Wake Up Call
This podcast is for anyone questioning the endless pursuit of more. An ex-VC and tech exec who left it all behind, sold everything he owned and went looking for some answers. This is his search for truth, meaning and what a good life actually looks like.
Episodes
#33 TJ Power | How To Hack Your Brain
In this episode I speak with TJ Power— he's a neuroscientist, but more than that, I think he and I see the world in a really similar way. We're both obsessed with the same question: how do we build a brain and body that can actually cope with how fast modern life has gotten?TJ breaks down his DOSE framework — dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins — and honestly reframed how I think
#32 Jenny Calvert | How To Escape The Hustle
Jenny Calvert spent years in tech building her identity around output and external validation — holding down a marriage, two kids, and everything else — while a resignation letter sat on her desk for six months. What finally made her hit send was hearing herself say, out loud, that she was terrified she'd never build something of her own.We talk about what that kind of burnout really does to your
#31 Solo | How to Prepare For The Next Decade
For ten years I optimized everything for speed and I paid the price. I short circuited my entire system trying to keep up with the pace I had chosen. There is a moment where the pace stops being something you make and becomes something you can no longer take.My fear is what happened to me is about to happen to all of us. Not by choice this time, just by living in the world coming at us.This solo i
#30 Steve Rio | Coming Home Without Leaving
This one's for anyone standing at the edge, wondering if the jump will get them lost. It might just bring you home.In this conversation, I sit down with Steve Rio from Enfold to talk about the question everyone seems to be asking, what actually happens at Enfold?Steve shares the entire process and we talk about the difference between external reinvention and inner alignment. About why most peo
#29 Solo | From Pressure To Peace
It has been a while since I did one of these.A lot has changed. Not just what I’m doing, but how I see everything.This solo is built around two questions that have quietly reshaped my life over the last nine months. Who shall I be today. And what shall I do today. Simple questions, but they force a level of honesty that most of us avoid.For most of my life, I chased performance. Titles. Outcomes.
#28 Ian Koniak | What You Hide Hurts You
Some wake up calls come quietly. Others hit all at once.Ian Koniak had the career most people chase. Top rep at Salesforce. Money, status, recognition. From the outside, it looked like everything was working.But underneath it, there were cracks.In this conversation, Ian opens up about the moments that changed everything. A near death experience that forced him to confront how he was living. And a
#27 Alex Kremer | Beyond The Numbers Game
There is a moment where chasing more stops working. Not because you failed, but because you are ready for something better. Alex Kremer leaned into that moment.We met in the early Outreach days. High output, big goals, everything pointed forward. But Alex didn’t just optimize for performance. He started redesigning how he operated. More awareness. More intention. Building a life where success comp
#26 Heidi Noble | The Collapse Behind The Win
Some people build things. Heidi Noble built a life at full speed.Chef. Founder. Winemaker. Joie didn’t come from money or connections. It came from instinct, pressure, and a belief she could figure it out as she went. And somehow, she did.What followed was two decades of creation. Scaling from nothing into something iconic. Holding every role. Carrying the weight.Until her body stopped playing alo
#25 Richard Banfield | Learning To Live Deeper
Some conversations slow you down in the best way.In this episode I sit down with Richard Banfield. Richard has spent decades building companies, writing books, and thinking deeply about how creativity, technology, and leadership intersect. But what makes this conversation powerful is not the resume. It is the life behind it.Richard opens up about losing his wife to cancer and how that experience r
#24 Brandon Fluharty | Playing The Meaning Game
Brandon Fluharty built the kind of sales career most people dream about.Seven figure years. Enterprise deals. Presidents Club. Recognition at the highest level.But achievement came with a cost. Burnout. Bankruptcy. And the quiet realization that performance without alignment eventually collapses under its own weight.In this conversation, we unpack the invisible game high performers get trapped in.
