The Driven Podcast

Colt Charlebois
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The Driven is a podcast hosted by Colt Charlebois. Sitting down with business owners, founders, and high-capacity leaders, he uncovers the real stories behind their success — the lows, the turning points, and the faith woven through it all. Every episode follows the same arc: where it all started, what nearly broke them, the moment things shifted, and where they are now. Raw testimony from leaders who built something meaningful while carrying real weight — in business, in life, and in faith.

  1. Sep 4

    Ep 013 | Paying People to Pray, Then Getting Called In | feat. Bryan Elliott

    You've hit the numbers and the wins keep stacking, so why does the quiet sense that you're not enough still drive everything you build? In this conversation, Colt sits down with Bryan Elliott, founder and CEO of Flō Energy Solutions, to unpack the hidden driver underneath high-performing ambition. Bryan grew a company from a $20,000 loan from his parents into specialized systems now running in roughly 2,500 stores across 35 US states, and for decades a lie that he was "not enough" ran underneath all of it. When faith started to reawaken, his first instinct was to run it like a founder: he brought a prayer team onto staff to cover the business, with zero intention of praying himself, until the conviction to join in slowly pulled him off the sidelines. You'll hear why success can't fix that lie ("it doesn't change the lie until it's displaced with truth"), how he turned an engineering mind into a supermarket market gap no competitor was solving, why he validates a problem exhaustively before building anything (Einstein's 55 minutes on the problem, five on the solution), and how his team learned to pray "we're not gonna let this customer become an idol" through years of financial storms. Bryan also shares the loss that reframed everything: waking the morning after his daughter's death with a peace he couldn't manufacture, where the heavenly reality superseded the earthly one. If you have been performing to prove something you can't quite name, this one is for you. ABOUT THE GUEST Bryan Elliott, P.Eng., is the founder and CEO of Flō Energy Solutions, the only HVAC company focused solely on optimizing mechanical equipment performance for food retail, and the author of five books, including More Than Gold and As In Heaven. A professional engineer trained at the University of New Brunswick, he started the company at 28 and filed his first patents in 1999 and 2000, building specialized supermarket systems now running in roughly 2,500 stores across 35 US states, with clients including Loblaws, Sobeys, Shoppers Drug Mart, and Aldi, all from a problem-first, minimum-viable-product discipline that validates a customer's real willingness to pay before engineering a solution. He is also the co-founder and president of M46 Ministries, co-founder and chairman of Bee Me Kidz, and a board member of Transform Our World Canada and EPIC at Work, and after returning to faith at 46 much of his writing and speaking now centers on inner healing, working from rest rather than toil, and the relentless love of God that pursued him through profound loss.

  2. Aug 28

    Ep 012 | Loosen Your Grip and Let God Move You Forward | feat. Sue-Jean Chung

    You're building at a scale you once thought was above you, and still a quiet voice asks whether you actually have what it takes. In this conversation, Colt sits down with Sue-Jean Chung, who passed a pivotal architecture course with a technical C and graduated certain she would never be an architect, then went on to grow Studio JCI from three people to more than thirty-five and help build over 1,800 residential units. You'll hear why she stopped calling herself an architect and started calling herself a problem solver who just uses architecture as the tool, how she reframed imposter syndrome as an insecurity about identity rather than ability, and what she means by yielding to promotion when God pushed her toward recognition she never sought. She unpacks why submission and authority are partners rather than opposites, traces the childhood tag-and-chips memory behind her fear that people would only value her for what she has, and shares how a loss in 2025 drove her to 2,700 logged hours and the brink of burnout before she learned that rest is not the opposite of faithfulness. If you have been performing at a level that looks like success from the outside while quietly wondering whether you belong there, this one is for you. ABOUT THE GUEST Sue-Jean Chung is a Founding Principal of Studio JCI, a multidisciplinary architecture firm committed to solving the housing and design challenges facing Canadian cities, which she has grown from a team of three to more than thirty-five architects and designers and whose work has contributed to over 1,800 residential units across the GTA and Greater Golden Horseshoe. A graduate of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, she has led projects on site for over ten years through every phase from tender to close-out, brings deep expertise in zoning by-laws and codes, and was recently inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada while her firm ranks number 39 on Canada's list of top women-led businesses. Through JCI Learn, she teaches weekly modules to raise up the next generation of problem-solving architects, advocates for women in the profession, and supports BEAT Toronto, building the practice alongside her husband, Jaegap Chung, on the conviction that two are better than one and that she is a steward of what God has entrusted to her.

