Career Advancement, Leadership and Promotion: The Mid-Career GPS Podcast
You’re doing great work. So why are you still being overlooked for promotions, leadership opportunities, or your next career move?
The Mid-Career GPS Podcast helps mid-career professionals build the visibility, influence, and career strategy to move forward. If you’re a manager, senior manager, or director who feels stuck, undervalued, or uncertain about what’s next, you’re in the right place.
I’m John Neral, a leadership and career coach. Each week, I share practical strategies and candid conversations to help you communicate your value, strengthen your leadership presence, and make more confident career decisions.
You’ll learn how to position yourself for promotion, navigate difficult workplace conversations, build strategic relationships, and lead with greater impact.
We’ll also tackle job search strategy, interviewing, and career transitions when your next step means moving to a new organization.
At the heart of this podcast are my SHOW UP strategies, helping you take an active role in your career instead of waiting for someone else to recognize your potential.
With more than 360 episodes, you’ll find guidance for the challenges and opportunities that come with this stage of your career.
Subscribe to The Mid-Career GPS Podcast and start building a clearer path to what’s next.
Explore coaching and free career resources at https://johnneral.com.
What happens when the career, status, and success you worked so hard to build suddenly disappear?
In this episode of The Mid-Career GPS Podcast, I sit down with Marques Ogden, a former NFL player who became a successful construction business owner before losing nearly everything. After his business collapsed and he filed for bankruptcy, Marques found himself working as a custodian for $8.25 an hour.
His path back was not built on another impressive title. It began with humility, gratitude, service, and a willingness to ask for help.
Today, Marques is a keynote speaker, executive coach, bestselling author, and host of Get Authentic With Marques Ogden. His career transformation offers powerful lessons for mid-career professionals who feel stuck, undervalued, dissatisfied at work, or uncertain about what comes next.
Marques and I discuss what it really means to fail forward when the consequences are personal and financial. We examine the identity crisis that can follow a major career setback and the danger of tying your confidence to your job title, income, or professional status.
We also explore how ego can prevent high-performing professionals from making necessary career changes. Marques explains how shifting his focus from recognition to service helped him rebuild his confidence, purpose, and career.
This conversation is not only about recovering from failure. It is also about becoming a more authentic and influential leader.
Marques shares practical insights about leadership communication, servant leadership, and recognizing your team’s contributions. We discuss how leaders can communicate results without making every accomplishment about themselves, why “we” language can strengthen trust, and how to demonstrate your individual impact while still honoring the people who helped create the outcome.
We also address authenticity in the workplace, social media comparison, values conflict, and the pressure to produce results in cultures that dismiss leadership skills as “soft skills.”
If you are navigating a career change, recovering from a professional setback, questioning your current direction, or trying to become a more effective leader, this episode will help you consider what you are building your next chapter on.
In this episode, we discuss:
How Marques moved from NFL success to business ownership, bankruptcy, and career reinvention
What happens to your identity when your title and professional status disappear
Why ego can keep successful professionals trapped in the wrong career
How humility and gratitude can help you rebuild confidence after a setback
What it means to fail forward when the consequences are real
How to communicate team results without minimizing your own leadership contribution
Why “we” language can create trust, alignment, and stronger workplace relationships
What servant leadership looks like when expectations and pressure are high
How authenticity allows you to be honest about who you are while continuing to grow
How to resist social media comparison and regain control of your time and mindset
What to do when your personal values conflict with your workplace culture
Why asking for help and becoming a reflective listener are signs of strength
If you are struggling in today’s job market or feeling dissatisfied with your career, remember that rebuilding does not begin with having every answer. It begins with getting honest about where you are, releasing the identity that no longer serves you, and taking responsibility for your next step.
Hello, my friends, and welcome to the Mid-Career Jeep Dance Podcast. I'm your host, John Darrell. This is the show for mid-career professionals who feel stuck, undervalued, or unsure what's next, and know that doing more isn't the answer. Here, we focus on how you show up. And that means how you make clear decisions, build influence, and take control of your career. Let's get started.
