The Honest Mic
by Fortune
Most success stories skip the expensive part.The Honest Mic is where founders, operators, creators, and people with scars worth learning from share what it really takes to build, recover, and keep going.No hype. No highlight reel. Just honest conversations from people who've been through something worth hearing.The goal isn't inspiration. It's perspective you can actually use.
Episodes
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Leadership with a Servant's Heart | Kevin Wayne Johnson
Most people think leadership is about titles. About being in charge. About having the corner office and the team that reports to you. But Dr. Kevin Wayne Johnson has spent more than three decades learning that leadership isn't about any of that. It's about service. Kevin spent 34 years in the...
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Rewire. Untangle. Lead. | Marcia Ruben
You can be smart, capable, and completely overwhelmed. Not because you lack skill or drive. Because your brain is running patterns that made sense once and now work against you. That's the pattern Dr. Marcia Ruben has spent more than three decades helping leaders untangle. She's an executive…
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The Authority X-Factor: From Best-Kept Secret to Recognized Authority | Kelly Schuknecht
You can be the most knowledgeable person in your field. You can have years of expertise. You can be the one everyone comes to for answers. And still feel like the spotlight was meant for someone else. That's the internal hurdle Kelly Schuknecht has spent over twenty years helping professionals...
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Coincidence or God? One Man's Journey Through the Impossible | Mick Wienholt
In 2000, Mick Wienholt was climbing alone on a 14,000-foot peak in Colorado. He caused an avalanche. It would have killed him. His skull was fractured in three places. His scalp was split open to the bone. He was losing significant blood. And he was alone. He hiked three miles back to his truck.…
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The Light Switch Myth: Why Healing Doesn't Work Like a Flip | Kerisma Vere
Most self-help tells you to flip a switch. Find the right system, the right mindset, the right morning routine, and everything changes. But if healing actually worked like a light switch, none of us would still be struggling with the same things we've been struggling with for years. Kerisma Vere...
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The Agreeable Child: A Yogic Journey from Tragedy to Triumph | Bradley Gabbert
At two years old, Bradley Gabbert was struck by a car and spent two weeks in a coma. He came home having lost the ability to walk and speak. He relearned both. And from the outside, he built a remarkably normal life. But there was another part of the recovery he wouldn't recognize for decades. He...
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Lighter, Quieter, Stronger — and Bio-Based | Phil Cohen
Phil Cohen is the CEO and co-founder of Simplifyber, a North Carolina-based advanced materials company that has raised $20 million to commercialize a proprietary liquid fiber molding platform. They form bio-based, shaped parts directly from natural cellulose fibers. And this isn't his first…
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Transformation Doesn't Happen by Chance — It Happens by Design | Paul Padgett
Most people are not living. They're surviving. They're getting up, going to work, paying bills, handling the next crisis, going to bed, and doing it all over again. And somewhere along the way, they stop asking whether there's another way. Paul Padgett knows that pattern. He's spent decades in...
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Both Sides of the Equation: From Investor to Operator | Christopher Swing
Most people who understand the finance side of a deal have never had to run the operation day to day. And most people who run the operation have never had to evaluate a business from the outside as an investor. Christopher Swing has done both. He's been a CFO. He's done private equity deals. He's...
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The Self-Driving You: Taking Back the Wheel | Alan Bodnar
Most of your life is being run on autopilot. Automatic responses. Conditioned patterns. Reactions you didn't consciously choose. The question isn't whether you have a self-driving system underneath your awareness. It's whether you're ever going to take the wheel. Alan Bodnar has spent the past...
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What Do You Do With Years You Weren't Guaranteed? | Gaylen Wilson
Gaylen Wilson's life has not been one comeback. It has been a series of forced reinventions. Farm failure. A collapsed stockbroker career. Years of alcoholism. Twenty years sober. 9/11 wiping out an industry. A Walmart cashier job. Rebuilding as a computer repairman. Rebuilding again as a...
