Brett R. Smith, Ph. D. is the Founding Research Director of the the L.I.F.E Research Lab at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio (L.I.F.E =Leading the Integration of Faith & Entrepreneurship). His program explores how spirituality and business can indeed be interwoven together for a more fulfilling professional and personal journey. The program’s birth at a public University was unlikely, but after hearing about Brett’s journey, his calling to teach, his deep faith, and the seeds that God planted in his life, it all makes perfect sense. Matt and Brett delve into his early roles, experiences with corporate and start ups, and finally his transformation to Miami University where, with his commitment and drive, he has led a flourishing program that has opened the minds of students in a unique and powerful classroom experience. The L.I.F.E. curriculum provides guidance, experience, and knowledge in social entrepreneurship and how faith can live in that environment. For anyone who has experience in starting something new, you know there will be high and lows. What the L.I.F.E. program suggests is that our faith can be an asset for survival. Faith is what let Brett to Miami, it is what shines light into his marriage to Laura (guest on 11/16/20) and into his role as a father to four kids, and it is what continues to provide guide posts as new challenges and opportunities fall on the path at Miami. Brett candidly shares some obstacles including how he faced health scares and question marks, but also how these challenges and set backs have been stepping stones to growth and insights to making decisions, arming him with more awareness that our clock is always ticking. This episode is a must-listen for all who are seeking courage to listen to our callings and are curious about how to harmoniously blend faith with their careers. To learn more about Brett, visit the Miami of Ohio University website. His achievements have also been featured in Time, Business Week, Financial Times, CNN, MSNBC and he has been asked to speak at the United Nations, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Tedx Youth, and a number of leading universities. You listen here or watch here.
Brett R. Smith, Ph. D. is the Founding Research Director of the the L.I.F.E Research Lab at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio (L.I.F.E =Leading the Integration of Faith & Entrepreneurship). His program explores how spirituality and business can indeed be interwoven together for a more fulfilling professional and personal journey. The program’s birth at a public University was unlikely, but after hearing about Brett’s journey, his calling to teach, his deep faith, and the seeds that God planted in his life, it all makes perfect sense. Matt and Brett delve into his early roles, experiences with corporate and start ups, and finally his transformation to Miami University where, with his commitment and drive, he has led a flourishing program that has opened the minds of students in a unique and powerful classroom experience. The L.I.F.E. curriculum provides guidance, experience, and knowledge in social entrepreneurship and how faith can live in that environment. For anyone who has experience in starting something new, you know there will be high and lows. What the L.I.F.E. program suggests is that our faith can be an asset for survival. Faith is what let Brett to Miami, it is what shines light into his marriage to Laura (guest on 11/16/20) and into his role as a father to four kids, and it is what continues to provide guide posts as new challenges and opportunities fall on the path at Miami. Brett candidly shares some obstacles including how he faced health scares and question marks, but also how these challenges and set backs have been stepping stones to growth and insights to making decisions, arming him with more awareness that our clock is always ticking. This episode is a must-listen for all who are seeking courage to listen to our callings and are curious about how to harmoniously blend faith with their careers. To learn more about Brett, visit the Miami of Ohio University website. His achievements have also been featured in Time, Business Week, Financial Times, CNN, MSNBC and he has been asked to speak at the United Nations, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Tedx Youth, and a number of leading universities. You listen here or watch here.
Well, hello with gratitude Matt listeners, my name is Matt Miranda and I'm the host for the With Gratitude Back show. Our goal for the With Gratitude Matt Show is to inspire our listening audience to practice gratitude regardless of how powerful their storm is. We found that the practice of gratitude works much like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. Today's guest is my good friend Brett Smith. Brett is married to Laura Smith. You may recall Laura Smith was on our show on November the 16th of 2020. Laura and Brett have raised four beautiful children, two boys and two girls. Their spiritual strength has played a large part in how they have raised their four children. Brett, in his professional life today at Miami University, is the University distinguished Professor and the Cintas professor of Entrepreneurship in the Farmer School of Business at Miami University in Ohio. He focuses on academically rigorous, practical, relevant research of faith based and social entrepreneurship. He founded the Center for Social Entrepreneurship and is currently the founding director of Life, leading the integration of faith and entrepreneurship Center