Honest Christian Conversations
A weekly podcast dealing with cultural and spiritual issues within the Christian faith.
Want to be a guest on Honest Christian Conversations? Send Ana Murby a message on PodMatch, here: https://podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/honestchristianconversations
Honest Christian Conversations
Transforming Rock Bottom into Faith-Fueled Success
Have you ever wondered how hitting rock bottom can lead to transformative success? Join me as I sit down with Alex Sanfilippo, the mastermind behind Podmatch, to explore his journey of faith and entrepreneurship. From growing up in a Christian home to facing the challenges of establishing his relationship with Jesus, Alex shares how his lowest moments became a pivotal turning point.
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Alex Sanfilippo is a remarkable man, full of humility, unapologetic love for Jesus and a passion for serving podcasters and small businesses. With his Podmatch services, alex embodies the definition of the phrase walk the walk and talk the talk, and I left this interview having even more respect than I already did for Alex and his wife Alicia for everything that they have done for indie podcasters like myself. You will be blessed and stretched by this episode and, just a little surprise, at the end, my youngest son makes a little debut. Be sure to share this episode with family and friends so they too can be blessed by the contents of this episode. Hey, alex, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I'm not going to lie, I'm geeking out a little bit having you on because you're kind of in my eyes You're a famous podcaster because I listen to your podcasting made simple podcast and, yeah, you're like a mini celebrity to me. So this is kind of like a moment.
Speaker 2:It's so funny, ana. I'm super thankful and humbled to be here today and it's been great getting to know you. You've done such a good job in podcasting, so really, again, truly an honor and excited to add value with you today. So thank you.
Speaker 1:Why don't you go ahead and share with us a little bit about your testimony, how you came to faith in Jesus?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I kind of have like two phases of this which I think is probably pretty common on, and you could probably tell me if it's not. But, like, I grew up in a Christian home. Therefore, if you would have asked childhood Alex if he was a Christian, I would have said absolutely Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in the same way.
Speaker 2:Right, and so that's like the first phase of it. And the reality is I was really riding on my parents' relationship with God, which I'm super thankful for. It did give me a very solid foundation. But as soon as I moved out of their home, out of their covering, if you will, I kind of slipped away. I stopped going to church. There was just, my lifestyle wasn't aligning with what the word of God says and even at that point I probably would have said, yeah, I'm a Christian. But I definitely hit a point where I I'll just say I hit rock bottom and it was because I was really living for Alex instead of living for God. So I was living for myself instead of for who God called me to be. And that's kind of the moment that I really realized it like, okay, this is real and I need God and I can acknowledge that now. And at that point I believe I was 20.
Speaker 2:Sometimes the numbers get fuzzy, but I believe I was 20 years old when I really dedicated my life to Christ, and it wasn't in some big church meeting or anything like that. It was really just me alone, knowing, going back to my childhood and thinking about the person I was, compared to the person I had become and knowing that, hey, I need to get back to this foundation. And at that point, man, I was in a season where I just needed God, and I think that those are sometimes the best seasons to find him, not when we feel like everything's perfect. We always need God, but we feel like we don't. But I was in that season where I really needed him.
Speaker 1:Because of that, I really dove all in and that's really what led me to God is just realizing that like, wait a minute, this is real and I need to really dive all in on this. That's awesome. I feel like maybe growing up Christian as good as it is for having the values and the foundation, like you said, I think it also I don't want to say it harms, because I don't feel like that's the right word, but I think it gives kids growing up in that a false sense of security, if that makes any sense, because, like you said, you would call yourself a Christian and that's what I did. I grew up in the church too. As a baby I was going to church. I knew all the things. I asked Jesus into my heart when I was 12. I did all the good things that you were supposed to do. I didn't do the bad.