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The True Cost of Financial Dependence | Estelle Gibson
Estelle Gibson is a CPA. She spent 40 years in accounting and finance. She knew money. She understood numbers. She understood the rules. And she still handed over her financial power during her marriage. After her divorce, she had to rebuild her life financially and emotionally from the ground…
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Most People Train Their Body. Very Few Train Their Brain | Arnold Beekes
You'll spend hours at the gym. You'll watch what you eat. You'll track your steps. And then you'll spend zero minutes thinking about the organ that runs everything — the one that determines how you think, feel, and relate to every person and every situation in your life. Arnold Beekes is on a...
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Why Teams Succeed, Fail, and What Leaders Can Do About It | David Lengyel
Why do some teams thrive while others struggle? Even when they have talented people. Even when they have good intentions. Even when they have plenty of resources. That question has been David Lengyel's obsession for more than 40 years. As the founder of Venture Up, he's designed and facilitated...
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Why AI Memory Matters More Than Better Prompting | Ben Finklea
The more clients, conversations, and AI tools you manage, the harder it becomes to keep important context from getting lost. Your AI forgets. You forget. And the decisions, commitments, and client history that actually matter end up scattered across a dozen tools that don't talk to each other.…
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Scale Means Nothing Without Presence | Sam Shargo
Sam Shargo started his first company at thirteen. Entered college at sixteen. Joined the military at seventeen. And then spent two decades building, scaling, and selling multiple companies, including a technology and cybersecurity firm. By every external measure, he had figured it out. And then…
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Why Capable Professionals Get Overlooked (And How to Change It) | Aletta Rochat
Stagnant careers shouldn't happen to good people. But they do. You're doing the work. You're hitting the targets. You're the one everyone relies on. And somehow, the promotion goes to someone else. The meeting moves on before you finish your thought. Your ideas get repeated back to you five…
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The Emotional Desert: What Culture Does to Men and Boys | Gloria Vanderhorst
Gloria Vanderhorst started her practice as a psychologist working with preschool children — mainly boys. Female teachers saw their exuberance and physical energy as problematic. They were labeled hyperactive or attention-deficient. Her work with those boys resulted in their fathers coming to...
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I Write Because It's How I Listen | Nancy Ensley
Nancy Ensley has spent decades in professions that demand empathy and discernment. Nurse. Hospice specialist. Legal nurse consultant. Coding specialist. Teacher. Supervisor. Helping people navigate life's most critical moments. She's learned that every story, no matter the genre, carries lessons...
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Thirty Years Taken: From Prison to Purpose | Tammy Corwin
Tammy Corwin was abandoned at the age of two. Later adopted. At twenty-two, she was convicted and sentenced to sixty years in prison for a crime she did not commit. She entered prison as a young woman and did not walk back into the free world until she was fifty-two. Thirty years passed while…
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She Has It All. So Why's She Crying in the Car? | Liz Coleman
Liz Coleman works with women who look successful and steady from the outside but can't remember the last time they truly relaxed. The ones stuck overthinking every decision, always on, unable to switch off even when nothing is wrong. She's a certified transformational life coach with a degree in...
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From the Circus to the Open Road: A Creative Life Across Five Arenas | Dave Letterfly Knoderer
Dave Letterfly Knoderer started on the circus as a teenager. He spent three decades training horses to the Haute École level. He became an award-winning performer on dancing horses. He recovered from alcoholism. He became the most prolific motorhome airbrush mural artist in the RV industry. And…
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BE DiFFERENT or Be Dead: Taking a Startup to a Billion | Roy Osing
Roy Osing took a startup to a billion dollars in annual sales. Not a company he joined after it was already winning. A startup he helped build from its early stages to a billion. He's a former president and CMO with over 40 years of executive leadership experience. He's the author of the...
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Ethical AI: Building Content Tools with Moral Plumbing | Hogan Shrum
Hogan Shrum loves what AI can make possible. And he really hates the way a lot of the industry has decided to get there. The pressure on agencies, brands, content studios, and creators to make more work, in more formats, faster than ever has become completely feral. AI can help with that. But it...
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Dignity Drives Profit: Growing a Business from $1.6M to $4M by Treating People Better | Todd Krause
Todd Krause spent two decades in institutional finance — building a $2B fund administration firm from scratch and helping launch a $14B Bank of America business unit — before buying a struggling cleaning company in 2020. Days before the COVID-19 shutdown. Everyone expected it to fail. Instead, he...
