Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.56 - Leading Young Catholic Professionals with Peter Blute’s Faith and Work Vision | Hard Work | Spiritual Growth | St Joseph

Transcript

Ep.56 - Leading Young Catholic Professionals with Peter Blute’s Faith and Work Vision | Hard Work | Spiritual Growth | St Joseph · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

• 0:00
  Peter Blute, you're the head of Young Catholic Professionals.
• 0:03
  You've also grown it from relatively small to quite
• 0:07
  extensive now. What was the secret to your
• 0:09
  success? Oh, man, starting off with the
• 0:13
  hard hitting questions, yeah, I think that when I, when I look
• 0:18
  back on how I was brought up, I think a lot about how hard work
• 0:23
  was instilled in me and that kind of work ethic at commitment
• 0:29
  to doing what you do and trying to do it well.
• 0:32
  You know, first starting off with chores and school and, and
• 0:36
  now growing in the professional life here, almost almost 15
• 0:39
  years or so since I graduated from college.
• 0:43
  And I think that work ethic is has served me really, really
• 0:49
  well. I think also though, it needed
• 0:51
  to be paired with this broader view of why we work and what
• 0:57
  what end we're seeking in our work.
• 1:00
  And having having grown up Catholic, I certainly have
• 1:03
  always understood that our end, or at least, yeah, I, I guess I
• 1:07
  could say understood, I've always at least conceptually
• 1:09
  understood that the goal is to get to heaven.
• 1:12
  But I don't think I really owned it in, in a more mature adult
• 1:15
  way until the last 10 years of my life or so.
• 1:19
  And so I think that, yeah, that hard work paired with orienting
• 1:24
  our work for the for the purpose of Co creating with God, the
• 1:30
  purpose of kind of sanctifying the world here has been
• 1:35
  something I've learned so profoundly as I've grown into or
• 1:39
  back into my faith, my Catholic faith, I should say.
• 1:42
  So I don't know if that's the ticket to success, the main
• 1:46
  reason, but it's certainly been pretty profound in my life to,
• 1:50
  to have learned that and be continuing now and various
• 1:54
  leadership roles now, you know, as the head of young Catholic
• 1:57
  professionals, to be able to, to speak into that more and lead
• 2:00
  A-Team and, and now be touching the lives of 10s of thousands of
• 2:03
  young professionals all over the the country who participate in
• 2:07
  YCP. So yeah, it's, it's really a, a
• 2:11
  joy and a gift, I think, to be given that chance to, to
• 2:15
  influence and participate in the way that I have been.
• 2:19
  How has YCP grown under your leadership?
• 2:23
  Well, I've, I've been the executive director for about 10
• 2:26
  months, almost a year now. So much of the work was done
• 2:29
  long before that. But I've been assisting, I've
• 2:33
  been supporting our founder and our previous executive director,
• 2:37
  Jennifer to grow the organization for 10 years now.
• 2:40
  And she's still very, very much involved just in a new capacity
• 2:44
  now as founder and advisor, participating in driving the
• 2:50
  longer term impacts of Ycp's mission, continuing to serve the
• 2:54
  organization in that new role. So you know, over the last year,
• 2:59
  we're especially taking a step back and thinking about 15 years
• 3:02
  into Ycp's, our 15th year as an organization, starting as a
• 3:07
  local ministry here in Dallas, TX, and now growing into 40 to
• 3:14
  essentially 40 of the largest 50 count cities in the country.
• 3:18
  Where we're touching the lives of young people in their 20s and
• 3:21
  30s, a single and married, who are at all stages of their faith
• 3:26
  journey and participating through work in every industry
• 3:31
  imaginable. Blue collar, white collar, you
• 3:34
  name it, we've had YCP members come from that, those working
• 3:39
  fields. And so to be able to bring them
• 3:41
  together in a community that really supports their faith,
• 3:45
  career and life connections is just so it's so meaningful, it's
• 3:52
  so necessary. It's, it's really life giving
• 3:56
  for so many people who are struggling with a really deep
• 4:00
  seated feeling of disconnection and loneliness in the world
• 4:03
  today. And also a lot of times just
• 4:05
  really trying to understand what what does my Catholic faith mean
• 4:10
  when I go into the workplace 4050 sixty hours a week, because
• 4:14
  right now I'm living two different lives, right?
