17:19that exists, I think for all of us. And it roots us in, in where we make our, our highest
17:25contribution
17:27and allows us to explore ways to express that on the business side of that, we have a shared gold
17:33line, right? That, that we, as a business, as a team, as a company are, are having. And to me,
17:39that, that center line, the thing that keeps us safe in that exploration is centering on the empathy
17:46that we, that we have and that only we own for our customers. It's understanding deeply the, the pain
17:53that they're experiencing. Um, it's understanding deeply the relationship that they have with us.
17:58And when we put that at the center of that exploration and we start to go down a path that
18:05maybe we haven't explored before, that deep understanding of, of who we're serving and what
18:11the needs are there and where the jobs that they're trying to achieve are and the, and the
18:17aspirations exist, keep us safe in the exploration because it keeps us from building something nobody
18:22wants. It keeps us from building something that ultimately will not be successful because it
18:28doesn't solve a pain. And, you know, there's a lot of talk in, I think the startup world about
18:32vitamins versus painkillers. And I think this is true that if, if we want to have success,
18:38we need to be a painkiller, um, not a nice to have vitamin. And, you know, when we discover
18:44that pain, that pain point is our center point that keeps us rooted in, in really delivering
18:50value back to the customer. Yeah, that's great. Um, I'm curious about a parallel between, so when
18:57you're cave diving, uh, and you're in an area that you haven't been before, uh, you know, I guess
19:05there's a risk reward of, of going through, I don't know what you'd even call it, some opening,
19:11uh, to see what's on the other side, but who knows what's on the other side and who knows if
19:15you'll be
19:16able to turn around. I don't know what the exact risks are. Uh, but what are the, what are the
19:20parallels between that kind of risk taking the risk reward there and the risk reward with, with
19:26business leaders that you talk to? Yeah, that's a great question. And, and I think this kind of hits on
19:32the, the methodology a little bit, um, that I've developed around the gold line. You know, the,
19:37the first thing that we have to do if we're exploring something new is, is we actually have
19:41to trace that line, right? We have to understand, you know, um, where there's no map, where, you know,
19:48there's no guarantees. Um, you know, we have to be able to trace where, where we've been. And so
19:54looking backwards often is, uh, is a place for us to really mine out the, the, the value
20:02that we've created in the past, if we're existing in the business or to understand if we're starting
20:06something brand new, what the value that the customer has been chasing, if it's painful
20:12enough, they're trying to solve it today. And so that first step of tracing the line, finding
20:18where we've made our greatest contribution that's based in the evidence of the past, not necessarily
20:23the, the goodwill of the future is really the first step. Um, and I think that that's where
20:29sometimes we get it wrong. We want to be something, but we don't have any evidence that supports that's
20:35actually what a customer wants, um, or, or where we can even be successful as a business. And it could
20:41be a very disastrous, um, you know, and so that first step is, is tracing that line, uh, really
20:48understanding where it is. And the second step then becomes the hard and tedious work of anchoring
20:54it to something real. Now, what do I mean by that? I mean that you have to be able to,
20:58to build the
20:59infrastructure to support that line. If we're in a cave and we're exploring and we tie the gold line
21:05to a, you know, a flimsy, uh, tie down or, or a rock that might move. That's not actually solid.
21:11Um, when we come back, you can imagine how scary that could be when the line is just floating in
21:17the air. We have no idea where it's going anymore, you know? And so there has to be real things
21:22that
21:22we anchor, anchor it to, anchor it to, you know, for me, uh, I love speaking and that's where I'm
21:27building, um, out, uh, and teaching and workshops and I'm building out my gold line really exists
21:32there. Um, but that means I have to do the hard work of building the, the outreach engine. I have
21:37to do
21:37the hard work of, of the spreadsheets and building the relationships. I have to do the hard work of,
21:42of literally building the stage that I want to stand on. Um, it's not fun. It's not, it's the
21:47tedious, hard work of anchoring the line into something real. And if it's not anchored, then,
21:52then we can't trust it. And so the same thing becomes true for business. What are the things
21:57that we need to be doing today that we're not anchored in, you know, that we don't have the line
22:02tied tight to, uh, what are the gaps of our understanding of our customer and the pain points that they
22:07might have that we need to, to really solidify for ourselves to be able to explore?
22:13Well, I was just about to ask, uh, in the people that you've spoken with and worked with,
22:20um, you know, are there any, uh, examples of maybe someone who they just really wanted something
22:27to work and it wasn't working? And was there a moment where you were able to kind of open their
22:34eyes to that fact? And then they were able to pivot and then things worked out for them.
