Episode 425 – Jervis DiCicco

Jervis is a CEO & Caver

Jervis DiCicco, CEO and Co-founder of ProsperBridge, talks about his passion for caving, the risks associated with it, and how that has helped him with handling risks in the workplace. He also talks about how intense situations can be bring people closer and why it is important to help activate people’s passions at work!

Episode Highlights

• Getting into caving
• Some of his favorite caves
• The risk matrix and how it applies to his work
• Building relationships from intense situations
• Activating people’s passions

 

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Photo of Jervis Caving

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Jervis starting a 150′ rappel in a cave near Carlsbad, New Mexico
 

 

Jervis’s Links

Transcript

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    Welcome to Episode 425 of What’s Your “And”? This is John Garrett, and each Wednesday, I interview a professional who, just like me, is known for a hobby or a passion or an interest outside of work. To put it in another way, it’s encouraging people to find their “and”, those things above and beyond your technical skills, the things that actually differentiate you when you’re at work.

    If you like what the show is about, be sure to check out the book, also called What’s Your “And”? on Amazon, Indigo, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop, a few other websites. All the links are at whatsyourand.com. If you want me to read the book to you, that’s right, this voice reading the book, look for What’s Your “And”? on Audible or wherever you get your audio books. The book goes more in depth with the research behind why these outside-of-work passions are so crucial to your corporate culture, and I can’t say how much it means that everyone’s reading it and writing such great reviews on Amazon and more importantly, changing the cultures wherever they work because of it.

    Please don’t forget to hit subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss any of the future episodes. I love sharing such interesting stories each and every week, and this week is no different with my guest, Jervis DiCicco. He’s the CEO of ProsperBridge, and now he’s with me here today. Jervis, thanks so much for taking time to be with me on What’s Your “And”?

    Jervis: John, it’s a pleasure to be here.

    John: This is going to be awesome. I’m so excited for this. I have 17 rapid-fire questions, get to know Jervis out of the gate here. I’ll start you out with a pretty easy one, I think. Favorite day of the week.

    Jervis: Ooh, not as easy as you would think.

    John: Okay.

    Jervis: Gosh, this is going to be unpopular, but I’m going to say Monday.

    John: Monday. Oh, is there a reason?

    Jervis: Yeah, I love work. I absolutely adore my family, but when the weekend’s over, I’m ready to be back and have some alone time in front of my computer.

    John: Okay, that makes total sense. I’m all for that. Okay. How about puzzles, Sudoku, crossword or jigsaw?

    Jervis: Crossword.

    John: Crossword. Okay. All right. How about a favorite color?

    Jervis: Go blue.

    John: Oh, that’s not a good answer at all. How about a least favorite color?

    Jervis: Well, I would say gold just to bother you, but I have to go with red.

    John: I figured it would have been Spartan green.

    Jervis: No, no, no. Ohio State is the real rival.

    John: That’s the real rival. There you go.

    Jervis: Yeah, Michigan State just happens to be in the same state.

    John: There you go. There you go. All right, I hear you. Fair enough. Fair enough. How about cats or dogs?

    Jervis: Dogs.

    John: Dogs.

    Jervis: Dogs, and I’m offended by the question.

    John: There you go. Oh, my goodness. How about a favorite actor or actress?

    Jervis: Ooh, that’s one of those things that’s always in flux. My long term answer, body of work, is Robert De Niro.

    John: Oh, yeah.

    Jervis: But right now, I am absolutely loving Schitt’s Creek and also Peaky Blinders, so, Cillian Murphy, and I think it’s David Levy. I think that’s his actual name, the son in Schitt’s Creek.

    John: Yeah, yeah, Eugene Levy’s son.

    Jervis: Son.

    John: In real life, yeah yeah. Good answers, very good answers. This is a fun one. Someone asked me this one, and I like to flip it around is socks or shoes.

    Jervis: Slippers.

    John: Slippers. Okay, there you go. Nice. That’s a good answer. That’s a very good answer. How about Star Wars or Star Trek?

