Defining Moments | A Podcast with JP and MK

Episode 06 | Defining Moments | JP Blevins & MK Wathen: Ten Lessons on Identity, Parenting, and Surrender

For five episodes, JP Blevins and MK Wathen have been asking other people the hard questions. This time, they answered them. In this episode of Defining Moments, JP and MK turn the microphone on themselves — each sharing five life lessons they'd go back and tell their younger selves, and what it actually cost to learn them. MK sits with the wounds she almost passed on to her kids without knowing it, the fear that stepping away from her career meant falling behind forever, and what happened on a walk on the beach that quietly broke her open. JP traces the performance identity he built on basketball and business success, the four things he spent his life chasing, and what he had to reckon with after he caught them. Neither of them arrives at a clean answer. That's not an accident. Ten lessons on identity, parenting, faith, and what it means to stop white-knuckling the life you planned — from two people still inside the questions they're asking.

Episode 05 | Defining Moments | Doug Flynn: What Winning Didn't Fill: Faith, Loss, and a Life After Baseball

When the Gold Glove finally arrived, Doug Flynn found himself more frustrated about the years he didn't win it than grateful for the one he did. It was the first time he admitted — to himself — how selfish he'd become. In this episode, Doug Flynn joins JP and MK to reflect on a life built in the margins of expectation — a Lexington kid with no scholarship offers who signed his first pro contract for $2,500 out of a tryout he showed up to in cutoffs with a borrowed glove. He played eleven years in the Major Leagues, won two World Series titles with the Big Red Machine, and learned what it meant to know your role on a team that didn't need his ego. He also carries something heavier: his sister disappeared in January 1977 and was never found, a wound he has carried for nearly fifty years without closure. What unfolds is an honest account of achievement that didn't satisfy, grief that didn't resolve, and faith that held through both. Some questions don't get answered on this side of heaven.

Episode 04 | Defining Moments | Chip Mahan: On Loss, Loyalty, and Finishing the Mission

The FDIC told him to sell or liquidate. He took a breath and said no. In this episode, Chip Mahan joins us to reflect on the handful of moments that quietly built one of the most remarkable entrepreneurial careers to ever come out of Kentucky — from a tobacco barn in Frankfort to a $15 billion bank in Wilmington, North Carolina. The conversation moves through loss, loyalty, and the particular kind of courage it takes to keep going when the math says stop. Chip talks about losing his father at 11, the neighbor's words that landed too heavy for a child that age, and the way that morning shaped everything that came after. He traces the origin of Live Oak Bank's defining culture back to a single afternoon with T.W. Samuels of Maker's Mark — and the lesson in loyalty he carried out of that distillery. And he tells the story of sitting across from a federal regulator in Atlanta in 2008, being told the bank was over, and choosing obligation over self-preservation. Through it all: a wife named Peggy who responded to every leap with "how much time do I have to pack?" — married at 22, still together 63 years later. Some lives are built on ambition. Some are built on something quieter and harder to name. #DefiningMoments #Legacy #Stewardship #Mentorship #Generosity #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #Kentucky #Banking #LiveOakBank

Episode 03 | Defining Moments | Chad Pennington: On Losing Himself in the NFL, Finding Freedom in Miami, and Leading with Service

Each morning during the 2007 NFL season, Chad Pennington got on his hands and knees and asked God to take football away from him. His father told him to stay in the fire. In this episode, Chad Pennington joins us to reflect on the moments that reshaped his relationship with the game, his identity, and the people closest to him. He speaks not as a former first-round pick or two-time Comeback Player of the Year, but as a son, father, and coach still learning what those titles mean. The conversation moves through a childhood in Knoxville shaped by two public school educators, a chance throwing session that led to Marshall, and the self-awareness to turn down an SEC offer at 19 because he knew he wasn’t ready. It lands in a Cleveland hotel room at 11:30 PM, where a five-minute firing became a doorway to leading the worst team in the NFL to a division championship. Chad talks about the void football leaves, the difference between reacting and responding, and why his father’s hardest advice was also his most loving. Some fires don’t destroy what they touch. They reveal what was always there.

Episode 02 | Defining Moments | He Bought a Bank at 26. That Wasn't the Turning Point. | Jess Correll

In this episode, Jess Correll joins us to reflect on what it looks like when a life built around business has to be rebuilt around something more. He talks about growing up in rural Kentucky with a father who believed he could do anything and charged him 50% interest for co-signing his first bank note. About selling Bibles door-to-door at 17, buying that first bank at 26, and building First Southern National Bank over 44 years without ever opening an account or attending a closing. About a divorce that cracked open his capacity for compassion. About a mentor he's called every Saturday for two decades — and how he doesn't spend $10,000 without checking in first. About reckless giving, the flip phone, and his father's antidote to greed. Jess has been asked many times to explain his success. He still isn't sure it's his to explain. Some lives are built quietly, from the inside out. This is one of them.