Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

This is part two of my conversation with Joe Tomco, and it goes even deeper than part one. Joe tells me about the weekend he closed a massive deal with General Electric Latin America before his product was even finished. He was up almost 20 hours a day for four days straight, running the whole thing by hand behind the scenes, because he had already promised his customer something automated. That story alone says everything about what building a business actually looks like behind closed doors.

We also get into venture capital and what he calls the golden handcuffs, the pressure to grow faster and faster until you feel more like an employee of your investors than the owner of your own company. Joe opens up about the exact moment 50 million users stopped feeling like the win he thought it would be, and why he eventually walked away from tech to run a pool store instead. Joe is also a bishop, and he talks honestly about mental health, empathy, and the idea that almost everyone you pass on the street is carrying something you can't see. He shares the line that changed how he thinks about work and family, that nobody lies on their deathbed wishing they had worked more.

If you're a student, a founder, or anyone who feels stuck on a path that doesn't feel like yours, this episode is for you. If this conversation brings something up for you, Clearapy is a warmline for anyone who needs to talk it out. Call 863-334-2447. Catch part one if you haven't yet, and new episodes drop every week on Chasing Glass.

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

Joe Tomco has started six companies, employed over 2,000 people, and built an AI language learning company that reached tens of millions of people in over 180 countries. So you'd think this episode is about tech. It's not.

Joe grew up as the sixth of ten kids, followed his siblings toward medicine, and then one business plan competition in college changed the entire direction of his life. He built companies, sold companies, and eventually walked away from the tech world to buy pool stores in Athens, Georgia. In this episode, we talk about what it really means to be the top and the bottom of your own company. We get into the puffer fish principle, the psychology behind rejection, and why 90 percent of businesses fail in their first five years. Joe opens up about two years spent in the Dominican Republic with no one who spoke his language, and how having his back against the wall became the foundation for everything he built after. We also talk faith, family, mental health, and why chasing the wrong kind of success can quietly cost you everything, even when it looks like winning from the outside.

This episode is a reminder that you're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to want a different kind of win. If this episode brings something up for you, Clearapy is a warmline for anyone who needs to talk it out. Call 863-334-2447.

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

Some protectors don't wear capes. They wear leather vests and road names.

Kuan Yu rides with Bikers Against Child Abuse, an organization built to do one thing: take the fear out of a child's world. In this episode we talk about what it means to show up at 2am for a noise in the dark, what it looks like when 60 bikers roll in to meet a scared kid for the first time, and why a teddy bear stuffed with hugs can mean more than anyone realizes. We also get into the hardest parts of this work. What it takes to sit in a courtroom and hold a court face while a child reads out what happened to them. And why showing up, even through snow he'd never ridden in, is the only skill that matters.

This one will stay with you.

Resources

Bikers Against Child Abuse: www.BACAworld.org or call 1-866-712-2873

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Need support or someone to talk to? Clearapy is here. Call (863) 334-2447

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

Teri Drake-Floyd works at Nuçi's Space, a musician's health and resource center in Athens, Georgia built to prevent suicide and keep working musicians alive, healthy, and making music. By night, she writes southern gothic and horror fiction under the pen name Lillah Lawson, pulling from her own family's history to tell stories most people are too afraid to tell. In this episode, we talk about the language shift Nuçi's Space uses on purpose, calling it "brain illness" instead of "mental illness," and why that one word change can change how someone accesses care. We talk about the moment Teri realized a friend had once used a real crisis intervention method to save her life, years before she got trained in that exact method herself. And we talk about the family story, and the great-great-grandmother nobody would speak about, that became the seed for her debut novel. This is a conversation about grief, about the stories families keep quiet, and about what it actually looks like to rebuild after your glass breaks.

Mental Health Resources:

• If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7. Call or text 988 to reach a trained counselor, day or night, anywhere in the U.S.

• Clearapy is a call-in support service for the moments when you're not in crisis, but you still need someone to talk to. For $15 an hour, you can call and be connected with someone right away, no waitlist and no scheduling weeks out. It's built for that in-between space, not a crisis, not nothing, just needing a real person on the other end of the line. Call (863) 334-2447 to connect. If you are in crisis, please use the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline instead. Nuçi's Space:
• Nuçi's Space is a nonprofit in Athens, Georgia built to prevent suicide, with a focus on musicians. They provide referrals for depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation, underwrite the cost of care for musicians, and help anyone find low-cost or sliding scale mental health support.
• Website: nuci.org
• Blog: https://www.nuci.org/blog
• "Beautiful Here: Emerging from the Overwhelming Darkness" by Linda Phillips, Nuçi's mother and the founder of Nuçi's Space. https://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Here-Emerging-Overwhelming-Darkness/dp/1537413678 Also available for purchase through the Nuçi's Space website.
• Teri's Books (writing as Lillah Lawson):
  • https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=Lillah+Lawson&bkshp-astro=t
  • https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00ZGWF2DM

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

On this episode of Chasing Glass, I sit down with Steph Cave, board president of Athens Pride and Queer Collective, for one of the most honest conversations we've had on the show. Steph opens up about living with lupus, Hashimoto's, and complex PTSD, what it actually took to come out in a rural town fifteen years ago, and their time as a protest medic during the BLM protests. We talk about grief, chronic illness, mental health, and what it really costs to build the queer community you needed but never had. This is a conversation about identity, resilience, and choosing to show up for people even when it costs you.

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

Sharvil Kulkarni built a full photography business in one year, all while being a full time college student. On the outside it looks like a highlight reel. On the inside, it is productivity guilt, imposter syndrome, and a moment on a 3 AM flight that cracked everything open. In this episode of Chasing Glass, we talk about what it actually costs to always be the one behind the camera, why comparison culture hits different when your job is curating everyone else's image, and the friendship lesson that changed how he sees loneliness. This is a conversation about burnout, boundaries, and figuring out who you are when nobody is watching.

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

Some losses are publicly mourned. Others get pushed into silence. Why?

This week I'm joined by Melyssa Munn, a UGA neuroscience and women's and gender studies researcher who lost both her parents at 15. Now, she studies the brain science of trauma and writes feminist theory on how women are valued, then dismissed.

We get into the psychology of grief, why some losses are quietly erased, what disenfranchised grief actually is, and why so many women learn shame before they learn confidence.

If you've ever been told to stay strong or just move on, listen to this one all the way through.