E83: How Understanding Human Motivation Helps Solve the Toughest Crimes — and Humanize Offenders with Eric Robinson

Most people never imagine how a pastor's heart can beat in sync with an FBI agent's pursuit of justice—Eric Robinson's story proves it's possible. Eric Robinson is a retired FBI special agent with 24 years in the bureau who transitioned from preaching sermons to chasing criminals. He shares gripping stories from investigations into organized crime, child trafficking, and national security that will challenge your assumptions about what true courage looks like. Discover how 

Eric's background as a pastor uniquely shaped his approach to crime-solving: treating even the worst offenders as human beings, understanding motivations rooted in safety and stability, and managing the emotional toll of confronting evil daily. We also explore the power of rigorous training, the value of storytelling for healing, and the surprising parallels between faith, discipline, and justice. His upcoming book offers an inspiring behind-the-scenes look at how ordinary people can do extraordinary things when they combine humility with skill—and this episode is your front-row seat to that story.

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https://preachertobreacher.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Today's guest has an unexpected career path. Eric spent 12 years as a pastor before realizing the emotional weight of carrying other people's struggles was taking a serious toll on his health. That realization led him to make a dramatic career change, becoming an FBI special agent, where he spent the next 24 years investigating everything from financial crimes to crimes against children and human trafficking. Let's roll right in. All right, welcome to the Work Sucks But I Like It podcast. Today we have Eric Robinson. He's a retired FBI agent after 24 years as a special agent. His work has spanned crimes including white collar, counterterrorism, crimes against children, gangs, drugs, and public corruption. He was also a pastor, which is very interesting, and I want to hear more about that, and is finishing a book called Irreverend, From Saving Souls to Chasing Sinners in the FBI. He has seen the good and bad in people. Eric, welcome to the show. Tony, thanks a lot. This is exciting because I get to talk about just work. Love it. Well, that's what we do, Eric. So define work for us today. Oh, uh, golly.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

What did you give me a heads up on these things? I I had I had a colleague once who was testifying on a case she wasn't familiar with, and without preparation, the prosecutor says, Well, can you explain what a download is? And she's like, Um, it's it's it's when you download. So yeah, like I hit me up ahead of time. So work for me was always you know, it's just what your everyday is, what your career is about. I've always told my kids, if you can make a living earning money for your family, that's noble. If you can have a job that also provides a benefit to society, boy, you're doubly blessed. And I can had work in two careers that had both. So I I bless times four, maybe, I guess. So that was a benefit for me. And I guess if you love work, you can get by with it sucking.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Fair enough. We definitely want to go into the parts that more or less suck today and what you're doing to make it not suck. But Eric, I'm very curious. Let's start back when you became a pastor. I want to start there in the timeline of kind of your work and we'll grow from there. What made you take that sort of path in your life then?

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Yeah, I grew up in a Christian home. We went to church each week. It wasn't a dominating thing. It was just part of what we did and who we were. Didn't feel bad about it. I enjoyed going to church. And I had a precocious knowledge of the Bible when I was a kid. I was the one who always raised his hand in Sunday school because I had the answers. Later in college, my faith became more personal. I understood the Bible more, and I came to a point where I thought, oh, you know, this is something that I enjoy. It's something that I think is a need. And yeah, maybe I want to do this. So took that path to get into ministry. My initial idea was I was going to be a missionary to Muslim countries. I had gone on a missions trip to the Middle East when I was in college. When my wife and I got together, though, there were some family issues that made that not a good decision. So stayed in the U.S. in a traditional path of youth pastor, assistant pastor, and then lead pastor of a church.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

No, that's awesome. So you did that for 12 years, right? So I guess now walk us through. I'm very curious to hear this transition. You go from pastor to now FBI agent. What did what was missing, I guess, in the work as a pastor that you saw the potential in as an FBI agent?