    Jervis: Star Wars.

    John: Yeah. Now, I’m double offended.

    Jervis: Yeah. I’m ready to hang up.

    John: Right. Your computer, more of a PC or a Mac?

    Jervis: Well, I prefer Macs, but I work on a PC.

    John: Okay. All right. All right, there you go. How about suit and tie or jeans and a T-shirt?

    Jervis: Neither one. A full zip sweater and these days, sweat pants.

    John: Okay, there you go. Now you’re bragging. Now you’re bragging. How about a favorite ice cream flavor?

    Jervis: Oh, that is brutally tough. I love ice cream. I’m sort of an ice cream aficionado. For me, it has to be chunky. Don’t give me chocolate or vanilla. I will throw either of them on the ground. I think the favorite flavor, and this is cheating because I made it, it’s toasted coconut with almonds and dark chocolate chips.

    John: Oh, there you go. Yeah. No, that sounds really good. I agree on the chunky. How do I get more calories per spoon?

    Jervis: Yeah, exactly. Right?

    John: In my face. Yeah, something to chew on. Yeah yeah, totally. I guess you already answered this one. I was going to ask TV show you’d binge-watch.

    Jervis: Both Schitt’s Creek and Peaky Blinders are the two that I have been into as of late.

    John: Yeah. No, those are solid answers, solid. How about your first concert?

    Jervis: Oh, man, that’s tough to remember. It was either Rusted Root.

    John: Oh, yeah. Okay.

    Jervis: Or Billy Joel. I’m not sure which of those two very disparate answers is correct. I think it was Rusted Root.

    John: Very cool. I like that. Since you’re the finance background, stocks or bonds.

    Jervis: Oh, gosh, neither. That’s another long conversation.

    John: Okay. All right. Fair enough. How about a favorite number?

    Jervis: You know what, this is so strange. Being an athlete, almost all athletes have a favorite number. I changed my number between high school and college, probably six or seven times because I really just don’t have one. I’ve even tried. I coached myself. Okay, I love ten. I’m going to love ten. I really don’t have a favorite number.

    John: All right, all right. I figured it was going to be zero and the number of national championships Bo Schembechler has won. No, I’m kidding, man. I’m kidding.

    Jervis: Oh, don’t go there.

    John: I’m teasing, man. Just had to fire back. Two more, two more. Books, audio version, e-book or real book.

    Jervis: E-book.

    John: E-book. Okay. All right. The last one, the favorite thing you have or the favorite thing you own.

    Jervis: Yeah, so this is a strange answer. It’s a hat with a pin on it, and the pin is the award. It’s an award I won at the summer camp I attended for 19 summers.

    John: Wow.

    Jervis: It’s called the A Camper Award, and it’s basically an embodiment of leadership qualities and outdoor skills.

    John: Wow. Okay. Does the pin, is it like a lifetime achievement sort of a pin, or is it every year, there’s somebody gets one type of thing?

    Jervis: Yes. Every year, as many people as earn it, can get it. It’s typically one to three, each summer, earn it, and you have to re-earn it consistently. It’s like an ongoing thing.

    John: Okay. That’s impressive, man. That’s very cool. That’s an excellent answer and dovetails perfectly in the outdoor stuff, caving. How did you get started caving?

    Jervis: That’s a great question, a fun story. I was out in San Diego for a good friend of mine, who I actually met at that summer camp, for his wedding in 2003. We were at Joshua Tree for the pre-wedding, you couldn’t really call it a rehearsal anything. We were just hanging out in Joshua Tree the day before the wedding. Joshua Tree is basically, for those of you that haven’t been there, it’s basically just piles of boulders made into mountains. It almost looks like God was just chucking pebbles for a while and making these piles. You can go climb around on the rocks. It’s a great place to climb in Boulder. My buddy noticed that I really enjoyed finding routes from the bottom of the pile to the top that went through the pile instead of just over the pile, which is what everybody else does. He’s like, “You should try caving.” Because he had just gone on a NOLS trip, it was a full semester and included two weeks of caving. I was like, let’s do it. That’s it.

