How To Make More Money

Join us here in Ogden this June for our annual new Christmas conference. This year's theme, the War for Normal, features a great lineup of speakers as well as a whole bunch of fun events to make new friends with like-minded saints. Tickets are more affordable than ever this year with a brand new family pass covering your entire household for one low price. Head to newcrissonempress.com/20206 for tickets and more information. This episode is brought to you by Indigo Sondry's soap company. Clean soap, cleaner body. Well, in our current series here on BrightHearth called On Being Human, we have been talking through various aspects of life where a man or a woman can grow, improve and become more fruitful as a result. We've talked about the physical with weight loss and physical health. We've talked about the spiritual and keeping the soul. We've talked about the social, life in friendship and family in church. We've talked about the vocational, the different vocations and duties of life that we have before God. In this episode, we're deep into that fourth and final category, the vocational. We've talked specifically about the different vocations of the man and the woman as well as some of the key principles that each ought to bring to their duties. We've talked about agency, the kind of spirit that each person should bring to their life's work, if they were going to please the Lord and bear good fruit. We talked in the last episode about a little case study from our family on vocation with the music that I produce and how it fits into our home. Now, as we come to the close of the series and the close of this category of vocation, there are two really practical questions that remain to be addressed, both of them related to the issue of money. See, when it comes to vocation, two big money questions frequently come to the surface. The first one is something like this, how can we make more money? It's a very simple question. One of the core vocations of a man is that of provider, the one charged with providing for the family. He's called to nourish and cherish his wife. He's called to provide for his own household. In fact, this charge is so strong that Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 5 that the man who fails to do this has actually denied the faith. So how can a man increase his ability to provide? That will be the focus of today's episode. But secondly, many want to know how the woman's vocation is related to money. In our age of two income households, where women normatively leave their father's home to attend university and pursue independent careers, with marriage and children a distant second or third focus, how should we think? The woman's primary vocation, as we've talked about, is helper. The helper has been achieved the God-given mission of the household. In that case, how should young women, prior to marriage, think about making money and about careers in college, how should married women relate to making money? And that will be the focus of the following episode after this one. So join us in this episode of BrightHearth as we talk about some very practical questions that men and households are asking in our day of high inflation and economic uncertainty. How can I make more money? Welcome back to BrightHearth, everybody. I'm very excited about this episode. Really? Yeah, because I've just not really heard you talk through this. Like, I have wanted to point families to you for this reason, but I haven't been able to get you to talk about this. Look at that. So I'm excited about this episode. We're making dreams come true right now, guys. And we're joined as well by a special guest here in the studio. Penny, say hi to the people. She's eating. She's busy. Penny with her teeth coming in and her nightly disruptions, but she's worth it. Hey, I penny. Can you say hi to daddy? She goes, no. Penny is rejecting. She's rejecting the microphone because she knows she knows that her vocation. Her vocation right now is that of Nerseling. Now she's talking. Well, welcome back, everybody, to the episode. We are excited to really be putting a bow on this series here in a minute. I didn't know that it would stretch to 20, 25 episodes when we started it. Oh, my goodness. Are you serious? Yeah, I know. Like half a year. Half a year's BrightHearth thing. I can't believe it's been. Wow. Yeah, when we started, they hadn't even invented the wheel yet. Okay. When we started this series, Eric didn't even know how to play golf yet. You weren't on a cut, probably. I wasn't on a cut. I was so happy and joyful, but fat. Wait, you know what? 10% body fat higher when we started this cut than I am currently right now. So wow. Wow, please clap. Please clap, everybody. Well, welcome, guys. We hope that your spring is unfolding with the Shua Devibe that every, you know, good, BrightHearth listener brings to their life. And we're excited to talk in this episode about really a question we get all the time. It's a question every single man is faced with today. And it is just how can we flip and make more money? Because it's hard out there right now. I saw a friend of mine tweeted this thought and I would say I'd get your thoughts on it, but I don't even think that you have any concept of how to answer it out of the honest. Okay. They said something like today, you need, if you're raising a family in a lot of places in America, you need like $100,000 to feel like you are just getting by and that you are still one minor emergency away from really big problems. Like whether it be an engine blow up or even like you need new tires or your AC goes out or something like that. So that's an annual income of about $100,000 as a household. I can't remember exactly where the numbers went from here, but the next one was like $130,000 to $150,000 annual income as a household with kids. You're now like probably able to own a home. You might be saving a little bit, but you're pretty breaking even, but you feel now like maybe you're not so worried about an emergency or something like that. But then he said $170,000 plus, $175 plus. That's when you're like, I can do pretty much what I want. Like if I want to go out to eat or do something kind of fun or maybe go on a vacation every year or two as a family or that's when you're kind of feeling comfortable doing that. And maybe you're at that point investing and saving for the future and that sort of thing. And at first I was like, those are really high numbers. And I was thinking like, yeah, I mean, we made less than $30,000 a year until we had multiple children, pastor like you know, so I was thinking back, but then I was thinking about inflation and what's happened to the world and how everything militates against single income families. And my conclusion was that that actually was probably pretty accurate. Like you could quibble in different areas or like different parts of the country or where you might live or how much help you got from your dad or what you, you know, lots of different things go into what makes you feel comfortable or not. And yes, there is still very important to be diligent in your spending no matter what you make. You should be diligent in thinking ahead and planning for inheritance and that sort of thing. But he's probably not that far off, right, in how this whole thing works. The reality is you simply cannot scrimp and frugal your way out of the economy that we're in. Being frugal is not enough. Scrimping is not enough because at some point when you're talking about double digit inflation, even high single digit inflation, five to 10% inflation or 10 to 15% in different areas and they're masking this in a lot of ways and trying not to let it show. You're talking about the such rapid inflation of your currency that making $100,000 a year, 10 years from now will feel like making $60,000 a year felt today or maybe even worse than that. In addition to that, the whole world is built to try and force people to be two income households to get all the women in the job. This is why the economy's turned pink collar. They say Eric wrote a book at this point. He's the first manuscript is already done like it's in editing. It's going to be out soon. And it's a book on the long house, which is really just a way of talking about gyno-centric female normed culture where you have the inversion of women ruling and men, not ruling basically in society. He talks about the pink collar economy in one