Wake Up Call

Jenny Calvert spent years in tech building her identity around output and external validation — holding down a marriage, two kids, and everything else — while a resignation letter sat on her desk for six months. What finally made her hit send was hearing herself say, out loud, that she was terrified she'd never build something of her own. We talk about what that kind of burnout really does to your...

For ten years I optimized everything for speed and I paid the price. I short circuited my entire system trying to keep up with the pace I had chosen. There is a moment where the pace stops being something you make and becomes something you can no longer take. My fear is what happened to me is about to happen to all of us. Not by choice this time, just by living in the world coming at us. This solo...

This one's for anyone standing at the edge, wondering if the jump will get them lost. It might just bring you home. In this conversation, I sit down with Steve Rio from Enfold to talk about the question everyone seems to be asking, what actually happens at Enfold? Steve shares the entire process and we talk about the difference between external reinvention and inner alignment. About why most p...

It has been a while since I did one of these. A lot has changed. Not just what I’m doing, but how I see everything. This solo is built around two questions that have quietly reshaped my life over the last nine months. Who shall I be today. And what shall I do today. Simple questions, but they force a level of honesty that most of us avoid. For most of my life, I chased performance. Titles. Outcome...

Some wake up calls come quietly. Others hit all at once. Ian Koniak had the career most people chase. Top rep at Salesforce. Money, status, recognition. From the outside, it looked like everything was working. But underneath it, there were cracks. In this conversation, Ian opens up about the moments that changed everything. A near death experience that forced him to confront how he was living. And...

There is a moment where chasing more stops working. Not because you failed, but because you are ready for something better. Alex Kremer leaned into that moment. We met in the early Outreach days. High output, big goals, everything pointed forward. But Alex didn’t just optimize for performance. He started redesigning how he operated. More awareness. More intention. Building a life where success com...

Some people build things. Heidi Noble built a life at full speed. Chef. Founder. Winemaker. Joie didn’t come from money or connections. It came from instinct, pressure, and a belief she could figure it out as she went. And somehow, she did. What followed was two decades of creation. Scaling from nothing into something iconic. Holding every role. Carrying the weight. Until her body stopped playing...

Some conversations slow you down in the best way. In this episode I sit down with Richard Banfield. Richard has spent decades building companies, writing books, and thinking deeply about how creativity, technology, and leadership intersect. But what makes this conversation powerful is not the resume. It is the life behind it. Richard opens up about losing his wife to cancer and how that experience...

Brandon Fluharty built the kind of sales career most people dream about. Seven figure years. Enterprise deals. Presidents Club. Recognition at the highest level. But achievement came with a cost. Burnout. Bankruptcy. And the quiet realization that performance without alignment eventually collapses under its own weight. In this conversation, we unpack the invisible game high performers get trapped...

On paper, Devon McDonald had it all. Division 1 athlete. Seventeen year run at OpenView. General Partner. Big house. Three kids. The life most people chase. But behind the scenes, something wasn’t sitting right. In this conversation, Devon shares the moment her body started speaking louder than her ambition. The locked jaw. The burnout. The quiet voice that kept saying it was time, even when every...

Eric Kostelnik has built and sold multiple companies, and somehow still manages to be one of the most grounded humans I know. In this conversation, we get into what happens after the exit. The identity shift. The silence. The need to re-anchor. We talk about fatherhood, the myth of "having it all together," and what structure really means when you're no longer chasing a finish line....

In this session from the Wake Up Call Live Wellness Series, Alex Easby from Dreamfuel guides us through a breathwork and visualization practice that’s equal parts cleansing and grounding. It starts with deep, rhythmic breathing to shake loose the noise we carry. Then it shifts into a slow, steady visualization that brings you back into presence. No performance. No pressure. Just a clear moment to...

Some people build empires. Others build frameworks that help people endure. Sam Jacobs does both. In this conversation, we unpack what it means to stay grounded when everything around you is accelerating. Sam shares the hard-earned lessons that came after being fired, humbled, and forced to face the parts of himself that success can distort. We talk about fatherhood, ego, reinvention, and the stru...

