Expand Your Empire

This week on Expand Your Empire, Amanda sits down with Audrey Schoen, a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in financial therapy for high achievers, entrepreneurs, executives, and couples. Audrey is not speaking theoretically. She has lived the tipping point where your business pulls from your life rather than funding it, and she built her practice helping others find their way...

A founder gets a number. Revenue for the month. A client who didn’t renew. The bank balance before payroll. And instead of treating that number as information, she treats it as a verdict. This episode is about the decision-making problem hiding inside that confusion, and why it quietly costs founders years of decisions, not just one bad month. In this episode: Why a bad number gets treated as a ve...

I met Susan at a Coronado Chamber of Commerce event. She mentioned she'd bought an auto shop. When I found out why, I knew I had to have her on. After sponsoring two Ukrainian families and watching how hard it was for them to stabilize here in the US, Susan didn't want to stop at temporary support. She bought an existing auto repair shop in Point Loma and created a real pathway for them to have wo...

You Cannot Buy Your Way Out Of A Belief. I want to confess something. I have spent a significant amount of money over the course of building my businesses on coaching programs, courses, masterminds, community memberships, and certifications. A lot of things I paid for and didn't even do. Most of them were good. The content was solid. The frameworks made sense. This isn't about getting scammed. It'...

When is the last time you did nothing and let it be okay? Not rest you scheduled. Not a Sunday blocked off so you could recover enough to work again Monday. Actually stopped, left space open, and didn't fill it. If you're anything like me, the answer is that sounds like a trap. The entrepreneurship space is always telling us to add more. Post more. Build the funnel. Launch the offer. Grow the list...

This episode is not for the woman who doesn't know what she's doing wrong. It's for the woman who knows exactly what she's doing wrong, could probably teach a master class on it, and is doing it anyway. She's read the books. Done the programs. She can articulate her money blocks with impressive clinical precision. She knows she's underpricing. She knows she's avoiding her numbers. She even knows s...

Every time I bring up investing, someone says I'm not good at math and checks out. That was never the real reason. The real reason is that nobody explained it in a language that felt like it was built for them. That is what this entire show is for. This is the final episode of Paychecks to Portfolios. We are on the multiple layers of the earn, control, own, multiply framework. And this is where th...

If you stopped working tomorrow, not retired, just stopped, how long could you maintain your current life before things started to break? If the answer is a few months, that is not a criticism. That is just data. And it tells you something important. You have built income. What you have not built yet is a position. And those are two very different things. This episode is about ownership. What it a...

I was standing on a stage in Hilo, Hawaii, when a handful of women walked up after I got off stage. Not to tell me how great the presentation was. To say thank you, because I had said out loud what they had been holding privately. And if you are a grown, accomplished, financially capable woman and your response to someone naming your private thought is relief, that is not about me. That is about t...

For about three years of running this business, I tracked every dollar. Every launch, every retainer, every invoice. I could tell you within fifty bucks what I'd invoiced in any given month. I believed, based on that tracking, that I knew what I was building. I did not know what I was building. Because revenue and income are not the same number. And in practice, I was treating gross revenue like i...

You can look fine on paper and be falling apart underneath. That's not a mindset problem. That's biology, and most high-performing women have no idea it's happening until the branch falls off the tree. Dr. Traci Potterf has spent 20 years working with high performers who are exhausted, wired, and running on fumes, and calling it hustle. She's been there herself. Living in a toxic environment, igno...

The number most Americans say they need to retire comfortably is $1.46 million. The median retirement savings for women aged 45 to 54 is $115,000. That's a $1.3 million gap, and it hits self-employed women hardest, because the entire retirement system was built assuming someone else is handling it on your behalf. Nobody is. So let's talk about how you build it yourself. In this solo episode, Amand...

I had a whole other episode ready for you this week. Recorded. Done. Ready to go. Then something happened I couldn’t let slide without addressing first, so I scrapped it and recorded this at the last minute instead, which is honestly very on-brand for how this whole thing started. This one is more raw than usual. That’s exactly why it needs to come out this way. For a long time, I was three steps...

