Ed the Diver - Diving, Clean Waterways, and Social Media Career - Ep. #9

0:16 Whatever, it's. It's life. You probably make this Dr. relatively frequently, huh? Yeah, I come down to Green Bay a lot. So either to dive or for for meetings a lot of this year it's been a lot of like news stations, radio shows, podcasts. I've done a lot down here, but I've done some from home also. Yeah, you're kind of in that spot right now like where it it's like balloons faster than probably you would have expected. Yeah, that was kind of the goal cuz I this is my first year doing this full time. So as soon as I quit my job at the end of December last year, my full time job at intercom, I was doing Underground Electric. As soon as I was done, I started contacting a lot of different agencies and saying, hey, this is what I do.

0:58 And you're like, Oh yeah, we've seen your videos, we've heard of you. When can we meet up? So it was really cool, like like January this year, I got a bunch of stuff, radio, some news. January, January, March or January, February, March. So I was really busy, even at that TV show. 2 episodes and that'll air pretty soon here. So it ballooned. Yeah. So a year you've been doing it? Yep, So January 1st will be a year that I've been doing this full time. I know it's slow in the middle of the year, the lure sales and stuff, but I was able to travel a lot and get a lot of footage. But now I'm like finally trying to catch up. Now that it's winter, it'll be editing time. I'm trying to catch up with about 30 videos, 30 different dives. Yeah.

1:39 So how long had you been doing it like part time before you started? Just took the dive to just full time be at the diver. So I think it was 2017. I started just going and you know, that wasn't really diving and I was just walking, wading through the water, picking up lures with a Golf Club Retriever and in cold water had some waders on. But then in the summer I would dive down underwater, hold my breath about 3-4 feet of water, grab lures. And then the next year I wanted to do it kind of get in the water sooner underwater. So I bought a suit, wet suit. That's why I started diving. And then I then I ended up getting a camera for my go for my mask, got a GoPro, and then I started learning how to edit videos and that was kind of tough, but figured that out.

2:23 And then after that, someone taught me to scuba diving. So I got scuba certified and just blew up after that, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So where did the IT sounds like the interest started then finding lures like how did the interest start in this in doing? It all right. So yeah, I was explaining this yesterday out in Milwaukeea. So my kids, I want to teach them how to fish. I've got two kids, they're 18 and 20 now almost. And so, you know, I lose lures myself. And when you have kids, they're going to lose lures. They're going to get snagged on rocks, snagged on trees, everything. So after having a tackle box full of lures, couple weeks or couple months, you look back at your tackle box, it's empty pretty much.

3:06 So I had to get those back and that was the way I got them back and instead of just getting mine back, I was getting everybody else's back too and and cleaning up the line, the lures. And then I seen the need for picking up trash too. So then I started putting up a basket on my board so I could throw bottles and cans and and paper plastic in there and it just ballooned. After that it kind of exploded, expanded, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, such a it's such a unique thing that you do. But there is in that niche, there are some others that like have there's one on the YouTube that I've seen that they they like dive and they the videos that went big that I saw of theirs, they're like fine, like conspicuous stuff, right.

3:50 Like they end up calling the cops and have to do that but I've never seen it. It's so interesting to start with the fishing lure aspect and I mean living in the area that you do like it's a really unique way that works out like so many lures specific times a year. It's very very busy. Do you make it a point to like go down to the river when it's real busy and? Yes. So in the springtime spring walleye run where everybody's shoulder to shoulder, fishing, combat, fishing. I try to get out there before there's too many crowds. Or I try to get in the spots where people aren't fishing and I keep my distance away because usually they're throwing up current, they're reeling in the lures, coming back.

4:31 You know, it's just kind of like a cycle, cast up, reel in, cast up, reeling. So I'll stay away from that area, but I'll I'll start diving in the spring probably when the water is like 3233° or ice is gone and it's cold, very cold. And I start collecting lures then and people around the bank still fishing. So I'll throw them lures that I'm that I'm I'm finding on the water and then I keep of course some for myself for my business. And it's just really enjoyable experience and there's many places to go do it because Fox River, Menominee River, O'Connell River, Peshtigo River, like Walleye are coming in all these places. So they're just big treasure troves, Kind, I guess.

5:11 Treasure, trash, troves, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, I'm sure we will talk later about it. Some of the you had to find some weird stuff, but I I want to know first like before we get too far away. Like you said you were doing some underground electric work before. How How did your career in life lead to Ed the diver? Like what? What was Pre Ed the diver? So I actually, I graduated from Lena High School. That's where I I kind of grew up. I also graduated from NWTC in Green Bay with a associate degree in law enforcement, criminal justice, law enforcement. And I started when I was 18 but finished when I was 27 because I got married, had kids, took a break and then came back in full force, finished it off. But I never became a cop.

5:58 I ended up working at a couple factories in Marinette and then was at Marinette Marine. I ended up being the the security supervisor there for a couple of years and then I decided hey, I've got my two kids. I was married at the time, she had two kids and I said I need to make more money, got a lot of bills. So I decided to do Underground Electric with my brother and it just it was awesome. I mean make more more money than a cop would make doing that. So and you don't need an education. So I did that for like 9 years. But then on the last couple years, I started diving and preparing for my own business and it just just blew up. So yeah, so it was in your mind for a while, like when from when you started making videos, like how long was that till you started being like, hey, you know, this could be a career, like you're probably started making a little bit of money doing it. But then how did that transition happen where you're like, man, this I might be able to do this as a job? So I started making the videos on YouTube and it wasn't really my my dream to be a a YouTube star. You know I just wanted to to get videos outlet people see what's underwater, the effects of the line and the hooks that are left underwater on the environment And it just my YouTube channel didn't really blow up at all but I had a lot of people watching from all over the world started getting comments people thanking me for cleaning up the environment and I started sharing stuff on Facebook and I got a lot of good feedback there.

7:25 But then I started a TikTok account and that just blew up. And so I was ended up doing live shows every week, doing a lot of giveaways to grow my audience and you know, grow my all my followers and get people to watch my live shows. And it just, I think TikTok was one that really blew up. And then I got Instagram, tried Twitter, but that's really tough. It's still still hard to do that one. But it's it's just been cool to to go through the cycle and you'll learn about monetization. You learn about verification, all this stuff, and you go through all those attempts of trying to get verified different channels and they keep denying you. Kind of stinky, but. Yeah. So you were doing that even before you decided to do it full time. You were starting to.

8:05 Yes. OK yeah. So checking out a bunch of your content, man, that that's one thing where we align a lot. So sustainability is big passion of mine. And it seems like that outside of getting your lures back and saving some money, it seems like that kind of is what ballooned your interest in doing what you do. Like what? Did you just start getting down there and just seeing how much stuff fishing actually leaves behind or? Yeah, I mean, you never know when you're fishing, you lose lures left and right. You know, some guys will go down and lose $300 worth of lures in a day or a couple hours and then they go to the store, buy some more and go back and lose them. But when you multiply that times, you know, a couple 100 people fishing on the banks, there's a lot of stuff down there and you never know until you get down there and see it in person, whether they're stuck on rocks, trees, logging cribs, bicycles, whatever is down there, snagging them up.

8:58 So it was a pretty, pretty big eye opener. And a lot of people mentioned that in my, in my videos, a comment like, oh, I never realized there's so much stuff down there. Didn't realize this really affected the water life that much. So I'm trying to educate people as they go along here. And and then looking for lures in line, you start seeing all that trash and you start seeing all the snags, bicycles, rims, sandbags, different stuff that people throw in there that doesn't belong there that will snag people up. And I try to get rid of all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what, What are some of the, you know, you've had to find things other than fishing lures? What else is down there you know, that you were surprised to find? So, so far I've only found one actual gun, a rifle that was all wrapped up in plastic electrical tape. They gave it to the Sheriff's Department. They couldn't find the owner or any crime committed with it, so I got it back after three months. Oh really?

