find your passion what you want to do I never thought I would own a Dive Center in in the tropics once you know something's possible there's nothing stopping you I went like five six seven years making nothing if
I want something bad enough fear is not going to stop me that's one of our plans for next year actually okay we are here with my buddy Justin carac Justin of course is the owner of Critter Republic in
daan Philippines and I know many of you have likely seen an interview or two with Justin we're very fortunate that he's a to sit down and chat with us today Justin if you could briefly introduce yourself for those
two people that have never seen you before so thanks for the interview my name is Justin and I run a Dive Center here in D well D it's outside of dumag right now we're in dag at the coffee
shop where Alex is living that's a great introduction Justin what makes D in a great place to learn how to dive well man so many things so before I got here I was a travel writer writing about dive
destinations I was going all over the world I dove on six continents 80 well I've been to 89 countries I didn't dive in all of them but the point is I could have ended up anywhere I ended up
Philippines and I could have ended ended up anywhere in Philippines and I ended up in D it's just such a just such an awesome place the Marine biodiversity is well we're in the coral triangle if you didn't uh
know that already but Philip in general is the center of the coral triangle so you you add a lot of other things like infrastructure and the people are kind and long-term visas I'm telling you long-term visas are Philippines
is one of the easiest so you add all those together and it was just a perfect spot do you have a typical progression let's say I've never been diving before and I want to get a intermediate level skill
set that's not something that's going to happen in one dive what kind of timeline can you share with with people who they've never been diving before or maybe they're very lightly experienced maybe they went once in vacation but
yeah yeah diving doesn't work that way I think so when you say My Level I guess you mean instructor and Tech diver yeah it doesn't work that way it's not like going running you just do it you can
do try Dives with the instructor where you go out they take you the basics of a dive and then see if you can you know if you can handle breathing underwater in the pool we have a pool and
then if it's it's it's all good we go out in the out front in the ocean maybe 5 m and you get a little bit of a taste cuz then then you know if you like it and you
don't have the anxiety all that you can do uh the dive courses and so how diving works it's kind of like skydiving you got to take courses man there's no such thing as self-certifying or selftaught In Scuba Diving
it's a pretty dangerous course sport activity activity yeah so how it works is there's a lot of levels so the first one would be open water certification for us that's a 4-day course our average student I think we've
been open about 15 months we've had about 400 students certifications our average student has been 60 years old we could do between 10 years old to uh well we've had a 80-year-old and a 78y old so you're never
too old and if you're 10 years old you can start so after the Open Water certification there's only so much you can learn in 4 days four ocean Dives and all skills you do underwater getting comfortable is the
main thing you got to get a little bit of experience do some regular diving and then the next level is Advanced open water that gets you down to 30 m the first course gets you down to 18 M
and then we work on other stuff you start learning nro theory physics of scuba diving you learn a little bit in uh open water but there's only so much you can retain people are usually nervous anxious also super
uh excited I mean this is like a bucket list activity if you've never tried it for a lot of people as instructors we're we're told to give 150% of the information and whatever so that they retain 75% you
know what I mean so there's only so much you can learn in your first course so second course touches more on that and you start working on the skills and then it's there's a lot of speciality like night
trucks uh navigation wreck diving there's a lot we we teach all of it at my Dive Center and then after that it's rescue rescue course all these are prerequisites if you want to be a professional level so then
you would go on to CPR oxygen Administration bloodborne pathog there's a lot of little stuff with rescue and then Dive Master Dive Master I got a student this this month actually my my personal my own student normally my
my instructors are doing all the work I'm just the I I just run the business and I got people to do stuff but I got I do do like mentors longer type courses so she's I got a Dive
Master student all month after that you got to get a lot of experience even as a Dive Master and then you can do your instructor course and then on from there rebreathers instructor trainers course directors uh Tech diving
now as a student myself I'm getting into Tech diving you got to start again at the bottom you got to you got be a student yeah so I'm an instructor on the recreational diving but on Tech diving I