SPEAKER_02 3:54

What was missing was relief. Uh huh. I I really enjoyed pastoring. And when I got to be the senior pastor and lead the church, then I was deciding we're going to do church this way. We're going to be a church of outreach. We're going to welcome people. If if we make mistakes, we're going to err on the side of grace. I'll let God judge me for being too uh welcoming to people. And I loved that, but I lacked the capacity to separate myself from people's problems. And that caused stress. And that stress caused daily headaches every single day, every day for two years. And so though I in I thought this is great. We're successful by every measure. I I can't do this anymore. And I just got to a place where I knew either my body was going to stop in some catastrophic way, or prior to that, I I need to find some sanity. So told my wife I need a job with less stress. So I joined the FBI.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

I guess again, I don't know much about the FBI. So I guess like what in your mind said that was going to be less stress. I'm just very curious.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

So and I just use that as shorthand. There were so many other features as well that I think get into the work sucks part. I often told people that I will spend eternity in heaven with some of the people I hate the most. So, you know, great Christians, and then there's ones who are horrible. And I have no reason to doubt their salvation theologically, but just people who are mean to me, who are backstabbing. What was great about moving into the FBI is here are Christians, and you expect them to act the way you think a Christian should, and then they don't. And then here's criminals. And I'm not surprised when they act like criminals because that's what they're doing. That's more and so the disappointment's not there. I could come to a place where I had things that I could succeed in that I could resolve. I had a purpose to bring some justice or accountability, got that done, good result. In the church, I'm working with people, they've got problems. Not like people's problems are going to be solved, like, congratulations, we we've reached perfection. And so it was just ongoing and demanding for me. And despite that there obviously were was stress in the FBI, wasn't the same and it just washed away.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

So interesting. So I guess, you know, Eric, what is the process for applying to be an FBI agent?

SPEAKER_02 6:38

Well, this was 25 years ago, so it's changed a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Uh the the internet was uh nascent. It was just a babe. So it was robust enough that I could download the 60-some pages to fill out to tell the federal government, everybody I've been in contact with since I was 16 years old, everywhere I lived, and you have extended family. Can't Google stuff. I have to make phone calls. So you make that application. If you're going to be an agent, you have to have a clean record, no drugs, bachelor's degree, at least three years experience outside of college. And then you you apply. Applicant coordinator looks at it, says, Yeah, this guy looks like he could be a candidate, pushes you on to phase one testing, which is an aptitude test. And so I took that in Buffalo, New York, and I remember leaving going, I gave it a try. And then they called back, and I thought, oh, that's great. I I don't know how I passed that. And then you're on to written exam, and I thought, okay, now I've got this more in my hands, and an oral exam where you can tell how you've dealt with obstacles and what results came from that. And I thought, I'm good with that. Fit test, I was in shape, still am to a degree, different shape. Sure, sure. Fit test, background, physical, and then the polygraph, which is uh the worst thing that a human can experience.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

I can only imagine that, right? It's not fun. Walk us through, Eric, a typical day. Now I know like that kind of is seems like an odd word to say with your line of work being an agent, but what was kind of a typical day? Because when I think of FBI agent, I'm not gonna lie, I don't know anything about it. I think of the movies, right? You were totally badass, you know, you probably were. Yeah, I guess like walk us through that day.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

Uh if if you made a movie about the typical day for an FBI agent, it would be rated R for profanity because you're you're yelling at the computer for not working right, and your stupid password expired, and I'm on the phone with tech support saying, I know I'm not supposed to do this, but I'm looking at the sticky note and I'm typing in the password and it's not working. But but the usual day is like we're either beginning an investigation, and we'll have probably four or five, maybe more going on at the same time. But then there's like our main one. And so I'm either at the beginning, I'm finishing up another one, and I'm going through the process of analyzing phone records that maybe I got, depending, depends on what violation you're working. Uh, I'm I've set up interviews where I'm setting them up. I'm looking at uh the background of this criminal, of what does the social media look like, working with my analysts to say, hey, can you get into this guy for me? And depending on the violations, it could be it could be very broad with the financial ones. You know, you're pounding paper, you're doing interviews from victims. With when I work crimes against children, our mandate was to uh get pimps who were trafficking teenage girls. And so a lot of that was uh federal social work, where my partner and I are knocking on a door talking to a 15-year-old who is at risk or known to be prostituting. When I was working that, my wife would say, Oh, Eric, what what's on the schedule today? And I would I would yell at her and say, I don't know. I know what I have planned, but some runaway girl is gonna foul up my whole day, and you know, and then here you go.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

How would how did you handle your emotions? I can only imagine, again, you're going from pastor, you're hopefully seeing the good in people, you know, these values you want to uphold in your life and their lives. And then you got these people that are doing this horrific things. Like, how did you manage your emotions like through that process?

