In this episode of Move Right, Zach and Jake tackle a question almost everyone faces at some point: How do you become more decisive when the stakes feel high? Instead of falling into the two common extremes—either “just send it” without enough thought or endlessly preparing without ever acting—they explore what it looks like to take a better path. This conversation is about how real decisiveness is built through preparation, conviction, faith, and the courage to move before full certainty ever arrives.

Through the lens of Move Right, Zach and Jake break down why decisive people are often not reckless at all—they are prepared. They discuss the role of due diligence, emotional control, fruit, wise counsel, and listening for God’s voice when making major life decisions around career, marriage, business, and calling. They also wrestle with the tension between responsibility and trust, showing that courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to move forward when conviction has been built and faith must carry the rest. This episode is for men who feel stuck, torn between too many opinions, or afraid of making the wrong move—and want a clearer framework for deciding well.

To watch the full conversation, find Move Right on YouTube at @ZKosturos.

Additional Discussion Topics:

• Why “just send it” and “just prepare more” are both incomplete
• How decisiveness is shaped by preparation, conviction, and courage
• Why fruit matters when evaluating your patterns and the advice you take
• The role of wise counsel versus endless opinion-seeking
• How faith and quiet time with God help clarify major decisions
• Why certainty is never total, and courage is still required
• How to think through big decisions like career, business, marriage, and moving
• Why decisive people often have stronger emotional control, not just stronger opinions

When you're talking about what career am I going to choose, what job am I going to take, am I going to buy a house or not?

The question is, have you prepared?

That way every one of us in the back of our brain goes, but what happens if this doesn't work?

What happens?

What does that mean about me?

What does that mean about God?

What does that mean about his promises?

Does that mean I missed something, I screwed up?

I think conviction is an outcome.

Conviction is a byproduct of preparation and faith.

I think oftentimes people will go and ask other people, like over, like people, person after person after person, their opinion, what they should do because they are too afraid to make a decision.

What's God telling you, right?

When in your quiet time, what's he telling you?

Because I could tell you something, your mom can tell you something, your wife can tell you something, your dad could tell you something.

And at the end of, at the end of the day, like none of us are God.

I got introduced to the opportunity to just do the next thing.

But there was no safety net, there was no parachute, there was no fall back plan.

It was just, hey, man, you want to play in the big leagues?

You want to move right on the curve, right?

Like, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

So have you ever heard, just send it, just go for it, trust your gut.

You don't need to keep preparing, right?

When it comes to thinking about a goal you're trying to achieve or something you're trying to change in your life, maybe you've heard the other side of the coin, which is, no, you just got to prepare more, you got to learn more, you got to consume more, and then you find yourself, hey, how do I get where I'm trying to go?

How do I move forward?

How do I achieve this goal?

Well, that's the thing that Jake and I are going to talk about today.

Because it seems to me, and it seems to Jake, that common wisdom usually ends up in one of those two buckets.

You just got to trust your gut, you got to send it, you got to go for it.

Or no, you got to learn more, you got to go to college, you got to, you know, you got to become an apprentice, you got to do all these things.

And I have found in my life that there's actually a third.

There's like a third path, a third way.

And I think, at least from what I can see, that it's a better way.

And so we're going to explore what that is today.

We're going to explore how do you actually become decisive.

Right.

Decisive in a way that's productive in a way that actually moves you, as we say, right on the bell curve.

And so with that, Jake, thanks for being here.

Excited for another conversation?

Yeah, man.

No, I really appreciate it.

And, you know, I feel like for, for people listening.

I know for you as well, it's like we're.

Every single day we're.

We're faced with decisions and, you know, some of them may weigh heavier than others, whether.

Whether you know it or not, you know, but that's, that's kind of like just for some example would be like, you know, for me right now is we're moving from Montana to Florida, as probably some people know by now.

And, you know, that's a pretty big move.

We made that decision already.

But the next decision that has a lot of weight on it is, you know, what am I going to do for work down there.

I currently work for construction or for a general contractor, and, you know, there's a decision that has to be made for what I'm going to do down there for me.

Right.

So given the time constraint and some other aspects of making that decision, you know, I seek some counsel.

I was like, you know, what.

What should I do?

And that's where you hit it right on the thumb.

There's.

There's one person that's telling me, oh, man, just send it.

You'll figure it out when you get down there, you know, like.

Like, it'll all be.

It'll all be all right.

Which is honestly probably more where I lean.

If I were to pick one of the.

Those two lanes.

It's like I'm.

I'm a little bit more, you know, head in first, kind of jump into it.

And then there's the other side, like you said, the indecisive person that's like, yeah, you know, maybe.

Maybe just wait and figure it.

It'll.

It'll come to you, you know, like just, you know, that sort of style of thinking.

And, and then it just got me thinking, like, there, there's got to be something else here, you know, and that's, that's when we talk.

Started talking about the decisive person of, like, when I think of the decisive person, I think of somebody who's, who's making, like, a swift decision that I'm sure people listening.

I'm sure you know, people as well, that's like, it's just like the way they communicate is just like, it's, it's like they have it all they.

They thought of it and they're like, well, of course this is the path you should do based on xyz.

