Above & Beyond Podcast: Season SIX
David Phillips | Author / Coach
Host Jän Simon interviews David Phillips—writer, speaker, coach, and author of “Surfing the Invisible Wave”—about helping people who appear successful outwardly but feel numb, adrift, or misaligned inside. Phillips explains his belief that people aren’t broken, just chasing the wrong scripts, and shares his path from growing up in Saskatchewan, studying architecture in Winnipeg, and moving to Arizona through marriage, to working in architectural project management, running a bed and breakfast in Jerome, and later entering vocational ministry in Colorado.
He recounts raising his son Julian through severe congenital kidney issues, a NICU stay, immune suppression, homeschooling, an autism diagnosis, and two kidney transplants (both 40 days after starting the process, the second during the 2020 pandemic). The conversation centers on meaning as the variable between despair and passion, the “freaking basics” of self-care, incremental life course-corrections, and his Midlife Reset Bracket at, with his book released on August 4, 2026.
David Phillips | Author / Coach "Surfing the Invisible Wave"
Luke Gilbert | Entrepreneur / AI Systems Builder
Luke William Gilbert knocked 150 doors a day as a rookie real estate agent. On door 1,474, a man opened up and asked him one question — "Do you believe in God?" — and became his first client. Two years later, Luke made a million dollars in a single year.
Host Jan Simon sits down with Luke, a real estate entrepreneur and AI systems builder in Idaho, for an unusually honest conversation about what growth actually costs. Luke traces the path from digging ditches in San Francisco and playing drums in a rock band, through a failed sound design career, eight and a half years of sobriety, and the $2,300-a-month pension conversation with a 63-year-old electrician that convinced him to quit the union and start over.
He talks about the panic attack he had the night before his first day of door knocking, the land development deal that failed three times before paying $471,000, why he felt like he was losing the year he won Rookie of the Year, and the coaching business that became just another job — and pushed him into building software.
Now he builds AI teammates for businesses through Smart Agent AI and Superhuman Systems, with one rule: the AI never pretends to be you.
"Your life gets to be the one you build, not the one you were given."
Find Luke on LinkedIn as Luke William Gilbert.
Luke Gilbert | Entrepreneur / AI Systems Builder
Jared Harmen | The One Group Agency
Jared Harman grew up wanting to play in the NHL. At 13 he did the math and realized his ceiling was too low. So he picked a backup plan: work in sports. He got a psychology degree, landed play-by-play for a junior hockey team, and ran the team's marketing to make it a real salary.
Then a well-known Canadian broadcaster told him over beers: "Jared, there's a million of you waiting for me to get hit by a bus so that they can have my job."
Two dead ends in a row. What he built instead is The One Group Agency — a 16-person, fully in-house marketing agency in British Columbia with clients who've stayed eight years.
Jared Harman | The One Group Agency
Steve Stowe | Apex Accounting and Advocacy
Host Jän Simon welcomes Steve Stowe to the Above & Beyond podcast for a wide-ranging conversation that moves from business numbers to identity, risk, and resilience. Stowe shares his origin story as a South Korean immigrant who learned English young and endured bullying, his early exposure to poker through his mother’s underground card room, and his path through college, marriage, and nearly two decades in commercial banking analyzing financial statements. A major turning point comes with a 2002 car accident that left lasting nerve damage, years of pain, self-pity, anger, and a return to drinking before he rebuilt his life through faith, family, and renewed purpose. He discusses writing his self-published book “Taming Yes” about people-pleasing, leadership coaching focused on delegation, climbing Kilimanjaro, and founding Apex Accounting and Advisory to help owners understand cash flow, margins, and the story behind their numbers.
Released 2026.08.27
Steve Stowe | Apex Accounting and Advocacy
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John Malko | Mighty Dog Roofing
Host Jän Simon talks with John Malko, a South Jersey native and Rowan University graduate who left a 15-year corporate role at a printer manufacturer (with 25+ years in sales, including growing the company’s Amazon account to #1) after feeling unfulfilled and pushed over the edge by COVID’s remote “Groundhog Day” routine. John and his wife, Lauren, moved from New Jersey to Arizona, raised 16-year-old triplet daughters, and in 2023 launched Mighty Dog Roofing in the Southeast Valley, Phoenix area, financed with an SBA loan. He describes early struggles with brand awareness, leads, sales, hiring, and production, lessons in managing people, and using tools like Predictive Index to build a stronger team. The conversation centers on integrity, doing the job right the first time, educating customers with thorough documentation, and building a referral-driven business he hopes to hand off as a lasting legacy.
John Malko | Mighty Dog Roofing
Jaime Johnson | Life Community Church
Jaime Johnson has spent 27 years at Life Community Church in Gilbert, where she serves as executive pastor. She also owns Leading Edge Preschools — three campuses, roughly 150 preschoolers and 22 employees, built in the last two years — and wrote a children's book about adoption called "They All Love Me."
None of that was the plan. Her father was killed in a plane crash when she was eight. There was no money for college and nobody to walk her through applying. She started at her church cleaning bathrooms on her half days as a high school junior, and took a job there for $50 a week.
In this conversation she talks with Jan about grace, about learning to say no as an act of care rather than rejection, and about the eight-year road to her family: infertility, IVF, a pregnancy lost, an adoption that fell through, an anonymous donor who covered their entire $27,000 adoption fee, and a fight in tribal court that came down to a single morning.
Her summary of what to do when someone's life falls apart is four words long: you just show up.
Jaime Johnson | Life Community Church
Stuart Preston - Cingularis / The Stoned Ape Show
Host Jän Simon interviews Stuart Preston—entrepreneur, technologist, stand-up comedian, and “AI solutionist”—about how his life split into “before” and “after” the 2015 suicide of his son, Ian.
Stuart shares his upbringing, music background, Army experience, and winding career through home automation, sales, consulting, and digital marketing, including hard lessons from business failure and the Great Recession. He describes coping with grief as learning to “heal with it,” the landmines that still trigger it, and how meditation and psychedelics became tools for transformation, stigma-breaking, and eventually his one-man show and book tied to The Stoned Ape.
The conversation also covers how AI disrupted his writing business, leading him to build Cingularis and help small businesses and nonprofits adopt AI with policies and an “ethos” to prevent “soul drift,” amplifying impact without losing human voice and values
Stuart Preston - Cingularis / The Stoned Ape Show
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