Episodes

The truck says “Seek Fuel,” the schedule says “Be set up by 8,” and my body says “Go to bed.” That’s the tension running through Episode 315, where I finally answer the cliffhanger questions: did we make it to the show, how did we pull it off, and what did it cost us in sleep, stress, and pride. We’re coming off eight straight weeks on the road as a small business owner, building Loud Proud American one event at a time while trying to keep family life steady. I break down the real logistics peo...

Everything is fine until the wheel falls off, the shipment misses the truck, and your calendar has zero open space to fix any of it. We are deep in the real-world grind of small business ownership, where event season does not care if your trailer is broken, your bus is down, or your best-selling sizes are wiped out. I walk you through what it looks like to run an apparel brand on tight timelines, why one vendor weekend can swing your whole month, and how a “make it work” decision can become the ...

The weekend starts with sweat, doubt, and that quiet question every small business owner knows too well: am I really building something here, or am I just burning myself out? I’m coming off America 250 and rolling into Episode 313 with a full recap of a blistering heat wave, a brand-new fair on the calendar, and a milestone I can’t believe I get to say out loud, six years of Share The Struggle and 313 consecutive weeks with you. I walk through the real vendor life math at fairs and festivals: s...

Only 53% of voters say they’re proud of the country, and that number lands different when you’re staring down America’s 250th birthday. I open by reading the Declaration of Independence, then I get blunt about what it means to be free, to be grateful, and to choose growth when life is heavy. This is a July 4th mindset reset with teeth, not a Hallmark speech. We talk through the pride gap and why it feels like the country is splitting into different realities. I break down capitalism vs communis...

Father’s Day didn’t just make us miss our dad. It exposed a fear we’d been carrying quietly for two years: what if he wouldn’t be proud of who we’ve become under pressure? We talk honestly about the weight of trying to do it all at once running a small business and building a brand, being a husband, learning fatherhood, and taking on the responsibilities our dad used to handle without complaint. Grief doesn’t always look like tears. Sometimes it looks like doubt, anxiety, and that looping quest...

Four hours from home, a brand-new fair, and a plan that looked simple on paper. Then reality hit: 90-degree heat, a solo tent setup, black flies so thick they sounded like rain, and four nights trying to sleep in the back of a Yukon because the camper wasn’t an option. We’re telling the whole road story from Springfield, Maine, from the small-town moments that restore your faith in people to the kind of setbacks that make you question why you even signed up. Along the way, we break down how we ...

Rejection emails are one thing. Rejection that makes you question your identity, your message, and your future is something else. We’re coming off a week that started with baptism and ended with two moments of real relief, and we’re telling the full story, messy parts included. We talk through the “season of new” around Loud Proud American: taking bigger swings for America 250, applying to major concerts and country festivals, and pulling back from familiar local events even when they used to b...

We waited a long time for baptism day, and when it finally arrived, it didn’t feel like a single moment. It felt like a whole season coming to a head: grief, healing, late-night doubts, and the decision to stop “faking fine” and start living our faith out loud. This recap is personal, funny in the way real life is funny, and honest about how heavy a joyful day can still feel. We talk through the people who showed up for us and the kind of church community that’s built on effort, not convenience...

We almost talked ourselves out of a new Memorial Weekend event because it wasn’t the “guaranteed” move. The warnings, the what-ifs, the fear of the unfamiliar, all of it started steering the wheel. Then we showed up, set up shop, and realized how wrong we were. What we found was a family environment, promoters who actually value vendors, and the kind of customer energy that reminds you why you started in the first place. We break down the real entrepreneurship lesson hiding inside a weekend rec...

Comfort can start as a blessing and end up as a cage. After a packed weekend of vendor events for Loud Proud American, we take an honest look at what growth really costs when you’re building a small business, raising a family, and trying to keep your faith strong while the next step still feels unclear. I break down why those “good weekends” matter so much, not just for sales, but for momentum, community, and the motivation to keep showing up. Then things get real: I share the first time in six...

One unexpected message can hit harder than a year of planning. After grinding through the messy middle of building Loud Proud American, I got a note from a mentor in the apparel world: “I’d like you to speak to my class.” That single ask turned into a full circle moment that gave me a boost of confidence I didn’t even know I needed, and it forced me to look at my struggle in a totally different way. We dig into why sharing your story is not oversharing, it is survival. When you keep the hard st...

She signs up for a women’s conference with barely any details, walks in alone, and ends up walking out with something most of us spend years chasing: relief. Allie joins me for a real, funny, and vulnerable talk about what it looks like when faith stops being an idea and starts becoming a decision, especially when you’re carrying grief, old stories, and the labels you never asked for. We break down what she heard and felt at the conference, including teaching from the Book of Ruth and the chall...

