The Hook S1E2

The Hook with Sarah Larsen

Guest: John Bundy of Morning Fuel Media

Episode Introduction

Some stories remind us that redemption isn’t a single moment. It’s a daily practice.

In this episode of The Hook, I sit down with John Bundy, founder of Morning Fuel Media and host of the Morning Fuel Podcast. John shares his journey from a rebellious youth on Long Island to finding purpose through faith, family, and storytelling.

We talk about identity shifts, the power of sharing our stories, and how showing up consistently—both in life and business—creates ripple effects far beyond our screens.

Sarah: I know you’re good at this, so it will be no problem.

John: I love doing podcasts, but I love being on other people’s podcasts better.

Sarah: Ah, that’s awesome. Thank you so much. All right, well, we will go ahead and get started.

Welcome to the Hook with Sarah Larsen. I am your host Sarah Larsen, and my guest today is John Bundy with Morning Fuel Media, and he is the person who showed me the podcasting ropes. We are recording with some of his super fancy equipment today. So I’m very excited about that. Hopefully the sound is really awesome today.

John: I hope so. And super fancy. It better be.

Sarah: So you wanna tell us what Morning Fuel Media is? We’ll start with just a little intro from you.

John: Okay, well cool. Morning Fuel Media is, a way to alleviate a headache. A lot of folks have the headache now. Social media has been for a while, but it’s kind of compounded lately in a way that folks have been told and are continuing to be told that you need to post constantly and you need to have content out there daily, across multiple platforms.

And it needs to be video and you need to do, do, do, do. That freaks people out. We’ve put together a little method of helping small business owners to collect custom video content in a batch form, meaning collecting it all in one sitting kind of over a couple hours, that they can then post for the entire rest of the month.

So we offer that service and then also in that we also teach. So yes, we want our clients to stick around. But we also love to be able to say, “Hey, you got this.”Then they go with it and then on to the next client. We also teach classes about social media and podcasting, so we’re having a lot of fun.

And I get to work with my daughter and my wife. I’m in heaven.

Sarah: Oh my gosh. I love it. And I love the messaging. If that doesn’t tell you a little something about John’s knowledge of marketing. We solve headaches. I love that.

John: We’re better than Advil. We’re better than Tylenol.

From Long Island To Virginia: A Disruption In Identity

Sarah: That’s fantastic. Well, I’m going to regress us a little bit because I wanna get some background on you. Where did you grow up? What was your family situation like? Tell us a little bit about that.

John: I grew up on Long Island, New York, more specifically Middle Island, more specifically, Shirley.

My younger years were in South Shirley, and then we moved to North Shirley, so not very far. I’m a child of the eighties and you know, we grew up on the streets. It was like come home from school, and Mom was like, “I don’t wanna see you till the lights come on.”

So road bikes. I did stupid stuff that young boys do. Lots of stupid stuff. Thank God I’m still alive. Junior year of high school, my parents moved us to Virginia. It took me a long time to forgive them for that because I went to the same school district my whole life.

So I moved from the largest high school in Suffolk County, Long Island to culture shock. Everyone wanted to hear me speak. And at the time I had a New York accent. I’ve kind of hidden that over the years because I was tired of people asking me to say things, like “Say Hot dog,” and then they heard me cuss a lot with the accent, and they loved that even better.

I was kind of antisocial in high school. And then, I had a tremendous spiritual experience. I met Jesus for the first time, even though I went to church my whole life, I did not know him. And at that point, I changed my ways, and I met my wife, and we have two beautiful daughters.

Our oldest is now 24, youngest is 17, going on like 30. So it’s amazing.

Sarah: I’ve met Kimberly. She’s so fantastic. And your wife Sarah, as well. They’re amazing.

John: They’re really a great crew and to put up with my shenanigans.

Sarah: Well, and you know, not everybody can work with their spouse or their family in general. So that says a lot about you. It says a lot about them. I think it’s really amazing. I did not know you were from Long Island originally. You’re right. That Long Island accent is gone.

John: I had to make it go away.

Sarah: I understand that. My husband, grew up in this area of Virginia. He moved to Northern Virginia with his first wife, and they both grew up in this area. He said when they got to Northern Virginia, she said, “We’ve gotta lose the accents.”

John: This ain’t the South NoMo, is it?

Sarah: Right. You’re not in the south. But it’s so funny because when he gets around his dad, and others that have very strong southern accents, he falls into it. I can always tell when he’s on the phone with his dad because I hear it. The accent comes out.