You can fix your systems. You can hire the right people. You can build the processes. But none of it works if the belief underneath has not changed. In this episode, I sit down with coach and clinical hypnotherapist Michele Molitor, who has spent more than two decades helping high-achieving women navigate the moment when success no longer feels like enough. Not because anything is wrong. Not becau...

You know how to earn. Nobody taught you how to own. Most successful business owners have built themselves a very expensive job. Revenue is coming in. The calendar is full. And at the end of the year, there is very little to show for it outside of the business itself. In this episode, I sit down with tax strategist Cynthia, who found me the old-fashioned way: she left a real comment on an Alignable...

You have built a business that pays you. Maybe really well. But if everything you have is tied to everything you do, you have not built wealth yet. You have built a very good job. In this episode, Amanda Taylor gets honest about the gap nobody talks about: the difference between income and wealth, why high-earning women often have no net worth to show for it, and what it actually looks like to sta...

You have done the work. The breathwork. The somatic sessions. The money story healing that went all the way back. You have regulated your nervous system and shown up better than ever. And on Monday morning you are still refreshing your bank account before your coffee is ready. Here is what nobody in the healing space is willing to say: the inner work is necessary and it is not sufficient. Healing...

Money runs the show whether you admit it or not. Most people think their financial problems are strategy problems. Wrong budget. Wrong investments. Wrong business model. But what if the real problem started before you ever made a single financial decision? This week I’m joined by Carrie KC West, founder of The Rewritten Collection and author of Money Rewritten, out now. Carrie has spent years help...

This week, we’re stepping away from cash flow (don’t worry,  that’s coming next) because this conversation couldn’t wait. I brought back Meaghan Young, jeweler, metals expert, and unapologetic Bitcoin nerd, to give me the Bitcoin 101 I desperately needed. I’m the person who tells everyone to invest, diversify, and build wealth… yet Bitcoin was my blind spot. So this episode is me asking every...

If you’ve ever thought, “I can’t go because my business will fall apart without me,” this episode is for you. I’m breaking down the three forces that keep high‑achieving women, especially my fellow Gen X founders, stuck in the day‑to‑day: the belief that work equals worth, the lack of actual systems, and the ego piece nobody talks about. By the end, you’ll understand why everything still needs you...

Why Making More Money Can Make Your Life Harder (And What To Fix First) What if more revenue is actually creating more chaos? In this episode, we break down the hidden challenges of business growth and why scaling without structure leads straight to overwhelm, bottlenecks, and burnout. If your business is growing but your life feels harder, this conversation will help you understand why… and what...

In this episode of the Expand Your Empire Podcast, we sit down with jewelry designer, entrepreneur, and educator Meaghan Young. Meaghan's journey takes us from a serendipitous necklace sale to building a global business and empowering women to combine creativity with wealth-building strategies. We explore how Meaghan's love for jewelry turned into an innovative business model, her approach to fina...

If you are new to the Expand Your Empire world, this is the episode to start with. Amanda Taylor pulls back the curtain on why most successful-looking businesses are actually "wealth traps." She explains the exact framework she uses to help high-achieving entrepreneurs stop the profit leaks, reclaim their time, and turn their business revenue into a compounding wealth engine. If you've ever felt l...

This episode is a departure from our typical conversations, and it’s one of the most important. We’re exploring a dimension of wealth building that rarely gets discussed: your capacity to receive. So many high-achieving women can execute strategy, build income, and hit goals, yet still feel disconnected, over-controlled, or stuck in cycles of hustle and self-sabotage. In this conversation, Sharon...

The Pillar Code: Healing the Hidden Barriers to Wealth with PJ Ashley In this episode, Amanda Taylor sits down with PJ Ashley , CEO and founder of The Pillar Code , for a powerful conversation on why wealth, success, and financial freedom often remain just out of reach, even for high-achieving individuals. PJ brings over 20 years of corporate leadership experience and decades of work in holistic a...