22:40Like, have you experienced that? Yeah, there's some great examples. I've experienced the same
22:45thing. Um, you know, my first startup was failed literally because of me and I had no idea at the
22:50time. Um, but you know, I'll give an example of a recent company I've been working with, you know,
22:56they, uh, they have a legacy product or, or a core product. That's very, very successful
23:01and they need to diversify the portfolio, right. To continue to grow that growth comes from
23:08diversification. And so they were really taking an approach around how do we invest, uh, in, in a few,
23:16uh, pipeline innovation products that we can continue to add to the core to grow and diversify
23:25the business. And, you know, what they were doing was they were building products, uh, first and all
23:33the features they could have heard. And they were asking, you know, um, grandma and friends, would
23:38they use it and do they like it and all these things. And once they had the product built, then
23:43they turned around and said, well, you know, who's the customer for this and what's the need? And found
23:47out after millions and millions of dollars in years and years and years that, that, that approach was
23:53sinking all of the work, nothing was, was being successful. And so I got involved and, and in
23:59their diversification side and said, okay, well, what if we look at this a little bit differently?
24:04What if we, instead of taking a pipeline view where we have a few small investments in, uh, or a
24:11few
24:11large investments in a small amount of projects, why don't we look at this more as an exploration
24:17project and say, why don't we make small bets in lots of different areas and then measure the
24:23evidence as we go through to really understand what we have versus what we don't. And so that
24:29became a process of starting with the riskiest areas first. Well, the riskiest thing to any
24:34business is, is there a customer and is there a need? If those things we don't have evidence for,
24:40there's no point in talking about the brand. There's no top point in talking about, you know,
24:44solution, what it will look like, or the value proposition. If there's no need and there's no
24:48customer, we, we should, we don't pass go. So we should shut it down there. Right. But if we can
24:53say
24:54there's a customer and there's a need, all right, great. What's the next tranche of risk that we need
24:58to deal with? Well, what's the value proposition that would address that? What are the requirements
25:03of a solution? Could we actually build that? And what's the competitive advantage that might exist
25:08for us out in the market in doing this? All right, let's generate some evidence on that. Let's see if
25:13we can get that. If we can't, let's stop. If we can, let's deal with the next tranche. And the
25:18next
25:18tranche is really saying, can we deliver it through channels? Can we measure it? And what would success
25:24look like? What's the cost to launch and maintain? And what's the business capture from it? And when
25:29we deal with all that risk, I would call that tier three risk at this point. Now we have something
25:35we
25:35can take to the market, to that first early adopter market and really test. Right. And so what you deal
25:41with risk instead of dealing with it from, you know, the broad perspective of everything at all
25:48at once, we break it down into where the riskiest portions are and progressively deal with that risk
25:54over time. And taking that approach with this organization, which has resulted in what I would
26:00call a portfolio view of innovation rather than a pipeline view of innovation, has transformed that
26:06in a way that they are able to pursue lots of different, what they would call spokes to that
26:13centralized hub of their core business that's working today. That's amazing. And I, you know,
26:21the show's called How Success Happens. So for you in your work, you know, success, obviously,
26:30I think there's one obvious outcome where we're selling more, we're making more money,
26:35we're making more revenue. But, you know, it sounds like success is also, you know, testing something
26:41out and realizing this isn't going to work before we spend too much time and energy on it.
26:47Yes, yes, yes, yes. And this is the hardest conversation to have. But I always talk about
26:52with innovation leaders, if you can't talk to the CFO about innovation, you're sunk.
27:00And so discovering, it's not about failing fast. I actually hate that phrase, Dan. And I have a
27:07t-shirt that crosses out fail and it replaces it with learn. It's about learning fast, right? And
27:12it's not about failing fast. Yeah. But failure is part of learning. Learning what doesn't work
27:17is as valuable to us as learning what does work. Because we stop wasting time. We stop wasting
27:23resources. You know, I've worked with lots of teams that have spent lots of time and money on
27:28something that didn't work. And that felt terrible. And they always say something, and I'm sure you've
27:34heard this before, if I had only known now what I know now, what then what I know now. And
27:40to me,
27:41that's saying, if I had only paused and identified all the assumptions first, as I was going. Yeah,
27:47because so much is built on assumptions. And once we identify those assumptions, we're able to run
27:53experiments against them and generate evidence against it. And that leads us to truly knowing
27:59which direction you want to go and which direction you don't want to go, or is not going to be
28:04tenable.
28:04And so to me, it's, you know, innovation inside of a large organization or inside of a smaller
28:11organization really is more of a cost saving center of not pursuing things that don't have needs,
28:17that don't have customers that can't deliver on a value proposition, then it is a revenue center,
28:23in a sense that none of us can guarantee that whatever we're pursuing is going to work,
28:28is going to produce that million dollars, that billion dollars. And so when we look more at
28:34learning as quickly as we can what doesn't work, it focuses our resources on the areas that we have
28:40evidence to drive us that is working. And it allows us to really increase the velocity and speed at which
28:46we can, we can bring those things to market and ultimately capture the value from them.
28:50I love that. That's fantastic. And before, you know, before we get too much further, I just,
28:56I wanted to, you know, let people know how they could learn more from you about your website,
29:02your book, and, you know, to get to get more information on this.
