How to Pivot Your Career & Balance Income vs. Passion | Brett Bzdafta

Hey everybody, welcome back to Real Work. I'm Jennifer Tarrell. I'm super excited today. We have Brett Bzdachka, whose career has taken some unexpected turns to say the least. Brett went to Bible college and seminary, but instead of following a traditional ministry path, he found himself in the world of technology and startups. I know, that's crazy. Over the past 13 years, he has worked across sales, partnerships, project management, and marketing. But his story isn't just about moving from one job to another. He's also learning when to pivot, questioning whether income and success are enough, and discovering work you genuinely care about, and finding a way to eventually turn that passion into paid work. Brett, welcome to Real Work. Hi, how are you? Hey, it's wonderful to be here. Thanks so much for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation. I'm excited too. All right, so you went to Bible college and seminary, and then you've somehow ended up spending 13 years working in tech. So what did you originally think your career would look like? And how did you get here? Give us the Reader's Digest version. Yeah, so I've passed that 13-year mark in the world of technology. And I think along the way, one of my favorite things to talk about with my wife is that anytime we make a plan for what's going to happen within the next two years, it completely changes. So we've learned that making long-term plans is probably not the best way to go about life. You really need to learn how to react. So when I ended up going into school out of high school into Bible college, and then right after that into seminary, I just was following my passion. Um, I became a Christian when I was 13. And over the years, I was really impacted by some people in my church that, uh, went to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. And I said, I guess that's my next stop. So I went there, ended up saying, oh, I love this. I would love to continue my studies. Uh, went to, uh, uh, spend a couple of years in seminary. And then after that, my plan was, well, I'm just going to go into Christian ministry full time and I'll spend my entire life in Christian ministry. Um, so I ended up moving to Tennessee. I had some family there. Nashville is an area that's bustling with ministry opportunities. Um, but after I was there for about a year, I found out that back home in Cleveland, Ohio, um, my mom came down with stage four, a pancreatic cancer. So right there, Oh, you know, it's, it's a happy thing to talk about because miraculously my mom is, uh, she's healthy and doing wonderful in 2026. So incredible. It's truly a miracle. I mean, I don't think many people have that experience. So yeah, whenever people go through any sort of cancer, it's just such a hard thing to go through. But in my view, in the sovereignty of God, sometimes, you know, he does heal people for his purposes. And my mom is a living testimony of that. So we are just so grateful to have her around and she's the favorite person of all of our kids. So I love it. What a blessing. Yeah. So all of that being said, I thought I'd be in Nashville or maybe move into a different city, but I knew I had to get home. I didn't know that my mom would be able to make it past six or 12 months. And I wanted to be there. Um, what was pretty awesome. I've only had one of these experiences in my life. Um, when I heard the news, I remember sitting at a steak and shake and just a couple of cities South of Nashville. Um, and just thinking, how am I going to get back to Cleveland? Because this was really before the work from home, remote work opportunities. So for me to move back without a job and kind of abandon my seeking ministry in a city that had a lot of opportunities, I just prayed to God and I said, God, I don't know how, but I asked that you provide a way for me to get back to Cleveland to be with my mom. And the next morning I got a call from Gordon Daly. He's the founder of Boxcast, a live video streaming startup in Cleveland. And he said, I'm starting a company. I want you to be my first employee. Would you be willing to move back immediately from Tennessee to Cleveland and help me start a company that can connect churches with technology? And that was by far the most direct answer to prayer I've ever experienced in my life. I wish that that's how it went all the time. Unfortunately, that's not. But this was something that I didn't expect. I didn't expect to be working in startup technology, but here I am 13 years later, and I've had quite the journey through the world of technology, and I'm excited to share that. I like that I just passed up this 13-year mark, which is kind of like kindergarten through your senior year of high school. