If you're reading this, it means you have somehow decided to stay subscribed to The Dream Job Podcast feed despite receiving exactly zero minutes of new content in the past three months. And if you're that dedicated to the work we're doing here, it's likely you were also listening in May when we had Dave McCloskey on the podcast. And if you were, you likely recall the solemn vow we made to our dear listeners that we would have Dave back on for a second episode to see how life was going after his first novel was released. This is that episode.  

When we last chatted with Dave, he was a former CIA analyst, a former McKinsey consultant, and an aspiring bestselling novelist, with the "aspiring" tag being passive-aggressively applied by us due to the fact that Dave's debut novel had yet to be released.  Well, we can now drop the "aspiring" tag and give Dave the credit that is his due as an actual novelist.

Damascus Station, Dave's debut novel came out in early October and has since gone on to sell several (at least seven) thousand copies, receive more than two hundred five star reviews on Amazon, and be named to a number of fall reading lists by the likes of Amazon, The Washington Post, Apple Books, and others. By nearly any measure, Damascus Station is an amazing success for a first-time author with zero reality TV credits or TikTok followers.

BUT...does that mean the path has been laid for Dave's career as a full-time novelist? Does it mean book #2 is destined for the same result? Does it mean he's living his dream??  Those are questions that need answers. And if we have to stage an impromptu, unplanned, mid-Winter podcast episode to get those answers...well, that's what we're going to do. So here it is. Hope you enjoy it! 

• Dave's Website
• Dave on Instagram
• Damascus Station on Amazon

It’s our last episode of the summer! Whether that makes this our Season Finale or our Series Finale remains to be seen. But at the very least, it’s the last episode we’re releasing for a little while. We didn’t want to float off into the audio ether without first (1) thanking everyone who has given us the gift of even five minutes of your time, and (2) attempting to put something resembling a finishing touch on our 2-year adventure in podcasting. 

In this episode, Onnie re-joins the podcast to engage in some meandering banter with Kent about what we’ve learned from the 50+ Dream Jobbers we've had on the pod – with a specific emphasis on the things we’ve learned but still refuse to apply. Kent and Onnie share updates on where they are in their own career journeys, describe what it feels like to be in the top 1% of all podcasts ever recorded, and discuss why it’s so important to let your friends know when they’re on speaker phone with children present. 

From the very beginning The Dream Job has been a labor of love. And while there have been times when it felt more like labor than love, it has also been a welcome diversion and the source of much enjoyment in a season when both of those things were desperately needed. So thanks for journeying with us! We hope you’ve enjoyed the conversations as much as we have. And if in the process you’ve come away with a deeper appreciation of yourself, your work, and what you want to be when you grow up, then that alone will have made it all worthwhile. Take it easy out there. Be good to one another. And get #BackToWork.

• Sarah on Instagram
• Amazon's Book Review Site

• Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng
• Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng
• The Husbands, Chandler Baker
• Winter Garden, Kristin Hannah
• The Great Alone, Kristin Hannah
• Count The Ways, Joyce Maynard
• Punch Me Up To The Gods,  Brian Broome

"Wunderkind" is a fun German word for "a person who achieves great success when relatively young." I can't think of a better word to describe our guest today.

Barely into his 30s, Matt Tresidder, is already at the helm of his second fast-growing tech startup. At the age of 26, with zero executive leadership experience, Matt was tapped to be the VP of Sales at Pushpay, a tech company providing donor management software to thousands of churches and nonprofits. He promptly led his team of 100+ sales reps and account managers through four straight quarters of record breaking and unprecedented growth. After taking a six month break to detox from quotas and end-of-quarter scrambles, he jumped right back into the startup vortex as Co-founder and (as of four months ago) CEO of Leadr, a people development platform that has just received $10 million in Series A funding. 

Matt steps back from the hustle this week to share how he's planning to spend that $10 million and to reflect on the half-decade he's spent in high pressure, high growth leadership roles. We talk about wins, regrets, culture drift, imposter syndrome, the endless hamster wheel that is sales, and I get him to share his philosophy on working with friends: "don't suck at your job and we'll get along fine." :) It's a great conversation with a guy who has taken the concept of "learning on the job" to new heights, and who has all the scars, perspective, and leadership chops to show for it. Give it a listen! And then get #backtowork. 

• Matt on LinkedIn
• Leadr on the web
• Leadr on Instagram

It's our 50th EPISODE!! And for the first time in over 18 months (and 47 episodes), we recorded this one in person with our guest. Was it worth the wait? Time will tell.  

In this episode, Kent swings by Orland Park Church in Orland Park, IL on an oppressively hot July day to chat with his good friend, Derek Buikema, about Derek's job as Lead Pastor of Orland Park Church.

After Derek attempts to derail the conversation by bringing up the story of Kent's disastrous audition for the Wheaton College Improv Team, Kent gets things back on track by shifting the focus back to Derek with some hard hitting questions about Derek's short-comings as a minister.

Just kidding. But they DO go deep on what life as the leader of a congregation of 1,000+ is really like. In a tight 30 minutes they touch on everything from the time Derek did four funerals in a single week to how he deals with congregational criticism to the most extreme responses he's ever gotten when he tells people "I'm a pastor." Being a pastor is one of the oldest, most intense, and most public professions around. Join us this week as we go behind the pulpit and into the life of Pastor Derek Buikema. And then get #BackToWork 

• Orland Park Church on the web
• Orland Park Sermons and Services on YouTube

When it come to amateur participation in endurance sports, most of us cannot imagine anything more ambitious or arduous than the 26.2 miles of a marathon. (And truthfully, most of us can't even imagine that.) But if you're our guest this week, you see the finish line of a marathon approaching and think, "halfway there." Literally.

