The Anti-Financial Advisor And What Wealth Actually Is With Chris Miles
Release Date: 08/04/2026
What If the Biggest Problems in Your Business Are Actually a Sign You’re Out of Alignment With Esther Wildenberg
The Story Engine Podcast
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about alignment—not just as a personal-growth concept, but as something that directly affects how we lead, build businesses, make decisions, and live our lives. In this episode of The Story Engine Podcast, I sit down with Esther Wildenberg, an executive coach, entrepreneur, consultant, and AI business owner who has spent more than 20 years helping leaders recognize when they’ve drifted out of alignment and find their way back. Esther describes alignment as the place where our purpose, passion, heart, identity, and actions are working together—and...
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From “Behind Zero” to Playing a Bigger Game: How to Stop Letting Your Past Define Your Future with Markus Kaulius
The Story Engine Podcast
What if the very experiences you’ve been trying to leave behind are actually the things that qualify you to play a bigger game? In this episode of The Story Engine Podcast, I sit down with Markus Kaulius, a multi-exit entrepreneur, investor, author, and longtime student of personal development, to unpack the beliefs, habits, health, and faith that have shaped the man he is today. Markus grew up poor, in a broken family, and describes himself as starting “behind zero”—but instead of seeing that history as baggage, he learned to recognize it as the source of his work ethic,...
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I Did Everything Right—So Why Was I So Unhappy with Melissa Marina
The Story Engine Podcast
What happens when you’ve built the successful career, hit the milestones, created the life everyone tells you that you should want—and yet, deep down, you know something is wrong? In this episode of The Story Engine Podcast, I sit down with Melissa Marina, a subconscious healer and intuitive channel for top entrepreneurs and founders, to explore what happens when high achievers finally stop compromising their deepest desires. Melissa shares the story of graduating with honors, winning entrepreneurship awards, landing a great corporate job, and seemingly doing everything...
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When Your Business Is Thriving but Your Life Is Falling Apart With John Glon
The Story Engine Podcast
I sat down with entrepreneur and business coach John Glon for a conversation about something I’ve experienced personally—and something I see happen to so many founders: the moment when hard work, grit, and determination that once built the business start becoming the very things that hold it back. John shared his journey from running a successful electrical manufacturing business to realizing that his deeper calling was helping leaders and their teams communicate, execute, and lead better. We explored what happens when founders become the person everyone depends on, why “I’ll just...
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From Nurse to Entrepreneur: How To Build A Business To Put People Before the System With Ashley Yardley
The Story Engine Podcast
What happens when you’re a nurse who deeply cares about helping people, but you realize the healthcare system doesn’t always give you the freedom—or the options—to provide the kind of care you believe people deserve? In this episode of The Story Engine Podcast, I sit down with Ashley Yardley, founder of Advanced Mobile IV, to unpack the personal experiences that pushed her to build a completely different model of healthcare. We talk about how her background in home health and hospice led her to see the power of bringing care directly into people’s homes and communities, and how...
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Your Brain Health Problems May Be Starting Decades Earlier Than You Think With Eric Collett
The Story Engine Podcast
In this episode of The Story Engine Podcast, I sit down with brain health and dementia expert Eric Collett to explore a question I think a lot of us would rather avoid: What if the problems we experience in our brain, energy, focus, and mental health today are warning signs of something deeper? Eric explains why conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s can begin developing decades before obvious symptoms appear, and why things like brain fog, low energy, declining productivity, gut health issues, and memory changes deserve more attention than we often give them. We also unpack...
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What If Thinking About Death Is the Key to Living Your Best Life With Karen Salmansohn
The Story Engine Podcast
What if the thing we spend our lives avoiding—death—could actually become one of the most powerful tools for creating a more meaningful life? In this episode of The Story Engine Podcast, I sit down with behavioral change expert and bestselling author Karen Salmansohn to explore why so many ambitious, high-achieving people resist self-help, stay trapped in “beast mode,” and keep telling themselves they’ll finally live the life they want someday. Karen shares her philosophy of moving from the “den of pleasure” into the “laboratory of growth,” embracing emotional diversity, and...
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Your Story Is Not Separate From You — How Writing a Book Unlocks a Whole New Level of Leadership with Steven Heumann
The Story Engine Podcast
Most people who want to write a book are thinking about the book. What they don't see coming is what the process does to them. Steven Heumann spent 15 years as a television writer and director before founding Superhuman Creative, a ghostwriting and publishing company that helps leaders tell their stories. In this conversation, we talk about the difference between leading with principles and leading with your story, what it actually means to reach a moment of authenticity (it's not a mindset shift, it's an identity shift), and why the clients who go through his process often describe it as four...
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She Shattered Her Leg, Got Evicted, and Found Freedom
The Story Engine Podcast
Rae Irelan was home alone, leg in a cast, a two-year-old running around, and a mattress on the living room floor because she couldn't climb stairs. Then the landlord called. Sixty days to move out. Most people would have collapsed. Rae and her husband Sammy sold almost everything they owned, hit the road, and used the chaos to finally go all-in on what they had been studying for months: using AI to take back the hours that were quietly draining founders dry. In this episode, Rae shares the real breaking point behind her shift, how she and Sammy built a system to audit where time actually goes...
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Wartime CEO: Disruption, Delayed Gratification, and Doing the Opposite with Chandler Bolt
The Story Engine Podcast
Chandler Bolt dropped out of college with a C in English, ADHD, and about three months of runway in the bank. He borrowed his parents' retirement savings to buy out his business partner at Self Publishing School, then paid every dollar back in 11 months. Over the last 12 years, his company has helped publish more than 7,000 books. In this episode, Chandler gets honest about what it means to lead through a genuinely hard season: flat growth years, SEO traffic down 70%, and an industry being disrupted by AI hype that he thinks is badly outpacing AI capability. He shares the framework he calls...
info_outlineChris Miles calls himself the anti-financial advisor. Not because financial advisors are bad people. Because he was one, and it nearly ruined him twice.
In 2007 he had it all figured out. Debt free basement finished, growing equity, a Mercedes in the driveway. He went to the bank to cash out on his home's equity and they kept moving the goalposts. Get your credit score up two points. Now do X, Y, Z. By September they told him the truth. No more cash out refinances for business owners. The equity he built his whole plan around was trapped.
Within two years he lost the house, the car, and nearly everything he thought defined him. He tells the story of standing at his door mid argument with his wife, slamming it, driving off, and somehow knowing something was about to shift. Two months later it did.
Here's the part that stuck with me. Chris says he didn't actually feel wealthy until the money was gone. That's when he found out what was actually his.
Full conversation is on the podcast. Worth your drive time this week.