Memoirs to Millions

On this Round Table conversation with Asher, Joshua, and Adaeze, they catch up on what each of them is building: a global community for African women in STEM, and a listening room where music is used to keep people still. Then the conversation turns to what gets hidden along the way. Adaeze describes the mornings she got dressed for a job she had already lost. Joshua talks about owners of multiple...

Dr. Juana Bordas came to this country at three years old, unable to speak English. She is a founder of Denver's Mi Casa Resource Center and founding president of the National Hispana Leadership Institute, and she has written the books that gave a name to a leadership model communities of color had been practicing for generations: leadership built on collective advancement instead of individua...

On this Round Table conversation with Asher, Joshua, and Dr. Renesha, they get into whether AI would leave a mark if it vanished overnight, an idea Joshua couldn't feed for years until the tool showed up to feed it, and who actually owns the compute everyone is renting. They pull apart a speech that spread across a continent and land on a harder question underneath it: does owning the resourc...

On our first Round Table conversation with Asher, Joshua, Adaeze, and Dr. Renesha, we get into the role of a wife, whether a relationship can survive without ever defining its own basics, whether kids losing the ability to read is a crisis or an evolution, and the Lindsay Clancy trial, a case none of them try to resolve cleanly. They talk about roles inherited without agreement, the autopilot scri...

Today's guest is Jen Fontanilla, back for another conversation. This time, about a project we're working on: the Ontology Project. Jen has been a graphic designer for over two decades. We talked about what she's stubborn about, and today we're unpacking what ontology actually means. Ontology is the study of a thing, deeply. And that turns into an anthology: a book built by more...

Between the ages of ten and twelve, Joshua Fields' whole week revolved around church. Sunday school, night service, Monday prayer, Tuesday Bible study, choir rehearsal on Saturday. He didn't know it yet, but he was training, learning how to hold a room and move a crowd with nothing but his voice, watching his father, a minister, do the same thing from the pulpit. Years later, that instin...

He burned his own work uniforms in a bonfire so the business couldn't own him again. Richard Walsh built water features and steel sculptures for twenty years, internationally recognized, award-winning, until November 5, 2008, the day after the election, when his phone started ringing and he lost half a million dollars in a single day. A mentor did the math for him afterward: file bankruptcy n...

Adaeze Iloeje-Udeogalanya is the founder of African Women in STEM. In her TEDx talk, she made the case that cultural identity is the key to unlocking success in STEM. This time, the conversation goes somewhere she's never taken it publicly before. At three years old, growing up in Nigeria, she picked up a book and read it out loud to a stranger, just to be seen. That instinct stuck with her....

Dr. Ankit Agarwal is the founder of Breaking Mental Models. In this conversation, he and Asher take apart the words we use without ever checking what they mean: system, culture, tradition, environment, performance. It starts with a 4am wake-up call and ends with the quiet realization that success and failure were never opposites to begin with. Ankit tells the story of his grandfather waking at 3am...

On this episode of the Memoirs to Millions Podcast, Joanna Sanchez sits down with Asher for a conversation on kindness. They talk about the armor she built around her heart, the cover she kept redesigning so nobody would open the book, and the seven years she spent building a fitness business before burning it down to rebuild around somatic healing instead. They get into the difference between com...

They talk about ending a twelve-year relationship and becoming a full-time nomad. About stepping into work the world still calls taboo. About heartbreak as a door instead of a wound, and why freedom of time outranks freedom of money on her list. And they keep circling back to the same idea: surrender was never the white flag. It was the doorway. If you've ever built a box and called it safety...

The first person who doubted your story was you. A friend leans across the table. "You should write your book." Before the sentence lands, you answer for them. Who would read about my life? That is the first no. And you handed it to yourself. So take no for vitamins. A no is not a wall. It is fuel. It goes down rough and builds something you use later. Every one you cross off puts you cl...

