Karl Jacobi
Host of The Grit Factor Podcast, Resilience & Performance Coach, Founder, Entrepreneur, Combat Veteran
Appears in 51 Episodes
Episode 030: Laughter Lightens the Load You Hold with Merit Kahn
Episode SummaryMerit Kahn walked into her first stand up comedy class in 2014 with one goal: to be funnier in her keynotes. She had no intention of becoming a professi...
Episode 029: Overcoming a Rare Disease and Fear with Marc Schmidt
Episode SummaryMarc Schmidt was born with Opitz GBB Syndrome, a rare condition that arrives as a package deal. Cleft lip and palate. Surgical intervention required at ...
Episode 028: Twenty Years of IT. One Deliberate Step Backward with Chris Farr
Episode SummaryMost people spend their careers chasing the seat at the table. Chris Farr had it. Vice President of Technology at a credit union in southwest Georgia, t...
Episode 027: Ten Years Lost. One Decision Changed Everything with Ryan Otwell
Episode SummaryRyan Otwell grew up a preacher's kid in a middle-class home, raised in the church, moving from house to house as his dad's work demanded, and building t...
Episode 026: The Guy Who Was Best Man at His Wedding Emptied the Business Account, He Kept the Doors Open Anyway with Josh Crumback
Episode SummaryJosh Crumback had one semester of college, a dream of playing football that ended with a back injury junior year, and the kind of work ethic that sends ...
Episode 025: Fifteen Years on the Front Line, MIT, and a Car Crash That Started It All with Murray Smith
Episode SummaryMurray Smith did not plan any of it. He finished high school, got accepted into chemical engineering, lasted two months, went home and told his mum he w...
Episode 024: The Thirty-Five Dollar Co-Pay Wasn't Working. So She Bet on the Four Hundred Dollar Coach with Carly Pepin
Episode SummaryCarly Pepin grew up in LA knowing something was off but not having a name for it. She was reactive at work, rough around the edges when challenged, and ...
Episode 023: Nine Figures, Ferraris, and a Son He Would Trade It All to See Again with Khang Dang
Episode SummaryKhang Dang sold blueberry blow pops for a quarter in fourth grade, got shut down by his math teacher, and kept going. He spent his college years arbitra...
Episode 022: His Wife Threatened to Sell the Bike. That Ride Changed Everything with David Forster
Episode SummaryDavid Forster grew up on a cattle farm in northeast Kansas, the son of a man who worked nights at a railway mailroom, put himself through school, became...
Episode 021: She Lost Everything to a Rare Disease. Then She Wrote the Laws That Could Help You with Barby Ingle
Episode SummaryBarby Ingle was at the top of her game. Coaching at Washington State University in the athletic department, cheering at every sport from basketball to c...
Episode 020: He Sold Pizza at Thirteen, burned Insurance at Thirty and Still Building a Paid Community with Christopher Grant
Episode SummaryChristopher Grant did not wait for permission. At eighteen he walked into insurance sales instead of a college classroom, taught himself how to close by...
Episode 019: He Lost His Wife, Raised Seven Kids Alone, and Built His Best Year Yet with Jeffrey Clark
Episode SummaryJeffrey Clark has been selling online since 2006. He built a multiple six-figure business as a one-man operation from a rural town in northern Indiana, ...
Episode 018: He Lost His Father, His Restaurant, and His Time. Then He Built a Life He Actually Wanted with Ryan Kimura
Episode SummaryIn 2019, Ryan Kimura was working seventy hours a week in a Thai restaurant he co-owned in Florida. Not seventy comfortable hours behind a desk. Seventy ...
Episode 017: He Built a Sixteen Million Dollar Business and Walked Away From All of It with Corey Ganim
Episode SummaryOn paper, Corey Ganim had it figured out. Sixteen million dollars in e-commerce revenue, over thirteen thousand YouTube subscribers, one of the most res...
Episode 016: Forty Million in Sales, Three Years Lost to Addiction, and the Comeback Nobody Saw Coming with Griffy Kesler
Episode SummaryGriffy Kesler started selling on Amazon at twelve years old, he made forty million dollars in sales over fifteen years, built multiple businesses includ...
Episode 015: Dad, Grandfather, Brother, Business. All Gone in One Year. Here Is What He Did Next with Trevor Neill
Episode SummaryTrevor Neal opened 2025 ready to build. His Amazon private label business had just hit one point two million dollars in sales. He had momentum, a plan, ...
Episode 014: Five Things Gone in One Week, and the CIA Agent Still Rebuilt Anyway with Ryan Walsh
Episode Summary Most people have a bad week. Ryan Walsh had a week that took out five things at once. It was Christmas 2020. He had just cleared a three-year reapprova...
Episode 013: Laid Off at 45, One Wolf Pack, and Still Building with Bryan Todd
Episode SummaryMost people see the layoff coming before it hits. Bryan Todd saw it too. The IT industry had been shedding jobs by the tens of thousands, Dell, Intel, H...
Episode 012: Six Kids, No Safety Net, and the Faith That Held It Together with Honey Woods
Episode Summary Nobody plans for the moment the floor drops out. Honey Woods had spent her whole life working toward one thing, being a wife and a mom. She homeschoole...
Episode 011: From the Pulpit to $2M, the Internal Work Nobody Talks About with Grant Douglas
Episode Summary What happens when the version of yourself you built your entire life around turns out to be the problem? Grant Douglas was a children's pastor at a te...
