EP 08 · Coming
Surviving Was Only the Beginning
Coming November 17, 2026 In February 2017, Emily Wilkins said goodbye to her family on her way into emergency surgery, not knowing if she would see them again. Years of living with Crohn’s disease had ended in a burst small intestine. She came out the other side with a fresh start and a new way of seeing her life.
Then she went back to the same job, the same pressures and the same patterns. “I survived this thing, and why can’t I make this work?”
Emily, the founder of Marketing Metal, tells Michael and Brian how her life pivot really happened: not in the operating room, but nearly two years later, on a last-minute trip to Florida with a notebook, a deck of tarot cards she’d owned for a decade, and a job search she gave up after two days. Life chose the first pivot. She chose the second.
This week’s question: where could you give yourself a little space to dream this week?
Tell us on Instagram at @bhtcollective.
Driving herself to the ER, and why asking for help is still a work in progress
Skydiving for her 30th birthday, before she’d fully healed
Going back to work out of gratitude, and the frustration that followed
“I’ve never fit into a box”: the kid whose report cards said she daydreamed too much
A calculus professor’s daughter on tarot as a way of reading patterns
Some pivots choose you: COVID, and losing her biggest client and her dog in the same weekend
Why visionaries need space to dream
Lake Michigan cold plunges and “I can do anything for a minute”
Writing down the week’s wins, and why momentum is everything
00:00 Intro
00:32 Welcome
02:36 It felt like a trap
10:46 Something is really wrong
19:17 One wild and wonderful life
26:54 I’ve never fit into a box
36:40 Some pivots choose you
41:52 Space to dream
48:54 I can do anything for a minute
54:16 Momentum is everything
No big questions this week. Michael and Brian just hang out: how they really met, growing up outside Cleveland and in Detroit, what they’re hilariously bad at, the sounds that drive them up the wall, a lightning round, and what they hope you’ll come to see in them.
Ka Wai Cheung spent 18 years building a company. The day he sold it, he felt relief, then a harder question: who am I now? Our first guest on the next five minutes, keeping your craft in a smaller dose, and why your “there” can be a feeling, not a finish line.
We all react. Michael and Brian on the space between what happens and what you do next: where you feel it in your body, how to tell real reflection from kicking the can down the road, and the one question that turns a reaction into a response.
