EOS Podcasts

Ryan Hawk built his life around hard work, competition, and consistency, but losing the quarterback job to Ben Roethlisberger forced him to confront an uncomfortable truth: sometimes effort alone cannot change the outcome. Years later, he walked away from a successful corporate career to turn his side hustle, The Learning Leader Show, into a business—only to realize that the podcast, the coaching work, and now, the livelihoods of his team are overly dependent on him. In this episode, Mark O’Donnell and Ryan talk through how they learned that sometimes you have to change the situation instead of grinding harder.

Brock Beiersdoerfer and his wife Kimberly opened The Heavenly Donut Company hoping to build something meaningful, but the business soon had Brock working brutal hours, worrying about payroll, covering overnight shifts, and watching the freedom they wanted disappear. The pressure peaked in moments like a 35-hour shift, canceled direct deposits, unreliable employees, and the realization that the business was consuming time he could never recover with his family.

Kieran James built Stryde from the ground up, but the real story starts earlier than that: a working-class childhood where food got stretched with oats and money was never quite enough. That scarcity mindset didn’t stay in his childhood home. It followed him into every pricing conversation, every hiring decision, and eventually into a franchise opportunity that looked like the growth of a lifetime. In this episode, Kerian opens up about the moment he realized his business decisions weren’t logic—they were an old survival pattern still running in the background—and what it took to notice it, question it, and choose differently.