The Pause : So often the path forward with Christ sounds like 'stop'

Season 2 of The Certain Success Podcast has begun after a long pause and so this first episode is about 'the power of the pause'

Can pausing actually propel you forward? Join us as we return to the Certain Success Podcast with a heartfelt conversation between myself and my good friend, Joe Gata. After a significant hiatus, we're back to share how moments of stillness and faith-driven pauses have profoundly impacted our lives. Joe and I recount the divine nudges that led to our reconnection and discuss our renewed mission to help business owners balance faith and work. 

Joe took a leap of faith, leaving a secure job to follow a calling he felt was aligned with God's plan. Together, we launched our new program "CEO," designed to support those brave enough to embrace change and trust in divine timing. Through our experiences, we highlight the challenges and blessings of making bold decisions and the importance of listening to God's voice when facing professional and personal transitions.

In this episode, we find strength through pause and prayer, underscoring the critical role of community and faith in overcoming fears and seizing opportunities. We conclude with a heartfelt prayer of gratitude for the divine guidance we've received. Share this journey with us, and don't forget to spread the word about the podcast to friends and leave reviews. Your feedback helps us remain committed to supporting your path to certain success.

Chapters

• 0:02 The Pause
• 13:11 The Power of Pausing and Trust
• 17:40 The Leap of Faith
• 21:42 Finding Strength Through Pause and Prayer

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey guys, welcome back to the Certain Success Podcast. It's been a minute. If you are one of our friends that has listened to a bunch of the past episodes of the Certain Success Podcast, you know that it's been a minute and we've been on a break, on a pause, which is the name of this episode. A break on a pause, which is the name of this episode, and I'm here today with my friend, joe Gata, and we are coming out of that pause together and working in partnership on a bunch of things that we're going to bring to you in this podcast about the intersection of business and faith, as I've always described certain success and I cannot wait to share more with you, and I want to start by having Joe introduce himself and talk a little bit about our work together.

Speaker 1: 1:02

But this episode is called the Pause because we want to talk about the pause that I took with this podcast and how you need to pause and how you need to be okay with pauses and stopping and understanding that things have seasons and sometimes things need to marinate. And maybe the most interesting part of this conversation is the word stop and how, in the last three years for me, I've been moving forward with business projects and things, and this podcast and a million things, and over and over and over again. God would come in and just say stop again. I want you to stop again. And this rhythm of becoming more able to be obedient to those pauses. And anyway, joe and I were talking this morning and trying to figure out how to restart this, this conversation, which will now be very much a a two voices podcast in season two, as we're calling it of of the Certain Success Podcast, and we were like man. The first one is called the Pause. So with that, welcome Joe to the Certain Success Podcast.

Speaker 2: 2:35

Thanks for that. Well, we came up. You know, as we were talking this morning, it's interesting how the word pause came into our conversation. But it brings me back to when you first reached out to me on social media. I mean four or five months ago, god had been telling you stop pause, and you did. I mean you hadn't done your last podcast, going back to October of last year, and you and I were in a similar walk. We're in a similar season. We're drawing closer to Christ. I'm 60, you're 58.

Speaker 1: 3:18

Here we are. I'm 56, don't age, all right, 56.

Speaker 2: 3:23

And we're at the season where we've experienced so much in our lives, but we're in a season where Christ has been saying, hey, I'm right here and I've always been here. And he was telling you no, you were on a mission, you thought you were on a path and he paused you. And then, back in late March, I get this message from you that says hey, we need to talk. In fact, quite specifically, it was hey, dude, we need to talk. And for those of you, you're meeting me for the first time, matt and I have been the real estate industry uh combined for close to 50 years. We'd see each other at events and we knew of each other, but we didn't know each other. We, we were friendly to each other at uh industry. Uh, you know conventions and we'd say hi and we chat for a second. But he had, but he had seen something on my Facebook that nudged him and what. What happened there, matt?

