The Grit Factor Podcast w/ Karl Jacobi

Karl Jacobi
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Entrepreneurship

The Grit Factor Podcast brings real conversations with founders, entrepreneurs, and builders. No fluff. Just honest stories, hard lessons, and practical takeaways you can apply right now. New interviews plus solo episodes on mindset, leadership, and execution.

  1. Episode 034: Stabbed at Nineteen. Sober at Twenty-Six. Still Cracking People Open with Jon Paul Crimi

    2d ago

    Episode 034: Stabbed at Nineteen. Sober at Twenty-Six. Still Cracking People Open with Jon Paul Crimi

    Episode Summary Jon Paul Crimi grew up on the Irish Riviera outside Boston, a place where city mentality lived inside suburban houses and you learned early that your bike might get stolen and somebody might beat you up and that was just Wednesday. At nineteen he was at a party, grabbed the wrong guy during a fight, and took a knife to the head. Forty one stitches. Almost died from blood loss. The doctor who stitched him up told him his hair would cover it. Jon Paul is completely hairless. He has alopecia. He has no eyebrows. The hair the doctor promised would cover the scar never came. None of that part turned out the way anyone expected. He moved to LA to become an actor and fitness model. His entire identity was built on his looks. Then bald patches started appearing on his head. His eyebrows went patchy. The doctor put him on prednisone, a catabolic steroid that made him fat and bloated while everyone around him at Gold's Gym in Venice was taking anabolics to get jacked. He was pencilling in the patches on his head to go to auditions. Then he bottomed out from drugs and alcohol. Got sober at twenty-six. Made the decision to stop the shots and get off the medication and let the hair go completely. Two months sober, he told a doctor that if that was what God wanted for him, then so be it. He had the courage of someone who had just found his footing and did not yet fully understand how hard the ground was. What followed was sixteen years of sobriety, a Big Brothers mentorship that taught him what it felt like to do something for someone else with nothing expected in return, a career as one of the most sought after celebrity sobriety coaches in the country, trips to pull people out of crack houses in the favelas of Brazil, rock bands on tour, movie sets, private planes at thirty thousand feet with someone trying to open the door. Then Matthew Perry handed him a breathwork session. Then a Tony Robbins VIP invitation led to a night in San Jose and an awakening moment where everything clicked. Then Matthew came to his first sold out breathwork class and told him he had found his gift. JP has now been leading breathwork classes for fourteen years, certified over three thousand facilitators worldwide, led the largest breathwork class in Switzerland for a thousand people, taught at Tony Robbins events, trained Olympians and Oscar and Emmy and Grammy winners, and runs Sunday morning classes online that cost nineteen dollars for your first session. Matthew Perry is gone. The ping pong table JP taught him to play on is being auctioned off. But the breathwork exists because Matthew pointed the way. JP will not let you forget that. This episode is for the guy sitting in the back row of the class with a look on his face that says he cannot believe his wife dragged him here. JP sees that guy. He speaks directly to him. And that guy always cracks open. In This Episode, You'll Discover: What it was like to grow up on the Irish Riviera outside Boston, how getting stabbed at nineteen with forty one stitches almost killed him, and why the doctor's promise that his hair would cover the scar became the most ironic sentence of his lifeHow losing his hair to alopecia while working as a fitness model and actor in LA became the identity crisis that sent him to the bottom, what bottoming out from drugs and alcohol actually looked like, and the two-month sober decision to let the hair go completelyHow JP built one of the most unlikely careers in sobriety coaching, the Big Brothers mentorship that changed his relationship with purpose, and what it took to become the person celebrities called in the middle of the night when they were in crisisThe Stanley Cup game six VIP room encounter with Tony Robbins, Matthew Perry's reaction when JP fanboyed over a motivational speaker in a room full of Hollywood celebrities, and the San Jose seminar that produced an awakening moment where JP decided he was done chasing Hollywood and was going to help people insteadHow Matthew Perry introduced JP to breathwork, came to his first sold out class and told him it was his gift, and why JP says without Matthew there is no breathwork, and without breathwork he does not know where he ends upThe science behind circular conscious connected breathwork, what transient hypofrontality means and why it matters, the difference between parasympathetic and sympathetic breathing and where trauma is actually stored in the body, and why this technique produces results that JP describes as twenty years of therapy without saying a wordWhy JP stripped the new age out of breathwork to build something that the guy in the back row with his arms crossed will still crack open during, and what he says to that guy during the class that makes even the toughest men cry in the lobby afterwardsThe mouse study and the fifteen generations of cherry blossom trauma, the John Hopkins study on circular breathwork and veterans with PTSD, and why JP believes this work is especially powerful for the person who has never once walked into a therapist's office and never willKey Takeaways: You Can Be a Work in Progress and a Masterpiece at the Same Time. JP says this without apology. He is not perfect. His wife will tell you. He is also not waiting until he is perfect to help people. The wisdom you carry is not for your enjoyment. It is the fruit on the tree for the people walking by. Give it away before you convince yourself it is not ready.It Is Not a Breakdown. It Is a Breakthrough. The release that happens in breathwork is not weakness. It is the clearing of what your nervous system has been carrying. The reason people with PTSD have level nine reactions to level three situations is because the nervous system has too many tabs open from old events. Breathwork closes the tabs. It does not add new ones.What Comes From the Heart Goes to the Heart. JP is a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu who will put someone in an armbar to protect his family and will tell a stranger in a class that they are worth showing up for, and mean both completely. Vulnerability modeled from strength is not the same thing as weakness. It is the only version that lands.The Life You Are Looking for Is in the Work You Have Been Avoiding. JP's directive in the trenches. Whatever you keep walking away from because it is uncomfortable, that is the door. That is where the thing you want actually lives. The breathwork, the hard conversation, the class you think is stupid, the person you are afraid to forgive. Start there.Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes. If you want a different life, do something different. Something specific and new, not just a harder version of what you already do. JP tried breathwork because two people told him to and he thought it was the dumbest thing he had ever heard. He now runs the largest classes in the world. Go do the thing you think is stupid.Grief Is Love With No Place to Go. JP said this quietly about Matthew Perry when he was going through an auction catalog of his friend's belongings and could not stop himself from thinking about the ping pong table. The love does not stop when the person does. It just has nowhere to land. That does not mean it disappears. It means it needs somewhere to go. For JP it went into the breathwork. For you it can go wherever helps someone else.Trauma Is Stored in the Sympathetic Nervous System. That Is Where You Have to Breathe. Box breathing and Wim Hof calm you down through the parasympathetic system. Circular conscious connected breathwork intentionally activates the sympathetic syst...

