One on One with Mista Yu

The uniform can come off in a single moment. The identity you built around it can collapse just as fast. We sit down with former collegiate athlete, author, and speaker Hakeem Bourne McFarlane for an unfiltered story of grief, addiction, jail, and the long climb back to self-respect, self-trust, and real purpose. If you’ve ever felt lost after sports, burned out by a job title, or trapped in habit...

Stewardship is one of those words that can make people brace for a money talk, but Larry O'nan flips that assumption fast. We sit down one-on-one to unpack stewardship as something much bigger: a daily way of living where we manage what’s been entrusted to us with care, purpose, and integrity. If you’ve been feeling busy but strangely unfulfilled, this conversation puts language to what might...

A single college football play can end a season. For Ken Kunken, it rewrote an entire life. Ken joins us to tell the story of a Halloween 1970 tackle at Cornell that broke his neck and caused a high cervical spinal cord injury, leaving him a quadriplegic and dependent on others for daily living. What follows is not a “feel good” shortcut, but an honest walk through fear, frustration, and the hard...

“Free traffic” sounds like hype until you understand what SEO actually is and why it matters for creators. We sit down one-on-one with SEO Optimizer Brandon Leibowitz to unpack search engine optimization in plain English, from how organic results work to why paying for ads is only one slice of digital marketing. If you’re a podcaster, author, speaker, coach, or content creator trying to grow susta...

One WhatsApp call. Jasper Hall expected a small group. The camera turns on and there are more than 800 people in the room, listening closely and asking a question every parent recognizes: what do we do about YouTube for our children? That moment captures why Pure Hope exists and why this conversation matters for anyone navigating a sexualized culture, pornography pressure, and the everyday reality...

A lot of leaders think burnout is a time-management problem. What we’ve learned the hard way is that it’s often a self-leadership problem, and it starts long before you “break.” Performance consultant, international speaker, and executive coach Rachael Edmondson Clarke joins me to unpack the patterns she sees in high achievers: big ambition, high standards, dopamine-driven momentum, and a dangerou...

A lot of success stories skip the messy parts. We don’t. Michael Leung, founder and CEO of the Flow Group, walks us through what it actually looks like to lose your footing and still find your way back: immigrating from Hong Kong to Canada as a kid, watching his mother battle bone cancer, and then spiraling into years of rebellion, street life, addiction, and deep grief that still shows up as PTSD...

She qualifies for the Olympic Games, hits a national record, and then a rain soaked runway changes everything. We’re joined by Cherita O'Dell, a transformational speaker, former Olympic long jumper, and author from Barbados, for a raw conversation about what happens when your biggest dream collides with sudden injury, public pressure, and the voice in your own head. We talk through the moment...

Most business advice tells you to suffer now so you can enjoy life later. We reject that premise and unpack a sharper idea with author, entrepreneur, and coach Russell Nohelty: success follows joy, not the other way around. Russell shares how a career that jumped from Capitol Hill news to entertainment, publishing, courses, and consulting became a real-world lab for understanding what actually mak...

Getting fired at 63 is scary. Doing the math and realizing you could be broke by 65 is a whole different kind of fear. That is where David Nassief’s story starts, and why it lands so hard. After decades of “doing the normal things,” he finds himself staring at retirement insecurity and a job market that does not want to hire him. So he takes a brutal leap into straight-commission work, absorbs mon...

He started as a pastor who could not stop carrying other people’s pain home, and the stress nearly broke him. Then Eric Robinson made a left turn that still sounds unreal out loud: he joined the FBI and spent 24 years as a special agent working everything from drug squads and gangs to counterterrorism, corruption, and crimes against children. That jump from ministry to federal law enforcement is t...

Ever had so much inside you that the words just won’t come out right? We talk with professional speaker, management consultant, and award-winning author Marcy Axelrod about what it’s like to lose your voice early in life, and how that experience can become a blueprint for deeper presence, better leadership, and more authentic communication. Marcy shares how childhood stuttering shaped her lens on...

Your “ethical” coffee might be funding the middle of the chain, not the farmer at the source. We sat down with Jean Christian Rindoni, founder of Symbiosis Infinity Group and a conscious growth advisor, to challenge the way global supply chains work and to lay out what a circular economy can look like in the real world. Jean Christian shares how an intense personal development and spiritual reset...