just did intro to Tech which which is a 40 meter you start you just stage tanks learning a lot of stuff and then a DP which is Advanced Nitro and decompression procedures it's all about physics decompression stops boring
stuff for most people listening but I'm I'm a student of the game and I'm fascinating with this stuff and I love the sport or activity whatever there's some when I get interested in something I want to know everything
and if you get into like knitting or something something you're you're probably going to learn everything pretty quick but in this there's never you can never know everything there's always another step there's always another course I haven't even
gotten into rebreathers yet triix hel Tru I'm only qualified for Deco diving at 45 M next up I'm doing extended range but you can never stop learning in diving there's a lot a lot more to it than just
going down and seeing a turtle and that got way more technical than you were hoping I think this is what I always tell people is find your passion what you want to do and then figure out how to
do it for a living make it sustainable I knew this wasn't just a one week a year vacation I had to figure out how to do it that's so powerful Justin and beyond the obvious value of diving I
think that you're a good example to people who they want to live what some might call an alternative lifestyle right you're not in the 9 to-5 you're not sitting in traffic with oh I got to drink coffee and
you know this and that I mean you have a a lifestyle many people dream about you know when fall asleep at night and they start dreaming they're thinking man what would it be like to be in a gorgeous
tropical place and be able to help people have these once in a-lifetime experiences speaking of which a majority of my audience at the current point is 55 plus obviously we're guys in our 30s we're probably a little bit
less worried about you could say we're a little bit more resilient we're in the prime of our our being can a 60 plus year old really dive what kind of things does your team do with somebody who's in
that age range that maybe they wouldn't do do with the younger diver or is it the same could you speak to that well first I want to reiterate on the first thing you said the alternative lifestyle or whatever
yeah growing up I'm 38 now growing up it's all it's all relative right so for example I have an intern right now she's about to turn 18 I've sponsored her for all her courses up till her next step
is Dive Master she can't do that until she's 18 she can't anyways so I asked her what do you want to do for a living and she's a local Filipina she's my dive Master's uh daughter and she said
uh maybe I'll be a school teacher and I was like what like that is not a dream that is uh I mean no offense to school teachers but it's safe yeah it's exactly it's safe but she doesn't know
the possibilities so she grew up in a tiny village no TV no internet no nothing her dad is a Dive Master her mom is a stay-at-home mom she's I mean the highest profession or professional she ever met was
her school teachers so she's like well you know they seem successful so we got to looking at it and like the average wage is 27,000 a month that's not even that's like $500 a month and that's after a
4-year degree so I got to thinking is she just not ambitious or is she ambitious up to her experience up to what she knows so I got to thinking about my own how come I'm hyper ambitious how come
and I I started thinking of my own you know when I was younger not childhood but I met a guy I lived in SW Town Colorado I also didn't have a huge influence out there I never thought I
would own a Dive Center in in the tropics I met a guy that showed me oh this is possible this is POS just go for it it's like it brought in my horizons massively I knew my passion was
traveling and then later diving I just figured I got to find a job where I can work really hard and do that once you know you get a vacation every year I had this professor that's telling mean well
why don't you just do it for a living do it all the time have the ultimate life not just wait till you're retired or you know one week a year or whatever what do you mean that's possible so
I started Googling those kind of things and there's I was Finding uh the stuff is possible so then once you know something's possible there's nothing stopping you or at least me back in our day when we were young
or let's say these these other guys that are twice our age this wasn't possible you're not going to work online you're not going to do all this stuff alternative lifestyle there there wasn't an alter lifestyle you were considered
a hippie or some something and there was no option but these guys go ask any of these old guys if they wished they were doing what I'm doing or what you're doing 30 years ago guarantee not one of
them would choose money over freedom I just so happen to be making good money now I went like five six seven years making nothing just so I can live build something up myself not rely on Social Security rely
on my own Investments my own whatever that I do now now you know building a business everything else you have a high value ad well the these days school is not as popular as as as it was in
