Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories

"Most people don't fail because they're doing too little... They fail because they're doing too much of what doesn't actually move the needle."   - Amy Lenius  Episode Summary  Amy Lenius didn't set out to become a personal development coach. She became one because, for years, no one could tell her what was wrong with her own body. Growing up with endometriosis b...

“I have never regretted going into an interaction with a victim, informant, or criminal, and employing curiosity.” — Eric Robinson   Episode Summary   For 12 years, Eric Robinson stood in a pulpit. For the next 24, he carried a badge. In this episode he tells Jeanne how a Baptist pastor from western New York walked into the FBI Academy having never held a gun — and spent the next two and a half de...

“Plant seeds, wherever you can, that will grow into trees that you will never sit under.” — Andrew Brummer Episode Summary: Andrew Brummer grew up in South Africa knowing early that the world wasn’t going to hand him anything. Born with a medical anomaly that set him apart, he learned from his mother that he couldn’t change what he looked like—but he could decide, every single day, who he’d become...

"The greatest good you can do for another is not to share with him your riches, but to reveal to him his own."  — Benjamin Disraeli   Episode Summary   David Ask has lived several lives at once — and somehow they all rhyme. He's a Nashville inventor who, with his brother-in-law, built the world's first thermostat guard, StatGuard Plus, now carried in more than 3,700 Home Depot...

“Somewhere between surviving and achieving, you forgot you were born sacred. Your soul has been waiting in the stillness of your heart for you to remember.”   Episode Summary   Sharon Madsen has spent 30 years doing work that's hard to put on a business card. She's a regulated health professional, a Reiki Master Teacher, and a self-described psychic medium — and the people who find her a...

“Through mindful touch, we reconnect and restore our wholeness and health.” — Dr. Greg Yuen   Episode Summary  When Dr. Greg Yuen was twelve, his grandmother died — and at the funeral, placing paper money on her coffin and touching her pillow to say goodbye, he was hit by the realization that one day he would die too. He handled the fear the way a kid does (a lot of Snickers bars) and made himself...

“Home is where the bike is!” — Chris Donaldson   Episode Summary  In 1979 a 21-year-old Chris Donaldson pointed a café-racing Moto Guzzi out of Belfast—a city of checkpoints and bomb scares, where his family’s furniture shop got blown up on the regular—and aimed it at Australia. He never got there. The Iranian revolution closed his road east, and what was meant to be a four-month, 10,000-mile ride...

“Don’t limit yourself with your past experiences. Every challenge is happening for you, not to you. Each experience carries a life lesson, once you’ve learned it, it’s served its purpose.”  — Joanna Zhang   Episode Summary  Joanna Zhang didn’t set out to become a consultant. As a self-employed financial planner drowning in back-office work, she cycled through virtual assistant after virtual assist...

Pets don’t respond to titles; they respond to consistency. Turns out, people aren’t much different.” — Andy Neillie   Episode Summary   Dr. Andy Neillie has a doctorate, a bestselling book, and five million frequent-flyer miles spent coaching leaders across Fortune 500 firms — but he’ll be the first to tell you his real education came from a string of rescued dogs. In this conversation, Andy trace...

"Live in such a way that you would not be embarrassed to sell your parrot to the town gossip."     EPISODE SUMMARY   Jim Sabellico built businesses at a level most people only read about — seven figures, eight figures, the cars, the house, the bank account. Then one night he came home late to find his son's birthday cake already half gone. His six-year-old wasn't devastated. He...

“Do it right or don’t do it at all.”   - Dr. Alphonso Buie Episode Summary Becoming an interior designer “wasn’t on my bingo card,” Alphonso Buie says. Yet here he is in his 40s, building a new career in Atlanta, running Place of Peace, and loving it. The name came from his grandmother, who always told him that a home should be a place of peace—“and if it’s not, you need to figure it out.” For yea...

Guest Quote “Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not.” (Originally attributed to George Bernard Shaw; frequently cited by Senator Robert Kennedy. Ken received this quote inscribed on a glass paperweight from Senator Edward Kennedy following his Senate testimony.) Episode Summary In 1970, Ken Kunken was a junior at Cornell University, studyin...