29:07Yeah, I think, you know, the biggest thing is you can go to jeremiahgardner.com
29:13backslash getclarity. And if you're thinking about, you know, where you are in your personal
29:19gold line along that tracing where you make your impact, now, you know, anchoring that into true
29:25lines or true places, and then navigating that line. There's a really cool free snapshot you can
29:31take that'll give you, hey, here's where you are personally in this. You can also check out the
29:37website in terms of bringing me into your organization and, and helping you think through
29:41some of the biggest challenges that you've got, some of the things that you're dealing with
29:44uncertainty. But I think the biggest thing that I would say to everybody, whether, whether you get
29:48in touch with me, or you don't, is that, you know, the discipline of, of searching, the discipline
29:56of dealing with uncertainty, I think is no longer novel. I think at some point it was. But now the
30:03world
30:03is full of uncertainty. I mean, global markets and all sorts of different things. And, you know,
30:08you've raised a hand and say, you know, five years ago, you asked everybody in the room,
30:12how many of you today use Twitter? Almost every hand goes up. Today you asked that question and
30:18there's a couple hands. And then you say, how many of you used chat TPT today? And almost every hand
30:23goes up. Right. And I mean, that's a five year span of crazy uncertainty. Yeah. And so embracing that
30:29uncertainty in a disciplined and repeatable manner, whatever that means to you and your business
30:35is, is, is I think the, the new reality rather than the novel reality anymore. And I would encourage
30:41you to, to, to take that dive to, you know, you don't have to be a cave diver squeezing through
30:46restrictions to get the same insights. Uh, but uncertainty is not something to sweep under the
30:52carpet anymore. It's something to, to bring out early and often and make it visible so that you can
30:57deal with it in a very structured way. Awesome. Awesome. I was definitely going to check that out.
31:02Um, so let's move into the celebrated speed round of this show. Uh, so we're going to ask you a
31:11couple
31:11of quick questions and, uh, you know, whatever comes to mind. So first one, what is a habit that
31:18you are happy to have and one that you wish you could ditch? Uh, happy to have, uh, I'm, I'm
31:26glad that
31:26I take time in my own meditation. Uh, that practice has been really important to me and just slowing
31:33things down. Bad habit to have is, uh, I replaced coffee with monsters and I'm trying to replace
31:40monsters with water and, or liquid IV and it's not happening yet. So one monster a day is where I'm
31:46limited now and I'm trying to get off that bad habit. Okay. Good luck with that. So, all right.
31:53Like underwater cave diving. So a lot of people are afraid of, uh, confined spaces. People are afraid
32:01of the dark. People are afraid of water. So I'm wondering, uh, what are you afraid of? You have
32:07any phobias? Oh, I, I hate reptiles. It's so silly, but, uh, but you can't anticipate what they're
32:15going to do. And so I went to an alligator farm actually not too long ago, uh, in the Florida
32:20Keys while I was visiting. And that's just like a, uh, uh, you know, a farm of, of tear to
32:26me seeing
32:27all these alligators and things around. And it's funny because there's actually all throughout
32:31Florida signs where the caves are, uh, that, that, you know, alligators may be present and,
32:36uh, it's, they're nice signs. I have to send you a picture, Dan, but it says, you know, usually they
32:41eat small things like fish or chickens, but they've been known to attack larger things and attack
32:47humans. Dot, dot, dot. So be careful. So I, it terrifies me. I've yet to see one in a cave,
32:53but Oh my God, that's a nightmare of mine. That seeing an alligator in the headwaters of a cave
32:57would, would just scare the bejeebers out of me. What, what is this? What's, what's the scariest
33:02thing you've actually seen? Scariest thing I've actually seen in a cave? Yeah. Um, my, my instructor
33:14coming with some new failure that I've got to work through during training.
33:20Great. Great. Uh, and then finally, as, as someone who has, uh, mastered, uh, the underwater domain,
33:28who do you relate most to Aquaman or SpongeBob? Ooh, that is a good question. Um,
33:38I gotta say SpongeBob, you know, and, and what's pointing me that direction is an episode of family
33:44guy back in the day where Aquaman, like, you know, there's a crime taking place on the shore and he's
33:49like, pops up, Hey, stop it. Stop doing that. I'm going to send some fish your way. He's just helpless
33:57as a superhero. So I think, you know, he's a little disillusioned as a superhero. And, uh, I think SpongeBob
34:03is who SpongeBob is, and he's okay with that. And I hope I am who I am, no matter what
34:08room I'm in.
34:09Ah, that's awesome. That's great. I love that. All right, man. Well, uh, so great talking to you.
34:15And again, you want to let people know where they could follow you and see all things Jeremiah Gardner.
34:22Yeah. Jeremiahgardner.com. You can find me on Insta as well. Um, but yeah, reach out my,
34:28and I'll give you my email address directly. Jay at jeremiahgardner.com. Feel free to send me an email.
34:33I'd love to hear your stories of uncertainty. I'd love to share some cave diving pictures if
34:37you'd like to see them and, and, uh, and just get to know those that are out there embracing
34:42uncertainty. I think it's a, it's an amazing community that continues to emerge around the
34:46work that I get to do. And so if you're interested in enjoying that, would love to have you as
34:50part of
34:51it. Awesome. Great, man.
Comments