of the chapters in the economic long house. So much of this, militates really against the vision that we hear at BrightHearth and that our listeners, probably most of you, are aligned with where the man should be the primary provider for the household. We're trying to not have mom need a corporate career outside the home 40 hours a week. We're trying to do, you know, educate our children ourselves and not send them to the government schools. And all of that makes it even harder in a lot of ways. You simply can't scrimp your way out of this. You can't frugal your way out of this at some point. You have to figure out how to make more money than you did yesterday. Whether that's being in a career field where the cost of living or the wage can somewhat keep up with inflation or changing careers or side hustles or owning a business. Or like there are a million different things you can do, but you have to do something. It's not easy out there. So let's talk a little bit more. There's really two halves to this episode. The first half is why it's important for a husband in particular in a household in general to be asking this question, how can I make more money? It's actually really important for I think every Christian household, for the most part, the ordinary households. Maybe you came from wealth and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, great. Happy for you. So excited. Support my new album. But seriously, Brianceave.com/shortyears. Go support the new album. See the last episode. But for most of us, this is an important question for us to ask. Now, I want to preface this and say, of course, you should be seeking the virtue of contentment. We've talked a lot about this. We're not laying aside any Christian virtue in asking this question. But we are saying Christians should want to not just struggle and get by. We should want to do well. We should want to be taking ground generation to generation, economically, spiritually, politically, in all these different ways, all the different parts of being a person. We should want to be taking ground. And economic ground is one of the types of ground that we want to take. We want to set our children up well and teach them how to handle money, yes. But also, we want to help them launch and that requires money or the opportunity to make money, which is involved in owning business. Why is it that most soaps in cleaning products ironically don't contain clean ingredients? Indigo sundry soap company is helping families stay clean and healthy by starting with the most important step in cleanliness. Soap. Their cold-press soap bars, including clay bars and talo bars, are made from all natural ingredients that don't have any harmful chemicals. And they smell great. Visit indigo sundrys soap.com in order today. And hey, subscribe for regular shipments and get 10% off every time. When you have a busy house, the immediate demands of activities, events, and never-ending to-do lists can overshadow critical long-term decisions, life insurance, financial planning, education savings, and retirement are continually backburnered. Joe Garracy and his team from backwards planning financial will help you maximize financial tools, management, and strategies so you can focus on your home and have confidence for your financial future. Visit backwardsplanningfinancial.com that is backwardsplanningfinancial.com or call 615-767-2555 to speak with Joe to develop a plan for the future. So why is this important? In the first reason I would say is because God says it is. God says that money is actually a thing that matters. To think about what percentage of Scripture is dealing with money, it's actually not a small percentage. Jesus in the gospels is talking about money quite a bit. The idolatry of money, the misuse of money, he's using money and the management of money as a metaphor and an out-apparable of how to please the Lord, money is a part of life. We have commands from Scripture that require us to seek income like a man in 1st to to the 5th providing for his household, especially the members of his own household, his family. We have commands that deal with inheritance where leaving an inheritance to your children's children is a good thing to do if you can possibly do it. Now that's not only economic, financial, but it certainly is a part of it. We could think about the importance of owned space and economic conquest and that's a huge reason why this is important. Do you want good for your kinsmen and your nation? Well then you should want virtuous Christians in charge of a good amount of the economy, which is going to require them to be people of agency and a lot of the things we talked about in that previous episode. So why it's important, I think we all agree. It's important. Money can be a massive stress as well. Lexi, you've talked about this. The husband who's asking his wife to make bricks without straw in the household, maybe you could explain that a little bit. Yeah, I think so much of the woman's job includes tools in material goods. It's part of managing the home is a manager of things. It is, I mean, first and foremost, it's people. It's shepherding the people, but people need things. People need food, clothing, Christmas gifts, like they need things. It can be, I've talked to some people where the husband has a really great vision, but it's like there's a disconnect between, well, he never goes to the store. I mean, I remember you doing this somewhat recently. Your dad did it to where you guys went to Costco and you were both like, I cannot believe how expensive things are since the last time I was in there. And the wife is dealing with it's constantly. She's trying to figure out how to get new spring clothes that are cheaper. And the reality is the cheaper stuff lasts one wash. So not only are things getting more expensive, but like the quality of things is getting worse and worse as well. But because she's the one having to deal in that constantly, it puts her in an awkward place where she wants to be content and respectful, but sometimes there just is no getting around and not meeting. No matter how many times she goes to the thrift store to look for those snow boots or no matter how many coupons she cuts out or like clearance meet she gets or whatever the tips are that you can do. Because the only solution really is making more money. Yeah. You can't, a woman cannot take a $100 grocery budget and make it into the equivalent of a $500 grocery budget. Correct. You can't have it. And if you looked at what $100 could buy in groceries in 2015 compared to 2025 or 26, it is a big difference. I would, I don't know the exact number, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's half as much that it can actually buy. Man yeah, I think when you and I were first married and like Ari's first year of life, we could get by between like under $100 worth of groceries every two weeks. And I don't even know if you and I alone could do that now. And that's not even I know for a fact we couldn't quality food. Now we could if we were like we're going to buy a sack of rice. Yes. And we're going to buy a bunch of beans and we're going to buy like the cheapest, I don't know, maybe ground beef out there or check ground, you know, something really cheap and have a little bit of it. Yeah. With the meals little like you're getting 40 grams of protein a day each kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. For less than a hundred bucks every two weeks, maybe we could do that. But we know that it's hard. We know why it's important. But just again, why is this so hard? Inflation. Two income economy. Rampant corporate cronism. We have companies that are putting up record profits and laying off tens of thousands of their employees to replace them with AI in the tech world right now. But it's going to happen in other industries as well with, you know, if you don't think AI is coming for your sales job, I have some news for you. If you don't think that AI is coming for your any job that that you are working on a screen, then I have news for you, which is a lot of jobs in the economy. I'm not trying to make you fearful, but I am trying to give you the spur of agency to say rather than thinking of all these things happening to me, I am going to go happen to the world. That's the mindset we talked about in the previous episode, but it is the mindset that you have to have to face these challenges head on. It is going