I sat down with Mark Montgomery, a serial founder with ten-figure exits, to talk about the part nobody warns you about: surviving your own success.This is a conversation about what is left when the thing you built is gone, when the money turns out to be fuel for something else, and when the same drive that made you can quietly unmake you.

This conversation is about what gets transmitted across a life: the trash and the treasure tangled together, and what it takes to keep betting on yourself when the bet doesn’t always pay off the way you thought it would.

The big questions:

• What happens to a man when the dream he built is dismantled and his marriage ends in the same season?

• Is the value money, or is money just fuel for something else?

• How do you separate the superpower from the kryptonite when they come from the same source?

• What did being in the room with death actually teach him that nothing else could?

• If God is the foundation and not the ceiling, how does that change the way you live?

What you'll hear:

• The juvenile delinquent theory of the founder, by way of Patagonia's Yvonne Chouinard

• Sending a 75,000-person snail mail list one final letter to move them onto the internet in 1995

• "You want to sell what on the where?" and the renegades at Telelink who invented commerce

• The starfish on the beach, and what "made a difference for that one" came to mean

• The cramped office, the lost document, and his father's "you little son of a bitch, you beat me"

• Selling the company in 2007, then the systematic dismantling of an 8 figure dream

• FLO, the smart-shit-with-cool-people salons, and recruiting Google to Tennessee

• Sitting in the room with his mother as she died, and the destruction of the ego that followed

• A Minor in Reality and teaching the class he wishes he'd had as a student

Pull quotes:

"I would say the process has gone through me."

"What drives me is the creativity."

"Your place is where you decide it is."

"So my advice to anyone who's dreaming about it is just fucking do it."

"My job is to be present as best I can when my fucking monkey mind gets going."

Chapters:

0:00 The Brown Note and the Toast · 1:20 Music Row, 2005, The Demo · 5:40 The Juvenile Delinquent and the Software Pirate · 7:20 Selling Music on the Internet · 15:40 Before and After Waking Up · 18:00 The Starfish on the Beach · 22:40 When You Sold Echo, What Did He Tell You · 33:20 The Process Has Gone Through Me · 34:00 The Dismantling · 47:20 The Hard Drive That Became Black Labs · 56:00 Flow and the Salons · 63:00 Recruiting Google to Tennessee · 66:20 God as Foundation, the Five Layers · 72:20 In the Room With Death · 77:20 A Minor in Reality, the Mentorship · 91:00 Just Do It, AI, and the Last Toast

About:

Here's Mark's bio:

I hate bios.and correct punctuation. and caps.

I ❤ …creativity of all kinds

great design (and designing all kinds of stuff)

out of the box thinking

being the dumbest one in the room

challenging the status quo

asking hard questions

empowering creators

#nashvillecreates

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Ernest Chapman is a brand therapist, composer, and recovering broke wizard. He is the author of Aligned to the Divine Design, and the host of The Divine Design Podcast, conversations with healers, heretics, and harbingers across five domains: divinity, civilization, purpose, family, and self-optimization.

Book: alignedtothedivinedesign.com

Podcast: thedivinedesignpodcast.com

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I sat down with the Honorable Glenn Anderson, a banker turned state legislator who calls himself a Gandhi Republican, to ask how you actually build a civilization that holds together. We started with one idea he told me that wouldn't leave my head, that an economic zone only works if it is a place people genuinely want to live, and from there we climbed the whole ladder: culture, energy, power, education, faith, family, and what it costs to tell people the truth. This is the zen of economic development, and it goes all the way down to the soul.

The big questions:

• Why does an economic zone fail the moment it stops being a place people actually want to live?

• How do you keep your sense of self intact when power reveals character instead of building it?

• If your physical self-awareness is smaller than a subatomic particle in the universe, what does it mean to claim you have God figured out?

• Who is really at fault when a public school fails the children inside it?

• Can capitalism empower the most people without tipping into oligarchy on one side or collectivism on the other?

What you'll hear:

• Why "creating value for us that benefits you" beats the traveling salesman pitch every time

• The offshore-wind welder problem: trigonometry, the boat ride, heights, scuba, and why the pool of qualified people shrinks to almost nobody

• How North Dakota's oil fields forced an entire education system to adapt to a wild-west influx of young men

• A legislator's day: building trust in the morning, a sixth-grade capitol tour at noon, and sitting on the other side of the table from half your morning allies by afternoon

• The breakdown of who actually sits in elected office, from the 60 percent still wondering how they got there to the 5 percent who are in it for themselves

• Why Glenn played music alone in the car as his anchor instead of taking calls

Pull quotes:

"The truth is is it reveals character it reveals who you always were before you got there"

"Economic development cannot be that it has to be I'm coming here we're creating value for us and that value has a benefit to you"

"Everything in human life is defined by energy"

"Never interfere never step in between a man and his lesson"

"Unless you educate your energy you're just sort of a drifting dissipating force"

Chapters:

0:00 More Than One of Me · 0:40 The Five Layers and the Economic Zone · 1:20 Culture Is More Than Numbers · 3:20 No Snake Oil in Economic Development · 4:40 The Offshore Wind Welder Problem · 7:40 You Have to Want to Live There · 8:20 North Dakota's Wild West · 10:00 Problem Solving Is Never Cheap · 11:40 A Legislator's Day and Building Trust · 14:00 Power Reveals Character · 17:40 How Do You Define God · 19:20 The Buddhist Gandhi Republican

About:

The Honorable Glenn Anderson is a Tennessee native with an economics degree, a corporate banking career, and twelve years in the Washington State legislature, where his focus areas included workforce development. He helped build Silicon Valley financially in the late 1980s and spent two decades on the Seattle tech corridor, and he now serves as Executive Director of the Tennessee Medical Cannabis Trade Association. A self-described Buddhist conservative who called himself a Gandhi Republican in office, his family roots run deep through Putnam County and back to the Mayflower.

Ernest Chapman is a brand therapist, composer, and recovering broke wizard. He is the author of Aligned to the Divine Design, and the host of The Divine Design Podcast, conversations with healers, heretics, and harbingers across five domains: divinity, civilization, purpose, family, and self-optimization.

Book: alignedtothedivinedesign.com

Podcast: thedivinedesignpodcast.com

If this one lands, share it with one person who needs to hear it.

I sat down with Christy Lynn Hicks, a builder of builders who climbed a corporate satellite-engineering ladder she hated, found yoga in a Nashville living room, and spent the next three decades turning a Southern conservative upbringing into a practical technology for the inner life. This conversation is about what it costs to live in integrity: the corporate years she was miserable inside, the studio she built and then lost in March 2020, and the slow, honest rebuild in the house her father built with his hands. Christy frames yoga as a technology and a philosophy for clearing the static so you can transmit a clear signal, not as a religion and not as a fitness class.

The big questions:

• What do you do when the dream you built for fifteen years gets torn down overnight?

• Is the work you do actually integrated with the words you speak and the life you live?

• Why do we keep knowing better and not doing better, and what does that cost us?

• Can you really teach anyone to get right with themselves before you are right with yourself?

• What does a world look like where everybody wins, and how would we ever build it?

What you'll hear:

• Her father's one house rule: no one wants to hear you complain, do something about it or zip it

• Watching her dad build their house with his hands when she was six, the image that set the standard for everything after

• Climbing the corporate ladder as a woman in her early twenties, becoming her former boss's boss, and being miserable the whole time

• The first yoga class in 1995, looked up in the yellow pages, where she saw the whole future before she was ready for it

• Yoga as a technology: tuning your inner satellite so you transmit a clear signal through the static

• Why she places yoga as its own philosophy, separate from Vedanta, that does not even take a position on God

• March 2020, the fifteen-year anniversary party, and the studio collapse that sent her into a Sisyphus loop of grief and addiction

Pull quotes:

"No one wants to hear you complain, do something about it or zip it"

"One of the reasons we suffer is crimes against wisdom"

"Integrity is just integration"

"We're being humans and it's a technology that helps us to human better"

"Lead yourself first and the rest will fall into place"

Chapters:

0:00 Builder of Builders · 2:20 Climbing the Corporate Ladder · 6:20 Dad's Rule: No One Wants to Hear You Complain · 7:40 Watching Him Build the House · 9:20 Five Layers in One Man · 10:20 The First Yoga Class, 1995 · 14:00 What Is Yoga · 14:20 Tuning the Inner Satellite · 18:20 The Kingdom of God Within · 21:40 Is Yoga a False Religion · 25:00 The Ten-Year Runway to Burbank · 32:00 Yoga Helps Us Human Better · 33:40 March 2020 and the Collapse · 36:20 Building Elevation Central While Broken · 47:00 Honest About Your Own Bullshit · 48:00 Crimes Against Wisdom · 60:20 The World Where Everybody Wins · 65:00 Empower the Treasure, Not the Trash

About:

Christy Lynn Hicks is the founder of the Living Arts Yoga Institute and Elevation Central in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, and the former owner of Yoga Blend in Burbank, which she ran for fifteen years. A onetime corporate satellite engineer turned yoga teacher of nearly three decades, she teaches yoga as a practical technology for the people who think they don't like yoga. She is the author of the forthcoming book Bless Your Heart and Do the Work.

Ernest Chapman is a brand therapist, composer, and recovering broke wizard. He is the author of Aligned to the Divine Design, and the host of The Divine Design Podcast, conversations with healers, heretics, and harbingers across five domains: divinity, civilization, purpose, family, and self-optimization.

Book: alignedtothedivinedesign.com

Podcast: thedivinedesignpodcast.com

If this one lands, share it with one person who needs to hear it.

I sat down with my friend Eric Busby, a man who started college at sixteen by arguing with his philosophy professor and spent the next forty years becoming a Chief Tekne Officer. We traced technology back to its root, techne logos, the rational language of art, and followed that thread all the way to the AI convergence, the one button left on the internet, and the only two things any of us take with us.

