Faith and Business Balancing Identity!

As we head into 2025, we kick-start the year by talking about the connection between identity and personality and how they shape our lives, faith, and business decisions. From balancing faith and entrepreneurship to the age-old debate of generalizing versus specializing, this conversation is full of insights to help you align your actions with your aspirations in 2025 and beyond. 

📌 Key Takeaways:  
✅ Identity vs. Personality: Understand the difference between how you see yourself and how others perceive you—and why it matters for personal and professional growth. 
✅ Faith-Driven Business: Explore the challenges and rewards of integrating faith into your business identity while staying authentic and impactful. 
✅ The Power of “I Am” Statements: Learn how the language you use to describe yourself can shape your identity and influence your future. 
✅ Specializing vs. Generalizing: In your entrepreneurial journey, discover how to balance testing the waters with going all-in on a focused niche. 
✅ Breaking Free from Labels: Why tying your identity to a single role, like “real estate investor” or “wholesaler,” can limit your potential—and how to unlock a world of opportunities. 

As you reflect on who you are and where you’re heading, this episode offers valuable perspectives on crafting an identity that aligns with your goals and values. Tune in to start redefining your future, one step at a time.

🎬 Chapters:
00:00 Exploring Identity and Personality
09:58 The Impact of Identity on Life Choices
20:05 Faith and Business: Balancing Identity
30:08 Generalizing vs. Specializing in Business

Transcript

People that make a lot more money than me in stocks. There's people that make a lot more money than me in Bitcoin. But I just don't understand it. And I think when you confine yourself into that box of, most relevant example is I am a wholesaler. That's what I do is I wholesale. You're missing out on a world of possibility and all these other aspects, if that's all you wanna do, then be the best at it. That's fine. But I think that when people open up their perspective into all the different things.

Alright Ryan, so back here on this beautiful sunny slippery ice filled chaotic day. Today is nothing close to sunny here in Nebraska. It's don't know what it is today, what 13th, 14th? It's 14th, yeah we just got out of the Friday the 13th storm. Oh, I didn't even realize that. All night just watching all the car accidents, people slipping and sliding, it's chaos.

Yeah, we didn't go anywhere. Smart. We had both of our kids soccer. Both of them had soccer last night. Both of them got canceled. So, I don't want to chalk that up as a win. Yeah. Well, we had a Christmas party last night that we were determined to go to. you made it. Yeah. But better man than me. Well, today I wanted to talk to you a little bit about something that I've had a lot of experiences with that I still feel very inexperienced with. that makes sense which if not, it doesn't make sense to me either. think that one of the things that people try and discover as they come into this entrepreneurial journey and any, anything in business, you know, is their identity. Faith as well. Yeah. I would say it's more like as a husband, as a father, as like to me, what you're about to get into opens up the door to a lot of things. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. And I think from, for, can't remember which video it was. was years ago that I watched it, but it was about the difference between identity and personality. And

At a basic level, your identity is how you view yourself. And not talking about identity politics and that stuff, we're leave that on the side. But especially coming from the military, you know, or any corporate job that people are at for 20 years, you identify with what you're doing, right? As a man, as a human, when you lose that job, you lose your identity, which is why, you know, post 2008,

There were so many people that identified as this provider, they identified as a businessman and when they got laid off, they lost their identity and they wound up spiraling and a lot of them, you know, want to take their own lives from it. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to go. I can't really say that as we're doing YouTube, but I think in the military, know, talk about 22 veterans give up every day or however you want to word it, you know, can't say the word, but,

And I think that's a lot of it. It's as much identity as it is what they've seen and what they did. Right. Absolutely. People attribute it straight to the PTSD and all that stuff. that is, that's just a small, small portion of it. Well, and for some people, this isn't minimizing their problems. No, their problems are their problems. I'm not in any way, or form. Like, I mean, I did 20 years in the military and like,

Valerie and I have had conversations about it. Like it's you lose who you are. Like you, when you go to basic training, like they build you down or break you down and it builds you back up to make you identify as someone who's in the military. Right. Colts do the same thing. Yeah. Colts. I've made the argument that there's a reason why they try to get people at 18 to join the military. Things are impressionable. Yeah. That and then they get the best working years out of them, but that's a whole different thing from the very start, like two, three, four weeks in, no matter what brand it's like, they tear you down, they tear you a piece of crap, and then they start giving you an identity. They slowly, first two weeks, they just brutalize you, and then they start building you back up for those next... It's very narcissistic when you put it like that. But it's efficient. Yeah, and I agree. It's... Your identity becomes the military, correct? And I, for years, it's like, you when people would ask me, what do you do? I'm in the military. I it's happened that, you know, when I first got into real estate and I still do it because I'll be like, retired military. work as a defense contractor and I do real estate and a small business. Like that's my, what do you do?