#36 - Jeremy Newman: Creating an Adventurous Life (One Conversation at a Time)

I make it a point to be that person that they can connect with in whatever fashion they walk into my class.

And they could be having a bad day, or a great day, or a day in between.

And they know that they're gonna get steady Mr.

Newman.

Hey, you all, my name's Chris Miller.

Welcome to the Talk to People Podcast, a weekly show dedicated toward exploring the healing power of social connection and proving why your life is better when you talk to people.

Today, we have a super awesome conversation with Mr.

Jeremy Newman.

He's a teacher, a business owner, a pilot, but overall, he's an adventurer.

And that's what we're gonna talk about is the power of connection and adventure.

The beauty of human interaction is anytime you ever talk to somebody, it's unpredictable.

You don't know what's gonna happen.

And that's why a lot of the times we stress out.

But if we lean into that, the power of adventure, then there can be such cool things that happen.

It's an incredible episode.

You're really going to enjoy it.

Before I hand you off, I wanna say, be sure to rate the Talk to People Podcast wherever you're listening.

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I'm sitting here right now talking to a camera.

I've recorded it in three different spots for this intro.

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So subscribe, thank you all for being here.

And without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Jeremy Newman.

All right, with that, you are officially live in the dining room studio.

Mr.

Jeremy Newman, how are you, sir?

I'm so great.

So happy to be here.

I've been following the podcasts from before you even went video, went live on the video.

And then I started watching on YouTube a little bit and it's been so fun to watch you grow.

And I'm just happy to sit in this chair and we got Sonny here to join us too, so.

Yeah, the studio mascot.

Yeah.

On command, he knows whenever they start.

So I'm gonna start off with some rapid fire questions.

We are going to get to know you a little bit to the rapid fire questions and then go from there.

Okay, so what has been your favorite age so far?

Oh man, I would have to say my, probably my early 30s.

And I've just passed my early 30s, but in my early 30s, yeah, for sure.

And why?

You know, opportunities, travel, family.

I feel like I have really appreciated connecting with the people that are in my life at that time.

Right, right, right.

And then what is your favorite thing to do during the summertime?

It used to be water skiing.

But I would say hanging out with family and campfires, campfires.

Why did it used to be water skiing?

I was much younger and more limber.

Yeah.

I grew up water skiing a lot, and we had a lake, or a lake house.

We'd go there during the summer and rip it up behind the boat.

It was amazing times then.

But I'm just not as limber these days.

Did you do one ski?

And I got to a point where I could get up on one ski, too.

Whoa.

And so the whole coming around to the dock and dropping one ski and having to keep track of it.

Those days are in the past for me, thankfully.

That is so cool.

I went skiing, and it's so hard to get up in the first place.

So to see people get up on one ski, I was like, holy cow.

All right, what is the last craft you made?

Oh man, my crafts now are like big boy crafts.

Like I'm working on the house, and it's funny, because every day at soccer, when I'd show up and everyone would be asking how the master bathroom's coming along, and it's a slow, slow project.

Are you still working on it?

Still working on it.

Yeah.

But we're so close.

For all those who are thinking about it, I know Ryan kept asking you about it, like, hey, how's that going, how's that going?

It's still ongoing, Ryan.

Yeah, and it's like a slow twist to the dagger, because my wife is the same, like, okay, we gotta get this done.

Yeah.

But life gets busy.

It'll be done.

And then if you were to write a book, what would that book be about?

Oh man, that's a tough one.

I think adventure, adventure, totally.

There's just so much adventure out there, and I feel like growing up in North Dakota and kind of seeing the, you know, there's adventurous people in North Dakota, but we don't always get out of our bubble.

And it took me until moving overseas and living overseas to really, truly understand what adventure could look like and what it feels like.

And so yeah, a book would be about adventure for sure.

Wow, well, let's go back to the beginning, where the adventure starts.

So tell me, what was your childhood like?

Yeah, so I was born and raised in North Dakota, the frozen tundra during the winter and beautiful summers during the summertime.

And I actually had a very unorthodox childhood in that when I was, just before my second birthday, I was placed into foster care and for those of you that are, for listeners that are familiar with foster care, it kind of has this bad stigma in that children that are placed in foster care, that it's for a negative reason or they're bad kids, or for whatever negative reason, it's just, it's not looked on as a positive thing by society.

But fortunately for me, as a two year old, I was placed in this foster home and I was given this wonderful, loving family who took me in along with some other foster kids.

And we were a bit of a foster, we were a family and these kids would come and go and as that happens in foster care.

But I guess lucky for me, I got to stay.

And we're kind of getting into the heavy part of it here, but I grew up on a foster home where I got to stay and they became, you know, mom and dad.

And the, you know, my foster brothers and sisters became my brothers and sisters.

And so I would say that the family that I have now is the family that I was supposed to have.

And then from, you know, from there I had a pretty normal childhood.

It was like playing sports and running around with friends in our neighborhood.

I had great experiences at school for the most part.

And I wasn't the, you know, the greatest student, but like I did my thing.

And it was because of the foster family that I had that allowed me to do that.

So whenever you were two years old, you were placed in the foster system.

Yeah.

And you joined this family of all of these people from all of these different places, and it creates its own family, which is, I remember we were meeting over coffee, and that was so beautiful whenever I was listening to that, because we think about social connection.

One of the places that we figure out how to connect with others is in our family, like our siblings, how our parents treat us, how our parents treat each other, whenever our parents' friends come over, how they, our uncles, our aunts, all of that.

But it starts with the family.

And in your experience, your family was a bit different than other people's families.

So whenever you were a little boy, did you have any shame in that?

What was that process like whenever people would say, hey, where's your mom or where's your dad?

Yeah.