And you're like, how did I not think of that?

You know, and it's so clear we know those kinds of people.

And I guess that's.

That's like you said, that's what I really want to have a conversation about is how does this decisive person.

How do.

How do you become more like this decisive person?

And what does it take to make these kind of decisions?

Yeah, well, I think we're all faced with.

We're all faced with those kinds of scenarios throughout our life.

And I've said for some time to people that I know well that one of the things that I can always see is people who tend to experience the most success, and we don't need to get into exactly how we measure that, but just say, if we're measuring success by attaining the goals that they're after in this context, one thing they almost always have in common is they make decisions quickly, they are decisive.

And the question then becomes, so then is the answer to just go for it to just jump, or is there some preparation that comes into that ability to be decisive?

And I think from my standpoint, I hearken back to this idea of the investor's approach because I think you can learn so much about life.

One of the things Warren Buffett always talks about is that investing isn't.

He says something like, listen, if you had to be smart to be a great investor, Everybody with an IQ of over 130 would be rich.

But they're not, because investing isn't about how smart you are in your brain.

It's about how well you understand emotional control and human behavior.

And so as we look, as it comes to this idea or this concept of being decisive, it's like, well, I don't think that the decisiveness is as much about what they know as.

As in terms of, like, facts and figures, as is.

As it is that they know enough to have a level of emotional control, emotional fortitude, emotional confidence to make a move.

And so why I wanted to hearken it to the.

This idea of investing is because, like, think about if you're going to invest $1 million in, let's say, a stock, you know, this idea of just send it would be really foolish.

You know, don't do any research.

Don't look into the company.

Don't look at any of their financials.

Just trust your gut and send it.

Are there people who do that and it works out okay?

For them.

Yeah, but that's like going to the casino and like playing roulette, you know, I mean, it's not a model for success for the masses.

On the other side, if somebody just said, hey man, like, I gotta research this thing, I gotta learn this thing, I gotta know this thing to the point where I'm 90% sure this is a safe bet or I'm 90% sure this is gonna work out well, then you're probably gonna do not very well either, right?

And so an investor is going to go out and they're going to do the due diligence, they're going to do the research, they're going to come up with a thesis and then they're going to go and they're going to understand like I'm never going to get to the point where I'm confident 90% or 100% that my thesis is right.

And there's not like there's a fixed percentage, but let's say it's 75%, they're going to get to this point where it's like they spent decades learning enough or years learning enough, so when they do the research on this company, they can get to 75% confidence in their thesis.

And then it comes down to they have the guts or not, right?

And then let's say they have the guts to buy it.

Then, then they get gut punched when the Scott, let's say the stock drops 25%.

And then, and then it becomes emotional again.

It's like, do you cut tail, you know, sell at a loss and run?

Or do you actually still believe your thesis and do you stick with it?

And so I say all that to say that I think my opinion is that decisiveness, it's just like when you watch a professional athlete in a game, man, you see what he does or she does for a couple or three hours or four hours on game day.

But the only reason that they can do that, the only reason that they got the confidence to go up there and face a guy throwing 100 miles an hour thinking that they're going to get a hit, thinking that they're going to be successful is because, man, they spent most of their life up to that point preparing, getting ready, practicing, dealing with the emotional toll of the ups and the downs and the wins and the losses and the failures and the success.

And so for me, I think, and this I said to you offline, I think very often we come to people, we try and give them advice, but we're not giving them advice, always fully understanding like, how much preparation have they done?

Right?

Because yeah, you can give somebody, like, let's say that, let's say that somebody's propensity was to just research something to death.

Well then telling that person, hey, you just got to like, if you don't feel confident, you got to get to the point where, you know, more is probably not very helpful.

Whereas if you're talking to somebody who has a tendency not to do much research at all, then telling them to just send it and go for it might not be that helpful either.

And so I think for us that's why it's really hard to just give blanket advice.

It really comes down to, hey, Jake, as you think about your career, as you think about your move, as you think about buying a house, as you think about all these things, what's your thesis and what have you done to get yourself, let's say, 75% confidence in the thesis?

You can see it, the believe it part is like where you built up that knowledge, that understanding, that confidence, and then you go for it.

Does that make sense?

No, it does.

And if I could add something, if speaking from the perspective of probably a more impulsive side of the person, the person that's saying send it, it's there, there's a mask.

You know, oftentimes I would disguise my actions of doing that as courageous.

You know, my impulsive decisions were courageous because I went out and like it was, I felt like a pioneer, you know, Right.

Because I'm going out there, I'm holding the torch and then, and then there's the other side.

And I personally know a lot of people that are, that are a little bit more on the indecisive side and they mask it as safety.

Like I'm just being safe, you know.

And I guess the question that I would ask you is, is this, this thing that you're kind of describing the 75, 80% and, and getting to that point of confidence of being able to make that decision, does that really apply in, in almost, in any scenario, or is it more like situational?

I'll give you a great example.

I'll give you two examples.

The first I'll give you is in a dating relationship, there's lots of people that start dating someone and they decide to get married without ever having like deep, hard, in depth conversations.

What are you going to do about money?

What are you going to do about kids?

What are you going to do about religion?

What are you going to do about politics?