Speaker 1:I think that's a problem for not realizing that you need to have Jesus. You know we were riding on our parents' faith, but at some point you have to realize it's your faith and if you go to heaven you have to account for what you've done. Your parents aren't going to be held responsible for what they did for you. So it was good that you were able to find that moment where you realized you needed Jesus, not that you needed your parents' Jesus, you needed Jesus, your way to him and found a way to just move forward and find a healthy life, which I think you found because you're doing so well now. What led you to start Podmatch?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Podmatch being the business I run full-time now, and for any of the listeners who are like, what is this Podmatch thing? And I've heard you reference it before, ana, so thank you. It's simply put. It's a service that automatically connects podcast guests and podcast hosts for interviews. Actually, ana, you and I connected through Podmatch, which is really cool, so it's basically for lack of a better term it works like a dating app, but it doesn't connect you for dates. It connects you for podcast interviews instead, so the guest and the host putting them together so they can record something really great for people that are listening. I launched that exact service, podmatch. We launched it on June 15th 2020. First and foremost, I knew it was a need for me.
Speaker 2:My podcasting journey goes back to 2015. Again, the years get a little fuzzy sometimes. I think 2015 was when I began and I always struggled finding the right guest. I could find people who wanted to be a guest, and I think that's still most of us, but finding the right person is a little bit more difficult, and I just kind of confirmed that when I was speaking at a podcasting conference actually the beginning of 2020, pre-covid, just like a week before the world shut down. There was about 2000 of us at a podcasting conference and when I got off stage, I just asked anyone who would talk to me, because people are always like, hey, great job, right, maybe just being nice. But people are always going to be nice, which I'm thankful for, but they all. I just asked every single one of them that would talk to me hey, what is it that you're struggling with? The most common thing I heard was the same problem I had simplifying the connection between guest and host, finding those right people, finding people that are actually interested, getting the information that I need from them. And the whole idea is just for the we've decided to do is, since that day when we launched, it's just been can we find a way to simplify this process? And so the software gets better and better. And that's really like where the whole thing came from. Was just really me deciding to do that.
Speaker 2:I will say this on a. I didn't like everyone was telling me that and I knew I wanted that as well, but for some reason I couldn't connect the dots and, for lack of better term, it was truly an encounter with God that made me finally finally realize like, what I just explained to you sounds like common sense, but to me it just wasn't. I couldn't seem to put it together, and hindsight I guess Right, but I just really felt like one day I came home from that conference I had all this stuff drawn out and I still was like I don't know what to do with this. And I'll never forget I was actually working on outside, working out from home, because at that point the whole world had shut down and so I was.
Speaker 2:I was at home and I was like I wasn't even really thinking about it, but just like it hit me and I ran inside, probably super sweaty and disgusting from working. I live in Florida, so it was quite humid, quite hot. I ran inside and had three whiteboards at that point on my wall and they're really big whiteboards. I just decided to map everything out.
Speaker 2:That just hit like download into my head and it literally was what Podmatch is today. It's the software that's connecting guests and hosts for interviews. And like I just took a step back and felt like I had been writing for 10 minutes but felt like it was just a second, if that makes sense, and that's really how I know that. Like I just just kind of sent this to me, and that's really where the whole idea came from and from there, even finding the business partner to help on the development side was a God thing. Alicia, my wife, is one of the partners in the business and her being able to work on it was a God thing and the whole thing just came together and I'm still, to this day, in shock and beyond thankful for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you and your wife Alicia have such a servant heart, which I love very much. You're constantly wanting to pour everything you can into helping entrepreneurs, indie podcasters, anybody who's got a small business that isn't able to fork out thousands, millions of dollars to do a TV spot or something, and I just, I really love how servant heart you guys are. That is your number one priority. You can see it, you can hear it in your voice in your podcast. Your wife answers I don't know how many emails from me, and she always got a bubbly personality about it. She's not annoyed and they actually come from her, which I think is also amazing.