at Miami University. He has partnered with U2 frontman Bono and the U.S. Department of State. His work has been featured in Businessweek, Financial Times, Forbes, Newsweek, Time, Nelson Mandela Foundation, TED Acts and the United Nation. Brett, it's such an honor to have you on today's show. Welcome to the show. Matt Thank you. It's absolute pleasure to be here. And as I've told you, you've already received the better half of our marriage. So all we can do is go downhill from there. But but in all seriousness, it's great to be here. Two caveats, I guess. One, whatever we talk about today will have very little to do with me and truly a blessing from God that have been sprinkled throughout our lives. And second, you know, I think we often talk about things rather linearly, like they happen in a straight line. And of course, that's not the case. You'll see lots of ups and downs. And I look forward to sharing all the highs and all the lows today. Absolutely. Absolutely. Brett, so I know, you know, today we mentioned you're at Miami University. You are an alumni of Miami University as well. I think maybe a good place to start. Before we get into what you're doing today is just talk a little bit about perhaps your your experience at Miami as a student and what you did right after graduating from Miami University. Sure. And I if we could, Matt, I go just a half a step further back when when we shared time together at St Mark's High School in Cincinnati, in part because it had a profound influence on me. They had this men for others Jesuit philosophy. And that's that's really steered and been instrumental in a lot of our work. But at Miami, I literally came to Miami thinking, You know what I really want to do? I want to be a high school English teacher. I had had great people like Paul Hendrick at St Luke's, and this is what I want to do. And my dad said, No, you'll do business. And so that was that. He was paying the bills. But there are really two things that sort of influenced my life. One of those was was faith. And one of those was entrepreneurship. And those were both very important to me. So at my time at Miami, I studied business. As I as I left Miami, I really considered both ends. I literally looked at going into the priesthood and I looked at launching into entrepreneurial careers. And based on whatever the rationale was at the time, I ended up doing this ladder and went to work for an early stage startup company that rented or leased wooden pallets to the grocery industry. And you're like, Awesome, I'm not saving souls. I'm renting wooden pallet house or something. But but it was it was awesome in the sense of understanding, entrepreneurship, building and growing. The company went to $1,000,000,000. I traveled a lot, got a lot of great experience. And so that was really fundamental to a lot of our work. The other thing that we did along the way, we open to any ends franchises and so soft hand-rolled pretzels. But again, more of the entrepreneurial bug as we got up and running. But I'm sorry, you said you launched in what was it? Yeah. The name of the organization is Auntie Anne's. It's a soft, hand-rolled pretzel store that you might see in a shopping mall or airport or that sort of thing. Got it. Okay. I was not familiar with that. So, Brett, so, you know, I mentioned earlier we had Laura on the show almost two years ago. It's hard to believe it's been that long in her. She's remarkable. It was just really nice to get to know her better. Love to hear a little bit about a how you met and what your courtship looked like early on. Sure. Happy to talk about it. In short, I've way overachieved. You know that you've seen the better half and now you get me But but we actually met in college, candidly never dated at all and decided to start dating when she lived in Miami, Florida. And I lived in Minneapolis. Not the most convenient way to do it, but that's sort of the way God called us. And so I literally would fly down there three weekends a month, probably. It was better and much warmer in Miami, Florida, than it was in Minneapolis. And honestly, I think we had all both been through enough relationships that we sort of knew pretty quickly. I think we dated for about six months before we got engaged. And we've been been very blessed to, as you say, raise four kids and really consent to new to sort of pursue our passions. And she has been a large part of why I'm doing the work that I'm doing today. That's amazing. And I did not realize that you guys were long distance daters. A little side note on Mary and I, we didn't live in the same city until the day after we got married. It's. That's amazing. Yeah. So we she was living in Buffalo, New York, and I was living in Detroit, Michigan. And I met her through. Well, you would probably know or do you know Megan Pulte? You remember Meg? I do know Megan. Sure. Yes. So, Megan, Pulte. Kevin Pulte, sister. They went to college together and Megan moved to Michigan right about the same time I moved to Michigan. Mary and Megan were good friends. In about 2001, Mary came to visit and was very fond of her, but never considered dating her just because of where she was. And it took me about seven years to actually ask her out on our first date. But shortly thereafter, I mean, seven years first date, we were engaged within six months, married within another. We were married within inside of a year of us, first dating. So similar story there. I just was a little slower than you, Brett. Not at all. I think we all get to where we're supposed to be. Yeah. No, no, no. That's