SPEAKER_02 10:34

In each case, whether I am looking into someone who's a criminal or I'm engaging with them post-arrest or an interview along the way, I I'm treating them like a human. So the idea that this this man's a monster, he's not a monster, he's a human who's done this thing, that thing, and that thing. And part of it too is getting to understand that, at least it was for me, that it was valuable for me to not allow it, but to get into what's driving this person. Drug dealer, why is he doing it? Okay, well, he needs money. He sees this as amoral, and so he knows it's against the law, he's just doing it. Gang members are involved because broken homes needing to get into a group, have some meaning that way. You know, violence comes from violence against them. So there's there was a lot to it, which then makes it much easier. But what was remarkable about that is that now I'm I'm not just working with this homogeneous unit in my church where pretty much everybody's coming from a similar background, similar socioeconomic status in the same town. But now I'm sitting down with a 15-year-old prostitute, interviewing her in her grandma's apartment. Four of us, me and my partner, knee to knee. Gal says, Don't worry, she can't hear a thing. And while we're sitting there, this young girl's telling us about all these men that she's engaging with, and Granny's just sitting there with a you know, unknowing smile on her face, and and that stuff's crazy. Like I didn't expect I'd be doing that.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

So, what do you think motivates people more, Eric? I mean, I guess like looking at, you know, again, people in the at the church and then these other like you said, like you humanize it, right? They're still people, they are still people. But what what have you seen in terms of like what motivates people more? Is it like fear, rewards, is it belonging, meaning? What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Yeah, I I think a lot of it is is safety and stability. Uh-huh. So uh again, going back to the teen prostitutes, they're trying to survive, they're making money, they're trying to get away from adults, parents who are absent, harmful, drug addicted. They're now clinging to a man who loves them, you know, the this pimp who's manipulating. The pimp is looking for stability in his community, uh, a group, uh, a society in that s small pimp society that says, this is what makes you a man, this is what makes you stronger by having a stable of girls, financial crimes, you know, looking for stability to make money. Not nothing's ever enough. Working with some of the idealized extremists, some of the terrorists. I mean, they're looking to stabilize threats that they perceive from other groups. We had one man who firebombed a church because they were uh turning kids gay or something. You know, so he he legitimately was uh thinking he's protecting them because he was so off into this Christian idealism that that was a good thing. He was, I think, trying to stabilize his uh his uh community by keeping kids from this horrible crime of being gay.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

I love your kind of systematic view, right? In terms of like thinking in terms of safety and stability. I guess like, you know, we all love a happy ending. And again, I keep thinking like you're this this actor in this really awesome movie, right? And then the about FBI agents. I guess like what kind of percentage were you able to, I guess, resolve these cases? Like, have there been things left open?

SPEAKER_02 14:18

I guess what I'm just curious, like what kind of yeah, well we have a pretty good Yeah, no, I mean we have a pretty good success rate because the FBI's mandate is is to work enterprise investigations where we have the time to dig to the root and then find the breath. There are, if you're asking, like, hey, how does the story end for me? The story almost always ended with conviction, guilty plea, and then we don't know how things go. You know, if guys turn around, if if these young, if these victims are getting better. But to your question, we also then work with, and this is a frustration that like any investigator has, I have knowledge that here's a group of ten men, let's say, who are in a conspiracy, they are guilty, they have definitely committed crime. Okay, we're only going to indict seven of them. And so here's three that I know are criminals, and there will be no legal justice. Like, you know, that's where hopefully, you know, the God part comes in and says, hopefully God gets them. But there's so many times where it's it's not even that where guys that you know committed crime, but there's these ancillary pieces where they're helping, they're knowing and winking at it, they're assisting in some way, but not in a uh illegal criminal way. Just the kind of thing that you and I would not patronize, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Interesting. How have you managed kind of like that? I mean, you talked about like they get the seven, this three's still missing. Do you still find you're attached to it, or you can let that go because it's just kind of a job, if you will.

