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Ep. 28 - The Missing Link Between Calling and Your Career
2 Playsin 1 day
In this episode, Ken Freire and Patrick Lowndes explore the missing link between a sense of calling and a practical career path. They unpack why many Christians separate their faith from their 9‑to‑5 and introduce a simple framework for integrating purpose with work. By defining a "marketplace calling statement," listeners learn how to connect their skills, the problems they care about, and the people they want to serve—creating a clear North Star for their professional lives.
Resources Mentioned
- Operate With Purpose
- Research Ray (Custom GPT used within the Operate With Purpose program)
Timestamps
- 00:01 — Introduction and life update from Ken about the new baby
- 01:05 — Why so many professionals feel stuck between calling and career
- 03:01 — Why your first job rarely fulfills your full calling
- 05:18 — Why writing down goals dramatically increases follow‑through
- 06:51 — The Marketplace Calling Framework: Skills + Problem + Context
- 08:00 — Identifying your most valuable skills
- 08:20 — Choosing a meaningful problem worth solving
- 10:42 — Defining the people or place you feel called to serve
- 13:09 — The simple formula for writing a marketplace calling statement
- 15:41 — Introducing the Operate With Purpose program and Research Ray
- 17:21 — Teaser: building a roadmap to turn calling into action
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Transcript
Intro
00:00:09
Patrick
Welcome to Buried Talent, the show for young professionals that tears down false beliefs about faith and work so you can unbury your God-given talent right where you are. I'm Patrick Lowndes and with me is Ken Freire, my co-host. And today we're talking about the missing link between calling and your career.
00:00:28
Patrick
So we're going to dive in on that. But before we do, brief check-in. It's been a little minute, Ken. How are things going in the Freire household with your newborn? know you're waking up super early, ungodly hours of the morning.
00:00:40
Ken Freire
I would be lying if I said I'm full of energy and I'm like awesome right now. I'm pretty tired actually right now, but all things considered, he's healthy, mom is healthy, and I am not sick, so we press on.
00:00:55
Patrick
You are hanging in there.
00:00:57
Patrick
I love that. Awesome. Well, for me, spring is a busy time for us at Frontier Operators. I've been traveling to different cities and universities, just getting to speak and encourage a lot of folks on this specific topic.
00:01:09
Patrick
So it's going to be fun to jump into that today. you want to maybe start us off with a bit of that framework that we're just to kind of tease people on kind of what we're going to lead towards in today's session? And then from there, we can just begin to unpack.
00:01:22
Ken Freire
Yeah, of the things that we have found is that people get stuck a lot when it comes to, they have this general sense of their calling, but they don't know how to tie that calling to their career. They do it maybe in their personal life, maybe in other areas, but not their career.
00:01:36
Ken Freire
So there's a framework that we're going actually go through, and I put it at the top of our notes, Patrick, but we'll talk about it little bit.
00:01:37
Patrick
Mm.
00:01:42
Ken Freire
But I want us to know that when you have a North Star, a lot more clear but here's what we have found here's a false belief I think most people struggle with they typically don't want to create a North Star or direction for their life because they think something like this like if I if it if it's gonna take me 10 years to make an impact then why try to articulate a statement now why do I try define where I'm going like we know it's all gonna change And what we have found is that when you start thinking about that, that you're like career changing, skills are going to grow, your interests will evolve.
00:02:19
Ken Freire
You kind of... You unintentionally will walk into career drift because you're being reactive versus proactive. And what we're going talk about today, the missing link, which what we're going to call is a marketplace calling statement.
00:02:28
Patrick
Mm.
00:02:34
Ken Freire
That's the missing link. When you to put this into your life, you go from having a career drift to being proactive in your career and in your calling.
00:02:36
Patrick
Mm.
00:02:42
Patrick
Mm. I like it. I like it. And maybe let's tee this up for our audiences because I've been hanging out a lot with university students, directors of career services, professors. And so if you're still on a college campus and you're studying for a specific degree,
00:02:59
Patrick
So you likely, hopefully if you're an upperclassman, you probably have already declared a specific major. You're trying to gun for it. So let's say you're a finance major or mechanical engineering, you're going to get into psychology or business management, whatever it is.