Speaker 1:You guys embody Christ, if I can say that I call it a ministry. In my opinion, it's a ministry. You minister to everybody, whether they believe in God or not, and that's one of the reasons why I like Podmatch, other than the fact that I mean it's helped me grow as a person, not just a podcaster. But I think that's because it's God-ordained. It's something that you and your wife have poured everything into. You lay your heart out and you allow God to do what he's going to do, and when we do that with our craft, god gets the glory and we get to stand by and be in awe about it. And, yeah, I thank you and your wife for your dedication to the podcasting world. I mean, who knows what it would be like if you did not say yes to what God wanted you to do and when you hit rock bottom. If you want to elaborate, how did you hit rock bottom? Were you always a podcaster or did you do something else before you moved into that realm?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good question here that I like to cover this and I'll cover it in as much detail as I can here Again. Growing up in a Christian home, when I kind of got out of that was my late teen years, into even 20 years old, and between that time I had really gotten deep into some business stuff. And this is going back to 2006, 7, 8, and even a little bit before that, which is when there was a major crash in the economy and I was working on real estate stuff real estate investing, real estate technology startup. That was doing very well and that was kind of where I found my identity was in those things was the fact that I was doing really well, and I'll never forget it. And that was kind of where I found my identity was in those things was the fact that I was doing really well, and I'll never forget it.
Speaker 2:At one point I believe it was a dental office that I was sitting in and it's back when before, phones did everything they do now. So no one's on their phones, everyone's looking through the magazines they put out there, right? We can all remember that. So the magazine said one was I believe it was Forbes and it said something about 30 under 30, which is the most successful 30-year-olds people that are under 30. And I was like man, I'm going to be one of these. That became the thing for me. I'm going to be one of these and it's going to happen through real estate, and that was my sole purpose. My identity was wrapped up in how successful I was from a monetary perspective. I've always had really good work ethic, maybe even out of balance work ethic, and so I just put everything into it. And when the economy crashed, I realized that the relationship I was in, the friends I had around me, the identity that I had formed around myself were all very shallow things and everything just disappeared around me because they were only here for a specific reason and it was just. It was a mess. It was like it really was like my worst nightmare. I'm like man I'm never going to be 30 under 30, because I'm going to be spending the rest, the next 10 years of my life getting myself out of this bad investment that I've made in multiple avenues. And I kind of sat in anxiety, stress, overwhelm, just sadness, if I can call that. It's just a feeling that I had, but I'll never forget it.
Speaker 2:One day I went to my mailbox. I moved into one of my investment properties as a young guy because it was the only option left with it, and so I moved into it. And I went to my mailbox expecting to have more bills. And sure I bet there were some in there. But there was a flyer for a young adult church ministry and I just looked at it for a second and just the address was pretty big on it. I was like, oh, that address has to be walking distance from me. It must be right around the corner somewhere, and typically I just throw that type of thing away. But I felt something inside that was telling me to not throw it away. And so I'm like a really organized person. I don't have like papers anywhere, like I'm anywhere, I like things in their place. I'm not OCD or anything like that, but I just like things in their place. But I left that sitting on my counter for three weeks and there was nothing else there before I finally got the courage to say you know what? Maybe something is telling me I should go to this.
Speaker 2:I grew up in church. I'm not going to be super weird, I'll be fine, but I remember I finally went there and as I was walking in, I was like these people are going to judge me because I've made really stupid investment choices. I've amounted to nothing. These are the thoughts that are going in my head as I'm walking through these doors and, to my shock, people were just really kind and in my head once again I was like well, as soon as they get to know me, they'll realize that I'm a total failure. Those are the things going through my head, but I can just just remember I felt like God met me where I was and loved me for who I am and didn't look at any of those things as a negative. And it was one of those things where I realized that's the moment, like I said earlier, where I just realized that's my moment with God, where I'm like I need to change. This is the life I should have. This feeling of freedom and peace that I have over me is. This is where I need to be.