to be hard. We have a lot of uncertainty with new technology like AI. There is rampant corporate cronism and global capitalism and things are very difficult. I'm just thinking about my own children and how to set them up and like not, not give them a pile of money that's going to be all they need for the rest of their life that first fall, not even close to ever being able to do that. But I'm talking about setting them up with that conditions where they can support a family as they grow with the modest star. It's a good way to put it here and not and be here and not have to leave our area. So, you have to stop letting the world happen to you and you have to think about happening to the world. So how the main bulk of this episode, let's turn to it. How can a man make more money? How can a household increase its economic bottom line? And the first thing that I would tell any man and many young men have asked me this question in the course of ministry, how do I make more money? Where I've told them, you need to make more money. Like you simply don't make enough money. You have children, you have a wife. I know it's tough. I'm not even going to tell you the exact solution, but you need to think about it. And that's the first thing is you need to give yourself permission to try. I think we do live in a culture that doesn't want anyone to ever feel bad. So especially among Christians, the last bit of advice you're going to give a man who's already feeling overwhelmed is you need to go make more money. Yeah, the problem actually isn't the budget. It isn't all this sort of stuff. Maybe that's 10% of it. Do you need to make more money? Yeah. Okay. Give yourself permission to try. You have to start with this. I can fulfill the duties that God gave me. Like normatively speaking, there's trial stuff happens. But normality is a lot of things. I have to start with the baseline almost assumption, but it's more than an assumption. It's like, I can do it because if you start with I can't do it. Yeah. Then you won't do it. You won't try. And I'm not saying that this assumption by itself will always prove true in a rose colored glass is way. Yeah. But it is a necessary but not sufficient condition to begin. Let's say you make $58,000 a year in your job. You've worked your way in a company for a couple years. Whatever the thing is, you do. You make $58,000 a year. In your area, you go, man, by two years from now, I really need to make $85. And by three or four years from now, I need to make $100. And I need the ceiling to be at least $150 in whatever I'm doing in today's dollar terms. Adjusting as I go, it's going to be a bigger number in 10 years. The equivalent buying power of $150 today, something like that. Okay. You have to give yourself permission to try. I am going to devote time to this. I'm going to devote thought to it. I'm going to talk to my spouse about it. I'm going to make a plan. I'm going to execute that plan. I'm going to work hard at it. I'm going to be willing to be emotionally durable to handle setbacks. I'm going to be wise in cunning. I'm not just going to quit my job tomorrow and start a side hustle. But I can start. You actually have to do that. The second thing that I would say is that where to start after that permission is an inventory of yourself and your opportunities. Do an inventory. Who am I? Who am I? Do the thing that every bad millennial era movie did where they're like, who am I? I need to find myself. But not like that. Do an inventory of your strengths. Write them down. Yeah, you're finding yourself for the sake of others. That's the difference. This is lawful self-knowledge. This is good self-knowledge. It's wise self-knowledge. If I've used this example before, if I said my whole hope is that I'm going to get an NFL career as a lineman and I didn't start with inventorying myself and saying my brother in Christ, you weigh 185 pounds and you don't know how to play lineman and you're 35. It's not going to happen. So there are obvious examples we could give to go, you're not suited for that. Or probably closer to home example would be like, I'm going to start a business. Okay. Do you have some of the important skills and features of disposition to be an entrepreneur? Are you a proven finisher? Are you capable of doing a lot of work with little return for a long period of time and sticking with it because you have conviction? Or are you a flip from thing to thing kind of guy? Do you do best managing yourself or being managed by a good manager? I think something that you can overlook too is like, if your household isn't managed well, right there, you know you're not a good manager. Yeah, you're not yet a good manager. Are you getting to the basics of that? Inventoring self. Some people are very suited to leadership and management and I'm not, everybody has to have a level of leadership. You have to lead your wife, you have to lead your kids, you have to lead yourself. That's all true. But not everybody is suited dispositionally and in terms of their gifts for broader management and entrepreneurship and some people are. Some people who don't seem to be can prove to be. I'm not saying it's an absolute like yes or no kind of thing. It's more of a continuum. But doing inventory of yourself first, like what am I, what do I know I'm good at? What am I interested in? What do I like to do? Left to my own devices. How do I operate? Am I a sole proprietor? Do I like to manage people? Do I like to sell things? Do I like to talk a lot? Do I not like to talk a lot? Am I good at talking? Am I not good at talking? Am I really good with technology? Am I not that good with technology? Do I love to work with my hands? Do I absolutely hate working with my hands? Like you have to make an inventory of your current skills, your disposition and wiring and inclinations and then do an inventory of your opportunities. And you will find that you have more probably than you think what people are in your orbit. But economic own spaces in your orbit, have you talked to any of those people about opportunities they might have in their business? Do you need any help? Might I work for you? Might I work with you? Do an inventory of your opportunities? Are you in a place where there is strong employment in some industry or other and then think through that? What are the opportunities related to that industry? I can't answer the question, but you need to do an inventory of what exists in you and in the world around you. The another aspect of this that I strongly encourage men to consider is am I maximizing my current career? So most people, maybe not most people, but a lot of people when they start thinking about making more money, they think about doing something completely different or like starting their own business or going in a side hustle or something like that. They start thinking like if I could drop ship T-shirts, I could make a thousand dollars a month or something like that. You probably can't. What am I currently doing and have I really maximized it? I work for a company, say, and I need to make more money. Have I systematically inventory my opportunities and the things that I'm capable of doing and have I given my all? Have I gone in and said, how can I prove to be so valuable to this company and produce so much for this company that I could potentially maximize and increase my value and worth at this company and in my current existing career? Because a lot of times we find out that we've let our foot off the gas, been doing something for a while. You let your foot off the gas. You're not thinking like the manager, leader, entrepreneur. You're thinking about the person who's like, well, I'm just entitled to this thing. I do it. I punch the ticket. I get the minimum done. I do my job and why am I not being promoted and why am I not? Well, it's not always the case that it's you. Sometimes you have a bad boss or you have the realities. The company doesn't have enough money or there are other things. But a lot of the time men will find if they spend six months attempting everything they can to maximize their current career where they currently are, that other opportunities will open because they will. It's just a principle that when you seize responsibility, authority and blessing tends to follow. It doesn't always, but it does tend to follow. Have you asked what skills could I make to increase my value to this company? What current have you asked for