To be honest, I don't think I truly recognized that my family was different until probably fourth or fifth grade, when I was truly starting to connect with friends who had biological parents and brothers and sisters who also looked like them.

But I also had a neighbor, shout out to Matt, who he lived right next to me, and we were the same age.

We went to grade school together, and I could easily run across the driveway and knock on Matt's door.

I mean, we were inseparable for many, many years.

And so to grow up with the family that I had, but also had this neighbor family who pretty much took me in just as their son as well.

I didn't grow up in a traditional foster care setting because I had so much support around me.

I believe that's why it turned out like I did is because of the support and the connection with not just my family and the people that were coming in or the kids that were coming in and going, but the neighborhood was so supportive of what my parents were doing as foster parents, but then also us kids.

It's a beautiful thing, for sure.

And the whole phrase, it takes a village to raise a child, and you had the neighborhood, so it's like, this is the neighborhood that's bringing me up, and you're involved in sports, you're involved in all of that.

My mom's adopted, and I hear her talk about, she went in and out of different families, and she finally ended up with her one family and grew up there.

But her biological parents, it was always, she was always unsure of what to do there, because she didn't know, should I go see them, or should I, well, first off, she didn't know who they were, right?

So it's like, do I figure out who they are?

And that's such a messy process, and there's no guidebook for it, right?

And it's something that a lot of people don't have to experience.

But whenever you do have to experience it, and you're younger, like, I don't know, what do I do?

I have this family here, but apparently I have a biological family.

I don't even know how to navigate that.

It's an interesting topic because I think everyone's experience is so different.

You know, for some whatever reason, kids get into a foster care program where the original home life isn't great, and they need to get out of there to feel safe and to have a childhood that they can really grow into.

Whereas, there's other circumstances where it's just not the best situation to grow up or to have parents like the biological parents.

And so placing them into a foster home is, for the time being, is going to be the best for the parents and the kids.

And I believe that some parents have the intention of, okay, well, let my child grow up in a foster care setting for a little bit.

And then when I can get my things together, then I'm going to take my son or daughter back and then we can really go at this as a family.

And I believe that the positive intentions of doing that are there.

But I think as someone who grew up in foster care similar to your mom, and trying to find a place to interact and build a relationship with biological parents knowing that maybe they weren't ready to ever have me back or your mom back, or they're not able to even take care of themselves to then take care of the children.

I think that's a tough thing to really understand as a kid.

Fortunately for me, my foster parents allowed me to go or kind of set the tone for me to go visit with my biological dad, my biological mother passed away when I was about one and a half.

And then I don't know my full story around that time, but I believe that my biological dad didn't really have the capacity to safely take care of me.

And so he sacrificed kind of our relationship to make sure that I was given to or had an opportunity to grow up in a safe home.

And as hard as it was for him, and now as hard as it is to build a relationship, he did the right thing for me.

But I believe it was probably pretty hard for him.

But it can be tricky.

Like I see my foster parents as, they're my parents, and for a long time I didn't know any different.

And it took really till adulthood to really recognize that, oh, I maybe have this other relationship out here with my biological dad that I should lean into a little bit and maybe try to figure some things out, which is still a pretty big process for me.

We get so caught up in the day-to-day, you know, everyone does.

And you, like I tend to forget about that I had this interesting childhood.

But when it really comes to mind is when I'm at church and Pastor Justin is saying his message and it's like, oh, I need to really lean into this other relationship.

Or maybe there is a little bit of forgiveness that I need to hold on my heart a little bit so I can let go of some things that have been on my mind that I don't often think about.

Yeah, you know, I smile about it now because when I think about my biological dad, I think that he had positive intentions of getting me to a better situation.

When did you have that realization?

It probably took, you know, I probably didn't have that realization until five or six years ago.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I'm 36 now.

And so like, I'm a proper adult.

And I've had lots of adult experiences and kids and, you know, the whole American dream thing.

Like, I've done all that.

And it took all these other experiences to be like, oh, I'm a dad now.

So like, well, what about my dad?

You know?

So I'm not a dad.

I have, you know, the dog who comes in and out of the frame.

Yeah.

But I have spoke with other men that talk about fatherhood and that process of the paradigm shift and your world changes.

And same thing with women about motherhood, right?

The world shifts, the world changes, the priorities go askew.

Everything that you knew prior to it is different after having a kid.

And you also have a reframing process, right?

Because then you get to see the perspective of the father, which then gives you a way new perspective of your father, right?

And it's something that I can talk about, but I have no idea what that's like.

Yet I hear from men who are fathers countless times how transformative that realization is.

Yeah, it sure is.

But even when you think of as a man when you're growing up, that every year is a new year of experiences that almost in a way get you ready for, when you're younger, manhood, but then also fatherhood.

And so there's no doubt that you're at the stage in your life where you're ready for fatherhood.

But you don't really truly feel it yourself until it happens.

And so you think of having a house and taking care of a house or a dog or taking care of your wife.

Those are all fatherly things.

And moms have it, of course, too.

I think moms are way better at that whole thing than dads.

But dads have it, too.

I wonder why.

It's something I think about often because Annie, my wife, she's super power.

Watching her operate and watching her function and all the things that she does, I'm like, wow.

And not to say that there's inferiority or superiority or anything like that, but it's just so fascinating seeing the difference between the two.

So how do you think foster care made you into the person that you are today?

Well, I think that foster care is a very, I would say, special place, but also interesting for a number of reasons.

But I had a chance to see other kids coming in and out who I've never met before, and they've never met me.

And so you think of like accepting others for who they are or their situation, or like accepting them and not even knowing their situation.

There was a, I guess, my foster brother who came in, and he was a year or two younger than me, and his name was Doug, and we called him Dougie.

And I didn't know anything about Dougie, but he instantly became my brother.

