Marjorie Dudley

If I could interview anyone in the world, who would be on my list?

I’ve thought about this a lot since launching the Relentless Pursuit podcast.

The show is built around conversations with people who refused to settle—people who challenged conventional thinking, overcame something difficult, pursued something bigger, or simply figured out how to get a little more out of themselves and the people around them.

So, if there were no barriers, no gatekeepers and no scheduling conflicts, these would be some of my absolute dream interviews.

Jesse Cole — Reinvent the game.

If you look at Jesse Cole and the Savannah Bananas and see baseball, I think you’re missing the bigger lesson.

I love Jesse’s obsession with removing friction. Instead of accepting the things people traditionally dislike about baseball as simply “the way baseball works,” he started questioning them. Too long? Change it. Too slow? Change it. Too many barriers between the fan and the experience? Remove them. His Fans First philosophy became the North Star.

But I’m equally fascinated by the overcomer story behind the yellow tux. The Bananas weren’t created by someone sitting on unlimited resources who decided to disrupt an industry. Jesse and his team had to figure out how to survive—and instead of simply trying to do baseball better, they had the courage to do baseball differently.

I’d want to talk about innovation, customer experience, resilience, and one of my favorite questions:

What friction have we accepted simply because everyone else accepts it?

Jefferson Fisher — Hold your ground without losing yourself.

I could probably spend an entire interview with Jefferson Fisher just talking about phrases.

His communication tools are wonderfully practical: how to disagree without becoming disagreeable, how to stand your ground while remaining kind, how to be candid without being cruel, and how to communicate clearly without slipping into argumentative, petty, passive-aggressive behavior.

His whole philosophy that better conversations create a better world resonates deeply with me.

Leadership requires hard conversations. Marriage requires them. Parenting requires them. Sales requires them. Life requires them.

I’d love to explore how we become people who don’t avoid difficult conversations—but also don’t need to “win” them.

Vanessa Van Edwards — It’s not just what you say. It’s how people receive it.

Vanessa’s work fascinates me because she takes things many of us intuitively notice about communication and gives us language for them.

Her explanation of the accidental question inflection is one of my favorite examples. We’ve talked about downward inflection in sales training for years, but the way she explains what happens when we turn a statement into something that sounds like a question is phenomenal. Instead of confidently stating an idea, we can accidentally sound as though we’re asking permission for people to believe us.

Her work is ultimately about something bigger: making sure what we intend to communicate is actually what other people experience.

That’s enormously important for salespeople and leaders.

I’d love to spend an hour nerding out about cues, body language, vocal tone, confidence and the science behind human connection.

Allan Peters — Craft still matters.

This one might seem like the outlier on my list.

I actually started college as a graphic design major—and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing professionally with that degree. 😂

But I’ve never stopped loving good design.

Allan Peters reminds me that craftsmanship matters. His work has an incredible respect for the process behind great design, and Peters Design Company describes its philosophy as being influenced by an era when craftsmanship was king and work was handmade with tremendous care.

In an increasingly digital, automated, AI-driven world, I find his appreciation for analog creation especially inspiring.

I’d want to talk about creativity, patience, iteration, taste—and whether technology sometimes makes it too easy to skip the messy process that actually produces our best work.

Tim Tebow — Use the platform for something bigger than the platform.

I saw Tim speak at Life Surge, and what stayed with me wasn’t football.

It was faith.

I admire that football became his platform without becoming his purpose.

Through the Tim Tebow Foundation, that platform now reaches some of the world’s most vulnerable people through work involving special needs, orphan care, medical needs, anti-human-trafficking efforts and child exploitation. Night to Shine alone has become a worldwide celebration honoring people with special needs.

I’d love to ask him what it looks like to pursue excellence without allowing achievement to become your identity.

How do you use success without letting success use you?

Dolly Parton — Make people feel loved.

This one now hurts.

I would have loved to interview Dolly Parton.

Dolly passed away on August 25, 2026, and I’m genuinely sad that I’ll never have the chance to sit across from her and have this conversation.

There was something remarkable about her ability to make people feel loved—even millions of us who never knew her personally.

She could speak about her faith without making it feel like a weapon. She seemed capable of holding convictions without using them to isolate people who saw the world differently.

In the political and cultural climate we’re living in, that feels increasingly rare.