all good. It's interesting to hear you say that, You know, Lara is in large part a big part of, you know, why you're doing what you're doing today. And I'd love to hear really how things transpired. You're down in Atlanta working in. How did the opportunity to come back to Miami in a teaching responsibility come to fruition for you? Yeah, sure. So so at that time, I was working in Atlanta before Laura and I had our first child. We were both traveling nonstop. She would go to Washington, D.C. every week. I would go essentially everywhere else. I was, you know, I flew 300,000 miles a year. And to be fair, we were making a lot of money. We were doing all the sort of American dream things. Thanks for for dinks, right. Do income, no kids traveling a lot, making a lot of money and is often the case. I think that's the time when when God starts Onaga is like a is this really sort of all it's cracked up to be? And I think in my case, I had always wanted to teach right? I said, Even when I went to Miami, I thought I would be a teacher. I thought I'd be an English teacher. And yet it wasn't until, you know, I'm 32 years old and and this opportunity comes up. So I call an old professor friend of mine. And I said, you know, God's been knocking pretty hard. I say, Hey, what's it look like to teach? And this professor friend of mine, great friend who had literally helped me get nearly every job I ever had, said, Hey, it's no problem. We can get you back here to teach. But do you have any idea what we pay people? I said, Oh, no, no, it's not about the money. And he said, Good, because we're going to pay you like 24 grand a year. And I said, Oh, you mean it's really not about the money? And yet, Matt, there was this tug on my heart that just said, I still think I'm supposed to do this right. This was this was a vocation, this was a calling. And so at a time when everyone looks at you like like you've got three heads and people think you're crazy, I got on a plane and flew to Oxford, Ohio, and talked to an old professor friend of mine and said, Let's look at this. And it was pretty clear, I think often we we see signs along the way. At least that's been my experience. And one of those for us was was a poem by Robert Frost about two roads diverging. And and it had been on my heart. We had been talking about it a lot. And I literally show up to Oxford. We go out to breakfast at this little cafe and right on the blackboard is that same poem. And I'm like, okay, maybe coincidence, but boy, pretty unlikely. And one thing led to another, and I eventually ended up we moved from Atlanta to Oxford, Ohio. What role did Laura play? Well, every because I said, Hey, what if we just quit our jobs and moved to Oxford, Ohio, and make 24 grand a year? And the very logical answer would have been to say, No way. And she just starts packing like like she was that supportive. I got here, I started teaching. And pretty quickly, I mean, like first class, first day, it was one of those senses where it's like, Oh, this is what God put me on the planet to do. It was pretty clear this is what I was supposed to be doing. That is so beautiful, as so beautiful. And I know I mentioned that you started the Social Entrepreneurship Program. Is that what your first role was coming into or coming back to Miami as a faculty member? Yeah, it's a great question. When I first came, I was actually teaching marketing, so I came back. I taught marketing. Two years is what they call an instructor. So full time. That's all I did was teach. I looked around pretty quickly and said, Hey, 24 grand a year, while it's nice, is probably not the long term solution for us. So I went back and worked on my Ph.D. and then when I came back to Miami in 2006, we launched into this program called Social Entrepreneurship. For me, I was still trying to figure out how do I integrate these two parts, this entrepreneurship part and this faith part. And a first answer of that to me became social entrepreneurship, not because I was overtly or explicitly faith based, but for me it was all around faith based rationale for why we did what we did. And so social entrepreneurship for for people who may not know, is simply how do you use the same tools, innovation, creativity, all the things that we do in entrepreneurship, but use it to tackle social problems of our hunger or poverty or inner city education. And so it was really a meant for others Jesuit philosophy. How do we do what we're doing but do it in a way that that is really first and foremost about serving others. And that's kind of how we got to that first sort of part. On social entrepreneurship. I give you a lot of credit for that. And I you know, one thing that really amazes me, and I think I mentioned this to you when we were reconnecting, is to do this at a, you know, state, you know, public university. Were there challenges early on that maybe you may not have would have experienced at a perhaps a Jesuit school that, you know, led with that mission statement, first and foremost? Yes. So let me take that in two parts, Matt. At first the short answer was there were challenges, but they weren't related to faith, because at that time, faith was really in the background. We were really focused on social entrepreneurship. Now, to be fair, it was a pretty early concept and we would have conversations with donors who might say, You know, I'm not really into socialism and entrepreneurship, and I would say many either. That's not what we're doing. So there was still some pushback because it was an early stage idea, but we