‘From a young age I’ve always known that adventurous travel was a great thing to do for your physical and mental wellbeing, but the real game changer came when I was working as a dive instructor in my early 20s. I was lucky enough to work all over the world but the people I trained all had something in common. Regardless of their initial level of skill, they all seemed to grow in confidence and glow with a sense of complete enjoyment after each dive. Diving with Manta Rays in Sulawesi, Whale Sharks in Honduras or on a WWII wreck with no visibility in the Atlantic, it didn’t matter, people experienced the same elation. At this point I realised that I was doing more than teaching people to SCUBA dive, I was awakening in them a real sense of inspiration, motivation, enlightenment and enjoyment that they’d lost in their day to day life’.
Jon continued to explore his passion for the development of people through challenging and adventurous experiences, specialising in Survival and Adventurous training within the Royal Air Force. ‘The key is that all the adventurous trg we delivered was facilitated to encourage the personal growth of each member of the expedition. It didn’t matter if it was a big wall climbing expedition to Jordan or a Ski touring expedition to the Bavarian Alps, the goal was the same; to develop the people on that trip for the wider good of the organisation’.
Jon went on to develop and understand resilience strategy while training the UKs Special Forces and MI6 in conduct after capture and resistance to interrogation, before moving back into an adventurous training role.
‘My aim now is to bring everything I know and have learnt to the adventure tourism space. Our performance passport is how we do that; whilst we can’t physically be with all of our customers on their expeditions to coach, their ability to log into their performance passport is the mechanism to ensure they get the best out of their trip. The aim is to help people identify where they want to get to with their lives and help them get there, our adventures are the springboard – it really is transformational travel’.