    1h 13m
  2. Episode 033: He Earned the Freedom. Then Lost Himself in It with Tim Kelly

    6d ago

    Episode 033: He Earned the Freedom. Then Lost Himself in It with Tim Kelly

    Episode Summary Tim Kelly grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, failed out of college, played drums in a band, and figured the Navy might be a good move until something better came along. Fifteen years later, he was a rescue swimmer living the mantra so others may live, a certified command financial specialist teaching hundreds of sailors and Marines how to build wealth while still in uniform, and a co-owner of apartment buildings and mobile home parks he had built alongside other service members. He had engineered enough passive income to make his pension essentially worthless. So at fifteen and a half years, five years before his pension vested, he walked away. What came next was not the dream. Tim had more freedom than he had ever had in his life and less capacity to handle it than he realized. The structure, the accountability, the purpose of being responsible for other people, all of it was gone. He was doing it for the wrong reasons from the start, chasing houses in different parts of the world and lavish vacations and financial markers that fed his ego rather than his purpose. The freedom without the responsibility produced isolation, depression, anxiety, irrational decisions, and a marriage that did not survive. He had the money. He did not have the moral compass. He describes that period plainly: his level of personal responsibility did not align with the freedom he had. The turn came through a group of godly men he had met at his final duty station who gathered weekly for Bible study over Zoom, read God's word together, and poured into each other. He leaned in. He moved to Tampa. He met his now wife, who he describes as a gift from God. He celebrated their one-year anniversary and is building everything again, this time in God's will rather than his own. He still owns and controls nearly two thousand income-producing units across apartment communities, mobile home parks, RV parks, and storage. He is a senior managing partner at Kelly Housing Group, a board member at Active Duty Passive Income, a high performance coach who takes clients to summit mountains, and a man who reads Joshua one nine on his gym wall every single morning. This episode is for anyone who is chasing freedom without asking whether they are ready for it. In This Episode, You'll Discover: How Tim engineered enough passive income to walk away from the Navy five years before his pension vested, what that decision looked like from the inside, and why the freedom he built almost destroyed himThe specific ways Tim's moral compass drifted once the structure of military life was gone, what isolation, depression, and anxiety looked like during a season of financial abundance, and what the divorce he did not see coming actually cost himThe group of men at his final duty station who met every week for Bible study over Zoom, how that circle of iron sharpens iron rebuilt his spiritual foundation, and why he says that community was what made everything else possibleWhy Tim says discipline is not restriction or punishment but the structure that gives you access to the life you actually want, and how he breaks that down across the five areas of his life using the GROWS frameworkThe high performer gap audit Tim uses with every client, the three questions around clarity, energy, and courage, and why he finds that even the most financially successful people score low on courage when it comes to conversations with the people they love mostThree specific reasons high performers stay stuck, confusing activity with progress, chasing perfection over momentum, and measuring themselves against where they think they should be instead of where they wereWhy Tim invested thirty thousand dollars across four credit cards into real estate education before he had the money, what that level of financial commitment did to his follow-through, and how he closed his first deal, paid it all back, and never lost those skillsThe miscarriage he and his wife went through last year, his number one goal of becoming a dad, and the faith that has to carry what his own hands cannot controlKey Takeaways: Do Not Just Ask How to Get More Freedom. Ask If You Are Becoming the Kind of Person Who Can Handle It. Tim says this slowly and means every word of it. Financial freedom and time freedom are not the destination. They are a test. If your level of personal responsibility does not match your level of freedom, the freedom will consume you. Build the responsibility first. The freedom follows.Discipline Is Not Restriction. It Is the Structure That Gives You the Life You Want. Discipline with your body gives you freedom of energy and vitality. Discipline with your money gives you freedom of options and wealth accumulation. Discipline with your faith gives you freedom from drift and ego. Discipline with your family gives you freedom to lead and love and build a legacy. Remove the word restriction from this conversation entirely.You Cannot Succeed in Isolation. But You Have to Isolate to Prepare. Tim is specific about the sequence. Before you go find the rooms full of the people who have done what you want to do, do the work alone. Learn the language. Build the foundation. Education without implementation is useless. But implementation without guidance is expensive and dangerous. Know which phase you are in.The Cost of Inaction Is Always More Expensive Than the Cost of Investment. Most people calculate the fee to get in the room. They do not calculate what it costs them to stay out of it. Tim put thirty thousand dollars he did not have across four credit cards for real estate education because the cost of staying in the Navy for another ten years was worse than the cost of figuring it out faster with help.Go Seven Layers Deep on Your Why. If your why does not make you emotional, you have not gone deep enough. Keep asking why until the answer is something that belongs to you. Most people are climbing a ladder that is leaned against the wrong wall because they never stopped to ask why this ladder in the first place.Courage at Work Does Not Automatically Transfer to Courage at Home. Tim coaches CEOs and real estate investors who will negotiate multi-million dollar deals without hesitation and cannot bring themselves to have a hard conversation with their spouse or parent. The courage you build in your professional life is a different muscle from the one you need at home. Both need to be trained.You Either Win or You Learn. Remove the Word Failure. Tim says it plainly and it earns the saying. The most successful people have failed more than anyone else. They just kept going. Every mistake is a lesson, not a label. Soldier on. That is the whole plan.He Is With You Wherever You Go. Tim has Joshua one nine on his gym wall. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. He gives it to God every morning. The spiritual warfare gets louder the closer you pursue God. That is not a reason to stop. It is confirmation you are going the right direction.Timestamps: [00:00] Karl introduces Tim Kelly: Navy rescue swimmer, fifteen years of service, passive income investor, Kelly Housing Group, Active Duty Passive Income, high performance coach, Ironman, Kilimanjaro summiter, Tampa resident[03:00] Growing up outside Chicago, failing out of college, drumming in a band, joining the Navy without a plan, and becoming a rescue swimmer living so others may live[07:00] Ten yea...