She kept her curls tied back for years. Not straightened, just tucked away, in a place that didn't ask her to take up space. Alana Robinson is a life coach trained through the Hendricks Institute. She spent years reading a room before she said a word in it, matching the temperature so she could stay safe inside it. On this episode of the Memoirs to Millions Podcast, Asher reads Alana a list o...

In 2023, I looked up the symptoms of dyslexia. Before I understood why I was crying, the tears were already falling. I sat in them for thirty minutes. I am not formally diagnosed. What I have is recognition. A pattern I had carried for decades without a name. Then I built a system out of what I could finally see. Three moves: 1. Name the Villain 2. Find the Hero 3. Build the Sequence The sequence...

Dr. Ankit Agarwal is the founder of Breaking Mental Models. He teaches about 1,000 students a year how human behavior actually changes. In his first conversation with Asher, he walked through the Hindsight Trap and the journey that built him. This time, the two of them sit down to play a different game. Asher brings a list of maxims. He reads one cold, and Ankit takes it apart. What is the stronge...

What looks like a money problem is almost always a positioning problem underneath. Jen Fontanilla spent 25 years in graphic design for Hollywood film and video games. She was great at the craft and still could not see her own worth clearly. Then a friend trading stocks woke something up in her. She crossed over, spent a decade learning the financial side, and brought both worlds into one business:...

Every week I read the Memoirs to Millions Weekly Intel Brief live -- because getting better at reading your own work is part of the process. This week's brief: Shaken Not Stirred You were never afraid of the shake. You were afraid of what it turns you into. People know the James Bond line as being about a cocktail. But what was playing underneath was something else entirely -- about survival....

Every week I read the Memoirs to Millions Weekly Intel Brief live - because the smartest thing I can do for your memoir journey is stay sharp, stay current, and share what I'm learning in real time. This week's brief: Mine Your Memories For More Meaning Read the full brief here: https://m2mweeklyintel.com/brief/2026/22 --- Are you an author, coach, speaker, or entrepreneur ready to turn...

You stopped noticing your best move the day it became second nature. This is Brief #23 of the Weekly Intel - a newsletter I write and read aloud for the Memoirs to Millions community. Each brief is a short reflection on growth, business, and the patterns most people miss. This week: The Tree. What happens when the thing you planted quietly starts bearing fruit — and you almost walk past it. Read t...

Rachel Cronin was raised in 19 different states and moved more than 50 times before she graduated high school. Her father struggled with narcissism, the family followed his jobs, and the longest one lasted six hours. She found personal growth as a teenager, listening to a program on repeat in a house that called self-help a weakness. She did not just survive it. She turned it into her work. In thi...

Tiana Wrightnour built a coaching business helping driven women step into their power. For a stretch of her life, she was also in a relationship where speaking up felt unsafe. Where she tiptoed. Where she made herself smaller to keep the peace. She walked away. And the first thing she rebuilt was her voice. In this conversation, Tiana and Asher talk about the tension between being consistent and b...

Riley Gruppo spent nearly 8 years in the Army. She commanded soldiers. She led where few women had led before. Then she walked away from the rank, the title, and everything that told her who she was. What she found on the other side surprised her. In this conversation, Riley and Asher talk about the high of rapid growth, why no one is coming to save you, and how the same past can become a complete...

Dr. Ankit Agarwal is the Founder of Breaking Mental Models. In this conversation, he walks Asher through the Hindsight Trap, the Johari Window, and the bowl of water analogy he uses to teach how human behavior actually changes. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT DR. ANKIT AGARWAL Founder of Breaking Mental Models. Senior educator at the University of Adelaide. Two master's degrees, a PhD in organiz...

"I Was Spiritually Homeless" | Retired Army Captain Tiara Joseph on the Whisper That Saved Her In 2024, Tiara Joseph sat in her dark living room, high on multiple drugs, in the middle of a ritual she believed was healing her. She had the rank. The house. The kids. She had retired from the U.S. Army as a Captain four years earlier. From the outside, she made it. Inside, she was dying. The...