    John: That’s awesome, man. So that was the first one?

    Jervis: Yeah. We weren’t really caving in Joshua Tree. There are no caves there. That got us excited about planning a trip. We planned a trip and executed our first trip about 10 months later.

    John: Oh, okay.

    Jervis: We went to Nevada and caved in Southern Nevada and Great Basin National Park.

    John: Very cool. Do you have a favorite or a group of favorites of caves that you’re like, oh, yeah, these are definitely, if anybody’s interested, you’ve got to go to, or ones that you’d go back to?

    Jervis: Well, if anybody’s interested, they should start with something easy, to see how much they like it. My favorite caves, and there are several, Horsethief Cave and Bighorn Cave, which are technically one cave, but they have separate entrances. Again, supposedly, they connect, but I’ve never found the connection. Those are both right at the border of Wyoming and Montana. They’re about a two-minute walk from each other, the entrances. One is in Wyoming, and the other is in Montana. They’re right on the border.

    John: Interesting.

    Jervis: Then Crystal Cave in southeast Arizona, and Crystal Cave, that’s a very common name, Crystal Cave in Sequoia National Park.

    John: Okay. They’re such cool names. It’s like, I want to go right now. Crystal Cave? Horsethief Cave? Of course, we’re going.

    Jervis: Horsethief Cave, John, has, in the back of it, in the way, way way back. We’re talking, if you know exactly where you’re going, it’s about a three-hour trip.

    John: Oh, wow.

    Jervis: It has a fully articulated skeleton of a prehistoric horse. This is a horse that’s the size of a large cat that could climb trees. You look at it. You’re like, oh, that’s a cat. You look closely, and the head is clearly a horse head. It has has no canines or fangs, just molars. It’s a tiny little horse that could climb trees and eat leaves.

    John: That’s amazing. Three hours in or three hours around?

    Jervis: Yeah, way, way back, three hours in.

    John: Wow, that’s nutty. Is it like rappelling down? Or is it, you walk in? It’s not like a hike underground. There’s some work involved here.

    Jervis: Some caves are horizontal, meaning, you walk in or crawl in. Some caves are vertical, meaning, you rappel in. Many caves have a vertical element in them, regardless of how you get in, so they’re very hard to find. You see in movies, people walking into this gigantic hole on the side of a mountain.

    John: Right.

    Jervis: While that does occasionally occur; most of the time, it’s like a manhole cover-sized hole that’s got a bush over the top of it, or is tucked up in, eight feet above you. You’ve got to scramble up and wiggle your body into this hole. It’s very hard to find the entrances if you don’t have precise directions or a GPS location. Then, yeah, once you get in, it’s the part where you’re hiking around. We call that walkie-fastie. That’s our technical term for when you can actually stand up and walk.

    John: That’s funny.

    Jervis: Sometimes you’re full on belly crawling and barely squeezing through spaces. Other times you’re rock climbing up the side of a 60-foot wall inside of a cave. One of the cool parts about caving is you can squeeze your body through a hole, it barely fits through, and that opens into a room the size of Notre Dame. It’s like this huge, amazing room. Then sometimes below you, there’s a canyon that goes down further than your light will go. It’s a really spectacular environment.

    John: Yeah. Are there maps of these? Clearly, there must be some research done before you just go in, Indiana Jones style.

    Jervis: Yeah, yeah. There are maps of many caves. We have never done a cave, the first time we went in, with a map. We always go into a cave without knowing what’s in there and where it is. Because one of the most fun things for us is the exploration aspect of you discovering that random hole that leads to that huge room or that huge passage or that huge section of cave. If you want to do something like find the horse in the back of Horsethief Cave, you better have a map.

    John: Yeah, I was going to say, some of that stuff, yeah.

    Jervis: Yeah, it would have taken us days to find that.

    John: Yeah. It’s like, should we keep going? Are you sure that’s really a thing? That’s so cool to hear. There’s just so many different adventures. It sounds like it combines a lot of things. It’s the hiking. It’s the rappelling. It’s the rock climbing. Then you add in the the army crawling, just for fun. There’s a helmet and equipment. What kind of gear?