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Yeah, I've learned enough through my education in the world of technology to hopefully be able to share some tips and tricks that other people might be able to put into practice as they consider navigating these types of career moves. Okay, so that's fascinating. So I have to ask, how did you know the owner of BoxCast? Like, how did that all happen? Like, did you know him? Was it just like on LinkedIn? in? I think it ties into a common thread that we'll probably be talking about today. I think I had had one discussion with Gordon up until that point, but we were both members of the same church in Cleveland for many years. And we probably walked past each other many times, but he had seen me involved in different ministries of the church. And I think he knew where my heart was at and he just knew of me and I knew of him. And I think he saw a skill set in me that might be helpful for what he was trying to do um and that is that is build a live video streaming solution that could be used by schools and uh churches and small businesses and uh we were only really dealing with early adopters streaming even StreamYard that we're using today it was not a thing so people would consider doing something like this and they were going to like they would spend an hour or two researching online maybe pulling their hair out in frustration thinking this is overwhelming how am I ever going to put my content online and this was the summer of 2013 so Gordon I think saw in me the ability to connect with churches and try to listen to their goals and help them out so I started it originally in a sales role where I was going to be contacting churches and trying to convince them to consider live video streaming even if that was not anything on their radar and I'll tell you what there's nothing like starting your career and technology doing cold calls to somebody that isn't even considering using your product. Yeah. How did you learn this job? I mean, you didn't study for it. So how did that all happen? Yeah. I think a lot of times people view career opportunities as like an A plus B equals C. And that is get the right education, get a little bit of experience in it, and then you're qualified and you get a job i was not qualified for the first job in tech because i honestly didn't know what a RCA composite cable was i didn't know much about HDMI or streaming protocols um i i did however have um a pretty significant advantage and that was understanding the the buyer persona um the specific person who would wind up uh adopting this product so um what actually this is a little bit down the line but what I ended up seeing was we had a sales team and I think within the sales conversations you had a lot of people that would say let's log on and do a 60 minute demo walking through every in and out of this feature to just talk about technology for 60 minutes and if our technology is good enough then people will sign up and we found out in that approach about 10 to 15 to 20 percent of people would eventually sign up within like three to three months. My approach was a little bit different. And that's the one I think we ended up adopting over time, which is I was only spending about 15 minutes, about a quarter of the time talking to these churches and just asking them, like, what are your goals? What do you want to do? And a lot of times they talk about growth and having more meaningful ways to connect with people in the community and invite them in. And then what I did was I just kind of gave them a three to five minute summary of how our technology could do that in an automated way, how it's much more affordable than they'd consider how our support team can help make this much easier and sustainable so it fits in their budget it can help them reach people in those different communities that they wanted and we ended up finding that that type of a 15-minute conversation without diving deep into technology led to about a 50 percent close rate um so i think that was a light bulb moment for me early on in my sales career is that you can talk about technology till you're blue in the face in the world of tech but if you can build trust and and really show the person that you're talking to that you care about what they care about and that you're listening and then can speak in a pointed specific practical way to that need they're gonna kind of get it quicker yeah and have a better chance of of adopting that opportunity how did you figure that out like just such an exceptional communicator. My other, um, job is communication. And so I'm always fascinated with someone who can figure that out and who can communicate that need from the buyer's perspective. Any tips or how did you get there? It's, it's funny how, uh, the lessons that probably led me there were not lessons that most people would think. Yeah. So, uh, I read a lot of theology books in seminary that I was interested in. I studied Greek. I studied a lot of different things that were very focused on theology. But one of the most meaningful books that I read in my seminary studies was a book on education by an educator that's well-known in that community. Her name is Jane Vella. And she had a thesis in one of her books that's really clear. And it just proves her point. It's called, it's telling is not teaching. So just because you tell someone something does not mean that you're actually instructing them so that they'll be able to learn. So how can you be incredibly empathetic to the person that you're trying to communicate information to and think about how they would prefer to learn? I would love to stand up in front of the youth group that I lead every week and just speak to them for 45 minutes in a deep theological way that I think is important, but it's going to go over all their heads. So