Speaker 1: 4:37

Yeah, you know, it's um huh. One of these other episodes coming up is just going to be called the nudge, the, the. The biggest part of the journey of the last few years and of a lifetime for all of us is this starting to hear God's voice in those nudges and go like, oh, that that's God prompting me to call Joe about this, something specific, and maybe I don't even know what it is yet. And but there was a clear, a clear prompt there of like, more than once, of like, oh, that guy, yeah, he's on a similar path to you, you guys need to talk, you guys need to go deeper. And you skipped over, joe, that we missed, like I had sent you a message before that.

Speaker 1: 5:23

I think it was maybe that's the one you're referring to that either I missed it or you missed it, or whatever. But it was months later when we finally really connected. And but, yeah, god clearly had a plan for us to work together. And we're both have, we're both at a similar moment in our lives. We both have the same uh, you know resurgence or acceleration going on in us in our relationship with the lord.

Speaker 1: 5:56

And you know, I, I, uh, I think I shared this with you, joe, but but somebody recently pointed me at a quote that said that everything that God's doing in your life up until the age of 60 is just preparing you to be effective at 60 and going forward, and we both have had this draw toward giving back, this draw toward giving back, this draw toward, you know, uh, coaching and consulting with business owners who are on the journey, um, and not that they couldn't be as our age or older, but, um, you know, I think about it and the people, guys and gals, in their 30s and 40s and 50s, and just balancing work and faith and what it looks like to be fully surrendered and be a disciple of Christ and walk in the business world, and we both have a heart to help them do that.

Speaker 1: 6:59

And God told me pause again, and I think now it's. This last six months, I would say, was about us getting together and finding alignment and being in this moment where we're now moving forward and sort of going public with this podcast and other ways of saying okay, guys, we're, we're working together in alignment and we want to help you and run your business and your life, and this podcast is just one of our ways to to share and help. And, um, so, season two of the certain success podcast, um, the theme is, um, well, what we call CEO, but it's one of those weird names Like when people have a weird name and it's spelled weird co is a name of a, of a, of a theme, of a project, of a, a plan, and but it's spelled c, c, e, o, but it's pronounced co and cce. Well, you tell him joe, you tell him what that means well it, you know the one.

Speaker 2: 8:05

The one thing that's been on our hearts is to work with like-minded people. There's the forever in our business world for both Matt and I. We've worked with the C-suite of companies, where we're working with the CEO, we're working with the president, we're working with the head of marketing president, we're working with the head of marketing, and the c part of cco is of co is is christ. Christ is at the center, and it was very evident again this morning in my quiet time, uh, that just through scripture and through, uh, my journaling, we're on the right track. This is what people are hungry for and I think that you're starting to see an awakening across the country and not just the United States, I think, across the world.

Speaker 2: 8:55

Maybe it was maybe what just recently happened in Paris and the way that they opened up the Olympics kind of set the tone that what in the world? And where are we? Where are we? And there's a lot of companies out there that really put their mindset on being everything to everyone and they went with an agenda that kind of grains against us Christians and how we operate. We just don't operate in the same mode as the world does and keeping Christ in the center of the conversation for CEOs where they're struggling in their businesses Is it? Is it about equity and inclusion or is it about? Is it about my faith and how I, if I'm going to have Christ in the center of my life, in my, in my personal walk as a CEO, how can I parlay that into the way I operate my business life as well? And trusting God and letting go? When will Christ be enough to where we stop chasing the?

Speaker 2: 10:10

You know the gurus of the world and work with you know folks that are like-minded. And that's what we want to do, matt and I want to help people just hit that pause button and regroup and put the focus where it needs to be, and that's on our relationship. Our walk hand-in-hand, locked arms with Christ. Walk hand in hand, locked arms with Christ. And how do we maneuver our lives with our wives, our children, our households and our work? How do we become the leaders for our staff? How do we become that guidepost for our clients? How do people look at us at the end of the day, when the door's closed and we're not in that room?

