The Found Podcast with Molly Knuth

This one is personal. Episode 260 is a solo cast, and it's the episode I've been sitting with for a while. I'm sharing what's been happening in real time in my career this year, not as a pivot story or a comeback story, but as a self-leadership story. Because I think a lot of people listening right now are living inside someone else's version of success and just don't have the language for it yet....

I get pitches in my inbox every day. Most of them I can't fit into the schedule, no matter how great they are. This one stopped me cold. Sarah Jakle is the founder and executive director of DemocraShe, a nonpartisan nonprofit offering free online training to high school girls in evidence-based resiliency skills, leadership, and civic engagement. They pay their participants $15 an hour. They recrui...

I've known Josie Manternach since she was roughly in first grade, and I still learned things about her in this conversation that I didn't know. Josie is an educator by trade, a military spouse, a mom, and now a community impact leader at the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque. But the path that got her there? It's the kind of story that is going to hit differently depending on where you are r...

I told you this was going to be a different kind of conversation, and I meant it. Serin Silva spent two decades inside high-pressure corporate environments at companies like MSNBC and Hearst, leading integration communications for billion-dollar acquisitions and overseeing a book of business worth $40 million. She was in rooms where she was often the only woman leader, playing a game with rules sh...

We're back with Part 2 of my two-part series on 10 things I know for certain about building a business, not from books or courses, but from almost a decade of living it. If you missed Part 1, go back and listen to Episode 255 first. We covered lessons one through five, and this episode picks up right where we left off. Today we're finishing out the list with lessons six through ten, and honestly t...

It's a solo cast! It has been a while since it was just me and you, and I'm glad to be back in this format because I have some things to say. This episode was sparked by a moment that happened in March of 2026 at the You Conferences in Cedar Rapids. I was the 3:00 PM speaker and somewhere between the nerves and the sound check and a very unexpected karaoke moment involving Gloria Gaynor, something...

Lindsay Leahy is back on The Found Podcast for the third time, and this one is unlike any conversation we've had before. You might know Lindsay as the founder of The Restoration Project , the author of Take It All Apart (a USA Today bestseller!), and someone who has spent the last several years helping leaders and organizations do their most meaningful work. But in this episode, Lindsay shares tha...

This is Brooke's third time on The Found Podcast. Every time she comes back, she brings something that stops me mid-conversation and makes me reach for my notebook. Brooke Fitzgerald is the Energy Builder at The Restoration Project in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and as of June 1st, she becomes the sole owner of the practice. She's a coach, a speaker, a mom of two boys, a recovering people-pleaser, and one...

Have you ever stood in the middle of a life that looks really good on paper and still felt like something was off? Like a quiet voice whispering, this isn't it anymore...and you didn't know what to do with that? This week on the Found Podcast, I'm bringing you a conversation with my own coach, Katrina Klooster, and I think this one is going to land somewhere deep for a lot of you. Katrina is a lif...

In this episode of The Found Podcast , Molly sits down with Sarah Hermanson, founder of One Above HR , pumpkin farmer, and people-first leadership expert. With over 30 years of experience in human resources and recruiting, Sarah has seen firsthand what makes businesses thrive and what causes them to struggle. And here's the truth she keeps coming back to: it's not just the product, the service, or...

This one feels really special. Back in 2020, The Found Podcast started with a simple idea: to share what I was learning about building a business, becoming a person, and navigating all the in-between moments. And now…here we are. 250 episodes later. Instead of making this episode about me, I wanted to bring it back to the people and the moments that made this podcast what it is today: you and the...

There's a leadership gap in our communities...and it's not what you think. It's not about titles. It's not about experience. And it's definitely not about a lack of talent. In this episode of The Found Podcast , I sit down with Melissa Reade, Executive Director of Leader Valley, to talk about the real gap we're seeing in schools, businesses, and communities—and how we can start to fix it. From wor...

What actually makes a small town thrive? Hint: it's not population size, location, or luck. It's leadership. In this episode of The Found Podcast , Molly sits down with Liesel Seabert of the University of Northern Iowa Institute for Decision Making to talk about the real, often overlooked work behind strong communities and why leadership development might be the most important investment we're not...