And I mean, he stuck around for a little bit, and we built some sort of relationship as young kids, but I don't know where Dougie is anymore, and Dougie probably doesn't know where I am anymore.

But I think that just seeing that and being part of that, the in and out, ingrained in me, and not that I knew it in the moment, but really ingrained in me that like, I don't know everyone's story, and I don't know where they come from, what they've been through, but I accept them.

And I believe that we could be good for each other.

So.

That's so good.

Let's be friends.

And I say that, and I'm a pretty reserved person.

I don't easily let people in.

And when I do let someone in, we're connected for life.

I love that, man.

One of the things that I like that you're good at is you're really good at being level-headed and seeming to be cool as a cucumber.

Whenever we're prepping for this, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, cool, yeah, yeah, cool.

And it's funny because I'm nervous.

I've done dozens and dozens of these, and I get nervous every time.

And I'm not to say you aren't nervous, but being able to present yourself as a, yeah, yeah, yeah, everything's cool, right?

And having that stability, I don't think people get that unless they've been exposed to unstability.

I get accused of that as well.

And it's like, yeah, there's definitely two sides of the coin where I've always, like I said, been reserved, and a lot of times hold my emotions in.

And that doesn't bode well when you have a wife or kids who need your emotion, both like the positive emotions and the negative ones, because it's okay to be angry or frustrated and for them to know about it, but there's learning opportunities within your emotions.

And so it's good for, of course, kids to see that.

But I think it stems from me just really holding in a lot, a lot of emotions.

And I have like some of my bracelets on my wrist, one of them says grow on it.

And that's an area of my life where I continue to have to grow in.

And that's sharing emotions and being less cool, calm and collected.

But I also think that there's the aspect in my job, in my career as a teacher that I need to have it together.

And whether the lesson is garbage and it's not going very well, or it's a rock star lesson.

Like the kids, well, see, now I go back and forth because it's okay for kids to see me fail as the teacher.

Because again, and they can learn from that.

But I just like having it all together.

I like being well prepared.

And I'm a calm guy.

Yeah, it's a funny thing to think about because the, oftentimes people will say, man, I should have composed myself better then.

But I also have moments.

And I don't know, have you ever had moments where you're like, I shouldn't have been as cool comic collected in that moment?

No, I don't think so.

I think where I show the most emotion is on, is like playing sports or like...

Me too.

Yeah, and like when I was playing, when I was pretty heavy into playing soccer when we were living in the Middle East, and I mean, that's kind of a hotbed for soccer.

And that's where like my real...

Your fire.

My real fire came out.

And it was, it felt good to like let loose a little bit, to have some of these really big emotions.

Because I don't have them very often.

But that's like the fault of my own where like, I need to be able to let go and like, it's okay to be emotional and show emotion.

But definitely on the like the sports pitch or the field, that's where I've been my most emotional for sure.

The high highs and the low lows too.

Yeah.

I operate in the...

If high highs are 8 to 10 and low lows are 1 to 3, I'm always in the 4 to 7.

Yeah.

I want to get better because I want to be a better celebrator.

Yeah.

If big things pop up, I want to be able to celebrate it, but I've never had the knack of celebration.

I see people around me who are really good at celebrating, and something big will happen.

I remember whenever I got this full ride to grad school, which was incredible.

Awesome.

And not only were they like a full ride, but we want to pay you to come to school.

And I held that information for 10 days.

I didn't tell anybody.

Because I had a really hard time, one, disclosing, and two, being like, yeah, yeah.

So I have to challenge myself, like you're saying, to grow and being able to celebrate, and then being able to be sad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I think, too, and knowing you, is that despite being a podcast host, you don't need to be the center of attention.

And so for people to come together to celebrate this big moment for you, like, I can see where that would be hard.

Yeah.

I'm very similar in that way, that I'm not a good celebrator.

And that's tough because there's lots to celebrate.

And are you self-critical?

I wouldn't say so.

I'm confident in who I am and who I need to be for...

You're gracious with yourself.

That's good.

Because what my bad combination was, was I'd beat myself up whenever something bad would happen, but then whenever something good would happen, I wouldn't pat myself on the back.

And it was one-sided.

And there's this interesting idea of you celebrate what you reward, and what you reward is reinforced, and what's reinforced is replicated.

So I'd give more attention to my downfall.

And I feel like by giving that more of my space, then I'd be like, man, I am putting way more energy in there than I am on the other side of the house.

So when I see people who are, who have more of that disposition, I'm always interested.

To your point about, you know, feeling what a nine and a ten looks or feels like, and also feeling what a one and a two and a three feels like, as someone who is more even keel and experiences lots of fours, fives, sixes, and sevens, you kind of lose out on the nines and tens, and the ones and twos and threes.

And those are some of the best experiences.

And I don't remember where I heard it.

It might have been a podcast somewhere or a book that I read, but if you're constantly living in that middle ground, where I am, the fours, fives, and sixes, it feels good to get to that nine and ten, but you always come back to that comfort zone.

But no, let's get out and adventure again.

Get to the nines and tens, but also experience the ones and twos.

So how have you been growing and expressing emotion?

Yeah, I've had many failures in that realm of life for myself.

I've tried journaling, and I was able to stick to it for a number of weeks, and it was kind of a nightly thing for me, and it felt really good.

And I could just write whatever, whether it was a note to my wife or something for myself to remember.

It felt really good to journal, and then it stopped.

But I think that's where I just didn't make it a priority.

I also tried to grow through podcasts, listening to people who I emulated or wanted to emulate or looked up to or who I knew were doing things the right way or speaking to the right people.

And the whole thing of you're the average of the five people you hang out with.

Well, for a while, it was like, I'm hanging out with these five podcasters, or just listening to their episodes.

So maybe I'm trying to grow in ways that they're already really excellent in life.