9:52 You get it back. I got got it back, yeah. Probably not operable. No, it's it's kind of rusty. It could be refinished or you know, worked on and made to work again, but I like the way it is. Yeah, it's kind of like a trophy. Yep. And I got a lot, a lot of trophies at home. So I find found a couple BB gun, handguns, a toy revolver, lot of phones, cell phones, Apple watches. Let's see here. You know, a hearing aid, jewelry, rings, drones, all kinds of stuff. Just anything you can imagine you. Found a whole drone. I guess that makes sense. You're flying over the water and it hit something a, you know, tree or a power liner, and you're not getting it back.

10:35 Yep. Yeah. And I've had in the springtime this, I think it was 2 springs ago. Someone was flying their drone trying to get shots of people fishing on the river, but they hit the power line and it went right down in the river in the current. And he asked me to go find it and I said, hey, it's the water's pretty cold right now. The current is too strong. There's too many people fishing. It's like I I won't be able to go in there right now, but I can in a couple months or a month. And but I went back there looked many times and the current must have just took it way far away or something. Yeah. So that had to be something you said someone talked you into scuba diving how what's the learning curve like for that and and how'd you because you talk about the current and that has to be different like doing a river than a lake like how did how did that play out? So when I when I was just free diving in a wetsuit, you can hold your breath and you're less of a current and you don't really have to worry about too much have a little weight, extra weight on my waist to hold me down because your suits buoyant. It'll make you float and you need to wait to get down. But I think when I started scuba diving, another scuba diver was out there and he saw me just hold my breath and he I went and talked to him and he said, hey, why don't you get scuba certified?

11:52 And my excuse was, well, I don't want all that stuff on my back. I don't want the stuff in my mouth and all that extra stuff looks scary. So and he talked to me. No it's not. I used to go go to M&M diving and I already knew of the place in in Menominee next to me and he said, dad, just go talk to him, set up a class and he'll answer your questions. So I did that and I got certified. I think it's 2019 in the in the fall and I just when the waters get pretty cold and I was already used to the cold water but then after that it just it just exploded. You know, I I was finding more stuff, I was safer. I was able to go deeper and not worry about getting hooked or something underwater and being stuck there trying to come up for air because I could breathe.

12:36 So just the best, the safest option was doing that, getting certified. Yeah, so how That's one thing I thought of while watching your videos is like how often does your, like wet suit get hooked on not only fishing hooks but anything down there because you like you navigate through some tight areas and and like how how often does your wet suit get hooked and and. So, well, my gloves, they're part of my gear. They I go through a lot every year, probably like 3 or 4 pairs. But the hooks will tear my my fingers apart, especially on my left hand for some reason. So I've got all these gloves with the left hand's bad, the right's still good, but so I think it must be how I grab them. But they hook them there and you're always ripping them out.

13:17 And then once in a while you'll look down you'll you'll see a hook on your leg or or a lure stuck in your leg or your arm. But it happens, and you just you just take it out. And when you're underwater, navigating through all that, the rocks, all the line and different stuff, you'll feel it on your fins, the line stuck around there. And you have to get it off right away, otherwise it's going to wreck your fins from rubbing back and forth. It'll wreck your gear and your hoses. Which I'm sure isn't the cheapest stuff on on earth. No, I think. I think the setup I wear when I dive is probably around $2500 Between my suit, my gloves, my camera mask, my, my BC regulator, octopus, and, you know, everything else. Yeah, so it's not definitely not cheap. And then it wear the wear and tear. You got to always have new stuff. So I got like 11 suits and a lot of gloves, probably about 10 air tanks and a couple extra octopuses and regulators just in case.

14:14 So how often do you dive? Like how often do you actually? How many dives would you say you did in the past year doing this full? This year probably like 50 or 60 and that's that's traveling, traveling all across the Midwest. Usually I do more, but this year I've been like I said, I was working more on social media stuff and working on getting on the public, traveling more. But a lot of times I'll just stick around. The first couple of years I was just sticking around about an hour and a half from my house and so it's easier to travel, dive, travel, dive. But this year I did longer trips where you're traveling more, less diving and and then it's also with social media and with all this other stuff, it takes a lot of time out from your diving because you got to do all that stuff too. Isn't that interesting?

15:04 You started doing it as a full time job and now you actually dive a little bit less than you were previously. You know, actually our last guest we talked about that a little bit how like passion and career, when they align, sometimes it like changes things a little bit. Has it changed diving for you at all yet? Diving is the the funnest thing of of my job. But it it like you said it's I'm getting doing less and less of it and it's it's it's kind of it makes me want to get out there again and more but and I I need to find help. So I need to find somebody to edit for me, and I need to find somebody to scrub lures and scrub bottles and all these frisbee golf disc so I'm not sitting there for hours.

15:50 Then trying to find owners of stuff that takes a lot of time, research, investigation. But once I find those people, I'll be able to get out there more and just do what I love to do, Dive. Yeah, so that's a pretty regular thing. How like you would you find these random things and you try to find who they belong to. How does that? Even if it's not like a cell phone or so, how does it work? Even if it is a cell phone, how do you find? It so you just say you just find a random cell phone. It doesn't work. I'll bring it home. I'll dry it out. Now I'm starting to take them apart, learning how to take them apart, so then you can actually try them out better. Then after that you try to power them up, after you think it's safe, then you try to get any information off a picture or you try to get the medical ID off that.

16:35 When you go to close your phone down, there's like a medical ID you can look at and it'll give you, give you their name, age, emergency contact and stuff like that. And that's kind of the same with Apple Watches also. You can do that, but I mean, sometimes they don't work. So the batteries expanded a little bit or something's off with it or something got fried so you can't get it to work. So just goes in the trophy shelf just as a decoration. But I get a lot of people that since I find a lot of Apple Watches, a lot of people see a black Apple Watch I found and say, hey, that's mine, I lost it at this place. And then you get three or four other people. It's my black Apple Watch and you can't really figure it out unless you get it working, unless you get the information on it. And I think that the last one I did, I couldn't get it working and I had four people trying to claim it, so whatever. Yeah, it's weird that there's so many Apple Watches. I wonder how, how and why that ends up being a lost in the water item phones.

17:31 You can see, you know they're coming out but how does the the watch come off your? Hands so Apple Watches, they're they're they're waterproof up just certain amount of certain depth. But what they are not is like slap proof or like when you jump in the water and your hand hits the water, the band just opens up and falls off. So whether you're coming down a slide and hitting the water, whether you're jumping off a rock or, you know on a zip line, you fall in the water, it's most likely going to come off. And we find a lot of them. Got you from swimmers. Yep, swimmers, yeah. That makes sense. Maybe you'll find my phone someday. Man, I I got my phone got stolen a while back when I was at a park and I found my phone case on the side of the road.

18:11 But once they figure out you can't do something with that, it probably just gets hooked out the window. You know, yeah. So I don't know much about phone tracking. And I mean if you have find your phone like on another phone or something, you, you could probably do that. But I think most of the time I do recoveries for people that call me and say, hey, I dropped my phone, you know, off the boat in this area and usually they'll pin it. I dropped it off a dock right over here. I can go find it pretty easy, pretty quickly, even in mud. I've had a lot of jobs where you're digging through mud, you can't see nothing, it just stirs it all up and you're just underwater, just probing around like that until you find it. Yeah.

18:52 And that that's a whole another part of your business, right? Like just specific calls or from singular people saying hey can you die for ABC item I lost. So on call. So people call me say hey, I'm at the Marina what do you charge to come look for my phone or my keys or whatever and I'll, I'll tell him, OK, this would I cost, that's what I charge just for this area. But if I have to travel like hours away I tell him my my travel time or my travel fee and my diving fee and give him an option say, OK, this is going to cost you probably about 600 bucks. Is your thing worth that much? I know my time is but I've done a lot of free stuff to to kind of advertise, get it out but now it's time to be more business minded.