What are you going to do about, you know, who's Who's.

Which family do you see at holidays?

Right?

They.

They get caught up in the emotion, and they love the person.

And maybe they're too afraid to have those conversations.

Maybe they don't think to have those conversations.

But my point is that it's very difficult for you to determine if that person is the person you should spend the rest of your life with when you haven't gone beneath the surface.

Right?

And so in that case, that would be like the just send it, just go for it person.

Then on the flip side, it would be like, God, I got to be engaged for three or four or seven or 10 years before I can decide if this is the right person to marry.

It's like, well, probably neither of those are the best way to do it.

Probably the best way is to use common sense and to just say, hey, let's go deep.

Let's make sure that we're compatible.

We're not going to agree on every single thing.

But let's say again, this is an arbitrary amount.

It's not real.

But everybody listening to this understands the point, which is, hey, when I get 75% confident, as long as there's not, like, an absolute, you know, deal killer, let's say, then I feel pretty good.

And at the end of the day, the other 25% is faith.

That's why faith is faith.

Faith is believing in a thing you cannot see but you have confidence exists.

Okay, let's take another one.

So we talk marriage, relationship.

Let's talk job.

You go, I don't know.

I don't know which job to do.

It's like, well, what are your skill sets?

What are you good at?

What are you getting opportunities to do?

What do people ask you about?

And then you go, let's say you're gonna.

Let's say.

Let's say you want to start a business.

Okay, well, do you know what people want?

Have you asked them what they want?

Have you sold them what they want?

Right.

Do you understand?

We talked about this a while back.

It's like, when I think about business, it's like, you got to be able to.

You got to be able to get your name out there or get your potential customer's name in here.

So you got to understand advertising and marketing.

Then you got to be able to sell.

You got to be able to get people to say yes to the thing that you want them to do or that you want to do for them.

Okay?

And then, so that's like what.

What you would call.

I've heard it called before the before unit, you got to know enough to get people before they become customers.

And then once they're customers, you got to know how to, like, keep them happy.

You got to know how to actually provide the service to account for the money, to make sure you're, you're doing it at a profit.

Right?

You got to understand accounting.

You got to understand legality, you got to understand business licensing.

You got to understand, like the nuts and the bolts of operating.

And then you got to.

So that's what they would call the during unit.

And then you have the after unit.

You got to make sure that they tell their friends and you have a system for referrals and you have a way to keep in touch with them to see if they're going to need your help.

Again, like, there's these things that you have to understand.

Well, this is how most people start businesses.

They're like, oh, I think I can sell this thing.

And does that mean that they shouldn't just go start?

Not necessarily.

Like, if you want to send it, because you can sell something, like, you can do that.

But I just don't think you're going to be as successful as you could be if you actually understood at least some, like, big picture of all the things that you have to do and all the things that it's going to take.

And are you going to be profitable?

And how do you know that you'll be profitable?

And can you scale the idea?

And then when you have a grasp of that and you have that, like, again, let's say that 75% confidence level, you're like, hey, I know there's some holes in my understanding, but I at least understand like from A to Z, the big picture.

And I'm really good at like, maybe this chunk over here and I can find people to help me with this or I can learn it.

That is what gives you the confidence to say, yeah, now I can go start a business.

Does that make sense?

No.

100%.

I completely see that.

I think, you know, just to bring another lens into this as well, I oftentimes like I said before, have mass my impulsive decisions as courage.

And that's just one half of it.

But when I think of, when I think of courage, I think of like the biblical lens of, of, of the amount of times it's written in the Bible, do not fear.

Do not be afraid.

And I feel like there's, there may be a line in there.

And maybe you can help me kind of define this for me personally, maybe for anybody listening of like when, when is, like we use the number 20, 25% for the 75.

20, 25%.

That's, that's your courage, right?

Like, that's your kind of courage number to say.

But it's, it's like, I guess the question is, is what is, what is the, the biblical narrative behind that sort of idea of that 20 to 25% of getting first off, getting to that 80%.

Right.

Doing the due diligence and sowing the seeds and taking care of the seeds, but also the 20% of courage and what that actually means.

Yeah.

So the way I think about it is the first 75% is the conviction.

The courage is what gets you to do the last 25.

Right.

Like some people will say, courage isn't the absence of fear, it's the overcoming of fear.

Right?

So think about, like Abraham.

In my mind, if we're going to draw a parallel here is Abraham had conviction in many ways because he heard God speak to him, right?

So, like, he didn't just leave his land because he just thought it was a good idea.

Like God told him, I want you to leave everything.

You know, I'm going to take you somewhere you've probably never been and you're going to completely start over, but I'm going to give you this promise, okay?

So I don't know.

I wasn't there.

But I got to believe that when it came time for Abraham to pack all his stuff and get out of there, there was probably a little trepidation.

Did I hear God right?

Is God really going to do the thing?

What's going to happen to my family?

What if they never talk to me again?

What if I never see him again?

And all these things that will run through and loop in your brain that are just, I think, you know, we read the Bible and we sometimes we forget, like, these are real humans, like, just like us.

They probably had a lot of the same thoughts.

And, and it said that it was counted to him as righteousness because he believed, okay?