And so, yeah, I mean, I'm always trying to surround myself with the right people, make the right choices, and then build a relationship with my family and keep that growing.

I feel similar about the podcasters.

I've been wondering something lately.

I wonder if there's something they take that makes them more mentally agile or witty, like a neural supplement, because I find myself on podcasts.

I listen to the three-hour podcast Chris Williamson and Alex Hormozzi did.

The one that just came out?

The whole thing was all of this brilliant stuff.

And I find myself sitting in a chair with the microphone in my face, cameras on, and being like, oh, right?

Like, what do I say?

How do I say it?

And it's so hard.

And the thing about podcasting and the thing about formulating thoughts and articulating them is we see the zenith.

So we see the Chris Williamson's, who has done, what does he say, over 600 episodes with brilliant people, and he prepares like a madman.

And then we see the Jordan Petersons, who have been studying for 40 years.

And we hop on a podcast, and we want to do what they're doing.

And then once you go live, it's so much harder.

And it's not just limited to podcasting.

We see that in every area with teaching, right?

You see the master teacher, who can run a classroom and customize it to everybody right then and there.

And you have all these different personalities, and they know how to thread the needle.

They know how to give enough attention to the person who needs it, and how not to give too much attention to the person who can't handle it.

So whenever I'm sitting here, thinking about those five people and thinking about how to grow, one good way to grow is to recognize, I won't be able to be like Chris Williamson.

I am close.

But you don't know that, Mikey.

Well, here's why.

If I study to the point that Chris Williamson studies, it's not going to look like that.

Because I am my own makeup, right?

I have my own strategy and my own style.

And that's the really interesting thing is, we have no clue what fully developed Chris or fully developed Jeremy looks like, because there's no one out there who has our genetic makeup.

And if we don't reach it, then the whole world misses out.

Right.

One, I think, to your point there, too, is that Chris Williamson and some of these other bigger podcast guys that we watch, we see there what looks to us like a finished product.

And yes, they're still growing.

But even Chris Williamson, a few hundred podcasts, or even a couple hundred podcast episodes in, he hired a speech coach.

And he knew that to take it to the next level, it was like, I need to do this.

I need to learn how to speak better, articulate better.

And same with the other podcasters.

It wasn't something that happened overnight for them, although it does feel like it.

And even from your perspective, through your podcast, you started out as audio only, and now your video, and now it's 4K, and now the conversations are getting better, and you're telling great stories, and you're doing all the social media stuff, and now you've got this other, the side gig podcast for the nonprofits, and so the growth is constant.

And it doesn't feel like it.

That's the funny part with me, is seeing it and hearing it.

Earlier today, I was feeling like, man, you're a bum, and that's negative self-talk.

And there was some things that happened that made me feel that way, and I had to be like, no, that's not true.

Let's look at the evidence.

And I am daily trying to provide more evidence, that would testify to the contrary, right?

Like, no, you aren't lazy.

Like, look at this.

But then there's this, my wife is really good at this.

She'll tell me, hey, it's not about what you do, it's who you are.

And I'm like, yeah, that's true.

But who I am is a pretty good representation of the things that I do.

You know, so I think about that as well.

Yeah, it's interesting because it's like, you just, we all have things that we need to grow at, but the things that we feel most important to us in our lives at this moment, like we want to be like that, like I want to be the rock star at it.

It's tough to have patience for that stuff.

It's super tough.

I'm ripping off something, but Chris Williamson was talking and he said, you have to reverse engineer the person you want to become.

And if you want to become an individual of patience, more than likely, you're going to have to be put through some really tough times to build the patience.

And if I want to be someone who's really good at communicating, then I'm going to have to put myself in situations to where maybe I don't know what to say, or maybe I don't know how to say it, and figuring out how to, and figuring out how other people communicate and the best way to navigate that.

Which with teaching is something that you've probably done a ton.

So let's talk about what made you move out of the United States.

Adventure.

I love adventure.

Adventure is an incredible thing, and there's many ways to find adventure.

You can find adventure in your backyard, in a totally different country.

Luckily for me and my wife and the friends that I met overseas, we were allowed to, because we were teachers, we had an opportunity to seek employment in a different country.

And what's interesting is that I had no clue about it as someone who was in undergrad, getting my bachelor's in education and later a master's and getting my teaching license.

I had no clue like teaching abroad even existed.

And it was until, like I was scrolling through Twitter, it was my first year teaching, and I saw this gentleman in Singapore who had posted some videos.

And so this was like 16 years ago, whatever it was, 15 years ago.

So Twitter was like big, and I was following some other PE professionals on Twitter and was using it more like a professional development opportunity.

And I saw this guy who was teaching the same thing I was doing just in Singapore.

And I was like, well, first, where the heck is Singapore?

And so I'm Googling it on the map.

And then I realized that there's other PE teachers doing the same thing in all these other countries.

And so I looked, I just dug into it.

I was like, okay, so there's international schools where they're teaching American curriculum or like British curriculum or the Australian curriculum.

And they're doing the same job I am essentially just in a different country.

And instantly it was, that's adventure.

There's some adventure there.

And so I made it a point that I've tried to figure out what the hiring requirements were for those types of jobs.

And it wasn't like I'm not gonna go overseas to teach English type of thing.

It was like, okay, I'm a PE and I'm a health teacher.

I'm passionate about living a healthy lifestyle and helping my students do the same, but I wanna do it in a different country.

I wanna try it out because adventure.

And so I knew that I had to have a master's degree.

I had to have at least three years of teaching experience here in the US.

And then schools international would start to look at me as a potential candidate.

Once I hit that, like the three year mark of teaching, it was just like job fair.

So there's job fairs all over the US.

And so I was like, okay, I gotta sign up for job fairs.

And I didn't even have to go to a job fair.