#23 Devon McDonald | Outgrowing The Old Dream
On paper, Devon McDonald had it all. Division 1 athlete. Seventeen year run at OpenView. General Partner. Big house. Three kids. The life most people chase. But behind the scenes, something wasn’t sitting right. In this conversation, Devon shares the moment her body started speaking louder than her ambition. The locked jaw. The burnout. The quiet voice that kept saying it was time, even when every
#22 Erik Kostelnik | Building From The Inside Out
Eric Kostelnik has built and sold multiple companies, and somehow still manages to be one of the most grounded humans I know. In this conversation, we get into what happens after the exit. The identity shift. The silence. The need to re-anchor. We talk about fatherhood, the myth of "having it all together," and what structure really means when you're no longer chasing a finish line.T
Live Wellness Series: Aurora Meditation
In this session from the Wake Up Call Live Wellness Series, Alex Easby from Dreamfuel guides us through a breathwork and visualization practice that’s equal parts cleansing and grounding. It starts with deep, rhythmic breathing to shake loose the noise we carry. Then it shifts into a slow, steady visualization that brings you back into presence.No performance. No pressure. Just a clear moment to f
#21 Sam Jacobs | The Grind That Grounds You
Some people build empires. Others build frameworks that help people endure. Sam Jacobs does both.In this conversation, we unpack what it means to stay grounded when everything around you is accelerating. Sam shares the hard-earned lessons that came after being fired, humbled, and forced to face the parts of himself that success can distort.We talk about fatherhood, ego, reinvention, and the struct
#20 Solo | Outgrowing The Old Story
Some years break you open so you can finally see.2025 cracked me. Not in the falling-apart way, but in the pulling-the-curtain-back kind of way. The ambition I was still hiding behind. The patterns I thought I had outgrown. The places I was still performing instead of living.This one’s about the friction that shows you who you really are. The slow death of the old story. The relationships that got
#19 Anurag Chandra | Rewriting The Scoreboard
Sometimes life serves up those chance encounters that don’t feel like chance. In this one, I sit down with Anurag Chandra for a rare look beneath the surface of success. He’s built some of silicon valley's biggest funds, advised companies, and navigated the kind of pressure most people never see. But the most powerful part of his story isn’t in the resume. It’s in how he’s stripped back the no
#18 Drew Hall | Undoing The Myth Of You
Some stories sit just below the surface for years. This was one of them.In this episode I sit down with Drew Hall, my closest friend since childhood, for a conversation we’ve never had on record. Drew opens up about the silent weight he’s carried, the mental health struggles he lived through, and the unraveling of the persona he thought he had to be.We talk about the gap between the life people se
Live Wellness Series: Wayfinder Meditation
Some episodes are meant to be listened to. This one is meant to be felt.In this session from the Wake Up Call Live Wellness Series, I’m joined again by Alex Easby from Dreamfuel for a guided Wayfinder meditation. It mirrors the rhythm of the practice itself, where breath becomes the oar, the body becomes the vessel, and you navigate like an ocean voyager reading waves, wind and instinct instead of
#17 Chris Walker | From Revenue To Resonance
Some people follow the playbook. Chris Walker rewrote it.In this conversation, we get into what it really means to live on your own frequency. Chris shares how he built and exited a high-growth company, but more importantly, how he learned to stop living by borrowed metrics and start listening to his own signal.We talk about stepping outside societal goalposts, upgrading your internal system, and
Live Wellness Series: Mountain Meditation
Some episodes are meant to be listened to. This one is meant to be felt.In this special session from the Wake Up Call Live Wellness Series, I’m joined by Alex Easby, a mental performance coach from Dreamfuel, for a guided breathwork journey and visualization. You’ll drop into your body, calm the noise, and reconnect with that quiet strength that so often gets buried under the grind.Presented in co
#16 Andy Johns | Trauma Becomes The Teacher
Some conversations leave you thinking long after they end. This was one of them.Andy and I get into healing, ego, and the messy, beautiful process of self-discovery. We explore how trauma can become a teacher, how love and community can bring us home, and what it means to move from transactional spirituality to something more grounded and human.It’s a conversation about slowing down, feeling what
#15 Solo | Reflections From The Himalayas
I’m recording this from a tiny plywood room in Dengboche, six days into a trek through the Himalayas. No Wi-Fi. No distractions. Just mountains, movement, and a lot of quiet time to think.This solo episode is a meditation on what we chase, what we call success, and how those definitions shift from 14,000 feet. I share lessons from locals entrepreneurs who are redefining what it means to build some
#14 Ally Maz | The Body Is The Barometer
There’s a version of us that knows how to perform. That knows how to keep it together, lead from the front, and show up like everything’s fine. But at some point, that version breaks.In this episode, I sit down with Ally Maz to talk about her early success as a movement teacher and founder to confronting parts of herself she used to hide, Ally opens up about shadow work, grief, embodiment, and wha
#13 Solo | What The Silence Showed Me