Speaker 2:And at that point I'd also taken a job as a part-time receiving clerk at an aerospace company, which is a fancy way of saying. I broke down boxes and took out people's trash. It was just a part-time thing. It's all I could get. I went from being at the top to the bottom here. And then in that moment when this happened, I no longer look at that as a negative thing. That job wasn't a negative in my mind. Instead, I was saying to myself you know what I can do really well in this space. I can really show up to serve well if that's where God has me and I can do well. And it was just this full 180. And I really can only describe that as an encounter with God. And it wasn't anything like this bright light showed up or someone random came up and said something to me. It was nothing like that. I just showed up in a place and said God, here I am, and I felt like he just met me exactly right there, and that's again. That's when everything just really shifted for me.
Speaker 1:That's where the servant heart comes in. I can see it playing out as you're saying it. I can see it as like ah, there's the shift. That's amazing and that's very interesting.
Speaker 1:The way God works sometimes, the things he does that you just you can't ignore them. Like you said, you would have thrown that away. I probably would have thrown that away too. Then like, oh, junk mail, more junk mail. I'm tired of junk mail, but you're holding on to it and you're like something's not letting me get rid of this. And you kept it for three weeks. I would have tossed it too.
Speaker 1:My family likes to leave mail on the table and I'm like if this stays here any longer, I will throw it away. So for you to not do that, especially when you like to be organized. God was talking to you and you were faithful and you listened, and that's when he can use us, that's when he knows you're ready to be used. You are ready to move to the next step, and I don't know how many people have been impacted by the fact that you and your wife said yes to God, that you chose to take that step and go to the young adults group. There's so many lives that have been changed because with that one gesture of saying yes, god, I'm going to do what you want me to do, I mean your whole life, your whole perspective, your heart posture, everything has changed. So that's an incredible story, very encouraging.
Speaker 1:Who doesn't love free? I know I do. That's why I created a free seven-day devotional for those who want to go deeper with God but find themselves too busy. Being a mom of five, my free time is practically non-existent, but I still want to give God my time because I know my day will be better for it. That's where this devotional comes in. It's a short daily devotional that will help fill in the gap between being busy and spending time with God. It's full of encouragement, guidance and impactful Bible verses related to the everyday struggles of everyday people. I know you will love this devotional as much as I enjoyed writing it, and since it's a digital devotional, you can take it anywhere and do it anytime Perfect for the person always on the go. Get the free devotional when you sign up for my mailing list. The link is in the show notes.
Speaker 2:It makes me think back to a previous episode of your show, if I can, anna. There's an episode you did with Richard Walsh and it aired on 8-21-2024, and it was titled Finding Balance in Business and in your Personal Life, and something that you said in it actually really spoke to me. It was a great conversation. So if you're listening to this, go back and check that out, actually finish this and then go back and make that your next one. But something that you said really stuck with me. You said put God first. When you have this in balance, life and work get a lot better. And for me, I realized that I was good at my work and I was even good at that part-time receiving job I had, but when I really learned to put God first, it changed things.
Speaker 2:And you're talking about us running with this servant leadership mentality, which is what we like to do. We love people, we serve people before we want anything from them. This is just our way of proactively putting God first in what we do. We don't do it to get a result. No-transcript into Podmatch it's either me or it's Alicia, and we're going to do that for as long as we possibly can and if we ever bring in a third person to help, in the inbox they will be publicly announced that this is the other person, right? And they will embody the same type of thing if we ever have to get to that point. But it's just so important to us that we look at our work in our life as being for God, not, well, we do stuff for God with what we get from this, right? No, let's just make it about him. Let's put him first, as you've said, anna. So I appreciate you bringing all that to light. It's just really encouraging to hear someone else actually say it, and I hope it's super helpful for listeners as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's like Colossians says do everything you do as if you're doing it for God, because that's who we're doing it for. That's all we're on this earth for is to please God and if he's asking, see your servant heart, like I said. But you can also see where you can apply this in your everyday personal life, because they're biblical standards, whether people want to believe that or not, because, again, this isn't a Christian platform. This is for everybody, but these are principles in life that everyone can benefit from and, like I said, it's helped me not just be a better podcaster, like I was telling you before we got on here. I was humbled by listening to my friend Johnny's podcast, refugee Stories, an episode that you were on, and God used that to change me and I just love that.
