Play It Brave Podcast

What if we never see the full outcome of the things we're fighting for? Does that make our effort any less worthwhile? After seeing Shaina Taub's musical Suffs in New York, I couldn't stop thinking about its closing song, "Keep Marching"—and the women who worked toward a future they weren't guaranteed to see. In this episode, I explore the stories behind women's voting rights, what The West Wing m...

Have you ever watched a movie and known who directed it before you saw their name? Or looked at a photograph and immediately recognized the artist behind it? What makes some creative work impossible to look away from, while other work, no matter how beautiful, is instantly forgettable? In this episode of Play It Brave , D'Arcy explores what filmmakers, photographers, and artists can teach us about...

What if you're not booking the weddings you want because you're showing the wrong photographs? Not because your work isn't beautiful. Not because you need another styled shoot in France. And definitely not because you need to spend the next six weeks rebranding your entire business. What if your portfolio is telling a story you don't even realize it's telling? After reviewing hundreds of photograp...

Facebook ads have made me millions, and they've also cost me sixty thousand dollars in a single agency contract. After a year and a half of mostly not running them, I'm turning my ads back on, so I sat down with Claire Pelletreau, creator of Absolute FB Ads and the teacher my team learned from, to ask everything I wanted to know before spending my own money again. We talk about her one simple ad,...

Christina McGarvey grew up in a dilapidated Victorian farmhouse in Petersboro, Utah, watching her mother hang wallpaper, lay floors, and carve her own four-poster bed on a lathe. Decades later she built her own dream home, lost her sister, her mother, her father and her uncle in a single year, and somewhere inside that grief started selling the things she loved on Instagram. Today Millcreek Manor...

For years, I recognized Pamela Anderson without knowing much about the woman behind the image. Seeing her differently made me question what I'd overlooked—and how often people do the same with us. In this solo episode, I explore what happens when your brand keeps introducing an earlier version of you. I share my own evolution from photography into coaching and writing, a lesson from helping rebran...

You can be extraordinary at what you do and still have a brand that makes strangers scroll right past you. In this episode, D'Arcy sits down with brand strategist and researcher Dr. Chelsea Shields to show you what a brand actually does, and it's a lot more than a logo, a palette, or a pretty website. They walk through real before-and-afters: a beauty brand that renamed itself so it could grow, a...

If your brand feels beige, the question may go deeper than fonts, photographs, or a new website. What happens when being unmistakably yourself still feels unsafe? After visiting Glastonbury, D'Arcy explores the fear of being seen through the archetype of the "dangerous woman," the patterns women may carry through family and culture, and the ways we edit our gifts to remain acceptable. She offers a...

There are more tools than ever to create a beautiful brand — so why are so many businesses starting to look exactly the same? In this episode, D'Arcy sits down with anthropologist and consumer researcher Dr. Chelsea Shields to unpack three mistakes they see even incredibly talented businesses making: playing it too safe, building from inside their own perspective instead of understanding the buyer...

What happens when you build the business everyone else dreams about—and realize you don't want to live that life anymore? India Earl had become one of the most recognizable photographers in her industry. She traveled the world, had clients waiting years to work with her, built an enormous audience, and created an education business capable of generating hundreds of thousands of dollars. From the o...

What if one job didn't have to equal one payday? Most of us finish the work, get paid, deliver what we promised — and immediately start hunting for the next client. But there may be far more money sitting inside work you've already created. In this short episode, D'Arcy shares a simple way to look at every finished job through three lenses: NOW — the money it makes today. AGAIN — how the same work...

I charged $4,500 to photograph the wedding. Then the mother of the bride logged into the gallery and, within about an hour, ordered $7,000 in prints. And she came back and ordered even more. That experience completely changed the way I thought about what happens after a photographer delivers the images. We spend so much time trying to book the next client that we often forget there is revenue, mar...

What did Dolly Parton believe about herself before the rest of the world believed it too? In this tribute to Dolly, D'Arcy explores the beliefs underneath an extraordinary creative life: letting yourself want something enormous, refusing to tone down what makes you different, knowing when gratitude doesn't require staying, continuing to create when the market moves on, and making something simply...