    1h 21m
  3. Episode 032: Watch Me. Two Words That Built an Empire with Renee Carbone Fleming

    May 26

    Episode 032: Watch Me. Two Words That Built an Empire with Renee Carbone Fleming

    Episode Summary Renee Carbone Fleming grew up on the second floor of a tenement house, sharing a pullout sofa in the living room with her sister, in a home where the expected trajectory was secretarial school, a pension, a social security check, and a slow death. Her biological father committed suicide when she was six or seven. Her mother remarried. The family scraped. Nobody had money, so nobody talked about it in a healthy way, and by the time Renee was a young woman earning her first real income, money managed her before she could manage it. Bankruptcy at nineteen or twenty years old. No college degree. Just grit, and a growing fire that had nowhere good to go yet. She channeled that fire into corporate sales, built a real career through sheer outwork-everyone determination, fell in love, built a marriage, became a stay-at-home mom by choice, then discovered in the quiet of that season that she had slowly stopped being a person. She was everyone's everything except her own. When the marriage ended after seventeen years, she was over forty, had two daughters aged twelve and nine, and an ex-husband who genuinely did not think she could tie her shoes without him. She wrote two words on post-it notes and stuck them everywhere. On the mirror. On the car. In the office. Watch me. Those two words became a business philosophy, then a book, then a brand. The W is withdraw from explanation. A is act before approval. T is take up space publicly. C is commit without consensus. H is hold a vision when no one else does. That is how she built over thirteen million dollars in retail sales through the organizations she has led. That is how a sparkle queen from a tenement house in the northeast ended up on the Nasdaq billboard in Times Square, on Fox, NBC, CBS, CW, and Telemundo, and named Top Empowerment Coach of the Year in twenty twenty-five by the International Association of Top Professionals. Underneath all of that is a mother navigating estrangement from her youngest daughter for three years and counting, pouring into her oldest the only way she knows how, showing her what it looks like to keep going anyway. This is not a polished story. It is a real one. And it is still being written. This episode is for any woman over forty who has been sitting at her kitchen table wondering if it is too late. It is not. This is what fifty-six looks like when you refuse to accept anyone else's definition of it. In This Episode, You'll Discover: How Renee traced the origins of her money problems to a childhood with no financial modeling, how earning money for the first time without any framework led to bankruptcy at nineteen or twenty, and what she had to unlearn before she could build real wealthWhat she gave up when she became a stay-at-home mom, why justifying her existence through PTO and volunteering was the clearest sign she had lost herself, and how a dance mom side hustle selling Swarovski crystals accidentally became the beginning of an empireWhere Watch Me actually came from, the ex-husband who did not believe in her, the post-it notes everywhere, and how those two words broke down into a five-part business philosophy that she now teaches through her book, brand, and coachingThe divorce's real cost, not the assets but the friendships that evaporated, the loneliness of suddenly being one person instead of two in every social circle, and the choice she made between victimhood and reinventionThe estrangement from her youngest daughter, three years of silence, no big fight and no clear reason, and how Renee arrived at a place of honoring her daughter's journey without pretending it does not hurtHow Renee's miracle morning works in exact practical detail, the Keurig by the bedside, the gratitude before she gets up, the frequency audio, and the voice memo future life script she recorded herself and listens to every single morning before her feet hit the floorWhy Renee does not ask for permission or approval before she builds something new, what the Watch Me acronym actually means in practice, and the specific trap of asking the people closest to you whether your vision is a good ideaWhat Renee is building next, the trademark process, the wine brand, the twenty-million-dollar exit goal, the Napa Valley experience, and why she is putting all of it on the table publicly because that is how manifestation actually worksKey Takeaways: Watch Me Is Not a Comeback Line. It Is an Operating System. Withdraw from explanation. Act before approval. Take up space publicly. Commit without consensus. Hold a vision when no one else does. Every element of how Renee built her business traces back to those two words on a post-it note. The anger was the seed. The system is what grew from it.Do Not Ask the People Who Cannot See the Vision to Validate It. Your mother does not know how to open a podcast app. Your ex does not believe you can tie your shoes. The people around you are looking through the lens of who you were, not who you are becoming. Do not ask them for permission. Just build. They will have questions when they see it working.The Future Life Script Is the Most Underrated Tool in the Arsenal. Renee recorded herself on her phone's voice memo describing her life in present tense as if she had already achieved everything she wants, every smell, every client, every vacation, every dollar. She listens to it every morning before she gets out of bed. She says on the worst days it is the thing that puts her back together. This is not woo. It is active reprogramming.The Divorce Did Not Take the Assets. It Took the Identity. Renee is clear about what the real cost was. Not the things. The people who disappeared. The loneliness of being one where there used to be two. The story she had to stop telling herself. That grief is real and it is often invisible. Naming it is how you stop pretending it is not there.Grit Is Showing Up In Spite Of. Not because you feel ready. Not because the anxiety is gone. Not because the estrangement has resolved or the finances are clean or the vision is fully formed. Grit is showing up in spite of all of it. Every day you show up when you do not want to is a vote for the future version of yourself.Put the Goal Out Loud. Renee said she is going to sell Badass Queen for twenty million dollars. She said it on a podcast in front of whoever is listening. That is intentional. The more you say it, the more your brain believes it is already in motion. The more your network hears it, the more they are consciously and unconsciously moving you toward it.Multiple Streams of Income Are Not Optional. They Are the Strategy. Renee has network marketing, a personal branding agency, a coaching program, merchandise, clothing, wine, events, and a book. She calls it plan A through G. Every stream lives under the Badass Queen umbrella. None of it is random. It is all part of building an IP business with a real exit value.It Does Not Matter Your Age. It Does Not Matter Your Experience. Fifty-six is a PhD in life. Passion. Hot desire. You can build an extra stream of income at any age, from any starting point, with the right personal brand and enough willingness to be seen. The women who watch the Golden Girls and think that is their future have it wrong. Renee is the proof.Timestamps: [00:00] Karl introduces Renee Carbone Fleming: founder of Badass Queen, Sparkle Queens brand, host of Unapologetically Badass podcast, author of Watch Me, top empowerment coach, thirteen million in sales, Times S...