• 4:16
  How do I have that kind of unity of life that we're called to?
• 4:20
  So you know, in the last year, as I mentioned, we're stepping
• 4:23
  back and saying what what is the unique space that YCP can
• 4:27
  continue to support young professionals in?
• 4:30
  And it really comes back to the core of our mission is to help
• 4:33
  people understand their work through the lens of their faith.
• 4:38
  And that's so important because we spend so much time that if,
• 4:43
  if we're in the workplace and we don't really know what it has to
• 4:46
  do with our salvation, then it's not only so much wasted time,
• 4:51
  but it can actually be time that distracts us or pulls us away
• 4:54
  from that goal of getting to heaven and bringing everyone
• 4:57
  around us with us. What would you say that YCP
• 5:01
  uniquely offers? Because then there are other
• 5:04
  options, right, for young Catholic professionals.
• 5:09
  Yeah, there certainly are a lot of options for participating in
• 5:12
  other community building efforts for young Catholics.
• 5:16
  I think the unique space that YCP is is really differentiated,
• 5:21
  is looking at work, right? So not just helping people come
• 5:24
  together in community, but also helping them see how they can
• 5:27
  build each other up in their work through their work.
• 5:32
  So the professional development piece, the professional
• 5:34
  networking and connections that they build through YCP and the
• 5:39
  role models and mentors that they get through YCP, because
• 5:42
  it's not just a peer organization.
• 5:45
  You also have so many Catholic executives who have gone before
• 5:49
  you who can now feed into you, who can be there to support you
• 5:54
  as you're coming up in your early and mid stages of your
• 5:57
  career. So I think the, the faith and
• 5:59
  work integration paired with the intergenerational connection
• 6:04
  that happens. And then lastly, the local and
• 6:07
  more broad national network, you put those things, those three
• 6:12
  things, you stack them together. YCP is really uniquely operating
• 6:16
  in that space to support young Catholics in their 20s and 30s.
• 6:21
  So what was the vision here? What are you all hoping to
• 6:23
  accomplish in the next 15 years? The next 15 years, wow.
• 6:29
  I mean, what what we're seeing is really the fruit of YCP is a
• 6:33
  feeling of confidence in their Catholic faith that they didn't
• 6:36
  have before, a connectedness with other Catholics who they
• 6:39
  can now say they have strong spiritually founded friendships.
• 6:45
  And then of course, the beautiful fruit of meeting
• 6:48
  someone, getting married and starting a strong, faithful
• 6:50
  marriage that comes from that. But even even beyond marriage
• 6:54
  and friendships, we're seeing people come together and there's
• 6:57
  these sparks that cause them to start an apostolate or a
• 7:00
  ministry together, to start an organization together, to go out
• 7:04
  and serve in their community together.
• 7:07
  Ultimately, just trying to to determine how best to utilize
• 7:11
  the skills and expertise that they have to go out and, and
• 7:14
  serve the world. Right.
• 7:16
  And so these relationships are starting, they're being
• 7:19
  catalyzed by people coming together in YCP.
• 7:22
  And so you blow that out over the next 15 years, like you
• 7:25
  said, this is going to have profound impacts on the
• 7:29
  organization's both for profit and not-for-profit.
• 7:32
  It's going to impact our parishes and the people who are
• 7:35
  serving in our parishes, giving to our parishes, driving
• 7:39
  philanthropy for the Catholic Church, people who are bringing
• 7:42
  new ideas and new organizations and new connections between
• 7:46
  existing things. A lot of these people I truly
• 7:49
  believe are going to come out of YCP and a generation that is
• 7:54
  being lifted up, you know, in the faith to stay engaged or
• 7:58
  come back to their Catholic faith and serve the secular
• 8:01
  worlds, right. And so I think what we will see
• 8:05
  is the kids, that the children of these first 15 years of YCP
• 8:12
  members are going to be coming up with a a beautiful kind of
• 8:17
  hopefulness and deep seated belief in their faith.