unknown 15:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

There's, I mean, there's some frustration, and I'm gonna fight with the prosecutor about it to get what I think is right, and then you move on.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

And and that was a learning process a bit. It's not like I was furious when I was young and then didn't care, apathetic at the end. But there is that learning of I I understood now being in trial, that the prosecutor can't risk going to trial. There's some things he will risk. If it's like high value, he's like, we'll go to trial no matter what. But they've got to look at those guys and okay, so those three, they're either weak or they're weak enough that they'll go to trial. And now this guy's tied up for too long. And then I saw on the other end, I'm trying to get a search warrant written on a completely separate case, but I can't get my prosecutor because he's in trial or he's got a prep. And so you go, yeah, that's just that's the system, that's how it'll be.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

No kidding. So when I think of FBI, I think of high confidentiality. You mentioned moving from you know, the being a pastor to an FBI agent. You had this sort of work life distinction that you wanted to make. Walk us through how work and life was being an FBI agent. Could you separate the two?

unknown 17:10

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Was there a blur? Yeah. No, no, easily separated. And and depending on what violation I'm working, you know, I'm sharing things with my wife and family because I can tell general details. You know, I was out on surveillance, guy got away today, or we're on the wire and he said, I'm being followed. There's a blue caprice behind me, and like none of us are driving a blue caprice. This guy's just paranoid, paranoid for good reason, but I'm I'm able to share some of those things. Working, public corruption, national security, you know, then not as much. Uh, I was part of the team that was called into my supervisor's office one day in Chicago, closed the door, and he said, I'm gonna tell you something that you can't tell your family, you can't even tell other agents. And that's when we learned that we were gonna be on a wiretap uh on a sitting governor, Rod Blagojevich of Illinois. So that was one time where I didn't tell my wife a thing. She's like, Why are you leaving on a Sunday? I said, I got to work, and I'm not even telling her that I'm on a wiretap in case something you know leaks through. But otherwise, when I was home, I was home. I didn't go to the bars afterwards, I didn't golf all weekend. There were many nights I was out late or mornings I left at one in the morning, times I was gonna miss, and I felt like those were excusable if every other time I'm committed to you know family life.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Awesome. What other well, I guess what were the work hours? What were the work hours like? Was it your typical 40-hour work week? Obviously, not you say you're going on Sundays, missing your golf time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Yeah. Officially, and I remember being worried about this when I got in. Officially, it's 8 15 to 5, and then you have to put in an extra two hours every day, too. So I remember I get on a drug squad, and and and then you're getting paid for that.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

So I remember being on a drug squad and talking to one of the more senior guys saying, Well, how how do we do this? And he said, Brother, don't worry about it. Uncle Sam will get it out of you. And I gotta tell you, like the first 10, 15 years that I was in the bureau, I was definitely in the red as far as time served. Like they got much more out of me. Um there are many days, like I said, on SWAT. I'm leaving at one or two in the morning to prep and you know, then just a zombie the rest of the day.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

So this is the work sucks, but I like it podcast second. You've kind of already talked about things that have sucked, right? Kind of the time, you know, and also not, I guess, bagging all the bad guys, if you will. Of the things that have sucked, what have you done to make them not suck? What are some things that you've kind of overcome in terms of the suckiness of that work that you were doing? Talking about it.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