Eileen Budd comes from a long line of Scottish storytellers. Her grandfather came home from the war with shrapnel in his legs, took a job driving a tour bus, and out-earned every other driver in Scotland — because he told stories while he drove. Nobody discovered Eileen was legally blind until she was eight, so she learned the world by ear: story by story, told out loud, passed down. In this episo...

Why You Can't Stop Being Productive Why can it feel easier to keep working when you're exhausted than it does to simply stop? In this episode, D'Arcy looks underneath overworking to the unconscious patterns that can make rest surprisingly uncomfortable. Sometimes the issue isn't that we're "bad at resting." Rest isn't creating the anxiety. Rest is revealing the anxiety that activity was covering....

There is an awakening happening in women right now. It isn't simply about making more money, building a bigger business, or becoming more successful. It's the question underneath all of it: Is this actually how I want to live? This week, D'Arcy sits down with her friend Kara Campbell — coach, gatherer of women, and founder of the Momentum mastermind — for a conversation about what happens when wom...

Sometimes your work grows faster than your identity does. In 2012, I had spent years charging $4,500 for wedding photography when a dream client called me just 27 days before their Sundance wedding. When she asked what I would charge for the weekend, I heard myself say a number I'd never said before: $7,500. She said yes. Two weeks later, I booked my first $10,500 wedding. I didn't suddenly become...

You can know exactly why you do something and still keep doing it. You can know where the pattern came from. You can have journaled about it, talked about it, analyzed it, named it—and then Tuesday comes around and there you are, doing the thing again. Because understanding a pattern and changing a pattern are two different skills. In this episode, I'm taking you inside the work I've fallen comple...

If you've ever tried to force  yourself out of procrastination, you know how well that works. You can know exactly what to do. You can have the time. You can want the result so badly it aches — and still find yourself answering emails, returning something to Nordstrom, or deciding the junk drawer has to be dealt with right now. That isn't laziness. Laziness would be doing nothing, and you are doin...

For the first time, the whole story of the last two years — told from the other side. In this episode: The heroine's journey — the map: the hero comes home with the treasure; the heroine realizes she is the treasure, and she is the home The launch that cracked it open: 21 yeses where 90 used to say yes — and the sentence that took over December 2024: the call that was harder than the breakup — and...

Most photographers aren't studying photography anymore — they're studying Instagram. In this solo episode, D'Arcy confesses to a decade of studying the wrong things — algorithms, funnels, hooks — and makes the case for what comes after the creator economy: the artist economy. It starts with Gene Kelly, soaked to the skin and swinging off a lamppost, and the strange grief of watching real devotion....

Success came easy. Love didn't. If you've built the business, the body of work, the beautiful life — and love is still the one thing that won't land — this conversation was recorded for you. D'Arcy sits down with self-love and relationship expert Sanaiyah Gurnamal — two-time TEDx speaker and host of Project Loving Myself (a Spotify Top 50 podcast with 1M+ downloads) — to name the three love blocks...

What if the biggest thing standing between you and the life you want isn't a lack of opportunity, talent, or strategy, but your ability to receive? In this episode, I'm exploring a question that has fascinated me for years, both in my own life and in my work with clients: Why do we struggle to receive the very things we say we want most? Love, support, visibility, money, rest, belonging. So often,...

What does it actually look like to evolve from a successful photographer into a fully embodied luxury brand? In this deeply personal episode of the Play It Brave podcast, I'm taking you behind the scenes with my client and dear friend, Kristen Marie, as she walks through a massive identity shift, creative rebirth, and business rebrand. Kristen has been photographing weddings and adventure elopemen...

In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on how I approach photographing a high-level, multi-day destination wedding—from the mindset I bring, to the creative direction, to the very real pressure behind the glamour. After more than two decades in this industry, I don't just show up and "document" a wedding. I direct it. I shape it. I craft it into a visual story that feels cinematic, intentio...