Podcast summary and Notes on "psychohobbyist"

017 - The Real Bread Engineer w/ Zach Pereyo Briarwood Bakery

If you took a look into engineer Zach Pereyo’s Silicon Valley garage on any given week, you won't find him hunched over behind a screen. Instead, you’d find him pulling loaves of natural bread out of ovens for his passion startup, Briarwood Bakery.

As a Google engineer, a 17-time endurance event participant, father, and partner— Zach has seemingly always been good at multitasking. Now, with orders lining up, he can officially add the title of bread master to his resume.

In today’s episode, Arwin and Sissi join Zach and his partner Amanda in their home, to hear the story behind Briarwood Bakery. Listen in to find out how discovering a passion for baking helped him to work through major loss while injecting more meaning into his life.

Episode Timeline:

[00:00] Intro
[01:21] The story behind Fight 2 Finish
[04:15] Meet Zach and his passion for bread
[09:27] Briarwood Bakery and a lesson in bread history
[18:20] Health benefits of eating real bread
[19:31] How important is it to feed your soul?
[29:40] GORUCK events and meeting his partner Amanda
[25:22] A challenging backpack event pre 1000
[37:44] Deciding to retire from endurance events
[41:08] Being your own worst critic
[49:10] How Bread making parallels life
[52:21] Knowing how to tell real bread from fake
[59:38] Building the business and looking to the future
[01:06:00] Where to find Briarwood Bakery
[68:56] Outro

Resources Mentioned:

GORUCK Events

Standout Quotes:

“It does not pay the bills as well as being an engineer but sure, it gives my life a lot more meaning and a lot more passion” -Zach [7:04]
“I think that really is important to kind of just feed the beast and feed your own curiosity because you never know what you're gonna unlock.” -Arwin [23:03]
“there's a point at which you feel like you're gonna die and the demons are telling you to quit and then you get the light you know, the morning light comes and you just feel new again.” -Zach [36:25]
“Sometimes the failures are just as important as successes, right? To help guide you to where you need to go, right? It's a path that you don't need to take anymore. Because you went down that already. But now you know.” -Zach [48:59]