Okay. It it's amazing. Agents will have so many stories, and and I write about these. I, you know, looking back and go, that's amazing. That we have many remarkable stories. I can pull a guy on the phone right now and say, hey, just tell me a crazy story, and he'll tell me a crazy story. Everybody's done them. Like my cases aren't special. I've had a few special ones, but they're not unique because other agents can go, yeah, here you go. Let me tell you about this time. But but we'll also recount things that are, you know, in retrospect, honestly, survivor stories. So we'll tell a story about, hey, remember that time Phil and one other operator went into the top deck and it was pitch black, and Phil ended up stepping on the guy trying to hide underneath clothes on the floor, and he had a loaded shotgun in his right hand. And like, and we're laughing, like, oh yeah, man, people could have been killed. Like, oh my yeah. I mean, that's it's a horrible story. But everyone's laughing because here we are. We we got through it. And there's so many like that where many of the stories you're telling are there's they're stories of trauma, but we're getting them out and working through them, I think, in that way. Of just let me let me explain this this event that I'm saying is funny, and yet the public go, that's horrible. So is that what motivated you to write your book then to get these stories out? In some ways, when I got accepted in the FBI, I thought that this is amazing. And all throughout, there were many times where I would pause and think, This is amazing. Now I'm out and I look back and I think that was amazing. I was just a guy. I didn't have any special skills. And then in the FBI, I gained those special skills. I'd never handled a gun before. First, you know, first firearms in the academy. I'm skipping rounds off the ground 10 feet in front of me. And then I became a firearms instructor. And I put myself up against anybody. I wasn't the best, but I could beat anybody at some point. And I had no expertise in tactics. I became a tactical instructor because I was around good people, learning from them, then getting challenged, like, hey, you should go to a class, now bring this back, be there to help out. And I just picked it up along the way. And the FBI just soaked so much of that into me. It was great benefit.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Now I love those skills that you talked about picking up along the way. So one of the things we'd like to say, Eric, on the show is that success is not a matter of good luck, but good skills. Throughout all the skills that you've learned and acquired, what would you say is the most important skill to your success at the work you do?

SPEAKER_02 22:53

So I'll say what I brought in was the most useful of being able to communicate with people. So while I came into the academy and I've got some guys who were FBI support staff, now becoming agents, former cops, former military, and they're like they have an understanding of what law enforcement does. Here's me coming in trying to understand the Bureau, and then I'm in a deeper hole because I don't even I don't know what cop life is like. But the advantage I had was I had 10, 12 years of learning people and learning how to listen and draw things out of them. So that gave me advantage later on. And then as far as what kept me safe was, especially being on SWAT, that regular training, I knew I was competent. I knew from watching these guys train with me weekly and then being in the real world operations, they were gonna get their job. They were at least as competent as me. So if ever I made a move and I was exposed, that guy next to me is gonna cover my exposed area, place his plates and rifle in a manner to defend me if need be. I was able to make calls when called upon to do it. So that made me feel safe such that when we were going to hit a house and we didn't know if a guy was going to violently oppose us, I didn't, I wasn't afraid. I was only thinking, what's my job? And do I have the equipment necessary to carry it out? And and and that brings a serenity where now I'm much more capable. I don't have something nagging at me. I can just move forward.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Well, it speaks to like the training too and the discipline. I think of like an athlete going in. I'm a big soccer fan. We got the World Cup here going on right now, 2026 in the U.S. Could you imagine a soccer playing being all nervous going into the game, right? To your point, you had to be steady, calm, so you could do your job, right? So I really, I really love that.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

Well, it but similarly, now if you put me on stage and say, teach, you know, play guitar, now well, I don't know if I'm nervous because I'm just so bad, but or or let's say sing. I'm I I'm not proficient at it. And so now the nerves come. But in that element, I know what I'm doing. I've done this so many times. Watch me do with my eyes closed.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

I love that, Eric. So I know you're you're still working on your book. What is your book aiming to do? What do you want readers when they pick up your book, what do you want them to take away?

SPEAKER_02 25:24

I think what they will take away is I could do that. Like this guy's not special. But then be amazed that but he got to do these remarkable things too. So I I was just Baptist pastor who then was a Baptist pastor in the FBI. And I've read many FBI books, and there's some awesome ones, and you get these stories where the story is the story itself is amazing. Like here's a guy who infiltrates the mob. Here's somebody who's, you know, was on HRT and Save People. And then you read mine and you go, Yeah, that guy's kind of like me. I could do that. And I think with that, then you get that insight of as you ask, this is what a normal investigation looks like. It's a normal investigation, but there's a lot of standout parts, the criminals and what they do, the stunts that we go through, the jokes that we play, the informants that are coming from some significant backgrounds that are now just sitting with me in a Panera bread and telling me high-value national security information.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

So, Eric, let me see if I can get this. So you're trying to show in your book the sort of like the the human side, the more normal day-to-day, along with the heroics, that people can be special?

