Stay ConnectedHi, I’m Chase Chewning (@chase_chewning on Instagram) and this is the podcast that is devoted to help you build a life that propels you forward – EVER FORWARD. Conversations with industry leaders in health and wellness, personal development, entrepreneurship, celebrities and entertainers, creatives, military and so much more.
I am a US Army veteran, ACE Certified Health Coach, and I hold a BS in Exercise Science and MS in Health Promotion and currently live in Los Angeles, CA.
Copyright: © 2026
Natascha Bessez is an international recording artist, model, spokesperson, and former beauty queen. While her career has taken her to L.A., Natascha was born and raised in New York, where she was crowned Miss New York Teen USA at 18. She has since performed around the world with some of the biggest names in the music industry, bringing her two Billboard Top 30 dance hits along the way.
Her global ambitions paved the way for the opportunity to headline Madrid's World Pride, place runner-up for Denmark's Eurovision Song Festival, compete in The Voice in Holland, and, most recently, star in The Bachelor Presents: Listen To Your Heart.
Asked how she knew the career she wanted to build for herself, Natascha replies, "I think it's not something that you know. It's something that you do." With music as just one of her many passions, the last thing she wants is to be boxed in and labeled, identified only by what she happens to be most known for.
"Performance is what I love the most," says Natscha. Growing up with a Chilean mother and a father of French descent exposed her to different types of music from the day she was born. That developed her love of opera as a kid. She recalls dressing up, belting out, and dancing her heart out on most of those early days. "I enjoyed being watched. I enjoyed expressing."
This love for performance and expression, along with her natural sanguine personality, led Natascha to all the different creative opportunities that have come her way so far. Through it all, she strives to keep her feet planted firmly on the ground, stay true to herself, and leave a legacy to young girls looking to chart a path on their own terms.
"Why would I want to do something that's not authentic to who I am? In time, you realize what you're not in order to find out what you are."
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Greg Anderson is a former Law Enforcement Officer and Special Forces veteran. He caught the public eye with a viral Instagram video he posted on May 6, 2020, in which he, in full uniform, challenged the constitutionality of enforcing strict stay-at-home orders. Greg was promptly terminated. His video went on to garner millions of views and counting.
Asked how the video was received, Greg says that "95% of people were supportive. Tons of police officers, too." He even got a message from a sergeant who told him that he played the video during roll call. "It's crazy," continues Greg, "how eight minutes changed the entire trajectory of my life—defined my life, really."
A year following the incident, Greg says that the experience freed him from a career that, while he was thankful for, never really felt passionate about. He felt law enforcement was "a kind of natural progression" after his time in the military, and he ended up giving the profession a good eight-year run. "But it was never me. So, this forced me to step outside of that and focus on some things that I'm passionate about."
Today, Greg dedicates most of his time to his Jiu-Jitsu academy and CrossFit gym, Electric North Jiu Jitsu, which he founded back in 2015. With Chase's help, through Operation Podcast, Greg also recently launched his own podcast, Endless Endeavor.
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"I've always been curious about hacking the game of life. I think it's a game. It's a game with highest stakes"
Today, Chase interviews David Wood, a High-Performance Coach and the Founder of Focus.ceo, a company that aims at helping business owners double their revenue by focusing on less. Listen in as David offers strategies and tips on getting super-focused with your work and life. Also, learn how you can overcome the shiny object syndrome and actually get twice as much done of what you care about!
David opens up about the severe life challenges he had in life and how he is still working on overcoming them. It all dates back to when he was seven years old. He lost his younger sister in a traffic accident, watched it happen. It wasn't until he was 23 that he actually began to realize how the incident had traumatized him in unknowing ways. That was when he sought the help of a psychologist.
Recollecting the whole experience of healing, he says, "I went through a whole series of learning how to cry, learning how to communicate, learning how to speak. And I think as I got back in touch with my emotions, I think that one has me so lit up and excited to help other people go into emotional vulnerability. Some of the leadership qualities like revealing and taking emotional risks."
David shares the silent symptoms of depression he had realized he was showing all the while. He says, "My body clenches up and gets really tight, probably because of emotional stuff that still isn't handled." Two compelling avenues that you can try are stillness and movement. It worked for him and would probably do so for you too!
Going ahead, David shares his love for helping people reinvent and change their lives for the better. That's where the whole idea of focus.ceo and coaching, came from for him. David has talked about his nine-point-plan for the samurai program, which he uses to help double people's income and time off over 12 months.
Follow David @_focusceo Follow Chase @chase_chewning Key Highlights"I want to see more people come from the action of using love. And again, that's from being proactive. That's finding solutions. That is, you know, listening to people, seeing them, and letting them be heard."
In this episode, Chase speaks with Ruben Rojas, a Los Angeles-born artist and muralist, about his clothing line and print collection, Live Through Love, his art, and all things love. His mission is to ignite creativity and inspire others to see the world through the lens of love. Ruben is also the author of the book of the same name- Live Through Love.