our day our parents probably told you just you have to go to school well I don't know what I want to do well just go anyway come out 50 Grand or 100 Grand in debt as long as you
can say you have a degree but now I think there's so I think there's so much Val unless you're going to be an astronaut a pilot a do lawyer doctor certain things 90% of us aren't going to that
stuff I think there's way more value now in uh internships when I lived in Australia for a year you had to do apprenti ships no matter what job it was like I was a bouncer I had to do
a freaking ship to be a security guard you get like a certification for to be a plumber you have to be Apprentice a plumers Apprentice or whatever and I think there's way more value you come out some actual
skills uh and whatever exact profession you're not studying things you'll never use anyway so I'm telling my Apprentice my my intern I'm like whatever happened to being a dive instructor I mean I'm sponsoring you I I'll take I'll
make it happen and she's like do they make money do they I love diving but is that a career and I was like look at me you're 18 you could you could own a resort one day I didn't
I didn't come here with money I built it from nothing nothing putting every dime I make back in and and living far below your means you know you just have to know what's possible figure out what you want
to do not how figure out what you would love doing and then uh later decide you're going to do it and then figure out how to do it cuz there's always somebody one that's a pro that's done it
that'll help you online education is massive there's so many tutorials on how to do everything from accounting bookkeeping I mean you name it we've gone through it all and then two there's people that that want to support you
if you're doing positive things trying to improve your life I think getting a bachelor's degree to be a school or something that doesn't pay anything is not a dream job it's just a it's easy it's it's comfortable I
guess that's not a good investment for her maybe for some people if that's the actual dream but it's not her dream is she wants to do marine biology and instructing diving but she's doing she she wanted to do
that just cuz she thought that was what was expected and I can speak to this as an Asian person in our cultures to be risk averse we want to do the thing that we feel like is steady and
stable and teachers get a lot of respect here in the Philippines it's not like we're from in the United States teacher is considered a respected upstanding member of society but there are different ways to earn a living the
Philippines economy is rapidly growing one of the fastest growing economies in Asia and I think there will only continue to be more and more unique opportunities here what do you say to the person who is scared to go
diving oh back to diving so I get this question all the time because there's a lot of dudes that come to to do a course with me and they want their girlfriend or wife or whatever to do it
with them and they're scared you wouldn't believe you've been to my office it's literally on the water or in my classroom you wouldn't believe how many girls have been there Filipinos that say this is the closest I've ever
been to the ocean and I'm not going in the ocean anyways to answer your question anything that is worth doing is scary so I think success is on the outside of your comfort bubble on the outside of your
comfort zone I've gone so far out of my comfort zone so many times and it's always always always paid off so if I want something bad enough fear is not going to stop me and it's always paid off
so if these guys are scared to go in the water and they have no reason to go in the water that's different if they're scared but it's always been their dream that that's that's a whole different thing you're
really going to want to regret it the rest of your life uh my my I I told you I have a Dive Master student right now dude she she was this this person she uh she she was this
person um she arrived with her boyfriend husband um whatever and he was doing the course she just joined in now she fell in love with it so much they bought gear she went all the way through all those
courses I just mentioned and now Dive Master and I could see her being an instructor one day she just totally fell in love with it um they live in sipan and uh they're literally they're both just changing up
their whole life plan everything they're like we can never live in a city where we can't just dive all the time I mean it's life-changing I kind of think you need a sports psychologist on staff Justin what do
you say to the person who maybe they had a stressful first experience in another country not here in the Philippines maybe they went to Mexico maybe they went to some other country I say Mexico because it's close to
the United States nothing wrong with Mexico what do you say to that person who's had that difficult first experience easy I get this all the time as well man a bad instructor can really make somebody not want to
dive ever again they can put them in danger they can hurt their ears a whole host of things and I think in diving there's no bad students it's just bad teachers and we've had we've had a host of
