Cole Kynoch is a first-year professional triathlete racing for Roka Standard Racing and an after-sales area manager for Lamborghini's Americas region — one of the more unusual day-job-and-side-hustle combinations on the pro circuit. But his real story isn't about supercars or race splits; it's about a self-described "jack of all trades, master of none" learning, later than he'd like, that figuring everything out alone isn't the same as thriving.

We talk about what pushed him to turn pro after years of finishing races alone off the front of the amateur field, how growing up as the oldest with twin younger sisters shaped his instinct toward self-sufficiency, why asking for help still doesn't come naturally to him, what mutual respect and loyalty mean to him as guiding principles, his path from Volkswagen to Lamborghini and what climbing that corporate ladder actually looks like, and his evolving, agnostic relationship with faith — including why he walked away from a checklist version of religion in favor of just trying to live with integrity.

This is a conversation about the quiet cost of always being the one who figures it out — in sport, at work, and in marriage — and what changes when you finally let people, and maybe something bigger than yourself, in.

I've saved this one (episode number, title, description, and a few candidate takeaways) so it's ready whenever you build the next newsletter — even if that's a different session down the road.

Cole’s IG: https://www.instagram.com/cole_tries_tris/

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Benjamin Randall — known to most of the internet as Triathlete Benny — is a professional triathlete and a staff writer at Colorado State University. But his real story isn't the run splits people argue about in the comments; it's the shy only child who just wanted friends, and the years he spent training close to 40 hours a week trying to outrun something he couldn't name. What he's built since is less about fitness than about finally being a whole person.

We talk about being labeled "just a runner who does triathlon," the strange math of having your worth measured in three sports, the high school journalism teacher who lit the fire that still drives his writing, and the coaches who found him at his lowest and asked what he was actually doing. Ben opens up about his eating disorder and the inpatient treatment that followed, grapples honestly with what recovery looks like when your sport rewards the same obsessiveness that nearly broke you, and shares the mental reframe that pulled him out of black-or-white thinking — plus why shoving his watch in his pocket made him faster.

This is a conversation about what happens when you stop performing your identity and start living it. If who you are depends entirely on what you did last Saturday, what's left on the days you don't race?

Benny’s IG: https://www.instagram.com/triathletebenny/

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Tegan Phillips is a South African cartoonist, adventure writer, and creator known for her women's cycling comedy — and for riding 11,000 kilometers across Africa with her family. But her real story isn't the big adventures. It's the quieter, less glamorous choice to stay put and build something sustainable when running away would have looked braver.

We talk about growing up in Cape Town and what inequality teaches a kid early, the boxes families and social media put us in, the eating disorders and comparison that shaped her teenage years, what it took to learn how to be honest in a friendship, and the gap between her chaotic online persona and the methodical business owner behind it. She opens up about the book she's been dragging her feet on for five years, and shares the most practical advice we've had on the show: if you want to make a living from your art, you have to learn how business actually works.

This is a conversation about the difference between following your heart and running from discomfort — and how hard it is to tell them apart without time alone to figure out which voice is which.

Tegan’s IG: https://www.instagram.com/teganphillipscomics/

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