Ask Forgiveness, Not Permission: Chuck the Lifelong Tinkerer
Spread The Positive Podcast
Chuck went from wiring bicycle dynamos as a kid to now being a pioneer in AI and creating a bar built on six continents. Here is his story. Chuck sits down with Katie in his Harvard shirt to go back to the start. He talks about how he works best under stress, how he slows down and absorbs while everybody else panics, and why when a deadline slips he is the one who walks in, delivers the bad news, and hands over the solution in the same breath. By day he is a product manager building the next product for who you will be five years from now. But he keeps coming back to the same idea: a...
info_outline
Building Character with Josh Chapman
Spread The Positive Podcast
Josh Chapman was born 3 months early and breathed through a straw. He now fixes chainsaws and works at Home Depot. Trent sits down with Josh and his sister Katie taking it all the way back to expand his airway. Katie explains why that matters today: Josh's normal breathing is basically breathing through a straw, so physical activity is hard, but you would never know it watching him work. From there it turns into pure Josh. He talks about the weed eater he found broken, how he took it home, and how he fixed it. He lays out the Josh Method, which is simpler than Marie Kondo: if it...
info_outline
Success Starts with Skills, Not Circumstances
Spread The Positive Podcast
Alex Piedra, pediatric dentist, entrepreneur, and Harvard education graduate, joins us at Spread The Positive to share the mindset that helped him overcome poverty, family hardship, and setbacks to build a life centered on service. From immigrating to the United States as a young child to treating more than 60 patients a day, Alex explains why your circumstances don't define your future—your skills do. Katie and Alex talk about growing up below the poverty line, the way the 2008 recession affected their childhoods, choosing dentistry over medicine, and leading with...
info_outline
You Don't Have to Do This Alone with Therapist Sarah Amos on Grief & Trauma
Spread The Positive Podcast
Licensed therapist Sarah Amos on when you actually need therapy, EMDR, and grief. Stephanie sits down with Sarah Amos, owner and lead therapist at Sparrow Creek Counseling in Nashville, for a full conversation about mental health. Sarah explains the name behind her practice: sparrows know how to protect themselves, so when a storm rolls in or food gets scarce, they find a cool dry place to rest and preserve their energy instead of powering through. That's how she sees therapy, a creek where you rest before you go back out to fly. They get into the real stuff. Sarah gives the...
info_outline
From Dreams To Reality With Annlee Head and Rachael Jarman
Spread The Positive Podcast
Annlee Head and Rachael Jarman on their experiences in the 2026 MTSU Truck/ Bonnaroo course offered by the university. Both Juniors, the two have a strong passion for live video production and were determined to make this year's road crew for Bonnaroo. While in the program the two learned valuable skills for running a broadcast on stage at festivals, working on the 2026 “This Tent” with Hulu. Rachael and Annlee reminisce on their younger selves while naming all the artists they were able to work with. Naming notable artists like Mother Mother, Modest Mouse, and...
info_outline
The Family Business That Kept Murfreesboro's Square Standing
Spread The Positive Podcast
Contractor Justin Edwards on 50 years building Murfreesboro's square, from horsehair plaster to a hidden room full of Civil War boxes. Justin grew up going to job sites with his dad, who started the business back in 1979. He went to MTSU thinking he might do something else, but he always kept one foot in construction, and now he and his dad meet every single day to run the company together. As he puts it, they've learned how to argue and still get along. Working on the square means no bid ever really holds, because you never know what's inside a 100-year-old wall. Justin has found plumbing...
info_outline
Why "I Don't Know" Is a Good Answer With Jaylene Hall
Spread The Positive Podcast
Jaylene Hall on pivoting from music business to tech, starting a design TikTok, and leaving it all to move to Charleston. Jaylene graduated college in 2020 with a music business degree and a touring internship that Covid wiped out, and for the first time she felt relief instead of disappointment. She picked up a design certification, messed around in Figma building app mockups, and realized tech was pulling at her. Four plus years later at Asurion, she had stability, mentors, and good income, and she's now stepping away from it to start over by the beach. At 25 she bought her first rental,...