19:38 So it's kind of tough giving those estimates out, but if you're going to take my time away and my skill my, you know, everything, my equipment, everything, I got to get money back for it. Yeah, for sure. Well, you talked about how much the equipment costs like it's like running any business and but it's just it's not the business that people come into contact with every single day of their life that you understand. But like so 2019 you started SCUBA, how long did it take like to get that certification and become like comfortable doing that? Since I was already underwater a lot it was pretty easy just to have that gear on and it figured out. But it was like I think 4/4 dives with an instructor and then you had to watch a DVD go through a book. So I mean I think it was about a month, month and 1/2 it took.

20:20 OK. So yeah, I mean that all goes into it, but I I assume that's probably a a big hurdle that others have to go over that you not, not a whole lot of people are diving underwater holding their breath and looking for fishing lures, you know that's already a pretty unique thing you had going on. It's a it's like it's a obstacle you got to overcome when you got to have the money for the class. And I was able to since I had a full time job, I had money coming in but then I was selling lures too so that actually helped too. But then after you take the class you got to buy your own gear and that's another big thing try to say do I want to buy used gear? Do I want to buy new gear? And the best thing for beginners to buy used gear because new gear is really really expensive I. Suppose, yeah.

21:03 So that's another thing I noticed talking about selling those fishing lures you put together like boxes, right? That people buy is the holidays. Are you expecting the holiday season? Be pretty busy for that. Yeah. And I they actually I used to sell, sell them separately most of them. But I did like singularly singular when you know, I put on my website just the different, the variety of brands and you know, let them pick what color they want and stuff. But now I just decided it's more efficient to put them in trays. They don't label the trays and stuff, put them on my website or sell them at shows with the whole tray because people want to buy it for their family member or for the friend for themself. They want to have like a mystery tray or they want to have a certain type of lures in one tray and it's shipping wise. It's better to buy them in bulk other than you buy one. Lure shipping is 450 so that $2.00, three dollars you're saving and that one lure you just paid over it and shipping. So but yeah it's it's been working a lot lot better. Last Christmas was crazy.

22:04 I was. I had my whole table just filled up with orders and I expect the same this year and I'll probably run out of lures, maybe this year before the spring walleye run. So I really got to get back in the water. Really. You You'll sell out of all of them that you find. Well, last year was was pretty. I was cutting the line close by the time I got just to the to the river to sell during the walleye run. Had a decent amount, but every year it's been getting less and less, especially with my online sales, social media and stuff in different events I do locally where I'm out selling at craft shows. So I hope to have some left, but you know the usual have like a couple thousand and I think it'll be down to a couple 100 by the time Walleye run comes around.

22:48 Yeah, something the everyday fisherman just doesn't think about, right. Like how much money's worth of lures is just under you in the water, That's that's why. So what, do you just do your boxes by like species then? Because I mean walleyes, huge around where you dive, but I'm sure you find some musky stuff and, you know, bad stuff and things like that. Well, musky stuff. I keep on my walls. Decorations. I think I sold two of them so far in the last couple years, but I'm kind of a holder of musky lures. OK, but yeah, everything is pretty much musky and maybe sometimes trout in the rivers where I go to, but I'll try to just put a variety in some trays are some trays. I'll just do one of a certain type, but a bunch of different colors. People like rip and wraps from Rapala. A lot of people use those in strong currents because they're they're lipless, they're heavier, they can get down to the bottom where the fish are more. And I find a lot of those blade baits spoons, so those are the main ones.

23:45 But also like shallow diving, shallow dive HJ Husky jerks and then deep diving Husky jerks, Those are some other ones that are out there. Have you had any of those companies like reach out to you and like you, you would think that's a prime opportunity, right? So it's for like pairing up. Have any of them reached out to you or anything? So good question. I actually contacted Rapala a couple years ago. I sent him an e-mail and said hey, my name is Ed the diver. I make videos cleaning up the rivers and the majority of the stuff I'm cleaning up are your lures. And I'm, I'm, I'm saving fish, mud puppies and crayfish from the lures and the line. But they never I I said, do you want to work together to kind of to advertise or help help out in some way. And they never got a hold of me.

24:37 But I had Northland Jigs from Minnesota. They contacted me and they love what I'm doing. And then I visited them. It was at this last year in in Bemidji where they're located. But we don't have anything any kind of working agreement going on whatever. But they they follow my channels, they watched my videos and I I did a little video with them when I was over there, but I don't have anything going on right now. Yeah. So it's probably like this weird double edged sword for them, right, Because the whole world, business world is about PR and they start thinking about the negative PR that could come from that. But like smart businesses get in front of it, you know, and address the issue before it topples the business.

25:18 You know, has it changed your outlook on fishing at all? You started it, you know, thinking about the lures you were losing personally. Has it changed your outlook on fishing? Really hasn't changed my outlook. It has changed my habit so I don't fish anymore, really. I've got thousands and thousands of lures, fishing rods and reels that I find that I can't return to. The owners got a bunch of those, but if I have time to fish, I have time to clean up the waterways. That's kind of my mindset now, you know. And when you're down there looking at the fish, you know, bass follow you around, you feed them crayfish by hand, you kind of grow a relationship with them. You kind of have like you feel bad for just going to fish and ripping up their ripping their lips up or ripping their throats up with a hook.

26:06 It's like I really don't have an ambition to do that anymore. When you're underwater, they're peaceful, they're just chilling out and it's. I just don't want to go out for fun and just, you know, catch them and throw them back, catch them and throw them back anymore. Yeah, I assumed it had to spending that much time down there with them. You you proximity is a big thing with our our kind of outlook on anything. I think like the closer for instance the closer people are to the food that they eat and the the animals you end up ingesting, our outlook changes on a little bit. So I I assumed it had to be the same thing with fishing. That's so feeding bass crayfish by hand.

26:48 Yeah, they'll just eat it right out of your hand. So they whenever I'm underwater or other divers, just you're looking for lures, you're moving rocks and then also you have a audience of bass, big bass, little bass. Because when you move a rock, there's crayfish, there's minnows, stuff that hides underneath there. So as soon as you move it, they go flying over, grab it, and then they'll just follow you around for like an hour. And everywhere you go, you're grabbing lures in line, they're swimming underneath you, they're swimming across your face. They're they just looking for free food. And there's been a couple instances where you you see a certain fish and you notice a scar in their lip or something that's different. I've seen the same fish a few times that they come find you, so it's pretty cool.

27:32 Right. They start getting to know you a little bit. So how? Like how? Well of course that makes sense. You know like they they don't see you as a predator. They don't often see a you know a human sized thing swimming around in the in the lake. So they they know you're not a predator. How I guess how are there more or less than you would expect down there when you start diving? Like are there more fish like like it has to be crazy during the walleye run but like in normal times too? Is there Are there more like fish around than you would expect or? So during the spring and the fall, there's more because they're they're coming up to do the spawn or you know, do whatever. And so the springtime, you're running into a lot of walleye, sucker, sturgeon and sometimes sturgeon. They're like 5-6 feet long and depending on the visibility, when I'm down there looking for lures, also need to see this big old logs from across your face and then this big old tail following it.

28:35 It's it's pretty crazy, makes your heart skip a beat. But sometimes you can swim right up on those on on sturgeon, you can pet it, you can grab try to hold on to the tail but they're so strong they just whip your hand right off it. But now walleye, they they're kind of finicky they if they see you first, they're gone. But you see trout, salmon, all kinds of different fish. And that's something I'm learning about is different types of fish. And it's kind of kind of cool seeing the different types underwater, the size of them and their habits of a kind of interacting with humans underwater. Some are brave, some are scared so. Pretty cool. So how like how what is the visibility like around here? Like it seems like that would be maybe a struggle that in other areas maybe like we don't have like the Crystal Clearwater that you see sometimes, is that a struggle? It is definitely in the Fox River in the springtime, when it's cold, you've got a visibility of, you know, three, maybe 5 feet sometimes.