those you know guys girls whatever especially young ones that the instructor forced them down uh deeper they were having anx they we know how to deal with this and a lot of guys don't so we just kind of
untrain them and show them you know we give them a good attitude like ah you got this you don't worry about that experience uh they weren't doing it right they we'll show you how it really is and I've
never I think out of the 400 whatever uh certifications we've had in the last 14 months or whatever I think I've had one student that didn't finish on his own most I mean almost all of them and he
he's coming back so you could definitely have a bad experience but getting back on the horse and finding the right instructor is it could be life-changing or it could be life it could be bad we have this all
the time as well we have to rra or not even the training just the The Experience that's why the tri Dives you know the DSD I know that we talked a bit about future careers and something that I
think is beautiful about diving is that it's not really from what I could tell it's not something you can get AI to do right can you speak to the Future opportunities that you think the diving industry will create
for for Filipino people who they don't know what they want to do with their life so I get a ton of Filipinos as well as everybody else watch it I have a YouTube channel about about diving and uh
I actually have two one is the educational aspect and the other is showing uh what you're going to see you know all the species so I had an old in business school I had a a teacher that told
me nobody wants a quinch drill bit they want a quarter inch hole so if you're in advertising are you going to show how cool this uh drill bit is or you going to show how cool the hole is
that comp that is the direct result of that drill bit I do have the educational the physiology the physics the boils law archimedia law hen uh Dalton gay LX like all these physics and all this stuff that is
more like how to be a better diver or increase your education so it's a small Niche but the other aspect is the Marine bi biology and what you're going to see as a diver and why in particular why
Philippines cuz there's more species in D in front of my shop within a few miles of my shop than all the entire Florida coastline which is massive that says a lot you know I when I was traveling around
the world Egypt for example that's a very popular dive destination the hob right yeah yeah I spent a year in the hub it would take me three Dives to do one episode and then I came here and I
could do one dive and do three episodes there just so many things to film I I I can't film a fraction of what I see every day and I'm not filming the same stuff I'm working on my second
book and it's just tons of species I don't even know what the question was I don't know what your question was I hope that answers it but I go off on tangence this is this is what it's about
it's not hard to get up I'm up at 5:00 every morning it's not hard to get out of bed when you're when you're working for something you love doing you're not work you're not clocking in for to make
somebody else's dream and then when people talk about it and they're interested and they ask you questions it's the lifestyle man it's it's easy to talk about that's so cool Justin you're one of those people that helped inspire
me because like you look here at dumag Getti you look at some of the Vlogs you get the impression the only guys that can live here in dag Getti that are foreigners they're retired men age right they wait
until they're 62 65 67 they collect Social Security and then they get to enjoy life you're doing it at a much younger age and I think there's a lot of guys who who uh if they could sort out
some kind of business opportunity they would love to be here as well uh speaking about your business cuz I I think that's just what's part of what's so interesting to me what do you see as the future what
what is your vision for the future of Critter Republic well so first off there is a lot of channels in Philippines like about Philippines yeah and it's almost 99% retired how to retire in the Philippines you know and
these guys look man I know this is the age of information but you got to consider your Source you get guys that have been here one two 6 months and they they're an information Channel and every time I
watch them I just got to shake my head and it's so hard for me not to call them up be like dude you're wrong on every single level I'm here almost eight years everything you just said is not
true this is you know and they're always have you ever seen somebody positive it's always I'll never buy real estate never buy a car it's impossible to get a driver's license it's impossible to you have to be here
six or a year or however long to get a bank account ER you you you can't register a motorcycle I've done every single one of these things in like a day each like everything everything they have a problem
with of it's it's it's nothing they leave us or wherever for a reason but then they want to bring and they come here because there's no problems they want to bring their problems and the luxuries they want they