    Jervis: Yeah, most essential gear is a helmet and headlamp. You want to wear gloves and body covering. Anything you leave in a cave is there, pretty much, indefinitely. That’s why there’s that skeleton of that horse in the back of Horsethief Cave. So, you don’t want to get your skin oil on the cave, as little as possible. Right after a helmet and headlamp would be knee pads and elbow pads. You definitely want some cushion for when you’re squeezing yourself through tight rock. It’s nice to not be mashing up your knees and elbows. Now for vertical caving, there’s a whole other suite of gear you need, in addition to a harness and a rappel rack. You need ascending gear as well, and I’m not going to get into that boring stuff.

    John: Oh, yeah.

    Jervis: You’re ascending out of a cave. It’s very often a free hang. There’s no climbing involved. You’re just going up a rope with an ascension system that basically cavers, climbers and people that cut down trees are the only ones that understand this.

    John: And sixth grade gym teachers.

    Jervis: Yeah, sixth grade, now they’re climbing those big thick ropes.

    John: Those big, fat ropes, right.

    Jervis: To measure how much of a human being you are. Are you presidential, or do you suck?

    John: Exactly, the presidential physical fitness test.

    Jervis: Yeah. Right?

    John: You get to the top, and you press it. There’s electric, like the static. It’s like, zzzt. It’s like, ah! I’ll just do the pegboard.

    Jervis: Yeah. We didn’t have static at the top of our rope. I don’t know if that was a special torture for you.

    John: Probably. John Garrett’s on there. Let’s do it.

    Jervis: Yeah, it very much felt like, if you can do this, then you can be the president. If you can’t, you’re going to be a janitor.

    John: Yeah, that’s the way they painted it. Right.

    Jervis: Yeah, absolutely.

    John: It’s sit and stretch on a box. Or maybe just, they were training everyone to be cavers. Maybe that’s secretly what their plan was.

    Jervis: Yeah. If that was how we ascended out of caves, the biggest ascent that we’ve done was a 300-foot ascent.

    John: Holy cow! That’s amazing.

    Jervis: I’m certain I could not have done that on the gym rope.

    John: Yeah. You had to stop and eat lunch, halfway up. That’s far.

    Jervis: It took one of us 42 minutes to do that. I’m not going to say which one.

    John: Right. That’s awesome. Do you feel like, at all, I mean, you don’t obviously cave to get better at your job, but do you feel like caving gives you any sort of skill set or mindset that you bring to work?

    Jervis: Absolutely. I think the biggest thing, there are lots of things. I don’t know how long we have. The biggest thing is definitely a risk matrix. Caves are very, very dangerous places to be. You’ve probably seen at some point in the news, people getting stuck in caves, getting lost in caves, getting trapped in caves. You need to be constantly assessing risk. It’s basically a two axes decision, and this applies to every area of life. There’s your consequences of failure axis. If I don’t execute what I’m trying to execute, what’s going to happen to me? Is it death? The last cave that I was in, last month, there’s a traverse along a wall, a ledge, that’s probably, I don’t know, at its widest point, maybe it’s 18 inches. To your right, off that traverse, should you fall, is about a 50-foot free-fall. We would call that a very high consequence of failure, potentially fatal. Okay?

    John: Yeah.

    Jervis: You compare that axis with your chances of failure. If it’s a low chance of failure, we looked at that traverse, and we figured out that the handholds were secure and stable and pretty comfortable. We said, okay, we’re going to do this because, well, obviously, the consequences of failure are high, the chances of failure are extremely low. You look at every decision in a cave, through that matrix. Because also, if you get hurt in a cave, it’s very difficult to get you out of the cave.

    John: Yeah, I can imagine. That’s such a great thing for life, really, yet it applies to work. That’s a muscle that you’re exercising every time you go caving. It becomes a quicker process and a more refined process, so then when you’re at work, you can apply that, and vice versa. I imagine, at work, you’re doing the same thing. You’re just getting better and faster at the same thing.