Like you put in your credentials into the online portal, and all these schools all over the world have access to that.

And then, but then as the teacher, like being able to see all these schools sign up, it was like, oh, I can, what, Africa?

Like I can go on safari every weekend?

Or Southeast Asia where there's Pad Thai.

I didn't even know what Pad Thai was at that time.

Now you know.

Yeah, so this is the North Dakota kid in me coming out because it's like, holy cow, there's all this out here that I don't even know existed.

But now all of a sudden, like I'm going to be that North Dakota kid living somewhere totally incredible.

And so I ended up getting hired and I had interviewed at just through Skype at some different schools, one in Guatemala, another in South Korea.

But my first offer, my first real offer was at this school in Oman.

And Oman is in the Gulf countries in the Middle East.

And so you think of like the Peninsula of Saudi Arabia, you have, you know, United Arab Emirates where Dubai is, you have Oman, you have Yemen.

And so, you know, I was hired, I think, the October.

And then that following summer ended up like hopping on a flight to a part of the world that I never thought that I would visit.

Number one, because everything at that time that we heard in the news was all negative of the people, the culture, the wars.

And that's what the people that I talked to as well from home were like, why?

Why would you go put yourself in that situation?

It turns out when I got there, it was the complete opposite.

The people are incredibly welcoming, the culture is beautiful.

The adventure is at your fingertips.

But I think most importantly, as a teacher, you got to experience the different cultures of the world.

And luckily, so the school that I was at was an American International School.

And so it was, we were teaching American curriculum to kids in the city of Muscat, the capital of Oman.

It was their families and those kids that wanted the American education.

And so my students were from all over the world.

They were just, their families were living in the country.

And I got to experience their cultures and learn about all these different countries and experiences through my students.

And then it was like, then, okay, now the adventure is on because I know that from my German family that if I go to Germany during Oktoberfest, it's going to be party.

Or if I go to Germany during Christmas, there's going to be some really beautiful Christmas markets and some amazing skiing.

Or if I go to Thailand and I go during spring break and I can have endless pad thai straight off the street and foot massages galore.

There's just, through that experience, I had so many great experiences and met so many great people, not just my colleagues, but also the families that I served as a teacher.

And every time I talk to a teacher here in town, especially younger ones or teaching couples or teachers that are single, those are like the prime candidates for international.

And that's who a lot of international schools are looking for.

And so every time I talk to them, it's like, have you heard about this?

No?

You have to look into it.

And like, here's the job fairs you can go to.

It's like I'm trying to relive that experience through them because it was just so incredible.

And I'll say this even from like the financial perspective, because as teachers in the US, the saying is you don't teach for the money.

And it's partially true.

But if you're a teacher and you go overseas, it's a much different game over there.

It's because international schools want really quality teachers and they're willing to pay them and they're willing to support them.

And they do that through a lot of times free housing, airplane tickets to and from home every summer.

So there's lots of there's lots of perks to it.

How do you think someone can go find adventure?

It's a mindset.

It's 100% mindset.

I think it comes from just being curious as well.

Like in the podcast studio here, like we have like you have this great setup, but the blinds are closed.

I don't know what's in your backyard.

Like there could be some really cool things back there.

And I love like I love campfires.

I love just the sun's going down.

You have the crackle of the fire.

It's nice and warm.

We don't need the warmth now, but like that feel.

I love that.

That could be back there.

That could be.

And so I think too, it's like yeah, it's the curiosity and you know, the positive attitude.

Do you see that in people?

Do you get adventurous whenever people share their stories?

Because there's so much for me.

That's one of the big ways that I live out my adventure is there is so much novelty.

Every person you meet, you have no clue what they did.

Like whenever we met, we were playing soccer.

You were good at soccer.

I was like, okay, he's good at soccer.

And then I learned more, and then I learned more, and then I learned more.

And then I'm, whoa, all of this really cool stuff.

That could have happened with all of the guys that were playing soccer.

I just didn't talk to them as much, right?

And the more we ask people questions and the more information that we surface, more likely than not, it's going to be like entertaining and enlightening.

And people will be like, oh, I have a boring life.

They'll be like, oh, I grew up with 12 siblings, and my family made me do karate when I was young, and I got a black belt when I was six, but I have a boring life.

It's like, you don't have a boring life.

Listen to how that sounds.

That's incredible.

So do you find yourself satisfying your curiosity by getting to know others?

Absolutely.

And it comes from, I think like the basis of this podcast too, is asking such thoughtful questions and being just authentically curious about who you're talking to.

And I think that's how we connected initially too, is just being curious about one another and being curious about the people around us, especially at soccer.

But it's a skill too, and it's a selfless skill.

You have to not think of yourself and think more of others.

And that's when the true curiosity and question asking comes out, I think.

And having a good time.

There's a really good quote that says, your world is limited by your language.

And we can process all the stuff we can process through the English language, but we're also limited to how many people we can connect to.

And this whole thing is about talking to people and being able to build social connection.

And if people are considering learning another language, go for it.

Because you can expand all of the people you can connect to.

You can learn.

I hear once you dream in a different language, then you know you really made it.

I've heard that too.

Wow.

That's powerful.

Can you imagine having a dream in a completely different structure and formula than what you're used to?

It makes me wonder how much bigger everything that I'm involved in could be in if I could be dropping Spanish and Chinese and Arabic.

But hearing you talk, I want to leave the country.

And one of the coolest things that I think you're good at is articulating how beautiful adventure can be.

That'd be something that you'd be good at if you get on a microphone sometime and you build a show.

That'd be sweet.

Articulating adventure and why it matters for people to go out and go do things would be a really cool thing.

It would be.

It's funny you brought that up because you and I had talked about when we met over coffee that one time about the different podcast ideas that you could and the ideas that are untouched and then the ones that are saturated.