feedback? What could I do to make myself more valuable to this company? What could I be thinking along those lines, maximizing your current career? Is there certification? Is there education or there opportunities? Have you knocked on the doors? Have you thrown yourself into it with a real zeal? And I think, you know, it's kind of like with the ladies at home, sometimes women think they're like the solution to my problem is some other thing out there or some big change and actually unfortunately the big solution to the problems are like growing in discipline and growing in virtue and just maximizing where you currently are at and what you currently have. I'd imagine too, like as a wife thinking about this as a homemaker, there's that worry of I'm going to be inefficient. It's going to be wasteful. I don't want to waste these resources. I imagine the stakes feel higher with the man too because there's actual like income and dinner on the table on the line sort of a thing. Yeah. But I do think it's important to remember that concept of like the Lord is asking you to turn a profit, not to be worried about what he's going to do with the profits. So like Rachel Jankovic gives the metaphor of the fruit trees, just dropping tons of fruit that's going to go to waste. Well, in our eyes, it's going to waste but really the Lord has like this miraculous magical recycling system of building the soil and all this other stuff. But as Christians, we need to be thinking that way of like it's none of this is a waste. Even if it doesn't play out the way, I think it is none of it's a waste. And I think because that kind of allows you to go at it whole hog because you know it's going to be used no matter what. Yep. I think yeah, 100%. I would say that part of this as well, like this plays in a maximizing your current career. It also will play into the other advice I have to give is that you need to start building the habits that multiply everything, not just your economic world, but build the habits that will affect and improve everything. So a lot of this series has been about that, but like your personal fitness, your personal fitness, hygiene, dress, carriage, social skills, improve those. And it is wild. You might find economic doors open. If you look better and you are in better shape and you are dressing well and you are carrying yourself well and you're learning social skills, these are some of the things that will cause some people to get promoted over other people that have worse skills at the job even. It's wild. I'm not saying that's just. I'm just saying that is true. So build the habits that multiply everything, learn social skills. There are also in certain industries, there are industry specific type of things, but there are often you'll find that there are skills that are highly leverageable in a lot of different places. like negotiation, sales, these people skills, leadership, management skills, a lot of these actually project management. These are skills that are perennially useful, marketing. Like there are just many of them and you could go say, pick in your current, to maximize your current career, look at what you do. Let's say that sales has something to do with it. Like you might not be a salesman, but let's say that it's sales has something to do with it. Go read the top three books that all sales people agree are really good books on sales. Practice. Pick the skill in your industry that's like, this is the skill that gets you noticed and gets you moving up and makes you useful. Go learn it and get really good at it. Get a PhD in it. I don't mean literally, but I mean like be an expert. Learn how to speak. Learn how to be assertive and humble. Learn how to get along in social environments. Things like discipline and network, growing your network, gaining friends, identifying key relationships that would help you in your business and then actively pursuing, making those relationships a reality, mastering financial literacy, moving from, you know, there's all sorts of habits that multiply everything you touch, sometimes focusing on those that can feel indirect. I'm not saying don't do other things too. Can bear economic fruit in ways that you couldn't centrally plan or predict ahead of time, but they just do happen. They really do just happen. So maximizing your current career is really important. I would say another way to make more money can be to change careers or change jobs within a career or even seek employment with other opportunities in the same field that you are, but that would be a step up the ladder. The studies show that the gap is closing a little bit. It was for a long time true that changing careers more frequently or changing jobs like even within the same career field would result in making more money more quickly. Companies were willing to pay more for the same role in a new hire than they were to pay to retain people, which is kind of dumb, but that's what they do because they already have you. They're happy that you're there. And so they're not going to give you more money unless they have to. Yeah. So that gap is closing a little bit, but it's still true that if you're very active, if you have agency and you're like, I work in this industry, I make this much, but there are five other companies in the orbit that might be able to employ me. I'm going to be really active. I'm going to be seeking opportunities. I'm going to be looking at job postings. I'm going to be networking with those other people. Not doing this in a scummy way, like where you're not taking care of the person you work for and not doing your job well. But being willing, not being married to just this exact job, this position, all the way up to changing careers. If you identify that the ceiling of your career, you're like, I do this type of, I don't know, quality inspection for this manufacturer of this product. And the reality is it's a really niche skill. And it has a certification, but it's an eight week certification class. There's really the ceiling is like $75,000 a year with 15 years of experience. Yeah, like, because any a lot of people can do it. It's not a rare skill. It's not hard to learn. I think this is one of the biggest things inhibiting men is not having to think outside of that box. Yep. They get locked in with thing. Yes. And then they don't do that inventory at the beginning and go, but what if I did something completely different from what I'm currently doing? Yes. What if I did? What if I identified something I actually really could do? And now that there's a, there's a trap that I want to point it now because we're going to talk about ownership and entrepreneurship as well. But don't quit your job too early. No, yeah. Especially if you have a wife and children. Yeah. You have more freedom in this if you're single. And if you're in that stage of your life, if you're a young man preparing for marriage and you're like, look, I can afford to quit this job, move in with my dad, go on lockdown mode and pursue a new career for a year because it will have so much more upside. Great. But be careful. Don't start a side hustle. In the first month, you make $1,300, quit your job and go, if I go full on, I could make five times that. Be very, very careful in doing that because you really do have mouth to feed. You have people to depend, you do not be quick to quit your job. It should be a very intentional decision to quit the existing job. So I'm just going to preface that. Now nobody can say, you know, write it and say, my husband could his job because of this episode. He doesn't have anything lined up. He just told me vaguely that he's going to change careers and self-actualize. Brian told him to. Actually I didn't. But changing career fields, if you say, look, three years from now, could I be in a completely different situation? If I worked really hard and did night study and devoted some time to it and gained the skills necessary, and yeah, I'm thinking about AI proof careers and I'm thinking about even maybe how to leverage AI tools and certain things or whatever the tools are of the industry. But I'm going to change my current career. I'm going to move from, I'm doing this. I'm going to do something totally different. And I think I could do it. I think it fit my disposition, the opportunities there in my local economy. I have a pathway. I'm going to sit down and I'm going to write out a plan in writing. I'm going to ask for counsel around that