    1h 6m
  4. Episode 031: Grit Is Glitter. She Left It Everywhere with Allie Grack

    May 22

    Episode 031: Grit Is Glitter. She Left It Everywhere with Allie Grack

    Episode Summary Allie Grack was born to a mother who was not ready, adopted into a volatile and abusive marriage that was already near its end, and by age eight had been through emergency placements at a runaway home for teenagers, a twenty-four hour psychiatric hold for adults, and the foster care system. The foster mother who took her in, a woman named Bev, sat an eight-year-old Allie down on the first day and told her the rules. If you do not follow them, walk down the gravel road a mile and a half, turn left, you will eventually hit town. End of story. There was a part of eight-year-old Allie that wanted to take the gravel. She stayed. And in the almost two years that followed, Bev and her husband Butch gave her the only structure and safety she had ever known, including a go-cart, a snowmobile, a camper, and the early understanding that you do the stuff you have to do and then you can have fun. Eleven moves between age eight and junior year. Reunification with her family that lasted less than six weeks before she was back in the system. A group home in Sioux City Iowa run by a Chinese nun who made espresso brownies that she still thinks about. A father at sixty-three who was done and gave her free rein at fifteen. A daughter at seventeen. College immediately after with a baby in tow. And a summer camp at the Des Moines YMCA run by a man named Doctor Ray Pugh, who taught a group of throwaway kids how to shake hands, make eye contact, and speak with authority. That one season at that camp sent Allie into debate, speech, and eventually a career that has lasted thirty-plus years. Today she is president and owner of Workhorse Marketing, a female-owned, mission-driven agency out of Minnesota serving YMCAs, nonprofits, local governments, and mission-aligned brands across the country. She has a team, an office in Brooklyn Park, a daughter she raised before she was old enough to drink, and a thirty-six-year-old grandkid who is growing up with more opinions than she knows what to do with. She has ADHD, anti-routines, a messy bed she refuses to make, and a definition of grit that reframes the whole word. Grit is glitter. Messy, fun, beautiful, and impossible to clean up. This episode is for anyone who has been told their life path was the problem. It never was. In This Episode, You'll Discover: What Allie's childhood actually looked like, from adoption into an abusive marriage to emergency placements, foster care, eleven moves, and the moment at eight years old when she understood no one was coming to save herWhat Bev and Butch gave her in those almost two years that shaped the parent she became, including structure she had never known and a foster father she followed around like a puppy on a snowmobileThe summer camp that changed everything, Doctor Ray Pugh, Leadership of Two Thousand, and how learning to shake hands and speak with authority sent a throwaway kid into debate, speech, and a thirty-year career in marketingWhy Allie refuses to see her hardest seasons as rock bottom moments and calls them the quiet instead, and the perspective that comes from standing in front of a coliseum built in twelve AD and realizing the bricklayer's problems do not matterHow Allie's ADHD diagnosis in adulthood finally gave language to everything she had been told was disruptive, disobedient, and too much, and why she now calls the same brain her greatest professional assetThe anti-routine mindset, why Allie says routines are the death of her, and how rejecting the prescribed one-size-fits-all path of motivational culture helped her build something that actually fit the way she was wiredWhy Allie believes you cannot out-market bad customer experience, the Burger King turnaround she is passionately obsessed with, and the first question she always asks clients before she lets them spend a dollar on advertisingWhat Allie would say to the version of herself twenty years ago, and the one sentence most people never heard growing up in the system that she is determined to say out loudKey Takeaways: No One Is Coming to Save You. That Is Not a Tragedy. That Is a Starting Line. Allie knew at eight years old that she was on her own. She did not spend her life waiting to be rescued. She spent it building the skills, the structure, and the network that would eventually become a thirty-year career and a mission-driven agency. Knowing no one is coming is painful. It is also clarifying.Find the One Thing to Be Grateful for in Every Hard Season. Even the worst moments that should never happen to any person. Allie is specific about this. She does not say ignore the pain or skip the grief. She says find one thing. What did you learn? What did you get? That one question flips the perspective from victim to builder and that flip changes everything downstream.Chaos Makes You Calm. Use It. Allie reads a room faster than most people can form a first impression, a skill forged in a childhood where reading the situation accurately was a survival tool. The wilder things get, the quieter she becomes. She knows exactly what to do when an artist takes an Ambien fifteen minutes before a show. Most people panic. She pivots.Grit Is Glitter. Messy. Fun. Beautiful. Hard to clean up. It does not have to be ugly and painful. It can be fun. The whole point is to leave it everywhere, inspire people with it, and dare anyone to clean it up. Reframing grit from something you survive to something you deploy is a different relationship with the hard parts of your story.You Cannot Out-Market Bad Customer Experience. This is the thesis behind Workhorse Marketing and thirty years of Allie's work. Before you spend a dollar on advertising, fix the product, price, process, friction, and funnel. Tom Curtis at Burger King gave out his cell phone number and is fixing signs. That is leadership. That is marketing. The rest is just noise.Protecting Your Team from the Truth Is Not Love. It Is Condescension. When things go sideways, Allie does not sugarcoat it. She opens the books, names the risk, and lets her team know exactly where they stand. Gatekeeping bad news from the people who depend on you to make good decisions is not protection. It removes their ability to contribute to the solution.The Prescribed Path Does Not Fit Everyone. Stop Trying to Make It Fit. Allie felt misaligned with motivational culture her whole life because the path those speakers described was not her path. The breakthrough was not finding the right prescriptions. It was accepting that her brain, her history, and her wiring were already pointing her in the right direction and learning to follow that instead.This Too Will Pass. And Then You Will Be Dust in the Wind. Allie's directive is equal parts honest and liberating. In fifty years no one will talk about you or your issues, even if you are beloved. That is not nihilism. That is permission. Stop carrying so much of it. Enjoy what is here. Relish it. Leave nothing on the table.Timestamps: [00:00] Karl introduces Allie Grack: president of Workhorse Marketing, thirty-plus years in marketing, foster care survivor, mom at seventeen, Minnesota native who refuses to make her bed[03:00] The unmade bed, motivational culture misalignment, and how Allie learned to take pieces from prescribed paths without following any of them completely[07:00] ADHD diagnosis in adulthood and the relief of finally understanding her own wiring[10:00] The story starts at the beginning: birth mother not ready, adoption into a volati...

