What happens when a bestselling business author stops writing for the marketplace and starts writing for his grandchildren?

In this heartwarming episode of Beyond the Draft, Imma sits down with Bret Ridgway, entrepreneur, publishing professional, business author, and creator of the children's book Games Animals Play.

After building companies, writing bestselling books, and helping countless authors find their voice, Bret found inspiration in the most unexpected place: a phrase he couldn't get out of his head.

"Crickets playing croquet."

What began as a whimsical thought became a colorful children's book, a creative adventure, and ultimately a legacy for the people who matter most.

In this conversation, Bret shares:

His journey from telemarketer to publishing entrepreneur

• How he overcame a fear of public speaking

• The biggest mistakes authors make

• Why grandchildren changed his perspective on writing

• The surprising power of following seemingly silly creative ideas

• What legacy really means when family becomes your audience

This episode is a reminder that not every great book is written for the world. Sometimes the most important stories are written for the people who will remember us longest.

If you've ever ignored a creative idea because it seemed too small, too strange, or not serious enough, this conversation may change your mind.

Because sometimes a silly phrase becomes a story.

And sometimes a story becomes a legacy.

Listen Now!!!!!!!!

He led a state through the most contested elections in recent American history. And the whole time nobody knew what it was actually costing him.

David Maeda served as the Director of Elections for the Minnesota Secretary of State from 2019 to 2024. He navigated the machinery of democracy at the exact moment when that machinery was being questioned, attacked, and defended in ways that tested everyone inside it. He certified results under scrutiny. He faced threats. He showed up every single day for one of the most important and publicly visible jobs in America.

And through all of it — he was quietly battling depression. A heart that had been broken more times than he can easily count. Mental health struggles that did not stop because the ballots needed counting.

His memoir is called This Is Not Who We Are: Confessions of an Elections Official. It rose to number one on Amazon in biographies and memoirs and six other categories at launch. And it is in his own words not political. It is extremely personal.

It is about music. Cats. Friends. Heartbreak held with humor. And what it looks like to carry a deeply human interior life inside one of the most publicly scrutinized jobs in America.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, David opens up about the personal story behind the institutional one. About why he chose to write about depression and heartbreak instead of political drama. About what music gave him when nothing else could reach him. About the humor that refused to leave even when everything else felt too heavy to carry. And about what he most wants every person holding it together professionally while quietly struggling personally to hear.

This conversation is for every human being who has ever shown up fully for a job that demands everything while their interior life demands everything else.

David Maeda just gave them permission to finally be honest about what that costs.

🎙️ Host: Imma

📚 Guest: David Maeda/Elections Administrator · Memoir Author · Mental Health Advocate

🌐 davidmaeda.com

📖 This Is Not Who We Are: Available on Amazon

Beyond the Draft — Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.

What if financial freedom wasn't the destination?

What if it was the beginning of your real work?

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, host Imma sits down with debut novelist Lukas Gaines, a former Big Tech professional who pursued Financial Independence not to retire early, but to build the freedom to write.

After years of disciplined saving, strategic planning, and intentionally building his own runway, Lukas walked away from a successful career and dedicated himself to telling the stories he wished existed when he was younger.

The result is FIRE on Fire, a queer romance releasing July 21, 2026, following Ash, a spreadsheet-driven tech manager pursuing Financial Independence, and Kael, a broke artist who challenges everything Ash believes about control, success, and what freedom is actually for.

In this conversation, you'll discover:

• Why Lukas used the FIRE movement as a creative freedom strategy

• The mindset required to leave a successful career without guarantees

• What Big Tech taught him about ambition, optimization, and identity

• The surprising connection between financial independence and creativity

• Why queer love stories matter beyond representation

• The emotional question at the heart of FIRE on Fire: What is freedom actually for?

• How writers can build their own runway instead of waiting for permission

• The courage it takes to build a life around the stories that matter most

This is a conversation about risk, purpose, creativity, and the difference between making a living and making a life.

For every writer, creator, entrepreneur, or dreamer who feels trapped between security and calling, Lukas offers a powerful reminder.

You don't have to wait for permission.