• 8:22
  Because they're going to be raised in families where the
• 8:27
  teaching of the faith is really a priority.
• 8:29
  Because they're going to have come from that background, their
• 8:32
  parents preparing to give that faith to their kids.
• 8:36
  Yeah, it's, it's going to be profound.
• 8:39
  I think when you look look to the future and the need for
• 8:44
  strong, faithful values driven leaders in, in the especially
• 8:48
  the secular workplace, YCP is raising many of them up.
• 8:51
  And in the next two decades, those people will come into
• 8:53
  significant positions of influence that can really have a
• 8:58
  an amazing impact on the organizations that they're going
• 9:01
  to be working within as well. So there's other organizations
• 9:06
  that don't completely overlap but are related.
• 9:07
  For example, you have sent Ventures, which is kind of like
• 9:11
  a networking group for I think they try to focus mostly on like
• 9:15
  executives, Catholic executives or founders or.
• 9:18
  Catholic builders, yeah. Builders, yeah.
• 9:20
  And then you have, there's this thing in DC and a couple other
• 9:24
  cities, the Leonine Forum, which is like networking for.
• 9:28
  So how, how does it are those like do you see those as
• 9:32
  competitors or how, how does that relate to what you all do?
• 9:36
  Yeah, Yeah, we, we know them really well.
• 9:39
  I mean, I know they're, they're founders and and we actually
• 9:41
  participate in some of the work that they do as well.
• 9:44
  What's what's really cool is we're actually collaborators.
• 9:47
  It's really about growing the pie and not trying to take the
• 9:50
  same group of people and cut it into smaller pieces.
• 9:53
  And if you think about YCP, we really operate as this vast net
• 9:59
  that's catching 10s of thousands of young people across the
• 10:02
  country that are at very broad. I mean, like I meant to, they're
• 10:06
  working across a lot of different spaces.
• 10:08
  Their faith is in a lot of different spaces, steps in the
• 10:11
  journey and they're living in cities across the country.
• 10:14
  And so we have this kind of broad net to capture them.
• 10:18
  We bring them together in community.
• 10:20
  Many of them, you know, are, are deeply seeking, yearning for
• 10:23
  that kind of connectedness. We're helping expose them to
• 10:27
  people who can teach them in the faith, who can teach them how to
• 10:30
  grow professionally and bring those two things together.
• 10:34
  And then from there, groups like Scent and Leonine are an amazing
• 10:39
  next step for a subset of our members, right?
• 10:42
  So people that are then saying, OK, I've received this formation
• 10:45
  through this kind of person on person formation that I've
• 10:48
  received through YCP. Now I'm ready to take that next
• 10:52
  step. And you look at it like a scent
• 10:54
  is such a good fit for people that say, I'm actually ready to
• 10:58
  go build something, right, or I'm already building something.
• 11:01
  I'm looking for the support to take it to the next level.
• 11:03
  That's where like we want to make that hand off descent
• 11:06
  because they're uniquely positioned to bring together
• 11:10
  entrepreneurs and, and builders and people that are trying new
• 11:14
  things, both in the, in the, in the not-for-profit and in the
• 11:19
  for profit space. And they've they're uniquely
• 11:21
  positioned with access to venture, venture capital and the
• 11:24
  types of mentors who are also entrepreneurs.
• 11:26
  So that's a great example of a handoff that we would make to
• 11:31
  support people in their next step beyond YCP.
• 11:34
  We want, we hope they'll still participate and hopefully come
• 11:37
  back and serve as a mentor. Leonine forum.
