Beyond the Image Podcast

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...

The date was 4/1/17 and I posted what ended up being one of my highest engaged posts I had ever done on Instagram.  In this episode, I'm reading you the caption, the reactions, and something that really upsets me. "The photos are edited to finish the narrative that we were telling through the location, through the set-up, through the styling, through the hair and makeup, through the poses, through...

It's Friday and we do not have time to waste! I'm jumping into the top 5 worst jobs I've ever had. But more importantly, I am diving into how I could have completely avoided working any of these jobs. "Perhaps if I did a little bit better in my planning, maybe I never would have had to work these jobs." IN THIS EPISODE Hear my top 5 worst jobs I've ever had and why. How planning changed everything...

It is about time we did a podcast discussing time. A couple years ago, I was going through this exercise with a business coach and what he made me do was to write down all the hours I worked in a single year. From photoshoots to cleaning toilets in my office. That number was quite shocking. Then he said to take the amount of money I made in that year and divide the number of hours by the amount of...

Did I ever tell you about the time I became a New York Times Best Selling author? I was working in marketing years ago and I started to pioneer a new marketing strategy that was building my company's brand awareness, generating brand validation and creating new job opportunities. I thought to myself, if only other companies were implementing the same marketing approach, they too could do the same....

It's not easy for someone to admit when they were wrong. For the second time in recorded history (no way to verify that), I was wrong. When I bring up the word "privilege" or "privileged" it can create a feeling of defensiveness for so many. It's easy to understand why; we might retort back to that and say, "No we're not privileged, I built this all myself." Although that might be true, we need to...

We are diving back into the conversation about empowering women and how they choose to build their brands and business. Today, I am talking with Nikole Mitchell, who is a pastor turned stripper and top creator on OnlyFans who went from living off of food stamps to earning 6-figure months. We discuss the evolution of the content marketing industry and what lies ahead for women in the selling of sex...

New Year, new show, new branding! Now, more authentic!  Looking back over the years, a lot of what I saw in hindsight was inauthentic. I couldn't see it while I was in it, but looking back, I did. There were specific instances and larger themes where I can see I strayed off course and got lost a bit. I'm reflecting on that today as I refocus and zone in on my mission, one that is authentic to me. ...

I was on Instagram the other day, wasting time, and I came across a post that said something to the effect of, "Why are people talking about 2021 being over and the inability to wait for 2022? Do you realize that there is still _ # of weeks/days/hours/minutes still left in this year? Are you really prepared to give up on your goals that easily and throw away this percentage of the year that you ha...

My guest today is no stranger to the Beyond the Image podcast, most of my audience, and our FITposium alumni. Billy Polson has been within our community for several years now and has been a presenter at our FITposium conference for several years. He is the Founder of The Business Movement and the Founder of DIAKADI, which is a fitness studio that has won best studio in San Francisco 15 of the 17 y...

My motivation has bottomed out and I'm tired. Have you ever felt that way? Even though this year flew by, it took an emotional toll on so many of us. I don't think a lot of us realized it even happened.  So today, I'm talking about motivation and distraction because not only am I struggling with it, I know so many are too.   "As we're coming into the end of the year, we've lost so much of our focu...

Entrepreneurship is hard. I'm sure as a listener, you deal with this everyday and you know this. Or you need a reminder because of the way influencers portray entrepreneurship on their feeds. Looking at my calendar, I realize that I walked away from my corporate job 10 years ago. Today, I want to talk about the things that have helped me survive this journey. "The devotion you give to the work you...

Today, we get to chat about something that I geek out on, which is how to better improve sales pages. I have invested copious amounts of my time, hours, energy, and emotions into understanding how to best set up a page that not only guides the visitor through an amazing journey where they are rewarded by every scroll but also leads them to what I wanted all along; to purchase whatever it is I'm se...