What if wellness wasn't another thing to optimize… but something you actually got to experience ? In this episode, Molly sits down with Dominique Farrar, founder of Well in France — a Paris-based community and experience brand helping women slow down, connect, and redefine what it means to live well. Dom shares her journey from fast-paced tech life in Silicon Valley to building a wellness business...

What if the biggest shift in your leadership didn't come from doing more… but from understanding yourself better? In this solo episode, Molly shares a behind-the-scenes look at a pivotal leadership moment inside her work with The Restoration Project. O ne that revealed how overperformance, urgency, and independence can quietly create disconnection on a team. Through a personal story about building...

This week on The Found Podcast , Molly reconnects with returning guest Erin McGuire-Henson, a nervous system healer, coach for soul-aligned entrepreneurs, and newly published author of The Art of Unraveling. In this deeply honest conversation, Erin shares the long and winding journey behind writing her book, a 15-year process shaped by personal healing, nervous system work, and the courage to fina...

This week on The Found Podcast , I'm joined by brand photographer, mother of four, and longtime friend Erin Moore for a deeply honest conversation about courage, community, and what it really takes to rebuild your life and business again and again. 👉 Real talk: The audio quality in this conversation isn't perfect. But Erin's courage, perspective, and heart made this episode one we couldn't keep o...

This week on The Found Podcast , I'm joined by Danielle Letayf — founder of Badassery, personal brand strategist, podcast guesting expert, and the perfect woman to help us kick off our Women's History Month interview series. Danielle helps thoughtful executives, authors, and experts turn their stories into something unforgettable. But in this conversation, we go far deeper than personal branding a...

It's officially Women's History Month, and this year, instead of starting with statistics, I'm starting with a question: In 2026, are we elevating hot takes…or high character? When I was in seventh grade, I wrote a research paper on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis . I was fascinated by the way she carried herself through public scrutiny, personal grief, and cultural change. Today, we live in a very dif...

What if education wasn't a one-time phase of life, but an evolving journey designed to meet people exactly where they are? In this episode of The Found Podcast , Molly sits down with Amy Lasack, Vice President of Business and Community Solutions at Northeast Iowa Community College (NICC), to explore how workforce development, education, and community collaboration intersect to create real opportun...

If you've been here for years or you're only a handful of episodes in... this one is for you. After recently stepping back into the guest seat on another podcast, I realized it had been a while since I reintroduced herself here on The Found Podcast . So today, I'm doing just that. But not with a résumé. Not with a tidy bio. With the real story. In this episode, I walk through the winding, nonlinea...

Some people build businesses. Some people follow a calling. And sometimes… those two things become the very same path. This week on The Found Podcast with Molly Knuth , I sit down with fellow Iowan and "Molly Squared" guest Molly Schreiber , founder of Challenge to Change and the nonprofit Mindful Minutes . What started as a young teacher's love of education became something much deeper after unim...

This one is a little raw. A little unpolished. And very real. After batch-recording months of episodes and stepping into a new season of leadership, I sat down at the mic for the first time this year and realized something: The most helpful thing I could share right now isn't a strategy or framework. It's the truth. Because even 10 years into business… even 200+ podcast episodes later… even as Man...

In this final episode of The Found Podcast's Ages & Stages Series , I sit down with Nancy Lynk — Senior Vice President of Commercial Banking at US Bank, community leader, mentor, and lifelong learner — for a conversation that spans generations of leadership, resilience, and self-discovery. From growing up on a Century Farm in rural Iowa to navigating the 1980s farm crisis as a young ag lender to l...

Liz Garcia is the kind of woman who makes you want to sit up straighter, open a new notes app, and finally do the thing you've been talking yourself out of.  In this second guest interview of the Ages & Stages series, I sit down with Liz — owner of Storage Theory, founder of GW Spice Co., mom of two, serial entrepreneur, and host of The Liz Garcia Show — to talk about what it really looks like to...