• 11:40
  Similarly, I mean, they're doing unbelievable work to go really,
• 11:44
  really deep in specific industries in certain cities so
• 11:49
  that they can influence culture. And so, you know, when we have
• 11:53
  members who are ready to take that next step and really go
• 11:56
  deep on reading and discussing Catholic social teaching and
• 12:04
  encyclicals and really understanding at a much deeper
• 12:07
  level the teachings of the church and applying them in the
• 12:10
  world, then we want them to go and apply and participate in
• 12:13
  Leonine. And we actually promote Leonine
• 12:16
  among our members as well. And we've had a number of
• 12:19
  members participate. So the collaborations are
• 12:24
  really, I think where where we see this benefit of all of us
• 12:29
  together in the professional space, building up the church
• 12:33
  through the lens of our professional lives.
• 12:37
  So that that's helpful. So you're not praying that they
• 12:39
  collapse and you're able to like take their market share?
• 12:42
  No, I think we actually need more, more groups that are that
• 12:45
  are staying uniquely focused in areas like each of those
• 12:49
  organizations because there's a lot of of silos.
• 12:55
  I think in well, I'll speak to what I have more experience in
• 13:00
  which is the young adult space, right?
• 13:02
  There's there's a lot of siloed work at the parish and the
• 13:05
  diocesan level that is good work.
• 13:08
  But how do we help have these handoffs so that when people are
• 13:10
  ready to take the next step or just when life brings them to
• 13:13
  the next step, that they know who can, who can support them
• 13:18
  and where they can serve in that next step.
• 13:21
  And so, you know, you think of a YCP member who like, like me now
• 13:27
  with married 3 kids, like where else do I participate, right?
• 13:32
  I mean, certainly I'm still participating in YCP in my role
• 13:35
  as the executive director. But thinking from a member's
• 13:38
  perspective, like what is that next step that I can now go and
• 13:41
  participate in? And how does YCP help expose me
• 13:44
  to all of the different things that are going on in my, in my
• 13:48
  diocese, in my city, so that I can know where else, where else
• 13:54
  I can be fed right, and where else I can serve?
• 13:58
  Yeah, it really does sound like a synergy.
• 14:01
  It's a for the purchase leaders audience.
• 14:03
  I think you're speaking to the abundance mindset that we don't,
• 14:06
  we don't have to be competitors. It's not a 0 sum game, but that
• 14:11
  we got our strengths, we build off of each other and then it it
• 14:13
  helps everyone. So having that networking with
• 14:16
  those people is is helpful for all of us.
• 14:19
  That's exactly right. Yeah, I think, I think we can be
• 14:23
  too small minded. I mean, you talked at the at the
• 14:26
  top of this call together, I think before we were recording
• 14:29
  about, you know, having this, this magnanimity, this kind of
• 14:33
  magnanimous mindset, right? This, this great soul, this
• 14:36
  great heartedness. And I think a lot of that
• 14:39
  sometimes get lost, gets lost. And what becomes more of the the
• 14:43
  petty fighting over the small little scraps rather than us
• 14:46
  thinking about how do we transform the world for Christ?
• 14:49
  And we're going to do that with each other, right?
• 14:52
  And not by sort of fighting over these tiny little things in the
• 14:56
  grand scheme of even each of our times here in the world.
• 15:00
  There's a lot of territory to conquer.
• 15:01
  We need all hands on deck. Exactly.
• 15:04
  Let's focus our efforts so. I'd be curious to get more into
• 15:10
  shot from the leadership perspective, your executive
• 15:12
  director, what are the practical skills that takes?
• 15:16
  What does your day-to-day look like?
• 15:17
  What are you doing to grow the organization?
• 15:22
  Yeah, practically, I support a team of 12 full time employees
• 15:26
  and then we by extension support about 750 volunteers that run
• 15:32
  these 42 cities across the country.
• 15:34
  And so a significant portion of my work is supporting people,
• 15:40
  right. And you know, when I think about
• 15:42
  my, my, the full time staff that we have here, you know, it's
• 15:47
  really supporting their development as professionals
• 15:50
  here at YCP, Professional development, spiritual
• 15:53
  development, creating or continuing to create a space
• 15:58
  here where you can work, but also get married and have a
• 16:01
  family and still be able to support your family while
• 16:04
  working here in all, in all the ways that that we need to be
• 16:07
  called to. And you know, a lot of it is
• 16:10
  supporting my teammates to go out and, and really execute on
• 16:14
  the big plans that we have every year.
