John O'Hurley

John O’Hurley has one of those careers that feels almost impossible to stitch into a single sentence: Seinfeld, Family Feud, Broadway — and for 25 years, the National Dog Show, a Thanksgiving tradition watched by millions. The Huffington Post once called him “the seventh most interesting man alive” — a title that somehow undersells the breadth of his life.

He told me the National Dog Show began as a wild idea to fill a two-hour gap between the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and football — and somehow grew into one of the most-watched television events of the year, with its audience still growing. What surprised me most wasn’t the scale of it, but his explanation for how he’s sustained it all. There was no master plan. Just one guiding principle he kept returning to: "I listen to my imagination."

John said his rational mind is designed to keep him safe. His imagination, on the other hand, pulls him toward what he’s meant to do next. “If you follow your imagination, you will succeed,” he told me. “If you follow your rational mind, you will be safe.”

Then he shared a story that made the idea feel sacred: A few years ago, John agreed to perform a one-man play — emotionally heavy, brutally difficult, the hardest thing he’d ever done. Mid-run, he received a letter backstage from a high-school student who wrote that he had planned to take his own life… but didn’t, because the show gave him the one sentence he needed to hear: "no matter how bad it is, it will get better."

For more than a decade, John has also been quietly working on an energy technology that converts waste — everything from tires to medical biohazards — into usable power with zero emissions, entirely off the grid. It’s scalable, portable, and designed for hospitals, wildfire zones, rural communities, and disaster areas. It’s not flashy work. It’s purposeful work.

Before he goes on stage, John says a simple prayer: “God, let me be surprised.” He wants to be present enough to become a messenger — trusting that something beyond him is moving through the work.

And when we talked about becoming who you’re called to be, John said he knew at three years old what he was meant to do. Since then, he's been facing fear, building skill, and preparing himself. His story reminds me that imagination isn't fantasy; it can build a life which can reach others beyond expectation.