The Relentless Project

Mike Benko has lost years of his life behind bars, endured unimaginable heartbreak, and faced betrayals that threatened everything he worked to build. But instead of allowing his past to define his future, he fought to rewrite his story, going from incarceration to becoming the CEO of Red Carpet Roofing Solutions. In this episode, we dive into second chances, personal accountability, grief, betray...

By day, Daniel Cohen is a full-time Data Engineer, but outside the office, he is a relentless Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athlete chasing greatness on major stages like WNO and IBJJF. Instead of letting devastating losses or tournament disqualifications break his spirit, Daniel treats failure like an engineering problem: find the flaw, make the adjustment, and run it again. We dive deep into his grueling...

Addiction doesn’t always look like sleeping on the streets; sometimes it wears a military uniform and hides behind a decade of quiet discipline. Army Veteran Andrew Riddle spent ten years fighting a losing, functional battle against opiates until a drained government credit card and a brutal ultimatum from his wife forced a massive reckoning. But getting clean was just the baseline—learning how to...

NYCDOT Plant Manager Jessica Haley has taken more devastating hits from life than most people can fathom, battling chronic illness, a tragic miscarriage, and a brutal skin cancer diagnosis all while her personal life completely crumbled. Stripped of everything and pushed to the absolute brink of suicide, she refused to let her story end in a hospital bed and walked into a boxing gym instead. Chann...

Refugee, street survivor, and BJJ Black Belt Rome Za knows what it takes to rebuild your reality when everything shatters. After pushing his body to the absolute limit, Rome suffered severe spinal and shoulder injuries, compounding the devastating loss of his business and marriage that forced him to start his entire life over from scratch. Instead of settling for a broken, average existence, he so...

US Navy Veteran Erik Jackson knows exactly what it means to carry the heavy freight of life without making an excuse. After an emergency surgery overseas left his left leg three inches shorter than his right, he flat-out refused to let a permanent physical deficit dictate his future. Instead, he spent the next two decades grinding in high-stakes environments as a Corrections Officer and Locomotive...

Bill Stiteler, better known as Saxboy Billy , went from battling severe alcoholism thousands of miles from home in Mongolia to rebuilding his life one uncomfortable bet at a time. After getting sober and returning to Pittsburgh, he stopped being a passive participant in his own life, followed the Pirates across the country, and turned comedy, baseball, and relentless self-belief into a new purpose...

Amateur MMA fighter Josh Frazier knows exactly what happens when the bottom falls out of the "safe" path in life. After losing his corporate job, his home, and suffering the devastating loss of his mother, Josh found himself with absolutely nothing left to lose. Instead of folding under the immense weight of his grief, he packed his bags, moved to a new city, and went all-in on fighting, recently...

Award-winning hip-hop artist CEE Brown has spent his entire life fighting a brutal, exhausting war inside his own head. After losing his father at just three years old, navigating severe depression, and surviving homelessness at nineteen, he poured his pain and insecurities into a microphone to find his voice. But the darkness didn’t just vanish with the music; four years ago, he reached his absol...

For many high performers, the ultimate trap is tying their entire identity and self-worth to their daily accomplishments. Former Division 1 track athlete, current BJJ Brown Belt, and high school wrestling coach Maiah Yankello knows exactly how destructive that fragile identity can be when life forces you to pivot. In this episode, Maiah opens up about her terrifying, exhilarating decision to walk...

Two years ago, undefeated amateur MMA fighter Luke Martin sat down with us right before suffering a devastating first loss that nearly made him quit the sport entirely. Refusing to let his story end in a locker room, the former NCAA Wrestling Champion leaned into his relentless DNA of hitting rock bottom only to bounce back one hundred times better. Today, Luke returns to the show as a 2-0 profess...

By day, Dr. Cheyenne Hall (Dempsey) dispenses critical medications as a full-time pharmacist, but by night, she steps into the cage as a professional Mixed Martial Artist. Raised in rural West Virginia with a strict family standard of never being average, she carries the heavy, driving purpose of living a life big enough for both herself and the little brother she tragically lost as a child. After...