were also blessed with many extraordinary partnerships. Very early on, we were trying to create a tension around the program. We ended up doing a partnership with Bono, lead singer of U2. Yet his wife had started an apparel company think like Fair Trade in Africa, and we were able to partner with them. So pretty quickly we end up in time in Businessweek, in the Financial Times, and our deans like, Hey, that little pet program of yours, there might be some strategic value there. So early on, I don't think there was as much pushback as maybe there was later as we got into the life program. How is the Bono connection made? Like, I would love to say there's this grand story. There wasn't like I literally emailed their PR person, emailed her and emailed her, and finally I picked up the phone one day and I said, Look, Brigitte, can I have your cell phone number? She's like, What? I said, I'm going to call you every day until you respond. She's like, Oh, no, no, no, I'm really not ignoring you. And I'd literally hang up the phone with her. And within an hour I get an email back and it's from the CEO of the company. He says, I'm in Africa with Bono right now. I'll be back in Paris next week. Give me a call and let's talk about a program. So it was literally and out of the blue, very much blessing God sort of thing that we were able to connect. We probably shouldn't have, but it led to us building an organization called Eden Live on campus that that really helped grow the idea of social entrepreneurship, certainly at Miami, but also at maybe 30 other campuses around the country. That is beautiful. That is beautiful. You know, so I know this type of program doesn't exist at a lot of different universities. We talked about that. What could a what can a student expect to experience in this program versus one that doesn't have the emphasis on the social and or faith aspect of what you guys are leading with? Yeah, I think what's happened, I think a 26 year, 100% right. There were not very many programs. I think today you look around, social entrepreneurship is much more common. That is not the case on the faith side. Like we have now launched a program which we'll get into in a moment at the intersection of faith and entrepreneurship, and that's quite a bit less common. But, you know, at the time we're running the social entrepreneurship program, everything is running well. At some point I take over the the entire entrepreneurship program. We're blessed with donors that are that are really contributing millions of dollars. And I get approached to to be the dean. You know, people come and say, hey, would you consider being a dean? It looks like you're doing a lot of the things that make sense. And I had never thought about it much. And I went to Laura and I said, What do you think? The woman who moved to Oxford, Ohio, on 24 grand a year says, and I quote, I'd rather you were in a wheelchair. And I'm like, What? And her whole point was that our life is not our own right. You've done the travel, you know, every day of the week and be gone all of the time and make all the money. But but if we lose our life in that process, is it really worth it? And I think that was the beginning. I think, honestly, the next major point might be the medical scare that really sort of sent us in that direction. But I'll pause there. Well, no, I think that's a good transition point. So we touched on the medical scare and it sounds like that kind of initiated some urgency with respect to you making some decisions. And perhaps if you could share with our listening audience what what you had to deal with from a medical perspective and the impact that that had on you professionally. Of course, I'd be happy to. So I went in for a routine checkup. No big deal. Been healthy my whole life. Never had anything significant at all. And in the course of an afternoon, I go from a routine checkup to being checked into the hospital. And again, you hear these words, you know certainly better than most. You hear the word cancer. For me, that was pancreatic cancer that they thought I had. Now I want to be super cautious because I don't pretend to understand the implications of what that means to someone who actually has it. And to cut the story short, I did not have pancreatic cancer, but we didn't know that for several months. So a routine checkup turns into an MRI, turns into a C scan, turns into literally, we think you have pancreatic cancer. We would do some more tests to confirm it. And as you know, your whole world stops. Everything, like the words are coming out of someone's mouth and you're like, what I am hearing. But like, I am having an out-of-body. I don't understand experience. My wife is not with me. I get to go home and try and tell her that. And again, now she has that same sort of reaction. So while we I never ended up with pancreatic cancer over the course of probably four or five months, I understood what it was like to worry about this might be the end. And in the case of pancreatic cancer, that's a very short window at times. I think for me that it did three things. It was it was a blessing in this sense. It clarified priorities. It created a new sense of urgency and it sort of reduced the fear of like trying something that might not succeed. Right. So so I think you know, maybe some 90 comes to mind of like teach us to number our days that we may have a wise heart. Well, this this medical scare did exactly that. It it it clarified things. It created this urgency and it gave me this like, you know, get over your fear if this is what