I have to try to not dumb it down, but I have to try to translate and put myself in the shoes of 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th graders and say, how can I make this real to them so that it's implanted in their hearts and they can take it with them? So I think that was something that I ended up learning in my education that led to educating people in the world of technology. Technology is scary. It's constantly changing. And Jennifer, one of the things that you and I have experienced over our lifetime is first people had like car phones and then they had like basic phones that can only do phone calls and then they had that Motorola razor that flipped up and looked so cool and it was sharp and thin and shiny and then we all got this different iteration of smartphones now the phones are open up and folding and people have tablets and we've just seen such a quick evolution of technology but I think a lot of people feel intimidated by the change and don't want to don't feel like they can keep up with more advanced cutting edge technology but the great thing is a lot of companies like the company that the companies that i've worked for have really made it simple so that you can actually communicate it in a way that is more approachable and can almost empower them to say like look you guys are much closer to this tech than you think you are i know that you're you're conservative and you're trying to be realistic but this is going to cost much less money and actually be much more practically affordable from your time standpoint as well so uh it's like it's a fun conversation to have right because you get to give people hope and build confidence within them that they maybe wouldn't have had in the first place fascinating yeah so a couple of things that i heard was like you have to have the empathy to kind of take the perspective and you also have to be willing to pivot and change depending on that person and where they're starting. And I think what's interesting about you is that you've pivoted a lot and a lot of people struggle with change and they know they want to. So how did you know when you wanted or needed to pivot and change, whether it's within your career or within sales, anything like that? Yeah. I'll kind of walk you through my quick snapshot of my journey. So I spent three and a half years in direct sales. I ended up pivoting into a partnership role where I was managing partnership sales, which is a whole different animal. After that, I ended up moving into five years of project management and product management. And then over the last two years, I've moved into growth marketing and marketing management. Um, so that's, that's just a high level of the journey that I've taken. And, um, what's, what's probably the most helpful bit of advice as I kind of talk about that and translate that to anyone who's listening is over time, I discovered things about myself that I didn't know. And I found out what I enjoyed. Um, so for instance, I was doing direct sales. I was having a lot of success about three and a half years, uh, into that. I was doing presentations at conferences around the country, and I was at a national worship leader conference in Washington, D.C., and there was someone in a class that I was teaching for an hour, and we really connected. And he said, I have a company out in Oregon, and we help churches with technology. They're looking for a live streaming opportunity. So I started working closely with him. We built out a partnership, and I was bringing in more business to that partnership than I was through all of my direct sales efforts. And I found that I liked flying out to Oregon a few times a year and treating them to lunch and training people and doing webinars within their platform. And I just kind of learned that this is something that not only is it making more sense for the business, but it's something that is a nice change. So that led to me saying, hey, I think I'd like to spend all of my time doing this. It made sense for the business. It made sense for my own interests. And through that process, a few years later, I ended up leading a lot of projects within within my company internally with engineers and product people and um the way that i went about leading those projects i ended up having the head of uh product reach out to me and say hey i think you'd be a great product manager i think you'd be a great product owner so um it's it's something that i didn't necessarily know about myself but once i got into that opportunity had a few projects that I led and had people also say oh Brett you're pretty fantastic at this I think you'd be great at this that led me into my next pivot so I think it's I didn't necessarily seek out either of these things I just kind of went into the experience found out what I enjoyed found out when I was ready for a change and when opportunities opened up I said all right let's try something new and that led into one of my largest my longest kind of seasons of work which was five years in product management which I ended up really loving and um that too though after five years kind of drew to an end and I said I think I'm ready for something different so it's uh just probably paying attention to what you're what you're enjoying what you're good at what you think you can