Outlier's Edge Podcast with Niiamah Ashong
Outlier's Edge Podcast is a live coaching podcast where we come together in conversation to work through the challenges and apply the gifts of being a unique tribe of high-performing, high-impact entrepreneurs, changemakers, and leaders who choose to play a bigger game of impact, influence, and income than we've ever play before. What's an Outlier? An Outlier is a high-performing, high-impact leader who often is: One of the Only: Thrive in systems/environments that were not designed to have someone like them succeed, One of the First: Thrive doing things no one else has ever done or dares to even...
The Four Time Author Who Feels New | R. Karl Hebenstreit | Ep 995
"I know what your website says. I know what your bio says. But who do you say you are, and do I believe you?" — Niiamah
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and R. Karl Hebenstreit for a live coaching session on what happens when a leader has built the body of work but has not yet claimed it out loud.
Karl came in wanting bigger stages. What surfaced was ownership. Four books, a TEDx talk, twenty years inside global organizations, and the sentence still sitting underneath all of it was "I'm not experienced enough."
This one go...
"I Am Birthing It By Saying It Out Loud" | Anthony Fleg | EP 994
"Model the future now." Niiamah
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Dr. Anthony Fleg for a live coaching conversation about what it costs to stay behind your own work.
Anthony practices medicine backwards from the entire system. Where medicine asks what is wrong with you, he asks what is right. He built a nonprofit that ran for twenty years and kept his name off all of it. Then he names the thing he has never said out loud to anyone.
What you get:
- Why every deficit is a strength in disguise, and...
The Opera Director Who Never Cast Herself | Kelsie Furst | Ep 993
"What if you're already ready." — Niiamah
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Kelsie Furst, executive and artistic director of Loveland Opera Theater.
Kelsey never set out to run an opera company. She came up through the chorus, auditioned pregnant, said yes every time she was asked, and rose. Now she wants to make something nobody will ask her for. This conversation is about the gap between the leader everyone recruits and the artist waiting for permission to start her own work.
What you'll take away:
- Why the question of "enough experience" is th...
How Do You Scale a Mission That Has Always Depended on You? | Meg Lowman | Ep 992
“The question is not just how do you raise more money. It’s how do you make the mission bigger than you?” — Niiamah
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Meg Lowman for a live coaching conversation where they explore what happens when a mission becomes bigger than the person who started it.
This session explores rainforest conservation, the challenge of saving forests faster, and why funding alone may not solve the problem. Meg and Niiamah explore succession, systematizing outreach, building partnerships, and creating experiences that bring influential people into the treetops and into the mission.
You’ll t...
From Striving to Being in Business | Ep 991
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Steven for a throwback live coaching session that pulls apart one of the quietest traps exceptional leaders fall into: keeping clients at arm's length to protect a professional persona.
This conversation moves through:
Why striving keeps you outside the room you're trying to enterThe hidden cost of selling expertise by performing impermeabilityWhat changes the moment your clients become family, not transactionsWelcome to the Outlier's Edge Podcast, hosted by Niiamah Ashong, Founder of Outlier's Edge and Sherpa of the World of Difference. On this podcast, you'll join other high-performing unconventional...
Why Self Judgment Stops Your Next Level | Ep 990
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and two exceptional leaders, Stacey and Kai, for a throwback live coaching session that goes straight at the judgment running underneath the next level. This episode unpacks what actually keeps leaders stuck at the door of their next chapter. Not the strategy. The judgment. The pleasing. The self-abandonment that masquerades as humility, service, and "being a good person."
What you will take away:
Why self-judgment is the real ceiling on your next level, not skill or strategyHow perfectionism is a form of self-abandonment dressed up as protectionThe reframe that ends the pleasing loop...Build Without Losing What You Love | 989
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Alexis Arden for a throwback live coaching session that exposes a pattern most leaders never name out loud. Alexis has a global movement she can see in full detail. She also cannot imagine starting it. Underneath that contradiction lives a vow she made as a child, never to let career come before family. Watching A-list clients pay that exact price for a decade only welded the rule deeper. Now her own vision is the thing the rule is firing against.
This conversation unpacks why the vision itself is the problem, not her courage.<...
The Hidden Niche Inside Your Routine | 988
"You living your life is the solution." — Niiamah
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Holly for a throwback live coaching session that takes apart the most common trap exceptional leaders fall into: building a life plan that requires someone else's permission to activate.