But I hadn't really thought about the podcast of adventure.

And I'm sure there's many podcasts like that out there, but there's a way to niche it down a little bit, I believe.

Oh, yeah, into a category of one podcast.

You totally could.

There's so many ways you could do it, but I imagine REI, something like that.

I imagine they have a podcast, right?

Or think of all those adventure brands like that.

You have the rock climbers and the mountain bikers.

I'm sure they have podcasts.

But if you totally could make it down to a category of one podcast, you want this is something I've been learning.

Your podcast should be so specific that someone sees it and is like, Oh my gosh, that's me.

Right.

And then they show up and people hear that and they're like, But I don't want to limit all these people from not listening to my podcast or from listening to my podcast.

And the truth is that if it's so broad, nobody will listen.

That's true.

And the true beauty of it, as we were talking about, is the adventure.

Your adventure could look totally different than anyone else's adventure.

And so there's that niche right there.

The concept of social adventure, like adventuring through social connection to explore the stories of others and relive their memories in a way that you can fuse the past memory that they had into the current that you've never experienced present day.

That's fascinating for me to think about.

What do you think the biggest benefit in leaving the country is?

I think it's the people.

And whether you do it just to visit for a week or two, or someone does it for a career or a lifestyle change, it's 100% the people and the culture.

You just can learn so much through other people.

And here we are, you can learn so much through connecting with other people.

And talking to other people.

And the reason why this podcast is so successful is because that's true in any part of the world.

If you can talk to people who know more about you and experience more about you in that area, the adventure is like ripe.

One of my favorite things about doing the podcast is having people sit down and then going on the adventure of this podcast, because this has been an adventure.

Like in itself, where are we going next?

How are we going to get here and how are we going to get there?

But one of the coolest things though is whenever you finish recording and you're like, wow, and you reflect on it, and maybe you reflect on it like, I should have said this, I should have said that.

But what that indicates is that you did it.

And going on that adventure and conversations are adventure and showing up to places for the first time in your life are adventure, and going on dates, dating, whoa, talk about adventurous, right?

And you have things that go well and things that go bad, and you share your first kiss and there's fireworks, and then you get dumped and you are in the ashes, right?

Going, oscillating from end to end.

That human condition is so full of adventure.

And we're so lucky.

We are so lucky that we get to deal with the ones and twos and the nines and tens.

And for guys like us, we have to make sure, like you said, we break into those.

Try and stay a little bit.

Maybe we go back to the middle, but if we consistently can be aware of it, then that's a great thing.

But with people, my favorite thing about social interaction with people is it's unpredictable, right?

Totally, yeah.

And that's the, I think it's the core of social anxiety, is not having the ability to control the future.

And anxiety is, I was listening to this guy speak, his name is Manny Arango, but he said anxiety is proof that you're really creative.

Because when you're anxious, you're like, oh, what if this happens?

And we create all of these potential alternate endings.

And whenever we go and we talk to somebody, it could go completely this way, completely that way, we have no clue, which makes really good conversations all the more special because they could have gone anywhere.

Right.

That's a really great point.

And I even think of it from like the teacher lens, where as adults we can pretty easily manage that.

And then I think of my middle school students, where some of my students are like riddled with anxiety about raising their hand in class or participating in a different activity.

And I'm constantly searching of like, what can I say to them?

What can I do for them to help them feel more confident in that small little sliver of their day?

Yeah.

What's your favorite thing about teaching?

It's always been the connections with the kids, the relationships.

And I see myself as a good teacher.

You know, I can teach the best practices.

I understand curriculum and how to build it and how to best, for the most part, best suit the variety of kids that I have in my class.

You know, despite their needs, one class I think of now is that there's non-English speakers.

There's kids with special needs.

There's kids that really excel.

And then there's those that are anxious or don't like the things that we're doing in class.

And so I make it a point to be that person that they can connect with in whatever fashion they walk into my class.

And they could be having a bad day or a great day or a day in between.

And they know that they're going to get, you know, steady Mr.

Newman.

Cool, calm, and collected for the most part.

And maybe that's part of where I get that skill is being a teacher and being that steady presence for them.

But definitely, you know, connecting with the kids.

And some kids don't need another adult in their life to connect with, and others really do.

And I was that kid, too, growing up.

Like, I needed positive adults other than the ones that were surrounding me immediately.

Like, so coaches, teachers, other parents, those sorts of things.

Like, the connection is the most important thing in education.

Did you have some really good teachers?

I did, and I had some really good coaches as well.

And I can, you know, I remember them very, very fondly.

And, you know, I think of my, he became my cross-country coach in high school, but he was one of my teachers in middle school.

And he was that kind of that steady personality.

He's an older gentleman.

But I just remember thinking of him as not someone that I necessarily wanted to be, but someone that I really looked up to.

And he treated us all with kindness and respect, very firm.

And I think I appreciated that firmness from him.

But he was also someone who believed in me.

So sixth grade PE class, we're testing the mile run.

And so we're having to go outside and run four laps around this track as fast as we can, see what happens.

I busted my butt.

And he's like, Jeremy, cross-country signups are next week.

I'll see you there.

And instantly it was like, oh, he saw something good in me.

Okay, I'll sign up.

And I ran, let's see, six years of cross-country, middle school and high school.

And it was because that single moment.

And then that led to everything that who I am now.

After college, I played baseball in college, but after college, I got back into endurance sports.

So it was into triathlons and into mountain bike racing.

But without that initial experience with connecting with one of my teachers, that simple little gesture by him made me who I am.

So when I think of that, it's like, okay, I don't necessarily put pressure on myself to be that for my students, but I know that I can be.

And so I'm always looking for like those positive little nuggets that they have.

And even if it's a fist bump to one of my guys at lunch, that he's a tough kid.