29:41 But then as the water gets warmer, you got all the algae blooming in the in the water or you got more stuff coming off the roads and out of the ditches and getting in the river and kind of mixing it all up gets worse during the summer. I've done recoveries and 0 visibility green water and it's possible to still find stuff, but you're not going to see anything, so. Sure, and that's all by. Field by field or with a a metal detector? Underwater metal detector. OK. So and I won't go out anywhere over my head where I'm not familiar with and dive blind but you know if it's off the edge of a pier or a a dock or something and you know I'm used to the area, I'll go down there and do that.

30:23 I'll I'll search. But then you're running into fishing line and you get fishing line in your in your mask and your camera. Then you got to get it out before it rips your mask off. You'll get it in your hoses. So you just got to kind of go clean up the area before you start searching. And you'll come up with handfuls of line hooks will start popping out of everywhere, and then you clean them up. Then you start searching, and it's been pretty successful in finding stuff. That sounds like not doing that, not being able to see sounds like the most terrifying and frustrating thing I've ever, I've ever heard. What? That's a It's got to be right? So if you're claustrophobic, it's not going to work out good. But it's another thing is to not really to be too scared about bumping into a fish.

31:08 Because, I mean, I've done that and there's still big sturgeon swimming in there. So you'll be searching all of a sudden you'll you'll feel something and you'll know it's just a monster sturgeon. But they don't freak out, you just bump them then you move back over. One of my fears is bumping a big snapping turtle or like maybe just bumping its mouth and it reacts and reaches over and grabs my arm or something. So you never know. That's one thing I was going to ask you about today. I've thought about that since I started watching your content snapping turtles. They got to be there, like I'm sure you've seen them right. Yep, I've seen them this year. Saw like three of them, but they're all pretty cool Experience. One of them, I actually reached my hand. I was reaching for a bottle.

31:49 I was focused on bottles and tunnel vision. Visibility is awesome. But there's this turtle just sitting on a rock and I put my hand right in front of his face and he just blinked. Didn't snap on my hand, nothing. And as soon as I grabbed the bottle, I I realized it. Or I was about to. I pulled my hand back and I was just like, whoa, it's pretty scary, but it's pretty cool. I guess in my mind I was thinking, anything goes in front of their mouth, they're going to grab it. Yeah. But it didn't do it. Because even like even underwater they can, I think they can move their heads really, really fast. They're fast, yeah. And you can't even react to how fast they are. It's crazy. Yeah, that's one thing I've been thinking about since I started watching your content. Because, like, you know, people, especially ones that aren't like fishermen or something, would probably think about like muskies and like, Oh yeah, big old fish, big old teeth. But I don't think that would really, They're probably not that scary, right?

32:38 Like. I've never even seen a muskie underwater yet. I've seen northern, northern Pike, but they as soon as they see you, they're gone. You can't. I've never got within like four or five feet from a northern Pike. OK, so they're kind of finicky too, like a walleye. And the muskie, I've seen seen people pull some huge muskie out of there, like, you know, over 4 feet long. And I mean, when they open their mouth, it's huge. I mean, they could bite your hand. But I've never had that issue, never seen one. Nothing ever attacked me. Yeah and I, you know, they're just out there to eat, you know, And maybe it's the same way with the turtle, but for some reason the turtle to me, I was thinking about snappy turtles watching your stuff and just specifically that scenario you just laid out reach into grab cuz they're very good camouflage too. Like you can't see them, really.

33:24 Definitely. So then next thing you know, like Wham. So I assumed you had to be thinking about that. Yeah, I do. Expression and low visibility are, you know, under a bridge. I do a lot of bridge cleanups too. So a lot of times I'll stay in the light where the lights coming down. But then you got the edge, the shadow from the bridge, and they'll actually hide there to hunt for another wait for fish to come by and they'll just, you know, minnows or crayfish and they'll grab them. So it's like when I'm working around there, I'm trying to be really careful to kind of stay a little bit away from the shadow. But then I do go under bridges too. So you go under bridges, you close your eyes, you let it adjust, or if you have your flashlight with you, you just use your light. But there's been this year, I went to reach for something in the in the dark, off the edge of the shadow of the bridge. And I seen it was white, kind of. And it ended up being a snapping turtle's leg, like the the white color underneath it.

34:20 And I just, it just creeped me out. It's just I I think I scared it as much as I was scared, 'cause it, it took off. I took off, yeah. Yeah, man. No talking about that. You're talking about price earlier. Oh, my goodness, that price just keeps on creeping up. What? Do you? Think about that. There's not a not a whole lot of people. I think that would feel a whole lot of comfort in that scenario. But yeah, the visibility thing, man, the the visibility thing really like that terrifies me to think about just being so you said around your head height, that's where you'll go with no visibility. Yeah. If I have no no visibility, I'll just stay shallow or you just so I can stand up if I have an issue or something. Or you know if I have a bunch of line and I need to stand up and and pull it all up and get it off my gear just so I can be in control.

35:12 So I'm not like trying to tread water and then the lines get stuck on my feet and my feet are stuck together. So I it just try to stay out of dangerous situations like that. Yeah, that's probably one of the bigger dangers, right? Like somehow being confined or stuck to an area that you can't get off of. Yep, and with there's different kinds of fishing line. You got mono and braided and I think there's other ones too. But monoline it's easy easier to snap with braided line you that start get that wrapped around your fins or that your your attachments on the side your fins and it starts wrapping your feet up. The more you struggle then then you can't really control your feet too much. But if you do have any issues you can just put more air in your BC float up the top or you know I always have a knife on me have a player's a scissors got stuff you know to help cut it all off and stuff.

36:02 So never been really confined to the bottom or confined where I I was freaking out or anything. You just stay calm and take care of the the problem. Then you keep keep working. Yeah, what are some of the more precarious situations you found yourself in since starting to do this? I just explained this the other night. I was in the Fox River and it was still springtime and there was a bunch of current coming through and then there was kind of a a calmer area and I was staying in the calmer area. Water was really cold, my hands were freezing already. My feet were freezing, but I was trying to stay on the edge of the current and my board. It must have been moving around on the edge of the current back and forth. So then my my line coming down that I was holding on to get wrapped around both my legs and so then I was the current started to pull me. I couldn't really move my feet because it was all wrapped up for my my line coming down and I had ended up just. It kind of caught me off guard because I'm like, man, this isn't isn't good, this isn't normal, I'm not used to this. So it pulled me down a little bit. There's nothing to hit or anything, just rocks here and there.

37:09 So I just ended up sinking down, grabbing some rocks and then just calmly unwrapping my feet. But then when I came back up, I realized that the current had pushed me down a little further away. So I just got out of the current and then went back to do what I was doing. But it was one of those situations where it's like, OK, what if something happened? And what if the current pushed you uncontrollably? You couldn't move your feet and yeah, run into a rusty rebar, you run into something sharp and metal, you're impaled. So that's kind of the situations you think about and you don't want to get caught up in it. Yeah, how does the current affect it being in the river? Like can you still in most places be where you want to be? Or are there places you can't even get to because the current is too strong? So the springtime that there's more dam dam gates open, so there's more water flow.

37:58 But later in the year when the gates are closed, you can get up really close to dams. And usually the dams that I go to, they'll, they'll sound the alarm or something 3 minutes before they're going to open a gate. So if I hear that or if I know it's going to be opening, I'll stay away from that. But I stay in Menominee River, I'll stay off the side more where they know it's not going to get, you know, be a dangerous situation. And I don't want to be a bad example either and I want to go home every day. So there's. Yeah. There's some situations I won't put myself in, but you kind of get to know the cycle throughout the year when the current's going to be stronger, when the visibility is going to be worse and you know different factors like that. So that's you can get up right close to dams sometimes. Yep, Yep.

