Life can change in an instant. For Mark Marrott, that moment came when he suffered a devastating 40-foot fall in 2008. The severity of the accident led to multiple surgeries and left him wheelchair-bound for a significant time. Doctors even discussed the possibility of leg amputation. Yet, against all odds and a 97% fatality rate, Mark's story is one of incredible resilience, determination, and the refusal to let his inner critic dictate his limits. Mark’s journey over the pa

I've had a lot of guests on KneeToKnee. Each one brings something that sticks with me. But when I finished my prep for my conversation with JD Tremblay, I sat back and thought, "Okay. This one's different." JD is one of only three people on earth who have completed the Epic Deca, ten Iron Man-distance triathlons over ten days on six different Hawaiian islands. For context, each Iron Man is 140.6 miles of swimming, biking, and running. Multiply that by ten, throw in flights

Ryan Reichert looked the part. Lieutenant Colonel. Fortune 500 job. Multi-six-figure salary. From the outside, the transition out of the military looked like a success story in progress. Inside, he was the loneliest he'd ever been. That's the thing about identity crises. They don't announce themselves. They just quietly take pieces of you until one day you look in the mirror and don't recognize who's looking back. Ryan and I talked about this on a Saturday morning, both of us

F or a big chunk of my life, I had a nagging feeling that sometimes I just didn't work the way other people did. Social situations that other guys seemed to cruise through would leave me needing to recharge. I'd prep for a speech by scripting the whole thing out, word for word, and reading it a dozen times — while other people walked up with three bullet points and owned the room. I'd check out of a party at 11:15 while everyone else was just kept cruising. I'm an introvert

I have done quite a episodes of KneeToKnee at this point, and every now and then one of them catches me off guard in the best possible way. This was that episode. Brad Zeeman and I go back several years. We worked together at a staffing company that eventually became a software company, and I was famously the guy breaking the software on a regular basis while Brad was the one patiently walking me and everyone else through it. Again. Every time. With the same level of calm and

When our previous guest on KneeToKnee, Doug Nielsen told me I had to get Kurt Francom on the podcast, I didn't know exactly what to expect. I knew the name. I'd heard of Leading Saints. But what I didn't anticipate was walking away from a 22-minute conversation with my brain spinning in all the right directions. Kurt is the founder of the Leading Saints podcast — over 20 million downloads, which in the podcasting world is a pretty significant number — and more recently a bo

I've said more than once on this show that the conversations I didn't know I needed are usually the ones that stick the longest. This was one of those. Kathy Kinghorn runs Therapy Utah, and she came on to the podcast at the recommendation of her son Jeff, who has been telling me for a while that I needed to sit down with her. Jeff doesn't oversell things, so I took that seriously. What I didn't anticipate was how directly the conversation would land for the kind of man this

When I first heard the phrase 'warrior heart,' something in me perked up. Not because I'm particularly warlike, but because somewhere in the back of my mind I think I've always known that the life I'm living has to mean more than just getting through the day. That's exactly what my conversation with Doug Nielsen cracked open for me. Doug is a certified speaking professional, a licensed psychotherapist, and the co-founder of Warrior Heart — a men's retreat program inspired

There are some conversations that remind you why staying in touch with the right people actually matters. My recent episode with Marshall Murdock was exactly that kind of conversation. Marshall is a life flight helicopter pilot based out of Idaho, a longtime friend, and one of those people I genuinely mean it when I say I should call more often. We first met somewhere around 30 years ago, which is a little disorienting to say out loud. We’ve shared everything from church miss

I've had a lot of great conversations on KneeToKnee, but every now and then someone comes in and says something that just settles into you. That happened with Lou Ogunyemi. Lou — whose full name is Olaolu Ogunyemi — is a U.S. Marine officer, an award-winning author, and the founder of Parent Child Connect. He also happens to be one of the most thoughtful guys I've talked to about what it really means to lead your family and your team. I was honestly looking forward to this on