John: I just have to visit my cousins for a day or two. I come back and I’ve got the New York accent back. So that’s, it’s interesting. My dad pretty much has this kind of, he’s always had this kind of like, you couldn’t tell where he came from. You know, he didn’t have an accent. But my mom had a very thick Irish, New York accent.

Escaping Into Darkness

Sarah: In listening to your story, I hear two kinds of disruptions and that is a conversation that I love to have. So the first is moving from New York to Virginia, which was a huge shock to your system, it sounds like.

John: Yeah, I hated it.

Sarah: How did you. How did you manage that? Like you mentioned the culture shock and people asking you to say things in your accent.

John: Well, what do we do? We enter a room. We’re networking. We look for people that are like us.

So I found people that were like me. Loved having fun, getting into trouble, and then that’s pretty much when my drug and alcohol experience started. I found a couple guys that were just as antisocial as me, just as kind of crazy in the head. It was not a good. It was not a good time in my life.

It was a lot of fun, but then when I started getting older, having more responsibilities, I didn’t grow up. I spent a lot of time in my early twenties, just doing stupid, stupid stuff and not really caring about anybody but myself. Like I said, until I had that experience that I had where I ran into myself and pretty much in my mind, I knew where I was going.

There was a lot of just trying to figure out how I can be a better person and struggling with that because naturally I was very selfish. I really didn’t even know how to care about other people.

Sarah: That’s really interesting. So the second disruption that I noticed was when you said, “I found Jesus And really got to know him” That sounds like, well, let me go back up just a minute. When you moved, And you had this experience where you’re in this new place and didn’t feel like you fit in so you leaned into the darker side of life, shall we say.

John: I certainly did.

Sarah: Did you feel an identity shift when you moved here? Was that something that you felt you were creating, a new identity when you arrived, after you moved here, or did you already have that, and you just found people that were like that here.

John: I really tapped into my dark side at that point because I didn’t have the family.

When we did holidays, we did holidays. Easter was at my Nana’s house. Christmas was at mine, and it was the entire family, extended family plus. So when we moved here, holidays were… you know, and so that hit my sister’s and I hard.

We moved here because of my dad’s work. We were able to get twice as much house, and he got paid a bunch more. I found a couple guys that, you know, were just as deviously destructive as I was. So that went on for a couple years.

It was even after graduation, and into my early twenties going into college, I was just selfish, destructive, didn’t even care. I wouldn’t have said this at the time, but I really didn’t even like myself.

A Life-Changing Encounter

John: Yeah, I hated it.

Sarah: How did you. How did you manage that? Like you mentioned the culture shock and people asking you to say things in your accent.

John: Well, what do we do? We enter a room. We’re networking. We look for people that are like us.

There was a lot of just trying to figure out how I can be a better person and struggling with that because naturally I was very selfish. I really didn’t even know how to care about other people.

John: I certainly did.

John: I really tapped into my dark side at that point because I didn’t have the family.

It was even after graduation, and into my early twenties going into college, I was just selfish, destructive, didn’t even care.I wouldn’t have said this at the time, but I really didn’t even like myself.

Sarah: I think that’s, It kind of starts. So what was the transition? Tell me what happened.

John: Okay. Well, I won’t get into all the details. I was heavily into drugs. My friends and I were experimenting with LSD. I went with a friend to visit a girl, I wanted her to be my girlfriend, up in Williamsburg and was around some new people.

My buddy that I went with said he didn’t want to be there, so he left. And I was there alone with people that I really didn’t know. I began to, in my mind, I don’t know exactly how the science of the whole thing works, but on LSD I was, in my mind, I was in a place where people wanted to hurt me.

So I imagined them to be witches and I ran out of that place. It was probably after midnight, in the early am, in a dimly lit neighborhood where I didn’t know where I was. In that experience, I’ll just kind of nutshell it here, but in that experience, I was dead. And thanks to my love of literature, I had read Dante’s Inferno. I was in one of the levels of hell.

I was waiting for pretty much judgment. Where am I going? And I’m talking to myself that whole time and I realized I’m going. But at that moment, I heard in my ear my voice, and again, I don’t know how the, the chemicals work. But I heard my voice when I was in preschool singing Jesus loves Me.

And at that moment I said, yes, Jesus is the way. I didn’t accept him at that point. But that started my search, I started going back to… It still wasn’t right. I started experimenting, instead of with drugs, I was experimenting with other denominations.