00:03:11
Patrick
You probably have an idea about field of work that you generally want to be in, right? Yeah. But this is the hard thing to square with is 90% of the time, maybe more, your first job will probably not be fulfilling your exact marketplace calling. And the thing that you're like super jazzed to get up and tell your friends, oh, look exactly what I'm doing. Sometimes it happens that, you know, but most the time your first job is not there.
00:03:38
Patrick
So, Ken, that's what we see on university campuses. What do we see for people that are already out there in the market?
00:03:44
Ken Freire
Yeah, I think when they're in the market, you're trying to leverage half of your waking hours every day towards a more purposeful impact. Meaning you're like, okay, I'll do my nine to five, but then I'll try to be more impactful.
00:03:56
Ken Freire
I have other activities that I do, other actions that I'm doing. You're more involved in your church, which is not bad. I'm not trying to say none of those things are wrong, but it's almost like you have that separation in your mind between what you at work and what, quote unquote, ministry may look like.
00:04:09
Patrick
Yeah.
00:04:13
Patrick
We were just talking with another guy earlier this week and he's like, oh yeah, be great. Well, let's put someone up in a job for 40 hours a week and they can do ministry on the weekends. And I just, we like almost stopped the meeting like, bro, like that's the, that kind of thinking is the problem.
00:04:27
Patrick
I didn't say it just like that, but I almost, I was more gentle.
00:04:27
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:04:30
Patrick
But I think that as professionals, we got to think about this link more intentionally. I mean, just look at companies. Sometimes you like look at how the best companies in the world are run and they're pointing their efforts usually towards like a vision and then a mission statement.
00:04:43
Patrick
Why do they do that? Like if companies are just a company, They declare those things so they can have a specific clarity about where am I going? Who do I want to serve?
00:05:09
Patrick
So that's what we're going to jump into this today. So we can avoid this issue, Ken, of like, well, like, why even try if it's kind of so far away or it feels so unattainable?
00:05:19
Patrick
Like, why even try is kind of the attitude. mean, we're going to get after that today, Ken. So first of all, is there any science to back this up about, like, why should I even write this down?
00:05:24
Ken Freire
Bye.
00:05:29
Patrick
Because that's what we're saying. figure it out and write it down. What's the science behind that?
00:05:35
Ken Freire
Research consistently shows that writing down goals significantly increases the likelihood of achieving them. A well-known study by Dr. Gail Matthews at Dominican University found that people who wrote their goals down were about 42% more likely to accomplish them compared to those who only thought about them.
00:05:54
Ken Freire
I want you think about that 42%. So if you were all of a sudden saying, hey, I have clarity on where I'm going and what I'm trying to do.
00:06:04
Ken Freire
And you write those down and you can see them every day. You're going to way more focused.
00:06:10
Patrick
That's right. But you're probably listening going, like, write what down, Patrick? Like, this is still difficult. All right, we're going to break it down for you super clear and easy. When I'm talking about this on stages in front of people, I give a statement about what we think marketplace calling is, right? And so when we're talking with larger groups of people, what we like to lay out in front of them is a vision for, you know, like, how does God actually direct you? And so here it is. Your marketplace calling is...
00:06:37
Patrick
God's active direction and guidance for you to bring his kingdom on earth through your faithful work unto him. And to make that even more specific, here's a, for you engineers or people that love math out there, here's a simple math problem. It's your what, which is your skills, plus your why, which is like a problem or a mission you want to solve in the world, plus your where or a context. Okay, so what plus why plus where? Skills plus a problem plus a context. So let's just dive into each one of those. Ken, what do we mean when we say like your skills?
00:07:15
Ken Freire
Yeah, this is all about like what abilities has God placed in your hands? What are the things that you're good at? Like, for example, you may be good at math. You just talked about math and engineers, right? You may be good at marketing. You may be good at finance, operations, leadership, people skills, public communication. There's so many things. There's actual things you do with your hands like mechanics, right?
00:07:36
Ken Freire
Doctors, nurses. There's so many different skill sets that come along with that. And we want you to almost take an inventory of all those skill sets.
00:07:45
Patrick
Yep. And you could even, mean, you could look at like a StrengthsFinder tools. Like there's so many different like skills inventories that you could like start with.