• 16:16
  Of course, a significant amount of my time is, is relationship
• 16:21
  development around around fundraising, you know, as a
• 16:24
  not-for-profit, about 3/4 of our revenue comes from really,
• 16:29
  really generous benefactors that contribute to IC PS future
• 16:34
  through donations. And so a lot of it is that donor
• 16:37
  cultivation, right that that invitation for them to
• 16:41
  participate in new ways with YCP.
• 16:45
  And so, yeah, it's, it's a lot of, a lot of work to galvanized
• 16:49
  people around the, the plans and the vision that we have.
• 16:53
  And to have them really like when I think out to these
• 16:58
  hundreds of volunteers, like how do we help capture all the
• 17:01
  creativity that they have and all the desire that they have
• 17:04
  to, to help build this and really to bring their, their
• 17:07
  unique skill set to growing YCP? Because it takes much more than
• 17:12
  a handful of full time staff to help continue to build an
• 17:17
  organization of the size. So it's extremely, extremely
• 17:21
  varied. I, I come from a background in,
• 17:24
  in marketing before I came to YCP and I've spent a lot of my
• 17:29
  time here in operations. And so pairing that with all of
• 17:32
  the people, the people side, the kind of sales, fundraising type
• 17:36
  role, it, it all comes together in the executive director
• 17:39
  position. Well, we graduate together from
• 17:42
  University of Dallas. I recently interviewed President
• 17:45
  Jonathan Sanford. It's a liberal arts school, so
• 17:50
  it doesn't explicitly train you to be an executive director of
• 17:55
  an organization. How does the UD education, how
• 17:59
  did that prepare you or not prepare you for what you're
• 18:01
  doing now? Yeah, I think it certainly
• 18:05
  prepares you. I mean, it prepares you for
• 18:08
  almost anything in life if you, if you think about the, the root
• 18:12
  causes or the, the fundamentals that you're cultivating when
• 18:17
  you're at UDI think a large part of my role now is to ask, learn
• 18:24
  to ask good questions and through that to support people
• 18:28
  to problem solve. And at UD we ask a lot of
• 18:33
  questions. Sometimes they're good,
• 18:34
  sometimes they're, sometimes they're.
• 18:40
  Well, yeah, it's just, it's a funny atmosphere, isn't it,
• 18:44
  where we we've learned to question so many different
• 18:46
  things. But I think it's a valuable
• 18:47
  skill is to be able to, to ask good questions almost.
• 18:52
  I really haven't met anyone who doesn't, whose, whose work or
• 18:55
  whose life wouldn't benefit from being able to get to the root of
• 18:58
  things right. And questions are a way to help
• 19:00
  bring to light the needs that people have, right?
• 19:04
  I mean, certainly through your work, right, you, you probably
• 19:06
  mostly ask questions as a psychologist, not give people
• 19:10
  the answers from, from the moment they start talking.
• 19:13
  And so I think UD really helps me to cultivate that and think
• 19:16
  about getting to, to the fundamentals, to the root of
• 19:21
  things. And yeah, I use that all the
• 19:24
  time. And then certainly, you know, as
• 19:26
  an English major. But of course, anyone who goes
• 19:28
  through UD takes the core, those first two years of the
• 19:33
  curriculum, the core curriculum. And I think just learning to
• 19:36
  communicate, especially the ability to write down your
• 19:40
  arguments in a compelling and succinct way, I think has served
• 19:45
  me really well. I mean, I don't get to always do
• 19:49
  it in that practical or that structured of a way now, but
• 19:53
  just the ability to organize your thoughts.
• 19:55
  I think it's a huge asset that University of Dallas graduates
• 20:00
  have and can continue to cultivate it.