So then he believes enough to actually go and do the thing.

He had the courage, like, I think that God speaking to him and, and him believing God, it was like he had conviction to 75%, let's say, well, whatever it was, but he had to have courage, faith to actually go and do it.

And so I think you could give story after story, think about King David.

He's anointed king at 15 or so, and he didn't become king for 15 more years, right?

So it's like, it's not like God made him a promise and the next day that thing happened.

Like there's a.

As long as his life was up until that point, that amount of years was the gap between the promise and the fulfillment of the promise, right?

But he had conviction.

I got to believe because God, through the prophet Samuel, told him what was going to happen, told him who he was, right?

And that conviction.

We talked in our last conversation about the push and the pull.

Think about Abraham, right?

There's probably a point in his journey where he's got to find, got to find it inside to push through hardship, to push through the point where it makes no sense.

Like when he's about to sacrifice his son or King David, when he's going through 15 years of wandering and battling and Saul trying to kill him and he's doing crazy things and it's like, what's fueling the push?

Well, I don't know for sure, but I gotta believe it's the pull from the promise.

So that's where I think, like when I was talking about investing, you have a thesis, you've done the due diligence to believe your thesis is correct.

And then you make the trade, let's say, or you make the investment.

And then the first thing that happens, like Myron golden always says, disruption always follows intention.

So in this case, you intend to make a good investment, you make the investment.

And often what will happen right after that is disruption.

The price will go down or there will be some emergency or something that happens because it's testing our conviction, it's testing our courage, it's testing our willingness to see it through.

And that's where most people, well, a lot of people never get to the point where they make the trade in the first place.

But the people that do, a lot of them will bail right after the disruption comes, right?

If you think about Abraham's story, that's what happened.

God made him a promise, he went and then there was disruption.

He thought he had to sacrifice his son, King David.

Same thing happened, right?

In a different way.

And so go back to the marriage example that we used earlier.

It's like, well, how many times have you heard this?

People are all lovey dovey, they want to spend every minute with each other and then they get married.

And often they say the first year of marriage is their hardest.

Why?

Well, because disruption followed their intention.

And if we don't have, if we didn't do the hard work in the front end to have the conviction, right?

Then when it comes time to push, to push through Hardship, it gets really hard because there's nothing pulling us.

So I don't know.

That's what comes to mind as I think through it and answer the question.

No, it does.

I'm writing it all out.

I'm writing a little tree in my brain right now.

If we were to go back to the original question of really, how do you become decisive?

What does it mean to be decisive?

I just wrote down one thing.

It's.

It's decisiveness is, is conviction plus courage.

The number can't really be thrown at it, but I think it's probably more situational in the sense of the person who you're talking to.

Right.

What level of conviction do you need to be able to take that leap?

Right.

You're always going to need courage.

The courage part is like, you're never going to get to 100% like we talked about probably a dozen times before.

But that conviction is built from your due diligence, like you said.

So I guess if I had a question for you, it would be, what, at what point in time, maybe you could share a story just for, for my help of, like, so my decision coming up what, what I should do for my career that we started with.

Like, maybe you could share a point in time where, where you were at that point and, and how did you build that conviction?

And then at what point did you have to take that courageously?

I'll think about.

I'll think about an example.

In the meantime, I, I think I would change the.

What you wrote down a little bit.

I think that because you, what'd you say you wrote down?

Conviction plus courage equals decisiveness.

Decisiveness.

I think conviction is an outcome.

Conviction is a byproduct of preparation and faith.

Right.

And so I don't know exactly what the formula is, but this is where these things get really tricky and I think where a lot of times conversations that are like trying to tie faith in the kingdom and the message of the gospel in with how we live our real lives, let's say in the business world or marriage or whatever.

Like, where they can come, where they can bifurcate or where you can find contention in them is because it's like there's no one size fits all, right?

So.

So as I think through this, it's like, I don't want to turn the message of our faith into something that we muster up and that like, we have to prepare in order to earn a thing, because it's not that way.

So.

So there is certainly a context, I would say most of the Context of life is our success actually just comes as a result of God's grace in our life.

Like, we just get what we don't, we get what we don't deserve.

That's the message of the gospel.

So I think what can often happen is then we turn all these other things into, well, everywhere else in life you got to earn it.

But in the big picture of life, it's a free gift.

And then we have like we talk about all the time, then there's this friction where we don't necessarily know what to do with it.

And so as I think through this, I go, in our faith, we believe because God made promises, okay?

And then so like when it comes to the big picture thing of like, where are we going when we die and what are we here for and what's the purpose of our life?

I think it's like, yeah, I mean, all the blessings that we experience are gifts from God.

And so what we can have a tendency to do is say, well, then we turn that into, well, some people are really good at like going out, working really hard and, and having, you know, building this conviction from preparation and confidence.

And then they can go and conquer.

Basically they can conquer the thing.

They can have no fear.

And it becomes very self aggrandizing, it becomes very self reliant.

I don't want this to turn into that.

So for me, I think about it this way.

I think like God has given me lots of free gifts and he's given me one, the biggest free gift.

And so how do I respond to that?

How do I respond?