Speaker 1:That's what the PodMatch community is about. They uplift each other, they encourage each other. It's like a. I don't want to call it a Christian group, because it's not a Christian group, but that's what it feels like. It's like a. It's a community. You call it the PodMatch community. That's what it is. Call it the pod match community. That's what it is. You have created a God-centered community without it shoving the Bible or Jesus down your throat. You've just been embodying Christ and I just I love that, because that's how all believers should be and sadly that's not the way it is and I'm not always 100 on that either. You guys are very encouraging, you and your wife, and I want to take a moment and I want to highlight her and say she's a wonderful woman and one day I would love to meet her, because she just seems fun and bubbly and very loving as well. I mean, how did you two meet?
Speaker 2:Thank you for that. By the way, I'll be sure to pass that on to her. I always try to get her to do podcasting. She loves being behind the scenes, which is funny. She's like a star athlete growing up and into college even, and still play soccer at a competitive level. But I'm like, hey, you should go on a podcast. She's like, no, I'm good, I think we've done three together ever. Anyway, thank you for that. Make sure to pass that laundry.
Speaker 2:We actually it's interesting like that young adults ministry I started going to after a while. I started I just felt the draw to start serving, so and no one asked me to. I just realized that like there was always chairs that were out of order when we're leaving and a few people would stay and fix them and it was like 10 minute tasks. So I started doing stuff like that. Anyway, as I started doing that, I made friends with other people that were also just had this servant heart, right, they're there serving God. They're there like, yes, to receive from God, but ultimately just to worship through the way they served and all that. And so I started doing that and somebody at one of them was like, hey, man, this service we're doing here. There's another church that's going to start doing it. It's like a sister church. We could use some help just the first day to get it set up and I was like, oh yeah, like I'll go out there and help with that.
Speaker 2:Turns out my wife was also somebody who was doing something similar and she was asked to go help as well. She was I don't even like know where. I had never seen her before, but we actually ended up meeting as soon as I walked in the door. She was the first person there, so I had the opportunity to meet her and for me, love at first sight her took. It was love at first sight, but two years later. So we actually stayed friends for a long time, which was really cool. And but yeah, we ended up meeting at church and just very similar Like our. We had like a really solid friendship for years before we even dated or anything like that, which actually, I think, built like a really great relationship from just a friendship level which we still carry with us today. We got married in 2012. So it's been a number of years and it's been amazing having just a blast with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you guys are perfect together.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. Thank you, it means a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my husband and I met at church too, but through mutual friends. He was friends with the husband, I was friends with the wife, and they just kind of were like, oh hey, you should meet and hang out. I love that that's great Church is one of the best places to meet somebody.
Speaker 2:I agree with that. I've actually had some friends that were not believers, but they're like man. The girls that go to church are just a different level. So they've gone to. Ultimately their lives have changed or something before, but they went with the intent of meeting somebody. They're like the bars and the gyms, aren't working.
Speaker 1:God can use anything. I want to know more about you and your wife. How do you guys maintain a God-centered relationship as husband and wife with the fact that you two are working? Because some couples can't work together. Some couples work together amazingly. You guys seem to work amazingly together. How do you keep a balance between work and being married? I'm sure you guys have arguments. How do you keep from carrying that on to work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a super insightful question and thank you for asking, because so many people were asked about this. The reality is a lot of couples just can't or won't work together I don't know if can't is the right term, but won't work together. We have the privilege that we worked together before we were married. For a while. That aerospace company I was at she actually ended up getting a job there. We worked together for not super long, but a little bit there, so we knew that we were able to. She later started a clothing boutique that was both online and had a brick and mortar as well, so I helped a little bit with that. So we knew that we had some ability to work together.