have success at where there are needs you might be able to transition to and some people that's not their style they would rather just put the blinders up do one thing and do it for 40 years. And if that's you, that's wonderful. For me, I've never had that mind. I think I've needed different challenges as I've kind of evolved as a person. I'm very different at the age of 39 than I was when I was 24 and 25. Yeah. So you talk a lot about you found what you enjoyed, you found what your passions are. And I think a lot of people, especially when they get of high school and college it's like well i want to do what i love but i think there's a balance between doing what you love and then you have to put food on the table and provide so how do you balance that yeah it's it's been interesting there's multiple facets of of working in in tech and one of them is you can actually make more money than you might have thought um after about nine years at BoxCast, I ended up moving into a cybersecurity role at another company. Again, I was ready for something different. Someone approached me and said, I think you'd be great for this. I wasn't really seeking it out. It ended up being a wonderful season for three years at this company called BlueMira in cybersecurity. That was something that was a blessing in more ways than one. I found myself making a lot more money because cybersecurity, the salaries in that space are enormous compared to a lot of other ones. So, um, I was kind of pinching myself and saying, oh my goodness, this means that, you know, as we have another couple of babies, you know, my wife could scale down her job and get home, which was something that she desired. So this kind of opened up a door for our family financially. But I think that navigating my career, something I've, I've learned is as much as I love working, um, at Boxcast with, with churches and schools and as much as I enjoyed cybersecurity and a couple of the other industries that I've been in over the years, it's not the deepest passion of my life. So I knew that this was probably not how I wanted to spend 40 years of my career is working in tech, but it filled a need when I needed to move back to Cleveland. I found out that I was good at it. It provided for my bills. It provided opportunities for my family. And behind the scenes, I was constantly involved in different ministries of my church. And so that desire that I had when I went to Bible college and seminary, I kind of figured out I can volunteer and do a lot of other things that I really enjoy and use my gifting, my passions. And so I came up with this life strategy essentially that I've taken, which is in my 20s, my mid-20s to my mid-30s, I wanted to have a higher income and have almost a lower passion in that technology when I wake up and is not the thing that runs through my my veins and I'm most excited about yeah it's what I do for work right and I wanted to kind of decrescendo my income over the years and actually increase my passion so what I've learned um I've gone through some different like budgeting classes and financial programs and I've made a budget with my money and I've kind of figured out how much I need to live and we have a lot of order in our finances because of that. I recommend it for everyone. There's a lot of different options out there, but what I've tried to do is say, okay, I don't want to just continue to make my life about making more and more and more and more money and then working more and more hours and being farther away from my family. I felt like there needed to be a good balance in my 40-year chunk of a career in that time was what money was. Money provided more flexibility. So it was wonderful that I was making more money than I thought I ever would. But I knew that my goal was to come up with a plan so that for my mid-30s and my mid-40s, I would transition to medium passion and medium income so that by the time that I get right around at the age of 50, I can do low income and high passion. So regardless of what exactly that looks like, because I know I can make a plan for two years down the line and it could be totally different. I know one thing, and that is if I can get my finances in order and sustainably kind of turn down the volume and the level of my income, that gives me more time so that I can have more availability, more capacity to do the things that I'm most passionate about. And you don't have to pay me. I'll just do them for free because I'm in control of my life that way. So I'm in the middle passion, middle income. And I'm hoping by the time that I'm around 45 now that I'll be able to move down to something that has quite low income, but it would just be perfect for my passion. So that's so fascinating. You mentioned a financial program that you did. Do you have names or anything in case the listeners are interested in something like this? Sure. And I'll preface it in this way. People are typically black and white. That's something that's 100% good or 100% bad. And so unfortunately in the, in the world of money and financial training, I think if you find someone who has one little idea that you maybe disagree with, they say, okay, throw the baby out with the bathwater. Right. So I've gone through financial peace university. Um, and I probably agree with about 85% of what I