    1h 9m
  5. Episode 030: Laughter Lightens the Load You Hold with Merit Kahn

    May 19

    Episode 030: Laughter Lightens the Load You Hold with Merit Kahn

    Episode Summary Merit Kahn walked into her first stand up comedy class in 2014 with one goal: to be funnier in her keynotes. She had no intention of becoming a professional comedian. She was already a keynote speaker, a sales trainer, a certified emotional intelligence expert, a former Gerber baby model, and the youngest general sales manager of a Personal Achievement Radio station in Chicago, a station that literally played Tony Robbins tapes like a music station plays hit songs. She had a vision. She was on the path. Stand up was just a tool. Then she did seven minutes of original material in front of three hundred people and walked off stage asking herself what just happened. Something had shifted in her body that she could not explain and could not ignore. Not the stand up exactly. Something bigger. The realization that she could take everything she had lived, the breast cancer gene, the preventive mastectomy at forty with a five-year-old at home, the divorce from a narcissist, the secret family she just discovered three weeks before this recording and she was still reeling from it, all of it, and turn it into something that loosened the grip on other people's hardest things. The result is Optimistic Personality Disorder, a one-woman comedy show she has toured from Moab to Cape Coral, selling out theaters full of people who bought a thirty-dollar ticket to something they had never heard of because the tagline stopped them cold: if a TED talk and a tequila shot had a baby, it would be this show. The show runs through five decades of her life. The sixth decade, the one with the secret family, the engagement ring shopping while he still had a wife, is still being written. She thinks she knows why she could not write it until now. This episode is for anyone who is gripping something so tightly that there is no room left for what needs to get in. And for anyone who has forgotten that finding the funny is not disrespecting the hard. It is how you survive it. In This Episode, You'll Discover: How Merit's childhood in White Plains, New York, formed an entrepreneur and entertainer before she had either word for it, from starting the Greatest Gals club just to march in a parade, to selling snow removal door to door and renting her grandfather's snowblower to do itWhy Merit walked into her first stand up comedy class in 2014 with no intention of performing, what happened during those seven minutes on stage, and how that moment redirected the entire next chapter of her lifeThe BRCA gene diagnosis that arrived at forty years old through a phone call from her aunt, how a long family history of breast and ovarian cancer on her father's side had gone unasked for decades, and the decision to have a preventive mastectomy when her son was fiveHow Merit developed Optimistic Personality Disorder as both a show title and a genuine self-diagnosis, what certified emotional intelligence training revealed about her specific wiring, and the dangerous imbalance between extreme optimism and a low reality checkWhy Merit says laughter lightens the load you hold, the science behind what laughter does to the stress grip, and why her goal is not to make the hard thing disappear but to loosen your fingers just enough to let the other things inHow Merit thinks like a comedian, the questions she asks about what is embarrassing, unusual, or ridiculous about a situation, and why learning this skill makes comedy visible everywhere and cannot be unlearnedThe breakup three weeks before this recording, the secret family, the engagement ring shopping while he was already married, and how Merit processed that hit through the same lens she has applied to every hard decade of her lifeThe four pillars Merit teaches in her workshops: health, money, people, and bliss, and why when she is in the thick of it she goes straight to bliss first before she deals with anything elseKey Takeaways: Laughter Lightens the Load You Hold. This is Merit's thesis and it is more specific than it sounds. She is not saying laugh it off. She is saying when you are gripping something terrible so tightly that nothing else can get through, laughter loosens the grip just enough. It does not take the hard thing away. It creates a little space for everything else that can actually help you move through it.Find the Funny as Fast as Possible. Nobody said tragedy plus time equals comedy has to take a long time. The faster you can locate even a thread of something absurd or ridiculous in a hard situation, the faster you loosen the grip. Merit was three weeks out from one of the hardest betrayals of her life and already knew what chapter of the show it was going to become. That is not denial. That is a skill.Think Like a Comedian. Ask what is embarrassing about this. What is unusual. What is ridiculous. Not every situation has a punchline and that is not the goal. The goal is to train your brain to observe rather than just experience. When you learn to do this, you see material everywhere. And you cannot unsee it once you do.Helping Is Healing. When you are in the thick of your own fire, find someone else to pour into. Not because it solves your problem. Because it moves you from consumption to service, and the shift changes what your brain is doing. Merit was three weeks out from heartbreak and spent an hour on the phone with a woman from her audience who needed what Merit had already been through. Both of them walked away lighter.The Dots Only Connect Looking Backwards. Merit could not have set a goal for Optimistic Personality Disorder. She could not have written the sixth decade of the show until the sixth decade gave her something worth writing. The vision she had at nineteen watching Tony Robbins was always smaller than what she was actually being prepared for. Stop trying to connect the dots forward.You Have to Know Your Bliss. Merit's four pillars are health, money, people, and bliss. When everything is falling apart, the first move is toward bliss. Not away from the problem permanently. Just toward something that lights you up first. Then you deal with the rest. The order matters. You cannot operate on empty.Curate the Persona Without Hiding the Person. Merit deliberately presents a lighter face to the world, not because life is always easy but because she has learned she can hold more when she feels lighter. That is a choice, not a lie. The vulnerability lives in the show, in the workshops, in the phone call to a stranger from her audience. The performance does not erase the real thing. It is its own real thing.Grit Is Also Knowing What to Stop. Merit's definition of grit for this season is eliminating the things that no longer serve her. Stopping things that are not going to get her where she wants to go. Most people think of grit as pushing harder. Sometimes it is having the honesty to subtract.Timestamps: [00:00] Karl introduces Merit Kahn: stand up comedian, Gerber baby model, emotional intelligence expert, sales trainer, author, playwright, touring performer of Optimistic Personality Disorder[03:00] Growing up in White Plains, New York: the Greatest Gals club, the parade, the snowblower hustle, and the patterns that pointed toward entrepreneurship before she knew the word[07:00] Connecting the dots backward: how everything from radio to sales to emotional intelligence to stand up led to a one-woman show she never could have planned[11:00] The 2014 stand up class, seven minutes on stage, and the moment she realiz...

