GrowthReady Podcast with Steve Mellor
Sep 30, 2026 · 48 min · 9 segments
Ever wonder what it takes to earn the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award before you’re 50? In this episode, Steve sits down with Jake Rademacher, for a story-filled conversation about courage…
Jake RademacherGuest
Steve MellorHost
I'm always listening for some sort of behavioral formula, if you will, in terms of just how you've achieved and experienced what it is you have.
And for me, the way my mind's sort of playing through this, Jake, is I think we're all operating through impulse every single day.
Obviously, a significantly less amount of us then have the courage to do something with that impulse.
And then the commitment piece is, do you manage to keep it going? Does that courageousness last or is it always slowly fading away? And the commitment is what keeps the courage alive is what I'm hearing from your story because I can only imagine it each and every turn.
In that entire story, there was always a new door and probably quite literal doors sometimes that you're walking through.
And you're questioning the decision to cross into that room, to cross into that environment.
Ambitious, whatever it might be, but I'm hearing that that underlying theme of commitment, yes, 100%, but I can't help but hear how the courageousness of it all, that was being tested throughout.
I would just love to understand what might have been an example, what might have been a moment where you're walking through some sort of threshold and you're starting to wonder – Have I asked too much of myself in this situation? Am I really up to what it is I've maybe set out for myself here?
First thing I was thinking of was, you know, that moment, like it's August of 2005 when I'm on an airplane flying to Kuwait, and then you got to sit there for a couple days, and then you're going into a war zone that's very much hot.
It was the first time my little brother, 19-year-old chip on his shoulder, sniper who knows everything, My good friend now, my brother Joe, I just was talking to earlier this morning.
But the first time he gave me a little credit, he goes, yeah, that first time you fly in a war zone, that's an experience because you really face your own mortality.
I'm always listening for some sort of behavioral formula, if you will, in terms of just how you've achieved and experienced what it is you have.
And for me, the way my mind's sort of playing through this, Jake, is I think we're all operating through impulse every single day.
Obviously, a significantly less amount of us then have the courage to do something with that impulse.
And then the commitment piece is, do you manage to keep it going? Does that courageousness last or is it always slowly fading away? And the commitment is what keeps the courage alive is what I'm hearing from your story because I can only imagine it each and every turn.
In that entire story, there was always a new door and probably quite literal doors sometimes that you're walking through.
And you're questioning the decision to cross into that room, to cross into that environment.
Ambitious, whatever it might be, but I'm hearing that that underlying theme of commitment, yes, 100%, but I can't help but hear how the courageousness of it all, that was being tested throughout.
I would just love to understand what might have been an example, what might have been a moment where you're walking through some sort of threshold and you're starting to wonder – Have I asked too much of myself in this situation? Am I really up to what it is I've maybe set out for myself here?
First thing I was thinking of was, you know, that moment, like it's August of 2005 when I'm on an airplane flying to Kuwait, and then you got to sit there for a couple days, and then you're going into a war zone that's very much hot.
It was the first time my little brother, 19-year-old chip on his shoulder, sniper who knows everything, My good friend now, my brother Joe, I just was talking to earlier this morning.
But the first time he gave me a little credit, he goes, yeah, that first time you fly in a war zone, that's an experience because you really face your own mortality.
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