And if I can give him one fist bump a day, not even say a word, like there's a connection there.

And so yeah, those connections are, to me, are powerful because I experienced it.

Wow.

Yeah.

You're changing the world through that.

Well, it's, and it's tough, like we talked about, like celebrating it.

It's tough to think of it that way.

Like it's like the hero mentality.

Like I'm not, I'm not, there's no way I'm setting out to be a hero or to save someone's day.

I just want to have a little bit of an impact.

And I know that the best way that I can do that is, is to be a teacher and to find the positives.

You said connection is one of the most important things in education.

And that made my head go, well, I'm thinking about all of the potential opportunities to look into that.

Because it definitely is.

That's the power of a good teacher.

Ability to communicate a certain subject matter, but all of that's lost if there is no connection.

Absolutely.

And we know the saying, too, that like, you hardly remember the teachers for what they taught you, but you remember how they made you feel.

That's 100% true.

And I think that's even outside the classroom, too.

You think of people in the community, and that's what humans are.

That's how we feel.

We can learn from other people, but if they make us feel great, I'm gravitating towards that person.

That's my guy.

So, if you were to say, I'm an adventurer or I'm an educator, which of those do you identify with more?

Adventure.

I mean, there's so many ways that we can twist and turn that, too, but adventure is also a great teacher in life.

You can learn a lot through adventure.

And it's tough because I believe that I can have an impact as a teacher, and going on adventure maybe seems like, oh, that's what I want to do.

That's my path.

And I don't think that we all have to have a mission in life where we're impacting kids or impacting other people.

There's certainly no pressure in life to have that mentality.

But some people do, and some people are really great at it.

But adventure is the way to go, because that allows me to be the best version of myself.

And granted, I need to have more adventure in my life.

I need to be more intentional about it presently.

But if I'm the best version of myself, because of adventure and new experiences and growing, that I'm going to be a rock star husband and a father and a teacher, a friend.

So adventure is for sure where, for me, is going to be my rock.

This is an adventure.

I said that once, but I'm thinking about it from your perspective.

Is going, let's do it.

And showing up and thinking about what it's going to be like, but then sitting down and doing the sound check and seeing everything first person and behind the scenes and then hitting record and navigating that.

So you're walking the walk.

That's another thing about adventure, right?

It can be a conversation.

It can be traveling, but like you said, it can be twisting the thing and open up the blinds.

Yeah.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

I do have a kind of a burning question from my perspective, and that is like the adventure of the podcast because I followed it from the beginning.

Yeah.

I remember when you first talked about like, I'm going to put this together.

And so, and then I remember you like, there's a couple of times at soccer where everyone had left, and it was maybe just a couple of us still around.

And I remember you just like, you were just almost like looking at the ground, and it was like, okay, he's deep in thought right now.

So then it got, okay, he's thinking about the podcast.

And so I want to know about the venture of this, of the podcast, like what you've come a long way from our perspective as listeners.

What does it look like for you?

And then moving forward.

Such a good question, man.

Yeah, it's been a wild adventure, because man, from the jump, just learning how to record audio, right?

It's like, how do you record audio?

Well, you have to use a microphone, okay?

But then I got my first microphones, and I recorded the audio, and I was using the software on my laptop, but it wasn't picking up my noise.

So I was like, what the heck?

So then I had to figure out the new microphone.

Then I finally recorded audio that picked it up, but it was fuzzy.

And then I had to figure all that out.

So starting from there and learning where to get the equipment, and once you get the equipment, what are you going to podcast about?

And once you forget what you're going to podcast about, how do you even get it online?

And how do you get Apple Podcasts to put your stuff up?

How do you convince Spotify to put your stuff up?

And then you get a trailer.

And the weird thing about the podcast and how it's been a really big adventure is once I put the trailer up, Apple Podcasts put it on their homepage for top new trailers.

I was like, what?

So I started to get these listeners from all around the world.

And like to this day, there's 80 people listening from Seattle.

I've spent a few days in Seattle my whole entire life.

I certainly don't know 80 people, but because it was put on the homepage, then there are people in Seattle.

I had a woman from Nigeria message me, who's a nurse, and she says, whenever I am, and if you're listening, shout out to Beth, but whenever I am going around administering things to my patients and working as a nurse, I listen to your podcast.

Incredible.

Yeah, incredible, right?

So hearing that and sitting down and seeing all of this has been so cool.

The fact that we've had someone like yourself, someone who flies planes and is a teacher who's traveled the world with such a cool background regarding your family and how you've built family and see connection in education.

And then a few weeks ago, we had someone who manages a really large nonprofit, and then we have someone who has won an Olympic gold medal and someone who's about to go to Harvard for a year and a guy who just graduated from Princeton, and now he's going into leadership for organizations.

So seeing all of that's really cool, but man, one of the crazy things about adventure, and maybe you may feel this way too, but sometimes it can be hard to recognize the adventure when you're in the middle of it.

Whenever we're sitting around the campfire and we're talking about that big hike we went on in seventh grade and how adventurous it was that we were sleeping by the river and the wind was blowing over the river and it was frosting the side of our tent.

But in the moment, we're just trying to stay warm, you know?

And I can get really psyched out in my head of being like, I want this podcast to grow.

I've been learning more about advertisement, the advertisement model of podcasts.

So to enlighten everybody, we all can benefit from this research here.

The average podcast will make about $1.9 from every 100 downloads, okay?

Which means you have to get a thousand people to listen to one episode to make $19, which if we keep doing the math, if you get a hundred thousand, then you can make $1900.

Now, it's really hard to get a hundred thousand people to listen to an hour's worth of content.

So all to say, if you get into podcasting for the money, then you are going to be utterly disappointed.