plan in writing. I'm going to discuss it with my wife. I'm going to discuss it with people in that industry. I'm going to discuss it with men of wisdom in my life who know me and who know this thing if possible. And I'm going to say, here's my plan. Is this a good one? Do you think I can do this? Does this sound reasonable? Here's how I'm going to get there and pay my bills all along. And when you do, if you do that and you're able to make that plan and work that plan and then put in the hard year or two years or three years or whatever it takes, you might move from a career who's ceiling with $60,000, $70,000 a year in today's dollars to a career where it's 1/50 or 200. Totally possible. I know a lot of men who have done this. I even know young men in my church right now who have completely, they're in the middle of this. I know a guy right now who moved from a kind of niche. That was a trades type of thing, but the ceiling genuinely wasn't that high in his role. And he was able to team up with a tradesman who owned his own business in our church. And he did that self assessment and then what are my opportunities? Well, here's a guy in our church that has his own business. Hey, could I get into that industry too? Do you need help? Turns out he did. Well, what would it look like for me to work with you and get certified? Could you pay me? And lo and behold, this whole opportunity opened up for the businessman, the tradesman with the business to be blessed because he needed help and high trust help. He could rely on a Christian that he trusted. And he had money to pay somebody, maybe not what was going to be needed in two years, but there was a pathway of certification and learning. And then it would multiply that business owner and the other guy. And so now you're a year into this process and you go, wow, multiple people are being blessed. It's a business that we've had in our home multiple times in the last year. It's like a plumbing thing. And we've had, man, actually an astonishing number of plumbing issues in the last year. And like the last three months, actually. Like $10,000 worth of plumbing issues in the last three months. So so fun. Great example of this. It was outside the box. It was an opportunity. Not everybody could replicate, but he did the inventory of his opportunities. And he did the, you know, and now things are on the way. So changing careers can be great. Be smart about it. Be intentional about it. Plan ahead. Get counsel. Do not be impulsive about this. People depend on you. Okay. The next one I would say, this is education related. I've talked about this a little bit already. You've looked at your own career field. You're in or another one you could get into or an opportunity locally. It's there. The ceiling is high enough. But you need to learn some things to get there. How are you going to learn them? Is it going to be self education? Because it's a career where there's no barrier of entry to certification. Great. Get started. Make a plan. Again, learn perennial valuable skills. Be fitting your nature. Social skills, management skills, leadership skills, entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, negotiation, project management. There are a million types of things that you could figure out right now that would be perennial valuable. How do you certain technologies? All the way up to I need a degree to do like I genuinely need a civil engineering degree or I need a degree and I think I would fit my nature figure out how you're going to get that education from self education on up to formal certification in a field that takes years to get. Now a lot of what separates the boys from the men in this and like the guys who are just going to fuss for 20 years about how they don't make enough money and the guys who are going to do five really hard years and then find themselves, well, wow, that worked. It's just grit and determination and creativity and stick to itiveness where they're not going to look at all the difficulties and just fuss. Totally fine to identify them. To be cognizant of them, you need to actually AI and pink collar and feminism and all these gay things that are getting in the way. But you actually do need to just at some point go do the thing. Yep, that's hard. Yep. This other guy got benefits that I didn't gain. handed to me. But guess what? In God's Providence, he put you here in this moment with the exact situation that you find yourself in. In his Providence, that's where you are. Are you going to give it your all? Are you going to leave it all in the field? And if you fail, it's not going to be because you didn't try. But it's going to be because things didn't go your way. You caught some bad breaks. That happens. You got sick. Your back gave out something happened. It happens. But are you going to just do nothing in fuss for 20 years? Or are you going to go in at least try with directed by wisdom with counsel, but at least try. Education is one of those things. You know how they say they don't make things like they used to? Well, now we do. Edwin's heirlooms is a family run business that provides handmade wooden toys for all ages. 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Get the Cycle Tincture Set at shophome and Harth.com/bright and use code "bright" for 15% off your order this Christmas. Now I do want to say I've seen people pursue stupid education that makes no difference whatsoever. They didn't do the research. They were like, "I'm going to get this certification from a and it's some like obviously nearly obsolete skill that is maybe could make you a lot of money 10 years ago but now it doesn't. Do the research. Make sure that you're the first education you get in seeking education is which education to get. Like look into it. Colleges and programs they promise the moon because that is how they make money. It is sales for them. Yeah, everybody that gets this IT certification is making $120,000 a year. Six months out of, is it true though? And is it likely to be true in five years given AI and other things? And if not, don't do that thing. It's pretty simple at the bottom what I'm saying but it's really important because you can waste two years of your life and then find yourself screwed. Right? So education is very, very important here. Pirenially valuable skills be fitting your nature but then specific skills that that meet a specific need in the economy. Thinking about the economy as the love of neighbor neighbor reified in goods and services. So that's what the economy is. Do you love your neighbor by providing something that they need or want that would bless them some good or service and how can you provide that really well. Learning those skills like no matter what if you are trustworthy that's a good skill to have. If you're a hard worker that's a good skill that if you don't have a conversation with a human being that's a good skill to have. Whether you're a plumber or a lawyer. I'm just I'm ranting at this point anything that you would add to that. Yeah, I just I think at that point that's another sticking point I think for men because they can often become well this is what I like or this is what's fulfilling to me and you're more frustrated that nobody is giving to you the job opportunity instead of actually there's these like three or four other career opportunities that are genuinely needed in the church. Yeah. Why do you can you meet any of those needs because when the economy is about love and loving others it's not about self fulfillment at that point. Yeah. And I mean, I've seen that so much in you over the years from being a teenager of like what what does everyone around me need because I'll do anything. I'll literally do anything. And oftentimes that's where the money has been made is by you being the one who's willing to do that when nobody else is willing to do it. Yeah, you have to cultivate that. Yeah, just go and do it. Don't care if you like it today. Yeah. Yeah, to try to find over time work that you do and join you think apt for that's not a bad thing to pursue at all. But like 80% of it is just you have to go do stuff that you really don't feel like doing. Yeah. Are you able to I talk about this all the time at New Kristen and press with employees and things like that. It's just like are you willing to do the same thing over and over for a year? Yeah, I've you know, I've talked to young families where they'll be like kind of that husband and wife