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

It's what it's what I got to do. I I'm just an everyman. I didn't come from I mean, I worked with guys who came from special forces, and they were just they're no different than me. Like they came in here and I came in here, but now we're both in this level. But it's common. I was common, but then also getting to do something substantial. I had a buddy who went to Princeton and he told me once, uh, yeah, I was connecting with some friends and looking on Facebook, and so many of my classmates are doing amazing things, business leaders, doctors. And I said, AJ, you're on the FBI SWAT team. They all wish they were you.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Yeah. But we have that FOMO, Eric, right? And I guess that's where I want to kind of lead to this next question. What are your thoughts with the current landscape of today of online? How do we, how do we navigate this? And like your friend, right? He feels inferior when he's already got a pretty awesome life. Yeah. How do we navigate that? Like that's a real problem for people today.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

For me, it was having an appreciation. This is something that here's a little insight. A lot of FBI agents feel entitled. It it comes with that authority. And so, you know, they're the ones who will park wherever they want to park. And and they kind of, I'm like, I don't have that right. I'm I'm just a guy. And actually, I don't I don't know how much I deserve this badge and gun. I've lived up to it, but you're bestowed with this great honor. So uh a lot of people come with that entitlement. I came in with, I don't deserve this, but I'm gonna keep earning it.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

More humble.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

And so when some when so when somebody's saying I had this great life, I had buddies in the bureau who did some amazing things. I stayed as a field agent for 24 years. I had one of my great friends from the academy ended up being number three in the FBI. Wow. Now, now a single guy, so you know, he can bounce around. And I think that's amazing. But I think that's amazing that I got to know him. Like, great for him. I had I just wanted to do the investigations, the training, the SWAT. That for me, that was like that was remarkable enough.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

How do you get ranked? You mentioned he was number three. What's the ranking system? How does that work?

SPEAKER_02 29:06

It's it's on pull-ups, how many pull-ups you can do. So I'm just I'm kidding.

unknown 29:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

It's like, oh wow, must be really good. There's a site called FBI Hot or Not. And you know, so he you you move up to management. So he became a supervisor and then he becomes an assistant special agent in charge, which would be like a group of maybe four people who are number two in that field office. Then he became a special agent in charge, which meant he ran a city's office. He was part of the first fly team, which is a group of agents who would go overseas to interrogate high-value terrorist targets. So like now he's getting some cachet, some background, some experience. He moved up, he goes back to headquarters. He's head now, he's going to be uh a unit chief over this aspect of the FBI, then becomes a section chief and then gets tapped to be assistant deputy director. And I thought I I didn't expect it, but I'm not surprised.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

That's cool. That's awesome. So, Eric, I'm excited about your book. Hopefully, listeners of today's show will be excited as well. Where's a good place for them to land to, you know, when this thing's coming out? And do you have a timeline for when this thing's going to be launched?

SPEAKER_02 30:22

The book comes out in October. My wife's company, Weaving Influence, just began publishing books as well, and she's the one who pushed me into writing. They've been marketing authors for 14 years, and then they started saying, Oh, you know, we can publish too. Let's do this. So it comes out in October, and you can find me on LinkedIn at underscore Eric underscore Robinson. Or that's Instagram, LinkedIn. You put in Eric Robinson and FBI, you'll find me. Or you can go to my website, which is preacher to breacher.com.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

Love it. Eric, it's been a pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tony. One thing that stood out to me from this conversation is that every career comes with challenges, but not every challenge affects us in the same way. For Eric, the work of being a pastor became emotionally unsustainable, while the demanding and often dangerous work of the FBI gave him a clearer sense of purpose and healthier boundaries. His story is a reminder that meaningful work isn't necessarily the easiest work, it's the work that aligns with your strengths, your values, and the way you're wired. Whether he's talking about the importance of listening, relying on your team, or treating every human with humanity, Eric shows that remarkable careers are often built on ordinary skills practiced consistently. And that is the skill today. Write out your skills, reflect on how you are developing them throughout your day. And with that, we'll see you next time.