Turning Your Athletic Hobby Into Your Career With Jill Heinerth (099)

In this episode I talk to Jill Heinerth, an underwater explorer, writer, photographer, speaker, and filmmaker. 

Jill shares how she started over after leaving her business in Toronto to pursue her dreams in the Cayman Islands, writing a best-selling memoir of her adventures, and how the pandemic and quarantine brought about a new business venture for her and her husband. 

We discuss:

- Having a successful business but ultimately realizing you would rather be pursuing deep-sea scuba and diving adventures full time rather than keeping it a hobby.

- Telling your family you are starting over while still not knowing how you are going to make money at your dreams.

- Pioneering the deep-sea diving world as a woman, photographer, and writer.

- Knowing the risk while looking fear right in the face and inviting it into your life for the better.

- Being a natural storyteller and deciding to write a book about your life and adventures.

- Having to put everything on hold, shutdown, and decide to move because of a global pandemic.

- New opportunities that present themselves as the result of quarantine.

… and more!

Here are some highlights.  

Deciding to make the change.

“I was a part-owner of an advertising company in Toronto, and that was my day job inside at a drafting table, and I loved my work. I am a creative being, I'm an artist, but nights and weekends, as often as possible, I was teaching scuba or jumping in the car to drive north to go diving, and one day, literally after a series of really high pressure jobs, I was just sort of looking around my little area going, I am not an indoor girl, I can't do this, I cannot work in an indoor space for the rest of my life, I have to find a way to be creative in the underworld. I thought, I love diving. It's the thing that I'm always trying to do, so why not get rid of this job and find a way to be creative, underwater...”

Taking what you love and expanding.

“I just knew being in the water every day is really what I wanted to do, but in terms of actually making money, I thought, Oh, you know, I don't want to teach scuba my whole life or I don't want to just do that. I was reading in the magazine, I wanted to write the articles, I wanted to shoot the pictures, and so I started submitting to magazines and pitching things, and then eventually volunteer to support an expedition. And that really opened the doors for me. I think volunteering is a great way to test the waters, so to say, or literally, and meet the people that are doing what you want to do.”

Knowing your limits.

“I believe that the rule of survivors is that you do have to be willing to bet it all, spend it all, do it all, train my butt off, and then in the heat of the moment, when I'm within a hair's breadth of what I may perceive as a complete success or the pinnacle of my career, I have to be willing to say, no, not today, and I'm much better, I'm much more peaceful about that, so I don't feel as much pressure as I used to to perform to get the notch in the belt.”

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