Today's guest knows what it means to reach the top, lose almost everything, and rebuild with purpose. Marques Ogden is a former NFL player, inspirational keynote speaker, executive coach, three-time best-selling author, and host of the Get Authentic with Marques Ogden podcast. After retiring from football, Marques built a successful construction company. But one devastating project cost him nearly $2 million in just 90 days and ultimately led to bankruptcy. At his lowest point, he took a job as a custodian earning $8.25 an hour. Rather than allowing failure to define him, Marques used it as the foundation for his next chapter. And today, he helps leaders and organizations strengthen their accountability, perseverance, and adaptability. He has worked with dozens of Fortune 500 companies, including Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Intel, JP Morgan Chase, and Home Depot. In our conversation, we explore what it means to fail forward, how to rebuild your confidence after a setback, and create success that is rooted in authenticity. And as you know, these are all important components about how we build our mid-career GPS. So let's get into it. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Marques Ogden. Marques Ogden, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here.
Marques Ogden
How are you, John? Thank you for having me on.
John Neral
I'm well, thanks. Marques, you've got such an interesting story. We're going to get into all of this today. But before we get there, what was your mid-career moment?
My mid-career moment for me, John, was when I ended up coming to Rodney, North Carolina. I lost my construction company. I was fine from two jobs in the same week. And I had my rock bottom spoiled milk moment where somebody's trash and rotten meat and nasty garbage got all over me because of my own ego. And my mid-career moment was I went from being a former NFL athlete, a failed construction company owner. And I started speaking in September 2013. So I was 32 years old. That was my next change from going from athlete to fail construction company owner that learned some lessons to keynote speaker, business coach, corporate consultant, and so on.
John Neral
Can you talk to us a little bit about what the hit was to your ego?
Marques Ogden
How long you got? John, imagine you're an NFL athlete, you are on top of the world, you're young, you got money, you're considered the best in your sport, but also the best in the industry of the vertical you're in, which is professional football. And people want to be around you. The guys, the girls, everybody says you're, you know, they when the stadium comes on, they're clapping for you. Yay, you're awesome, all this type of stuff, right? And so when you have that, and then you go into construction after a little bit of shortcomings of trying to go through the issues of finding my purpose, all that stuff. I got to the construction company. Again, I had massive success. I started out small, and I became the largest African-American subcontractor in the city of Baltimore, state of Maryland, and some other surrounding states for two years in sight work. So again, inflated ego. I could buy what I want. I had Hummers and this and that, and a really nice house and money in my pocket, and everybody wants to be around me. When I lost everything, right, John, and I had to leave Baltimore and move to Raleigh, North Carolina, bankrupt, broke, broken, full of brokenness. Matter of fact, John, I was so broke, I could not even pay the bankruptcy fee of $3,300. $3,300 to protect me from five and a half million dollars of debt. I couldn't pay it. I was so broke. So when I got here, right, John, my ego went from like a hundred to like negative $5,000. Like it just went total in the opposite direction because I ended up literally putting myself in a position where my ego cost me everything.
Well, first, thank you for sharing all of that because I appreciate the honesty and the authenticity, which we're going to talk about, the vulnerability and everything. But when you when you look back on that time, and for so many of the people, Marques, who listen to this show, there's there's an identity associated with their title, what they do, where they work. And it it becomes for some the be all and end all. And then to your point, and in your experience, something happens, something changes. And they end up having to realize that the identity they once had no longer fits or no longer serves. From your experience, how did you navigate that part of your mid-career journey where you had to basically reinvent or re-identify yourself?
