Above & Beyond: Where Excellence Meets Elevation

Send us Fan Mail Brands like Netflix, HBO and Peacock spend millions building sets for live events, and then leave the most important part to chance: the people. Terence Leclere is an immersive actor, TEDx speaker and founder of Metaforyou, the experiential consultancy behind guest interactions at activations including the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary experience and Peacock and Blumhouse&a...

Send us Fan Mail 36 postal addresses. Three continents. One Army scholarship lost in a single week.  Elaine Kessler is the Director of Foundation and Community Impact at the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce, president of Gilbert Sister Cities, a Flinn-Brown Fellow and Gilbert's 2019 Businesswoman of the Year. She is also a photographer, educator and speaker whose message is simple: the tension you...

Send us Fan Mail Fired on a phone call in a parking lot, Charles Shepherd went home to a rented room and decided to sell everything he owned and bet on himself. Three years later, his company, Alpha Appliance Repair, holds an A+ with the Better Business Bureau and has won Best of the Desert Community Choice Awards in both the East and West Valley three years running. The last time it won, it beat...

Send us Fan Mail Every Wednesday at 4:04 PM, a reminder goes off on Stuart Preston's phone. It says one word: Ian. That's the minute he learned his son had died by suicide in 2015. People ask why he'd keep it. He says there's something absolutely pure and raw and real about that moment. Stuart is a computer engineer who never used the degree, a former Army Patriot missile lieut...

Send us Fan Mail Jaime Johnson was eight years old when her father was killed in a plane crash in Graham County. There was no money, no plan, and a new school almost every year. She never went to college. Her first church job paid $50 a week.  Today she is the executive pastor at Life Community Church in Gilbert — 27 years on staff this month — the owner of Leading Edge Preschools with three campu...

Send us Fan Mail John Malchow shares his journey from a South Jersey upbringing and a rocky academic start—including not graduating eighth grade—to earning a degree, building 25+ years in sales, and spending 15 years at a printer manufacturer where he grew its Amazon channel to number one. Frustrated by corporate politics, stalled promotion prospects, and the “Groundhog Day” routine intensified by...

Send us Fan Mail He immigrated from South Korea at four and traded his first language for English. His mother ran an illegal card room under the family bar until it got raided in 1986. He spent twenty years in commercial banking deciding who got loans and who didn't.  Then, in August 2002, Steve Stowe came home sick, took cough medicine, got behind the wheel, and fell asleep on the US 60. He...

Send us Fan Mail He wanted to play in the NHL. At 13 he did the math and knew he wouldn't. So Jared Harman picked a backup plan — work in sports — and got remarkably close, calling play-by-play for a junior hockey team while running its marketing. Then a well-known broadcaster told him over beers: "Jared, there's a million of you's waiting for me to get hit by a bus so that the...

Send us Fan Mail Luke William Gilbert knocked on 150 doors a day as a brand-new real estate agent. On door number 1,474, an older man with a big mustache opened up and asked him one question: "Do you believe in God?" That man became his first client — a $24,000 commission, more than half of what Luke earned in a full year as an electrician's apprentice. Two years later he made a mil...

Send us Fan Mail David has spent more than a decade walking alongside people who look like they have it all together on the outside — the career, the family, the responsibilities — but who are quietly wrestling with drift, numbness, and the question: is this really the life I'm meant to build? His own path was anything but a straight line. Born in Saskatchewan. Architecture degree in Winnipeg...

Send us Fan Mail He quit a $60,000-a-year job, moved his wife to Farmington, New Mexico, and started flying passengers with only 250 hours of flight time — making $20K a year. Fourteen years and three airlines later, Phil Green finally earned the left seat at Southwest Airlines. In this episode of Above & Beyond: Where Excellence Meets Elevation, host Jän Simon sits down with Captain Phil Gree...

Send us Fan Mail Roy Sublasky was on probation until he was 18, dropped out of school, and watched friends die or go to prison. At 21, a woman showed up at his door with a two-year-old son he didn’t know he had — and that knock changed everything. He surrendered his life to Christ, became a pastor, and spent 20 years planting churches and serving communities from Arizona to Cambodia. Then, on Octo...

Send us Fan Mail Jason Bressler was an Arizona high school All-Star pitcher who played at Chase Field on Father's Day, threw in the low 90s, and had his sights set on ASU — until two labrum surgeries ripped the glove off his hand for good. Today, he's the owner of CertaPro Painters of Gilbert-Queen Creek, carrying forward the family business his parents, Randy and Irma, built from scratc...

