UTD Scuba Diving Podcast #104 – Meet the UTD Instructors - Rene Krikke

[Music] Hi everybody, I'm Jeff Suckandore, CEO of UTD's. I don't even know my name, my company, it's more a change. [Laughter] What is an agency? It's UTD Scooba Diving now, not Unified Team Diving. Well, is UTD my team diving? Or UTD? You don't have an official name. It's Unified Team Diving. Okay. Everybody, welcome back to the Unified Team Diving podcast. I'm your host Jeff Suckandore, CEO of UTD Scooba Diving. And this is another in our series of Meet the UTD instructors. We're trying to do 12 of these, but it may end up being more because they're kind of fun. So here today with Renee Cricka in Germany. Hey Renee. Hi there. Good morning. Good morning. Good afternoon. Yeah, for me it's good afternoon. Yeah, it's a rare, rare, raining morning here in San Diego. Oh, and it's here freezing cold, so. [Laughter] Well, nobody's diving today. It's what I can tell. It's like, you know, when it rains here too, the runoff makes our water horrible. And it's the same thing here in Germany with the lakes. Cool. All right. So what we're going to do today is super fun. We're going to look at Renee's history with UTD, history with diving, and what led him to become a UTD instructor. It's a really interesting journey. And I've been on this journey with Renee for a while. So let's start at the beginning. When you were three, what led you to wanting to dive? Well, when I was three, I was a little bit older. I was maybe eight years old. And I'm now 47 years old. But I was eight years old. And I did a. How do you call it on English? A little bit playing scuba diving. We had a school. We could choose some things to do in sports. And there was also the possibility to go scuba diving to feel what it is. You were eight years old. Yes, yes, yes. And then we tried it here in a pool with a bunch of kids. And it was, for me, marvelous. And my parents were in debt support of all kinds of stuff. So it flowed away the thought of scuba diving. But I was always interesting in the marine life and everything. Seven years ago, in 2017, I was on a holiday in Egypt, in Uganda, and with my ex-wife. But we were sitting there in a resort. And all you can eat buffet and everything. And after two days, I got really bored. So there was a scuba diving school at the resort. And I went in there and talked a little bit. And they asked me, "You want to try?" I said, "Well, I want to do my first step." So I started to do my open water for petty. And with a very fine instructor, there was a one-on-one instructor-type schooling thing. And this is still in her gata. Yeah, that was in her gata. And it was perfect with that guy. I played around to three, four days with him. And I got my certification of open water. So you're one of the few people who learned to dive in one of the most beautiful places in the world, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I wanted a great opportunity to be introduced. I've talked about this before. My open water was in a lake in upstate New York. And it was like 42 Fahrenheit, which is what about four Celsius? Freezing cold and dark and muddy and murky. And it was a great opportunity for you for learning and incredible, incredible. Yes, I know when I'm looking back, but it was. The conditions were perfect, absolutely. So I got my certification and I went home from my holiday and some private matter. And then I got acquainted with a new girlfriend. And she told me she was diving for 20 years. And I just got my first certification. And oh, well, let's go to Uganda and have some vacation. It was 2018. And yeah, I was thinking about to get my advanced. And then I was looking around and hearing around those diving people. And I get acquainted with some good divers. And they said, "Renaid, just take it slow. Not from zero to hero in two weeks. Just take it slow and make some more dives. And then come back and make your advanced." And I said, "Oh, yeah, that makes sense to me." Another holiday later, we went there back again. And I got my eyes fixed on one instructor there. It was a German instructor. So we came back. I went to him. And I want to get my advanced from petty. I said, "Well, okay, we do that." And so on, it was a great course, also one-on-one course. And in the time of that course, I got to know a man, technical diver. And he was a diver in the army and in the German army. So we get really acquainted. And my instructor told my girlfriend, "Ena, watch out. Don't let Renaid come near that guy. Otherwise, he's lost." And he not my girlfriend turned around and she said, "Andy, he's having a beer with him." So it's too late. And yeah, it was too late. I was hooked on the stories. So he was a technical instructor? The technical diver, that other man. And we got friends. And I got hooked up and he told me stories about training and blah, blah, blah, whatever. And he was a Jewish diver. But it was