Jacob Puzey is an ultramarathoner, performance coach, race director, and business owner.  In 2016, he set a world record by running 50 miles in 4:57:45 on a treadmill, beating the previous record by nearly an hour. He is a six-time national champion in cross-country, road and ultra championships, and has three national trail 50K championships to his credit. In 2017 he finished 37th overall at the Boston Marathon (out of a mere 30,000 runners) with a time of 2:26.52.

He hangs up the running shoes long enough this week to sit down with The Dream Job, and share how his childhood spent playing with pickaxes and rocks prepared him for the work he does today. We also talk about how he got the courage to walk away from two masters degrees and half of a PhD to go "all in" as a running coach, and about the inspiration he draws from his 70 year-old father's approach to his career. It's a wide-ranging and downright inspiring conversation that will make perfect background listening while you're wheezing through one of Jacob's warmup runs (aka: anything less than a half marathon). 

• Peak Run Performance
• Jacob on Instagram
• Jacob on Twitter

James Carbary didn't invent podcasting, but he's been hosting and producing them since the dark days when the only people with podcasts were Bill Simmons, Marc Maron, Ira Glass, and a bunch of Breaking Bad fans. (FYI: in podcaster parlance this era is generally known as B.S. - Before Serial) 

Since then, James has founded a B2B (business-to-business) marketing company, executive produced 100s of podcasts that have been downloaded millions of times, written two books (one for grownups, one for kids), gotten married, and has somehow found time to continue recording 100s of hours of podcast content each year. He's also accomplished a neat trick that so many entrepreneurs miss: he's turned something he loves (podcasting) into a business and has managed to not start hating it in the process. 

We talk this week about how he's managed to pull that off. And also about how he connects his personal values to his professional life, the importance of "the Goober Ratio" at any networking event, and how he keeps his dream job from taking over the rest of his life. It's a podcast, with another podcaster, about his company that makes podcasts. Doesn't get much more meta than that. Give it a listen! And then get #backtowork.

• James on LinkedIn
• [email protected]
• Entrepreneurial Operating System
• Sweetfish Media
• Content Based Networking (James's book)

Ironman Triathlons are widely regarded as the most challenging single-day athletic competitions in the world. (Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest is a close second.) On their own, each of the three events would represent a significant athletic achievement for anyone who accomplished them: swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, run 26.2 miles. Doing them all in a row in a single day is a Herculean achievement almost beyond comprehension. But for professional triathlete, Pedro Gomes, it's all in a day's work. Literally.

Pedro has been competing professionally on the Ironman Circuit since 2010. During that time, he has notched an impressive 25 Top 10 finishes in Ironman Length Races, including a third place finish last month in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho which qualified him for the Ironman World Championships in Kona, HI next month. 

Pedro takes a break from his insane training schedule this week to chat with us about how he turned his passion into his profession.  We talk about some of the "high highs" and "low lows" that come with life as an endurance athlete. Pedro shares how it feels to be nearing the end of his professional career. And we get hyped for Pedro's quest for the ever-elusive sub 8-hour Ironman. Let's face it, none of us are ever going to actually do an Ironman. So we might as well listen to someone talk about doing them. #BackToWork 

• Pedro's Website
• Pedro on IG (@PedroGomesTri)
• Pedro on YouTube

Of all the job-related superlatives that can precede one’s name, “New York Times Bestselling Author” has to be right up there with the best of them. (Maybe right behind “United States Ambassador to Fiji” and “TGI Fridays Employee of the Month”.) And it’s one our guest this week, J Ryan Stradal, has been hearing ever since his debut novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest hit the NY Times bestseller list in 2015. That was soon followed by the national bestseller The Lager Queen of Minnesota in 2019, and we catch him just as he has put the finishing touches on the manuscript for his third novel. 

We chat with J Ryan about his process as a writer, the numerous driver’s tests he failed as a teenager, and what a “good day” looks like for someone who’s done nothing but write fiction for 12 hours. We also talk a bit about some of the financial realities of being a writer and he delivers one of the best lines anyone has ever said on the podcast: “Trust me, there is nothing the world needs less than your novel.” 

It’s a warm and wide-ranging conversation with the writer of warm and whimsical books. Give it a listen! And then of course…get #BackToWork. 

• J Ryan's Website
• J Ryan on Twitter
• Kitchens of the Great Midwest
• The Lager Queen of Minnesota

J Ryan's Recommended Summer Reading: 

• Shoulder Season (by Christian Clancy)
• Four Dead Horses (by KT Sparks) 
• The Music of Bees (by Eileen Garvin) 

There was a time when nothing in the world sounded better than the thought of being a stay at home dad. (Mostly right after college when the crushing reality of a 40 hour work week was proving a difficult to stomach.) But then I had kids. And now there are few things that sound worse. 

But for Michael Voth, certified stay-at-home dad and our guest on the podcast this week, it's the most purposeful and life-giving job he's ever had. In fact, it was that stark contrast between the joy he felt raising his three boys and the drudgery he felt at his various jobs, that led him to ditch his 9-to-5 a few years back and dive headlong into fulltime fatherhood. And he hasn't looked back since. 

For this special, Father's Day Edition of the podcast (aka: the Dad Pod), we chat with Michael about the good, the bad, and the exhausting of his life as a stay at home dad. We talk about how he and his wife navigated that transition, any "dad hacks" he's picked up along the way, and how he stays sane while spending 90% of his waking hours with three people under the age of 8. 

Give it a listen! And then tell your favorite Dad how happy you are that they didn't throw you out of the cave when you were a kid. Because lord knows we all deserved it.