are both thinking through this question of you know, because it's a lot for the wife too. It's not yeah, it's not nothing for her to consider her husband doing some of these things where he's just like I know he just needs to be faithful. And he's like it's just not I'm just not feeling it anymore at this job. And there's so many times I just want to say do you know how many nights out of the week I just don't feel like making dinner? Oh man. Do you know how often all of us don't feel like doing the work we know we're called to do in our duties? Even in jobs that really are genuinely very fulfilling a lot of levels. You just still don't want to show up most of the time. But guess what we live in a world where the Lord has made just made us contingent upon one another to show up and just do our duties whether we want to. And did you know that you're not owed work between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday to Friday? Yes. Did you know that you're not owed Saturdays off all the time? Yeah. Like I see guys that I know who are working really hard. And they're routinely like working on a Saturday. And I'm not trying to promote the hustle culture where it's like work 120 hours a week just to make as much money as possible. I'm really not. And yet six days of work, six days a week shall you labor and one shall you rest. Rest really well on the Sabbath. Yeah. And take, yeah, I do advocate in our world for like trying to get a sat, your Saturdays do stuff with your family, have family worship, try to have stability like aim for that 100%. But I know guys who they don't have a hustle bone in their body and they think that they are owed a living income just by virtue of being willing to be present in a certain location for 40 hours a week. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, work hard. Be that guy. I think I think people get that applies to the education thing. It applies to it all. Let's talk about ownership and entrepreneurship here because this is a big area where there's huge opportunity. Generally speaking, not always, but generally speaking, there is a much higher upside, potentially with ownership and entrepreneurship, then with just working for somebody else. But not always and not in every industry. And that might not be true for you. I want to make that utterly clear. Not everybody should be an entrepreneur, not everybody's even suited for it. In fact, most people should work for somebody else. Yeah. In the world that God made, most people should probably work for somebody else and be an employee. To some extent, even if they're a really high up key, they have ownership. But I mean, not everybody is suited to starting and running their own business or side hustle even. But a lot of people are and could be if they figured out the skills of management, the principles of loving people as apply in economic terms, stick to itiveness, creativity, willing to endure hardship, planning ahead, prudence, governance, all of these rule, a lot of these things have a high upside. So genuinely owning your own thing can be huge. I want to give a few warnings here. Number one, be very, be very, very wary of partnerships. They say in business that the only ship that doesn't sail is a partnership for a reason. Partnerships are very, very hard to make work and they have a high failure rate. So when you're talking about ownership of like, well, I got a buddy and I'm going to start something with him and it's going to be 50, 50 ownership and here you go. Let me tell you how many of those end in disaster and church disputation and problems because working together is really hard. You find out one guy ends up doing 80% of the work and the other guy's not very good at it and he's not trying to be a dope but he's just not that good at it and so like you end up spending your wheels and then you have this huge problem that's like anchoring the business down. So be very careful about the ownership question. If you're starting a business, consider being really clear about ownership. Maybe you're going to be a sole proprietor where you own the whole thing and you have employees and there's a very clear delineation between that. Maybe you are going to enter into a partnership but be so careful. Make sure that you have really clear expectations, contracts, things are laid out upfront. You understand gifts, you understand who's good at what, you understand who's going to be doing what, you understand how money is going to be handled, who's going to make what because making a living is a big deal. It's a emotional deal and so if all of a sudden you're getting a dispute with a partner, it can be really, really bad and it can wreck a lot of stuff. So let me terrify you there for a minute and then say partnerships can work. You can work with other people but you just need to go into an eyes wide open. There are a couple ways that you could get into entrepreneurship in ownership that would be viable way to increase your income and one of them or a principle that runs through all of them is that be where equating your job to early thing. Don't quit your job to start a restaurant probably. It's like one of the highest failure rate businesses. Look into the type of business this you're starting what are the challenges, what are the real opportunities? Be sure, be willing to actually embrace the sock for a little bit longer that you even think you need to in terms of working your normal career and starting the business until you're pretty confident like you've sought counsel about it. And then there does come a tipping point and I know lots of guys who have done this and there comes a tipping point where they go, "No, really, I am ready and I need to and the business will grow even better. My family will do better. I'm gonna jump, ship and go over there." Maybe that's starting a side hustle. I would say beware of very saturated industries and get rich quick stuff, the whole drop shipping thing like where I'm just gonna, I'm not a big drop shipping fan. At New Kristen Press, there were times when people, people really wanted us to like make t-shirts and stuff and we didn't ever make money on them pretty much, we just did them for 'cause people wanted them. And it was not a core part of what we do. But more and more and actually almost exclusively today, anything that we sell at New Kristen Press, I want to know who made it. But it was here, like we're working with a local business in our church to make a small run of some of the coolest handmade clay mugs ever. And we are really going deep on the details of these things, like making sure that they're amazing. We love them, stand by them. And people just think, "I saw a course for selling stuff. I'm gonna open up a drop ship, Shopify website and kill it in the first month. It's survivorship bias that's driving that. They're hearing from the one out of 1500 of those people that really made it big. And now selling to you either through the medium of attention or through a course, how to do the same thing they did, not realizing that they got really lucky or they had an X factor you don't or something else is going on. So be really careful about the business. You start, think about like the love of neighbor again. What is a good or a service that I could offer digitally or locally or a combination of the two that would genuinely be a huge help to people. Where I wouldn't feel bad when I got a sale, like, "Ah, I suckered another person." But you'd be like, "No, this is the product and the price that I'm giving you. You are gonna be blessed." - It's actually gonna be helpful. - It's gonna be a huge help. Like when I think about somebody buying a book from New Christian Impress, there's no part of me that's like, "Oh man, I hope they don't actually look into it because I'm like, "No, this book could, like you could get something from this book that would change your life." - Yeah. - And like your grandchildren could be blessed and it was 2395 with free shipping. - I think that's how we think about a lot of projects that New Christian Impress is like, "Man, I really wish there was a resource on XYZ 'cause that would be helpful and I can't find it." - Let's make one. - We probably should make that resource on XYZ. - So be aware of quitting your job too early but do look into ownership. This might be taking the core skills of a career or trade that you have and going freelance with it. It might be identifying