Builder of All Things

"Navigating Deep Waters"| Episode #65 | Builder of All Things | Author’s Cut: Chapter Three w/ Richie Breaux

• Richie Breaux

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Welcome to the Builder of All Things Podcast—where we go beyond the pages of the book and explore into the Author’s Cut! 🔥 Join Richie Breaux and Ray Bisnar as they break down each chapter in micro-episodes, giving you the behind-the-scenes insights, deeper wisdom, and real-life applications—just like a Director’s Cut for a book.

In this episode, we get real about business, leadership, and faith.When success starts growing fast — more employees, more projects, more opportunities — it’s easy to lose sight of the why. It’s easy to drift into the deep waters without a map, chasing images of success that ultimately feel empty.

In this conversation:
* 🌊 Facing the overwhelming “ocean” of social media, business coaching, and pressure to succeed.
* 📈 How building without a true purpose leads to feeling lost — even when everything looks successful on the outside.
* 🚢 Lessons from real Navy missions and what it feels like navigating when you can’t see land.
* 🙏 Why having God as your foundation is critical when navigating deep waters.
* 🔥 The turning point: Recognizing the difference between worldly ambition and God-given purpose.

If you’ve ever hit a point in your journey where you ask, "What am I even doing this for?" — this one will speak to you deeply.

🔔 Subscribe for more honest conversations on faith, leadership, business growth, and staying anchored in purpose.

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Follow "Builder of All Things" on YOUTUBE@richiebreaux

Speaker 1:

when it comes to navigating waters, bro. Um, I've read this portion, but what's your uh? Can you kind of explain in your words?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, this is where the whole uh, business and success and where am I going Just uh, exploded for me. I think I am a habit of nature as well, where I'll look on social medias and try to look, or websites and be try to look for what? What do I do, how do I grow, how do I, you know, become successful like other business owners? And so, you know, on social media, right now especially, there's just so much, you know, um help, I don't know what you call it, it's saturated.

Speaker 2:

It's saturated by so much like you know, different quotes, different ways of doing things.

Speaker 2:

You need to do it this way business owners trying to equip business owners.

Speaker 2:

And it's just, you know, I I, as a humble student of the game, I want to learn, you know, and so I've gone through seasons where tiffany could tell you where I've hired business coaches, just because I don't, I'm not a like, I'm not an educated business entrepreneur that went to college for six years and got degrees in business right, and so I had this fear or insecurity that I don't know what I'm doing.

Speaker 2:

You know, and in a sense, so yeah, I was being resourceful to look up things, but I felt like I needed coaching and I'd go through coaching and and what blew my mind is these coaches. They're like you got like all your ducks in a row, man, like, and then all of a sudden I realized I was coaching the coach and telling them what they should be doing in their coaching and certain things, and so it was just like every coach I'd hire, every thousands of dollars I would spend. I realized Tiffany's started at first, I think she supported, but after she's like, after I give her like the feedback, like oh man, this guy is awesome and I told him he should do this, this she's like, but what did he tell you?

Speaker 1:

let me say something real quick. When I first we, when I came in here and I seen the way the, the, the tools that you utilize, sometimes I look over your shoulder and see all of these like data, data analysis and these graphs, and I'm like, richie, what are you doing? And and you're explaining to me like, oh, this is what we, you know, we track every single thing. This is where you go and look.

Speaker 1:

If you click here, it shows blah, blah, blah you were nerding out and I was like yo richie is a beast when it comes to these things.

Speaker 2:

you see me, me and Ray. We shared an office because I moved my office to the production room and he was our lead production creative content specialist during that season. And yeah, he was able to. Just Ray would just do his thing and I didn't want to be bothered and just be in Grimoire, but Ray always was there to see what was going on.

Speaker 1:

I was like I was sticking my mind. I was like this is not normal. I was like you have to have some type of drive, or or, in your case, maybe adhd is a superpower, as we talked.

Speaker 2:

yeah, it's, it's, it's a blessing and probably I don't want to say a curse, but yeah, yeah it could be a blessing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's got the two different lanes. But yeah, I believe God gifted me to understand how to navigate data analysis, how to break things in categories, how to scale. I mean, I just had it naturally and didn't know. But the point is that with these tools, with the coaching and everything I'm seeing on social media, I'm just like I'm hungry to grow and I see it growing because God's blessing this thing right, and there's just so much work, so much opportunity, and so I just felt like, okay, if there's a lot of water, I need to get a lot of cups, I need to, you know, continue the flow and overflow and keep growing.

