Defining Moments | A Podcast with JP and MK

The FDIC told him to sell or liquidate. He took a breath and said no.In this episode, Chip Mahan joins us to reflect on the handful of moments that quietly built one of the most remarkable entrepreneurial careers to ever come out of Kentucky — from a tobacco barn in Frankfort to a $15 billion bank in Wilmington, North Carolina.The conversation moves through loss, loyalty, and the particular kind of courage it takes to keep going when the math says stop. Chip talks about losing his father at 11, the neighbor's words that landed too heavy for a child that age, and the way that morning shaped everything that came after. He traces the origin of Live Oak Bank's defining culture back to a single afternoon with T.W. Samuels of Maker's Mark — and the lesson in loyalty he carried out of that distillery. And he tells the story of sitting across from a federal regulator in Atlanta in 2008, being told the bank was over, and choosing obligation over self-preservation.Through it all: a wife named Peggy who responded to every leap with "how much time do I have to pack?" — married at 22, still together 63 years later.Some lives are built on ambition. Some are built on something quieter and harder to name.#DefiningMoments #Legacy #Stewardship #Mentorship #Generosity #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #Kentucky #Banking #LiveOakBank

Each morning during the 2007 NFL season, Chad Pennington got on his hands and knees and asked God to take football away from him. His father told him to stay in the fire.In this episode, Chad Pennington joins us to reflect on the moments that reshaped his relationship with the game, his identity, and the people closest to him. He speaks not as a former first-round pick or two-time Comeback Player of the Year, but as a son, father, and coach still learning what those titles mean.The conversation moves through a childhood in Knoxville shaped by two public school educators, a chance throwing session that led to Marshall, and the self-awareness to turn down an SEC offer at 19 because he knew he wasn’t ready. It lands in a Cleveland hotel room at 11:30 PM, where a five-minute firing became a doorway to leading the worst team in the NFL to a division championship. Chad talks about the void football leaves, the difference between reacting and responding, and why his father’s hardest advice was also his most loving.Some fires don’t destroy what they touch. They reveal what was always there.

In this episode, Jess Correll joins us to reflect on what it looks like when a life built around business has to be rebuilt around something more.He talks about growing up in rural Kentucky with a father who believed he could do anything and charged him 50% interest for co-signing his first bank note. About selling Bibles door-to-door at 17, buying that first bank at 26, and building First Southern National Bank over 44 years without ever opening an account or attending a closing. About a divorce that cracked open his capacity for compassion. About a mentor he's called every Saturday for two decades — and how he doesn't spend $10,000 without checking in first. About reckless giving, the flip phone, and his father's antidote to greed.Jess has been asked many times to explain his success. He still isn't sure it's his to explain.Some lives are built quietly, from the inside out. This is one of them.

Before they ask anyone else, they go first.In this inaugural episode of Defining Moments, JP Blevins and MK Wathen set the stage for what’s ahead: long-form conversations with Kentucky’s builders, leaders, and athletes about the few decisions that changed everything. But first, they share their own. JP reflects on his mother kneeling in the backyard when he was eight, telling him he could do anything if he worked for it daily and believed. Ten years later, he played for Kentucky. Then came a reckoning with performance-based identity. At 28, he left comfort for obscurity—Wilmington, North Carolina, knowing one person. Five months in, death and grief nearly sent him home. He stayed. MK talks about eighth-grade clarity that decisions matter forever, the choice to bet on family over career, and six months on her back deck in 2017 that stripped away everything trivial.This is the pilot. The beginning. Two people who’ve walked through a lot together, now asking: what are the moments that actually define us?