learned there. I've kind of twisted some other things that I want to do a little bit differently. For instance, the big one is people say, Oh, he says, don't use credit cards. I have the self-control and the planning that I can use credit cards fine. And it's not a big problem. Um, there have been seasons when I've done all cash. There've been seasons when I've done credit cards. So, um, yeah, at the end of the day, it's a, it's like a two and a half month program that changed the way that I viewed my budget and moved from a lot of kind of financial chaos to a lot of financial order. And the purpose of that is so that I can then organize my finances and my life to be more about the things that I'm passionate about. Yeah. I have not done his whole course. My aunt and uncle did the whole course. They bought a lot of his books for me. I've read a lot of his books and I agree with you. There's really great information in there, but I do think a lot of people throw the baby out with the bathwater because they hear it's a credit card. And I do think in this day and age, that's a tough one because you're doing so much online, but I digress, but definitely a great, um, a great suggestion. And one more thought on that, Jennifer, it's, I don't think he's really saying things that are mind blowing and new. In fact, my grandparents, what they did is when when they got paid they had envelopes and they would put money for gas and money for food money for fun and money they they just organized what they did and gave every dollar a job and that's pretty much what he's saying here is that don't just you know subscription yourself to death because you've got Netflix and HBO and Hulu and all these different charges that you don't even know about right don't be influenced by social media just because you see everybody else that has that car or has all these nice things or goes on these nice vacations have a plan give yourself a chunk of money for the fun stuff, but also save and have that sense of control over your money rather than just spending like crazy and getting in trouble with your finances. Yeah. This would be a different, I'd love to have you back on. You're so easy to talk to. You have great points of view. And I do think that it's really tough in this day and age with social media to sometimes live that in a way that makes financial sense versus what you think you should be doing and so i love this discussion um because a lot of times when i was starting out you just i didn't take vacations for like a decade of my life because i didn't have any money and that's just the way it is um but it does what i call what you're doing where you're saying shifting from the um low passion to high passion is that how you said it yeah for sure yeah um i i call that tunneling out so i think we're talking about the same a very similar thing not exactly the same thing um yeah so it seems like you're always just being so faithful and so willing to grow and how does your faith impact your decisions and how you're going to do this whole plan yeah i mean it's it's my it's the foundation of my worldview um jesus said i have come that you may have life and have it abundantly uh one of my favorite verses in john 15 11 and he says abide in me and i in you and he said i've told you these things so that my joy may be in you your joy may be made full. So a lot of people who may be familiar with the Bible and with Christianity think, well, it's a path to heaven. But I also think it's like the most wonderful life on earth. Not that it makes you prosper and have all of these monetary successes, but that if God is my creator and I'm his creation, that I can make my life about him and then experience the joy that I was, I was made to have in, in God himself. So because of that, what I've, what I've been able to do is just kind of get involved at different churches and with different ministries over the years. And once again, follow a very similar journey with my career, find out what I'm good at, find out what I enjoy. And so recently what I've done is I've seen that there's, there was nothing at our church for high school kids. And so I recruited some volunteers and came up with the pitch and said, Hey, uh, I would love to start a youth group here. We can, we can have this simple format where, uh, we have worship. We've got a 20 minute devotional teaching aimed at kids spend a half an hour playing games and being goofy. And then we just have a small group time where, um, where kids get to come and just share what's on their heart and, uh, open up with adults that love them and care about them and, and peers as well. Um, when I, when I was 13, I became a christian and i spent half of my high school on crutches i played basketball and i had an injury in the first game of every season um so i oh my god i had a lot of like existential crises through those injuries because i really wanted to play uh high school basketball and have a big junior and senior year and uh you know i found out that god had other plans in my life and through that i ended up experiencing a lot more purpose and joy and meaning and personal growth and my character skyrocketed to learn how to have joy through trials. And I also struggled with these kind of concepts of doubt and faith. And what do I truly believe is I'm becoming