I would have wanted to ask her how she protected her joy, how she remained so authentically herself, and how she learned to make such a broad range of people feel welcome in her presence.

May she rest in peace.

Tony Robbins — Your mnd is more powerful than you think.

Tony was probably my first love, if you will, in the motivational and personal-development world.

I remember listening to Awaken the Giant Within and being completely captivated by the idea that our thoughts, patterns and decisions have so much influence over the lives we ultimately create.

I sometimes wish I’d discovered more of his work even younger.

But I know this: being exposed to Tony’s message changed the trajectory of my life.

I’d want to ask him, after decades of studying human behavior and transformation, what he now believes separates the people who know what to do from the people who actually change.

Because information is everywhere.

Transformation is still rare.

David Goggins — What if our limits aren’t actually our limits?

David Goggins fascinates me because he operates at a level of human performance most of us can’t imagine.

More than 70 ultra-distance races. Thousands of pull-ups. SEAL training, Army Ranger School and Air Force Tactical Air Controller training. He has repeatedly tested the edges of what his mind and body can withstand.

Do I believe everyone needs to live at that extreme? No.

Sometimes one extreme can crowd out other things that matter.

But I deeply admire people who break our rules about what is possible.

I’d want to know: What have the rest of us incorrectly labeled a “limit” when it’s really just discomfort?

Andy Frisella — Stop negotiating with yourself.

I’ve completed 75 Hard twice, so Andy Frisella’s work has had a very practical impact on my life.

What I appreciate most isn’t the workouts or the water or the checklist.

It’s the standard.

75 Hard is positioned as a mental-toughness program built around completing the commitments without compromise or shortcuts.

There is something incredibly powerful about deciding that certain things are simply no longer up for negotiation.

I aspire to that.

And I fall short of it daily.

I’d love to talk with Andy about what happens when we stop allowing our feelings to renegotiate commitments our better selves already made.

Ed Mylett — One more.

I once heard Ed say something that has stuck with me ever since:

“You’re best equipped to help the person you used to be.”

I love that.

I also love the way he weaves faith into a larger conversation about human potential, identity and growth.

His “one more” philosophy resonates with the entire idea of relentless pursuit. We are capable of becoming so much more than we give ourselves credit for—but often that growth isn’t found in one giant heroic moment.

It’s found in doing one more.

One more rep. One more call. One more attempt. One more act of courage when quitting would have been easier.

I’d want to explore the line between relentlessly pursuing more achievement and relentlessly pursuing more of the person we were created to become.

Weldon Long — Your past doesn’t get the final vote.

And finally, Weldon Long.

His book The Power of Consistency has stuck with me because his story makes the message impossible to dismiss.

He spent 13 years in prison. He walked out broke and struggling to find employment. Within five years, he had built a company recognized by Inc. as one of America’s fastest-growing privately held companies.

What fascinates me isn’t simply the business success that followed.

It’s what happened before it.

He used an incredibly dark chapter of his life to change the way he thought, develop discipline, take responsibility and create different patterns. His philosophy is built around the idea that our repeated thoughts and beliefs drive our actions—and those actions compound into the circumstances of our lives.

That is self-leadership.

I’d want to ask him what it takes to stop allowing your history to dictate your identity.

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Looking at this list, I realized my dream guests aren’t really connected by industry.

One reinvented baseball.

One teaches communication.

One studies human behavior.

One creates logos.

One played football.

One sang country music.

Others teach mindset, discipline, performance and personal transformation.

The common thread is relentless pursuit.

Every one of them, in a different way, has challenged an assumption.

This is how baseball has always been played.

This is just how I communicate.

This is as far as my body can go.

This is who my past says I am.

This is what success is supposed to look like.

This is simply the way things are.

The people I most want to talk to are the people who respond:

“But what if it doesn’t have to be?”

That’s really why I created the Relentless Pursuit podcast.

I’m fascinated by people who refuse to settle for the default version of themselves, their businesses, their industries or their impact.

People who keep asking better questions.

People who fall down and get back up.

People who relentlessly pursue what could be.

So… there’s my dream interview list.

Now I guess I need to start asking. 😉

And who knows?

Maybe someday I’ll come back to this post and start crossing names off.

Stay Relentless.

#RelentlessPursuit #StayRelentless #LeadYourselfFirst #Leadership #HumanPotential #Podcast