This one’s personal.After years of chasing, I hit a wall. The momentum I built started to feel heavy. Burnout set in. And for the first time in a long time, I stopped.This episode is about what I found in that stillness. A psychedelic journey that opened something in me. A slow process of rethinking how I show up in the world. What I believe. What I value. What I’m letting go of.If you’re in the m
#12 Nirosha Methananda | Unlearning The Need To Prove
Nirosha Methananda spent years behind a high-performance mask. A child of Sri Lankan immigrants in Australia, she learned early how to hold it all together, to outperform, to prove. And she did. Leading global marketing teams across SaaS and AdTech. Unlocking millions in pipeline. Building her name in the space. But behind the resume was another story.In this episode, Nirosha opens up about the fe
#11 Michael King | Clarity Starts In The Collapse
At 31, Michael King was behind the bar, not behind a desk. Life looked different then. The seizures came out of nowhere. No one could explain them. And for a while, he tried to ignore what was happening. But denial has a shelf life.This episode traces the quiet pivot that followed through diagnosis, surgery, reinvention, and the slow grind of starting over. From bartending to breaking into recruit
#10 Townsend Wardlaw | The Collapse Was The Catalyst
Townsend Wardlaw shares his story of rising to entrepreneurial success, facing personal crisis, and then losing everything. His net worth. His marriage. His health.This episode is about the interplay between creation and destruction that shows up in high performers. The way early programming shapes beliefs, behaviours, and the silent rules we live by. The invisible operating systems that run in th
#9 Antonio Zivanovic | When Survival Looks Like Success
What if the success story wasn’t a story at all? What if it was just survival?In this episode, Antonio Zivanovic shares what it took to build a career in strategy, brand, and venture capital while carrying the weight of a childhood shaped by instability and fear. But this isn’t a playbook. It’s a reflection. On resilience. On repression. And on what gets buried when performance becomes protection.
#8 Anna Heiny | Redefining What Winning Means
Anna Heiny spent her life chasing the dream: national championships, Olympic trials, a pro contract with the Boston Athletic Association. Then the dream landed... and it didn’t feel like she thought it would.In this episode, we unpack what happens when the path you’ve worked your whole life to walk suddenly stops feeling right. Anna opens up about the quiet courage it took to step off that path, c
#7 Kyle Lacy | The Quiet Fall After The Big Rise
Kyle Lacy sold the company. Made the money. Got the title. But the moment didn’t land the way he thought it would.In this conversation, we explore what comes next. The quiet reckoning that follows external success. The pull to be more present - for your kids, for your partner, for yourself - even when your mind won’t stop reaching for what’s next.Kyle opens up about sobriety, self-doubt, and the s
#6 Justin Welsh | When Enough Is Never Enough
Justin Welsh had the resume most people chase. Big title. Big salary. Big results. But inside, something was quietly unraveling.After years of pushing through burnout, panic attacks, and performance addiction, he finally hit a wall that forced a full system reboot. In this raw conversation, we unpack what happens when your nervous system says no more - and how he found a way back through small wal
#5 Steve Rio | The Architecture of Identity
Steve Rio built companies, led teams, and chased a version of success that looked right from the outside. I was on a similar path. High output. Constant motion. A quiet disconnect from self.Together, we unpack what happens when the systems that made you successful start making you sick - when nervous system overload becomes the norm, and your identity is built around performance.This is a conversa
#4 Solo | Forgetting Who You Already Are
In this solo episode I open up about the quieter toll of chasing greatness. The way constant striving rewires my nervous system. The way presence slips through my fingers when every day feels like it has something to prove. Drawing from the writings of Alan Watts and my own lived experience, I explore the illusion of separateness, the myth of the “most important day,” and the addictive nature of a
#3 Tessa Whittaker | Success Wasn't The Answer
Tessa Whittaker had the career, the relationship, the apartment. On paper, everything made sense. But inside, something was quietly breaking.After years of high performance and holding it all together, she made the call to walk away from it. Her engagement. Her country. Her old sense of self. What followed wasn’t a clean pivot. It was a full system reset.In this conversation, Tessa opens up about
#2 Scott Britton | Context Behind Ambition Matters
Scott Britton and I dive into burnout, psychedelics, and the tension between achievement and inner growth. We explore the struggles that come with ambition, the automatic drive to contribute, and the importance of inner work in finding authenticity and meaning. Through our own personal stories and insights, we unpack how embracing life’s challenges can fuel real personal evolution.SCOTT BRITTON LI
#1 Solo | Introducing 'Wake Up Call'
In this inaugural episode of 'Wake Up Call', I introduce listeners to my journey of self-discovery, exploring the themes of success, ambition, and the often hidden costs associated with the pursuit of achievement. I share my personal stories of burnout, addiction, and the quest for a more meaningful life beyond societal expectations. Through candid reflections and insights, I aim to create a space
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