another skill you could gain or a service you could offer. It might be an industry where the service itself isn't, doesn't have a high wall of gatekeeping like lots of people could do it. But the X factors that you're really good at sales and working with people in management. And so you're gonna take that skill and make a bunch with it. And I know people who, you know, one a guy in our church told me a story about an engineering student. So he's an engineer and he was in like a pretty expensive really high-end engineering school. You get like a couple hundred thousand dollars of debt in this school pretty routinely. Well, the guy started, one of his co-classmates started a landscaping business to help pay his way through college. He's like, "I can do that in the summer. "I can work weird hours and make it work. "Flexible around my class schedule." Well, by the time he graduated, he was making like $400,000 a year with his landscaping business and he just said, "Well, I know how to engineer, "but I guess I'm never going to." And then he just ran that business. Yeah. Because yeah, landscaping's not a high barrier to entry necessarily, but if you're really good with people and sales and management and hiring and all the things that go into a business, you can be the best one on your local market. You can find a niche. You can do something like that. I mean, there can, you can build businesses around trades. You can build them around a lot of different things. But the core skills of management, sales, marketing, customer service, they're all come back to loving people well. Christians should have an edge in these things. So this is the longest, the highest long-term upside activity you could, for most of us, we could probably do, is figure out how to do a really good job at some good or service that would bring such benefit that you'd be super excited for somebody when they bought your product or service. 'Cause you knew what it was gonna do. I know people have done this with everything from cleaning businesses to landscaping to trades, to selling digital products, to stuff where it was genuinely good, genuinely helpful, not crap, not trash, not cheap marketing and then I run out of town as quick as I can to the next niche before people realize how bad it is, real good products and services. So that is a huge thing that you can do, but you just need to be careful that you're the right person and that you are approaching it with that spirit. You're willing to suffer and work hard and take risk and there's reward on the other side of that risk. The last thing that I would say is that in this calculation, there's a challenge that is genuinely needs to be factored in, but you can seize it to a lot of ways. And that's AI. AI is going to be a huge challenge for a lot of people because it might make your existing job not exist in five years or two years or 10 years. So you need to be thinking in their long-term planning about like what can I do that will be not replaced by that. That is genuinely a part of the planning. But the other thing that I think is important in lots of industries with a technology like AI is that genuinely AI is amazing at certain things. It is a force multiplier in certain things. I know a full stack developer who is, he works for a large company, a company that employs hundreds of thousands of people, so a very large company. And he's very good. He's high up in the leadership. He's not in the C suite, but he works with the C suite people a lot. And he knows from the bottom to the top coding all the way at full stack development. What's a C suite? It's the executive leadership of an organization. So the CEO, CEO, CFO, got it, C's, got it. The C suite. Yeah, chief, chief operating officer, chief executive officer, that kind of C suite of a company. In this company, that means he's a big deal. He makes good money doing it. I asked him about month or two ago, hey, how has AI changed your job? Because you're in, it's really good at software. AI's great at software coding. It's already totally changed that industry. He said, and I know he's not an exaggerator. He said, I'm not exaggerating. I am 30 times more productive in terms of producing a product with my thing than I was two years ago. 30 times. It's crazy. And I was like, what do you mean by that? Like 30 times. He's like, I can do the work myself of if you had 30 of me. Yeah. Two years ago. Because of AI. And what it was is he looked at the industry. He was like, this is going to be a big deal. And he threw himself in the learning. He learned, no one told him to it his company. This wasn't a job that they gave him. Yeah. He looked ahead and he was like, well, I'm going to be out unless I figured this out. And he learned how to do it. And now that tool has made him so good at his job that he can like iterate new things. It will make new, it's a genuine help. But it's a company that does good work, important stuff. And so he's an example of how like this doesn't have to replace you. New tools don't have to replace you. You can learn how to leverage them. I'd get that they will replace some people and that there are ethical problems. I'm not side stepping that. I'm talking about realities right now of the economy. If I was in any kind of software industry, I would be throwing myself, I would be spending nights researching. I would be on the cutting edge. I would be learning everything I could using the tools, talking to my work, how can we use this tool? How can I, how can we make sure that we help our people not to just get replaced too? Like love your coworkers. What skills can we learn where they could make our business five times more effective and not lose anybody. But keep everybody. And like love the people, not realistic in every industry. You're not in the C-suite in every industry. So there's a challenge that you need to plan and factor in in all this conversation. But you also need to be willing to seize the challenge and in particular industries especially learn how to use the tool in a lawful way that is increasing your love of people, serving them well with a good product or service and that is going to make you valuable in the economy. This is how the economy works. So you know, a lot of people are like never touch AI. For anything ever I'm like, well, there are certain things I've been kind of vocal see our last episode about where I think AI is using it for certain things in certain ways is actually a huge mistake. It's being ruled by it and letting it replace some glory that you should be doing that's good for you. But then there's other things like writing code. It's just a utilitarian thing to achieve a digital end. So yeah, if you can use AI to write 30 times more code that's great and does the thing really well, do it. Figure it out. Learn how to leverage it. And I think there are ways this technology, I'm not an expert on it. I think there are ways that this technology will be leveraged and shake out over the next 10 years that will people are acting like it's the second coming of Christ. It's absolutely. not. It is going to change things, but there have been lots of technological shifts that have changed things over the years. We just need to be thinking well about them. I think there will be societal things we have to do in light of this to make sure that we don't create a hellscape. But I am kind of fundamentally an optimist by disposition. You are. So I told Eric this the other day, I've told many people this, but when I look at the world today, if you said Brian, you have to start over tomorrow, you have nothing. It's you and your family and you're moving back in with dad and you're embarrassed for some reason. I don't know. There is a part of me that would be wildly excited because I look out the world and I see opportunity. That's just the way that I am. I am by disposition. I look out and I see 10 businesses that could be started. I don't have time to start them or I can't do it, but I look out. I tell guys all the time, have you thought about doing this? What about this? What about this business? That's just I see a world of opportunity. I'm really excited for my sons because I think man, my sons are going to be able to kill it. They're getting a good education. They're learning how to think well and be good men. They could be rulers of a fiefdom because there is so much opportunity and a lot of the walls are coming down of barrier to entry in some things