KPHRED Work - Life Balance Radio

What happens when an occupational therapist and an engineer combine their unique skills, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit?

On this episode of **Chat & Suzanne: AI for Everyday Life**, Suzanne welcomes Tyler and Melissa O’Neal of Egmer Marketing. They share their journey from occupational therapy and engineering into the world of marketing and entrepreneurship.

Together, we explore how their different professional backgrounds influence their approach to business, the importance of building meaningful relationships, and how creativity, technology, and AI are opening new opportunities for entrepreneurs.

It's a conversation about taking unexpected paths, embracing change, and discovering how skills from one career can lead to exciting new possibilities.

Chat & Suzanne: AI for Everyday Life is a KPHRED RADIO podcast.

Out on the Skinny Branches with Jim Pehkonen and Ingrid Rivas

What happens when a child grows up surrounded by fear, anger, addiction, and uncertainty, then carries those experiences into adulthood without understanding their impact? In this deeply personal episode of Out on the Skinny Branches, Jim Pehkonen sits down with Ingrid Rivas, whose extraordinary journey began in El Salvador, where she witnessed her grandfather's death at just four years old. After immigrating to America, what should have been a fresh beginning became years of instability, domestic violence, and responsibilities no child should have to carry. Ingrid shares how growing up in survival mode created overwhelming anger, anxiety, and eventually a crippling fear of death. Her story raises a powerful question: How much of what we struggle with today was shaped by experiences we never had the opportunity to process as children?

But this isn't simply a story about childhood trauma. It's a conversation about courage, spiritual discovery, and the unexpected paths that can lead us toward healing. Ingrid describes how listening to hundreds of near-death experiences helped transform her relationship with mortality, while Jim reveals his own remarkable near-death experience, including an encounter with his late father that forever changed his understanding of life and death. Together, they explore the invisible weight of childhood wounds, the importance of addressing anxiety, and the possibility of finding peace after years of emotional turmoil. If you've ever struggled with unexplained fear, carried anger you couldn't understand, or wondered whether the wounds of your past still influence your present, this is a conversation worth hearing. Sometimes the greatest freedom begins when we finally understand what we've been carrying and realize we no longer have to carry it alone.

Out on the Skinny Branches with Jim Pehkonen and Mary Reiss Farias

What if everything you've been taught about building a successful life is backward? We spend years learning how to earn a living, follow the rules, and fit into someone else's definition of success. But how often do we stop and ask, "Am I actually creating a life that makes me happy?" In this inspiring episode of Out on the Skinny Branches, Jim Pehkonen welcomes author, entrepreneur, and personal development consultant Mary Reiss Farias for a fascinating conversation about breaking away from traditional expectations and designing a life around who you truly are. Mary introduces her concept of a "YOU-Shaped Economy," where success isn't measured solely by income but also by meaningful relationships, personal fulfillment, freedom, and following your passions. Imagine building a life where your work, your values, and your dreams actually support one another rather than compete for your time and energy. What would become possible if you stopped living by someone else's blueprint?

But this conversation gets even more interesting when Mary shares her powerful five-step process for creating a Self-Image Script, a practical way to envision your future self and begin living from that identity today. Jim and Mary explore how personalized affirmations, imagination, intentional beliefs, and daily choices can help you step beyond old limitations and create something extraordinary. Rather than waiting for life to change, what if you began becoming the person capable of living the life you desire? You'll discover why the present moment holds tremendous creative power and how shifting the way you see yourself can influence your decisions, relationships, and opportunities. If you've ever felt stuck in a routine, questioned your direction, or sensed there's a more fulfilling version of life waiting for you, this episode will get you thinking differently. Listen in, challenge your assumptions about success, and discover why the most important economy you'll ever create might just be the one built around YOU.

Mary Farias
Economy Creators
WHO ARE YOU inside the economy you're building?

We spend so much time thinking about what we want to create—the business, the book, the income, the relationships, the opportunities, the lifestyle.

But there's another question we need to ask:

Who do I need to become to live that life?