  3. Aug 21

    Ep 011 | Obsessed With The Right Thing | feat. Rabbi Curt Landry

    You hit the number — the profit, the cars, the employee-of-the-year cover — and instead of arriving, you find yourself burned out and further from God than when you started. Curt Landry was 36, sitting on $7.6 million in project profits, when that exact life cracked open in a bathtub encounter with Jesus that dragged the shame of his origins to the surface and rebuilt his identity from the ground up. In this conversation, Colt sits down with Curt to separate being driven from being obsessed — why ambition either balances under God's power or spins off into the flesh, and why failure, not success, turned out to be his best teacher. You'll hear how he sanctifies behavioural tools like NLP instead of using them to manipulate, why he argues AI can carry anointing rather than strip it, and the prophetic word he took heat for: that revival is coming to the "business mountain" through its partnership with media. It builds to a single unscripted phone call to Palm Beach — a father recognized across a parking lot, and two reconciliations, earthly and heavenly, in one evening. If you've been chasing a goal so hard that your life has gone a little off the rails, this one's for you. Guest Bio Rabbi Curt Landry is a speaker, author, and international ministry leader with a heart to see restoration between Israel and the church. Founder of Curt Landry Ministries and House of David in Oklahoma, he spent his early career at the top of the corporate world as a master-level NLP practitioner trained in performance goal-setting, before coming to faith in 1989. A Jewish man who believes in Jesus — conceived out of wedlock, nearly aborted, born in Skid Row, and adopted at six months by a Jewish mother and Catholic father — he frames his life's calling around Malachi 4: turning the hearts of Jew and Gentile back to the Father to become "one new man." Across 37 years in ministry he has taught biblical finance and spiritual warfare, authored books including Reclaiming Our Forgotten Heritage and the Goals to Grow workbook, and leads the invitation-only Summit Leadership program in Destin, Florida. He and his ministry work closely with Israel and the IDF — delivering roughly $970,000 in support to reservists within 28 days of October 7th — and he has ministered to leaders worldwide, including Israel's Prime Minister and otther officials.

  4. Aug 14

    Ep 010 | You Cannot Burn Out a Man in Love | feat. Bill Nissen

    Description Most men north of sixty ease off the throttle. Bill Nissen is hitting higher RPMs, and the reason traces to a single conviction: you cannot burn out a man in love. In this conversation, Colt sits down with Bill to separate the exhaustion that flattens driven leaders from the devotion that never empties, a distinction he drew from a study of Song of Solomon after church elders once warned him to slow down before he burned out. You'll hear why he spends his energy turning oughts into want-tos, how he argues much of the Western church sells fire insurance instead of intimacy, why he insists only a new experience and not another book can change what you truly believe, and what he means when he tells a stalled leader that you can't steer a parked car. Bill also shares why he set out to work himself out of a job on purpose, certain that was the point of his leadership all along. If you have been burning out while doing all the right things, sure your heart is right yet unable to get off the couch, this one is for you. Bio Bill Nissen is the Head Performance Coach at AlterCall, drawing on more than 35 years of pastoral ministry, 25 years of trauma-based counselling, and 35 years of mentorship focused not just on imparting knowledge but on building character, resilience, and a sense of purpose in the people he leads. For the last 15 years, he has worked in business consulting and team building, growing a company past $50 million in revenue, and he serves as a corporate trainer, public speaker, and author. With a foundation in psychology, sociology, public speaking, and ministry, he coaches across emotional mastery, mindset training, team building, and business accountability, helping leaders integrate their spirituality into their professional identity and serve a cause greater than themselves with a heart of service.

  5. Aug 7

    Ep 009 | Competing On Purpose | feat. Bruce Taylor

    You built the business, and you could sell it tomorrow to the highest bidder and walk away rich. Bruce Taylor did the opposite, handing EnviroStewards to his own employees rather than to the multinational that would have paid more. In this conversation, Colt sits down with Bruce to unpack the economics of that choice and the triple bottom line behind it, where economic, environmental, and social return all count. You'll hear why he treats profit like blood, something a company needs to accomplish its mission but never the reason it exists, how root-cause systems thinking lets his engineers save clients tens of millions instead of selling them equipment they don't need, and why he tells owners they cannot compete with big firms on salary but can win decisively on purpose. Bruce also explains how a $100 biofilter saves the poorest families $1,000 in medicine, and why that conviction keeps his people from leaving. If you have been trying to out-pay larger companies for talent and losing, this one is for you. ABOUT THE GUEST Bruce Taylor is the founder of EnviroStewards, an engineering firm he launched in 2000 after a decade with multinational consultancies, work that once included water recycling on the NASA space shuttle. He started the company the year the Walkerton water crisis hit, added roughly one employee a year to reach a team of twenty, and carried them through 2008 and 2020 without a single layoff by having everyone share the reduced hours. He is the author of the textbook Sustainable Business, and through the company's hybrid mission he teaches communities in South Sudan and Uganda to build water purifiers from local materials, work that has reached 20,000 families and now runs alongside the Cup for Cup program and an annual film festival in Kitchener. Converted at 25, he built the firm on the values honor God, serve people, care for creation, and married his wife in South Sudan in 2007.