that is going to be highly disruptive to those industries and there's going to be pain. But I just see opportunity. So I was even talking to that full-stack developer guy and I was like, look, I know you're doing well, like you're working with the C-suite, but like you and I, we could do something great. Let's come on, man. Can I get you? How many side hustles have I heard you bring up in the last six weeks? After you've said, let's just keep doing the basics. Baby. You just have to understand who you're dealing with. I know who I'm dealing with. I do have to be careful about this. It's why I keep telling you to be really careful. I've had 10 ideas in the last year that I know I can't do. And I shouldn't. And there's cost. But I like doing the things that I do. And that's I think I'll leave it there. I cultivate a joy and an optimism that drives your work. Paul says rejoice at all times. God is with you. He's on your side. And yeah, things might suck some of the time. Trials happen. You might be poor some of the time. Things might fail. Business might go on. Dream Michael bankrupt. Like all that asterisk. Yeah. But even then be joyful. Because God's on your side. And like this is just the earthly life. We have eternity before us. Let's run the race with endurance here and do our best. Money is just a thing here in this earthly sphere. It's not of ultimate importance. The people are of ultimate importance. It's a good tool. Use it. Be generous. Tithe. Be a be a guy who like if you run a business, pay your people well. Give them raises. Don't be the guy that's like, yeah, our business made $1.2 million this year up 30% from last year. If I lay two more people off, I might be able to get it up to 1.4 instead of like how can I bless my people and reward good work and build a good culture. So the people want to work for you. And they do well and they want to stay. They want to keep working for you. That's very important as well for Christians to do in particular. One of the errors, the fatal errors of capitalism as it's currently practiced is shareholder economies create perverse incentive structures that result in the mistreatment of people. And that happens. I mean, it definitely happens, especially in globalistic corporate capitalism where you have big functionally monopolistic business in bed with big government. You just create perverse incentives that literally incentivize C-suite leaders of companies to offshore their production to third world crap holes where they can pay really terrible, like mistreat those people and then also lay off all of their own kinsmen here. And they're doing it so they can make the stock price go up a little bit. And that is abominable and God hates it. And they will go to hell. That's a sin. Like you go to hell for sin. So they should repent and trust in Christ and genuinely turn from those wicked deeds. And we can do better in our businesses, in our commerce. If we remember that the fundamental thing you're doing in a just economic exchange is loving one another, then you'll do well. So cultivate joy, cultivate agency. I've talked a lot, like CD of any last housewife. Yeah, just words. Know your wife and her disposition too. And because some of this stuff, the goal will be pulling her not pulling her along, but like helping her catch the vision for what you're trying to do too. And the reality is there's some wives that just really can't do it. They couldn't hang with a husband who's a business owner. No. And what it takes. And so, you know, again, and talking to families thinking through this, there are times when I just know absolutely, that is not going to work for you for better or for worse. Like it's not it's not bad that God gives people different dispositions at all. No, he did that on purpose. Yes, he did do that on purpose. And it's it's a good design feature. But a husband has to be honest about when he doesn't have a wife very suited for that. Yeah, that's very true. Know your wife's frame and live with her in an understanding way. And also wives to just be aware that you are the greatest tool in your husband's tool belt on those days when everything really is sucking. Are you okay with saying it's okay? I really just wanted you not to paycheck anyways. And like that really is the reality sometimes. Yeah, you have to have his back in ways that are tangible and felt and and that's really important. And two is things start to grow that you don't become fussy of like having to manage more because now there's more responsibility on both of your plates. Yeah, because as his workload and responsibility increases because the Lord is blessing him yours by default also increases. Yep. So you have to be able to also flex with your responsibilities of managing as a helper as well. Yeah, that's not just getting stuck in. This is what I thought it looked like to be a housewife. Yeah, you might need to increase that somehow. So yeah, well, in this, uh, the in the kitchen that goes with this episode, uh-huh. We didn't talk about it today, but if you want to support what we do here at New Chris and Impress and BrightHearth, we have a Patreon channel where you can become a supporter of the show, a couple bucks a month and help make this possible. Like I said, we do have lots of employees that work at New Chris and Impress and touch everything we do including BrightHearth and help make it possible for us to put out a podcast that's like an hour long every week. That's actually a big lift, but we do it because we think it's helpful. We actually want to help and offer real counsel that would change your family and generation in life. That's that's what we're trying to do. So you might think, wow, that's kind of a big, you too big for your bridges. I don't know. That's what we're trying to do. If you want to support that, um, you can support the great Christian businesses that you heard and ads in the show that do support our work here and you can also become a patron. Um, we do a little in the kitchen. It's a little podcast called in the kitchen as a thank you to our patrons. And this week, Lexie is going to talk about where to, we're in the grocery budget. We talked about how frugality is not enough, but it is one thing. We're in the grocery budget. Should you scrimp and where should you not worry as much like about scrimping? So there are different products at the grocery store, different categories of things that it's like, you're not actually getting a lot better for your family by spending 30% more on the organic or this or that. And then there are ones where it does make a difference in Lexie's thought through that. She's going to talk a little bit about that and some grocery related stuff on the budget there, um, for the supporters that they're at Patreon. And then in the last episode, probably the last episode in this series, we're going to be talking about discerning, all right, we're going to be talking about actually the woman and money. How does she relate? Because I've talked about the man as provider. But how can she relate to money? We don't want her out in the corporate world chasing a career, but we also aren't saying that the woman has nothing to do with making money in the home. That's a very, very weird idea actually that is not scriptural. And it's not even that historically accurate to think about the Christian household that way. So she's deeply involved in the economic engine of the house. This is just how God made the world as well. So we're going to talk about that clear up some misconceptions about the woman and money, but also talk about some of those good boundaries and why they're there. And how we should think about this. I think this is one of the most common questions we get at Breithart, not just in this series, but all the time. So we hope that one will be helpful next week, Lord Willing. But thanks for listening guys. Like I said, as well, if you like my music, I am running that, I think it's April 20th as this comes out. I'm in the middle of trying to fund my next full studio album of original music. And you can learn more about that at Brian Sove.com/shortyears. Thanks for listening guys. We hope this was a blessing. We'll see you next time on Breithart. [Music] [MUSIC] If you like our podcasts, we think you'll love our books. Head to newcrissonimpress.com to browse our growing library of legacy resources, published in high quality print formats that look great on your shelf. [MUSIC]