military art, you know? Standing proud and this and that. And that was not my kind of thing. In that time, I was so hooked on scuba diving. So I did research on internet on YouTube. And all of a sudden there was a crazy little guy talking English with a Dutch accent. I thought, "Wait a minute. I like him." So I did more research, looked more videos from Ben, Ben Boss. And yeah, it got clicked. I got more research in UTD. And it all makes sense to me, the whole philosophy. It's so interesting you say that because, you know, we're not a huge marketing company, unified team diving. But we are dedicated to the podcast. We're dedicated to Ben's videos and our video channel. And we get so many people coming through those channels because what happens to us, and I'm assuming you're seeing this as an instructor now, is that. By the time people see the videos with Ben, listen to the podcast with us, they kind of have an idea what they do. So the people who come in our doors are generally ready. You know, the law of readiness is an interesting piece. I think that's kind of what happened to you. You sort of showed up at Ben's doorstep, kind of ready. Exactly. It was meant to be. It was fate. So that was 2018 or 19. And then did you start taking classes with Ben? My first class was the ratio Diko 3.0. That was right after we did 3.0. Ben had a little podcast or a video on YouTube over a ratio Diko. And I got so interested in it because I got all the other stories of decompression, diving and whatever. And Ben, yeah, he hooked me up for it and took that course. And I had an online debate with Ben about that course and explaining. And it all makes sense. And I was really, I liked that guy. I want to meet him. So the next step up was in 2021 was the essential course. But, to that, I was looking the videos from Ben, how he was underwater and some skills videos. So I started to training for myself. I'm in person. I'm a self-learning person. When I see something, I learned it myself. So I started training. I bought my own dry suit and I started training for myself with my dry suit. I didn't never had a course in the dry suit. And I made a plan. 30, 35 dives with dry suit and it was, it was a battle and it was fun, but I conquered and yeah, really, we don't actually condone that, but okay. Yeah, I know, I know, but I didn't got really an entrance here with people who would train with me, who would see what I want to do and they didn't do that what I want to do. So it was very difficult. So I was a lot of my own with, of course, with, with bodies diving, but while diving, I was doing my thing, you know, and yeah, then in 2021, I started my first course with Ben and it was essential scores and it helped open for me to have an, to have an door. The essential scores is so, so amazing. It's really no words. You know, it's an interesting piece of it also because one of the things about essentials is that it is a pure teaching class. We have no expectation for anybody where they are at the moment they come in. We don't care. We take you where you are and you know, that course was born because there were similar courses and other agencies that were, that the expected expectation was you come in ready to pass the course. But we didn't look at it like that. We looked at essentials as let's really teach people how to do personal skills as a prep for moving on. Exactly. So when you do come into a tech one or tech two or tech rational or cave, you really have the personal skills. When I was, this was before U.T.D. when I was getting ready to take, um, fundees, it seems like a hundred years ago, I got with the people who took fundees and I, yeah, and I trained and trained and trained kind of wrong exactly because I was just training. We were doing, you know, valve drills and estriles and all that stuff, but had no one really ever taught me how to do it. So by the time U.T.D. came along and, you know, I started doing proper tech training and all of that. I had to relearn all that stuff because no one taught it to me properly in the first place. Exactly. And at that point, I experienced now myself with, with, because I'm now instructor for U.T.D. and incoming people. And, uh, two months ago, someone signed up with me for an essential course and then, and you ask, uh, yeah, I have to train or this. And they say here, I'm not ready enough and I said, those agencies want to let you enter in a, in a sudden standard. I said, we don't have that because you don't know where to start. And, and you can train, but if you train and, and practice, you will train and practice the, the wrong stuff and it's harder to unlearn than learn something. Oh, yeah. No, it's interesting when I, we got to talk about cycling and every podcast or it's not a U.T.D. podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But when I switched coaches, which was almost to the day three years ago now, I had about two weeks before we