Extraordinary Stories

Dr. James Leathem didn’t arrive at his work through theory. He arrived through loss, survival, and a quiet decision to listen to something deeper than logic. After losing his father and nearly his own life within weeks, he made a choice that would define everything that followed. Not just to become a doctor, but to understand what it actually means to heal. That path wasn’t clean. Rejection, self-...

Andrew O’Brien doesn’t come from a polished version of success. His story begins in loss, addiction, and survival—growing up surrounded by death, navigating prison, and learning how to function in a world he never felt prepared for. What emerges is not a clean redemption arc, but a raw, unfiltered perspective on what it actually takes to rebuild a life from the ground up. The turning point isn’t a...

Amir Glogau has spent decades building businesses, leading turnarounds, and surrounding himself with some of the world’s most influential thinkers. But underneath that success is a quieter, more personal pursuit: understanding what actually drives us. Not just in business, but in life. This conversation explores the tension between external achievement and internal alignment—and what happens when...

Chris Rawlinson has spent his life quietly questioning the way the world works. From designing smart homes for celebrities to building a wine brand that disrupted an entire industry, his path has never followed a straight line. Beneath it all is a simple tension: why are so many parts of life unnecessarily complicated—and what would it look like to make them easier for people? That question became...

Dr. Adrijana Kekic built her career inside one of the most advanced healthcare systems in the world. She was trained to understand the body at a genetic level, helping personalize medicine for others. From the outside, it looked like precision. Control. Mastery. But underneath that identity was a familiar tension: a high performer quietly ignoring her own signals. That tension broke in a moment sh...

Rudi Riekstins didn’t start as a coach or speaker. He started as someone lying awake at 4 a.m., staring at the ceiling, realizing he couldn’t keep living the way he was. On the outside, life looked stable. On the inside, it was anger, resentment, and a growing fear that he would ruin the relationships that mattered most. This conversation traces the shift from that breaking point to a life built o...

Yasmin Rivera Klein walks into rooms where she’s often the youngest, sometimes the only woman, and sometimes the only Latina. Instead of shrinking, she learns to translate that position into something else entirely a responsibility to speak, to build, and to create space for others who haven’t been heard yet. Her story is less about early success and more about learning how to trust her own voice...

Tomás León has spent more than 25 years working across healthcare, nonprofits, startups, and community initiatives—but his story doesn’t start there. It begins in an 800-square-foot home in Tucson, raised by blue-collar parents who grounded him in values of service, family, and faith. In this conversation, Tomás reflects on the tension between humble beginnings and high-impact leadership, and how...

Brandon Gerson has built companies, advised founders, and now helps turn university innovation into real-world ventures. But underneath the resume is a quieter tension—how to balance ambition with being a present husband and father, how to build at scale without losing yourself at home. This conversation opens in that space between success and self-awareness, where the stakes aren’t just financial...

Casey Caston’s story starts where most people assume the happy ending begins: the wedding day. But within hours, something felt off. What followed wasn’t a fairytale marriage, but three years of loud, painful conflict that forced both him and his wife to confront something deeper than compatibility. They weren’t just fighting each other. They were colliding with everything they carried from their...

Rich Bracken looked successful on paper. High-performing role, constant output, always on. From the outside, it worked. On the inside, something was breaking. One unexpected trip to the ER forced him to confront the cost of that pace—and the reality that he had been pouring into everyone else while running empty himself. That moment became a pivot. What started as a prescription for a panic attack...

Brett Harmeling’s work sits at the intersection of health, performance, and human potential, but his path into that world didn’t start with optimization. It started with loss of control. A traumatic brain injury forced him to question everything he thought he knew about healing, identity, and what it means to feel like yourself again. That questioning led to a series of decisions most people avoid...

Kristen Cantrell has built a career around something most people underestimate: saying hello. What started as a natural instinct to make friends became a business, then a movement, and eventually a network of communities across dozens of cities. But underneath the growth is a quieter tension—how someone who brings people together at scale still wrestles with doing everything on her own. That tensi...

Episode Description Posture Guy Mike didn’t set out to build a business. He was trying to survive his own body. After years of injuries, multiple surgeries, and chronic pain that pushed him to a breaking point, he found himself with no answers and no way out. What started as desperation turned into a quiet obsession with understanding how the body actually works. The turning point came when he sto...

Chris Jester didn’t start out as a sailor. He started as a planner—on a traditional path, building a career inside structured systems, doing what made sense. But underneath that was a quieter pull toward something else: travel, freedom, and a life that felt more aligned with how he actually wanted to spend his time. That tension came to a head around 30. Chris and his wife made a decision most peo...

Mayor Corey Woods has spent nearly two decades in public service, stepping into leadership early and staying long enough to feel both the purpose and the pressure of the role. From student government to leading the city of Tempe, his path has been shaped by a consistent pull toward impact—paired with the reality that leadership is never as simple as it looks from the outside. That tension becomes...

Naveen Jain has spent his life building companies at the edge of what feels possible—from space exploration to personalized healthcare. But underneath the scale of his work is something quieter: a deep curiosity about how the world actually works, and a refusal to accept things simply because they’ve always been that way. His story isn’t about chasing success. It’s about questioning assumptions. T...

Ricky Rosselló was trained as a scientist, driven by a belief in progress and problem-solving. But his path pulled him into something far messier—politics, leadership, and the weight of representing an entire people. At one point, he was leading Puerto Rico through crisis, rebuilding its economy, and navigating natural disasters. From the outside, it looked like momentum. Inside, it was pressure....

Kimberly Fletcher didn’t set out to build a national movement. She was a mother, focused on her family, trying to make sense of the world around her. But beneath that role was a growing tension—questions about identity, purpose, and responsibility that wouldn’t leave her alone. What started as personal curiosity slowly turned into something much bigger. The turning point came after 9/11, when Kimb...

Dana Herrera has spent years in the world of regenerative medicine, watching people search for healing in procedures, protocols, and performance. Beneath that work is a more personal story—one shaped by a childhood built around earning love, and a life that, on paper, looked complete but felt anything but whole. The turning point came in a moment that redefined everything. After the loss of her fa...

Christine Butler has spent much of her life in roles that ask something of her: young mother, military wife, teacher, writer, and now a woman stepping more fully into leadership. What makes this conversation compelling is not just the number of identities she has carried, but the throughline beneath them. Again and again, she returns to the same question: how do you protect what matters most witho...

In this episode, Forbes Shannon steps into the guest chair and tells the story behind the voice listeners usually hear asking the questions. What unfolds is a conversation about reinvention, friendship, brain injury, ambition, ego, and the long road from wanting to be seen to learning how to truly see other people. It is the story of someone who lost a version of himself, built a new one, and is s...

Aaron Bare has spent the last two decades traveling the world as a speaker, entrepreneur, and facilitator, helping leaders rethink what they believe is possible. But behind the titles and accomplishments is a simple question that drives his work: why do so many capable people settle for smaller lives than they’re capable of living? In this conversation, Aaron reflects on the experiences that shape...

Every extraordinary life has a moment that changes how someone sees the world. In Extraordinary Stories , hosts Forbes Shannon, Christine Butler, and Aaron Bare sit down with founders, leaders, creators, and everyday humans to explore the conversations and experiences that shaped who they became. These are less polished success stories. and more the turning points, the doubts, the decisions and th...