info_outline
Jamie Steelman on August 1st at the Fountains: Give Blood 4 Ryan
Spread The Positive Podcast
Mortgage lender opens up about losing his oldest son, the blood drive he runs in his memory, and why donated blood gave their family 21 years. He grew up a sports nut, became a church league legend, and tried to walk on at Western Kentucky before reality hit. Then he had his first son at 20, walked into the hospital one person and walked out a different one. He learned mortgages in 1995 by getting handed a phone book and told to start calling, ran batting cages in La Vergne before the timing was right, coached a dead-last team to beating the Tigers, and eventually started his own branch. The...
info_outline
How Chase Hartwell Productions Got Booked and Blessed
Spread The Positive Podcast
Chase Hartwell left a 10-year Google career to build a Nashville photo and video company with nearly 500 clients. The business started with him photographing 13-inch Star Wars figures in front of his TV to wake his passion for photography back up. That turned into real estate gigs on Fiverr, then restaurants, then food, then video, then filming Chris Kirkpatrick from NSYNC for American Dream TV. Along the way he learned to run a cinema camera in a week for a documentary gig, talked his way into being the only photographer invited to a 2,000-person food event, and figured out that email and...
info_outline
Lindsay Fitz on Saving Animals and Saying Yes!
Spread The Positive Podcast
Lindsay Fitz spent 20 years crushing it in TV, won an Emmy at the Beijing Olympics, and now gets to do her dream job running celebrity partnerships at Best Friends Animal Society. She grew up in Oklahoma, went to Oklahoma State, and chased the New York dream right after graduation. She landed the legendary NBC Page Program, hung with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, covered politics during one of NBC News' biggest eras, and spent 10 incredible years at NBC Sports helping launch Sunday Night Football. From there she jumped to Discovery for the Alaska shows, then built something amazing at...
info_outlineLindsay Fitz spent 20 years crushing it in TV, won an Emmy at the Beijing Olympics, and now gets to do her dream job running celebrity partnerships at Best Friends Animal Society.
She grew up in Oklahoma, went to Oklahoma State, and chased the New York dream right after graduation. She landed the legendary NBC Page Program, hung with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, covered politics during one of NBC News' biggest eras, and spent 10 incredible years at NBC Sports helping launch Sunday Night Football. From there she jumped to Discovery for the Alaska shows, then built something amazing at A&E for 8.5 years.
Two years ago a single phone call opened the door to Best Friends Animal Society, and she hasn't looked back. She now connects huge names like Sabrina Carpenter, Myles Turner, Trisha Yearwood, and Warner Brothers to the save them all mission. She shares the Sabrina Carpenter tour that brought puppies backstage at every stop, the Superman partnership that drove a wild 500% spike in adoption interest, Myles Turner holding cats at the sanctuary, and the NYC Gala in October honoring Trisha Yearwood for quietly giving to a shelter in every single state for five years running.
FAQs 1. What is the NBC Page Program and why does it matter for a career in TV? I
t's the legendary 80+ year old NBC program that gets you in the building and sets you up to work on shows like SNL, The Today Show, or The Daily Show, which is exactly how Lindsay's whole career started.
2. How does celebrity partnership actually work for a nonprofit?
You start with no agenda, find out what the celebrity actually cares about, and build something custom around their passion that also moves the mission forward.
3. What is Best Friends Animal Society and what does no-kill mean?
Best Friends is a 41 year old national nonprofit with 5 lifesaving centers, a huge sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, and 6,000 network partners working to get every shelter in America to a 90% save rate.
4. How do you pivot from corporate TV to nonprofit work?
Lindsay leaned into the cause work at every job she ever had, and when the right phone call came, she said yes.
5. What's the easiest way to support rescue if I can't adopt right now?
Foster, volunteer at a local shelter, donate to a Best Friends network partner, or just share rescue stories on your own platforms.
Best Friends Animal Society: bestfriends.org
Go follow Best Friends Animal Society and check out the Supergirl partnership campaign launching this June.