38:43 So I'll blow it. And like I'll I'll never dive above. There. Not above, yeah, but below the dam. You can get there with your scooping gear. Yep. So in Menominee, the Menominee River they have most of the year, they have the like 9 or 11 dam gates and they'll just keep like the one on the further end open throughout the year. Sometimes it's closed completely but and there you got all this extra space where the the water will go out but it'll like fishbowl, like it'll kind of come back like this, but it's not very strong. So you can go down there and search for lures in line and not worry about getting sucked in over there. Yeah, because that's got to be a huge collection area. Right. Right under where the waterfalls. Down and that's where everybody's fishing because that's the furthest place the fish the fish can go to. Yeah, and they all get piled up, right? There, yeah.

39:32 One of my one of my favorite fishing spots back when I used to live in a different place. I would catch crayfish and then fish against the dam where the water came off and I would slay them. A lot of fish there too. They love crayfish and I used to do that too. You know, you go catch a couple crayfish, you hook them on. I don't think you can even do that, but. Yeah, I know. I don't think. So I was a kid. I didn't know. Yeah, I know. I don't know what state it was in. You could probably do it somewhere, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I didn't. So that's interesting that you can get that close to the dam. I assumed that that was kind of like a a dangerous area, but that's to the layperson, I guess. I have no idea. Yeah. I haven't been in trouble yet and I don't want if I'd somebody does come out and say like an authority figure says, hey we don't want you dive in here you know off the just do what they say and you know move on. But that's definitely one of the place that needs to be cleaned up the most.

40:25 Yeah, is up there and I find so much lead from the years of people throwing those big snag hooks out with the lead on them. The Hooks have have rusted off, but you just get hundreds and hundreds of pounds of lead sitting up there. Yeah. So get rid of that. Absolutely. And then what do you just sort of like recycle that probably right? I've got a a bunch in my basement and I have projects that I want to do. I've got forms to tell you me. I got things to pots, to melt it, to do stuff, but I just don't have the time. Yeah, I started painting lures. I'd make time for that in the winter time to do custom painting, but now that it now I outsource that to save me time. Yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on. Yeah, well that's probably been maybe to get off the diving topic a little bit, but that's probably been one of the more interesting thing in that to navigate in your first year transitioning to doing this just full time is like where to put your energy and and what to do because you don't have identified like the cash cows yet. Probably there isn't you're making bits of money from different places.

41:29 How you how you working through that? So that is that is a good point. I've I've been trying affiliate marketing for the last year and a half and I just decided like, hey, I look at the statistics, how many clicks I'm getting, how much people are buying off my links that I have. I'm like it's not really paying off of me taking the effort to, you know, keep keep the links updated and do all this stuff. So I'm just going to keep it, but I'm going to not touch it. I'll just like you don't have the links, I'm not going to keep them up to date. I need to focus on stuff that's actually making money right now. And that right now, for me, that's social media and phishing lures. And as I grow my channel, social media, of course, will make more money than, you know, local sales, because you're making money when you're sleeping. People across the world are watching your videos, you know, for the rest rest of your life, they're they're on the Internet. They're going to be there until the Internet shuts down. I don't know if that'll happen or it could happen. Yeah.

42:25 And you probably you're at that spot I'm sure like you have worldwide watchers that probably contact you probably made some cool relationships out of it I'm guessing, right? Yep. So I like people from all over the world do watch. And there are people that are continue to comment and stuff and but you get a lot of people that always are begging. They'll send you messages. They'll send you comments, send me money, send me some lures, give me a gift card. And you know you're rich, man. Help me out. I need this for that. And so you get a lot of those in in the US too, but. At the diver Rich. Yeah, maybe. Maybe sometime. And yeah, it's like when your when your face is out there that much, people think you're rich, they think you're millionaire. And it's like, no, I'm not, not yet. Someday.

43:11 Yeah, you you applaud the, you know, the 11 year old and you're up for sending the message. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So really it's just you're trying and testing and seeing what works. Yep, it's kind of. Exactly. Now, this year was something different. We went to a Cory and Green Bay here, Pampering park, they've got a Frisbee golf discourse and they've got this quarry in the middle of the course where people lose their Frisbee golf discs in this quarry. And I've been asked to go dive it many times over the years. I contacted the the park system, said, hey, can I come dive it? And they said, oh, you need $1,000,000 in business insurance policy and you need this and that and sign this waiver and like, well, I'll try to get this policy.

43:57 So I try to get the policy, couldn't get it through my insurance. So I just decided, OK, I won't dive there. But then they contacted me like a year or two later and said, hey, we've been watching her videos, you know could you come dive here? And I'm like, what about that policy? They're like, oh, we can work around that. Yeah, so is the the park director got a hold of me and he asked me to come clean up trash and he want to know if there's a car down there and just collect all the the trash and the frisbee golf disc. So we did that, didn't find the car. We got 280 discs out of there, me and my buddy, and we were able to find a phone. We saw like 4 bikes down there, a safe refrigerator.

44:40 I can't even talk a refrigerator. And it was just really cool seeing what was in there after all the years of, you know, kind of being in the area and wondering what was down there, how deep it was. And we were able to figure all that out. And someday we'll be back there to get the bikes out the safe and the mic the refrigerator. So you are. So I watched this one. I I know which one you're talking about. So you are making plans for the fridge. You're going to try to get that out of there. I would like to, but I think it would require a crane or some many lift bags. Yeah, so. So lift bag, That's a what? Like something that what I'm picturing is something that puffs up into a bunch of air, brings it to the top.

45:20 Yep. So you you attach it to whatever you're going to lift up, you take your regulator, fill it full of air and then it expands and then I'll lift it up. But I think my biggest one I have is 125 lbs that it'll it'll lift up. So I would need something that would lift 6-7 hundred pounds up. So I think, but it's an old fridge, so you know, I'm sure it's pretty heavy. Oh, I'm sure. And full of mud and full of junk. And who knows what's inside of it? Yeah. So it might be a crime. Maybe there's someone, someone inside, something inside. But. Man, So what? What'd you do with all the the the disks? I put them all on my website. Oh, OK, OK.

46:02 For this, for first day that I had them, we washed them. Second day I contacted 100. I texted 100 different numbers that were. There's names and numbers on a lot of them. Because I know, yeah, I know a lot of people do that. Yeah. I spent like 10 to 12 hours the next day doing that and I actually was sick when I was doing that. I from diving, I dove at the quarry and then after that I did a phone recovery in that green water and I ended up like I was throwing up. I was the bathroom like multiple times and then also trying to contact these people is a really rough day. But I was able to get about 25 back to the owners and we had about 1520 that people said, oh hey, we watch your videos, we like that you're cleaning out the environment. You can just go ahead and keep keep the disk, my disk, keep it, sell it, give it away, whatever you want. So then after I gave everybody two weeks to respond my text or Facebook message, however, I got a hold of them and then I ended up putting them on my website and started selling them like that.

47:04 Gotcha. OK, So is that something that happens like, you know, there's, I mean, there's times everywhere where you can't swim and things like that. The water's not always healthy to be in, but if you get a recovery, sometimes you do it. Is that is that what you got sick from? And is that something you have to keep in your? Mind it was getting sick. It happens a lot, even just when I'm just doing cleanups, if I swallow a little bit of river water in the springtime, you got, you got walleye particles coming from, you know, eggs or walleye semen coming through the water. And you're like, you come up for air, you come up to do work. Also, you get a little water in your mouth and you start gagging. Just swallowing that little bit of water will make you sick for three days and it's I'm used to it, so it's part of the job. I like to tell people that I got worms in my stomach. That's why I can eat all the ice cream I eat and whatever else. After a long day of diving, that's the indulgence. Ice cream, yeah.