In this conversation today, Ruben walks us through his journey in life so far, talks about the switches he made in his career, and how he finally decided to start with his current business. He shares that art had always been a significant part of his life- he enjoyed doodling and painting back during his school days. While at college, one of his friends suggested he try real estate investment, and he went on for it. But the business took him to the extent of bankruptcy, and he put an end to it.
Later, he tried his hands on investment and retirement services. That, too, did not go as expected. It took years of testing and switching careers to finally get him to start with what he has always been passionate about- art and the idea of love.
In his own words, "I would say it wasn't that clear. It was like, the I never is running through quicksand. So at first, it was really, can I do this? What does this look like? Can I sustain myself? Can I build a life off of this?"
The benefit Ruben says he's had in everything is he has always been self-employed. So whether it was as a personal trainer or as someone making sales commissions or in real estate, everything was still on him. He has never had a salary and never had to worry about just being comfortable in that space.
Ruben's decision to take on mural gigs and mural projects happened because he wanted to know if he could make money out of that. He wanted to know if that could help him create a business and sustain something while he continued to build.
A valuable takeaway is Ruben's advice on treating yourself with kindness, whether or not your choice in career gives you the anticipated success. "Maybe that wasn't your thing at the moment. And it's just another step to that next thing that actually gets you to where you need to go."
Follow Ruben @rubenrojas Follow Chase @chase_chewning Key Highlights"Humans are creators. But I think we've lost touch with the divine creativity that exists inside of each and every one of us because we've forgotten somehow that we are part of a larger story."
Katelyn Dowling, Ph.D., is the Founder and CEO of Sustainable Self, Inc., which offers coaching and consulting services broadly within the sustainability space. She is also a sought-after speaker who covers a variety of topics from imagination and creativity to the secret superpower of your heart's electromagnetic field.
Chase and Dr. Dowling discuss his personal experience undergoing The Quantum Clinic, a service offered at Sustainable Self which uses the experimental scalar energy device, the RASHA, to soften the veil between one's conscious and unconscious world. The goal of the session is to usher a person into a state of oneness, gather unique insights about themselves, and heal—all in ways that can only be achieved upon surrendering to their body's innate wisdom.
On a macro level, Dr. Dowling calls for humanity to "return to indiginous ways of knowing, being, and relating to oneself and one's environment." With the planet collapsing ecologically, she believes that if more people were capable of tapping into those other centers of wisdom within their subconscious, they become more aware and, therefore, more capable of addressing urgent issues around sustainability.
In fact, it was only as recently as last year, in the wake of the pandemic, when Dr. Dowling realized how serious the state of our planet truly is. She was compelled to widen the scope of her profession to encourage the "massive consciousness revolution" that is already taking place around the world.
"My personal mission," says Dr. Dowling, "and the reason I started Sustainable Self, is to create greater harmony with human, natural, and technological systems. [...] How do we use things like artificial intelligence and data analytics to actually make real changes in the world—not just to develop insights, but to bring about healing?"
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Jeff Chilton is the founder of Nammex, the leading supplier of organic mushroom extract ingredients to supplement companies. A pioneer and trailblazer in his field, Jeff was a key player in bringing medicinal mushrooms to the US market, and has dedicated over 40 years to unlocking its many health benefits.
He studied ethnomycology at the University of Washington in the late 1960s and went to work for Ostrom Mushroom Farms in Olympia, Washington in 1973. Over the next ten years, Jeff worked his way up to Grower and ultimately Production Manager.
In 1983, Jeff co-authored the highly-acclaimed book on small-scale mushroom cultivation, The Mushroom Cultivator. Throughout the 1980s, he operated a mushroom spawn business in British Columbia.
Finally, Jeff founded Nammex in 1989. Contributing to the reputation of the company as a leader in the mushroom industry were Jeff's numerous trips to China. During his visits, he built valuable relationships while attending conferences and visiting research facilities and mushroom farms around the country.
Aside from his work at Nammex, Jeff, along with his son Skye, offer a product line of high-grade mushroom supplements at Real Mushrooms.
To Jeff, mushrooms are a forgotten food, or what he calls "the missing dietary link" for many in the West. He encourages everyone to include mushrooms in their diet, in whole or supplement form, to experience their often-overlooked holistic health benefits.
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Dr. Kleiner is the owner of High Performance Nutrition®, LLC, a consulting firm in Mercer Island, Washington. She is the Director of Science & Communication for Vitargo, Inc., and the High Performance Nutritionist for Seattle Storm. Dr. Kleiner is the author of eight books, including THE NEW POWER EATING®, The Good Mood Diet®, and POWERFOOD Nutrition.
She has a PhD in Nutrition and Human Performance and is a registered dietician, certified nutrition specialist, Co-Founder and Fellow of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, and a Fellow at the American College of Nutrition, where she received a Young Investigator Award for her research. She has been a member of the National Strength and Conditioning Association and the American College of Sports Medicine for decades.
"What I do is help people achieve peak performance from the locker room to the boardroom to the bedroom." Dr. Kleiner's world is nutrition and human performance and believes that appearance or body composition should be an athlete's secondary priority. In fact, she focuses on body composition insofar as it contributes to performance.