An attempted assassination on a president should stop a nation in its tracks, not blend into the weekend like background noise. We sit with that chilling “new norm,” then ask the harder question: what are we doing to each other with the way we talk, post, mock, and accuse? We trace how political violence, conspiracy theories, and media rhetoric collide in real time. When leaders and influencers pour gasoline on polarization, someone out there eventually treats it like permission. We also confro...

A year can pass in a blur, and then one date cracks everything open. We sit down again, husband and wife, to revisit the phone call she dreaded for years: the one that told her the police needed her to identify her mother. What follows is an unfiltered conversation about addiction, homelessness, the overdose crisis, and the brutal reality of being the child left behind, still loving someone who couldn’t stop hurting themselves. We talk about what happens when a death gets treated like routine p...

We juggle a sick kid, zero sleep, and a late-night recording, then land on the one story we promised: how Good Friday and Easter Sunday reshaped our faith. We talk about grief after suicide loss, the power of being prayed over, and why hope only works when it’s placed somewhere solid. • recording on fumes after a rough sick-day spiral • why we commit to Good Friday and Easter services • feeling drawn to church and finally feeling at home • parenting pressure when there’s no childcare • choosing ...

Episode 300 hits on a day that feels bigger than a calendar date. I’m looking back at six years of the Share the Struggle Podcast, 300 consecutive weeks with no hiatus, no missed shows, and no hiding from the messy parts of building a life. If you’ve ever felt stuck, tired, or unsure, the core idea is the one that keeps me moving: everybody struggles, but you decide whether you go through it or grow through it. That choice shows up in your habits, your relationships, and the future you’re quietl...

I didn’t expect a 24-hour lesson to smack me in the face, but it did: wake up in Maine and go to bed in Texarkana, Arkansas, and you realize how much life can fit inside one day. I’m running hot lately, riding deadlines, feeling the walls close in, and trying to claw my way back to solid ground. Then my wife says the simplest thing that changes everything: go. Take the break. Get out of the foxhole for a minute. So we do something ridiculous. Brian Palmolo and I fly out, hit Houston, Uber down ...

The fastest way to feel crazy as a small business owner is to do “everything right” and still watch people walk by with empty hands. We just got back from the Eastern Maine Sportsman Show at the University of Maine in Orono, and we’re giving you the unfiltered recap: booth cost, hotel, fuel, meals, the sales goal we set, and why landing at about half of what we hoped for still didn’t make the weekend a total loss. We dig into the real-time signals we’re seeing at vendor events, fairs, festivals...

Everybody loves the highlight reel of entrepreneurship. The booth photos, the road trips, the “we’re chasing a dream” energy. What people don’t see is who’s back home keeping the whole machine running when one of you leaves and the bills, chores, pets, and a one-year-old tornado don’t pause. My wife joins me to tell the other side of the story: the chaos coordinator life, the extra responsibilities that land on one person’s shoulders, and the surprising ways role reversals can build real respec...

The dust hasn’t settled, and maybe that’s the point. We just wrapped Daytona Bike Week 2026 with a week that threw everything at us—flooded tents, leaky air mattresses, midnight engines, and a sales curve that swung from record pace to near freefall before a late rally. The numbers say we edged past last year; the story says we leveled up in ways a ledger can’t track. We open with the campsite chaos and the mental game it takes to keep showing up when sleep is a rumor. Then we peel back the bus...

The engines are loud, the tent is louder. From a canvas floor pooling with rainwater to a sales board we feared wouldn’t budge, our Daytona Bike Week run at the Cabbage Patch starts rough and gets real. We gambled big on a new location—higher rent, bigger crowd, more risk—and immediately collided with delayed shipments, an all-night print sprint, and an opening weekend of rain that drove us to shut early and regroup over pizza and live music with our guy, Daniel Johnson. What happens next is th...

Two truths can coexist: headlines can drown out the soul of sport, and honest stories can still cut through the noise. We open with a candid look at how the Olympics should feel—earned pride, shared sacrifice, and a country pulling together—then spotlight the moments that actually delivered. Alysa Liu’s gold, shaped by a father who fled repression for freedom. Team USA hockey honoring the Gaudreau brothers and lifting a grieving family onto the medal stage on the Miracle on Ice anniversary. The ...

Eight people dead within days and two countries, and yet the first casualty was clarity. We open the mic on a hard truth: when mental distress goes unmanaged, when policy favors speed over stability, and when media framing outruns facts, families get left to carry the wreckage. We walk through two fresh tragedies and connect them to earlier cases, highlighting documented histories of instability, prior police calls, and a pattern of warning signs that never turned into effective prevention. We ...

The biggest stages in sports are supposed to pull us together. This week we ask why the Super Bowl halftime and the Olympic spotlight feel more like battlegrounds than bonfires—and what it would take to get the joy back. We start with a straight-up reality check for New England fans: an improbable run deserves pride, even if the ending stung. Then we go deep on the halftime controversy, from a global-growth pitch that never met the moment to language and cultural signals that made families brace...