So I started popping around like, kind of tasting everything. And then I just found the place that was the people my age and instead of a choir and pipe organ like I grew up with it was a band. And the music was good. This is different. And people that actually cared to listen to me and, and minister to me.

I just remember, I was on my knees after reading a little tiny little book called My Heart, Christ’s Home, on my knees, in my bedroom, in tears, accepting Christ as my Lord, and the rollercoaster ride starts because I went into depression and anxiety and all kinds of stuff, but I always felt drawn back, like he was there with me. I realized that he was with me the whole time.

Sarah: You had a really strong why to keep you on the path of right of growth.

John: My why at the time was I didn’t wanna go to hell. Eventually that turned into “I’d really like to share my faith with other people, especially my family.”

Sarah: What a great story, John.

John: Thanks for letting me share it. I don’t get to share it often. I’m always interviewing other people.

Sarah: I know, but people need to hear your story. Oh man. It’s incredible. You obviously at some point meet your wife, and you guys get married?

John: I met her at a karate dojo in Yorktown. Actually her sister said “Say yes,” and then she said “Yes.” But I was still very irresponsible, young in Christ. A very immature man who thinks he knows some things. 25 years married this October and like, the love of my life. I mean, really. I wanna spend the rest of my life with her, and I’m planning like, okay, what are we gonna do? We wanna travel the states and do some things we haven’t done before.

Sarah: Well, you’ve created a career that you could actually continue doing while you do that if you wanted to.

John: That’s a cool thing about it. And I’m just realizing just within the past, maybe even six months, that I can be anywhere. The past two weeks I was in Puerto Rico. Working. Which is amazing.

Sarah: I’m a little jealous.

John: You should go. I know a lady, my sister, who has really, really cool Airbnbs, and they’re amazing. The the best postcard sunsets you’ll ever see in your.

Finding Purpose Through Storytelling

Sarah: Cool. Well, that’s definitely on my to-do list. Speaking of your career, what did you do? What were you doing that led you to today?

John: My daughter said that she wanted to be a YouTuber, and I was working at NASA at the time. I wasn’t a rocket scientist. I was doing inspections in the bowels of NASA.

They have tunnels that have been there since the thing started. It’s nasty. So she said she wanted to be a YouTuber, and at first I was like, “Uh, no, you’re 13 years old. You’re not gonna be a YouTuber.” But she wanted to talk to her friends about her faith and about things that she’s going through as a girl and all that kind of stuff, and she can write.

So I was her producer, director, editor, you know, kind of creative director. And so we did her YouTube channel, Kimberly Faith. Kimberly Faith TV, it’s actually still on YouTube, and she’s got some great word for 13-year-olds and 14-year-olds, you know, at the time. She still does her own thing, but she’s mostly on Instagram.

She actually started a podcast recently called Clipper Strong Podcast, and it’s for her school. She’s kind of helping her underclassmen overcome their fears of senior year and teachers and counselors are being interviewed on it. It’s really cool.

But she, she was the one that kind of started us into the media. I’ve done graphic art and design for 20 plus years. I knew a little bit about editing, so once we started doing it… I love to network. I love to hear people’s stories, so I kept hearing over and over again, “Hey, can you do that for me? Can you do the social media?”

So we started a little thing. At the time it was called Scribe Design back in 2019, and then I started the podcast. My wife at one time told me that I have a face for radio. So I was like, okay, let me show you. And I started doing the podcast, which I realize now I should have started earlier.

Because over the years people have said, you need to do something with your voice. I tried to get into radio, it just didn’t work. I tried to do some voiceover stuff. Every once in a while, volunteer for church or something like that. But now I’m doing it for a living.

Sarah: You’re doing it well. It’s fun that we got to meet because we were running in the same networking circles. And then ended up in the York County Chamber together. So many people come to me now, and they’re like, “I got interviewed on John’s podcast.” Somebody just this morning told me that

John: Yeah, I’ve had the best guests.

Sarah: I got to be on your podcast, which was so fun. And that’s when I got to learn about this. So where are things going? You’ve created this media company essentially, right? What does the future hold?

John: I think more of the same. We love what we do. We love helping small businesses. I love hearing people’s stories. Um, I am gonna launch another podcast. I’ll continue to do more Morning Fuel podcast, which is asking folks why they do what they do, especially small business owners, ministers, missionaries. We’re starting to get into that as well. The new one’s gonna be called What the Fail. And it’s gonna be about people’s failure stories that then led to success. So we’ll do a little bite in the beginning of a famous failure. Like Abraham Lincoln for example.