In this special workshop edition of Economy Creators, host Mary Reiss Farias shares her October Economy Creators Workshop on Self-Image—one of the most foundational elements of intentionally building a YOU-Shaped Economy.

Mary spent 37 years immersed in gymnastics as an athlete, collegiate gymnast, coach, gym owner, and mother. For years, her identity was inseparable from the sport.

Then she made a profound shift.

She stopped seeing herself as someone who was successful in gymnastics and began seeing herself as someone who was successful. Period.

That shift opened an entirely new world of possibilities.

Because when we change how we see ourselves, we can begin changing what we believe is possible.

In this workshop, Mary walks you through five steps to creating your own Self-Image Script—a living document that helps you intentionally develop the thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors of the person you want to become.

THE FIVE STEPS

1. Define Your Goals and Desires

What do you truly want? Explore your desires across your entire economy—health, wealth, relationships, happiness, work, and the things that bring you alive.

2. Craft Your Scene

Visualize yourself already living your ideal life. Create a vivid, sensory-rich scene that represents your desires fulfilled.

3. Create Your Affirmations

Rather than borrowing someone else's affirmations, discover the characteristics of your ideal self and create personal “I AM” statements.

4. Describe Your Ideal Traits

Go deeper. What does being confident, calm, wise, joyful, or successful actually look like in your daily life? Describe how your ideal self thinks, believes, acts, and responds.

5. Embody Your Ideal Self

Combine your scene, affirmations, and descriptions into a script. Read it, refine it, record it in your own voice, listen to it, and begin practicing being that person every day.

YOUR SELF-IMAGE IS CENTRAL TO YOUR ECONOMY

Your YOU-Shaped Economy isn't simply about making money.

It's about intentionally creating a life around your interests, talents, experiences, relationships, desires, and the person you truly want to be.

And YOU are at the center of it.

Your self-image influences what you attempt, what you accept, how you respond, and what you believe you're capable of accomplishing.

This workshop is an invitation to stop defining yourself by who you've been—and begin intentionally creating who you're becoming.

Your future self is waiting. Let's begin building.

CONTINUE YOUR ECONOMY CREATORS JOURNEY

Subscribe to Economy Creators on Substack:
https://economycreators.substack.com/

Join the Monthly Economy Creators Workshop:
https://www.magnetminddevelopment.com/economy

Download The Economy Creators Framework:
https://www.economycreators.live/ec-framework-ebook

Take the Economy Creators Diagnostic Quiz:
https://www.economycreators.live/quiz

ABOUT ECONOMY CREATORS

Economy Creators explores how to intentionally build a YOU-Shaped Economy around who you are and the life you truly want to create.

Lead Yourself → Lead Your Economy → Lead Others.

Beyond the Masks, Old Survival Patterns, and Expectations: Rediscovering the Person You've Been All Along.

You've spent your life learning to succeed, care for others, build relationships, and meet everyone's expectations. But somewhere along the way, did you lose touch with the person underneath it all? In this episode of Out on the Skinny Branches, Jim Pehkonen and Desi Bolin explore a question that can change the direction of your life: Do you really know yourself? Discover how old survival patterns, limiting beliefs, fear, and the roles we've learned to play can quietly control our reactions, relationships, and happiness. What if the impatience, people-pleasing, emotional walls, or need for control you've accepted as your personality aren't actually who you are? What if there's a more authentic, connected version of yourself waiting to be rediscovered?

Jim and Desi share insights from the opening session of the Conscious Connection Collective, where personal growth begins not with judgment or fixing yourself, but with curiosity, awareness, and choice. Explore how understanding yourself can transform your relationships, bring back playfulness and imagination, and help you create a life filled with greater meaning and genuine connection. You don't need all the answers, and you certainly don't need to have life figured out. You just need a willingness to explore. If you've ever felt there's more to life than the one you're currently living, this conversation is for you. Listen in, then join Jim and Desi on Tuesday evenings for a deeper journey into yourself. Discover how to experience two complimentary sessions at https://consciousconnectioncollective.com/2. Your next chapter may not begin by becoming someone new, but by finally coming home to yourself.