    Jervis: You got it, absolutely. Again, it’s a simple equation, chances versus consequences, but it makes you really want to dive into how you analyze decisions. Because there’s the flip side of that, the more positive side of that matrix would be your chances of success versus your outcomes of success. You can flip it around and say, okay, if I do this thing, that might increase my business, ten times, but it’s really expensive. The chances of success are really low. I might not engage with that thing, even though I got really excited at the outcome possibilities.

    John: Right. Yeah. It reminds me, when I was in college, I took a class on decision trees. I just love that because you’re just looking at all the alternatives and the percentage likelihood of them and then the outcomes. It’s just you don’t have a whiteboard in the cave to draw it all out, at the time.

    Jervis: Yeah. I would not have guessed, by the way, John, that you were the guy in college that likes that class.

    John: Well, it was the least technical class that I took, outside of the philosophy and the theology stuff. It was like, oh, good. It’s not a balance sheet? Okay, awesome. There’s no cash flow statement in this class? All right, I’m all for it.

    Jervis: Nice. Nice.

    John: Yeah. So, is caving something that you’ve talked about in your career, with colleagues or clients?

    Jervis: Yeah. It’s probably my favorite thing to talk about in the world. I often, aggressively, keep myself from talking about it because it’s not an experience a lot of people can relate to. A lot of people find it frightening and horrifying, so it’s not something I often lead with.

    John: Sure.

    Jervis: But it is something, when I do it, I love to share it. The camaraderie aspect, what I love most about caving is there are four of us that have been doing it together for a long time. We’re guaranteed to get great physical exercise, hiking, climbing, rappelling, ascending, squeezing, crawling. We’re guaranteed to have privacy. It is not a popular sport, and it’s not an easy — like I said, you don’t just find your way into a cave. Or that doesn’t happen frequently, anyway. You’re all in a pretty intense situation together that you’re exploring together. You’re finding new things. You’re using each other to help problem-solve, and always staying connected, at least being able to hear one another. If someone goes and scouts in one direction, and someone else goes and scouts the other direction, you always make sure there’s someone in between that can hear both of them to be the liaison there. It’s an amazing opportunity for camaraderie. I learned at a young age that putting people in, I don’t want to say extreme situations, but in really intense situations, builds relationship faster. I think that that’s also something that I’ve carried over to work.

    John: No, it’s so true. The privacy thing, I never really thought about that, but you’re so right. It’s just quiet, and it’s just us.

    Jervis: Yep.

    John: That’s awesome. You can go at your own pace. You don’t feel like you’re slowing anyone up, or you’re not being held back by someone who’s brand new that’s in front of you or whatever. That’s cool, man. That is cool. Have you come across any other cavers or people in work that you’ve talked with that are like, hey, I’d like to do that, or tell me more?

    Jervis: Yeah. Rarely have I had someone say, I’d like to do that. Your reaction is actually pretty unique. Most of the time, the reaction is, why would you want to do that?

    John: Holy cow! Really?

    Jervis: Yeah. That is definitely the most common reaction to, I’m a caver. Or they’ll say, oh, you like to go spelunking, which is not the correct terminology.

    John: What’s the difference, for the people listening.

    Jervis: Yeah, I’m glad you asked because I can’t wait to answer. I think the way to describe the difference is someone that wakes up in the morning and jogs for 10 minutes versus a marathoner.

    John: Oh.

    Jervis: A caver will say that spelunkers are the people we save when they get drunk or lost inside of a cave.

    John: Okay, okay, fair enough. Okay.

    Jervis: Yeah. For us, it’s a sport. It’s a craft. It’s technical. For them, it’s, let’s go in the spooky cave.

    John: Yeah, exactly, like Scooby Doo or something.

    Jervis: Yeah, exactly.

    John: That’s funny. That’s like the difference between a comedian and a humorist.

    Jervis: Yeah, there you go.

    John: Where it’s like, don’t ask, don’t ask, please don’t.