How many times did he run for office and fail in business and stuff like that. And then one of the great presidents of the United States. So different things that we’ll share a little bit like that. We’ll get into other folks. Tell us when you’re at your bottom, what happened or whatever, those that are brave enough to share those stories.

Because I think that we don’t understand, and again, I say this on Morning Fuel, our stories ultimately don’t belong to us. If we keep ’em to ourselves, they become rotten. But when we share them with other people, people get brave. They start that thing that they’ve had on the back burner for a long time.

So that’s my heart. That’s what I want. Perhaps folks will sponsor the podcast. That’d be cool. Then it would allow me to do more. I look up to Mike Rowe, if you know Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs. And now he’s doing How America Works and a few other different things.

He’s got a foundation really helping folks to realize that the trades are dying. You know, the amount of people that are going into welding and things like that. You know, they’re not doing that because they just wanna do social media all day. He’s one of those guys.

He had a show called Returning the Favor. It was a Facebook show. It was only on Facebook TV. But it got taken down. I don’t know why. It was like the best show that I’ve ever seen.

Sarah: Does Facebook TV still exist?

John: I think that’s maybe why it doesn’t. But the premise of the show is “Phone in. Tell us who’s doing good in the community. We’re gonna go out there, pretend we’re doing a documentary about them, and collect information to find out what they need.” And then at the end, they bless them with like all the tools they need and remodel their business and all that stuff.

And then it’s this big surprise at the end. So, Returning the Favor. I want to do a local one called Give it Back or Giving it Back, or something like that. [Mike Rowe] would go all over the nation, but I love this area. So I would think Hampton Roads, and do that same type of show where I get people to sponsor these people doing good in the community and then surprise them.

Kind of like that. But, Mike Rowe, he’s just awesome. I’d love to meet him.

Sarah: Oh, I love that. I love that story.

Fuel For The Soul: Finding Your Why

Sarah: The other thing that I wanted to touch on, cuz you’ve told me this before, but I really wanted to share it since we are kind of redoing this months later from our original conversation. The origin of the name Morning Fuel.

John: Morning Fuel to me is what gets you up. Why do you do what you do? So that powers us through the day. Ultimately it’s the why, right? My morning fuel is wanting to provide for my family.

I heard my pastor say that, discipline turns into delight. So when you discipline yourself in an area, eventually you’ll get to the point where you look forward to that thing that you’re doing or the results of that thing you’re doing.

For example, I never liked to run, but I was going through a bout of depression and anxiety. I read a book called My Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, and I began to run. The having run was the feeling that I wanted. The running sucked, right? So I knew for a long time I needed to get into the Word. I need to know this Jesus, that I say I love and worship, right? So I got into the Word, it was a drudgery.

I mean, especially when you get to a list of names that’s like chapters long. Good day, I can’t even pronounce the name, you know? So, it’s like I skipped a meal if I don’t do that. So my morning routine. I get up in the morning, I sit in silence for like 15 to 20 minutes, and then I pray, then I get into the Word, then I do yoga, then I take a cold shower.

When I miss those things, I miss those things. So that’s part of my why. That morning fuel. But then the why is my family and providing for my family. That’s the fuel that keeps me going.

Sarah: I loved that story so much, I wanted to you to share it here.

John: Work used to be really, really hard. Now, Monday’s one of my favorite days because all day Sunday I’m like, I got these ideas, I gotta do these things. And then Monday is like, okay, I get to.

Sarah: One of my clients told me she has created a creative CEO day, and that’s her Monday, the day that she’s fresh from the weekend. She spends the day creating all the things that she needs for her business and I love that.

John: Right, right. It’s wild, when sometimes when we get in a tough spot, we do a little bit of research to figure out, for example, you have an ache and pain.

Like me, I don’t like to take medicine, so I immediately go to holistic remedies, or “How do you do this at home?” kind of thing. And so you do these studies and when I was realizing some of my brain fog was due to lack of potassium. So what do I do? I take potassium. And it worked.

If there’s a little bit of an issue, I start to research. How are other people taking care of that? The book by Hal Elrod, My Miracle Morning, he went to all the most successful people in the world and figured out what, what do they all have in common.

Well, it was the morning routine. They wake up early, they all do this same thing. And there were like five or six things that they all did. So he started doing that and started seeing some success.