were going to start with this new coach. And I was like, what do you want me to do for the next two weeks? It was so smart. He was like, ride your bike. Just get a lot of volume. Just go ride your bike for two weeks and then we'll start on the day. And it was the best advice because I wasn't trying to learn anything new. I wasn't trying to do my own self coaching. I was just riding my bike. And then when we started, I was really prepared. You know, both mentally and physically because I had just done, you know, two weeks of massive volume. And I was like, itching to get going, get started. So the startup was good. And I think that's the same thing with it coming into UTT as an experienced diver is to come in where you are. Don't try to be someone you're not or something you're not. And you know, if you have a run up to the class, do the online course materials, but go dive and have fun. Exactly. And then do the course. Exactly. That was my, my road was exactly the same with Ben. I saw his videos. I got the online class for essentials and I saw all the videos and I tried to remember that and just for me, slightly tried to train that. And the day I met Ben in Hemore and we got into the water and Ben said, wow, what did you do? I watched your videos and I tried to translate it to my body. And he said, well, that's perfect. And we only just have to fine tune all the other stuff. But that's where you were. Somebody else could have come in straight out of a recreational course with a jacket BC and no trim, but we would go through the same process. Exactly. Take them to the same point where you ended up. It all works the same for everybody. We start you where you are. Exactly. It's such a powerful thing that everybody can come in and that's the beauty of it. Yeah. No, it's cool. So tell me about your experience with coaching, UTD coaching program. UTD coaching program. Yeah. In 2023, I did my tech class in Norway. Ben and I talked one night there and I said, I want to be an instructor and Ben said, yeah, you're ready now. So you can do it. But do the coaching. So I get in touch with you guys. So we set it up and started coaching class with you and also the beauty of that was, the distance, we are miles, miles away from each other. We never, we never saw us in real life. I don't think I've ever actually met you in person yet, right? No, no, no. But I've seen you a thousand times on Zoom. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. As I said, that's also the beauty and the power of the coaching program. You don't have to be near each other in, in, in, in, nowadays with the modern techniques on, on, on internet, it's all possible. So that's so powerful and it gives you a good feeling that someone is there, someone is listening. If you have problems, if you're struggling or whatever. So it was the same with you. I, I, I texted you or send you an email, Jeff, these or that. And, and you planned the whole weeks and that was perfect. So you have something to, to forward to it and to go work with it. One of the things that happens with becoming a UTD instructor is it's re, we, we assume by the time you're ready for that, you know how to dive. Exactly. So our instructor development program is not a diving class. Yeah. It's a teaching class, you know, we're teaching you. To teach. How to teach. And what that means is the diving has to be done. When you come in, the diving has to be done. We learned this early on because we would do IDCs and the IDCs would turn into essentials. And now we're much better at that. We know that people are coming in with the diving finish so we can really focus on the teaching. What was happening before you got into the instructor development program is we would sell the content to, because that's what we do. We sell online content to instructor candidates and they would get this massive amount of information. You know, sections on teaching, on listening, on development, on diving, on teaching diving. And it was a huge pile of information that you could go through and people were kind of phoning it in. People were just going through the material and it wasn't sinking in. What happened? What's discovered with the coaching program for leadership, for instructors and dive masters, is I could schedule your academics. So I could schedule like our extreme scuba makeover, first two student classes. And then I could schedule in how we developed extreme scuba makeover and then give you another extreme scuba makeover course for the next day. And then start the process of the academic stuff on how we teach extreme scuba makeover. So it allowed us to integrate real world diving with the instructor academics. It completely changed how we do it. So now when people come in and they buy the instructor candidate materials, they get a, I think I built it into a 10 week calendar. So that I just use the coaching calendar. They come in, there's your course. It's