"Where Did The Fire Start?" | Episode #99 | Builder of All Things | Author’s Cut: Chapter Eight w/ Richie Breaux

Welcome to the Builder of All Things Podcast—where we go beyond the pages of the book and explore into the Author’s Cut! 🔥 Join Richie Breaux and Ray Bisnar as they break down each chapter in micro-episodes, giving you the behind-the-scenes insights, deeper wisdom, and real-life applications—just like a Director’s Cut for a book. 

Episode 3 | Facing the Mirror (Chapter 8)
In this part of Chapter 8: Facing the Mirror, we uncover the Three H’s—three powerful tools for identifying and eliminating the “smoke” that clouds our vision and derails our purpose. Through a personal story of loss, lessons from firefighting, and biblical insight, we explore how to spot the “flash points” where trouble begins—and stop it before it spreads.

You’ll discover:
* How a devastating house fire revealed an unforgettable symbol of hope
* The meaning of flash points and why finding them stops the smoke before it starts
* The Three H’s: Honesty, Humility, and Healing—and how each one clears ego, misaligned effort, and emotional residue
* Why letting go of control can move you from performance to true service
* How to protect yourself from the “one-star reviews” moments in life and leadership

This episode will help you lead, serve, and live with clarity—fully aligned with the assignment God has for you.

📖 From Chapter 8: Facing the Mirror in the book.🙏 Let’s identify the flash points, clear the smoke, and stay in God’s lane.

#FacingTheMirror #Episode3 #Chapter8 #ThreeHs #Faith #Leadership #Honesty #Humility #Healing #PersonalGrowth

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting Up The Three Hs
• 0:33 The House Fire Story
• 2:46 Learning Flashpoints In Firefighting
• 4:28 The “Never Give Up” Sign
• 5:38 Honesty, Humility, And Ego
• 9:20 Letting Go Of The Helm

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:17

With these three indicators, right? Those pillars, you use the tools of you know, figuring things, not figuring out, but identifying these things, which is the three H's, right? Can you tell us about that and how to identify it?

SPEAKER_00: 0:33

Yeah. So just going piggybacking off, you know, being trained as a firefighter through the Navy. When I was in eighth grade going to high school, we went on our very first vacation to as a family, very first one to go visit my dad's side of the family in Utah. And right when we arrived, it was a road trip, I believe it was about a day and a half to I can't remember the time frame of the drive for my family. My dad led the family trip. When we arrived, literally pulling into the driveway of my uncle's house, my dad's brother, we got a phone call from my grandma, my mom's mom, that our house burnt down. Second house fire. I remember seeing my mom and dad just cry and hug, and I was old enough, right, to really understand. You know, I lost all my Ken Griffey Jr. rookie cards and like, you know, like all the clothes that I had and what I have now is all I got. And they made a decision, let's just finish the vacation, go back and face the music.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28

So yeah, very tough.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30

But as kids, smart move, we just enjoyed the vacation, but kind of knew this heaviness of like, what are we going back to? And so when we drove back to Peoria, Illinois, and we pulled up to the house. I remember just seeing a just to understand the context of the fire, two neighborhood kids, good kids, they just were play there, they had a habit of playing on our front porch with my brother, my youngest brother Sean, and that was his friends, and they were there. We happened to have a gas tank for our lawnmower and a mattress we were getting ready to throw away. And they were playing with probably some G.I. Joe figures and and and lit them on fire. They might have had a little lighter or something, but it it caught the mattress on fire. They ran, thankfully, nobody got hurt. But once I hit the gas can, it blew a hole straight through the house. And sec two-story house, you could see from the porch straight through in sunlight. And then and then it was just melting everything, but the smoke damage just everything was done, complete damage. It was everything was black. I remember uh walking in with the fire chief, with my my mom, my dad, fire chief, and I forget who else was there, but we walked through as a group to be safe, but to just kind of recognize the damage and what we went went through. But while he was walking, and I heard the other fire people talking, they're looking for the where it started. Yeah, where did the fire start? So we didn't know at the time, they're still kind of researching. So, what they were looking for, and what I learned in the Navy as a firefighter, you look for these flashpoints. That's let's just take a match, and it has that little tip in the wood, and you look for a substrate and you just rub it across. As soon as you see that thing ignite, that's called a flash point. And so that flash point became a tool for me to you know use to try to find and identify where these things grow from, where the fire grows from. Because if you can identify where the fire starts, it will eliminate the idea of there's ever gonna be smoke. Yeah, you know, and so you know, we were walking through, everything was black, just to kind of close the story on walking through the house. There was a picture on the wall. We seen uh the piano in the living room was melted, the TV was halfway melted down, all black. Every little I remember walking through and all the little memories I have of my brothers playing and eating lunch, macaroni and you know, macaroni and cheese, and just the table was black. It was real funky, like what that does to you, right? And so everything's black, and then the fire chief is like, Man, you guys aren't gonna believe this. And I'm like, Oh man, what? So you pull the whole family over. There was one picture on the wall that was untouched, like no smoke, and it had like a smoke ring around it, real funky, but it was like like it didn't touch it. Like there is like a handprint, not literally a handprint, not that specific, but like something blocked it, and it was a picture of a a pelican with it's a it's a well-known picture if you look it up on like uh Google, but it's a pelican eating a frog's head, but the frog, his head inside the pelican's mouth, his hands was choking the pelican. And on the bottom it says, never give up. And I remember seeing my mom tear up. I seen, you know, the even fire chief saying, Man, I never seen nothing like that, you know, and just being encouraged, knowing that even in the smoke, even in the fire, God's right there, man. God's right there. And that's what I would encourage anybody today, you know, is watching this. Like, you do have to start with honesty. Honesty is super important, but number two H is humility. Humility kills pride. Come on, humility kills ego, humility will listen to misaligned effort, and humility will put light on where you need to forgive. You know, humility is the the secret sauce. You know, honesty is basically uncovers the food, but the secret sauce, man, is humility. Humility is the key. And so now I'm looking on my life and I'm looking at what are the flash points on my derails? You know what I mean? Like, or am I even derailing? Maybe I am on the right course, so I gotta really search these things. And I believe me personally, where I discovered one was not letting go of the helm. Like you get to a point where you're you're not a Michael Jordan or Steph Curry, but you get to a point where you feel like you have full control of the game. You know what I mean? You've learned enough, and and you you're trusting your entrepreneurial skills, you're trusting how I'm doing things. And there's a point where you take your belief system of God that he's going to come through for you based on your efforts. And I've been there, I've been there where I wouldn't let go of the helm. And God was saying, let go, and I couldn't do it. You know, it's like, no, no, you know, I know, I know he's got me. And then I turned into a Jonah. You know, a Jonah is, you know, it went through a path of disobedience. And it wasn't like a disobedience, like going into sin. It was a disobedience of not letting go of the helm, letting go and control. I'm gonna go my way. Not like, you know, I'm still thinking in my head I'm going God, like I'm still serving God by by going that way. And why I say that is Jonah truly believed Nineveh is sinful.