47:57 Well, once in a while as I get older, I'm like, is this really good for me? Like, am I going to sleep tonight? Am I going to have a heart attack? Am I sleep if I eat all the sugar? So that's that's the kind of stuff that crossed my mind. But the ice cream videos have kind of helped my grow my audience and make people laugh more so. And So what like thinking about that weight thing, what's what, how heavy a thing can you bring up? Just like because that's it's not like lifting something out here like how heavy you think can you bring up from the water. So I brought if I have something heavy. I've done 2 anchors before, like two 2530 LB anchors, so I'll have them in front of me. I'll pump a bunch of air in my BC, which will inflate it, put more air in it to make me float. And then I'll grab the two anchors and I'll kick my feet, get them up here and come up the kayak and toss them in. So like 5060 lbs.

48:48 That that works. But I've had boat motors where I couldn't do that. I've had to drag the boat motor underwater for like 6080 feet back to shore over rocks, You know, it goes up, down, up, down, and that's tough. You're breathing hard, you're sweating. But it's nice to get it out because it's not a snag anymore. Sure. And a boat motor, is that like a like a personal recovery or do you just find? Boat motors. I've done one person recovery for a boat motor, which is it was a lighter kicker. But then I found another one and the there's gas tanks on some of the older ones too. So there's fuel still in them and you want to get them out of there so you don't have fuel floating down the river, but you just randomly find stuff so you never know. You could be, you know, looking for lures or trying to do recovery else and you see something weird over there, something weird over here and it just get it out of there. That's funny.

49:41 So where did some of those trips take you? Like you said, you're starting to expand your range a little bit. Where are you starting to dive? So I made it down to Illinois last year and this year, but this last time I was in Illinois, I wasn't able to dive because the water quality is horrible. So I just ended up doing cleanups, shore cleanups, bank cleanups. And you know that needs to be done too, because birds, wildlife around the shores get all tangled up in fishing line the trash. Any trash on shore is going to blow in the water, most likely. So I did that in Illinois, went up to Bemidji, MN this year again and I went over to the Mississippi River in Alma, WI. Visibility is horrible, but we we try to die, but it's it's still fun. Fun trip.

50:25 I go up to the UP once in a while. One of my goals is to get all the way up to Lake Superior and do some dives for those yooper lights, those glowing rocks, when you shine a blue UV light on them. They have all these cool that looks like lava inside of them, but they're apparently worth some money and a lot of people collect them. But it's it'd be pretty cool to do. But I mean, yeah, just across the whole Midwest and we've been traveling kind of expanding more but also trying to hit the hundreds of spots I already have marked on my map that people love. Asked me to go dive, either by dams, by old bridges, by places where they used to be a a dump, You know, find old bottles, find trash, get out of there. Yeah.

51:07 So that. OK. Two things I want to talk about 1 Superior that like that's a lot clearer, right? At least when I've like. When I've been in superior like it's a lot clearer water. That seems like something that would be a little bit like. Destination. Spot. Yeah, it would be more enjoyable dive. I'm not used to enjoyable dives. I mean, I still enjoy them, but you know, they're low visibility is what I'm used to. That's you're going to find a lot of stuff that other divers that like recreational diving, they're not going to come in and you know, clean up, clean up the kind of stuff I do, but some do. So it's like up in superior. I've been up there once.

51:49 Is it last August? Not this August. Last August we went up and it was so cool being being being able to see like 30-40 feet, that's pretty neat. But there's other places along the Pictured Rocks up there where people go up there, they swim, they lose stuff. I want to go try that out and also try to find those those Yooper Rocks or Yooper Light rocks I'm. Going to have to check that out. I'd, I'd never heard of those. So yeah. And then like that's what I before coming across your content, that's what I picture as scuba diving. It was like, you know, the swimming along a coral reef where you can see to, you know, 5060 feet, how deep can you go And like is that an aspiration of yours to do that kind? So my for my training right now it's I have basic open water training so I can go up to 65 feet deep. My instructor is trying to get me to get more training done so I can go down, you know to hundred or past that. I have done that in Jamaica on a shipwreck. But it's it's not hard to do, but it's it's not something that I really need to do with my business. You know my basic open water cert helps me to do everything that I'm doing already and it's like do I want to spend more money on training right now?

53:05 Because I don't need to, but I kind of want to. I want to get the the, the deeper water one done. Then I want to do ice diving, rescue diving, but in time. But I've talked to a lot of different people who dive already for like a law enforcement rescue diving. And I get way, much, way more practice than them because I'm in there every day pretty much. And then whenever they get a call there, they get one day of training a year. So they go to look for something in the dark or low visibility and they're just kind of freaked out. They're not used to it. So I talked to a lot of different people that dive and they asked me a lot of questions and they kind of share with me. Oh yeah, I really enjoy doing this. I don't like doing that because of this, but I just try to help them talk, talk them through a little bit. Yeah.

53:54 I need to drink. Water. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. So the, like the shipwreck thing, I know that's something that gets talked about, right? Like there's shipwrecks in Lake MI all over there. Shipwrecks in Lake Superior. Can can you even do that around here? Or does visibility stop you from exploring those shipwrecks? No. So in the Bay of Green Bay, there's a bunch of shipwrecks, and that's what my instructor brings his his students out to get certified or to to get more comfortable, he brings them out there. There's also some some shipwrecks kind of out from the mouths of rivers then that are easier to see. There's also some smaller boats in the rivers that you can see, but a lot of them in the rivers are going to be lower visibility out in the Bay. You're going to be able to see them a lot better. So when you dive out in the Bay that change, that's a significantly better visibility.

54:48 Oh, yeah, OK, definitely. I suppose it was moving. It's not like the same type of moving water and everything. So what's visibility like out there? So sometimes depending on the the wind direction or the the temperature of the water, like the first couple feet, like the the warmer layer will be a little less, let less visibility. But then once you hit that thermal climb towards colder water you can see really, really good, really far. So I mean, I'd say like 20 feet maybe on a good day. But you it doesn't sound like you spend too much time out there. Most of your time is in the rivers. Most of my time is in the rivers, but I have done searches for shotguns. You know, duck hunters. Lose them out in the Bay, and then what else did they do out there? Just a couple.

55:30 They're just fun. Fun dies with with buddies or something, but I don't go up there too much. Most of my my work is in the river system, smaller lakes and stuff like that. OK, why it seems like you know? I love doing it. You know, I it's not my my passion to go and do recreational diving just to look at stuff. I always tell people I'm a grabber. If you're doing a recreational dive, you can't grab stuff off a shipwrecks because it's historical and it's like, it'd be cool to see it, but I want to be be in the water making a difference, You know, cleaning line up lures, getting trash out of there, finding cool stuff that you can take. Yeah man.

56:12 And you know, doing what I do and you know I have people ask all the time like about being like YouTube influencer stuff like that. So many of the the successful ones are like you, like you didn't aspire to do that, became really passionate about something that just happens to be very interesting to watch and see. So that makes complete sense. You know that you're not just you know the views are a byproduct of what you do, and it just happens you'd like to enjoy doing what you actually do. Yep. And that is, yeah, it's true. It's like when you start growing, you're looking at those numbers, you're looking at those numbers and you put all the hard work into a video all the time and you hope for a lot of views.

57:01 But I think that what I'm learning is like I'm, I'm looking for more of more comments. Like I want people to say, oh, I never knew this or thanks for sharing. You know, now I want to go, I want to go clean up the banks or I want to clean up any water. So my goal is to educate, inspire and inspire right now and that's kind of more important to me than getting views. I just want to, you know, if I can be in a an impact and somebody to to start cleaning up their area where they're at. And a lot of people want to come meet up with me and do it with me. But I'm like, well, how about you just start in your area and work your way out because that's what I'm trying to do. Like with my logo, I have it has my mask and has some ripples on it. My goal is to, you know, just start here and then ripple out and what's cool is that I'm able to do that. Oh yeah, to think about the people that have even just like. So the next time, after watching your content that walk down the river and pick something up that they wouldn't have otherwise, that's awesome.