Public school can teach you how to follow a schedule. It rarely teaches you how to build one. That single gap shows up fast when a parent starts homeschooling and suddenly has to plan the day, teach the lessons, manage emotions, and keep everyone moving. We talk with Amanda Schenkenberger, founder of Homeschool Family Legacy, to get real about what homeschooling looks like now and why so many fami...

You can be surrounded by people and still feel alone, and for a lot of men that quiet loneliness turns into burnout, addiction, or a life that looks fine from the outside but feels empty on the inside. We sit down with Stefanos Koutsoumpis, a scientist turned mindful life coach, to talk about what actually helps men rebuild confidence, connection, and emotional strength. We start with his story gr...

Your body can be the loudest truth-teller in your life, especially after years of trying to be “the responsible one” who keeps the peace. We sit down one-on-one with Mairin Moore-Cane to talk about what happens when silence, stress, and people-pleasing collide with real life. She shares her path from a quiet childhood shaped by split households and insecurity to a season where chronic illness chan...

Your phone makes life easier, but it may also be training your brain to quit. We sit down one-on-one with transformation trainer Arnold Beekes to get brutally honest about brain health, mental health, and the hidden costs of constant scrolling. Arnold shares his personal background growing up under an authoritarian father, how nonstop criticism shaped his inner critic, and why so many capable peop...

Most of us make plans like we’re exempt from the clock, then we’re shocked when stress, fear, and identity-driven leadership show up in our decisions. We sit down with Reverend Dr. Seth David Clark, a leadership scholar, executive coach, and hospice chaplain whose work spans boardrooms, bedside moments, and years of ministry on the US Mexico border. He brings a rare mix of compassion and realism t...

Stephen McConnell joins me for a grounded conversation about why personal growth stalls even when we know exactly what to do, and how to close the knowing vs doing gap without relying on hype or willpower. Steven shares his path from a loving but financially scarce upbringing, to decades in the corporate world, to building a service-driven mission as the founder of the Growth Myndset Initiative. W...

If your morning scroll leaves you anxious and drained, you’re not imagining it—your feed is shaping your mood. Gerald Jones joins us to share how he and Kevin Clark transformed that daily dread into Blessn, a free social platform designed for uplifting content, real community, and values-first monetization. Their story starts with a rare 20-year friendship—born backstage at the Academy Awards—and...

You can do everything “right” and still feel like something is quietly slipping away. That tension is where our conversation with coach, speaker, and author John Salzwedel gets real, fast. We talk about how a life can look stable and successful on the outside while feeling out of alignment on the inside, and why the first step back isn’t a dramatic reinvention, it’s learning to listen again. John...

Prison doesn’t always have bars. Sometimes it looks like a grown man carrying a distorted blueprint for manhood, trying to outrun trauma, rejection, and shame with silence and distractions. That’s why we brought in Ronald Zion Roseboro, founder of Shame Free Life Coaching and Consulting and creator of the BRICK Method, to talk honestly about identity, healing, and what it takes to rebuild when lif...

A knock on the door. A father’s firm no. A living room prayer that turned a life from street survival to steady purpose. That’s the pivot we unpack with leadership coach and Marine veteran Coach T.O. Clay—raw, specific, and full of hope for anyone ready to come home to who they are. We start at the root: grandmothers Alma and Hester, a pastor father, and the pews that formed a backbone of gratitud...

What if the life you’re chasing isn’t yours at all? Lucie Maguire hit pause on the script—school, work, settle down—after losing her dad at 22, then said yes to a month abroad that became four months across Europe. That choice didn’t just change her scenery; it changed her operating system. Today, we sit down with Lucie—founder of The Traveling Youth, social strategist behind Get Real Social, and...

A son’s unlikely beginning—born in a bucket in Haiti—becomes the spark for a life of service that refuses to chase applause and instead builds people, one steady step at a time. Jean Rebecca joins us to share how separation, survival, and faith shaped a mission that strengthens what already exists in Haiti rather than duplicating it. Instead of launching another orphanage, Jean and his wife chose...