I think that the way I am thinking about this is I respond by realizing like, God gave me a brain, he gave me a mind, he gave me desires.

He gave me a desire to serve people, to help people, to have these kinds of conversations.

And he also gave me the ability to learn and to discern and to grow and all those different kinds of things so that my confidence in him and his promises and what he said the point of all this was and what my life could look like, like, I believe that more and more and more so that I have the faith and the courage.

Because let's say this, let's say you do all.

And this is what I think gets, we're really getting to here is I think everybody's trying to figure out, Zach, let's say I make this career switch and everybody, like if you had 100% confidence it was going to work, we wouldn't be having the conversation, right?

We're having the conversation because every One of us in the back of our brain goes, but what happens if this doesn't work?

What happens?

What does that mean about me?

What does that mean about God?

What does that mean about his promises?

Does that mean I missed something, I screwed up?

And so I think oftentimes that's what we're really wrestling through.

And so here's what I would say.

I would say that when it's all said and done, it's like to have the courage to go do these things actually has nothing to do with what we believe we're capable of, right?

And the friction comes in, well, does that mean I just do nothing?

And I just say, trust God, send it.

And this is the part we've talked about this many times.

I think oftentimes in our conversations and our teaching, in our Christian circles, it's like we are trying to get rid of that friction.

And yet I think that friction is like a default in the whole thing.

The friction's never going to go away.

We will never, ever, ever have the certainty we desire.

Like Abraham did not have the certainty, other than God told him he didn't.

Like Abraham has nothing to bring to the table other than God told him.

And so I think for me, where I get in all this is like, jake, what's God telling you?

Right?

When in your quiet time, what's he telling you?

Because I could tell you something.

Your mom could tell you something, your wife could tell you something, your dad could tell you something.

And at the end of.

At the end of the day, like, none of us are God.

I mean, I can give you wisdom as I. I think that I've got it, but I also could give you the complete wrong advice if I'm giving you different advice than God.

And so, you know, maybe for people who are listening to this, maybe they're like, zach, everything you said just contradicts what you said before.

That's certainly not my intention, but I just.

I wanted to pause because I think that these conversations can so often turn into Jake, it's just all about what.

What we do, what we muster up in our own strength.

And.

And it's like, I think that there's a very big difference between requirement, responsibility, weight, and response.

And so I hope that as we have these conversations, it's not.

It's not like, earn it, prove it.

It's really more like, hey, respond in your God likeness, right?

Because he's given you the ability and have courage and have fear and yes.

Or not have fear, have confidence.

And yes, some of that in the here and the now in the temporal comes from preparation.

It comes from putting ourselves in a position to understand.

But really, at the end of the day, when it comes to going for it, that last 25%, it's having faith that he's sovereign, Having faith that, yeah, I did my part.

I did the part where I didn't just sit around eating bon bons, just like waiting for somebody to zap me out of my situation, but I also don't think it's all in my shoulders.

Interesting.

So I guess there's one.

There's one connection I'm trying to make.

And I. I think if I were to go back to my equation that I'm trying to write in my brain of, of decisiveness in the, in the context of what you just brought up, would you say that's more in.

In my quiet time of when I'm hearing the Lord speak to me, is it.

Is that.

Does that go into the conviction piece?

Is that building more conviction in your heart?

Because it's like.

It was interesting that you brought up, you know, your personal ability, what the gifts that God gave you to do.

It's like, I think of that for me in the sense of the gifts that I personally feel like I've been given is.

Is.

Which maybe is masked in this sense of.

My idea of impulsiveness is like I'm.

I'm able to make decisions relatively fearless.

I would say, like, compared to people around me in this.

In the sense of when other people are maybe afraid or kind of stepping on the edge, I'm like, all right, let's just go, you know, so that could be.

That could be a sort of a superpower and kind of help me build my conviction with that little bit of courage at the end.

Right.

But it could also, you know, maybe push me to spots that I probably shouldn't jump.

So as part of that conviction, a discernment as well, of discernment of what is God calling me to do and how does that go about.

Yeah, I think in those instances, there's a lot of people who think that they have, like.

Have you ever watched American Idol where the kids start singing and they're just God awful, but their parents tell them they're the best?

There's a lot of people who think that they have these superpowers that they don't actually possess.

I'm not saying that's you in this case, but it's like, well, how do you know?

Well, you got to judge a tree by its fruit.

So it's like Think back in your life and say, okay, in these seven examples, this thing in me that everybody else was scared about, that I wasn't scared about, how did it turn out?

And if seven out of seven times or six out of seven times, you ended up all the way on the right, and everybody else was stuck in the middle, so to speak, on this bell curve of whatever it is we're talking about, then maybe it is a superpower, right?

Because what we're really talking about, how do you go from the middle of the bell curve, right, Just average or normal to an outlier to one or two or three or four standard deviations from the center?

You certainly can't do it doing what everyone else has done, right?

And so a lot of what I want this to be is not necessarily saying there's anything inherently wrong with being in the middle, right?

It's just to say, like, I think I shared a video with you.

It was Dr. Ben Hardy, and he was talking about.

When you get to.

It's funny because he's talking about the bell curve.

You know, he's talking about scaling all the time now.