• 20:03
  Yeah, I was actually on campus. I spoke to the students just I
• 20:06
  guess that was just last week. And I was encouraging them to
• 20:10
  really take these skills that they're starting to develop at
• 20:13
  UT. But don't don't stop, don't
• 20:15
  leave UD and think you've got this figured out.
• 20:18
  Like these are lifelong commitments to learning that we
• 20:21
  have. But but you're given some of the
• 20:24
  the inklings of it. That's.
• 20:26
  The starting points for that, they can be cultivated, yeah.
• 20:32
  And those are things I look for in new hires as well, for people
• 20:35
  that we bring onto the team here.
• 20:38
  So, yeah, UDUD had a really profound effect on me.
• 20:43
  Those are a couple of ways. What a great testimony to the
• 20:46
  liberal arts education. But what are you reading now?
• 20:51
  Gosh, what am I reading now? Not, not a ton because of
• 20:56
  between my work and then my kids when I get home, there's not a
• 20:59
  lot of time that I've I've carved out for reading.
• 21:02
  I read a book recently on network effects, which was
• 21:07
  really, really interesting by a guy who was involved in Uber in
• 21:12
  the early years, just talking about what it takes to reach
• 21:17
  kind of a, a tipping point in a network and think about Uber and
• 21:22
  bringing together the marketplace of the riders and
• 21:25
  the drivers. And so we, we've been thinking a
• 21:27
  lot about that with YCP and applying it.
• 21:30
  You know, we've, we've got the, you know, there's a couple ways
• 21:33
  you could think of it. We've got the employers and the
• 21:35
  talent base through ICP. We've got the mentors and the
• 21:39
  members, right? These are just the similar
• 21:41
  groups of people we're naming in different ways, but we are
• 21:45
  ultimately bringing people together in a network.
• 21:48
  So yeah, it's just really interesting to see how they
• 21:50
  thought about that in the earliest days of Uber and how
• 21:55
  small you had to think about a network before it reached a
• 21:58
  certain density that it was self perpetuating.
• 22:03
  What do you mean how small you had to think about a network?
• 22:06
  Well, I'll give you an example from the book, right?
• 22:08
  So they talk about Uber in the early days, and they would be in
• 22:11
  San Francisco or in New York, you know, some of these largest
• 22:15
  cities in the country. And you'd think they start in
• 22:17
  the city. Uber starts in the city, but
• 22:19
  they don't. They start on a certain corner
• 22:22
  at a subway stop at 5:00 PM on Fridays, right?
• 22:26
  And they have a whole team of people just driving traffic from
• 22:31
  drivers coming to pick people up and then people using the app,
• 22:35
  users participating who needed rides.
• 22:37
  And they would just have this entire team of people who would
• 22:40
  rally around this one time in this one geographic space
• 22:44
  because you had to drive enough people to use the app in that
• 22:49
  space. And it required a certain
• 22:50
  density of both sides of the marketplace.
• 22:52
  And so part of the takeaways, one of the takeaways from this
• 22:57
  book is that you want to find your the forget what he calls it
• 23:03
  the, the nuclear. I'm going to forget the phrase
• 23:08
  of the nuclear networks, Like what is the smallest form of
• 23:11
  your network that's dense enough to then start the flywheel going
• 23:15
  that it's it continues going on its own, right.
• 23:20
  And so after that they would go conquer another corner at
• 23:22
  another subway stop until they started to build that up into a
• 23:27
  city. And it looks like Uber just
• 23:28
  takes over cities when they were building and when they were
• 23:31
  starting. But that really wasn't the case.
• 23:33
  It was a very calculated effort to go from one geographic point
• 23:36
  to another and build up these densities.
• 23:39
  And so I mean, there's huge implications as we think about
• 23:43
  parish life for, you know, church, church life, just the
• 23:46
  Catholic Church in general. We think about YCP and US
• 23:49
  operating in cities across the country and those all coming
• 23:53
  together in one national network.