all the chapters and it's integrated with student chapters with real world diving, with podcasts that are appropriate with videos and all that stuff. So even though it slowed the process down from three or four weeks to more like 10, I don't know, really made it better. And when you came in, Renee, you were kind of the impetus for that. - Okay. - You were sort of the first group that came in where I realized I could actually not only lay out the instructor academics, I could integrate it with all this other content that made it so much richer. - Exactly, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's the same what I experienced. And funny you mentioned it. I was yesterday in the dive club and I did a little training. And it was a guy coming up to me and we talked a little bit and he just got his two-star from CMAS, which is the equivalent of like an advanced recreational course. Yeah, exactly. And we just came in talk and then all of a sudden I came up with also, he came up with questions about IDC and whatever and how my progress was. And I said, what I see and what I experience now is with other instructors from other agencies and then on the sideline, I don't wanna bash agencies or whatever, but I see it and those instructors are going to an IDC. And I hear them talk, "Oh, but I have to practice my back kick or I have to practice that or practice so." And then I'm looking, you're going for an instructor candidate. Why do you still have to learn to dive? You have to be ready. If you're not ready to dive, then you're not ready to be an instructor. And that's the thing what you just said, the IDC with UTD is, and especially in the coaching program is, you guys learn us how to teach and not how to dive. - We've always said that we are an education company that happens to do scuba. - Yeah. - Right, back in 2008 when I was actually looking for an education project to do, I was getting out of the film industry or was changing things and it turned out, scuba was a good one for me, right? I loved the dive, I was an instructor, it was fun, you know, I had become a DIR style technical diver. So it was a nice fit. It could have been rocket science, it could have been brain surgery, it could have been anything, car mechanics. You know, I didn't care, I was just looking for a really good education project. And that consciousness from day one at Unified Team Diving goes through to today. When people ask what we do, it's always about the idea that we are an education company that happens to do scuba. And I think that we instill that same consciousness into the instructors. - The coaching IDC is just very powerful, but I experience also the coaching in with the other courses we have, like an essentials a few days ago, by my students sent me recordings, film recordings from him on the water. And he was riding with me on WhatsApp. He said, I was in the pool and I was training and I filmed myself. I said, okay, let's see the recordings. He said, he said, no, no, wait, wait, I have to edit the recordings and I will send it tomorrow or day after tomorrow. I said, no, I want raw material. I don't want to see something edited or whatever. Okay, then the recordings came in and I analyze them with him together and you said, wow, okay, this is perfect. So you set someone up for the next time training and he got things in mind to what he has to do. - What happens there that's fascinating to me and this was part of developing the coaching program is that we thought initially that doing video for personal skills was going to be a cop out that we were going to say it worked, but it didn't and we weren't sure and all this other stuff. What I've really discovered over the years now is that this process that you went through with your student where record yourself in a pool and let's talk about that. And then you can send that student back with one thing to fix. Whatever it happens to be. And then the student goes in and has to make that neuromuscular connection to learn how to move their own body to fix what you were trying to adjust. And when you do that, you learn it yourself and you learn it in such an incredibly strong way. Whereas if you were in the pool with that student and you just, you know, monkey see monkey do, you show them how to hold the regulator on an estrile and then they just mimic you and they put it, that doesn't create the later stages of learning. We have wrote understanding application correlation. It doesn't give you anything to help you with correlation. It just gives you a root, which is memorize it, but not understand why, not understand how to apply it. And then correlation, how to use it in a new scenario. Exactly. So this whole process of video really actually does work. It sounds like, you know, when we try to sell this to people, we sound like used car salesmen. But it really does work because you have the ability to learn this stuff on your own and