57:58 To think about and I get people send me pictures they'll they'll send me a picture oh, I just cleaned this bag of trash off the bank while I was fishing. Like awesome job. Thank you. So they kind of want to share that they're doing doing something too and it's I really appreciate that they're doing that and and then whenever I'm out there I get kids I do beach cleanups too. So I'll just in the summertime, I'll go to the beach. I'll start walking with a bag. I'll start throwing trash in there. Pretty soon. I have other people like grabbing trash, throwing in there too. And that's one of the ways I try to inspire people, too, just to do, you know, local cleanups in the beach. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I know recently you were telling me that you're kind of branching out a little bit and now you're going to kind of move into like some speaking endeavors and and things like that.

58:46 What type of, what type of content are you going to do with that? Like what? What did you do the other day or what are your plans? Like you have I'm sure all of these stories that we can't get to today, but how are how are you going to turn that into that? So I I've been speaking for a couple years now but this, this last one I did was more of a a higher paid when I'm starting to charge for speaking more. But it was it's I want to do it, you know one to educate more people on a wider scale. You know I can just make a video, put it out and 10,000 people could watch it and I could educate 10,000 or I could go make it a private event when it was 20 to 100 or 300 people and just do it there.

59:33 I don't really, I don't really want to record it myself because then I got edited after, but other people record it and they make videos out of it too. But I want to keep doing that. I've got some more stuff coming up soon and I've got a a kind of a marketer guy that I'm going to be working with soon going to we have a phone call today. We got ATV show opportunity coming up soon trying to get a whole season. So then it'll be less work on me and more work on their production side, so. There's a lot of stuff coming up that I really can't say too much about, but I'm just kind of cross my fingers hoping it all falls into place and I'm just going to keep doing what I what I do until it does happen. Yeah. So like some of the speaking arrangements, it's focused on the importance of clean up.

1:00:20 Clean up our business strategies that was the one I just did recently was business strategies for my own private business, social media. So I was able to to go over a bunch of slides and my own personal story with them and they up. They all liked hearing it, had a lot of questions after, and they're all a bunch of millionaire businesses wanting to hear from someone small like me, so. Well, I mean, Small's a relative term, right? And I think there's so much value that that's the value of the conversation we were talking about earlier. But like for a year you've been kind of throwing darts and seeing what sticks and seeing what works. And every year that passes, you're going to have like that knowledge is going to be exponential where you can then share.

1:01:06 I mean, obviously social media changes by the day, but like the strategy around that doesn't always, you know, like there's certain things like you always have to keep in mind about like who's watching your stuff and you know where they are and how you can reach them and things like that. But yeah, that's of course people want to hear that, man. Like, you know, there's there's all kinds of people that do fell into something by passion like you did, and then they want to build it or realize they can build it into something. But so many people, which is a bummer. So many people are like I don't know how can't do it. And that's, yeah, that's the thing.

1:01:47 It's you got to push yourself to learn more stuff. For me, learning how to edit, learning how to market, promote other other businesses other people, collaborate with other people, interview people. There's so much stuff that I'm learning computer stuff and then just trying to sell, sell what you're doing to help you do it full time. And sometimes you really don't have to try too hard to sell it. It's just going to automatically for like for what I do in environmental cleanup, entrepreneur, you know, recycling lures, frisbee, golf, disc bottles, anchors, all the stuff that's already in the river and it's going to recycle next year. You can go back and repeat and you clean up, resell, clean up, resell.

1:02:32 And it's it's been a cool business and it it gets to a lot of people, young and old, that are that love fishing, love outdoors, love clean up, all kinds of stuff. Is there going to be an Ed the diver storefront? Is that in the? Is that in the future? Well, I have Ed the diver, Ed thediver.com, so I already sell stuff on there, and I even recently put some my daughter's candles on there. She's got her own business too, but a lot of stuff on there. And I actually just I I have a lot of old gear and since I have a lot of a big following, I started like putting some of my old gear up for sale. This is like a memorabilia, like someone have a hang one of my old suits up on their wall and say it's from Ed to die everywhere back when it started so.

1:03:16 Yeah. So do you remember, I know it's kind of circling back to where we started, but do you remember the like, was there a concrete day or time that you remember that you that you made the decision to say like I'm going to leave my job and I'm going to do this? Like do you is there anything specific like that? That is a really good question and I've got to answer. So I've worked a lot of jobs. I got really comfortable, my last one making a lot of money, Awesome insurance, awesome benefits. But as I'm aging my my hands and my feet, I've got Reynaud's Syndrome, so they get cold really fast. And I just had shoulder surgery. But working in the ditches all the time, it's a lot of hard work. You're working in the elements.

1:04:00 Cold weather I don't do good with anymore. So operating machinery and working out with your hands in like 10° or 0° weather, it was so miserable because it it just hurt my hands and my feet, they're just frozen icicles. And I just decided, like, how long am I going to do this for? You know, like the 1st 10 minutes of the day your hands are frozen. They're frozen until you get home at 6:00 at night. It's like I can't keep doing that. I don't want to keep wrecking my shoulders. 3 hernia surgeries. It's like really really wrecks your body. So I'm like what price am I going to beat up my body just to keep working this job for another 20 years and then my body doesn't work. So that was kind of one of the main factors that I decided, hey, I want to work myself, do something less, less physical, but something that I really have a passion for, I love doing and that I can make money from, make a difference around the world.

1:04:54 And it's kind of what made me want to do it and and start it full time and I so I built up over a couple years and started this year full time. Yeah. So it was kind of a slow build up to finally, like, you know, nipping away at you to then this, this opportunity in a way kind of presented itself, right? Like it's not something you started doing with the intention. You started doing it because you're passionate about it and it was cool for other people to see. And then like, there was this weird crossing paths of like, you thinking about all that stuff you were just talking about and then at the same time being like this was building and building. Building OK. And it's after I quit my job, I didn't have insurance for for a couple of months. So that it was kind of a really worry in your mind like, OK, I got to be really careful now and don't get sick, don't get hurt, don't do this.

1:05:45 And so I made it through that period. You have insurance now, but it's just one of those things like as a parent, as a adult, you're like I need insurance, My kid needs insurance. So you worry about that. And and then with having your own business, you got to worry about, you know, keeping track of everything, your income, your expenses, your taxes, all that stuff. And then when another the government comes and say says, OK, how much do you make, how much do you spend? And then you try to tell him, OK, I I made this much but it looks like a lot but I have a lot of bills and I put it in my business and so it's it's all kind of frustrating but. Yeah, man, that's that's a microcosm you just laid out, you know, the, the laundry list of things that stop people from taking the leap to to do what you did.

1:06:32 You hear about all that stuff, right? You hear about the insurance. You hear about like, oh, I'm not a numbers person. I can't, you know, manage and balance my Ledger. You know, like I can't, but but you can. Like you can do it. And a year later I'm guessing. Are you? Are you happy? Oh yeah, I'm definitely happy. And like I said, I got a lot of stuff coming, coming into fruition or coming up next year and it's just kind of a waiting game. You know, you're getting more people talking about contracts and and lawyers and account, Like you get all this stuff that you got to start thinking about and it's like, OK, I need to start looking. I'm a diver man, Yeah. And that's like my, my business is called Bieber's Underwater Recovery.

1:07:15 For my official business, it'll be an LLC starting in 2024. So then I can start hiring and having employees and stuff and you know, it kind of just protect my assets in my, my home and all that stuff. But there's so much other stuff that's, you know, coming in the mix like, OK, I want to public speak more. I want to do more commercials for companies. So that's why I want to get in in in hooked up with an agency, something that can market me, advertise for me, get me more clients and then now they get like a Commission out of it. So, but it also saved me time from searching for all that stuff because they do it. Well, and that girl's starting to be on display, right? You said you were doing a dive with Charlie Barons the other day. Yeah, we did one in October, got that. And then he, he wants to come back up to my area and do it and I want to get to.