“Sweat dries, blood clots, and broken bones heal. Suck it up.”  — Jay Setchell   Episode Summary   Jay Setchell grew up on a working farm where nothing came free — up before sunrise mixing powdered milk to feed calves, sorting eggs by lantern for the candling plant, learning that time is money and a job left half-done isn’t done. That foundation of urgency and responsibility is the thread through...

“I am FEARLESS, willing to take on any project and get it done. I’ve lived by this my whole life (92 years old), whether I knew it or not.” — Jim Paulk   Episode Summary  At 92, Jim Paulk has lived enough lives for several people — Naval Academy graduate, submarine engineering officer, 26-year Procter & Gamble executive, marine conservationist, and published author. In this Ship’s Log, he trac...

“Every disappointment is for the better.”  — Stephanie Sylvestre  Episode Summary  Stephanie Sylvestre builds digital twins — AI versions of real people that can keep talking, teaching, and advising long after a conversation ends, and even after a life does. In this episode she walks Jeanne through what her company actually does: AI agents and digital twins grounded in a private “data vault” so th...

"Be the change you seek in the world." - Gandhi (paraphrased, as submitted by guest)    Episode Summary  Kerisma Vere didn't arrive at her work in holistic wellness coaching through a degree program or a tidy career pivot. She arrived through the long way — through a full nervous breakdown in 2018 that left her unable to remember who she was, unable to cook, unable to leave the hous...

"A man is what he makes of himself." — Peter Gunn   Episode Summary   What happens inside the mind of someone who builds entire mythological universes? In this Ship’s Log, Jeanne sits down with Peter Gunn — a U.S. Air Force veteran who served twenty years, a bodybuilder, the lead guitarist of The Angellics, and a poet on a mission to bring epic poetry back from the past. Peter reveals th...

“I was taught at a very young age that I could cope with life and deal with almost anything – one step at a time.” – R. Timmerman Episode Summary   Rand Timmerman enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1966 after hearing a radio report in an upstate New York bar — and nine months later found himself in a rice paddy in Vietnam. Decades later, four years into recovery from alcoholism and carrying an artifi...

"The most important promotion you will ever earn is the one no one can give you. It begins the moment you stop waiting to be chosen and start choosing your own growth."   — John Reaves  Episode Summary  John Reaves spent decades doing everything the corporate world told him to do — building the resume, earning the credentials, staying late, and checking every box. And still, something wa...

"Uncertainty and chaos aren't something to avoid — It's where freedom lives, and possibilities multiply."   — Regina Huber  Episode Summary  Regina Huber has lived and worked across five continents — Germany, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, the US, and France — picking up languages, partner dances, and hard-won leadership lessons along the way. In this episode, she sits down with Jea...

"They may not recognize your face. They may not know your name — depending on the day. But they will remember for a long time how you made them feel." — Lisa Skinner   Episode Summary   What does it actually mean when a doctor says 'Alzheimer's'? Lisa Skinner has spent 50 years answering that question — first as a teenage granddaughter watching her grandmother describe bir...

"The biggest lie in business is that leaders are born that way."  - Jim Carlough Episode Summary What makes someone a leader? According to Jim Carlough, it isn't talent, title, or personality. It's a skill that must be developed over time. In this candid conversation, Jim reflects on the mistakes that shaped him early in his career and the lessons that eventually led him to ide...

Education is valuable, but execution is priceless.” - Danny Brassell EPISODE SUMMARY    Danny Brassell has delivered more than 3,500 keynotes across four continents, but he didn't start on a stage. He started in the classroom — teaching inner-city kids to love reading in South Central Los Angeles. In this episode of Ship's Log, Danny and Jeanne trace the unlikely journey from Capitol Hil...

"Accounting is the heartbeat of business and the key to personal finance success."  — Albert Butler   Episode Summary   Albert Butler is a CPA, MBA, and Resident Partner-in-Charge of a national accounting firm — but the conversation in Ship's Log #24 isn't really about accounting. It's about what happens when you treat your own life like a balance sheet. Albert walks Jeann...

Episode Summary  In this episode of Project Candor, host Jeanne welcomes Mickey Fitch-Collins, PhD — leadership facilitator, speaker, and host of The Learnit Lounge — for a candid conversation about what it takes to lead with both joy and depth. Mickey's story is anything but linear: she was a professional bass fisherman at 14, a college student leader when 9/11 happened, and someone who turn...