anchor it in a way that you don't ever forget it. I'll see it for my students as the magic won't, you know? It's the magic tool for my students. And because I was there myself with Ben recorded me in water training and in the evening with a glass of beer or whatever, we showed us. And then you can really open up your mind and process it because you see what you have to do. And what you said, if you're in water and you make an ascent, you're on a surface and you talk to your student and you say, yeah, you have to change this, but they don't really have an image with it because they think, oh, I'm in perfect trim. And then with a video you show it and then they really realize, it doesn't look like how I feel. And that's the thing. They think they are in the water and they feel like, well, I'm in perfect trim, I'm the best tech diver or whatever. And then you hold up that video and you say, that's a minor thing. That's a thing. And then they really, okay. So you see them thinking and they get that aha moment and they open up their mind and their senses to process it. And that's why I say that the camera, the GoPro, in our teaching is the magic wand. So that leads you to last week when we had a meeting and got you set up as a coach. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm excited about that as you start to bring people into the program. Yeah, I'm also excited and I'm hoping it will come off the ground. And as we spoke about it here in the Northern of Europe, it's very difficult because everything here is packed in clubs and all sorts of stuff. And we have to manage the bureaucracy of every nation. And you told me you don't have that problem in the United States. It's only a dive shop and everybody meets everybody and hey, let's have some fun. Yeah, both of those systems have benefits and drawbacks. You know, the drawback to the club system is it tends to be kind of a closed system. Yeah. The drawback to the shop system is they tend not to have communities associated. So the club gives you a community, but it also closes the system a little bit. In the US, we have dive shops which will sell you anything and teach you classes, but then it's harder to form communities within that. Yeah. And we do have dive clubs here, but they don't function like they're social. Yeah. They have meetings, they have trips. They're not really designed around teaching or around a compressor. You know, you're still in the US still going to a dive center to get fills. Yeah, but that's the difference. And as I said, it's a little bit harder to get a hard work here to get foot on ground to get your students. But I got the UDD logo on my van and I go on every lake. And yeah, very carefully, the people starting to recognize me, starting to recognize UDD. I was last time, I was in HEMOR. I had a course dry suit. And I was talking with my student and blah, blah, blah. And all of a sudden, they came across me. He said, "You're a bald also, but you're a little bit too tall. You're not Ben." I said, "No, I'm not Ben. I'm his colleague." And that was really funny. So the recognition is. is there, you know, and that feels good. - Yeah, that's a really good piece of it too, because, you know, we started coaching, and then we started to sell coaching or to market coaching. And it's really tricky because it's such a new thing. No one's ever heard of it. Nobody knows what it is. There's no, you know, I keep hoping that some other agency will embrace the coaching system because it will help all of us market it. But so far no one else has. So, you know, it becomes a very grassroots sales process for us. You meet a student, they don't live close to you. It's freezing cold in the winter. Hey, I've got this thing called coaching. We can work on this for the next six months, get you ready for a class, then we meet someplace when it's warm and beautiful or we go to Egypt. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, and as we say, and what your matter of speak is nothing is for free. That's also a thing what I experience here, when they are in clubs, they pay a yearly fee for the club. And here in Germany, for example, we have the Faudi Estee, that's organization. They control all the clubs with insurance and regulations and they tutor under CMAS. Yesterday also in the talk with that guy, and I said, "Yeah, you're paying a little money. To be honest, you only getting a little education." But I noticed because people see the prices or hear the prices, oh, that's a lot of money. And then I said, "Yeah, but what is your life worth?" And what is worth for a good quality of education. - So, I have a couple of things about that. I have two memes about free. One is, free has no value. That's the first thing. And the other piece of it that I always look at is free is the F word. I just hate free. What happens with coaching is that the clients, so we've changed the nomenclature a little bit, right? The