Speaker 2:

And so, um, just on that pursuit, I just felt like kind of lost to like where are we, where are we going, you know? And so, um, and in this chapter I use the analogy of navigating in the deep oceans, because I served four years in the Navy, did two tours where we went across the whole Pacific Ocean to the Middle East on a six-month cruise. It was a mission and come back and I've done that twice, so I've seen some really deep waters, man, and I know that feeling of being out there where you don't see any land for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and what that can do to you as a human, you know just being. And in the Navy, we obviously know there's a navigation happening, there's a captain, they know where they're going. But from a sense of, if they're not telling us, and I'm at the bottom, like what do we really know what's going on? You know, it's like that kind of disconnect, and so that's how I felt as a business owner.

Speaker 2:

I felt like there's a disconnect with where am I going? What's the purpose? Is it just for profit or is it just to grow in status or like. But where's the land? You know what I mean. Like, what's the purpose? And all this like, and I I felt like I started losing a sense of like. Where am I going? What's the point? And that's when I really just wanted to seek god and say man, I feel like lost in this ocean of people on social media telling me I need to do this, business coaches telling me I need to do this to get up to the mountain, mountain, keep growing, keep going, get to the top. But then what's up there? You know it's like what is this?

Speaker 1:

When did you realize that you had no navigation or no map? I guess in a sense Was there a shift in, like an event in the business that kind of caused you to realize, like what am I even doing here?

Speaker 2:

Well, it might have been an internal thing. Just, I've always seeked purpose with God and intent, you know, and when we started this it might have been an internal thing. I've always seeked purpose with God and intent, and when we started this it was with God and I just felt at the time like it was fruitful. But I have to attach something to it with God or I don't want to be in it. I started losing the interest, almost like an overwhelmingness, of constantly being pushed to the top, at least in a sport, we know time runs out and you got to win a game. You know that's the goal. Yes, right now I'm like, what's the goal? Like what, what am I doing? Like, am I just trying to like get money? Am I just trying to provide work? Am I just trying to be the best on the island? Like, what is the point in this? And so I think, when you know we signed in, signed up for the union, we became a union contractor, because I felt like the right next thing to do. We are hiring employees, we're growing our workforce, we just got a new office, you know, first time, getting a real office and warehouse, you know. And just, we're growing and I realized the weight of what was coming with it. But then I'm like, is it worth it? Like, what's the point here?

Speaker 2:

Like, you know, I started feeling that on the inside, like, okay, I'm leading, but for what? Just to sake to lead, you know, I'm the owner. For the sake of what? Just to be an owner? So I, yeah, with nobody. Everyone's already back home having their regular lives and I'm sitting there grinding estimates and just sit back and just say what am I doing?

Speaker 2:

You know, it's just I don't know how to explain it, man it's just one of those moments like, where am I going? Like, if I don't have purpose, man, I lose passion and interest. Right, the passion and interest was just trusting God, stepping out and seeing it happen and just being excited that, oh man, this thing is working, god's in it and this. But OK, but where are we headed? Yeah, we got it, ok, we got the ship, it's working, we got a crew, we're out in the ocean. God put us out here. But now it's like I don't have a GPS. Man Like, ok, we're just out in deep waters. Now Like, and I'm, I'm reading, I'm seeing what everyone's putting on Instagram and I'm just like that's like, is that is that it Like, and it's just overwhelming man.

Speaker 1:

That's crazy Cause. Um, I seen this. Um, while you're talking about that portion where everything's kind of popping everything's, you know you got your crew. Uh, business getting better, you got more employees.

Speaker 1:

There was one specific image in my mind came up, bro, where you would have meetings I think it was like every Wednesdays or something in the meeting room, but the room would be absolutely filled with all the leads and in my mind I was like oh, like this is getting big. But I see that now, where you're thinking, what you're saying here is like everything was going big. But what was the real purpose of that? Was it just a facade of having this image and it being an example of what success is? Because sometimes in my mind I'm like what does success look like when you're in the business? And as I continue to read this, you get all of the things that you imagine in your head what a successful business looks like. That image came up and I was like, okay, that does look like success, but deep down it's like when you know when you're at home or when everything's by yourself or alone, you have these thoughts. Again it's like, okay, is that really the purpose or whatnot?

Speaker 2:

But I just seen that image for some reason, with the room filled. Yeah, and those, and you know, when you see growth as somebody who's stewarding a business, you get excited in those moments and you see them. I see them too, like I'm looking like, wow, I got there's so many leads I get to pour into and equip them to go out there. And those are exciting. You know, uh, fire, firecracker moments. You know you're just like man, okay, but exciting. You know, fire, firecracker moments. You know you're just like wow, okay, but like I don't.

