The Normal 40 Podcast

A lot of people come to Normal 40 because they feel a pull. Not because they hate their life or because they've failed. Because something inside them keeps whispering: "There's more." This conversation begins there. For more than 30 years, Chris Bertrand built a successful career in healthcare. He helped people. He built relationships. He did meaningful work. And like many of us, he reached a poin...

Most of us inherit a scorecard before we ever think to question it.  Revenue. Title. Pipeline. Promotion. Bonus. Growth. Output. And for a long time, that scorecard works. Until it doesn’t. This episode is another Insider replay, pulled directly from inside the Normal 40 community. It is a member-led conversation about what happens when the old measures of success stop telling the truth. The conve...

Most people never realize when they’re living a “last.” They just move through the day. Answer emails. Take the call. Say “we’ll catch up soon.” And then it’s gone. 18 months ago, Lon sat on a beach in Kona with his son Dawson on the last day of something they’d always known—father and son, in its simplest form. The next morning, Dawson would leave for a journey neither of them fully understood. D...

What do you say when you know the day matters? Not because something is ending forever. But because you know, deep down, this version of life is. This episode took 18 months to publish. It was recorded on the beach in Kona, Hawaii, on the eve of a first and a last. Dawson was about to begin a new chapter — one that would take him across the world, deeper into his faith, and further from home than...

This episode is different from the usual Normal 40 conversations. This is a confession. In this episode, Lon pulls back the curtain on a realization that caught him off guard while writing his second book, The Gap . As he mapped the patterns of thousands of conversations with high performers stuck on the backside of their success curve, he discovered something uncomfortable: The same pattern he wa...

Most of us don’t think about death. Not really. We think about promotions. College tuition. Quarterly numbers. The next vacation. The next deal. But we don’t think about how it ends. In this episode, Lon sits down with Dr. Josh Russell , an ER physician who moved into palliative care, and the conversation goes exactly where most people avoid going. Death. Not in a morbid way. In a clarifying way....

There are moments that rearrange your priorities without asking permission. They don’t feel profound when they arrive. They feel urgent. Final. Unavoidable. For Dave Sanderson, that moment came on January 15, 2009, when the words “Brace for impact” cut through the cabin of US Airways Flight 1549. What followed was the Miracle on the Hudson. What came after was something far harder to navigate. In...

Most of us think we’re high performers because we get things done. We solve problems. We chase answers. We check the boxes. But what if the thing holding you back isn’t the hard stuff? What if it’s the easy stuff you keep avoiding? In this episode, Adam and Lon kick off 2026 with a candid, unfiltered conversation about avoidance, self-sabotage, and the surprising anxiety that shows up when you’re...

Most people don’t avoid change because they’re afraid of action. They avoid it because they’re afraid of the questions. The ones that surface late at night. The ones you don’t ask at work. The ones you don’t bring home. The ones that quietly shape your future whether you acknowledge them or not. This week’s episode of the Normal 40 Podcast is different by design. It’s a live Q&A recorded inside Th...

The first time Keith Pochick joined this podcast, he had just walked away from medicine and into a classroom full of eighth graders. His story hit home because it was raw; a man in mid-leap, hoping he wasn’t crazy for wanting a simpler, more joyful, more human life. Two years later, Keith sits down with Lon to talk about what life actually feels like on the other side of his trade. And what he des...

Most people go into medicine to help people. But somewhere along the way, the system swallows that dream. Long hours. Broken processes. Pressure to perform, not to care. But not Chris Cannell. Chris is a PA, endurance athlete, husband, father of three, and president of a national nonprofit in legal medicine. But more than that, he’s a man who kept chasing the spark that started it all: a sister’s...

Most people meet their doctor in an exam room. I met mine at the edge of a breaking point she didn’t even know she’d been carrying for years. Dr. Jill Kruse grew up wanting to save lives for one simple reason: she didn’t want to lose her mother. She entered medicine the way so many elite performers do — head down, high achieving, fueled by good intentions and impossible standards. She pushed. She...

What if the version of you you're trying to fix… isn’t broken? What if the problem isn’t your motivation, your discipline, or your job…But the story you’ve been telling yourself to survive it? In this episode, Lon sits down with Dr. Fredric Mau, a board-certified hypnotherapist and licensed mental health counselor who left a corporate career and stepped into one of the most unexpected and effectiv...