And he goes, by the time you get a few deviations out from the center or from the average, he goes.

What the research tells us is you can usually only make it one standard deviation away from where you currently are because your mind can't actually comprehend, like, even participating in, let's say, two or three standard deviations from where you are.

So a lot of what I want to do here is just to the degree I'm capable or able, based on my life's experience, to say, like, hey, I want.

I want to.

Like, when I was your age, I got to be around some people who literally opened my mind to things that were possible that I had never even thought were possible.

And so it's like, oh.

And now I see.

I'm like, oh.

Because they were a standard deviation away, and I just got to participate in their circle.

And then it activated something in my mind that I didn't even know was there.

I mean, I knew, but, like, I didn't think it was possible necessarily for me.

And so going back to that, your superpower very well may be that you're courageous or you're this or you're that, but you have to judge it against the outcomes, right?

You have to judge it against.

What outcomes have I actually gotten from that?

Right?

And then I would say, like, going back to.

You asked me for a story.

Okay, I'll give you a story.

When I was your age, I was doing a sales job, and I was making pretty good money, and I really didn't like the job.

Like, I really didn't like it.

And I kind of felt stuck, you know, like I didn't know what to do.

And then I started trying to figure out, what am I going to do next?

And I.

That's when I really got into.

I was a little younger than you when I really started getting into, like, learning about investing.

But then as this was just getting harder and harder, this job that I just really didn't like, I'm like, I got to find a way to get out of this.

And so I started looking for careers in the investment world.

I wanted to go into the stock world, you know, the equities world.

But I had a friend who was a commercial real estate developer, and we would talk and we would meet, and he would always say, oh, you should think about commercial real estate.

And so then I went out on my own.

I start learning more, and we kept talking and I start realizing, oh, well, commercial real estate isn't really that much different, you know, as an investor than, let's say, buying shares of a company.

Because what you're really doing is you're valuing future cash flow streams.

And I'm like, you know what?

I could probably do that and maybe I could bring something that's a little unique to this.

Think about it.

A little different than most real estate people.

And then the craziest thing happened, man.

So I'm at the same time I'm getting my real estate license at the exact same time, I'm at the last interview to become a medical sales device sales rep guy.

I was going to have the.

If I get the job, it's going to be like the territory of the Pacific Northwest.

Pays really good.

It's a safe job.

I went on a ride along and I was like, gosh, I'm going to hate this job, but maybe I can do it for a while while I get going on commercial real estate.

And so I go in to talk to these people at the commercial real estate company about being a broker.

And I sit down, we're having a conversation, and one of the partners says to me, well, what's your plan?

And I said, well, my plan is I'm going to take this medical sales job and I'm going to learn real estate on the side.

And then when I feel like I've got my bearings about me, I'll make the switch.

And she looked at me and she goes, yeah, it doesn't work like that.

She's like, you got to go all or nothing.

Okay?

So that this job was going to pay me, like, 250 grand a year at 24 years old.

And probably, I don't know, 150 of that, 180, I don't remember, was guaranteed.

Okay?

The world is falling apart, okay?

The Dow Jones bottomed out about two months after this was all occurring.

Or I could go into commercial real estate, which paid me $0 guaranteed, okay?

And I had.

I had saved up enough to live for about a year.

But my wife had been doing the same job as me.

She had also quit and started her own business.

Okay?

So we're literally like, safe, secure, or nothing.

I'm like, I know I'm going to hate this job.

I hated the job I just got out of.

I'm not doing that again.

So I go home, talked to my wife, and I said, I know I'm going to hate that job.

Like, I think.

I think we should do this.

And she's like, yeah, I think you should do it, too.

And so I called the medical guys because I'm supposed to go in, like, two days later, sign all the paperwork, and I said, hey, I'm really sorry.

I wasn't expecting this.

I got a pass.

I'm going to go this other direction.

So I take a job as a commercial real estate broker.

And I had no idea, Jake, that five months later I was going to be asked if I wanted to buy out the partner who told me I couldn't do it part time.

And I had no idea that a year after that I was going to buy out the second partner, and a year after that the third.

And, like.

And so I'm getting to a point.

The point is, within three years, I buy this company, I buy out all the original founders, and, you know, you would think, oh, it's a fairytale ending, and everything went well.

Well, fast forward.

I've been doing this for almost 20 years now, and there's often where I just go, did I make the right choice?

Because I don't always love what I'm doing.

This is not what I really envisioned for myself in many ways.

But I think back, and I remember as all this was happening, how God just kept opening doors.

He opened the door of my friend being a developer.

And this developer just happened to know the people who own this company.

But then there was a test and there was a choice.

I had to make a decision, like, do I really want to go for it or do I want to go Take the safe route.

And I had to make the choice.

But then he opened another door for me to buy out a partner, and then another and another.

And so part of it is, like, even when we're in the midst of things, it's easy to look around and go, I'm not sure if I'm in the right place.

And that's why I think in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, God always told his people to set up altars so they would never forget what he did.

Because it's so easy in our life to forget what he did.

Because we're going through a hard patch, or we're going through pain or we're going through persecution.

We're going through things we don't want to.