    Jervis: Someone who thinks they’re funny, and someone who gets paid to be funny.

    John: Right, right. Exactly. Laughs per minute. It’s just a humorist will make you smile a couple of times, and a comedian is going to make you laugh six times a minute. You pick. It’s cool to hear that you’ve shared and been able to share. A lot of people, they’re worried of being judged. How much is it on the organization to create that atmosphere where, hey, this is what we do here, we share what lights us up; versus, how much is it on the individual, maybe like in your case, to just, in a small circle, just start sharing that way?

    Jervis: Individual courage, I believe ultimately drives the world, but a good employer and a good culture is going to try to pull passion out of people, not just because it makes for fun conversation, or, by the way, an engaged employee, but because it builds a sense of team and culture. You can hear in my voice, how excited I am about caving. When you can activate that in someone, you’re getting to see a part of them, you’re learning something about them, you’re having, again, one of these intense shared experiences where someone is passion dumping. I believe, and you and I talked about this the last time we spoke, that employers really should be making an effort to pull that out of people, actively engaging. If I’m your boss and I find out you love caving, and let’s say I don’t, let’s say I’m the average person who thinks it’s crazy and why would you want to be in a small, dark space with things that might eat you. By the way, there’s nothing that can eat you. There are bats, but nothing that can eat you. I would say to that person, hey, you know what? You’ve got 15 days of PTO this year. Let’s make sure that you’re spending at least five of those doing caving if you love it so much. As a company, how cool would that employee feel, if I then even went to a travel agent or someone who knew something about caving? By the way, you asked about where the cavers are. They’re in groups called grottos. There are two in the Denver area, the Front Range Grotto and the Colorado Grotto. The National Speleological Society is the national organization. So, if I empowered that trip, if I even planned and helped you map out your dream caving trip, how much more would you love to come to work? Little things like that, activating people’s passion creates connection.

    John: Yeah, or come back and give a five-minute presentation. Here are some pictures. Here’s the story, a little bit of show and tell. When we were kids, we did it with kid things. Now we’re adults with really awesome stories and adult money. Bring in the cool stuff. Let’s do this.

    Jervis: Yeah. My kids, on my older son’s graduation ceremony from pre-K, don’t get me started on whether or not there should be a graduation from pre-K, but they had each kid come up and say what was the thing they loved the most about pre-K. I would say probably 50% of the kids said the swings.

    John: There you go.

    Jervis: Yeah. My son gave a unique answer that no one else gave. He said lunch.

    John: Nice. There you go.

    Jervis: Yeah, I couldn’t decide if I was proud or horrified that school lunch was that exciting. Made me think that maybe what we’re feeding them at home is not really up to snuff. It’s just cool to see these kids are just naturally, what do we love? I love swinging. Not one of them said Math, and that’s cool.

    John: Yeah. No, it’s super cool. What’s your favorite thing about work? Excel macros? No. Not that. It’s not. Maybe for the one off, okay, but for the other 99.9% of us, it’s the swings or the whatever, lunch.

    Jervis: Hanging out.

    John: It’s the human side of things.

    Jervis: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s funny. When you say Excel macros, my brain goes right to the South Park movie. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it.

    John: Totally. Yeah.

    Jervis: The scene where the presentation that the military is giving, fails, and they call Bill Gates in, to question — I’ll leave it there. I won’t spoil the joke.

    John: It’s worth the watch.

    Jervis: It’s worth the watch. You can YouTube. You don’t need to watch the whole movie.

    John: Exactly. No, that is awesome, man, so great. It’s been so fun having you be a part of this. We could do 18 episodes, I feel like. Do you have any words of encouragement to anyone listening that maybe feels like they have a hobby or a passion that no one’s going to care about because it has nothing to do with my job?

    Jervis: Absolutely. Like I just said, when you share your passion with people, you light up, and that makes them light up. It creates a bond that nothing else can. So, have the individual courage that I just talked about, to step up and share your passion and your hobby, and encourage others to do the same. Because everybody loves to talk about their favorite thing but for some reason, most of us, and this includes me, oftentimes don’t do it. That’s a shame.