"Translating the science of nutrition into food is the particular skill of a good dietician," says Dr. Kleiner. To this end, she has always taught her clients about food from the get-go so that they think about their daily food intake in terms of the food itself rather than simply counting macros and calories. She is an advocate of what she calls "power eating", or eating more instead of restricting yourself in order to gain greater energy, train harder, and, if part of your goal, lose fat.
Whether you are an elite athlete or someone who just wants to increase performance in mind and body, listen in as Dr. Kleiner shares her philosophies and ideas around nutrition that can help you reach your fitness goals without having to worry about your diet.
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Hollan Hawaii is a cordon bleu trained chef, health advocate, former restaurant owner, and mom of three. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Hollan studied at Le Cordon Bleu before settling in Kauai, Hawaii where she ran the vegan restaurant Caffe Coco until the end of 2017. Today, Hollan writes on all things health and wellness. She recently published the vegan cookbook Good Food Gratitude. The journey toward the vegan lifestyle and stellar health overall wasn't an easy trek for Hollan. Over a decade ago, just shy of her 30th birthday, she was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and was warned that she had a 60% chance of developing type 2 diabetes within the next several years. Holland was also overweight and struggled with endometriosis and kidney stones. Determined to reclaim agency over her young life, Hollan changed her diet, lasting a whole day as a vegetarian before committing wholeheartedly to veganism. The results were immediate. "What I started to realize really quickly was that you can control your health—or at least your body's health—through food. I literally felt like I could turn disease on and off with what I was eating." One of Hollan's biggest revelations is that you can "turn disease on and off" depending on what you eat. After going vegan and discovering that her body functions best by adapting to different "seasons of nutrition", Hollan felt liberated knowing that she was in control of both her physical and mental wellbeing. While she is an advocate for the transformational benefits of the vegan lifestyle, Holland encourages everyone to find the nutrition protocol that works for them. Our bodies don't need a lot. We just need to give it a little change so our brain can catch up and have some of those ah-hahs. Follow Hollan @hollanhawaii Follow Chase @chase_chewning Key Highlights
Nick Shaw is the Founder and CEO of Renaissance Periodization, former competitive powerlifter and bodybuilder, and coach to world-class athletes such as CrossFit Games Champions, Olympians, UFC fighters, and Navy SEALs. Nick, along with his wife Lori, co-host the RP Strength Podcast. To many an athlete, or even just the avid gym-goer, the lockdowns presented a ton of challenges to staying in shape. However, both Chase and Nick view these "limitations" from a different perspective. They discuss how having no choice but to be creative with their workouts has forced their bodies to deload. "We always think that more is better," says Nick, referring to his fellow athletes. "It's short-term thinking." A deload allows the body to "catch up" after a build-up of fatigue throughout an intense period of training. Coupled with periodization—well-rounded, systematized training to maximize productivity—more experienced athletes with specific fitness goals will be able to avoid burnout, let their body rest and recover, and maintain their motivation to hit the gym. "Eat enough, sleep enough. Do those two things and your recovery is probably going to be pretty good." Listen in as Chase and Nick go on to discuss best practices for growing as an athlete, with particular emphasis on the often-underestimated factors of nutrition, rest, and, most especially, doing the small monotonous things every day. In Nick's own words: "Little, gradual improvements over time is the success secret of consistently successful people." Follow Nick @nick.shaw.rp Follow Chase @chase_chewning Key Highlights
"We're energetic beings, and if you are not paying attention to your energetic body, and just paying attention to your physical body, there will be illness."
Dr. Saman Faramarzi is a naturopathic doctor and Founder of SAFA Life and Wellness. The name of her concierge business doubles as both a portmanteau of her own name, as well as depicting the Farsi word safa, meaning "joy". Joy, says Dr. Sam, is key to her role as a practitioner of self-healing.
"My responsibility is to meet my patients where they're at," says Dr. Sam. "So, my job is to open the door—create that space to go deeper."
Within the first 15 minutes of a consultation, she asks her patients to share their goals (interestingly, most of her patients wish to "feel lighter"). Many are ready to express themselves openly from the get-go, while others need a little more encouragement to open up. Regardless, for each and every patient, continues Dr. Sam, "we start with the deeper human being questions before we get into the physical symptoms. Then we start the healing." A human being is an energetic being.
Chase and Dr. Sam go on to share their respective personal experiences dealing with the repression of trauma, and how they have suffered emotionally in the past as a result. One may look physically perfect on the outside, but be deteriorating on the "inside" to the point of experiencing actual outward symptoms. In Chase's case, those symptoms included panic attacks and, in some cases, blackouts.
Dr. Sam describes her process for helping patients unveil the source of grief and begin the process of healing by tapping into their chakra—the energetic level of being. Dr. Sam encourages all of her patients to commit to the process of healing—of growth—just as she is committed to their journeys. Commitment, she says, makes you immune to obstacles of all sizes and opens your eyes to every opportunity that brings you a step closer to achieving your goals.
"All the power is in the patient," says Dr. Sam. "I'm only here to give you this information, help you, and work through the obstacles; but it's your commitment to you."
Follow Dr. Sam @dr.sam.nd
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