And it's just so easy to get to a point where we're like, God, I'm miserable, and just completely forget all that he's done.

And so, listen, I'm at a place in my life today where, you know, I'm struggling with some of the same things that you are.

I moved to Florida after I moved to Montana.

I'm running my business from 3,000 miles away.

Um, and so I don't think that these.

I don't think that these are, like, easy answers.

But.

But I think that for me, again, like, yes, I've prepared.

Yes, I've.

I've tried to be prudent and do all the things that I think I'm supposed to do.

But at the end of the day, when it comes to actually making a decision, I can look in the mirror and say, lord, I've practiced, I've prepared.

I feel really confident.

But ultimately, I'm going to trust you because you have a plan, you have a purpose.

Even if I make, quote, the wrong decision, you're going to work it together for good.

And so if you really believe that, if you really know that, if that's really true, like, when I had to decide, am I going to take $0 or a quarter of a million dollars?

Right.

It's like, I think that the reason I made the decision is because at the end of the day, it's like, there's nothing.

There's nothing in my life that God's not sovereign over, and he knows that I've prepared, and he's opening the doors, and so I'm going to walk.

Yeah, that's really interesting.

There's one part of that story that actually fascinates me, and I think there's one more part I want to talk about.

Maybe we can finish with this and it's.

You talked about fruit.

We talked about how, how fruit is kind of bears the image of the decisions that they're kind of that, that people are making.

Right?

Or for me to look back at how I've made decisions, whether it be impulsive or speculative or, and indecisive.

And what, what kind of those decisions, what kind of fruit did those decisions bear?

And the reason why I bring that up is, is because in that story that you shared, there's, there was the partner that said, oh no, you can't, you can't have one foot in and one foot out.

And, and I guess the question for you and for what I would be working through because, because for me it's like I'm, I'm 24 years old.

There's probably not a lot, a lot of long term fruit.

I can now analyze the decisions I've made.

So it's like the next, the two next steps that I should probably do, which I mean I should probably do first before making decisions is one would be to invite God into the situation.

Right?

But the other option is what you should do on top of is, is to seek counsel of, of somebody maybe that has experienced that.

So, so the woman for you, what, what fruit did you see that was like.

Or maybe it was just the Lord speaking through her to you, to something that you needed to say.

But what, what part of that helped you make that decision?

That's a good question.

I think that, I think that I just, I just inherently knew from my life's experience that to really be great at something, you can't be doing everything right.

Like, you know what, because, because for me, what, Because I think the answer, the way I can answer that question is maybe a little deeper.

It's this, it's like at that point, what, what did I recognize from my own life that made me think, man, I think I can do this.

I think that this is going to work.

And I go back to, and I know I've referenced this a few times, but, but for me it was very pivotal.

It's like my sports, man, I just knew, I knew like I, I had committed my life to just like grinding whenever everybody else, not everybody else, but a lot of other people were screwing off.

And I got to see, like I was team captain of my high school baseball team.

I was team captain, my college baseball team.

I just, I just knew that like the fruit in my life was God has for whatever reason done things through my life where he's.

He's put me in these positions of leadership.

So, like, for you, you said part of your superpower is you think you can do things when other people are afraid.

Well, that's been my life.

Like, that's been my life since probably I was, I don't know, 12 or 13.

If you ask my mom, she would say, like, since I was a kid on the beach at 4 years old.

And so for me, I just.

I was able to look back and I was able to say, like, I know when I did this baseball thing, if I. I wasn't talented enough to do baseball and football and basketball and track or whatever else, like, I had to focus on baseball and, you know, I played other sports, but, like, by the time I got to high school, that was my sport.

There's other people who are more talented me that can do them all or whatever.

But.

But so, like, I knew my own limitations in that.

In that way.

And so when it came to her and she says, hey, you just got to go all in or nothing, it's like, well, I knew because I had read all these books about Warren Buffett and all these guys.

It's like, well, they were all the way in.

I knew from my baseball experience that, like, I could have never gotten to where I did in baseball if I was trying to play three other sports.

And.

And then I'm like, I've been on this ride along.

I see how much travel they do.

Like, it just part of it was common sense.

And so here's the thing.

Fear, right?

Sometimes you're afraid to go do the research.

Most of the times you're afraid to make the decision, right?

And so for me, when it came down to that time, it's like the medical thing was just.

It was just from the get go, it was like, I'm going to do this until I find the next thing.

And then I got.

I got.

I got introduced to the opportunity to just do the next thing.

But there was no safety net.

There was no parachute.

There was no fallback plan.

It was just, hey, man, you want to play in the big leagues?

You want to move right on the curve, right?

Like, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

And so.

So here's what.

If we go, this is going to take us all the way back to where we started.

I had to be decisive.

I had to sign the paperwork in two days, or I had to say, I'm doing this the next day, okay?

But I had spent the last four years up until that point preparing to make that decision.

I didn't know it, but that's what I was doing.

And so that's why I say to you, when you're talking about what career am I going to choose, what job am I going to take, am I going to buy a house or not?

The question is, have you prepared that way?

And if you haven't prepared that way, like thinking about it, well, what other experiences in your life have prepared you to make that decision?

Because like, let's say it's buying a house.