Most people would quit after hyping up their hometown debut only to get knocked out in twenty seconds, but retired pro fighter Ethan Hayes is not most people. Despite having little natural athletic pedigree, he swallowed his pride, walked back into the fire, and spent the next decade outworking everyone in the room. He transformed that public defeat into asuccesful ten-year combat sports career, b...

Born just twenty-three days after her decorated father died by suicide, Ashley Puig grew up carrying an inherited wound that eventually pushed her to the brink of taking her own life at just sixteen years old. Waking up on a hospital shower floor, she made a relentless promise to build a life that mattered, but she was continually tested by the loss of loved ones, severe health scares, and watchin...

In 2013, Active-Duty Green Beret CW3 Nick Lavery survived a devastating insider attack in Afghanistan, taking four machine-gun rounds to the leg at point-blank range simply because he absolutely hates to lose. After waking up at Walter Reed missing his leg above the knee, Nick did the unthinkable: he flat-out refused a full medical retirement with honor. Instead, he endured a grueling physical and...

The tactical community spends a lot of time training for the chaos of war, but almost no one trains you for the deafening quiet that hits when the uniform finally comes off. Retired Army veteran and serial entrepreneur Damien Celaya knows the brutal reality of this transition, battling what he calls "Loss of Tribe Syndrome" and an addiction to stress that often led to self-sabotage. In this raw an...

David Watson knows firsthand that the most brutal battle you will ever fight is with the person staring back at you in the mirror. After a series of bad decisions led to him spending nearly eight years locked inside harsh prisons across the Bahamas, Mexico, and the United States, David was forced to sit in the heavy, suffocating silence of his own regret. Instead of playing the victim, he chose ra...

At 18 years old, Michael Kessler found himself staring down the barrel of real-world responsibility as an unexpected teen father. Instead of folding under the pressure or making excuses, he used it as rocket fuel, stepping onto a college campus just four days after his daughter was born and walking out four years later with two degrees. Today, Michael balances a relentless tri-hustle as a corporat...

As a 6th Degree Black Belt and a relentless entrepreneur, Brigitte Morris knows how to fight, but her toughest opponent has been her own body. At just 18 years old, she went from being a peak-performing athlete to fighting for her life against a devastating Crohn’s disease diagnosis that led to agonizing pain and multiple organ-removal surgeries. Refusing to play the victim on the floor of her apa...

Born with less than a one percent chance of survival, Licensed Professional Counselor and filmmaker Luke Goozdich lives every day with a congenital heart defect that acts as a literal ticking clock. After surviving a profoundly dark night in 2015 where he nearly took his own life, his body rebelled with catastrophic blood clots that forced him to stare down inevitable organ failure. Instead of pla...

EDM producer and label owner Mikey Shanley, better known as Noki, knows firsthand that the road to greatness is often paved with profound isolation. Before his hometown anthems were smashing into the Top 100 dubstep charts, he had to survive being homeless on a beach, his mother's battle with cancer, and the tragic loss of his father to addiction. We dive deep into the painful reality of "leveling...

VP of Sales at IceCap Group, real estate investor, and football coach CJ Norman knows exactly what it takes to survive in an industry where you eat what you kill. After transitioning from a college athlete with no roadmap to a general manager leading 30 people right out of school, CJ built a massive career spanning over 200 real estate transactions. But scaling his success came at a brutal cost, f...

Growing up immersed in the gritty reality of the drug and alcohol recovery center his father founded, Paolo DiCenzo got an early, firsthand look at what it means to fight for your life and the power of true redemption. Refusing to play it safe, he walked away from a Division 1 athletic scholarship to lean completely into his DNA as a serial entrepreneur. Today, he runs three companies—including hi...

Russell Rogers and Dan Scoca , hosts of the Dual Coast Podcast, bring a powerful collision of holistic mindset and hard medical science to the table. Russell, a 20-year athletic trainer and author, is on a relentless mission to help families unplug from digital addiction and build generational leadership. Dan, an orthopedic surgery Physician Assistant, balances that drive with the undeniable medic...

For the first 30 years of her life, former Division 1 athlete Talie Feola carried the crushing, silent weight of repressed childhood trauma that made her feel completely unseen. When those terrifying memories finally surfaced, she refused to let the darkness win, taking a massive leap of faith to sit with plant medicine in the jungles of Guatemala to face her demons head-on. By doing the grueling...