We spend decades chasing success—with our heads down and our priorities out of balance. Until one day… you look in the mirror, or see a photo of yourself, and something doesn’t match. Your body starts telling the truth your mind has been trying to outrun. You’re tired more than you used to be. You sleep but you’re not rested. You’re not proud of how you look, and if you’re honest, you’re not proud...

Most of us do exactly what we were told to do: we work hard, climb the ladder, check the boxes, and live the life we set out to build. From the outside, it looks like success. But inside, many of us wrestle with the same silent question: “Is this it?” In this conversation with Justin on Grody and Unprofessional , I go back to the beginning of my story—the moment I realized I had everything I thoug...

At some point, your success starts to feel like a trap. You’ve got the title, the money, the corner office—but something’s off. You’re restless. You’re starting to wonder, is this it? And no one around you seems to get it. This episode is for you. Lon and Adam are back to break down Lon’s next book, The Gap —the emotional, spiritual, and practical space between the life you’ve built and the life y...

What happens when you’ve built a perfect résumé, then lose everything it stood for? Laverne McKinnon was doing everything right. Climbing fast. Getting promoted every 18 months. She was a powerful voice behind some of the biggest shows on television—including CSI and Criminal Minds . And then, one day, it all ended. No warning. No performance plan. Just a quiet conversation behind closed doors… an...

There’s a moment—quiet, invisible—when you stop asking for someone else’s approval… and start listening for your own. That moment is called permission . And in this episode, Lon and Adam unpack what it actually means to give it to yourself, and why it’s often the hardest, most courageous thing you’ll ever do. Lon reveals the real pattern behind over a thousand coaching conversations, and how nearl...

Most people open ChatGPT to get answers. Rob Cressy opened it and found a new life. In this episode, Lon sits down with Rob—entrepreneur, creator, and AI enablement coach—to talk about the real power of ChatGPT. Not as a shortcut. Not as a gimmick. But as a tool for clarity, creativity, and reinvention. Rob discovered ChatGPT five days after it launched. And within minutes, he knew: this wasn’t ju...

At some point, every man has to ask: What’s this life I’ve built actually doing to me? In this episode, Lon sits down with Tait Arend—fundraiser, leadership coach, and Co-host of the Bridging Connections podcast, for one of the most honest conversations we’ve ever had. Together, they unpack what happens when you’ve done everything right, checked all the boxes, built the image… and still feel like...

Some trades don’t make sense—until they do. This is one of them. Keith Pochick was an ER doctor. Twenty years in. Saving lives. Leading teams. Teaching residents. Everything he was trained to do and everything the world told him he should want. Until it stopped working. This conversation started the way most do: a quiet nudge, a LinkedIn post, and a DM sent without a plan. Forty-eight hours later,...

What if the life you built—the job, the title, the salary—wasn’t the life you were meant to live? Lon sits down with Dr. Eric Arzubi, a former Wall Street bond trader who walked away from Morgan Stanley to become a psychiatrist and mental health advocate. But the real story isn’t the résumé. It’s what happened in between. Eric shares his remarkable, winding path. From early success to devastating...

What if success didn’t satisfy you the way it was supposed to? Lon sits down with Nicholas Whitaker, former Googler, entrepreneur, and founder of the Conscious Lead Collective.  Nicholas shares his journey from punk anarchist to Google executive and the unraveling that began in a hotel room in Japan. At the peak of a global career, Nicholas found himself crumbling under the weight of performance,...

Sometimes it takes a crash, literal and emotional, to finally wake up. For Steve Garraty, it was both. Before the diagnosis, there was the drinking. The parties. The wrecked cars. The spiral most people didn’t see coming, not even him. But then came the mass on his neck. A cancer diagnosis at 18. And suddenly, the path he was speeding down came to a screeching halt. In this episode, Lon sits down...

In this raw and revealing episode of Normal 40, Lon Stroschein and Adam Eaton reunite for a signature ramble—and what unfolds is one of their most honest conversations yet. It begins with a simple question: What if you followed your passion 10 years ago? And what if that passion has changed? What follows is a masterclass in midlife clarity. Lon and Adam unpack the invisible tension between time an...