But if you get into podcasting for The Adventure and for The Opportunity and for the potential to connect with all these amazing people, then this is one of the best ways to do it.

And if people are listening and they're interested in podcasting, I'll sit down with you for free for like 30 minutes an hour and talk to you about how to do it because I'm really passionate about the medium.

And the reason why is it connects people.

You know, like my whole thing is people need to be more connected.

And then there's this platform where you can literally connect to the whole digital world.

Then yeah, I'll help you do that.

The adventure has largely been looking back and being able to see cool stuff.

I think in the future, I'll have to have something.

One thing I really want to do, and you can help me put this on, but I want to have a really big event, okay?

And the event may be a live show, like sometimes podcasts would do that.

Or just this big event where I invite every single guest that's ever been on the podcast, all of the listeners, and it's an actual in-person event.

And people can show up, I've run out of space, and then we just do stuff.

And in doing that, we get to act out this idea of showing up in person and being in conversation.

But then we also get to be able to look back and be like, hey, that was really cool.

You know, this little thing that has two different tripods with two different cameras and a room that I stage before you get here, like you showed up and you saw me staging it, it's able to be evolved into information and footage that people are watching everywhere.

So like, I hope to get a big studio.

I was talking to you about it.

I have plans, but until then, you know, hopefully people trust me enough to come to my home.

I try and be, and hopefully I trust people enough to invite them into my home.

So both sides of the house.

Yeah.

Well, I think a couple of things to your points here is that I've noticed that you make it look pretty effortlessly through the video, you know, through the production quality that you're pushing out.

In my opinion, you're right up there with a lot of those bigger names.

And having done that through the first bunch of episodes, you're still in the infancy level of this thing.

And then on a grander scale is that a lot of these other podcasts that I've noticed is like, sure, you can make money through the podcast, but they're also branching out into these other things to make money, which I think is great for them.

But sometimes it's like selling courses or selling products or other things like that.

Whereas yours, because of the nature of your podcast and your ability to connect people and bring people together, yours, I feel like will always, always, always be bringing people together.

That's great.

And so like the event that you spoke about, people with a like mind are going to come together, and it's going to be the event of the year type of thing.

With your other podcasting ideas, like with helping some of the nonprofits, you're bringing people together.

And so that's the beauty of what I see of the podcast and the adventure in it is that you're not branching out to make money.

You're branching out to bring people together.

And when it makes money, rightfully so.

It should.

It's all about the metric that you're measuring.

If I were to measure how much money I made from podcasting, then I'd be screwed, right?

But I took this job whenever I was a freshman in college over the summer, and I was a server at the rooftop, which was a pizzeria in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, downtown Broken Arrow.

Broken Arrow is a town essentially the size of Lawrence, Kansas, so it's not too small, not too big.

And on the rooftop in Broken Arrow, during the summer, it gets incredibly hot.

The sun beats down, and I'd show up to work as a server, and they'd say, hey, you have four tables.

I'm like, oh, wow, four tables.

That's pretty good.

I can make some good tips.

And they'd be like, you're outside.

And I was like, oh, dang, nobody sat outside.

And I would leave with like five bucks, ten bucks.

And I told myself, if I show up every day, and I think how much tips I make depends, determines whether or not I had a good day, I'm going to have a lot of bad days this summer.

So I need to transition my focus into how good can I get at talking to the tables that I do have?

How good can I get at making them feel, wow, this is one of the most relaxing meals I've had.

The chef's doing the whole food thing, but how good can I make their experience so that even if the food sucks, they're like, man, the service was incredible and the server's really thoughtful.

He knows not to check up on us too much because he can read our body language and little things like that.

So changing and switching that.

And with the podcast, my goal is one, to honor people and then two, to become a better communicator.

And I can do that.

I can do that.

I can do that.

It's to showcase conversation.

My goal is that whenever people hear this, they go, oh, cool, I have a role in the whole human thing, and I have ability to socialize and I have ability to connect with my neighbor or my boss or the students that I work with.

You're on the money.

I'm so happy that we had this conversation because, I mean, I didn't even really think of it in that frame of mind until we sat down.

Me neither.

All right, I have a few questions for you.

Are you ready?

Yeah, I'm ready.

All right, what motivates you the most?

Ooh, man.

It's funny because milk duds just popped in my mind.

You really like milk duds.

Yeah.

Yeah, of course, like the core part of my life is, you know, family and, you know, what we're all about.

And so they're the large motivator of, you know, what I do day to day.

Best advice you've ever received?

Today is the day.

I would say today is the day.

And that, again, it's a mindset, but like live it up today, knowing that like tomorrow is going to be a little different.

Yeah, one thing you wish more people knew about you.

My wife would laugh at this, but I got my sense of humor, maybe.

It's probably full of dad jokes type of thing, but I think when I get going, sometimes I can crack a joke here and there.

The man's got jokes.

And then if there were a billboard that was going to be seen by millions of people, what would you have it say?

I think it would be, well, I think it would be do everything with love.

And, you know, there's different levels of love, of course.

Like, I love you different than I love my wife or my kids.

But if you can love everyone, I think just within our own little bubbles, our own little circles, we can have such a positive impact on each other.

And if there's love all around, you know, I don't want to get too deep on it, but if there's love all around, the communities that we live in in the world is a much better place.

And I think some people in some cultures are really good at loving everyone, loving others, other places, and some people have work to do.

But I think it's connecting with people like this and spreading the joy and the love, and I think that's powerful stuff.

Me too.

And you're doing it.

We are doing it.

Thank you for being here.

It was really fun to have you here.

You exemplify adventure and connection, which I think are synonymous.

Thank you for that.

I was really looking forward to talking to you.

Whether it's through a podcast or not, I feel like a really incredible connection.

I appreciate it.

Of course.

And we will see you next time, folks.