Marques Ogden
That was a great question. It was extremely hard, John, because for so long my identity was built off of football. And then to go from football to a successful young construction company owner that's making millions of dollars and has and can get anything everything that he wants. It was also difficult for me to move from that to what I was doing in my career. But what I tell people is it took me a while to find it. But once I found humility, once I found gratitude, once I found appreciation, at the end of the day, it is such a real journey that you can go through. What happens is, right, John, you stop looking for everybody to praise you or love you or want to be around you, and you just appreciate the little things in life. So as a speaker, right, John, as a coach, as a consultant, as a podcast host, my whole career is serving others. My career is what people want per person. Speaker serving the cause or the mission or whatever the client is looking for for the theme. For coaching, it's not about me, it's about where are my clients and where do they want to go. Consulting, same thing. Podcasting, right, John? It's asking very curious, engaging questions and getting people to think out of their norm or out of the box and give lots of value to your audience. So to answer your question, once I stop looking for the appraise or the applaud or the attaboy, start looking at, hey, let me just be grateful and full of gratitude for what I have and the small things in life. What happens is, right, John, the small things become the big things when you stop trying to make the big things your sole focus.
So I want I want to invite you to think about a mid-career professional who is in some type of leadership role within an organization. They have a big heart, they care very deeply about their team. They struggle to talk in the singular when it comes to their results because they always want to talk about the team did this, we accomplished this. And so that narrative piece, and I want to lean into your expertise as a speaker in particular, which is what advice can you give the listeners to help them craft a much better narrative that allows them to talk in the singular without disregarding or disrespecting their team in the collective?
Marques Ogden
So, what they need to do is understand that the team as a whole got things done because of their leadership and their servant leadership or their direction and how they go about doing things. As a leader, it is okay to say that was a great job by the team and me. We did a great job. Not just they, right? We. I always tell people, right? I don't say my, I say our because it's not just the team, it's not just me, it's everybody. So if you listen to this awesome podcast and you're a leader, you don't have to say they, you can say we because you are part of the we. And when people hear you say that, it creates more of an alignment around a unified vision, right? And I tell people that falls in what I call a business value driver under strategy and tactics, right? The ability to make sure that you are aligned with each other because you're strategic in how the organization is going to move and making sure, right, John, that the mission and the mantra are in full alignment with the people inside the organization. Because what I tell clients is at the end of the day, yes, your team is amazing, but so are you. Don't forget you, right? Don't forget that's always like, you know, our podcast is doing phenomenal. I give Ben a lot of credit. Ben is an amazing podcast producer, sensational. But I also give myself credit, I'm a very good host. And did that happen overnight? No, of course not. When I started, did I have to work through struggles? Of course I did. Had to work through cadence and rhythm? Of course I did. But that doesn't mean that I'm not good at what I do because I had to work to get to that point. That's normal. But I think what happens is when people start saying they, it kind of creates a and they don't mean to do it right, John. They end up, unfortunately, creating a disconnect between them and their team. And what happens is the team, they know that you're trying to give them praise, which they love, but at the same time, a team, a real team, I feel, wants to be connected in some way, shape, or form to their leader.
I want to go back to something you said about being a servant leader. I want you to clear up any confusion or uh misnomer someone may have who's listening because they're not gonna, they haven't heard the definition specifically from you. What does it mean to be a servant leader?
Marques Ogden
Being a servant leader means serving a cause bigger than yourself. To me, it's people like Doc Martha King Jr., Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Princess Diana. People who serve a cause that was much greater or is much greater than yourself. Because at the end of the day, right, it's not about you as a leader, right? It's about the team, it's about everyone. I call that, John, a victory mindset mentality. It's all about creating the type of mindset where it's not just about you, right? It's not just about what you're doing, it's about the team as a whole and what they are doing. It's about the team and the organization together in harmony, in unison. That's what it's all about. So if you're listening to this awesome podcast, again, servant leadership is serving a cause greater than yourself. It's being selfless, it's being somebody that's humble and somebody that knows how to take, you know, take the appreciation when necessary, but at the same time, they know how to give out more appreciation than they take in.
So, where does authenticity come into play in that?