I've been in a lot of rooms. Conference rooms, auditoriums, corporate training spaces, and everything in between. I've led workshops, given keynotes, and sat knee to knee with some remarkable people. But my conversation with Rebecca Courtney this week genuinely shifted something for me. Rebecca is a Facilitation Coach at AJ & Smart — a Berlin-based company founded by her brother Jonathan Courtney that specializes in workshop design, facilitation training, and building commu

I've had a lot of great conversations on KneeToKnee, but every once in a while someone sits down with me and I walk away genuinely different. That's what happened when Brad Barton joined me. I've known Brad for close to 20 years. We crossed paths through the National Speakers Association, and I'd always known he was an exceptional human being. But sitting down with him on the podcast — really talking — reminded me why I started this show in the first place. Brad grew up o

I know how that sounds. Trust me. When I started putting this episode together, my mom summed it up best. I was telling her about the topic — how to support an introvert spouse — and she didn't miss a beat. Her response was something like, "Mark, we all already knew you were one." Fair. But here's the thing: even though I'd known it for years, I hadn't truly understood what it meant until I dug into the science. And once I did, things clicked into place — about myself, about

I've known Joel for almost 20 years. Let that sink in for a second. Two decades. We met when he hired me for a job, and somehow, through company changes, career moves, busy seasons, and all of life's chaos, we've stayed friends. But here's the thing that hit me during our recent conversation: In 20 years, Joel and I have probably only spent about 30 maybe 40 hours together outside of work. Maybe less. When I realized this, it stopped me cold. How is it possible to have such a

When my friend Heath Thurston first connected me with Joe Morton, I knew I was in for something special. Heath has this knack for introducing me to people who just get it —people who understand that real transformation happens in the space between struggle and breakthrough, in the relationships that hold us when everything else falls apart. Joe Morton is one of those people. He's an endurance athlete, host of the "A Cup of Joe Podcast", and a guy who's proving every single da

I have to be honest - when Alyssa Smith told me her four-year-old was cooking eggs in their kitchen in South Korea, I had flashbacks to my own childhood and how my parents instilled in us so many amazing skills. Our conversation shows how that worked for her child and my brothers and I. See, Alyssa isn't just any parent. She's spent nearly two decades as an international educator teaching kids on two continents, holds two master's degrees, and is certified in positive discip

I've had dozens of conversations on KneeToKnee, but there are moments in certain episodes where I feel the air in the room shift. My conversation with Jesse Munns was one of those moments. Jesse came into the studio as a veteran helicopter pilot—nearly 20 years of flying high-stakes missions, from Vegas tours to EMS helicopters, from offshore oil rigs to agricultural spraying. The resume is impressive. The outside looked successful, driven, accomplished. But that's not the st

I've been a fan of Scott Christopher since I first watched The Best Two Years way back in the day. There was something about his presence on screen—authentic, funny, real—that just connected with me. So when I had the chance to sit down with him for Knee to Knee, I was genuinely excited. What I didn't expect was the gut-punch of a story he shared about his childhood. Scott grew up in a single-parent home, raised by a mom who was doing everything she could to make ends meet.

Twenty years. That's how long I've known Ty Bennett. And until last week, we hadn't spoken in a decade. But when our mutual friend Julie kept mentioning his name during a recording session, something clicked. I picked up the phone, and just like that, we were back—Knee to Knee—talking about what really matters in leadership. Ty is the founder of Leadership Inc., a bestselling author, and someone who's spent 15 years traveling the world helping leaders build trust and influenc

As a former firefighter, my default lens on health has usually been Western, tactical, and practical. “Breathe” was something we yelled to each other on the fire ground, not a doorway into healing trauma, grief, and anxiety. That perspective started to shift for me during a KneeToKnee conversation with somatic therapy coach and mental health advocate Jamie Hinckley. Jamie's Journey Jamie’s path into somatic therapy began in one of the hardest ways imaginable. In 2021, her dom