instructors are coaches in vice versa. The students are clients in vice versa. But when the student comes in and says, "Okay, you're gonna pay a monthly fee for coaching. You're gonna get all of the UTT online content for your category, but I'm going to save you 10 times over your monthly coaching fee by helping you purchase carefully, by helping you spend your money carefully." We're very financially transparent in UTT. My life is that I am frugal but not cheap. I don't know if in German that translates, but they're different, right? Frugal is careful. Cheap is a state of mind. - Exactly, yeah. - Not cheap. Someone said to me the other day, we were talking about buying a bike, and I was like, "Just get a good bike," right? And she was like, how did she say it was? Buy once, cry once. - Yeah, that's a key, right? - So you buy it, you feel the pain, but then you don't have to buy it again. And that's kind of what we're looking at. So when people come into coaching, it's like, "Well, it's gonna be this much a month." I'm like, I'm gonna save you that in the first six months by helping you, guiding you to buy stuff once, buy it properly. So the free model, which has haunted us in UTT working in Europe for a very long time, it's a terrible model. - Yeah. - It's a terrible model. - Yeah, and you're right there. So, yeah, nothing is free, and you can spend your money only once. - Yeah, when people come to me as a new coaching client, I ask them for two things on day one. One is their equipment list. Make an online spreadsheet and show me every piece of equipment you have, right down to the bolt snaps, and then your spares kit, all that. And the other thing I ask them is, what is your disposable income or your disposable budget for scuba diving? 'Cause scuba diving does not put food on your table, it does not put a roof over your head, doesn't pay your mortgage. How much money can you spend every month on scuba diving? Fairly, and not get divorced and not run out of food. And all this. And once I know the budget, and once I see the equipment list, then we can develop a year long plan. It says, "Here's your budget for equipment. Here's your budget for training. Here's your budget for travel, and here's your budget for coaching and education." We put all that together. It takes so much stress off the client. - Yeah, that's right. And the same thing you did with me when I came into the coaching program for IDC, the first thing you asked me to put a list of my gear and my budget, so yeah, it makes sense. - And it reduces all that stress, right? It's like, "Oh my God, now he wants me to buy a dry suit. You know, where am I gonna get $3,000 or $3,000 for a dry suit?" But if we look at a budget and say, "Okay, you're gonna skip this one trip, but you're gonna use that money for the dry suit, and you're gonna have a few hundred dollars, a few hundred euros left over for training." All of that fits in, and I've had everything. I've had people come in and say, my budget is unlimited. It's like, "Well, nothing's really unlimited, but okay." And then I've had people come in and say, "Well, after I pay for coaching, I can spend like $100 a month." It's like, "Okay, we can make that work too." And so finding this balance as a mentor and as a coach gives you so much ability to work with your clients in a really honest and transparent way. That's been a huge piece of it. - And that's the key, that's the key to find that balance with your student or client, sort of speak. - Yeah. - And that's really the key, so. - Yeah, I have clients, one has lots of money and has the most expensive gear, and I have a client who has from scratch second hand, doesn't matter. - Doesn't matter. - It doesn't matter as long as it's good. Go for it. - Yeah, yeah. So what's next for you? So you're an instructor, you're tech trained, what are you gonna do next? - Try to convince my girlfriend that I can go cave diving. (laughs) Okay, you may have to take her with you. - I don't think so. Now she's now diving 25 years now on a really, really recreational type of way. And that's okay with me, you know? And then she also said and there is, as you thought in a, you spoke about it in a podcast, you need a village to grow and to sustain in what you're doing. And that is really true. And she is also my village, but she said to me, don't bother me with those things. I don't want it. I said, okay, just have, have fun diving in Uganda and that's it. - Yeah. - She only loves the warm water and the colorful fishes and corals and everything. Yeah, and I'm a type of guy I like to call dark and the bad vis, you know, the bad visibility. So diving with my girlfriend is for me relaxation and it's all good, but when I'm diving, a tech dive with some other UTT guy or whatever, and it's also fun for me, everything. - Isn't that the beauty of it though, I think, and again, I think I work on this a lot with my coaching clients