Some years break you open so you can finally see. 2025 cracked me. Not in the falling-apart way, but in the pulling-the-curtain-back kind of way. The ambition I was still hiding behind. The patterns I thought I had outgrown. The places I was still performing instead of living. This one’s about the friction that shows you who you really are. The slow death of the old story. The relationships that g...

Sometimes life serves up those chance encounters that don’t feel like chance.  In this one, I sit down with Anurag Chandra for a rare look beneath the surface of success. He’s built some of silicon valley's biggest funds, advised companies, and navigated the kind of pressure most people never see. But the most powerful part of his story isn’t in the resume. It’s in how he’s stripped back the n...

Some stories sit just below the surface for years. This was one of them. In this episode I sit down with Drew Hall, my closest friend since childhood, for a conversation we’ve never had on record. Drew opens up about the silent weight he’s carried, the mental health struggles he lived through, and the unraveling of the persona he thought he had to be. We talk about the gap between the life people...

Some episodes are meant to be listened to. This one is meant to be felt. In this session from the Wake Up Call Live Wellness Series, I’m joined again by Alex Easby from Dreamfuel for a guided Wayfinder meditation. It mirrors the rhythm of the practice itself, where breath becomes the oar, the body becomes the vessel, and you navigate like an ocean voyager reading waves, wind and instinct instead o...

Some people follow the playbook. Chris Walker rewrote it. In this conversation, we get into what it really means to live on your own frequency. Chris shares how he built and exited a high-growth company, but more importantly, how he learned to stop living by borrowed metrics and start listening to his own signal. We talk about stepping outside societal goalposts, upgrading your internal system, an...

Some episodes are meant to be listened to. This one is meant to be felt. In this special session from the Wake Up Call Live Wellness Series, I’m joined by Alex Easby, a mental performance coach from Dreamfuel, for a guided breathwork journey and visualization. You’ll drop into your body, calm the noise, and reconnect with that quiet strength that so often gets buried under the grind. Presented in...

Some conversations leave you thinking long after they end. This was one of them. Andy and I get into healing, ego, and the messy, beautiful process of self-discovery. We explore how trauma can become a teacher, how love and community can bring us home, and what it means to move from transactional spirituality to something more grounded and human. It’s a conversation about slowing down, feeling wha...

I’m recording this from a tiny plywood room in Dengboche, six days into a trek through the Himalayas. No Wi-Fi. No distractions. Just mountains, movement, and a lot of quiet time to think. This solo episode is a meditation on what we chase, what we call success, and how those definitions shift from 14,000 feet. I share lessons from locals entrepreneurs who are redefining what it means to build som...

There’s a version of us that knows how to perform. That knows how to keep it together, lead from the front, and show up like everything’s fine. But at some point, that version breaks. In this episode, I sit down with Ally Maz to talk about her early success as a movement teacher and founder to confronting parts of herself she used to hide, Ally opens up about shadow work, grief, embodiment, and wh...

This one’s personal. After years of chasing, I hit a wall. The momentum I built started to feel heavy. Burnout set in. And for the first time in a long time, I stopped. This episode is about what I found in that stillness. A psychedelic journey that opened something in me. A slow process of rethinking how I show up in the world. What I believe. What I value. What I’m letting go of. If you’re in th...

Nirosha Methananda spent years behind a high-performance mask. A child of Sri Lankan immigrants in Australia, she learned early how to hold it all together, to outperform, to prove. And she did. Leading global marketing teams across SaaS and AdTech. Unlocking millions in pipeline. Building her name in the space. But behind the resume was another story. In this episode, Nirosha opens up about the f...

At 31, Michael King was behind the bar, not behind a desk. Life looked different then. The seizures came out of nowhere. No one could explain them. And for a while, he tried to ignore what was happening. But denial has a shelf life. This episode traces the quiet pivot that followed through diagnosis, surgery, reinvention, and the slow grind of starting over. From bartending to breaking into recrui...