The Knowing Podcast | Emotional Intelligence, Business Growth, Personal Development · Christene Marie | Entrepreneurship, Mindfulness, Mental Health

S2 Ep12 - Face Your Problems & Build a Vision Bigger Than You: Bold Moves That Changed Everything

·50 min·2 clips

If you can breathe, you can think. And if you can think, you can fight or you can figure out what's going on.

Christine Marie sets the frame right away by asking listeners to turn toward the problem instead of away from it. She links breathing to clarity, and clarity to the ability to act. That opening idea carries through the whole conversation. Joe Stolte comes in as a guest, but also as someone Christine already knew from an event in Austin. Their connection started with his daily AI work and grew into a deeper overlap in values. The interview keeps its no-agenda shape, because the show is built to hold back judgment and let curiosity do the work. That matters here. It gives Joe room to move back through his own story without feeling rushed. He talks about growing up in a farm town in Oregon. He remembers wanting out. At the time, the place felt small. Later, he looked back on it with reverence. He also names the harder parts plainly, including fighting, drug use, and friends who were already getting incarcerated by middle school. His parents loved him. They did not have much money, but they found ways to give him what he wanted. That mix of limited means and real support shaped the way he learned to move through the world. Wanting more made him resourceful. He started by collecting beer cans for deposit money. Then his dad taught him how to mow lawns. He did not love the work, and he was not very good at it at first. He still tried to build something from it. He knocked on doors and offered to mow lawns for ten dollars. The first job went badly when he ran over a sprinkler. Instead of stopping there, he kept thinking. He looked for another way to make the work hold together. He started borrowing lawnmowers and leaning on the people around him. The conversation uses that story as more than a childhood anecdote. It becomes a way to think about desire, discomfort, and the practical shape of ambition. Christine keeps pulling it back toward the deeper question underneath the success story. What does it mean to want a bigger life. What happens when the thing you are moving toward is also exposing the parts of you that are still scared, restless, or unfinished. The show stays comfortable with those questions. It lets the story breathe. It lets the listener sit with the fact that growth is rarely clean. It is often improvised, a little messy, and tied to the places you tried to leave behind. By the end, Christine reminds listeners that therapy, masterminds, and networking can help, but they are still outside supports. The real work is to take the questions inward, sit with them during the week, and come back to yourself more honestly. That closing lands as an invitation rather than a slogan. It keeps the episode in the show's favorite lane: practical enough to feel lived, reflective enough to matter after the conversation ends.

As heard by us

A reflective conversation about turning toward problems, building resourcefulness, and using ambition as a path to self-knowledge.

Christine Marie keeps the conversation open and curious. The thread is simple enough: when trouble shows up, turn toward it, breathe, and think.

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Why you'd press play

You want a business conversation that starts with breathing, not bravado.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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