  6. Jul 31

    Ep 008 | When Who You Are at Church Isn't Who You Are at Work | feat. Calvin Quek

    Most leaders can name the moment they realized the person they are at work and the person they are on Sunday had drifted apart. In this conversation, Colt sits down with Calvin Quek to talk about that gap and how it tends to form. Calvin was 23 and clearing over a hundred thousand a year in tech sales, in an office with a beer fridge and a standing month-end ritual at the bar downstairs, and he is candid about how hard it was to follow Christ and still belong there. You'll hear why the gap usually shows up as loneliness rather than anything dramatic, how one question at a generosity retreat ("what is the finish line?") reshaped his sense of what enough looks like, and how his thinking moved from tithing on profits to stewarding the whole business. Calvin also reflects on the season after a partnership ended, what he learned about identity when the title went away, and why he would tell his younger self to trust that God has a plan. ABOUT THE GUEST Calvin Quek is the founder of Bright Mark, a consulting firm that implements Salesforce and marketing automation for growing businesses, nonprofits, and Christian ministries. He began his career at Salesforce as a sales rep and solutions engineer, reached President's Club in his third year, and later ran sales enablement bootcamps for new hires across Canada, the US, the UK, and Ireland. He co-founded an earlier Salesforce consulting practice and grew it past 40 staff and 5 million in revenue. He is also part of Multiplied Impact, which gathers Christian entrepreneurs around a Kingdom Vision Statement and three pillars: generosity, evangelism, and missions.

  7. Jul 24

    Ep 007 | The Post-Exit Crash No Founder Sees Coming | feat. Troy Hoffman

    You spent a decade building the thing. The day it sells is supposed to be the finish line, so why do so many founders crash the moment they cross it? In this conversation, Colt sits down with Troy Hoffman to unpack the addiction underneath the drive and what actually happens on the other side of a sale. Troy went bankrupt at 23, hit 300 pounds and a Hashimoto's diagnosis by the time his second company was running, and rebuilt himself over years of protocols, coaches, and men's groups. He tells the story of Blake Mycoskie, who sold TOMS Shoes, looked like he had the perfect life, and nearly took his own. You'll hear why the traits that make you a great operator make you a crappy investor, why wealth is created in concentration but preserved in diversification, how Strategic Sedation keeps a nervous system from shattering under founder-level stress, and what the first year after a sale should actually look like. Troy also shares the three warnings every founder needs before they sign the papers. If you have been eyeing an exit or feeling the pace catch up with your body, this one is for you. ABOUT THE GUEST Troy Hoffman leads FNDRS, an organization helping entrepreneurs build, lead, scale, and exit without burning out, with a stated goal of guiding 10,000 companies through scale and exit. Over three decades in the arena, Troy went bankrupt at 23, rebuilt from a 300-pound burnout and Hashimoto's diagnosis, and refined a founder philosophy built on Strategic Sedation, real-money mentorship, and a post-exit playbook most founders never hear until it is too late. Troy is a fixture in global founder circles, drawing on years of NLP work under the late Dr. Robert D. McDonald from Tony Robbins' lineage, Garrett J. White's Wake Up Warrior, Mark Moses of CEO Coaching International, and personal counsel from Richard Branson. He splits time between Puerto Rico and Florida with his wife and kids, and stays anchored in a faith practiced through worship, morning journaling, and an ongoing search for deeper connection with God.

  8. Jul 17

    EP 006 | 92% of Entrepreneurs Can't Answer This One Question | Feat. Stephen Courson

    You're making good money. Your calendar is packed. But if you had to say out loud what you actually want, would you have an answer? In this conversation, Colt sits down with Stephen Courson to unpack the clarity problem hiding underneath most driven entrepreneurs' stuck moments. Stephen tracks it: 92% of the people he works with cannot answer the one question that would change everything, what do you want? You'll hear why ambition is God-given and not the same as pride, what the "God slot" is and why leaders quietly hand it to themselves, how good distractions sabotage a calling faster than bad ones, why "vagueness is fear dressed up as humility," and how the TEAMS framework (time, energy, attention, money, soul) exposes where your life is actually going. If you have been staying busy so you don't have to face the question, this one is for you. ABOUT THE GUEST Stephen Courson is the founder of Lifebuilder and author of What Do You Want? He spent over a decade in enterprise sales at Gartner and Salesforce, earning 11 top sales awards in 12 years, before stepping out to help high performers align their time, energy, attention, money, and soul. Through his Clarity Machine, a 7-step system to eliminate distraction and turn goals into daily execution, Stephen coaches founders and leaders to reclaim 10 plus hours a week, build new income streams, and get more done by doing less, better.

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About

The Driven is a podcast hosted by Colt Charlebois. Sitting down with business owners, founders, and high-capacity leaders, he uncovers the real stories behind their success — the lows, the turning points, and the faith woven through it all. Every episode follows the same arc: where it all started, what nearly broke them, the moment things shifted, and where they are now. Raw testimony from leaders who built something meaningful while carrying real weight — in business, in life, and in faith.

Information

  • Creator
    Colt Charlebois
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    14
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Driven Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Driven Podcast