We go back to a few conversations ago.

If you're like, honestly, none, then it's okay to say I'm not going to buy a house right now, but I'm going to spend the next three years preparing for that decision or the next 12 months or the next six months or whatever it might be.

Um, I don't know if that's helpful, but that's how I think about it.

No, that's super helpful.

And you know, one, one last thing that, that I'd like to add on to there too is, is for maybe somebody listening and for maybe for me for sure is I've, I've applied this pretty regularly of like when I, when I get into positions where I feel nervous or unsure of what the results were would look like.

One of my steps into kind of building that confidence or conviction would be to ask for advice from, from people who have likely experienced something similar to that.

And, and going back to what I brought up earlier about the fruit, it's like usually a step to.

That is like you said, analyzing the fruit of the people you're asking.

That's, that's honestly a huge part where we're sitting here and talking right now is because I see the fruits that has aroused.

From your life or you know, that you've built and, and, and enjoy having these conversations and talking about these things because, because it's like your advice is, is very valuable to me.

Same as as if I were to look at somebody else for some other advice and ask them for that.

It's like, I know one thing that we've talked about probably a dozen times before is, is take advice from, from the people that you want your life to look like.

And, and in that sense, that's kind of what I'm thinking in the back of my head too is like to help build that conviction, it's like maybe, maybe there's a person that's, you know, been down that road that the lady for you that was like, you know what, Zach?

I don't think you can do one foot in, one foot out.

And I Think you should do all in on this.

And I think that you can.

You have what it takes to run this business.

Right.

Because with it, I mean, she knew that probably when.

When you.

She hired you on.

Right.

Or basically at that point in time, because six months later, she offered you the business or offered to, you know, buy and get bought out.

So.

Yeah, I don't know if that makes sense either, but that's kind of what I was thinking about, too.

Yeah, Well, I think what I saw in her was she.

She had accomplished all the things that I set out saying I wanted to accomplish, you know, in that profession.

And so.

And they had a good reputation.

They had been in business for 25 years or something like that.

And so again, it's.

It's like, do you want to.

Do you want to take advice from the guy who's like, well, I learned about this stuff watching YouTube gurus, or do you want to take advice from the person who spent the last 30 years doing it and, you know, had the.

Had the.

Had the actual tangible credibility?

And so for me, that's part of why I tell people that all the time.

It's like, take advice from people whose lives look the way you want yours to look, because most people, like, oh, it's so hard.

Again, this is friction.

The Bible talks about there's wisdom in a multitude of counselors, and that's true.

It also says, like, don't go to war, oddly enough, without counselors.

And then at the same time, we live in a world where there's so much information that I think oftentimes people will go and ask other people, like, over, like, people after person after person after person, their opinion, what they should do, because they are too afraid to make a decision, because they are doing the.

Just learn more.

Just prepare more.

Just get another perspective.

And that's why I say you have to actually be listening for God's voice.

I knew in my spirit, God was telling me, zach, if you take that medical job, it's just going to be more of what you just got out of.

You walked into the first hospital and you're like, I don't want to be here.

It feels oppressive.

It feels dark.

It feels dreary.

I'm not saying it is.

It's just, for me, that's what I felt.

And so that's where I think, like, this is not standardized advice, right?

This is like, listen, man, that's part of the problem.

Part of the problem is we try and turn it into everybody.

Everybody's a guru, has all the answers for everybody else, it's like, well, that's not how God created this whole thing to work.

Are there certain wisdom principles?

Yes.

Is there certain.

Like, the Bible also says his people perish for lack of knowledge.

Is it important to get knowledge?

Yeah, but it also says that knowledge puffs up.

So it's like, well, when you're out there and all you're doing is consuming more content and more information, there's a high probability that if you're not doing something with it, you're probably just getting puffed up, but you're trying to convince yourself that you don't want to die.

So you need more knowledge.

Right.

Again, this is the friction part that the solution to is you got to listen for what he's telling you.

You got to read your Bible, you got to pray, you got to be quiet.

You got to commune.

You got to actually pay attention to what you're sensing inside.

And then when he tells you, when you feel like it's really clear to you what he's saying, do it, do it.

Don't ask another person, don't ask for more confirmation.

Don't read another book, don't watch another video.

Just say yes and do it.

And I think that's often what we're missing.

So, so, so to me, it's.

It's, again, how can you be decisive enough to do that?

You have to have spent the time ahead of time.

Right.

There are very few times, I think, and I could be wrong, but I think there are very few times where God's just going to stop you in the moment and go, no or, yes, it will happen, I'm sure.

But I think most of the time it's like, in that quiet time, in that preparation, in that listening, in that working, in that communing, like, he's just.

He's like.

He's like cultivating so that when the decision time comes, it's clear.

That's really good.

That's really good.

Yeah.

Maybe we could leave it at that.

Yeah.

Well, everybody appreciate you being here.

Appreciate you listening to this conversation.

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We'd love to, you know, get these conversations out to a wider group, hopefully help some people.

Yeah.

Who are.

Who are on life's journey, you know, trying to move to the right and you can always check out our website, costeros.com k o s t-u r o s.com we actually just posted this finally on Apple and Spotify.

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