This session goes deep on:
The borrowed timeline. What happens when your next move is locked behind another person's yes.The career placeholder. Why the version of your work you describe in public is often a cover for the one you haven't given yourself permission to name.The premium hidden inside your limits. Ho...Build Where No One Else Is Building | Ep 987
"If you want to hold on to your pride and ego, it ain't worth a damn. Go out and get what you want. I don't care. You beg. I don't care." — Theron
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Theron Washington for a Throwback live coaching session that goes somewhere most coaching conversations never go. Theron came in, calling himself a Mind Scrambler. He left with his own mind scrambled.
This session moves through the architecture of an underdog's life: bankruptcy, welfare, the sheriff at the door, $12 to his name, and the day everything shifted. Underneath the story is...
When Fear Stops Being Your Compass | Ep 986
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and April Cunningham for a throwback live coaching session about what happens when the compass you have been using to find your edge stops pointing anywhere new. April left an 18-year tech career, built two businesses, went live online, and started dating again after divorce. She came in asking: what's left to conquer?
What surfaced was bigger than the next mountain.
In this session:
Why fear stops being a useful compass once you have mastered itThe hidden cost of protecting other people from your messWhere the next edge actually lives when...Find the Mission Story That Moves People | Brittni Cosgrove, Bryn Drescher | Ep 984
"The person who beats the drum of authenticity the most is probably the one that's still discovering who their authentic self is." – Brynn Drescher
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong), Brittni Cosgrove and Bryn Drescher for a live coaching session about the gap between being a great coach and the world knowing it. Two leaders bring the same buried problem: their best work happens in private. The container they've been using is too small for the impact they're built for.
What the session covers:
- The mission that lands versus the one that doesn't.
...
The Trap Of Achievement-Based Worth | Ep 983
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Zach Klein [HANDLE NEEDED] [LINK NEEDED] for a live coaching session on Shape Your World Live. Zach came in messy. Mid-transition, no polished package, no clear next move. What surfaced underneath was bigger than the career question. It was the pattern most high-achieving leaders carry but never name: worth fused to doing. This session goes into the winter season of the creative process, why deconstruction is the work, and what it takes to free a voice that's already inside you.
What you'll take away:
→ Why messiness is not the problem to so...
The Brag Zone Every Leader Needs | Ep 982
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Karen Grant for a Throwback Live coaching session that lands the breakthrough in under ten minutes. Karen came in hunting for what makes her different from the thousands of other transformational coaches in the world. What she walked out with was the answer she already carried. This session is for any leader who keeps searching outside themselves for the language, the framework, or the proof that they are the one.
What you'll take away:
▸ Why talking around your distinction is the real thing keeping you stuck
▸ The difference between feel...
The Next Level Game: How to Stop Climbing the Wrong Ladder | Ep 981
"You may not be any of the individual ingredients, but you're the pot. If there was no pot, they're just separate ingredients. You can't make a stew, you can't make a gumbo, you can't make anything from it without the pot."
Join Niiamah Ashong and guest Palmer as Niiamah introduces the Next Level Game — the difference between getting better at where you are and stepping into where you're meant to be. What unfolds is a man discovering his creative gift isn't writing or directing, it's bringing the pieces together.
What Palmer walks away with
...
Your Capacity, Not Your Capability, Is the Real Limit | Ep 980
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and two leaders, Claire and Amici, for this Livethrowback coaching session that refuses to stay clean. This one is about the price of playing at your next level. Not the strategy. The capacity. What it costs to actually be with the thing that breaks your heart instead of organizing your business around avoiding it. What your frustration with another leader is really telling you about the move you have not made yet. Why integration beats opposition when you want to change a system from the inside.
Three takeaways:
Your capacity, not your capability...Your Impossible Goal Starts With Identity | Diane Cunningham Ellis, Pauline Victoria, Nate Guadagni
"It's not about the impossible goal. It's about the impossible becoming, like who am I going to become and allow myself to become, to step into it fully. Because I don't need permission from anybody else other than myself." — Pauline
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) with guests, Diane Cunningham Ellis, Pauline Victoria and Nate Guadagni for the return of live group coaching on Shape Your World Live. Three outliers. Three real edges. One hour of transformation in real time. In this episode we go deep on impossible goals, seasonal change in business and life, invisible impact, the identity work th...