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The Motivational Firewood Guy: Blowing Up Your Life and Rebuilding Better | Steve Gamlin
Steve Gamlin blew up his life at 35. Radio career. First marriage. Financial stability. All of it. He found himself standing in a thunderstorm, hitting a $3 bucket of golf balls, daring the lightning to hit him. It didn't. And two questions from a coach started him on a path to rebuilding —…
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AI and the American Dream | Bradley Aman
Bradley Aman spent decades building companies from the ground up. He became a millionaire by 40 and eventually sold his primary business after growing it into a national leader in its industry. That's a real exit built on real years of grinding. Now he's focused on a new challenge: helping…
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Winning at Work, Losing Yourself | Tony Tenaglier
Tony Tenaglier says most people are winning at work but losing themselves. They're climbing ladders that don't lead anywhere meaningful, grinding through burnout they've been told is just part of the deal. Tony is an aerospace Quality Manager, a PhD researcher in Industrial-Organizational...
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Consistency Is the Ultimate Measure of Excellence | Ed Franklin
Ed Franklin has spent more than 33 years in the sports information industry. He holds an MBA in Finance. He's established one of the most successful and consistent records in the business — a 96.4% client retention and renewal rate and more than 30 consecutive years of long-term profits. His...
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Find Your Leadership Confidence | Victoria Noethling
Victoria Noethling spent 40 years in corporate America, including 17 as a project manager on large-scale programs at a Fortune 500 company. Then she retired in 2018. And instead of slowing down, she launched a podcast, co-authored six books, built coaching programs, and devoted the last decade to…
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When the Doctors Say NO! God Says YES!!! | David Ebel
David Ebel was dying at birth. He was exposed to a medical experiment that kept him alive — but the side effects were so severe that it became illegal to do to humans just months after it was done to him. Birth defects. Sterility. 100% mortality by age 20. He was in chronic pain from his earliest...
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Once a Fighter, Always a Fighter | Noah May
Noah May has battled mental health struggles since he was 13. Depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, feeling like an outcast, never feeling good enough. He kept going. He's now the host of three podcasts, including Lethal Venom, where he and his guests speak nothing but the truth, as well as...
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From Interest to Client: A Framework for Coaches | Robbie Mould
Robbie Mould says most coaches are doing all the right things — posting on LinkedIn, speaking at events, appearing on podcasts, writing books, networking — and still not getting the clients they expect. The problem isn't that they need to work harder or become better at selling. There's simply a...
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You Don't Want to Forgive Them — You Want Them Out of Your Head | Katharine Giovanni
Katharine Giovanni says you don't want to forgive them. You want them out of your head. That reframe alone changes the conversation. And coming from someone who has lived through childhood trauma, stage 3 breast cancer, and over three decades of sobriety, it's not a clever saying. It's something...
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The Managerial Leadership Journey | Julian Chapman
Julian Chapman retired as a Brigadier-General after more than 30 years in the Canadian Armed Forces. That means he spent his career actually managing managers at the highest level of accountability there is — life and death stakes included — before ever setting foot at Forrest and Company. That…
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From Bottom of the Class to Millionaire by 36 | Dennis McCurdy
Dennis McCurdy graduated eighth from the bottom of his high school class. He drove a canteen truck, tended bar at night, and failed in real estate at 24. And by 36, he had a net worth of over a million dollars. That's not a motivational arc. It's a specific sequence of decisions made by someone…
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The Social Media Platform That Blocks All AI Content | Ross Thorpe
Ross Thorpe says 71% of images uploaded to social media every day are now made by AI. Some platforms have over 45% of their users as bots. You are not interacting with people anymore. The 'social' has gone from social media. Ross is the CEO of Rooverse — a social media platform that blocks users...