Marques Ogden
Authenticity is all about being who you are in the moment, right, John? Knowing that the moment's going to change. I'm not the same person I was yesterday or a week ago, or when I first started this awesome podcast of my own, get authentic. I've grown, I've changed, I have evolved. It's about being who you are, your real self, and not worrying about what do you think about this, what do you think about that? You want to really truly be yourself and don't try to inform other people, right? I feel I did the talk yesterday in Chicago, great group, IABH, the Illinois Association of Behavioral Health. I told them in the room, be people who are going to start your day and take charge of your day. Don't be people that are getting caught up in social media or trying to compare and contrast. And I said that yesterday that I feel a lot of mental health issues, especially with our youth today, come from social media because they see other kids or other people doing what they think is cool and got this house or this car or this trip or this. You have no idea what somebody's life is really like behind the curtain. So I told, I talk about please don't compare, don't contrast, don't conform, be authentic. Everybody can only be themselves. The minute you stop trying to be yourself and start trying to be somebody else, you're in a lot of trouble.
John Neral
Yeah, if you ever want to feel inadequate, just pull up social media.
Marques Ogden
There you go. 100%. 100%. Oh, I don't have this, or I don't have that, I'm not going on this room, I'm not going on that trip, I don't have this car, I don't have that car. Okay, I mean you can sit there all day and do that. Or you can go out and try to actually win your day and take control of your day to live the life that you want to live. That's on you.
I want to process something with you because I'm I'm thinking about the leader who wants to be the servant leader, who wants to show up and be authentic. And they work in an organization where quote unquote soft skills are not desired or favored. And they find themselves in a values conflict between how they want to show up versus how their leadership has told them they are expected to show up. In those kind of situations where someone may be struggling with their being authentic or showing up in their organization in a way that they can find the place that is favorable for them if possible, what would you say to them?
Marques Ogden
What I would say to them is at the end of the day, you have to do what you know is best for you. And at the same time, you need to make sure that you're being your real self. Because here's the thing if you have leadership that's saying soft skills are important, right? And your team is feeling the pressure from you and you're not getting your job done, if you end up being who you need to be and showing soft skills and getting things done and accomplished, they have nothing to argue with. Nothing. Because at the end of the day, I always tell my clients, and it comes to corporate America, it's about the numbers, it's about the production. So if you are somewhere where the values don't line and you know that it's causing you stress or it's not working, I always tell my clients, you're better off doing what you know is best for you, and then let the numbers speak for itself. Because if the numbers aren't good, but you're doing it their way, that's still a problem. Sure. It's not gonna work. It's not gonna work. It's not gonna go, oh, well, well, we didn't tell you to do it this way, we wouldn't mean it this way, or we didn't mean to go that way, we meant that way. I mean, you're gonna think you can always find an excuse. So I tell people, if you know the way they want you to do something doesn't work for you, and you can get it done in a way which is going to be best for you and get results, you're better off getting the results because at the end of the day, they're gonna say, well, you did it your way, the numbers reflect, move on. And that's how I know I've seen it happen to organizations so many times, John, in my career, from manufacturing to pharmaceutical to technology. I've seen it so many times across the board. Yeah.
John Neral
It's such a frustrating situation to be in, too, when when you find a values conflict or or even just a leadership style conflict in terms of how different people within the organization show up. And and somebody has to get the win, unfortunately. And I've seen too many, like you, I've seen too many leaders get pushed down or suppressed in some way of being who they truly are because they feel like they have to play a game within X organization.
Marques Ogden
You better believe it. And here's the point, here's the thing, right, John. They're playing a game, sitting there trying to figure it out, and all the companies doing is saying, Show me the numbers, show me the numbers, show me the numbers. So you have to at some point make a stand and do what's best for you. Because if you don't, then it's gonna be very difficult if things don't improve to keep your job because they're gonna say, Well, we didn't mean do it this way, you meant do it that way. So that there's there's always an out if somebody's not happy with the end result. Yeah.
I don't know if you have a crystal ball or not, or if you've got one handy and you want to take a look into it. But as we look at the the last quarter of 26, especially heading into 27, what do you think is the biggest leadership conversation that needs to be had in the workplace that isn't happening right now?