    1h 3m
  6. Episode 029: Overcoming a Rare Disease and Fear with Marc Schmidt

    May 15

    Episode 029: Overcoming a Rare Disease and Fear with Marc Schmidt

    Episode Summary Marc Schmidt was born with Opitz GBB Syndrome, a rare condition that arrives as a package deal. Cleft lip and palate. Surgical intervention required at birth. A speech pattern that has drawn stares and dismissive comments since he was four years old. Daily physical management that most people in his life do not know about and that he has learned to carry without making it a headline. Teachers who treated him differently. Kids who excluded him from birthday parties. A childhood that had him feeling like he was walking alone before he had the vocabulary to explain why. And through all of it, a quiet pull toward television and broadcasting that he spent years talking himself out of. Who is going to want to watch me? Who is going to want to listen to me? Those were not passing thoughts. They were the operating belief system that kept him behind the camera instead of in front of it for years. The version of Marc that finally hit record was not built in a single moment. It was built through a decade of networking events that showed him people genuinely wanted to see him succeed, a promotion into management that cracked his confidence ceiling, a blog, and eventually a podcast he called Mark My Words, a tribute to the entrepreneurs who took unlikely paths to the lives they wanted. Today Marc works at Disney Streaming, has nearly two hundred podcast episodes under his belt, speaks on stages, and creates content on Substack. He did not wait until the syndrome was gone or the voice was different or the confidence felt permanent. He did it while all of those things were still a factor. And he is still doing it every week. This episode is for anyone who has convinced themselves they need to look or sound a certain way before they are allowed to hit send. In This Episode, You'll Discover: What Opitz GBB Syndrome actually is, how Marc describes it as a package deal where some people get certain challenges and others get different ones, and the one daily physical reality he carries that most people who know him have no idea aboutHow Marc's mother shaped the foundation of who he became, waking him up at five in the morning for phonics and grammar lessons, showing up for every class event, and quietly working to make the world see beyond what was on the surfaceThe decade-long corporate job that unexpectedly became a turning point when Marc was promoted into management, what that validation unlocked in him, and why leaving that role sent him searching for fulfillment through entrepreneurship and contentThe fantasy Marc carried for years about bullies and naysayers eventually coming back to apologize, how Facebook dismantled that expectation gradually, and what he replaced it with when the apologies never cameWhy Marc refuses to go down the rabbit hole of assuming he was passed over or dismissed because of how he looks or sounds, and what that discipline has protected him from becomingThe networking events and early encouragers who changed his belief about whether anyone would want to hear from him, and why it took getting beaten over the head more than once before it actually sank inWhy Marc says the primary blocker keeping him from the next level is himself, his own caution, his reluctance to take risks, and the honest self-assessment of what he could be doing that he currently is notWhat Marc would say to anyone sitting in their car after a hard moment, convinced they will never be heard, from someone who has had every reason to believe exactly that and chose differently anywayKey Takeaways: You Have Every Reason Not To. Do It Anyway. Marc is honest that he has every reason to delete Mark My Words and walk away. The condition, the daily management, the voice, the history. Every episode he releases is a decision made against a full stack of legitimate excuses. That is not inspiration porn. That is what showing up actually looks like for most people.Stop Waiting for the Apology. The bullies are not coming back. The teachers who dismissed you are not going to call. The naysayers who sold you short have moved on and are not tracking your trajectory. Building your life around a moment of validation that is never coming is not motivation. It is a trap. Move on. Do it for yourself.Your Voice Is Not the Problem. Marc has people tell him their voice sounds weird and that is why they have not started. His response is immediate and specific. He has a voice that sounds genuinely different, built a nearly two hundred episode catalog, and people keep showing up to listen. Your voice is not the barrier. Your decision to hit record is.Practice Is the Only Path. Nobody comes out of the womb able to host. Mr. Beast's first YouTube video was terrible. Marc's first episodes were fine but pale next to what he does now. Karl's first stage talk had sweat running down his legs. The reps are the whole thing. Do it scared. Do it badly. Do it again.Little Victories Compound Into Evidence. Marc does not have one single turning point that rewired everything. He has a collection of small moments. A first podcast guest who believed in him. A boss who promoted him. A networking event where someone saw past the surface. Those accumulate. When the noise gets loud, go back to the evidence. It is always there if you built it.The Rabbit Hole of Why Has No Bottom. If you start looking for reasons you were passed over, dismissed, or overlooked because of something you cannot change, you will find them everywhere. That thinking does not reveal truth. It builds a cage. Marc made an early decision not to go there and it has protected everything he has built since.Fulfillment Is Not on the Corporate Ladder. Marc climbed it, reached a meaningful rung, and discovered the fulfillment was not where he expected it to be. The promotion was real. The validation was real. But it was not enough on its own. The question of how can I make life more fulfilling for Marc is what sent him toward content and community. That is a question worth asking before the ladder does the answering for you.The Primary Blocker Is Usually You. Marc's answer to the question of what is keeping him from the next level was immediate and unvarnished. Himself. His caution. His hesitation to take risks. Not the syndrome, not the voice, not the industry. Him. That kind of self-awareness is the starting line for actual change.Timestamps: [00:00] Karl introduces Marc Schmidt: Disney Streaming, nearly two hundred podcast episodes, stage speaker, Substack creator, born with Opitz GBB Syndrome, and a version of himself built one decision at a time[03:00] What it felt like from age four or five to sense that the world was going to handle you differently, and the loneliness of feeling like you were walking that path alone[07:00] Marc's mom: five AM phonics sessions, class events, and the quiet work of trying to make the world see past the surface[11:00] The syndrome explained: Opitz GBB as a package deal, what most people do not know about Marc's daily physical reality, and how he has learned to carry it without making it everyone's headline[15:00] How Marc handles the workplace looks, the borderline interview questions, and the moments where he could spiral into assuming the worst[19:00] The limiting belief that kept him behind the camera for years: who is going to want to watch me, who is going to want to listen to me[23:00] Karl's ad break: The Grit Code Exposed at https...