Send us Fan Mail Jän Simon interviews Liz Ponce, a twin mom and co-owner of Arizona-based LZR Marketing, about building a marketing agency without choosing a niche and balancing creativity, leadership, and family. Liz shares growing up in Jackson, Michigan and Chicago before moving to Buckeye Arizona, her competitive background in basketball and drumline, and how she moved through multiple schools...

Send us Fan Mail Boaz Gilad on Unmasking Success: From Actor to Billion-Dollar Real Estate—and Losing It All Host Jän Simon welcomes Boaz Gilad—entrepreneur, performance strategist, founder of Zenith Clubhouse, and author of The Zenith Code—to discuss why success isn’t linear but a rollercoaster. Boaz shares his origin story from growing up in Israel, serving in the Israeli army, moving to New Yor...

Send us Fan Mail On Above & Beyond: Where Excellence Meets Elevation, host Jän Simon sits down with John Weiss—owner of ProBlast LLC and co-owner of Minuteman Press in Mesa—whose path from Anchorage, Alaska to Arizona is shaped by constant reinvention. John shares a childhood rooted in old Alaska history and hard lessons, early work from shoveling driveways to gold mining, and a career spannin...

Send us Fan Mail She Built the Gilbert Chamber’s Business Resource Center Used by 800+ Businesses in 18 Months | Sarah Watts Jän Simon interviews Sarah Watts, president and CEO of the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce and newly appointed chair of Arizona Chamber Executives, about leading the community where she grew up. Sarah shares her East Valley upbringing in Chandler, her long relationship with her...

Send us Fan Mail What if the path to freedom isn't found in following the traditional playbook, but in learning how to own your decisions, your time, and your future?  In this episode of Above & Beyond, host Jän Simon sits down with Steve Rolle—entrepreneur, investor, US Army veteran, and author. Steve grew up in a low-income environment in Washington, DC, and went on to build, scale, and...

Send us Fan Mail In a roundtable on business and life pivots, host Jan Simon talks with LJ Richardson, Bob Flecken, and Ted Bliefnick about leaving corporate paths for entrepreneurship and the motivations behind those decisions. LJ describes abruptly quitting a 16-year career at Discount Tire to launch ventures including golf apparel and later a mobile tire business funded by a HELOC, driven by cu...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of "Above & Beyond: Where Excellence Meets Elevation," host Jän Simon sits down with Brett Johnson, a licensed real estate professional serving the Phoenix and Denver metro areas. Brett shares her journey from a competitive sports background in Colorado to becoming a leader in real estate and a champion for foster youth.    We dive deep into:  • The o...

Send us Fan Mail Eric Lopez shares his journey from growing up in small-town Illinois with an absent father to being raised by his mother, stepfather, and influential older brother, including a turbulent period living with his dad in California that led to drugs, quitting other sports for bowling, and eventually college bowling. After graduating from the University of Illinois, he was kicked out o...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Dallas Sloan shares her journey from growing up on acreage in southern Alberta to moving to Arizona at just 23 years old to pursue her dream of building a multi-modality beauty business. She opens up about launching Colair Beauty Lounge & Medspa in 2017, growing from hair and spa services into cosmetic injectables, and building a team culture rooted in charact...

Send us Fan Mail Recorded remotely from Brian Riley’s garage pub hangout, this episode follows Brian’s path from growing up in Enfield, Connecticut and playing football and baseball to a life shaped by “saying yes,” including a chance retail interview that launched a 20-year career with Structure/Express, where he met his wife Cheryl and focused on developing teams. Brian contrasts today’s club “s...

Send us Fan Mail Elisha Kameyama, CEO and co-founder of Red Crane Digital in Phoenix, shares how embracing discomfort fuels growth, then traces his journey from growing up in California and Colorado as a pastor’s kid through joining the Navy two weeks after high school, serving eight years with deployments tied to 9/11-era operations and later humanitarian work in South America. He explains how a...

Send us Fan Mail Tank Giles, a Daytona Beach native, shares how sports helped him navigate a challenging childhood, including family violence that led to being taken from his parents twice and periods living with a football coach and later with his sister. He explains earning the nickname “Tank,” excelling in football, missing a Division I opportunity due to credits, taking a gap year, then moving...