00:07:51
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:07:52
Patrick
But I would challenge you like just come up with a handful of them. We like in Operate with Purpose, we have people come up with five skills that they think are the most marketable skills that companies or organizations might want.
00:08:02
Patrick
Now, the second one skills plus a problem or a mission. we like to think about this as God sized problems that are affecting the world. So if you hang out with us at all, yes, it might be a problem that like, you know, your zipper keeps getting stuck when you're trying to like zip up your zipper and hate that stupid zipper.
00:08:21
Patrick
But like, we're talking about much, much bigger problems here. So I love it.
00:08:24
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:08:26
Ken Freire
not talking about first world problems.
00:08:27
Patrick
This is not personal. It's not first world problems. So my friends, Justin Forman, Henry Kasner, Solving the World's Greatest Problems. I love how they articulate some of these problems. And also friends at Praxis do something as well with opportunities for redemptive imagination. But just to list off a few of them, there are some real obvious ones like violence and sickness and poverty and economic exploitation. mean, even human trafficking, right? There's ones that lean a little more spiritual. So many people are going to die and go to hell because they don't have access to the gospel. They've never heard it one time.
00:08:59
Ken Freire
Thank you.
00:08:59
Patrick
And as Christians, that is a unique thing that we believe, that our job is to actually be about telling people and giving them a chance, giving them a shot to hear about the good news of the kingdom of God. And we believe that it's actually on the church, and it's our job do that. So that's a big problem. Or a Bible translation is another one.
00:09:17
Patrick
Like people don't even have the ability to read the Bible. Or it could be like, hey, some people, Patrick, don't even have clean water or they're polluting the environment. Like there's so many massive things, creation care kind of topics. And so there are ways to kind of narrow down a problem or mission in the world.
00:09:34
Patrick
It's not to say that, you know, one problem is worth solving and the other is not solving. What we're saying here is which one are you drawn to that you feel like God has given you a desire towards solving, right?
00:09:48
Patrick
That's because I feel like clean water is a major issue in the world. just don't feel like my life and skill set is designed to try to help specifically with that problem. But I'm so grateful for the brothers and sisters that are solving that problem and who are called to that, right? Which is great. So that's what we mean when we say a problem or a mission. And we like to try to dream at a pretty big global scale as much as possible. And yes, there might be a more local application of that. But Ken, tell us what the third part, what we mean by aware or a context
00:10:19
Ken Freire
So by context, we're talking about like the people, a demographic or a place, right? Like a geographical place. So you'll hear this where some people might say, hey, have a heart for Southeast Asia or Africa or different locations around the world. And that's OK. But sometimes it's also a people group, right? They're like, I really want to work with this type of people group or a demographic. Like, I really love working for young people.
00:10:44
Ken Freire
It could also be things like small business owners or startups or undeserved communities, right? Or students, right? College students, you may have that passion. You want to look at all these different applications, right? So the what, what are your skill sets?
00:10:58
Ken Freire
Then you want to look at the problem and then who are the people? And the intersection of all those three things is one, where you might feel called to. But two, then you could start writing a mission statement or sorry, a marketplace calling statement to define these things because that becomes your North Star.
00:11:14
Patrick
Yep.
00:11:18
Patrick
Yeah, and it functions a little bit like a mission statement if you're wondering, like, what's the difference? They're similar, except this is really focused on what you're doing with your 80,000 hours in your career.
00:11:29
Patrick
So that's great. So thanks for walking us through that. And there's even, if you want to go, like, for extra credit, you can even get into more of the effective altruism movements for Christians. And there's some really cool work in the EA space about thinking about where is the highest impact of leveraging your career. Some people are in an earn to give. Like, I'm just going to try to maximize and make millions and millions and millions of dollars because I find that the best place to use my skill set is actually to try to earn as much as I can to donate some. What we're saying here is,
00:11:59
Patrick
Wouldn't it be cool if you can also leverage your skill sets and what you're doing for those 80,000 hours to even be part of the problem, fixing some of those issues, creating innovative companies, helping new products and services solve some of these problems with the marketplace, not just with charity and donations, which is typically a typical Christian charitable approach to these problems. Yeah. So Ken, maybe you can help us round the corner here and kind of get towards what is like a better, what's a better truth that we need to start believing help us overcome this. I'll say this inaction of a lot of people throwing up their hands saying, Patrick, that all feels too big. It feels like it's 10 or 20 years away. How do we try to, know, challenge people with that?
