Beyond the Image Podcast

I feel like right now is a hard time to be entertained. You have football out of season, college basketball is wrapping up, hockey isn't interesting right now. I've seen everything on every streaming platform that could be viewed thanks to the last year and a half. What am I to watch?  Last night we took a chance and put on the HBO show, Julia . In all honesty, we thought it was the movie from a h...

I've been known to go a little bit overboard or become obsessive about certain areas of my life. When I was in middle school and high school, I was obsessed with movies; particularly horror films. I started to amass a collection at the time of VHS where every weekend I would go to a video store and buy as many VHS films as I could. The goal was to amass a collection that would rival even a Blockbu...

I believe there are two camps of marketing.  There's the reactive marketing camp; "if you build it, they will come." The primary tenants of reactive marketing are hope and prayer. It's the type of marketing that encourages you to focus on your social media content and building an expensive and robust website so you can take advantage of SEO. The other marketing camp is proactive . It's about setti...

We need to discuss the last 3 weeks. There were 4 trips to the pediatrician, 3 trips to urgent care, a telehealth appointment, as well as a quick stroll to another clinic just to make sure that we spread out our deductibles to as many providers as possible. There were some rampant fevers, lots of bodily fluids, a tremendous amount of coughing, and even a dog bite! If that wasn't enough, I had some...

Note: Check out this podcast episode's post at JamesPatrick.com to see an AI video in action! When was the last time you had a delightful consumer experience? It's hard to think of one because it's almost like our brains are wired to only remember the negative consumer experiences that did not go well. The ones that are so distasteful that they send us straight to Google or Yelp to hash out our 1...

Who are some of the hardest working people that you know? Is it your parents? Oftentimes, we model our work ethic based on what we saw our parents do for us. How hard they worked to provide us with a life where we can work hard for our children. Maybe it's your grandparents.   When I think about hard working people, I think of course about my mother who worked nights for 25 or so years so she coul...

I truly wonder how often it is that we as entrepreneurs get into our field in a very roundabout way. For example, as a photographer, I got into photography through being a journalist. The plan was never to be a photographer. I was trying to leverage my experience as a photographer to get more jobs as a journalist. Eventually, I owned being a photographer. The same thing happened as a business coac...

Best idea I ever had for a podcast was that I would get together with a guest and we would each get a different craft beer. Over the course of drinking that beer, we would talk about all things photography. This was also the worst idea I ever had. Why did this idea not pan out? Probably, because we got too inebriated to ever appropriately launch it.  Nonetheless, in 10 years of podcasting, I have...

Do you want to know what's embarrassing? Having someone walk in on you while you are listening to yourself on your own podcast. Immediately, they think that you're doing it because your ego is so big. You try to defend yourself and say, "No no! I'm just checking the audio levels, that's why I'm listening to my podcast." They won't believe you.  I do like to hear myself talk. This is episode 347 an...

My guest today is Sarah Ortlund. She's a Krav Maga instructor and personal trainer. She's also in grad school studying clinical psychology.  We're diving into boundaries, what Sarah has learned along the way, and how you can incorporate the same things into your personal and work life. "You have to give yourself some grace and recognize who you are as a person and that you still want to enjoy life...

When I was younger, I had no idea what I was going to do when I grew up. Around the age of 18, as I'm coming out of high school, my thought was, "I guess I'll be a journalist." Truthfully, I didn't want to be a journalist. I just wanted to be a section editor, where I would run the arts and entertainment section for a publication. Then came college, and that plan didn't happen. In fact, I had a ca...

I've been told I like to complain a lot. And I take issue with that critique. Perhaps, I want to complain that I'm being critiqued for complaining too much. Because how is the world ever meant to improve if I am not complaining? Today, I'm sharing the top 5 worst experiences I've ever had as a consumer, what not to do to your customers, and how to delight your customers instead. "How can you surpr...

