The Sallie Ogden Show

Grab a pen — this one earns its length. In this episode, I sit down with Amy Mills, and her story is one of the most compelling I've recorded so far. Amy has spent her career helping companies tell their stories in a way that actually gets noticed, and she breaks down exactly how she does it. We get into the practical, take-notes territory: five specific things you can do to get the media to pay a...

Have you ever found yourself somewhere between rock bottom and the pinnacle of your career? Not failing, not winning — just stuck in the strange middle where everything looks fine from the outside and feels deeply wrong on the inside? I have. And it happened during what people around me kept calling the most successful chapter of my career. In this episode, I share what that period actually looked...

Have you ever caught yourself thinking I'm meant to do more than this ? Not in a dramatic way — just a quiet, persistent sense that the job you're in isn't the full size of what you're capable of? If so, this conversation with Emily Sexton is for you. Emily is the founder of The Flourish Market, an online boutique that carries more than 50 brands working to provide dignified jobs and fair wages to...

In this episode, I sit down with Chris Kennison, a financial educator who teaches people how to actually grow their money — not just manage it. But Chris didn't start out in finance. First he was going to be a professional baseball player. Then a teacher. Then a professor. He's tried on more careers than most people consider in a lifetime, and that willingness to keep iterating until something fit...

In this episode, I sit down with Lizzie Fortunato — designer, founder, and the creative force behind one half of the accessories brand that bears her name. Lizzie grew up in rural Delaware with a talent for making things. That talent followed her from Delaware to Duke, where friends kept asking her to create custom jewelry for them. After graduation she did what most ambitious young women do — she...

In this episode, I sit down with Bernadette Joy — entrepreneur, author, and the woman behind Crush Your Money Goals. Bernadette didn't set out to become a personal finance voice. She started her career in HR (not where she thought she'd land), went back to get her MBA, and graduated to the realization that she was sitting on a mountain of student loan debt and no clear path forward. That's the roc...

In this episode, I sit down with Carolyn Manno, a sports journalist who took a wrong turn on her college campus and ended up walking straight into her dream career. Carolyn's whole story is a study in what happens when you lean in instead of leaning out — when intuition calls and you actually answer. We talk about how she's followed that thread through every step of her career, including how she e...

In this episode, I sit down with Lila Stewart, one of the co-founders of Hari Mari flip flops. Lila's growing passion for children began while she and her husband were living in Indonesia. Three years later, they came back to the United States — and that experience became the seed of Hari Mari, a flip flop company with a mission that runs much deeper than footwear. We talk about her journey from I...

In this episode, I sit down with Cheri and Whitney, co-founders of The Southern Coterie — what they call a "virtual front porch for Southern creatives and entrepreneurs." On paper, both women already had what most people would call a very successful life before launching the Coterie. They wanted more. Not more in the hustle-culture sense, but more in the this isn't quite the thing I'm here to buil...

This was the very first episode of Hitting Rock Middle — the show that has since evolved into The Sallie Ogden Show. I'm leaving it here as a marker of where this all started. The voice is earlier, the framing is different, and at the time I was still calling myself a business coach and going by my old last name. But you can hear the seed of what the show is now: the conversation about getting stu...