How Vulnerability Becomes Your Leadership Move | 977
"The more I'm actively trying to be like, what's the authentic thing to do here? The less authentic it actually comes across." — Niiamah
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong), Angelique, and Elisa for a Live throwback session on the move most leaders miss. This session goes deep on the architecture of coming from leadership instead of climbing toward it. The hidden pattern underneath the steps you think you have to take. Why trust is the entry point, not the reward. And why the leaders building the next era of humanity stop waiting for permission to lead, connect, and be seen.
...Why Conventional Success Stops Working | Ep 976
"Jump in. Just contribute in any way and every way and just put yourself there because you will contribute." - Palmer
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Palmer for a live throwback coaching session that breaks open one of the traps high-achievers fall into: trying to be the wrong kind of creator. Palmer has built conventional success in sales. He achieves. He delivers. And he's carried a creative pull for over a decade that he keeps not moving on. This session names why.
What this conversation covers:
The difference between being an ingredient and being the...A Masterclass in Receiving Appreciation | Stacy Louise Christopher | Ep 975
"It's almost like there's a mirror in front of me, and the mirror was cracked or dirty or smudged. And then you just came in and you're like, hey Niiamah, you do know you're looking at a dirty mirror, right? Let me just clean that off."
Join Niiamah Ashong and guest Stacy Louise Christopher in this throwback conversation as she walks him through ten acknowledgments live on camera, naming every dodge as it happens. Most exceptional leaders are catastrophic at receiving acknowledgment; they deflect, minimize, joke past it. This is 48 minutes of Niiamah being walked through it...
You Got Everything You Wanted Now What | Vicky Vaswani | Ep 974
"Success is going to sleep every single night with my heart, mind, body, and soul at peace with one another." — Vicky Vaswani
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Vicky Vaswani for a throwback conversation about what happens when you get everything right and still feel flat. Vicky tracks his life across five areas every month, has a personal definition of success built around heart, mind, body, and soul at peace, and is working toward living to 100. He is extraordinary at achieving what he sets out to achieve. And the question this episode quietly asks: when you've engineered every outcome, wh...
You Won't Feel Enough Until You Begin | Ep 973
"It's so much easier, and people actually want to help people who don't know things." — Justin Jobity
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Justin Jobity, for a throwback live coaching conversation about what it takes to start over in a completely new field with zero qualifications. Justin spent a decade in education technology, building someone else's startup from two guys with an idea into a sold company. When the exit came, so did the question he had been avoiding: what do I actually want? In this session, Justin and Niiamah unpack how convenient jobs create quicksand, why being the du...
Every Time You Were Just YOU, It Worked | Ep 972
"I'm not good at helping people reduce who they are in order to be accepted by the majority. I'm great at taking someone from outsider to outlier." — Niiamah
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Jaspreet Dua for a throwback live coaching conversation that reframes how outliers find their next opportunity. JD has built his entire career through chance encounters: walking into a Bose recruitment fair in a golf t-shirt, polo matches, a random tweet. He calls it luck. Niiamah calls it something else entirely. In this session, JD asks how to sell himself better to the conventional market. Niiamah's an...
What Drives You When There's No One to Prove Wrong | Ep 971
"The hard thing is not making it happen. The hard thing is making the decision." — Dom Moss
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Dom, for a throwback live coaching session recorded during the early days of COVID-19 in New York City. Dom has moved from France to London to Barcelona to Manila to Bali to Hong Kong to New York, gotten a green card from scratch, and made every impossible thing happen. But the book she is writing, the one everyone around her believes in, is not moving. In this session, Niiamah finds out why: the medium is not th...
The Lone Martyr Trap | Ep 970
"I was meant to burn my candle out so that other people could have what they needed." — Tony Martinetti
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Tony for a throwback live coaching session that goes to the root of why high achievers burn out. Tony spent 20 years building a successful career in biotech while quietly suffering inside, eventually hitting the bottom and climbing out. Now he coaches tech leaders through burnout and fulfillment. In this session, Niiamah uncovers the belief Tony had never named out loud: he thought he was put on earth to suffer so others could have what th...