    John: It doesn’t have to be a shout it from the rooftops every five minutes.

    Jervis: No, no, that would be too much.

    John: If somebody asks, well, you asked. I’m not forcing it on you. That’s also a great way to lead is just to ask them. Well, mine’s caving. Wait, what?

    Jervis: Yeah, exactly. Then they’re like, oh, I can say whatever mine is.

    John: Yeah, pretty much, pretty much, except for spelunking or Ohio State football. That’s not a good one either.

    Jervis: Yeah, thank you. No, and everybody knows that.

    John: Right. Everybody knows that. This has been so much fun. I feel like it’s only fair that I turn the table since I rudely peppered you with rapid-fire questions at the beginning. We’ll make this the first episode of the Jervis DiCicco podcast. Thanks for having me on. I’m all yours, whatever you’ve got.

    Jervis: What’s your favorite quote?

    John: Oh, my favorite quote. That’s a good one. There’s one that I’m going to have to look up the exact… It was on a subway sign in New York City. When I was going down the stairs, they had a sign above the stairs, and it was something to the effect of, you’re either creating or consuming, so, create with courage.

    Jervis: Ooh, I love that.

    John: Yeah, and you can apply that in however you want to apply it. Not everyone’s creative, but we’re all creating in our own way. We’re creating our life. You could say, live with courage. It kind of dovetails with what you were saying as well. That’s one that I really like and, yeah, a big fan of that one.

    Jervis: Alright, if you could only eat one fruit for the rest of your life, what would you pick?

    John: Oh, wow. Probably apple. Probably apple. I’m pretty basic. Watermelon’s so good, though, too, like good watermelon, but apple is versatile. It’s hardy. Actually, when I speak, I often joke about, whatever group I’m speaking to, that apples are very much like professionals. They’re durable. They have a long shelf-life, and over time, they grow round. Not everybody laughs as hard as we do, but that’s hilarious.

    Jervis: Yeah, depends on your shape.

    John: Exactly, exactly.

    Jervis: Last one, favorite movie.

    John: Favorite movie. Not to beat a dead horse, but of course, Rudy’s got to be on the list. Goodwill Hunting is a good one, Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber. I don’t know. I do enjoy just silly movies.

    Jervis: Yeah, yeah. You say Ace Ventura, and that pointed me to a follow-up. Ace Venture 2, where is that in your pantheon of sequels?

    John: I’m a massive Jim Carrey fan. It’s hard to think of a better one.

    Jervis: Yeah, I love it. I think it’s one of the most underrated movies ever.

    John: Yeah. It’s just more of — is that the one when he goes to Africa? There are so many hilarious people that are in that movie, as well, than of other parts. Ace Ventura, it’s such a great story of where they came to him originally with a script, and he’s like, this is terrible. He’s like, the only way I’m doing this is if I read it. At first they were like, no, and then they figured out, yeah, maybe we should. It’s pretty genius.

    Jervis: Yeah, it is.

    John: You can turn on any part, and it’s pretty hilarious. Yeah, I’m a big fan. Awesome. We’ll have to go caving and then after, watch Ace Ventura 2, and then hang out and eat some ice cream. It sounds pretty awesome.

    Jervis: Ice cream and apples.

    John: Well, yeah, and some apples.

    Jervis: Chunky ice cream.

    John: In case there are doctors listening. Right? No, but it’s been so much fun, Jervis, having you be a part of What’s Your “And”? Thanks so much.

    Jervis: My pleasure, John.

    John: Yeah, and everybody listening if you want to see some pictures of Jervis in action in these caves, or maybe connect with him on social media, be sure to go to whatsyourand.com All the links are there. While you’re on the page, please click that big button, do the anonymous research survey about corporate culture. Don’t forget to check out the book.

    Thanks again for subscribing to the podcast on iTunes or whatever app you use and for sharing this with your friends so they get the message that we’re all trying to spread, that who you are is so much more than what you do.


		

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