Speaker 2:But when we decided to start this pod match, we started in 2020, which means we were at home together all the time right, there was no like cool, we're done with work, let's go somewhere else, right, and because of that, we had to really intentionally learn how to build boundaries to keep the balance, and still, to this day, we do our best to incorporate those. I say do our best. Sometimes it doesn't happen, but for the most part, we've been very vocal together about hey, this is when we talk about work. This is, when we don't. A great example of this. I'm not worried about her knocking the door down right now to ask me a work question One. She'd be able to hear that I'm doing a podcast episode with Anna, right. But also, if I'm not on this call, there's certain times of the day where we talk work even though we're both working, but there's no just like hey, I need you to do this. Or she's like hey, do this right. There are just two set times of the day where we actually intentionally will stop our work and go work together for just a little bit. It's maybe 45 minutes in total where we just kind of hash out some questions real quick and then we're back and building that balance inside of work has been extremely helpful, because it's not like, well, you leave me alone, I need to work, right. There's none of that going back and forth. Granted, sometimes I overstep when I'm like wait a minute, I need this now, right. And she's like calm down, dude, right. It's like calm down, dude, right. Uh, it's more me who will do that. She's a bit more respectful with uh, with hey, we've got set hours, right.
Speaker 2:It doesn't happen often, but then, beyond that, when we turn off work. We turn off work and we will typically like something we love doing is going for walks. We we're those weird people on it who don't mind the humidity and heat and we talked about before we even started like you're, like I would never live in florida, florida, we like it. So we will go for a walk, typically after work, and we might talk for a few minutes, just work stuff, kind of just decompressing from the day, but then we just don't bring it back up.
Speaker 2:So it's not like we're always ruminating on work, thinking about it, talking about it. We've just built a balance. So we know that like hey, for eight hours a day this is our work time and for 45 minutes of that eight hours it's our work time together, and then after that we can talk about it for a few minutes, but then the rest of it is just us as a married couple, followers of Jesus and friends. That's kind of how we're going to be able to balance those things out From day one. We've just been very intentional with that. I'm not going to say again we didn't do it, we've adjusted it, but that's how we do a really good job making sure that we maintain balance in our relationship, both from a work and personal standpoint.
Speaker 1:Nice. Do you guys do any devotionals or anything together? Do you have a morning or evening routine where you guys just put your relationship with God together? It's important to do it on our own, but if we're married, it's also important to incorporate your spouse with that, because if you don't, then your marriage is going to start suffering. So how do you guys make sure that you keep your marriage firm? And I don't want to say fireproof, but I guess fireproof.
Speaker 2:We stay really intentional with this as well. We've previously done some devotional stuff together. We don't do them directly together, we're doing our own thing, but we're very involved in it. I know exactly what she's learning in the Word right now. She knows exactly what I'm learning. And again, when we're spending that time together, typically I say a walk, because I just retain way better if I'm doing something like other than just sitting down and chatting, not that we don't do that, but if we're walking and that's where we kind of bring each other up to speed.
Speaker 2:This is what God showed me. What's God showing you? How can I pray for you? How can we pray together? And then we do spend time worshiping together and stuff like that, specifically on our Sabbath. So like Saturday is laptops, phones, like nothing's getting used from a work standpoint, and we just that's when we'll kind of spend that time. So we do like our Sabbath and communion and stuff like that together.
Speaker 2:And it's just an ongoing conversation for us about what God's showing us, because right now I feel like God's teaching both of us very different lessons that we both need to learn to continue to grow. But they're not the same at all. They're very different, but it's really great having the opportunity to talk to each other, because what I'm working on right now it's never been like an issue for her. She's like, oh, I've gotten that from the first time I read it in the Bible and I'm like it's just now connecting for me. So it's like this thing where we can kind of help each other along.