Your Gift Is You Not What You Do | Ep 969
"The gift that your people are looking for is you." — Niiamah
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Matt for a live throwback soul-to-soul coaching session that goes to unexpected places. Matt's mantra as a goalkeeper was "you can't hurt me." He built an armor of mental endurance that carried him through Ironman races, executive life, divorce, and grief. Now he's a coach trying to give the world his gift and realizing the harder he tries, the less he gives. In this session, Niiamah catches him in the act: upgrading from "impressing people with achievement" to "impressing people with vulnerability" is...
Upgrade Your Doubts Upgrade Your Life | Theran Washington | Ep 968
"If you want to hold on to your pride and ego, it ain't worth a damn. Go out and get what you want." — Theran Washington
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Theran "King T." Washington — entrepreneur, former Salsa Aerobics pioneer, and self-described Mind Scrambler — for a throwback live coaching session that goes deep fast. Theron built a salsa empire across 15 LA fitness clubs (with Sugar Ray Leonard in the front row), not from vision, but from wanting to escape competition and haters. Now he's fighting for his biggest mission yet: youth education, women in power, and dignity for the incarc...
Stop Running You Were Built to Fly | Ep 968
"Before you were flying. Now you're walking. They're trying to teach you this great thing called running — and you were flying." — Niiamah
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Kimberly, ex-professional dancer, Nike athlete, and founder of Land the Brand, for a throwback live coaching session that cuts straight to the core. Kimberly walked away from a biomedical degree, refused Nike's audition brief, and got chosen by the highest-grossing tour choreographer in history all while having zero attachment to the outcome. Now she's frustrated, working harder than ever, and producing less than she knows she's capable of. In this session, Niia...
Stop Hiding Behind Being an Expert | Susana Denia | Ep 967
"I'm tired of hiding. If I can become an expert in being messy, I think we're all going to benefit from that." — Niiamah
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Susana Denia a leadership coach who traded financial markets in London for coaching executives in Madrid, and discovered her biggest breakthrough came not from a coach or a therapist, but from a 2-minute children's video about sadness. In this live Shape Your World session, Niiamah coaches Susana through the real thing blocking her next calling: the expert identity. Together they uncover why simplicity sits above complexity, not below it, and wh...
Your Hidden Voice Has The Power | Robin Eaton | Ep 966
"I told my own soul to shut up and go sit in the corner and basically I denied myself, my own presence." — Robin
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Robin Eaton, former federal law enforcement officer turned shaman, spiritual teacher, and guide, for a throwback conversation that goes straight to the root. Robin spent 20 years supervising people coming out of prison, silencing her own gifts to survive a system that had no room for them. What she found on the other side: the voice you shut down to be acceptable is the same one that holds your power. This ep...
Stop Planning Start Inviting Five People | Gina Smith | Ep 965
"I've been thinking of the limitation as a restriction rather than a gift." – Gina
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Gina, a regional sales manager overseeing $100M in revenue, as she works through a live coaching session on one of the most common traps high-performing leaders fall into: building a plan so big it never starts.
Gina came in wanting to design a group coaching program. What emerged was something simpler and far more powerful, that the capacity ceiling she thought was holding her back is actually the thing that makes her offer rare, urgent, and worth sh...
You Can't Win If You Need Certainty Before You Start | April Cunningham | Ep 964
"I trust myself and I don't trust myself; complicitly. These two are partners in crime keeping you exactly where you are." – Niiamah Ashong
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and April Cunningham for a live coaching conversation that goes somewhere neither of them planned. April came in talking about dating. What surfaced was a paradox she had never named: she wants adventure, free fall, and full uncertainty in love and that desire is exactly what makes her shut down. Niiamah coaches her through the trap in real time, shares his own version of the same paradox, and leaves her with a...
Authenticity Is the Truest Form of Rebellion | Shelley Paxton | Ep 963
"We edit our story before it even has a chance to get out in the world — we preempt it by what we think other people are going to say about it." – Shelley Paxton
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Shelley Paxton, Chief Soul Officer and author of Soulbbatical, for a throwback conversation that goes way beyond the book. Shelley was the CMO of Harley-Davidson. She had the title, the brand, the world travel. And she was slowly dying inside. This episode isn't about burnout. It's about what happens when the productivity mindset that built your career becomes the exact thin...