    1 hr
  7. Episode 028: Twenty Years of IT. One Deliberate Step Backward with Chris Farr

    May 12

    Episode 028: Twenty Years of IT. One Deliberate Step Backward with Chris Farr

    Episode Summary Most people spend their careers chasing the seat at the table. Chris Farr had it. Vice President of Technology at a credit union in southwest Georgia, twenty years building his expertise from the ground floor up through the era of mainframes and dumb terminals, through the rollout of online banking when half the membership still preferred the phone teller, through compliance frameworks and security protocols that come with the weight of managing other people's money. He earned that seat. And then he walked away from it. Not because of a crisis. Not because he got pushed out. Because he looked at the landscape, saw that the MSP world would let him do more for more people, and decided that the discomfort of starting over at the bottom of a new learning curve was worth more than the comfort of staying at the top of one he had already conquered. That decision cost him his confidence for a stretch. It cost him long nights on weekends relearning things he thought he already knew. It humbled him in rooms where he had expected to be the expert, and dropped him back into the experience of being a green technician figuring out systems he had never seen before. Almost a decade later, Chris is VP of Operations at Envision, one of the most trusted MSPs in the southeast, serving clients across multiple industries as a true technology partner rather than a vendor. He is also a published author, with a book called Built in the Trenches, and someone who has become increasingly focused on cybersecurity education for small businesses who wrongly assume they are too small to be a target. This is not a comeback story. It is something rarer. It is the story of a man who chose voluntary discomfort at the peak of his career because he knew comfort was the enemy of growth. This episode is for any leader who has been quietly wondering whether the seat they are sitting in is still the right one. In This Episode, You'll Discover: What VP of Technology at a credit union actually looked like day to day, how Chris helped drag an entire industry from mainframes and green screen terminals into the era of home banking, and what a winning week felt like when members could transact without standing in a drive-through lineWhy Chris made the deliberate move from a single-client corporate IT role into the multi-client MSP world in 2016, what drew him to the variety and challenge of serving multiple industries simultaneously, and what nobody told him about how humbling the first twelve months would beThe specific moment when Chris realized his confidence had cracked, standing in front of a client whose whole site was down, second-guessing whether he actually knew what he thought he knew, and what he told himself to keep moving forwardWhy the MSP model, at its best, functions less like a vendor and more like a fractional CTO partnership, giving small and medium businesses the strategic technology leadership they need without the overhead of a full-time executive hireThe platinum rule Chris drills into every technician on his team: not the golden rule of treating people the way you want to be treated, but treating them the way they want to be treated, and why that distinction is the difference between a forgiven mistake and a lost clientWhy cybersecurity is the season Chris is most focused on right now, how small businesses massively underestimate their exposure, and the specific problem of cybersecurity insurance forms written in language most business owners cannot actually interpretThe radical responsibility mindset Chris is actively building, the shift from knee-jerk dismissal of a struggling employee or client relationship toward asking what he could have done differently, and how that reframe changes everything downstreamHow to distinguish between pushing through and pivoting, the framework Chris uses when everything is falling apart around a decision that made sense on a whiteboard, and when it is time to take it back to the drawing boardKey Takeaways: Voluntary Discomfort Is a Career Strategy. Chris was not forced out. He chose the bottom of the curve over the top of a comfortable one. That choice cost him confidence in the short term and built capability in the long term. Most people wait for forced change. Chris engineered it. That is a different kind of grit.You Think You Know Until the Client's Site Is Down. Confidence built in one environment does not automatically transfer. When the pressure is real and the system is unfamiliar, you find out quickly where the gaps are. Chris's answer was not to fake it. It was nights and weekends resharpening what had gone dull. The foundation was still there. It just needed work.The Platinum Rule Beats the Golden Rule. Treat people the way they want to be treated, not the way you want to be treated. In tech support this means no jargon to someone who does not need jargon. It means making them feel heard before you make them feel fixed. When they know you genuinely care about their problem, they will forgive the technical slip. They will not forgive feeling dismissed.You Are Too Small for the News. You Are Not Too Small for a Cyber Attack. A small law firm or medical practice may never make headlines when compromised. But the reputational damage in a small community is catastrophic in a different way. You still have to see those people at church. The question is not whether you are big enough to be a target. The question is whether you have the right locks on the door.Radical Responsibility Is Not Just for Founders. Chris is building this as a daily practice. When a client relationship sours or an employee struggles, the first question is not what is wrong with them. It is what could I have done differently. Even if you were not the primary cause, you were in the room. That means you had a hand in it. Claiming that is not weakness. It is leadership.The Right Person, Wrong Seat Problem Costs Everyone. An analytical employee doing creative work is not a bad employee. They are a misaligned one. Moving them costs nothing. Losing them costs months of replacement. The culture fit is the hard-to-teach part. The skills are transferable. Always try the seat change first.Your Job Security Ends Where the Customer's Happiness Ends. This is the Sam Walton quote Chris keeps on his office wall. Not as a motivational poster. As a daily operating principle. Every hire, every decision, every interaction runs through this filter. If what you are doing is not serving the person who trusts you with their technology, you are not doing your job. Everything else is secondary.Push Through When the Goal Is Right. Pivot When the Path Is Wrong. Chris's framework is clean. If the destination is correct and the team is committed, grip it and grind it through. If the execution is revealing that the plan itself was flawed, you have to have enough clarity to call it before it gets worse. Grit is not stubbornness. It is knowing which one you are in.Timestamps: [00:00] Karl introduces Chris Farr: twenty years in IT, VP of Technology at a credit union, VP of Operations at Envision MSP, published author, cybersecurity advocate, Leesburg Georgia[03:00] What the credit union IT world actually looked like: mainframes, dumb terminals, green screen prompts, and dragging an industry into online banking[07:00] What a winning week felt like: members transacting without lines, employees set up for success, and the technology quietly doing its job in the background[1...