Speaker 2:

I'm not attracted to the success that everyone's preaching though, like where is it going? Where does it end? Where does it fulfill? You know, and so, yeah, those deep waters, man, they can, they can get a little lonely. When you start actually recognizing you're in the deep ocean, you know it's like there's a quick fear that can come over you Like you know what if I fail these guys out here? You know, and I've seen movies where captains take their crew out to ship and a big storm comes and they all end up dying out there. You know, and I'm just like, oh man, like where am I actually taking these dudes? You know, where am I taking everyone? So leadership, I think, think, always has that. I think there's pastors, there's, there's big time entrepreneurial uh leaders and and people, even us as uh husbands and uh you know, we, we hope we're leading well and not like leading them. You know, deep ocean where there's no land or fulfillment, you know and so and yeah, man, that that was where navigating water started.

Speaker 1:

There was a portion there where you talk about the Challenger Deep or mention the Challenger Deep. I have this where it says it's about seven miles down down below and it's like when I read that I was like I had. So personally, I have a fear of like underwater and like where the reef is is, and I think it's because I just don't know what's down there yeah, so every time I, you know, at weimei we jumped over rock or whatever, and then you can see the underground, but once you go deeper it's like you can't see anything unless you go down.

Speaker 1:

I'm scared, I'm like.

Speaker 2:

I just don't like diving because I don't know what's down there I and and I I shared this in the book and it was very uh. It was a I I had significance to, um, a reason why I I shared it, it's because, okay, let me share the experience first. Man, like yeah, it's south of guam and there's a part of the ocean, the pacific ocean, called the challenger deep, and yeah, it's about seven miles deep and it's it's one of our trajectories going from uh hawaii to uh the middle east. It just that's part of the pathway and so when the ship gets over certain things, like you know, the captain of the ship goes on and say, now we're about to be going over the challenger deep, and gives us a little history and allows us to go out and just kind of look over and see, you know, it's not, I mean, it's just water, um, but he, you know, there's certain things, uh, that we get to experience out there on water, and that was one of them.

Speaker 2:

But I remembered like I didn't really have a significant or significance, I didn't have a uh, a dial in on what seven miles was, you know, and so I was like I did quick math, I was like okay, football field is like 100 yards and I did like how many football fields are in a mile? And I came up with like 18 and that's how I understand.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I was like what's 18 times seven, and I forget, it's like 156. I I was thinking, dang, that's 156 football fields going down. And then, once I realized that, man, I just felt like I remember thinking like, not like if, because obviously you jump in the ocean, you're still going to be able to swim, but there's a feeling of that depth under you. It's kind of scary, you know. And so when I was in that season, I was thinking, man, I have God under me, but I couldn't imagine a business owner that didn't have the builder of all things. They would be like the ship going, not only lost the ocean, nothing under them either, you know, for seven miles.

Speaker 2:

And so I was just thinking, man, almost about other business owners, like what they must feel, what I'm feeling, but even like worse, it's like an empathy kicked in of sense, of like man. I wonder what, how they feel. Sometimes, you know, like, at least when I get into that moment, I go okay, I know I got god, you know, under my ship, I got his hand and so support me. And what I mean by that is my foundation, tiffany's foundation. When we started we jumped out, we jumped out with God, right. So knowing that he's under there, but just having that empathy to think about man, how deep you know somebody could feel in that lostness if they were in a place and didn't have god as well.

Speaker 1:

That was where that connected for me how long were you guys had to go through that?

Speaker 2:

I mean it's it's, it's quick oh yeah, I think our ship, I mean our ship is like 560 something feet long. You know and I think there's a certain length where you can call it a boat to a ship and it's based on the length. Yeah, and so it qualifies as a ship. Um 10 000 pound ship can go 30 knots. I mean, we're a beast what's uh, what's?

Speaker 1:

30 knots I want to say.

Speaker 2:

I don't know the math and I'll probably be wrong, but I'm thinking 40, 40, 50 miles per hour.

Speaker 1:

Oh, okay, I think that's fast for a ship. Yes, yeah, for a ship that size yeah. Yeah, oh, 10,000. Yeah, that's wild.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that thing can book and it's intentional because the ship that I was on was a warship that protected our. It was a US cruiser missile protected what do you call them? Carriers? And so 434?, 34? Oh, we got input from Michael, so 30 knots is 34 miles per hour. That was close. I said 40. I gave it a little oomph yeah.

Speaker 1:

Maybe with the stream.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we were a beast man.

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Richie Breaux

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Ray Bisnar

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