my own man. I'm not just a little kid anymore. I'm kind of taking ownership of my life. And so I know this is a passion of mine. I know that kids from these middle school into high school years are making choices on who they're going to be for the rest of their lives. And if they can have someone apart from their parents come alongside them, play games with them, laugh with them, bring them to Jesus through a devotional practical teaching, have some good acoustic music, do something that's fun with their voice, and then have a safe space to talk about trials that they're going through. That's, it's a wonderful, I think, blessing for students because a lot of times, a lot of adults don't really invest in these kids during that transition, transitionary time. And that's something that I just really care about people blessing during that season. And I want to be a blessing to people in that season. So it's sustainable for me, right? Cause I'm in, I'm in the season of medium income and medium passion. I've been doing this for 13 years, so I don't have to work 60 hours a week get this job. I can put in a good 30 some weeks, 35, 40, maybe 45 sometimes. But there's enough balance in my life that I can actually give my time and energy into something that I'm really, really passionate about. And what I've learned with like volunteering in particular is if you are faithful in small things, more and more doors open up. So now I'm leading the offertory song once a month at my church and I'm helping teach the membership class. And there are different opportunities. I've taught a Bible study for a year for adults and I've had one of the lead elders of the church come up and say, we think you should go through the ordination process. So now I'm currently going through the ordination process within my denomination and I'm also back in school. So I'm excited now. Yeah, I'm excited to be taking one class every fall and one class every spring and just really like marinating in it. So I'm taking a class right now called the history of Anglican theology. And it's just like blowing my mind. And it's, it's something that, again, I have the time and space for it. And I have the financial situation where I can pay for one at a time, not, not full time, but it's, it's really sparking within me the thing that I care about the most. And, um, so yeah, I think this kind of folds into this whole idea of, of pivoting and balancing and balancing, balancing the income that you need and the passion and the capacity and time that you have for it. I like a couple of things that you said. They sparked some interest in me. One is find joy in what you're doing and what you're doing now. And I think you can find joy in everything. I think you can just be the best that you can be at any point in time with whatever you are doing. And I also am intrigued by you are finding your passion and living out your passion and doing the youth group and the Bible study at the income level that you need right now. And I think that's such a great lesson for me. And I think for people who are listening that they sometimes feel like I'm not getting that, I'm not passionate about my job. You can get that in different ways. And I think that's just such a a great way to feed that if you don't feel like you're getting that at work. And some people just have to do what they have to do, right? You understand this. And that's a really great way to kind of do both of those things. Yep. I mean, I've definitely, when I was in Tennessee, looking for a ministry position, I was working three different jobs. And one of my jobs was, I was the janitor at a 10,000 member church and and on Sundays I would go around from from all of the bathrooms and clean out all of the individual little stalls that have their own you know uh mini bags and that's what I did you know for 40 hours a week while I was trying to find my way and I've worked in car part warehouses along the way in high school and like there is the sense of you kind of do have to put in your time a little bit but something something that i have learned recently is you know jesus spent 30 years before he entered into his public ministry the apostle paul became a christian and then he essentially went into hiding for a decade and he just spent time he spent time with jesus and my favorite story that i resonate most with in the bible is a guy named john mark who ended up writing the book of mark and he goes on this missionary journey with paul and barnabas and and he abandons them. And he gives up, and he's afraid, and he tries to join up with them again for another missionary journey. And Paul and Barnabas have this big disagreement. Paul's like, I don't want to bring him. He abandoned us. But later on, we see in Paul's final letter, he says, bring me John Mark. He's useful to me in ministry. And Peter calls him my son, my spiritual son. so this guy named John Mark ends up writing one of the first gospels uh to the church in Rome right before there's this big fire in Rome and Christians are persecuted so like he was a key figure for the church but he had this really messy path so I kind of take comfort from a lot of history of people who first of all they just took time before they got to do what their passion of what their passion was and second of all they might