Speaker 2:But I do, I agree, it's important to pray together and we do pray together every day. It's important to bring back to unify, because something I see commonly, especially with couples that are in business together, start to split and to separate, even from an emotional standpoint, because there's no real crossover other than talking about work, which I think can be very dangerous. You have to, like you said, put God first. Like I said in that last episode you did with Richard Walsh put God first, and as long as you're doing that, then it seems everything else kind of falls in alignment.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of like the way that we prioritize God together. Yeah, that's good. It's always best to keep God first, whether you truly believe in God or not. It's best, and I don't know if you can hear it, but my son managed to get into the room.
Speaker 2:I love it. You've not built that work, you've not built that boundary yet. Huh, that balance.
Speaker 1:Well, he's not even two yet, so he's like I'm just going to break the door down, which is kind of what he did. Fair enough, it's so funny. Yeah, this has been an amazing conversation. I know I could easily talk to you for a lot longer, but I will ask you one more question. If you could say something to the entrepreneur or the indie podcaster who's feeling kind of what you felt before you found God, feeling I'm a failure, I didn't make anything of myself, I'm not going to be successful before I hit 30, or just all the things that you felt before you came to Christ. What would you like to say to them? To give them encouragement, wisdom, anything?
Speaker 2:Yeah, first off, whether you're an entrepreneur, a solopreneur, want to be an entrepreneur, or an independent podcaster there's very much crossover between those things. To each of those right. And if you're in that boat, saying, okay, I'm doing something, I'm putting something in the world, I'm creating it with the intent of it serving, how do I do this without feeling like a failure? How do I do this without feeling like I'm not actually making it anywhere? And I think that most of us would voice that it feels lonely and it feels like we're not, we're just hitting our head against the wall. Sometimes is what it feels like, whether you're with God or not, sometimes that same feeling and that emotion is just what's occurring. And so the encouragement I want to give to you is twofold. First off, don't stop, please don't stop.
Speaker 2:I think that so many of us we stop three feet from gold, and that was like a saying from Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, where there was somebody during the gold rush years in California and they were digging for gold and they bought all the gear, they bought all the land and they just went after it forever, forever. It felt like right, and finally they just gave up and they sold everything for pennies on the dollar. The person who bought it all dug three feet and struck more gold than anyone ever had. And I think that for many of us, we have to consider the timing of what it takes and when people will be ready. Don't stop, keep on going and let that perseverance finish its work inside of you, right? Maybe there's some character building that needs to happen along the way. And the other thing is to stay positive. To stay positive.
Speaker 2:I find staying positive is, for me, a unique definition. Staying positive means internally staying positive, but also talking to people, because I find that when we start getting negative, we remove ourselves from others, but when we stay positive, we're very happy to talk about it. Talk to the people that you're saying this is who I'm going to serve in a manner of where you're excited, you're positive, you're optimistic about the future, and just listen to them, build empathy so you can build this connection with them, because it'll help you figure out exactly your niche and how you can help others. So again, for me, it's all about not quitting staying positive along the way and just talking to those people and finding out like, okay, I'm going to keep on going and stay positive, I'm just going to hear and listen and adjust and adapt and just trust the process along the way. To me those have been some of the biggest things that have really helped me grow in business and in my relationship with God. As I build empathy for others, I really learned to serve and love people a lot better.
Speaker 1:Empathy for others. That's something I think all people need, especially Christians, because there are people who aren't believers, and if we do believe in heaven and hell, we know what that means. I've been saying the whole time you and your wife embody Christ and empathy and serving, which is amazing, and more people need to have that kind of heart. Keep going with what you're doing. Where can people find you? How can they listen to your amazing podcast?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to thank you again for the platform and, first and foremost, honest Christian Conversations. If you're listening here, stay here. This is a great spot to be. If you are interested in anything else I do, if you just go to podmatchcom forward slash free, it'll kind of give you an introduction to being a podcast guest host or, if you're already experienced in those places, kind of give you some ideas on how you can continue to level up. It'll also show you everything that I do and give you ways to contact me. And that's podmatchcom forward slash free. And Ana, thank you again for the opportunity. It really means a lot to be here today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you for coming on. I enjoyed our conversation.