you're called to do, just go ahead and step into it and start doing it. What's amazing to me is you So you lived for it sounds like several months without firmly knowing. Did did they ever tell you that you had it in or it was all they were trying to get resolution or clarity as to whether or not this was, in fact, pancreatic cancer or not? The belief was that I had it. The MRI and the CT scan again looked like what they would call a mass at the head of the pancreas, which which was always the concern. And we went through test after test doctor after doctor until finally one of the doctors says, like, look, we can run all the pictures we want. The only way we're ever going to know is to go in and look. And they they ended up doing a biopsy to determine that it wasn't pancreatic cancer. It was actually just a torture, what they call a tortured artery at the head of the pancreas. That looked an awful lot like it. And that's sort of why they thought that's what it was. So it was probably a four or five month period. Yes. I expected that I had it, that I was being told that it looked very much like I had it before we had any resolution to the fact that that that wasn't the case. That's amazing. I know in just talking through kind of the conversations that we're having today, this ultimately it sounds like it expedited things for you in terms of what you're thinking about doing from a professional perspective. And maybe share with us how that took place. Yeah, So so I had gone from running our Center for Social Entrepreneurship, which we had started and run. I took over our entire entrepreneurship program and that, you know, we were right place, right time. Entrepreneurship had become very popular, you know, across the board, not just at Miami. And so the program was growing, funding was growing, student enrollment was growing. But that also meant that I was grinding a lot. I was spending a lot of hours, a lot of time. And this was one of those times when it was like, Oh, okay, I go to law and I say, Hey, what do you think about this next step up? She says, No, the medical scare happens and it just becomes blindingly clear that, like cultures, view of success is not what I'm supposed to do. I'm not supposed to take this next very traditional step. I'm supposed to take a very different step, a step that to the world looked idiotic, quite frankly, and that is not step up, but actually stepped down. I stepped down from running our entrepreneurship program and I was like, great, now I've stepped down. What am I supposed to do? And I remember looking back through I journal pretty episodically. I have journals as far back as 2003. So we're now 2015 that say faith and entrepreneurship. Faith and entrepreneurship do something at the intersection of faith and entrepreneurship. So I said a lot. I said, okay, I'm going to try and launch. I feel very called to launch this thing at Faith in Entrepreneurship. Just to be clear, that's probably not going to happen at a public university. So once I try and launch this and it fails, we're going to move. And she's like, That's fine if that's what you think you're supposed to do, go do. And truly by by the grace of God, by by the support of lots of administrators and donors and students, we have been able to launch what we call life. It stands for leading the integration of faith and entrepreneurship. And it is a program, a center here at the university that is focused on understanding what difference it makes when entrepreneurs bring their faith into their middle, middle of their entrepreneurial venture. So our job isn't to say they should or they shouldn't any more than it is in social entrepreneurship, right? Students Or say, you're trying to convince me to be a social entrepreneur, I say, I do not care. My job is to educate you. Your job is to decide. Same here. Our job is to say it. We're not saying people should or shouldn't bring faith into their entrepreneurial ventures. We're saying they do. And if they do, and it affects the entrepreneurial process, the opportunities they pursue, where they get funding from, how they treat their employees, then yes, we have an obligation to be studying it, understanding it, and teaching it. And so that's sort of the program that we launched out to start about four years ago. That's amazing. It truly is amazing. So let me just question for you. So that's four years ago this program's launched Corporate America today. Or let's just look at leaders, CEOs, CFOs of let's just say fortune 500 companies. How prominent do you think just faith in general is in conversations that they're having internally? Question number one and two, do you see that changing at all moving forward? So let me try and tackle both parts of that question. Matt. So so first off, I think, of course, it depends, right? It depends on the leader. It depends on on their own specific religious background. I think you have some variance between Fortune 500 companies and maybe private companies. Smaller, yeah. Where there might be more agency to decide how you do or do not invoke values. I think the reality is, you know, some 70% of the world's population still claims a religious tradition. So even though there's lots of conversation about, oh, religion's going away or people are becoming less religious, a lot of the data doesn't fully line up with that. It does suggest they may be going away from traditional forms of religion and denominations, but it doesn't suggest that they're actually going away from religion. And so I think what you would see, again, just extrapolate