is find the fun. You know, I was getting, I get people coming in and you know, I'm doing, you know, training dive after training dive, then I'm in the pool and I'm training, and I've always been adamant that if you're gonna do a training dive, do it at the end of a fun dive. So go diving for an hour and for the first 40 minutes, go have fun, go play, go explore, look around, do some photography. And the last 20 minutes when you come back to the line, do your skills, do your practice. So you don't get into this rut of just training, training, training, training and lose the joy. Yeah, exactly, you will not be able to sustain the joy to hold that joy if you only training, training, training. You have to make fun dives. You ask me about my future, yeah, cave diving, cave diving is my non-plus ultra. I went, I was, when was it last year, September? Yeah, I did the overhead protocols course with Ben in Hemore, and it was, What's the matter? I didn't, it was really, I was so amazed by myself. And I was, and the beauty was there. Also we were with three guys. And the other two guys are also UDD divers. And one is also a UDD instructor against. And the other guy I was on the tech course in Norway. But it was really magical. We never met Jens. And we met each other there. And we stand there. We drink a cup of coffee. Okay, let's go diving. We made a dive plan and it worked. Without too many words spoiled. And there, it came to me on the water. This is unified team diving. Everybody is from the first second on, on the first page, on the same page. And it's dialing in. With, with not much words. And that was really a beauty. But yeah, we did that over head protocols. And it was a fantastic course. It really boosts your skills. And everything in mind, in body. It's amazing. The overhead protocols. Yeah, we developed overhead protocols, which is really the first half of cave one or the first half of rec penetration one. Because people were going to Mexico and spending half their time, you know, in 20 feet, six meters in an open water learning the skills. We're like, you could do that at home. Yeah, exactly. And then we take those three extra days and put them on the end of your cave one class and go cave diving. And it's worked out perfectly. And what also powerful is overhead protocol. I noticed it was last year. Last year I was, what was it? May or June. I submitted for a cave dive here in a slight mine here in Germany. Because there was some some on Facebook something. And if you're a tech diver and you want to try cave diving, sign up and come a day, try to dive in a slate mine. I said, yeah, that's, that could be the possibility to to experience if cave diving is something for you. I mean, not not everybody can go cave diving. It's all about the mind and the mind is the mind isn't is a crazy thing. And so I did that and I said, I was hooked. I said, yeah, cave diving. Yeah, I'm a girlfriend. No, you're not going to cave life. It's dangerous. It's not dangerous. It's more dangerous to walk here in the traffic than go cave diving. But whatever. And then I started the overhead protocols and and and that course is really the perfect course to experience and and to learn about yourself if is cave diving something for you? Yes or no? Before you spend a lot of money for the cave on course and then you're in in the cave. And then you say, no, one mind will not work with it. So for you, it's great though, because you're the guy who likes cold dark no vis and you can drive to France and take your course there. You don't have to fly to Florida, fly to Mexico and so on. And yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. And that that's the beauty of it. So I hope that that I will start this year with the cave. Fantastic. People can reach you via the instructor search page on the website if you're in or around Germany. Hit up Renee for training and coaching and you're just starting to work on getting some of our materials translated into German, which is cool because we haven't really explored that language too much yet. Great. Did you could do the podcast and great we could introduce you to our community. I appreciate it. Yeah, it was fun and just wanted to let anybody know out there that I'm here and especially for the Netherlands and for Germany and wherever in Europe. Maybe I will get in the footsteps of Ben and fly all over the world, but yeah. And then we'll chip away at the club bottle. And see if there's a good way to integrate ourselves into the European club. Yeah. All right, Renee, thank you so, so much for everybody. Be sure to leave us a rating review, get on our mailing list. All the things we say at the end of the podcast, you can get this podcast wherever you get your podcast, which is for us almost everywhere. And yeah, thanks Renee. We'll see you all on the next one. Yeah, thanks Jeff and take care. Bye-bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]