SPEAKER_01: 6:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 6:33

So he believed they deserved wrath and not grace. And so he went this way and he believed he was doing good. Yeah, you know, and then he realized you know, God was still chasing him. And so in my life, in my business, you know, I recognize, you know, as a human, I had to be honest about myself. Like, am I really allowing God to have the helm and I'm serving, you know, and I start paying attention. Am I performing or am I serving? Where's the heart? Not the visual, but where's the heart? You know, like getting up on stage and use I used to rap. I used to get so super like anxiety and nervous. And this, you know, why is because I I was performing. I wasn't I wasn't thinking my head, that's good. I I'm going up here to serve people. Who cares if I mess up? You know what I mean? But in my head, I didn't want to mess up. So that's a performance tier, right? That's like, and I used to get super anxiety and nervous because I didn't want to mess up. I mean, it was as simple as that. That's simple. Like, if I told you that on the surface, like, oh, don't worry, mate, you're gonna be cool. You know what I mean? But really, I was in a performance category versus a servant.

SPEAKER_01: 7:37

Come on, that's that's gold. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00: 7:39

So now, now I have to literally tell myself, how can I serve today? I'm getting on here on the mic. Well, how can I serve today? How can I serve you, right? How can I serve the client? How can I serve my wife? Because performance level, man, that's all affirmation, man. That's that's what's that's what's coming out of that. It's like, are they gonna say, hey, you did a good job? Hey, you didn't mess up, you know, hey, you know, and so I had to like really let go of the helm of performance and and who cares, you know, where it goes if you're serving. Yeah, as long as you have the heart of serving, you're a full vessel and open for God to move and operate, right? Yeah, and so the third H man is not really an action item, but it kind of is. So once you go through honesty and you're just being honest, letting that door open to really dig in deep and be vulnerable, even with yourself and look in the mirror. Am I do I really gotta brush my beard? You know, like really looking at yourself, and then you're humble enough to say, Yes, I do need to brush my beard, you know, or you know, just have that humility to say, I I I am here. And now God can move in and now you can heal from these things, right? And healing, and why I put it as the third like prong in the three H's is because you can't just like discover, oh, I let go of the helm. Now, now I'm good. There has to, you know what I mean? Like there has to be a season of allowing God to regroup you, re-reconstruct you, and get you back on course. It's not like like if you're going off course, you know, like like uh Jonah, I mean, he was going to Tarshish, which which was 2,500 miles away from you know where he was, and where God was sending him was only 500 miles. He went that far left, man. And so when he got into the the big fish, got you know, got him in there and then spit him out, it was a journey of healing before he got to Nineveh Nineveh. That was a far distance. It wasn't like the fish swam all the way to Nineveh and he didn't just spit him out. Maybe he did. I gotta go check. But I believe there's a journey of walking and and healing and understanding the mission and the assignment, not the performance or not the reason you think you're going. And so going back to is the light in you, if the light in you is darkness, how deep is that darkness? I think it's very important, man, to check yourself. Very important to check yourself. And I think, you know, when I was in uh the starting days of ATN, all things new, our construction company, what I used to do was I would go to Yelp, right? And I would not study the competition based on their five-star reviews. I would go read all the one-star reviews. I'd read them all. I'd read them all. And so my goal is, and what I would learn from those was I'd want to set myself up knowing what not to do. Right. Right. And so a lot of entrepreneur owners, a lot of coaches in in this world, they want to give you the five steps of getting rich and and getting out there and get going. But I'm I'm not like my approach is I want to show you what not to do, or how to protect you from the fall, or how to battle adversity. And so I thought it's very important to throw, you know, these three pillars in these three, you know, categories and the smoke being very important to recognize like, hey, if I'm gonna go down this lane and strive for the assignment God gave me, the builder of all things, be sure to check these one star reviews, you know, like and know what not to do. And so that's what these are, man.