• 23:55
  So it's it's interesting to take those learnings from the the for
• 24:02
  profit world and start to apply some of the common threads in
• 24:05
  the in the not-for-profit world. Yeah, that's fascinating.
• 24:09
  So if you're looking to start in another city, what that would
• 24:12
  look like is maybe identifying a parish that has the most young
• 24:15
  professional life already and focusing there and then building
• 24:18
  it from there. Yeah, that's, that's an example,
• 24:23
  yeah. Or one thing that we're building
• 24:24
  right now is a talent marketplace for our young
• 24:30
  members to connect with values aligned companies.
• 24:33
  And so originally we were like, well, let's, let's launch this
• 24:36
  across the 42 cities that we have.
• 24:39
  We we call it the work Well network is, is what we're
• 24:43
  calling this new product that we're bringing, bringing to our
• 24:46
  audience. And we said, let's bring work
• 24:49
  well to all the cities where we operate.
• 24:51
  And then we read this book and we're like, you know what, maybe
• 24:53
  we should really try this out in a certain marketplace, a smaller
• 24:58
  marketplace, work out the kinks, get a density of employers and
• 25:02
  our talent, our members connected with each other, make
• 25:05
  sure there's value and, and usage their adoption, and then
• 25:10
  start to roll this out regionally.
• 25:11
  So right now we're launching this in North Texas because
• 25:14
  that's a market where, you know, we know a lot of employers.
• 25:17
  We have a lot of our deepest roots here since YCP was started
• 25:20
  here. And yeah, so I mean, we took
• 25:23
  that learning and we we kind of applied it to adjusting our
• 25:27
  strategy a little bit for growing this this marketplace.
• 25:33
  Yeah, that's OK. That's interesting.
• 25:35
  Yeah, I recently interviewed the founder of the Catholic Business
• 25:38
  Directory, which sounds like it's doing something similar.
• 25:41
  So maybe I'll we, we talked about that and connected with
• 25:44
  that. If it's helpful, yeah.
• 25:48
  Do do you have any last thoughts for our audience?
• 25:56
  Well, you know, at the end of the day, I think one of the
• 25:59
  things I've learned in the last 10 years is to is to stay close
• 26:03
  to Saint Joseph. And we're right here on the cusp
• 26:07
  2 days from now of one of his two wonderful feast days on
• 26:10
  March 19th to see the feast day more oriented towards him as
• 26:16
  husband of Mary. And he's our patron St. under
• 26:20
  the title of Saint Joseph the worker, which is his second
• 26:22
  feast day on May 1st. And so I would just really
• 26:25
  encourage people to go to Joseph if they don't yet have a
• 26:29
  relationship with him, his intercessor.
• 26:31
  He's had a powerful, really a profound impact on my life.
• 26:35
  And I think it's, it's a, it's a wonderful starting place,
• 26:39
  especially for people like me who like to talk a lot.
• 26:43
  Saint Joseph gives us the kind of silence and the steadfastness
• 26:47
  that comes from trusting God. It is a good balance in my life.
• 26:51
  So go to Joseph. Beautiful and you have a great
• 26:55
  painting behind you there, the Holy Family, including Saint
• 26:57
  Joseph. Isn't that cool?
• 26:59
  What I love about this one is you know, you, you have
• 27:02
  paintings of the Holy Family and you have paintings of Saint
• 27:04
  Joseph working. And sometimes it's it's Joseph
• 27:08
  and Jesus working. Sometimes Mary is there, but I
• 27:10
  haven't seen many of those. But here you get the Holy
• 27:13
  Family, you know, Jesus interacting with both of his
• 27:17
  parents and they're working at the same time.
• 27:20
  And so I think it's just a beautiful testament to the call
• 27:24
  we have to live an integrated life and to to be both, you
• 27:29
  know, father and husband and employer and friend all in one.
• 27:40
  So it's it's an inspiration for me every day.
• 27:44
  Beautiful. Keep working, Peter.
• 27:47
  Well, yeah, thank you for the invitation.
• 27:49
  This has been great.