think it's going to be the same luxuries as wherever they just left and it drives me crazy and I think because you know most of these guys these channels they never went anywhere and then they went straight to
Philippines to retire cuz they saw somebody else do it it's very rare where you got somebody that's super well traveled and then it just ended up living in Philippines kind of like me and you maybe that's why I
didn't have any culture shock culture shock maybe I can't even think of a place I had crazy culture shop maybe Zambia or something Philippines is the most like the US than any country in Asia it's the most English
the most friendly I mean the stores the I mean they're American Products you got American brands here so they're so jaded it feels like that they watch like James Bond movie where he's riding a vesa with some hot
girl on the back just going down the Coastal Highway with the beach on or the ocean on one side and like some Cliffs on the other and that's how it's going to be in uh Philippines or whatever and
then they get here and it's traffic and the normal Asia stuff and they start making videos about how horrible it is here and don't come here but you know they can come here but you're not going to be
able to handle it and there's so many different gatekeeping gatekeeping so I feel like I'm a well I don't make videos about this I make videos about diving so but I honestly think that diving is the number one
uh hidden Jewel of Philippines otherwise I'd be somewhere else there's a lot of country all the best things about Philippines is not unique there's a lot of countries with friendly people there's a lot of countries with tropical beaches
and Island Vibes in in fact better ones there's countries with better food you name it there's a lot of good things about it but you can go Indonesia in a lot of places the Marine biodiversity the diving it
does make Philippines unique in the world maybe five countries in the world has what Philippines has and then you add in the like I said the infrastructure and the Visas and all that it's just better here that's why
I'm here and I started Critter Republic so what I see in the future this is a long answer I guess but right now I'm leasing the Dive Center space from a a big Resort I'm at Sierra Resort in
D and so in the future I need to buy a resort or land and build build a resort because of the channel my channel it's overcrowded I've I've made that Resort really popular really I mean they're always full
and then that's why we have a lot of students as well so I'd like bigger classrooms bigger office uh right now we're making we're actually making massive plans that I can't really talk a lot about got it yeah
um a good magician never because it's almost 2025 and I'm so cliche in this one thing where I love I'm not going to say resolutions but like like goals and just having a new year is like a good
timeline a good marker or whatever to implement goals but we have Big Brand ambassadorships and things that we're working with like Dive Right and uh insta 360 and stuff like that we're in talks there's not too much I
want to talk about but no worries I I figured that you'd want to keep a lot on the D I think I think in six months we've had a lot of investor uh offers that we turn down cuz
I think in in uh 12 months it's not even going to be recognizable for we're expanding we just hired another accounting company and a bookkeeper and CPA so we had to go through our books for our this this
is our first year it was huge so I think we're also getting into real estate stuff but I'll get in the main thing is we did a lot better in our first year than I thought we did and
we had to invest a lot of money back into it you know like trucks and gear and insurance and we have a lot of full-time employees now I think a year from now it's it's going to be it's
going to be even bigger well Justin thank you so much for sitting down with us today you've been so generous with your time to share with the audience one of our students is is shopping they're doing their hair
and shopping so I got to come to town and chill out and meet meet a lot of guys here in uh doag Getti in the coffee shop so I'm always at my Resort well not always that's one of
our plans for next year actually I have a full-time staff now I've out sourced pretty much everything cuz I mean one man can't do I'd be I'd be a bad business guy if I was leading the divers on
godded Dives all day or teaching every day I need to be out of the water editing videos and doing the marketing and the stuff that my staff can't do so that being said I get guys all day every
day coming to my shop just to buy shirts or say hello or dive or whatever so I'm opening I I got a new studio like off property and I'm going to be hitting out a lot so I can
get some actual work done and my wife my secretary my instructors my dive Masters all them they can run the day-to-day stuff so so I was going to say come down and see me but I can't guarantee I'll
be there I have to dive every day every couple days get footage but I can't run the day-to-day stuff anymore it's it's too busy it's a good problem to have but thanks for hanging out that's wonderful man I'm
sure we'll see you soon take care everybody