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Surviving the Killing Fields: A Story of Tenacity, Faith, and Freedom | Sara Im
Sara Im grew up in Cambodia. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge took over. For four years, she was held captive in a harsh labor camp — starved, exhausted, severely sick. During that time, two million people died. A quarter of the Cambodian population. She survived. She escaped. She built a life on the…
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I Didn't Retire — I Recommitted | Anouk Brumfield
Anouk Brumfield spent more than 30 years climbing the corporate ladder at IBM, eventually becoming an Executive Vice President and Senior Partner. She led global teams, billion-dollar portfolios, and game-changing strategies. And then she stepped away. Not because she failed. Because she had to...
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Southern Stories, Strong Women, and Second Chances | Susan Gooch
Susan Gooch is a true Southern storyteller. She writes about strong women, friendship, and second chances. Her novels are set in her beloved hometown of Searcy, Arkansas. She's been married to her high school sweetheart for nearly forty years. She has three grown children and four granddaughters....
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From Combat to Creativity: A Veteran's Decision to Finally Live | Kenneth Webb
Kenneth Webb served 33 years in the U.S. Army, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, with combat deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo. He retired, completed a second career at American Airlines, and then walked away from a six-month contractor job to finally live, not just exist. He...
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The Janus Plan: Beginning Again with Intention | Jobert E. Abueva
Jobert E. Abueva grew up between worlds. Born in the Philippines, raised across Nepal, Thailand, and Japan. He spent his career learning that the hardest threshold to cross is the one inside yourself. He was a global marketing executive at ETS. His career spanned Fortune 500 leadership and...
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Building a United Front in Marriage | Pesa Shayo
Pesa Shayo says couples don't have to keep turning against each other when outside pressure rises. They can learn to face it as one team. He's the co-founder of Live Your Best Marriage, an author, and someone who helps cross-cultural Christian couples build a United Front through in-law pressure,...
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3,102 Miles on a Tandem Bike: Finding Courage at a Pivotal Moment | Teri M Brown
Teri M Brown chose to ride a tandem bicycle 3,102 miles across the United States in 2020, the same year the world stopped, while healing from a 14-year emotionally abusive marriage and finally giving herself permission to write fiction. That's not just an adventure story. It's a story about…
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The Pain of Regret vs. The Pain of Trying | Dean Taylor
Dean Taylor has carried a sense of purpose from a young age. He wanted to make a difference, encourage others, and help people believe more is possible. But like so many people, life had a way of quieting those dreams. Responsibilities grew. Setbacks came. Doubt crept in. And for a season, the...
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Choose Your Miracle | Lauren Fay
Lauren Fay says alcohol wasn't the problem. It was revealing the problem. That reframe alone opens a conversation most high-performing people have never been invited into, because they don't see themselves in the traditional addiction narrative. But they know something is quietly costing them....
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Leading While Human | Ralph Kellogg
Ralph Kellogg built a successful leadership career while privately carrying the weight of perfectionism and isolation. He survived a suicide attempt. And then he rebuilt his life through radical honesty, personal reflection, and years of journaling that became the foundation for his book, Leading...
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The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon | Steve Anderson
Steve Anderson spent decades in the insurance industry building his career around risk — how to assess it, manage it, and protect against it. Then he read Jeff Bezos' 21 letters to Amazon shareholders and saw something nobody else had noticed. Through a risk lens, Bezos wasn't just a visionary.…
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Why Should Anyone Follow You? | Larry Robertson
Larry Robertson has helped client organizations win over USD 9 billion in new business. That's not a vague leadership claim. That's a number someone can actually check. Over 30 years and 30 countries, he's worked with chairmen, presidents, CEOs, and executives across a broad range of…
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Most Innovation Budgets Are Being Incinerated | Bruno Pesec
Bruno Pesec says most innovation budgets are being incinerated. Companies talk about innovation constantly. Very few actually profit from it. He's one of the rare advisors who has helped senior leaders unlock €1 billion in new revenue and open doors to €28 billion in new market opportunities. Not...
About this show
Most success stories skip the expensive part.The Honest Mic is where founders, operators, creators, and people with scars worth learning from share what it really takes to build, recover, and keep going.No hype. No highlight reel. Just honest conversations from people who've been through something worth hearing.The goal isn't inspiration. It's perspective you can actually use.
Hosted by
Fortune