have had an up and down journey where they've had some failures. I would see people in my life that I went to Bible college and seminary with who were in ministry. And I would think, what's wrong with me? You know, they had this path that was just straight out of that type of a school and then into these jobs. That wasn't my story. And I think I felt like a failure sometimes, but you know what? I was able to care about the churches that I was working with at Boxcast. And I've been able to kind of figure out along the way, how to turn my life into the things that I'm, that I enjoy the most based on my own gifting and my passions. And it hasn't been the smoothest journey and I've taken some patience and self-reflection, but you know, I think that's, hopefully that's an encouragement to someone listening that things take time. They might be a little bit messier, but if you are intentional and can come up with a long game to try to free yourself up, uh, to have capacity and time, to do what you love. That's, it's a, it's a meaningful, meaningful path that I think I felt a lot of momentum increasing and that's brought me a lot of joy. I, I love all of it. I love all of it. So I'm trying to like synthesize everything here. So that's okay. Some of the things that I keep hearing from you or find joy in whatever you're doing, find a way to do your passion work, but still you have to pay the bills and have an income. So find joy in that, do your best in that. And I think the thing that's resonating the most, which is your path in life does not always look like what you think it's going to look like when you're 18. But you can have this still incredible journey. It's so amazing. And you have control over what you do, but you may have to wait yes to do what you ultimately want to do and i think that's just a great message which is all good things come to those who wait also i would give a caveat you still have to be doing the work at the same time it's not like it's magic that oh my gosh yeah i've had some i've had some frustrating you know seasons of work where it's just like you just feel like your soul is not thriving and joyful. So I think it's that balance, right? It's navigating all of that. And that's kind of in this messy middle, I think, of a career where I'm at now. All right. So for all of our listeners, if people feel stuck between like, I have to have this job that pays the bills and I want to do what I'm passionate about, what is one thing that they can do right away to kind of bridge that gap? Yeah. I mean, I think everybody's story is different. Probably the thing that I've found most practical in my life, but also almost like somewhat of a danger that I've done wrong is sometimes you feel like all of your energy is given to something that you don't necessarily love. And you feel like there's not much left to continue to invest in something that you're passionate about. And so a busy week turns into a busy month, turns into a busy year, turns into a busy five years. And you think, man, I haven't done anything that like really makes my soul sing for five years. And I guess those will be the next five. I guess that's going to be the rest of my life. And you just feel kind of hopeless. So I don't think there's any like magic piece of advice, right? I think the best thing that you can do when you're in a problem that's complex like that, you don't need to know what seven steps to take to get to a place that's optimal. What you need to do is just say, I'm going to take the next step. And after that, I'm going to take the next step. So it's going to take some discipline with my schedule to say, I'm not doing anything on Saturday or Sunday. I'm going to let myself rest on Saturday. Then on Sunday, even though there's all this social stuff I could do, I'm going to spend two hours and I'm blocking it off from one o'clock to three o'clock. And I'm going to sit down with a piece of paper, not even use a computer. And I'm just going to write out my thoughts about like, what is it that I want to do? What is it that I'm good at? And what you'll find is once you, that's like a two hour chunk, right? Not a huge investment of time. But if you spend two hours with no music, no shows, no computer, no technology, where you're just thinking and writing, then that's probably going to give you a little bit of a path to that second step where you say, okay, I need to explore how I can do something more. I'll give you a specific example. My favorite thing that I have learned that I enjoyed the most is doing marriage counseling. I have spent time over the past 12 months with four different couples going through really, really, really hard things. That's given me the most joy. It sounds kind of strange. I think that's what I'm best at. So how do I find more of those opportunities to practice and grow and do the thing that I care about? Well, it's not really clear for me, but I know that even though that's step seven, getting involved in more marriage counseling from a Christian perspective with Christians, I know maybe step two, and then i'll do step three and step four and i think that's going to lead me to that path in general i don't need to worry about eating the whole elephant just take one bite at a time and once you start building a little bit of momentum then it's