It cost money to take it each time, I'm sure.

It cost hundreds of dollars to take it every time.

And then I was buying study material.

I was studying for 600 hours.

And my poor wife, we had three kids at the time.

Every time I didn't pass, she's like, what are we doing? Because this is my own time and money that I'm putting into this, right? And so as I passed this exam, the third time I get the notification on my computer and it's like, you passed.

And most people would be like, yes, finally.

And that led you to start Actively Human, right? Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah, what a great question.

I, like I said, I got a job straight out of college working for a local firm in Fresno, California, worked there for over a decade, loved it, loved the people, the pay was good, the projects were good.

But there was something inside of me that wanted something different, wanted to mix it up, wanted something more.

I didn't know what that was, and I didn't feel comfortable working for the competition down the street because these guys had kind of made me who I was as an engineer, and it just didn't feel right.

And so my wife and I at the time had three kids, and I reached out to some mentors of mine, people that I knew in the industry, and said, hey, does anybody know an engineering firm, a structural engineering firm in the Salt Lake City area? Because- We had family there.

We went to school there.

And I'm curious, what what was the wake up call? Like,

Um, what was that process? Like, why, why did you, because that was a similar story to you or what was your, what was your vibe there?

So there's a huge parallel between you and I with coaching and fatherhood.

So I knew I wanted to be a father.

You weren't quite sure.

It sounds like you were in the sports space, the coaching space, mentor space, whatever that was your whole life.

I did not want to do that.

That's not something I aspired to.

But I think there's also a side of entrepreneurship that – shouldn't that should be shown on social it's not all sunshine and rainbows you know so anyways that's my that's my two cents

Sure.

I grew up in California, lots of earthquakes there.

I now live near Salt Lake City, also lots of earthquakes here.

And so top of mind for us is life safety, human life, protecting other humans, and it's something that doesn't get understood or people don't understand that about what structural engineers do, that a lot of it is that life safety.

But the transition for me i- in my career as a structural engineer becoming a coach and starting a business called Actively Human was that I felt, for me personally, I felt a huge creative void in what I was doing as an engineer.

I was sitting behind a computer, cran- cranking out numbers, doing calculations, and I wasn't interacting with people, and I wasn't creating.

I think it's deeply human to create-

Yep.

up dad

yeah it was awesome he he loved it and and he was he was great at what he did and i grew up in the back shop after school my mom worked there too so i'd go and hang out at the jewelry store and as a kid i my perception was that business was chaotic and it was a struggle and the finances were up and down whether that was true or not i don't know that was my perception as a kid of business and i thought i don't want this so for 35 years of my life i thought i'm not going to do that i'm going to go to college i'm going to get a job and i'm going to have benefits and a paycheck a consistent paycheck there's nothing wrong with that i did that for for many many years but i got to the point like i said earlier where what i valued was different than the life i was living so i wanted more time freedom to be with my kids to go to sports i wanted to not miss out on things i wanted to make more money to be quite frankly i you know there's a ceiling to what you can do as an employee sometimes financially and i Because I wanted to travel and I wanted to be with my kids more and I wanted to have these experiences.

And so I got to the point where, again, there's no villain in the story.

It's just that I didn't want what I had signed up for.

And I felt like I wanted to take a stab at this business thing, at this entrepreneur thing.

And the one thing I wasn't gonna do was do exactly what I just described was not what my dad did.

My dad did wonderful things, but what other people tend to do when they start a business is have two jobs, right? And so it felt very frustrating and confusing to me to try to figure that out.

And so