Speaker 2: 11:00

Are they saying those are two of the most Christ-centered people I've ever worked with and I want to continue to work with them. Or are they saying they're not who? They say they are and they'll know it. And that's what we want for those that we touch in our lives. We want to help surface that love, and that's the number one command from Christ is to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. And how do we package that into a way that we run our business so that everything's clicking in certain success? You can't have certain success without Christ, and that's and that's where we align. And well, it's a journey that you've brought me into in your world so well we're.

Speaker 1: 11:54

You know, you know I'm so excited to go further on this journey. You know I started on this journey three years ago podcast two years ago but the the difficult journey of breaking everything in your life and going, I know, whatever I've been doing in my life career it really is what I'm talking about, cause I'm talking to you If you're a, if you're listening to this and you're at a place in your career where you know that it's time for a change, a big change, and it's a scary moment. And I hit that moment many times in my career and I've been reinvented myself many times in my career. But this last time it started three years ago and I was like man, I am making a change that is so fundamental, making a change that is so fundamental. So, just, I don't know monumental, that. I know I want to come out of this doing exactly what I want to do, exactly the way I want to do it. And again, I sort of have always been bent that way, but this has been the hardest, most complicated change of my life and, while I'm still doing a lot of the things that, I was always been bent that way, but this has been the hardest, most complicated change of my life and while I'm still doing a lot of the things that I was always doing you know, I've done consulting for decades, but I'm trying to do it in a completely new way and during those three years, like I'm saying, there's just been like pause after pause after pause.

Speaker 1: 13:35

That I think were correct, I think they were from the Lord of you know. Hey, okay, cool, you made this progress for a few months and now I'm, you know what. It's time to stop again. And so many things. As always, god's doing 35 things at once. He's, you know, teaching me how to be patient and pause, teaching me how to listen to his voice, me how to be patient and pause, teaching me how to listen to his voice. And he's also like lining up.

Speaker 1: 14:01

My pause was to line up timing with joe's timing so that we could be in alignment, get together and be going forward together.

Speaker 1: 14:07

And you know all those things. You know you think I don't know why. I just had this thought of like you talk about how you hit a red light and you're frustrated and you're like why did I hit that red light? But if you had made it through the light or red light, and you're frustrated and you're like, why did I hit that red light? But if you had made it through the light or run the light, you were going to get in a car accident, but you were protected from that because you stopped, you paused, and so it feels like that. And so now here we are. I think we finally feel like we are clear on how we're going forward and while it it's new, but it's not new in the sense that we're just leveraging everything we've both done in our careers and we're just doing it now in more clear alignment, and we're launching this program called CEO that soon we'll invite lots of you into if you're running a business or you want to run a business.

Speaker 2: 14:59

And step one of running the business and the life of your dreams is to learn how to pause and not be afraid of it yeah, I like that and and as we shared uh, before we hopped on to to this call to chat with you all, you know, when I left, uh, my last position, I posted on linkedin, uh, the pause button and everything points to that in our lives that we need to pause and and just that's what christ wants.

Speaker 2: 15:38

He's like, hey, kind of block everything else right now. You know, if you're going for a walk this morning, or if you go for a walk this evening, or you're on the treadmill, the peloton, whatever you're doing in your workouts, in that, in that time, when you're giving it your best, give him your best and give him your attention. And that's what we want to help individuals until the day we meet Christ in eternity and he gives us our first embrace. Our goal together, matt and I, we want to please God, we want to make them smile, and the way we do that is by being faithful to his, to his word, and we're going to help companies, we're going to help individuals grow by using that as a foundation.

Speaker 1: 16:30

Well, and you know I want to go back to talk a little bit more about you. You said your last position and I think it's really noteworthy that again, god's timing and slowing me down so that my timing would line up with your timing, and you were still working for the company that you were most recently working for. But you had kind of mentally decided, like you think I think it's time for a change and you were contemplating that change. You were right on the edge of jumping off that cliff and so the timing lined up for us.