1:08:02 I want to get a couple of guys up there, but. Yeah. So I guess a little bit earlier you mentioned that you had a bunch of spots on the map. Those are those are probably just interested people sending you these locations, right? I can show you really quick here, but I get everywhere I go. People say, oh, can you come here? And if you come here, can you let me know? Because one, they want me to come come see what's in their waterways, and two, they want to meet me. So there's those are the spots. Oh wow. Yeah. And there's a lot of spots that haven't marked but. There's got to be 50 or 60 just right there. Yeah, there's so many just in this area here within an hour of Green Bay. But there's never, never an end to where you can dive or where you can go every, every place with water. There's mysteries, trash, you know, treasures, something cool to see.

1:08:55 And people in the area that drove by there every single day of their lives, they want to know what's underwater so they get to see it. Private like water bodies do people, that's probably more of like a paid thing, right? Unless they think there's something really cool there. But people come, come, have you like dive their private body of water. Like a private lake. Yeah, I've, I've tried to do cleanups at some of these and you talk to somebody and they're like, no, it's a private lake. We have an insurance that we get to pay for and you can't come dive here. And I'm like and I say, well, I just want to clean up the trash here at your beach. And no, no, we can't do that. OK. I'm moving on. See ya. But then I get people that will lose stuff a a homeowner on that lake will say, OK yeah, we dropped our our phone or keys off the dock or in the middle of the lake.

1:09:37 Can you go look for it? Then with their permission I can do it. But if somebody says no, then I can't. Yeah, well, and even like like if it's a lake, you know, there are very few actual like private lakes that that people that, you know, people that live on them think they're private sometimes, but very few of those. But even like ponds and stuff, you know if someone does, but I'm assuming that's probably more of like a lost thing in there. I've I've done a couple things in ponds. Somebody hired me to come look for a a grate from their dock got really windy and it blew one of the aluminum grates off and it was really tough because they dye their pond blew to keep the algae out.

1:10:19 So when you have blue water and you're going on deeper, it's just completely black. And then they had a flashlight and it didn't there. It's really bright, but for some reason it wasn't really working too well down there but ended up finding the great. But while doing that you got all these half dead black weeds hitting in the face and you're diving. It just feel so gross and it's just like, you know, you come up, it's just. Man, I do not envy it. I I'm going to leave, I'm going to leave the diving to you, man. But so interesting though, and like, it's it's just, it's awesome to hear your story about taking the leap. You know, 'cause so many people don't. And that's a lot of reason why I like sharing stories, why I thought about the podcast and sharing people's stories is that there's so many people that are on the cusp of that, you know, that have something that's working, but there's all these things that keep us not taking the leap. And it's awesome that you did, man. Yeah, it's a lot of fear involved. Then you say, what if I fail?

1:11:22 What if this happens? What if? A lot of what if? What if? What if you succeed? What if you make a difference? What if people love what you're doing and it's just kind of how it is, and I'm going to mess up. I'm going to get discouraged by negativity. Negative comments, but the positive comments definitely overwhelm it. When you get somebody post something, false or negative, you get all the all your followers that sit there and kind of tear them apart and like, why would you say that you're wrong. It's all it's pretty cool. Yeah, and that's one thing that that's probably a good kind of last topic to hit here today that I wanted to talk about. As your presence online grows and your your following grows, of course, like the keyboard warrior side, on the other side just trolls grow too. And as much as you know that most of the time it's somebody that there's no, like, there's no true meaning behind what they're saying.

1:12:13 They're just quite literally being a troll and just trying to send negative thoughts and stuff out into the world. What's that been like dealing with for you as a as a person who got into this with a passion not to be a social media star, but to to have it come along with it. What's that like dealing with? At first it's kind of tough when you know when you're trying to show people like you try to show them proof video footage and you have all these videos of all this proof, yet they come into one video just to come make a stupid comment and then leave. Are they make a comment, block you and then leave. So it's just it's really frustrating, but for a little while I kind of, I really would Stew on it, you know, I would try to message, message him, message him back or say something nice to him.

1:13:01 I'm like say hey, could you watch more of my videos before you make this kind of statement or judgement? But then they block it and you can't say anything to him. And then and then other people would be able to message him, they'd say stuff to him. But I just, I just stopped responding to people like that. And I was deleting them at first, but now we just leave them, let other people take care of it. And it was kind of like it would bother me for hours. I would, you know, just kind of laugh at it. Then I would be driving. I'm start thinking about it. I'd go to the bathroom. I'd think about it, just it's like is dumb, But now I'm kind of learning how to overcome it. Everybody. You say it's dumb. It happens to everybody. Yeah, and then I mean then people. I was going to say people that spam people will send any messages. I posted a picture one one day and within a couple days I had 3000 spam messages on my my messenger and so I would did a lot of business on there.

1:13:55 So all my business opportunities were lost in the 3000 messages because I couldn't go through every single one and delete them because they kept coming. As I was deleting them, kept coming and I do a lot of stuff, my phone, my iPad and it's like, I don't know how to manage it And there's they're still coming so. But it seems like some of my business leads are kind of separated. So people get a hold of me, say hey, can you come find my phone? Or if I just go on the search and say lost, like type in keywords and I can find those messages in there. Yeah, OK, yeah. You know, it's such a strange thing. Social media platforms are like the best worst thing that could have happened to humanity, right? Like there's so much positivity that comes out of it. And like talking about the power of, you know, you doing what you do, you know, you, you.

1:14:46 It's on a small scale, you say, but still think about the exponential impact that it's going to have over the time that you do it and then at the same time you have that person where it's a lot like that, you know, the the old adage says, like the the outward expression from people that are in the negative, you know, mindset or sending out that negative type of stuff into the world. It's more about them than it is about you. And social media allows that to happen under the guise of like a blanket right, Like nobody truly knows who like this fake name is, but that doesn't change the impact it has on the receiver. You like, you know, you started doing this just to make a positive impact and then it's like this, you know, like this chipping away at it.

1:15:33 It's like that sends people a different direction too. So I'm glad to hear you know you've come to a place of resilience, but man, that's tough too. Yeah, well, it happens. It's not just online. You get local, some local people or businesses that are jealous or maybe you're taking away business. They'll they'll say stuff to public people, then you hear it through them. So that's I've learned to overcome that so. Yeah, that type of stuff is, you know, that's a little bit different. You social media maybe amplifies that, maybe it doesn't, but like whatever. Like come by at the divers lure for $3 cheaper and it's fine. Yeah, yeah, It's just lose it again, then I'll find it again. Yeah, well that's awesome, man.

1:16:20 I I really appreciate you coming on. It was nice getting to getting to know you a little bit and hearing about your story. I I wish you continued success, man. I and I I was kind of surprised to see when you you parked in the driveway like people know at the diver your your car or your truck is like set up so they can keep an eye out for your decals. Yep. And that's that's one of the things that helps with my business. Advertising for for, you know, smaller businesses, bigger businesses. And that's one of the things that I started doing too, promotion, promoting small businesses through my channels, advertising my truck. And just something I never thought about Intel. I was like, OK, I need to make more money working for myself. Lure sales are slow.

1:17:01 So then you you start brainstorming. It's pretty cool. That's those stories, man. That's what matters to all those business owners you just talked to the other day. Because everybody, you know, everybody that starts that business, there's no great, well there is probably, but there's no like certain or specific prescribed way to like take a step by step growth in that. It's like everyone's going to be unique and you got to decide what works for you and what doesn't. Yep, exactly. Yeah, Well, thanks Ed. It was nice having. You on, man. Thanks for having me. Absolutely.