00:12:38
Ken Freire
Yeah, I think your purpose becomes more clear when you have a defined direction. And that defined direction is not perfection. It's just working, right? It's just progress. It's making movement. And that's what we call the marketplace calling statement.
00:12:57
Ken Freire
Now I want you to think about how this marketplace calling statement works. Okay, so if you think about all these things, if you were to take it in one sentence, you want to say, want to use my blank skills to solve blank problem for blank people or context.
00:13:14
Ken Freire
And the reason why this becomes important is because then you could say, hey, when you're looking at jobs, right, say you're trying to search jobs, you don't start by just opening up Indeed, right, and just scrolling down.
00:13:14
Patrick
Yeah.
00:13:26
Ken Freire
You say, hey, what do I feel called to? Let me start by, let me start doing that. Let me start looking for jobs that fit there or help me grow the skill sets that I need or get closer to the people that I want to work with or the problem I want to work with. You start to navigate that process. So the truth that you need to know is don't wait for the perfection.
00:13:48
Ken Freire
Work on progress. Work on the North Star. You have a direction. Start moving forward.
00:13:53
Patrick
That's right. And some examples might be like, I want to use my analytical skills to solve financial inefficiencies for small business owners. Or maybe I want to use my operational leadership capabilities to help scale startups to make companies that are going to bless frontier markets. There's so many different ways to do this. I met an engineer in our program called Operate With Purpose. And he's like, Patrick, I'm an engineer. I'm good at software stuff. And I care about homeless people. Not sure how to put all these things together. And we are working through the research process and working through our RISE program within Operate With Purpose. And he got some clarity real fast. Like, whoa, what if...
00:14:30
Patrick
I could actually use my engineering skills to build AI guided experiences for low-income people to break through to avoid becoming homeless.
00:14:40
Patrick
And he's like, whoa. Getting that guy to a moment where he can actually have an epiphany like that, it's a good example of someone who started with, how do these worlds even touch and is trying to link them together with now he's working on that marketplace calling statement. So that's an example of what that could look like in your own work, which can operate with purpose.
00:15:00
Patrick
Is this a good moment to mention that?
00:15:03
Ken Freire
Yeah, let's do it, man. You're already in there.
00:15:04
Patrick
Let's jump on in.
00:15:05
Ken Freire
Go for
00:15:05
Patrick
I already kind of went a little bit into it. So just to kind of continue it out, on our website, we have under the resources section, you'll see operate with purpose. It's a program that we're using university campuses across the country, but also young professionals. We got people that are, you late 20s into their still going like, man, I just want trying to figure out, think I need to make a change. think I just want to get clearer on where God is putting me because I don't think it's climbing this ladder at this company or staying in this industry. And so it's basically a program that's wrapped up in about six sessions and you can consume these sessions at your own pace. And then what's cool is like you're going throughout Remember we're talking, Ken, about like you don't just go to Indeed.
00:15:46
Patrick
We have a custom GPT called Research Ray. And you have a short chat conversation.
00:15:50
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:15:51
Patrick
And within about two or three minutes, Ray comes back with amazing list of like super relevant organizations, businesses, podcasts, conferences, all the stuff that like launches you into figuring this out.
00:16:05
Patrick
So you can try to clarify, know, more about your marketplace calling statement. So that's just one little thing that we do within Operate with Purpose. But yeah, we'll put a link to that in the notes and we post this one out there.
00:16:16
Patrick
But that's just a quick plug on Operate Purpose.
00:16:19
Ken Freire
Yeah, and that's a free thing that you could do with us. would encourage all of you to check that out, especially if you're trying to figure out, hey, I would really love help in creating a mission statement like this, or sorry, I did it again, but a marketplace calling statement like this, right?
00:16:33
Patrick
Yes, yes.
00:16:34
Ken Freire
Where you find clarity and you feel excited about that. And once you do, then the next thing comes, and that's actually creating a roadmap where for yourself on how do you actually make this thing not just an idea, but reality.
00:16:51
Patrick
Hmm.
00:16:52
Ken Freire
That's next week's episode. come join us and hang out with us. And until then, stay blessed and continue to operate with purpose.