My mother always said that I had a face for radio. Perhaps that's why I'm speaking to you in a podcast form, not a video format. I remember my first time on TV, I was promoting the FITposium conference. I was aggressively nervous. I wore a nice suit, I tucked in my shirt, and I made sure to comb my hair and shave. But, I was a pile of sweat for a segment that lasted a sum total of 30 seconds.  Mea...

Do you ever watch Seinfeld? I have a favorite episode. The one where Jerry's at his apartment and a telemarketer calls him. He responds and says. "You know I'm really busy, can I get your home number and I'll call you back later?" The telemarketer says no. Jerry says, "Oh why? You don't want people calling you at home? Now you know how I feel!" I love this scene so much because it is what I wish I...

I want to tell you about the second girlfriend I ever had. We dated for two whole weeks until she broke things off and shattered my heart. That same night, I had my best friend over for a sleepover and I was crying to him about how much she hurt me. The reason she ended things? Because I was too afraid to talk to her…Yup.  When this happened, I was 16 years old. I was a nerd. So how did I even get...

I was 16 years old when I finally got a starting position on my high school football team. It took all year of trying to convince my coach that I had what it took. My parents were on the stands brimming with pride, and I knew I was going to make them proud. The ball was kicked right to me, inches away from my fingertips, I fumbled it, got tackled, and then was benched the rest of the season. It wa...

Have you ever quit something in glorious fashion? I mean the type of quitting where you walk in slow motion away from the building and then the building explodes! (Don't worry, no one is in the building.) But you don't flinch when the building explodes. Instead, in slow motion, you take sunglasses out of your coat pocket and place them on your face while the building behind you burns to the ground...

Do you want to know what pisses me off? A lot. Conventional wisdom will tell you that anger is bad and rage will hold you back. But you know what? I love my rage, I cherish my rage. I worship my rage. Because I can harness my rage. In today's episode, we are going to talk about how you, too, can harness your rage. "When it's applied appropriately with focus, it can actually accelerate you faster w...

On today's episode, my guest is Lizzie Ens. She is the founder and creator of UnDiet Yourself. She has a very different story of what her life was like at the age of 19. When I was 19, I lacked direction and motivation. But today, let's jump into what Lizzie's life looked like then and now. "I was able to look forward. Not everybody's able to do that." IN THIS EPISODE Where Lizzie's story started...

At the age of 12, I went to comic book camp. It's where young kids can go to learn how to create their own comic books. I went on to create a whole universe of characters that would make Marvel jealous.  That same year, I also spent a week at coding camp where I learned to write code for tiny robots. In my lifetime, I have learned a lot of things. Like writing screenplays, the original HTML code,...

I've done a lot of peculiar things for money. In a previous episode, I listed out the top 5 worst jobs I had ever endured. Today, I'm sharing some gems that did not make that previous list because they may not have actually qualified as legitimate employment.  "Every hour counts." IN THIS EPISODE More "jobs" James has had in the past. The movie you should NOT Google. Why you should know how much m...

In my lifetime, I've sat down to write about 5,242 different books. In my lifetime, I've actually been able to finish two of them. One was an ebook (I get it, not a traditional book). But this ebook went on to not only net me a significant amount of revenue, it also helped brand me as a subject matter expert in a very specific field. From this ebook, I even created an online membership platform th...

In today's episode, I want to share with you one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. I'm going to talk about a time that I failed to woo another. It's a true story and heartbreaking but most importantly, it goes along with what we're talking about today. Why we need to nurture relationships. "Consumers no longer want to be sold to, they want to be engaged with." IN THIS EPISODE The import...

My first brush with owning a business came at the age of 10 years old. I launched my very own puppet show and on our opening night, we sold out all the seats we had in the venue. There were 2 seats - one for my mother and father - and they were 25 cents each.    My second launched business was my own newspaper that I typed and printed and distributed to both of my parents. I only printed two, but...

I've been talking a lot on this show about really unpacking what the true journey of entrepreneurship really is. Oftentimes, thanks to social media, we get only a veneer perception of what it means to live the life of an entrepreneur. It's easy to look at people on Instagram with expensive clothes, nice watches, and fancy cars and think, " I too could live that life!" Then you start out and realiz...