What Got You Here Might be The Wrong Tool for Your Next Level | Kristen Kosinski | Ep 962
"Everything is figureoutable. Like, everything can be figured out if you want it to." – Kristen Kosinski
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Kristen Kosinski, coach, former Paramount executive, nonprofit founder, and mother, for a raw look at what it actually takes to reinvent yourself again and again without losing what matters most.
Kristen has had four careers, seven roles, and one relentless skill: figuring it out. In this conversation, Niiamah helps her see that the drift-and-reset cycle she calls failure is actually the most advanced navigation tool a trailblazer has, and that she's already living the life sh...
What's Actually Keeping You From Starting | Tam Nguyen | Ep 961
"The fear of getting rejections is worse than the rejection itself." – Tam Nguyen
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Tam Nguyen, business development director, Vietnam Rising podcast founder, and the person her foreign colleagues call the only local they truly trust, for a live coaching session that peels back a fear most leaders misname.
Tam thinks she's afraid of public criticism. What she discovers is something far more specific and far more worth facing. If you're building something that matters and you keep stalling at the edge of visibility, this conversation will show you exactly why.
...
Help the People Already in Front of You | Hayden Lee | Ep 960
"I want to work with finishers. I want to help people finish. I think I'm called to work with the finishers." — Hayden Lee
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Master Certified Coach Hayden Lee for a throwback conversation that goes deep on the inner journey behind the outer success. In this episode, Hayden unpacks the "low hanging fruit" trap, the belief that serving the people already in front of you is somehow beneath your mission, and discovers live in conversation the distinction that reframes everything: he's not built to work with starters. He's built to work with finishers. If yo...
What If You Are Enough Right Now | Zach Kleyn | Ep 959
"What needs to die is a connection, an intertwining — between the actions that I do in the world, my accomplishments, my achievements, and my sense of worth or value. Those two things feel over-coupled." – Zach Kleyn
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Zach Kleyn as they go deep on the hidden cost of high achievement and what happens when you finally stop trying to earn love through results.
Zach is a coach, artist, and creative consultant who helps people freely express their unique voice. But in this raw, unscripted conversation, he's the one in the chair, navigating a se...
Permission to Stop Toning Yourself Down | Laurens | Ep 958
"I've been modulating the intensity out of fear of overdoing it." – Laurens
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Laurens, an Agile management consultant and graphic facilitator, in a rare live throwback coaching conversation that goes somewhere most podcasts never reach. Laurens has spent his life being extraordinary for others and this episode exposes exactly why that's been costing him. The reframe that lands: being selfish isn't a betrayal of the people you serve. It's the prerequisite. From owning your intensity to giving yourself permission to need something, this episode is for the outlier who's been told they're too much an...
The Gift Inside Your Hardest Story | Diana & Danby | Ep 957
"There are gifts in failure, vulnerability, and shame. For us to grow, for us to connect with a part of ourselves that we've shut down for means of survival." – Diana
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and guests Diana and Danby for a live throwback coaching session that redefines what next level growth actually looks like.
Diana opens the conversation by doing what most leaders won't — owning the full gift of her hardest story, including 20 years of undiagnosed PTSD and the courage it took to find the transformation inside it. Danby confronts a quieter truth: a lifetime of sayi...
The Rebel Who Sold A Hundred Million Dollars | Christine Volden | Ep 956
"I always met and exceeded my number. It was never hard. I felt like this is the easiest job in the world. And I always felt a little bit of guilt around it — and it wasn't until now that I realized it was just easy for me because that's how I wanted it to be." – Christine Volden
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and sales coach Christine Volden for a throwback conversation that challenges everything you've been told about hard work and success.
Christine spent 15 years in corporate sales, closing over $100 million, and spent most of it feeling guil...
Stop Waiting To Feel Ready | Christopher Joseph | Ep 955
"There isn't safety in freezing in non-action. There's great risk in that." – Christopher Joseph
Join Niiamah (@niiamahashong) and Dr. Christopher Joseph — coach, mindfulness trainer, and former civil engineer — for a conversation that turns the idea of motivation completely upside down. Chris reveals why waiting to feel ready is actually the riskiest choice you can make, how he rebuilt after losing six figures in a Ponzi scheme, and why withholding your potential from the world is an ethical failure. From his breakdown during a PhD to building a thriving coaching practice, Chris's story is a raw, honest case study...