    57 min
  8. Episode 027: Ten Years Lost. One Decision Changed Everything with Ryan Otwell

    May 8

    Episode 027: Ten Years Lost. One Decision Changed Everything with Ryan Otwell

    Episode Summary Ryan Otwell grew up a preacher's kid in a middle-class home, raised in the church, moving from house to house as his dad's work demanded, and building the kind of faith that was borrowed from the people around him rather than owned for himself. That distinction would cost him a decade. When infidelity, attempted suicide, and months of family chaos unraveled everything at home just as he was stepping into adulthood, Ryan reached for the only foundation he had. He reached for people. And when people let him down, there was nothing underneath. His older brother left for the military. His younger brother needed him to be steady. He was neither. He fell in with the wrong crowd at his first job washing dishes at Ryan's Steakhouse, started drinking, started smoking weed, and discovered exactly what substances are designed to do: push you away from the pain and make you feel good at the same time. For a brain wired the way Ryan's is, obsessive, all or nothing, that combination was a perfect and total trap. What followed was years of carrying that baggage into everything. He graduated college with an engineering degree he earned because school came easy and required minimum effort. He married, brought all of his unresolved trauma into the marriage, and watched it fall apart from the inside when his wife's affair came to light. He was already deep in substance abuse and chronic depression by then. By the time the lowest night arrived, it was four in the morning, he had not slept, and he could not go to work. He called his dad. He told him to come get him. He needed help. His dad took him to a facility. And sitting outside, unable to form a prayer himself, he asked his dad to pray for him. His dad told him: I know you can't see it, but one day you will be able to help somebody. It took ten more years for that sentence to fully land. Today Ryan runs a seven-figure Amazon business, homeschools two boys alongside his wife, serves on the board of Send the Light shipping clothes and necessities to Christians in the Philippines, speaks on stages, and just came back from a five-day fully unplugged vacation, the first in years, that he would not have believed was possible for most of his adult life. He is not where he wants to be yet. He will be the first to tell you that. But he is not where he was. And that distance is the whole story. This episode is for anyone still waiting to be clean enough to ask for help. In This Episode, You'll Discover: What it felt like to grow up as a preacher's kid with borrowed faith, why infidelity and near-suicide in his family during his high school years cracked the foundation wide open, and how the absence of his own faith left him with nothing to hold onto when people let him downHow Ryan's obsessive personality, the same trait that makes him exceptional in business, became the engine of his self-destruction when it was pointed at trauma, breakups, and substances that kept the noise quiet for a few hours at a timeThe four AM phone call to his dad, the facility, the moment he could not form a prayer himself, and the sentence his dad said over him that took ten years to fully understandWhy Ryan refuses to call himself an addict even after going through rehabilitation, what he says instead, and why the words you use about yourself are not just semantics but active programming of your belief systemThe shift from be yourself to be better than yourself, why the first is destructive when the version of yourself you are being needs to change, and how that one reframe changed his relationship with every room he felt he did not belong inWhy Ryan says you cannot fix yourself before coming to Jesus, what the shower analogy actually means, and what grace towards yourself looks like when you have spent years believing you were too dirty to belongThe morning routine that Ryan resisted for a long time, what happens on the days he skips it, and why faith, family, and freedom as stated priorities only mean something if the first one gets time before anything else doesWhat a five-day completely unplugged vacation revealed about how far he has actually come, and why measuring the gain instead of the gap is the only honest way to assess how you are doingKey Takeaways: Borrowed Faith Does Not Hold Under Pressure. Ryan believed because his family believed. When his family fractured, his belief fractured with it. The work of making faith your own rather than someone else's is not done in a church pew. It is done in the moments when the people you borrowed it from are no longer there to hold it.Substances Solve a Real Problem. That Is Why They Are Dangerous. Ryan explains this with unusual clarity. Drugs numb the pain and produce pleasure at the same time. For someone already obsessive and in emotional crisis, that combination is not a weak choice. It is a completely logical one. Understanding why people use is not the same as endorsing it. It is the starting point for actually helping them.It Is Not Your Fault. But It Is Your Responsibility. Ryan draws the line clearly. The trauma that happened to him, the family crisis, the divorce, the borrowed faith that shattered, none of it was his fault. What he did with it was entirely his responsibility. Nobody is coming to save you. But somebody somewhere needs you to show up and start walking through the fire.The Words I Am Are the Most Powerful Programming You Run. Ryan will not say I am an addict. He will say I struggled with substance abuse, I made poor decisions, I needed help. The distinction is not denial. It is refusing to let a season of your life become a permanent identity. Whatever follows I am, your brain believes it.Be Better Than Yourself. Not be true to yourself. When the version of yourself you are being is the one causing the damage, authenticity is not the goal. Improvement is. The I belong in this room does not come from convincing yourself you are already enough. It comes from committing to become the person who belongs there.You Do Not Wash Before You Shower. You do not heal before you go to the doctor. You do not clean yourself up before you come to Jesus. Those are the reasons you go. Waiting until you are presentable enough is the thing that keeps people outside the door the longest.Whatever You Find Your Hands to Do, Do It With All Your Might. Ryan's anchor from Ecclesiastes. Life is vapor. It is vanity. And that is not a reason to coast. It is a reason to go all in on the day in front of you. You have today. The rest is not guaranteed.Look Back Before You Look Forward. The gap is where you are versus where you want to be. The gain is where you are versus where you were. Ryan spent years obsessing over the gap. Five days unplugged in a hotel with his family, measuring the gain from a rehab facility to this room, is what finally made it real.Timestamps: [00:00] Karl introduces Ryan Otwell: homeschool dad, seven-figure Amazon seller, board member at Send the Light, speaker, and the lost decade nobody sees on his bio[03:00] Growing up as a preacher's kid, moving constantly, the introverted kid who had to restart every few years, and the borrowed faith that would not hold[07:00] What actually happened in the family during Ryan's high school years: infidelity, attempted suicide, months of chaos, and the older brother leaving for the military[11:00] The obsessive brain: when it serves you in business versus what it does when pointed at trauma and pain at two in the morning...

    1h 18m
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The Grit Factor Podcast brings real conversations with founders, entrepreneurs, and builders. No fluff. Just honest stories, hard lessons, and practical takeaways you can apply right now. New interviews plus solo episodes on mindset, leadership, and execution.

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