much easier to realistically closer and have kind of have more i guess momentum would be the word to get towards that seventh step of what you want to do so i don't know if that made any sense but i think that's the best way to go about it is just to say okay one little one little step one little bit of progress and that I'm going to give myself a few days off and maybe the next week I'm going to take the next step. And once you do that once a month for two hours, every Sunday or Saturday, whatever day is good for you, you're going to look back over six weeks and be like, I've got a pretty clear intention. I know what I need to stop. I know what I want to start pursuing. And you find yourself actually starting to spend time doing the thing that excites you. Yeah. I love that. I, I always recommend to people just do the next right thing that's it just yeah one foot in front of the other and i do love your tip i do think that we tend i'm included you get so busy and you never stop to just take a walk without your earbuds or like you said sit down and just write for a couple of hours block out time for you with no music nothing and just think what should i keep doing what should I take away and do a little planning time. And I think that really does go a really, really long way. Can I share one more thought on that? Please do. Yeah. It's easy, I think, in life to look at a difficult boss or a team or a company or a circumstance and think, this is really hard. I don't, this isn't fair. It's making me really sad. Yeah. But I think our biggest enemies are actually probably ourselves. It's what's happening between the ears and the self-talk and also just the culture that we live in. We are in a, I think I saw a stat and I wrote an article about this about a year ago, but the average person like in America checks their phone 112 times a day. I believe that if you are, if you are constantly just moving from micro interaction to micro interaction to micro interaction where I have to have a podcast or a song on when I'm in my car I have to when I'm working out in the gym I have to have YouTube on to be watching something when I'm riding a bike I need to be watching Netflix when I'm like there's just we're we are just amusing ourselves to death there is not there's not space to think and we don't even realize it because that's just the normal flow of life in our normal culture so I think that's what I mean by we can be our own worst enemies we don't even have time to think like right like if you were just willing to have that discipline to say as much as I want to watch the new superhero show or whatever it is as much as I want to like feel like I need to be doing something and listening to something like just be quiet be with your thoughts and think like that's probably that's probably the thing holding you back from really getting to where you want to be, not somebody else or something that's happening outside of you. It's really what's happening in the own chaos of your mind and your thoughts. Yeah. That's always a good reminder. I need that reminder too, because there's so much good just TV and content out there that it's really difficult sometimes to say no. So your career is such a good reminder that things don't always follow a straight line and that's okay. And I also love the message of sometimes we have to do things that we might not really want to do, but it makes the most sense at the time, but you can still follow your passions and learn and find new and exciting things that you never even thought were out there and possible. So I know everyone's going to want to reach out to you. Where can people find you? Yeah. LinkedIn is probably the best platform. I check it most days and um i try to respond to people who write me real messages okay yeah the ai stuff i'm i'm usually just clicking on it and moving on from but yeah here's the thing about all this what matters is people um yeah so if if you want to collaborate and and talk about something i'm happy to you know to chat back and forth we can email um and if it's just like a really good fit and you want to talk with me, I would love to hop on a call one-on-one and chat with you. I think we're all in this together and the more that we can just have real authentic conversations like the one we're having now, the better. We all need a little bit of encouragement. So I'd love to try to encourage you wherever you're at in your journey. Well, Brett, this was a delight. So amazing. And for people who are listening, you have been like a real sport because I got a delivery and we had to restart again. So thank you so much for hanging in there. But I would love to have you back on. You have so much wisdom for such a young man. And I really would love to talk about some of the financial stuff. I think so many people struggle with that. And it sounds like you've really done a lot of research in that area and you've come up with a plan that works for your family. So maybe we can come back and talk about that if you're interested. Okay. I would love that. Thank you for everything that you're doing, Jennifer. It was a joy to be on and I look forward to our next conversation. Oh, the pleasure was mine. This was a complete joy and I absolutely thank you so much and you have an amazing day. You too. Take care. Bye.