those numbers. There's still a high percentage of people, both in corporate America and entrepreneurs that say faith matters an awful lot to who I am. And so no different than and I get there are important differences, but no different than gender or race on a monday morning to someone, leave their gender or race at the door when they walk into business. Probably not. And so what is increasingly going on is people are starting to say, not my faith either. I'm going to bring it with me now, how I bring it and how I do that, and what that looks like and how I integrate that. That's a different conversation. But the reality is lots and lots of people are increasingly doing this. And while we talk about lots of different forms and I get it's a hot topic right now about diversity, equity and inclusion. One of the forms we're not talking about is religious. We're not recognizing that this is an important form of difference and a different form of ways that people are sometimes excluded from conversations and organizations and opportunities. You know, I know Miami University is doing fantastic in terms of enrollment and national recognition. We've got a number of friends here in Buffalo that are sending their kids to Miami right now. How is the life program at all being utilized in terms of recruiting kids to come to the university? Or is it something that's not yet been utilized in that capacity? Yeah, I think I think it's pretty new still. I think we are getting that. I have an email from a student just just in the last couple of weeks that is coming to Miami. And they said in part because of the program, I think if we look back and look at social entrepreneurship, it took a few years to have a more fully developed program, but before it started to become an attraction. But I think what you're starting to see is people are saying, Hey, faith matters. So we have people that are in the program where faith is deeply important and central to them. And we have people in the program who are saying, I don't know what I think about my faith, but I want to understand what does it look like? What are the possibilities? Right. Often when people say, I want to integrate my faith, they actually hear one of two things. Students say this all the time. I either should go into investment banking and do that and make a ton of money and give a bunch of money away and that's awesome. Or I need to move to the other side of the world and work in a poor developing country and evangelize to people. And again, that's awesome too. But those are two ends of a huge continuum. And I think we only think in terms of those anchors. We don't think about all the gray in between, which is where the rest of us tend to live. So what does it look like to integrate your faith? Again, there's nothing about what we do that says you should or you shouldn't. What we're trying to do is say people are doing it. And when people do it, there's a variety of ways they can do it, and there's a variety of outcomes that are associated with that. And so a lot of what we do is we do academic research, we do academic research to say, what does it look like when people integrate their faith into their entrepreneurial ventures and what difference does it make? And a lot of people have been doing this for a long period of time, but yet we have no understanding of is it making a difference? Is that a positive difference or are there negative consequences? And that's where academic research becomes a really important sort of leg of the stool of the work that we do. And do you have relationships with corporations that allow you kind of inside their their walls to do some of that research to kind of see how things are being conducted internally today? Yes. So most of our research is focused on entrepreneurs. And so we have lots of access to entrepreneurs that are thinking about this. Sometimes that becomes from, you know, a local group. There's there's an accelerator here in Cincinnati called Ocean. It grew out of a large nondenominational church called Crossroads, and it's focused at the intersection of faith and entrepreneurship. And so we'll work with organizations like Ocean or like an organization called Faith Driven Entrepreneur or Praxis to say, can we have access to the entrepreneurs, you know? And so I think creating access is a big issue. But but maybe an example is helpful. Matt We're working on a study right now that looks at how do entrepreneurs survive the sort of high highs and low lows that they naturally go through. And at the end of the day, the question is like, does faith make any difference? And if so, why does it matter? And so that's the kind of a study that we would start to tackle to say we want it to be practically relevant. Like, does it make any difference surviving these highs and lows? And we want it to be academically rigorous so that we can depend on it, right? Anytime you hear something where you don't believe it, someone will say, there's a study that says, well, in part, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to be the studies that say, here's what it looks like when you integrate your faith in entrepreneurship. You know, you mentioned Crossroads. I'm very familiar with Crossroads. I think that's right there and is it? Well, it's not Hyde Park, but it's Oakley. Oakley, That's right. Yep. Very familiar with that now. So this and when you mentioned Crossroads, this this thought came to mind. Obviously that's a that's a Christian organization. But when you talk about faith, there's a lot of different religious