Speaker 1: 17:06

But I think, beyond that, the point that I want to make to everybody listening to this is that you jumped, you, you, it wasn't, you didn't get fired, you didn't need to leave. There was nothing really particularly wrong other than you know you, you, it wasn't, you didn't get fired, you didn't need to leave. There was nothing really particularly wrong other than you know you didn't feel great there for all the reasons. But the point is you trust the Lord enough that you were like I'm going to be okay and I'm going to jump because I know it's, I feel it, I know it's time to jump and you jumped.

Speaker 2: 17:33

Yeah and uh, thank you for that, because it was after it was after spending some time with you. We talked about it. You were basically saying, hey, joe, what's it going to take for you to do the leap? And are you okay sharing what you told me about jumping out of airplanes and the theme that you raised your kids with? Because that's basically what I did, I mean well, I think that's a different podcast.

Speaker 1: 18:04

We'll tease it. We'll tease it what he's talking about.

Speaker 1: 18:06

Well, you know, we got a bunch of stuff to talk about in terms of learning who you are and learning what your identity is, but mine is cliff jumper and I used to inappropriately as tell my children, my children and all of their young friends in their twenties, when they'd say, oh, I want to go do this or that, and then they wouldn't do it, and I would be like grab your balls and jump. Like just jump, life is short, we're all going to die. Go do what you want to do.

Speaker 2: 18:31

Um but that is. That is a title of another podcast, but I I'm glad you, I'm glad you shared it. And listen, guys, you're getting the. This is us, we're real, we're sharing our hearts, and that that wasn't meant to be offensive. You know, grab your balls and jump.

Speaker 2: 18:46

You know, listen, there's a lot of things out there that we have to take in and as far as risk, but one of the things that came to my mind as I left that company was I was about to go on a three-week trip with my wife to Europe and part of my negotiating when I took that job was my first year with them. They were going to pay me three weeks of vacation. I did not feel good about it. I did not want to go on vacation knowing I was going to come back and leave.

Speaker 2: 19:21

I just had to jump, I had to hit the pause button of insanity and say you know what no, I don't want to be in Europe thinking about I'm going to come back to this, this spot in my life that I don't like, and that's what we want to do. That's our heart is. We want to take you guys from that angst, that that spot where you're just like what am I supposed to do. We all know what we're supposed to do and it and sometimes it's just having the right people in our lives that, unlike our spouse or a friend, uh, sometimes they're fearful for us and they don't want you to jump. We're going to, we're going to help you jump.

Speaker 1: 20:00

Well, you know, I think that to land this plane a little bit for today, I think that you know and I know, and if we've come, we've come to clearly understand and have resolve around the fact that God is for us and we trust him, and that's where you get the confidence to jump. You might get the confidence to jump some other way or you might be forced to jump, but the but, this, standing at the precipice and making a choice to leap, leap of faith, as they say, it almost can't be done properly without a deep faith to go. I know, I believe that God is with me, god is for me and I can jump because he's going to, he's going to make the way.

Speaker 2: 21:12

And that's the centerpiece, and I think that kind of puts a bow on, you know, our lives in this pause, in this prayer time, and that's what you do daily as we pause. So, father, god, thank you so much for your daily grace, the love and patience that you have with us. Even though we want to tear away and run from you, we can't run from your hand. Your hand's too big and you've got us. And as we struggle through the daily war of decision-making, the struggles that we have with some of the people in our lives, the struggle we have with not maybe just running our household but running our businesses, and forgetting that, if we just put you at the center and we pause and we get quiet and we realize every storm that comes our way, you're there, in the center of it, with us and we can through Philippians 4.13, we can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us. Father, thank you for this peace that you provide. In your son's name we pray.

Speaker 1: 22:26

Amen, amen. Thanks for the prayer, joe, and thanks for your partnership and guys, welcome back to the Certain Success Podcast CO second season, and you're going to hear lots and lots from us now, so I hope you all will share this with a friend and, if you haven't already, we'd love for you to give us a review on the podcast, on Apple or wherever you listen, and we'll see you back here soon on the Certain Success Podcast. Thanks,