Marques Ogden
We need more leaders to start having authentic and real conversations with their team and showing them their human side, not just the business side. One of our amazing clients is a company called True Cordia. They are based out of Linden, Utah. Phenomenal organization. Their CEO, Mr. Felix Morgan, embodies showing his whole self, his personal, his business, his family, his joys, his hobbies, and people flock to them like crazy. They're one of the uh they're one of uh Inc. 5000's fastest growing companies. They are climbing the ranks consistently in the insurance space. I believe they're now in the top 15 largest commercial insurance brokerages in the United States. They grow through merger and acquisition, and more and more of these independent property and casualty insurance agency owners are joining forces and selling their companies to TrueCordia because of the leadership that starts at the top with Mr. Felix Morgan, Mr. Michael Moran, their COO, Miss Leanne Ross, their uh director of sales, Leslie Green, their chief marketing officer. They are so amazing, John, that I asked Felix to write the forward for our new book coming out, Built for the Storm, The Bison Operating System. And how did I meet him, John? He was a great interview on our podcast last November. Nice.
John Neral
Nice. Well, hopefully the listeners will go and check that out. And so before we turn over to you to share us all the great things where people can connect and find, we always wrap up the episode with what's one piece of advice would you give our listeners today to help them build their mid-career GPS?
Learn how to ask for help and be a reflective listener. A reflective listener, which means be somebody that listens actively and then reflects on what that person that was talking to you said and apply what that person said after you've had a chance to reflect on it. So be an active listener who reflects and then takes action. So call it a reflective listener. One of my good friends, her name is Janet, she told me that. And she's right, and I love it because at the end of the day, right, John, it's about being an individual who can listen, process, and then act. And that's what it's all about. That's what it's all about. And at the end of the day, right, John, when you do that, man, people do what? They tell you more and more things, which gives you what? More and more perspective. And that's how you navigate your GPS system in that career midpoint where you're trying to potentially look to go somewhere else within your career, make a career pivot or a career change. Awesome.
I love that. Marques, thank you so very much. People want to listen to your podcast, get your book, find more information about you. The mic is yours. Please tell us all the great things.
Marques Ogden
They can go to our podcast, get authentic with Marques Ogden. We are on Spotify, we are on Apple, we're on YouTube. Uh, you can connect with us up, connect with us on our website, www.marcus-ar, q-u-e-sogden, o-g-d-e-n.com. You shoot me an email, Marques at Marques Ogden.com, or find me on LinkedIn, Marques Ogden, M-A-R, Q-U-E-S, O-G D-E-N.
John Neral
I will make sure all of that is in the show notes. Marques Ogden, thank you for spending some time with us today on the MidCareer GPS podcast.
Marques Ogden
Thank you so much. I appreciate it, John, and I look forward to having you on my show.
John Neral
Yeah, I appreciate you as well. Thank you so much. And what I want to leave our listeners with, Marques, is just this one huge takeaway from our conversation. You've got such an interesting career path. And you shared a little bit about it. I shared some in the introduction as well. Um, whatever you do at any given moment is only a portion or part of your identity at the time. What you emphasized for us today is so much more about being authentic, being true to who you are, showing up as an authentic individual that is out there to serve and do a whole lot more good than what's going on. And so the challenge for the listeners today I want to offer them is spend some time getting really clear with what being authentic means to you and create a list of examples about where you are being an authentic and servant leader are showing up for you in the workplace. And that's a great component to building your mid-career GPS this week. So until next time, my friends, remember this. You will build your mid-career GPS one mile or one step at a time, and how you show up matters. Make it a great rest of your day.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't keep it to yourself. Kindly share it with someone who needs it. And if you're tired of feeling stuck, overlooked, or underutilized in your career, go to my website, johnnarrell.com to get started. There you'll find free resources, ways to work with me, and details about the Show Up Leadership Lab. My signature membership for mid-career professionals who want to lead better, get noticed, and elevate their career. All the links are in the show notes. You can grab what you need right there. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. And if you're getting value from the show, take 30 seconds to leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Remember, how you show up matters, and I'll see you next time.