denominations in. Are you analyzing, you know, multiple religious backgrounds or is it primarily focused on Christianity? Right. I think as we approached the topic, this became a major source of conversation. Right. And for us, we have used, you know, we say life, but but F for us means faith and that means all faith. And I think that means we are not only open to people of all faiths or no faith at all, but we are also willing to do research in and around those places. Sometimes that requires collaboration. So I have a great colleague in in Germany who who studies Islamic entrepreneurship. I'm not an expert on that. I can't be an expert on that. He is. So much of my research focuses on the Christian faith because that's the that's the faith that I know and understand. Sure. But as we collaborate with others, interfaith traditions become become really, really important. Again, back to back to this recent study we did. It might be helpful just to share a bit on that basic idea goes something like this. We have at least two identities, right? One of those is like a work identity. It's important what we do at work, and that's defined by a role that we play. And that identity is strengthened by earning, by achieving, by doing well in that role. But that that identity is also always up for grabs because the next time I don't do well, there's some question, some concern over that identity. That's sort of the lows that we go through versus the faith identity. The faith identity at least as as we study it and understand it is what we call a relational identity with God that is based on a relationship, not a role. So so it's based on an understanding that from a Christian perspective, that people view themselves as as children of God, a parent child relationship. It's not achieved. It's actually gifted or received. So it's a different kind of identity. It's not always up for grabs. It's more permanent, right? Think like Psalm 139 of like knitted together in my mother's womb. Right? And so you have two very different identities at play and what happens when these interact. So that's the kind of research that we do, having to talk more about it. That's helpful. Happy to move on. If it's not. No, that's really, really cool. I appreciate that. You know, as we kind of, you know, wind things down here, Brad, I get a couple closing questions and I've got one that I've really asked all of my guest, but I'd be remiss if I didn't at least touch on the topic of gratitude. We've got show around centered around gratitude. And I guess I just my question to you, your lead, you know, the Social Entrepreneurship program, you launched this life program at Miami, studying a lot of what's going on at corporations is where does gratitude play in corporate America today and how can gratitude potentially be a positive contributor to corporations, ultimate goal and missions that they're trying to accomplish? It's a great question, Matt. And let me let me try and touch on it in two ways. One, personally, one one, through research, I think personally, you know, again, this is this is my own view is that, candidly, everything is a gift from God. And that's the good stuff. And that's the stuff that we tend to think is not so good, but often tends, you know, in my case, a medical scare tends to be very good in the long run, tends to lead you in different ways. That's not to say everyone's story is mine. I'm not trying to impose that, but I'm trying to say to the degree that we can be thankful for those things. I think it really pushes the gown against sort of a materialistic it's all about me. It's all about entitlement kind of culture, right? So even going back to our study, what we find is this. We find that in the low lows, when people are really struggling, like their entrepreneurial venture is failing, one of the things that actually helps lift them out of that are and firm them out of that is an acknowledgment of God's past provision. Right. They will look and say, Oh, God has been faithful to me in the past. Therefore I can be grateful even what I'm going through now. Or they will. One person said to us, Oh God was so gracious that he protected me from success. So even in failure, they were willing to say because I knew my own heart was so greedy and so egotistical, I would have made it all about me. I would have been a wreck. And this was probably our most surprising thing. That is when people were in their highs. So imagine the best success you've had professionally. They actually, counterintuitively said to us that was an identity threat for them. That was a big concern because they were worried about the comparisons either to themselves in the past or to other people. And can I keep this up? And instead, what they found what we found is that as people started to attribute that success to God, they were actually able to come out of that high and actually to have this enormous overflowing gratitude that we get to be a co-creator, a co contributor, and the work of God. So what role does gratitude play? Well, in our research, it would say it gets you out of the highs air to get you out of the lows like it keeps you in this very middle anchored ground that says, I am very thankful that I woke up this morning, but I am also thankful for the successes that aren't all about me and the failures that also aren't all about me. There's a lesson. There's something I'm going through. There's something I've learned. I think gratitude is is off the charts essential in terms of how we understand and process and really and really deal with life