The big questions:

• What if efficiency has quietly become an entity that governs us, instead of the other way around?

• What do you buy with the Earth money before it stops being worth anything?

• What is left when the algorithm catches everything humans have ever made?

• How does a hyperachiever quiet the very mind that built his success?

• When the rug gets pulled for 350 million people at once, what actually endures?

What you'll hear:

• Techne logos broken open: technology as the rational language of art, and why technique runs through music, martial arts, and accounting alike

• Jacques Ellul's warning that efficiency governs us and we work for it

• Os Guinness in a California truck, answering "does it all come down to violence?"

• The Nashville ice storm, day three, when the veil came off and people became who they really were

• The Body Keeps the Score, the knot held for 50 years, and saying goodbye to his dad on the massage table

• Reassigning the hyperachiever instead of firing him

• Name target marketing, the squirrel out the window, and how AdCritter got its name

• Southern Baptist yoga, and why it lives under the first commandment

• Ham radio, the weekly net, and why black belt is white belt under pressure

Pull quotes:

"And efficiency becomes this entity all on its own that starts to want to control everything."

"Our character and our relationships. Everything else is not important."

"I have enough faith to believe in God. I don't have enough faith to think that I know that he's not real."

"Black belt is white belt, applied under pressure."

"There's often one correct way to hit a bullseye and 10,000 ways to miss."

Chapters:

0:00 The Love of Wisdom · 0:30 Techne Logos: The Rational Language of Art · 2:30 Efficiency as Its Own Entity · 4:00 Os Guinness and the Question of Violence · 9:00 The One Button Left · 11:30 The Ice Storm, Day Three · 15:30 What Do You Deserve? · 18:30 The Body Keeps the Score · 21:00 Saying Goodbye to Dad on the Table · 30:30 Name Target Marketing and the Squirrel · 45:30 Southern Baptist Yoga · 61:00 What Endures: Character and Relationships · 66:00 Ham Radio and the Weekly Net · 71:30 The Word to the One in Pain

About:

Eric Busby is the Co-Founder, President, and CTO of AdCritter, an AI-first DSP. He is also a former CIO of Saddleback Church, a commercial photographer, a licensed ham radio operator who has contacted every continent from his home, a beekeeper, the catcher for a vintage base ball team, and a yoga practitioner. He began studying Jacques Ellul's philosophy and theology of technology as an undergraduate in the 1980s.

Ernest Chapman is a brand therapist, composer, and recovering broke wizard. He is the author of Aligned to the Divine Design, and the host of The Divine Design Podcast, conversations with healers, heretics, and harbingers across five domains: divinity, civilization, purpose, family, and self-optimization.

Book & Podcast: alignedtothedivinedesign.com

If this one lands, share it with one person who needs to hear it.

All children are wizards. Growing up, most of us forget… but it's never too late to remember. In the founding episode of The Divine Design Podcast, I sat down with my friend Jim Morris to share my Confessio and turn the Divine Design framework on myself.

The big questions:

• What if the same pattern that destroys civilizations is the one destroying you?

• What did you have to let go of to become who you are now?

• When did you stop being who you were and become who you are now?

• Was there a specific moment when you realized everything had to change?

• How would you rebuild yourself?

What you'll hear:

• The prayer I didn't know I was praying until it was too late to reverse the answer

• The email from my wife that broke me open (September 19, 2013)

• My four-year-old's playground punch that forced me to burn my ships

• Why I walked out of AA and built a different model of recovery

• The M's: Music, Mindset, Meditation, Manifestation, Mentorship, Mastery, and the MAGIC that happens when you try as hard as you can to get out of the way

• The Five Layers: Self → Family → Purpose → Civilization → God

• Why {ai + ai} (actual intelligence) is the only honest way forward

• The closing mandate: find the Voice of God within you

Pull quotes:

"The magic is what happens when you try as hard as you can to get out of the way."

"Broke wizards lose their magic when they fail to keep their obligations."

"I believe the higher power is what gives me power, and that I have to claim it, own it, and become a better me."

"All I can really fix is myself."

"The first tagline for Black Labs was Connect or Die."

Chapters:

0:00 The Magic of M · 3:01 The Chiropractor · 8:56 The Prayer I Didn't Know I Was Praying · 10:48 The Punch That Changed Everything · 15:45 The Worst Email of My Life · 19:05 Why I Walked Out of AA · 24:59 The Kingdom of God Within · 31:33 What Is "Myself"? · 37:59 The Five Layers · 43:10 Brand Therapy · 56:05 Ai + Ai · 1:03:16 Connect or Die · 1:07:03 The Closing Mandate

About:

Ernest Chapman is a brand strategist, former professional musician, and recovering broke wizard who lives in Nashville with his wife and two sons. Founder of Black Labs, author of Aligned to the Divine Design.

Jim Morris is the host of the Impact Effect podcast.

Book: alignedtothedivinedesign.com

Podcast: thedivinedesignpodcast.com

If this one lands, share it with one person who needs to hear it.