Consistency, Authenticity, And Showing Up

Sarah: Something else came to mind. You mentioned earlier that business owners don’t have to post on social media all the time and do all the things. And that’s something that I like to think about, how we do things because somebody said we should. The “shoulds of owning a business.” Things like that.

I think even a morning routine, everybody’s gonna have a different version of that, right? Do you have a recommendation when it comes to your neck of the internet, let’s say, what do you guys recommend for your clients when it comes to putting out there? Is that okay?

John: Well, I definitely don’t wanna be misunderstood on this. I really do believe that you need to be consistent, and you need to do something often if you want to reach people on social media, cuz that’s the algorithm. If you don’t have anything going on… Internet’s like a noise in the neighborhood.

So if there’s a noise going on over here, the algorithm goes, okay, “What’s going on over here?” And then “Oh, there’s action here. There’s people gathering.” So then they start to increase it. So yes, you do need to do it often. You do need to do it consistently.

That’s why we do what we do. So if you yourself don’t have the time as a business owner to put in the time to do that, there are solutions. We are just one of them. Our done-for-you service is something that we can do that consistently keeps you out there.

The collection only takes you like two, three hours, and then we kick in where we’re editing and creating little bits that go out all month long. That’s important. So don’t get me wrong on that. And then then don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

I know folks that are just on Twitter. I’m sorry for those folks. They don’t seem to be very happy. To me, Twitter’s seemingly been like this angry place. People go to complain and all that kind of stuff.

But I would say just don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Try the different places. One of our methods is we don’t create a video that only works on LinkedIn, and then have to create another one that only works on Instagram, and then create another one that only works on TikTok. We create it in the best way that works across all those platforms.

So we create one video that works on all of the platforms. It doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it to be. Also, sometimes we think it has to be perfect before I put it out there. Done is better than perfect.

The algorithms, recently at least, are liking, and I guess people are liking more the videos that don’t look polished. The ones that, “Hmm, I can do that.” The ones with a little bit of a shaky camera movement or, or not the best lighting kind of thing. I think people would rather listen to something, it’s better than the most perfect video.

But if it looks like it’s home-done or it’s authentic, it was done, off the cuff, that those are videos that do better. Attend a lunch and learn. Go to one of our classes. We do have paid classes, and we offer everything that we know.

It’s not everything that’s out there, but everything that we’ve learned.

Sarah: You guys have learned a lot because you are continuing every day to learn. I see that for sure. Thank you so much, John. I love getting to sit down with you again. Where can people find you on the internet?

John: Okay, John Bundy on Instagram. Actually, I didn’t talk about this earlier, but Bundy Won Kenobi on TikTok. I’m a Jedi that reads the scripture on TikTok.

I took two things I love: Jesus and Star Wars. I put them together. Morning Fuel Podcast and Morning Fuel Media across all of the platforms.

Key Takeaways

Disruption can be divine. Moving from New York to Virginia felt like loss, but it became the path to faith and purpose.
Faith grows through practice. John’s transformation wasn’t instant. It was a process of letting go, rebuilding, and showing up daily.
Storytelling heals. When we share our stories, we remind others that redemption is always possible.
Consistency creates connection. Whether in business or belief, showing up authentically builds trust and attracts aligned opportunities.

About John

John Bundy is the founder of Morning Fuel Media and host of the Morning Fuel Podcast, where he helps entrepreneurs and small business owners share their stories and show up consistently online without the overwhelm.

After two decades in graphic design and media production, John transformed his love for storytelling and connection into a business built on purpose. His own journey from a rebellious youth on Long Island to a life anchored in faith, family, and creative freedom shapes the way he serves others today.

John lives in Virginia with his wife Sarah and their daughter Kimberly, and together they help clients create meaningful, authentic content that fuels both business and soul.

Connect with John:

Morning Fuel Podcast | Morning Fuel Media: Instagram | TikTok

Energetic Reflection

This conversation with John carries the frequency of restoration.

It’s about how darkness becomes fertile ground for growth when we’re willing to face it. Every creative, every entrepreneur, and every seeker has their own “Long Island to Virginia” moment—a disruption that shakes them awake. What matters is how we respond: with presence, with humility, and with the courage to keep becoming.

If this episode reminded you of your own turning point, I invite you to stay connected through my Reiki-infused newsletter, where I share reflections on creativity, faith in oneself, and the energetics of business.

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