in corporate America and beyond it. Love it. Brett That is beautiful. Really, really love it. So I mentioned, you know, we got one one final question to ask you, and I ask all of my guests this one final question. It's it's one that might take a bit of thinking, but You know, everybody faces hurdles in life. Everybody faces challenges. And I'd love to hear your perspective if there's one perhaps hurdle obstacle, something that maybe you and Laura had to deal with. You touched on the medical scare already. If it's this, that's great. But is there something that you experienced or had to go through individually or as a couple that at the time was very devastating. But as you were able to go back and look back on time and whether it be a quarter, six months ago, a year year ago, and look how you grew as an individual through that experience and maybe even find that you're grateful for that experience. If something comes to mind. I'd love to have you share that with our listening audience, because I'm a big believer that often times some of our greatest growth opportunities come from challenges that we have to navigate through. And I'd love to hear your perspective on that. No, I think it's 100% right. And of course, you know, these are the low lows and they're experienced in different ways. Sometimes they're experienced through a medical scare. We had to deal. My wife had a miscarriage. We've had to deal with with jobs that you didn't get all of my life from day onward. I have tried to be at a faith based institution, and it is abundantly clear that God does not want me there. I don't know why, but I've been told no more times than I can explain. And I think in each one of these times, right in each one of these difficult days, it's it's not what happens to us. It's what do we do after what's happened to us that makes all the difference. Right. So so I think I've talked a little bit about things like calling today. Right. And to me, a call is an important way to think about it because like, the call is like God's, it's not mine. When we think about the word vocation or calling, you know, like Victor Frankel said, we detect rather than invent, our missions are callings. The call is encouraged by others. But the call always, always, always look stupid to other people and goes through very difficult challenging times when you're like, why on earth did I ever do this? And I think it's in those moments where you can be grateful not only for the opportunities, but grateful for the detours to say, Look, at least in my view of the world, if it were up to me, I wouldn't go through this. But I'm going to trust just like I have in other every other area of my life that God probably knows better than I do about how to run my life. And it is that sort of thinking that allows us to say, Then this must be here for some reason. I'm not saying all those things are good. I'm not even saying all those things end well. But I am saying there is good that comes out of those challenges and difficulties. And if we can just have the courage to take the next step, just literally to take that first step and understand, okay, this is our bottom out. But we always talk about spiraling down. I heard a great conversation this week about Michael BLOCK, who was on the PGA this this week and had this great club pro who had an unsurprising, a very surprising run. And he said he hit some shank and he said, I look at how do we spiral up? And I think that's a really great way to think about it is we always worry about spiraling down when things go go poorly. What if we looked at them as spiraling up like they become like a launching pad for where we're supposed to go and what we're supposed to do. And I think that really gives us a maybe a different way to think about, you know, how do we chase after this even when it looks hard knowing that you weren't alone to get there? You're not alone now. You're not alone as you sort of move forward and at least from a place of faith, God is with you through all of those stages, including how do we rebound and react from from sort of challenge to overcome it? Yes, indeed he is for sure. Brad, it's such an honor to have you on today's show. And I'd like to just formally congratulate you on everything that you're doing at Miami University. You are absolutely making a difference. Not only are you making a difference in the lives of your your students, but beyond that, you're making a difference in corporate America and how corporate America is embracing faith. And as a result of that, you know, we're seeing changes in that front. You know, as I think about, you know, how I approach each and every one of the days that I live in, the hurdles that I'm faced with, I, I think about three things. And I try to do three things each and every day. First of which is I try to find the courage to be grateful regardless of how powerful the storm is right in front of me. I also think it's very, very important to be truly present to those you're with. If you're not truly present to those you're with, you're going to miss the opportunities that God is presenting you. And then lastly, we have to pay attention to how we're feeding our mind, our body and our soul. Today's guest was Brett Smith, leader of the Life program at Miami University today. Brad, it's such an honor to have you on today's show. If today's show inspired you in some way, shape or form. Please subscribe to the show. Share it with others and come on until next time with gratitude. Matt Listeners, find the courage to be grateful. Godspeed, my friends.