You can build your own runway.

Connect with Lukas Gaines and learn more about FIRE on Fire: Lukasgaines.com

If you've ever wondered whether the life you're building is serving the work you're meant to do, this episode is for you.

Listen now.

What if some of the most important conversations of your life have already happened?

What if God has been speaking to you all along, and you simply didn't know how to recognize it?

In this powerful episode of Beyond the Draft, host Imma sits down with Rev. Dr. David Chotka, Founder and Director of Spirit-Equip Ministries, international speaker, theologian, prayer leader, and author who has spent more than twenty years studying the Greek text of Scripture.

Drawing from decades of ministry, global teaching experience, and deep biblical scholarship, David explores one of the most profound questions a person can ask:

How does God speak to ordinary people today?

Together, they dive into the conversations many churches avoid, healing prayer, the supernatural nature of Scripture, spiritual experiences, discernment, and what the Bible actually says when read in its original language.

In this conversation, you'll discover:

• Why David believes God has been speaking to far more people than they realize

• What twenty years in the Greek text revealed that surprised him most

• Why many churches struggle to talk about the supernatural

• The difference between biblical supernatural experiences and spiritual speculation

• How prayer transcends culture, denomination, and geography

• What happens when believers read Scripture expecting God to act

• The common experiences people dismiss as coincidence that deserve a second look

• How to approach spiritual experiences with both faith and discernment

Whether you're deeply rooted in your faith, wrestling with unanswered questions, or reflecting on experiences you've never fully understood, this episode offers both theological depth and practical wisdom.

Rev. Dr. David Chotka brings together scholarship, pastoral experience, and spiritual insight to explore what Scripture says about hearing God's voice, and why that conversation matters now more than ever.

Connect with Rev. Dr. David Chotka and Spirit-Equip Ministries: Spiritequip.com

If you've ever wondered whether a moment in your life was more than coincidence, this conversation may change the way you think about it.

Listen now.

What if the reason your book isn't finished isn't a lack of time?

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, host Imma sits down with Liam Begley, Vancouver film industry crew member and author of Broken Interstellar, an epic science fiction novel written while working sixty-hour weeks in one of the world's most demanding creative industries.

Liam shares how a story that began as a simple adventure evolved into a thought-provoking exploration of power, governance, individuality, collective identity, and the tension between domination and support.

Drawing from decades inside the highly unionized film industry, he reveals how production skills, resource management, discipline, and long-term thinking helped him accomplish what many aspiring writers never finish: completing and publishing an ambitious novel despite having almost no free time.

In this conversation, you'll discover:

• How Liam found time to write while working sixty-hour weeks

• Why he treated his novel like a film production

• The real reason many writers abandon manuscripts halfway through

• Why Broken Interstellar rejects empires and military hierarchies

• How unionized spaceship crews became the foundation of his worldbuilding

• The challenge of self-publishing without an audience

• How to explore politics and philosophy in fiction without preaching

• What it takes to finish a book when life refuses to slow down

For every writer waiting for better circumstances, this episode is a reminder that stories are not finished when time appears.

They are finished when writers decide they matter enough to keep going.

Connect with Liam Begley:

www.liambegley.ca

Get your notebook ready. This conversation is filled with hard-earned wisdom for writers, creators, and anyone trying to build something meaningful while balancing the demands of real life.

He took thirty hours to come into this world. And has been wreaking havoc ever since.

At six years old, Zac Baldwin watched Fred Astaire on a black and white television and leapt up with everything a child has and said I want to do that. He never stopped wanting it. And he never stopped doing it.

What followed was one of the most wildly, gloriously, impossibly full lives ever brought to Beyond the Draft. He studied dance for ten years. He choreographed stagecoach robberies and barroom brawls in the streets of Albuquerque, full contact, full commitment, and he has the knees to prove it. He came to Hollywood with a prodigious history in dance, stunts, choreography, writing, and directing. Hollywood responded by making him a furniture mover and a ditch digger.

He kept showing up anyway.

He was offered good money repeatedly to change his female action hero to male. Every friend he had thought he was crazy to say no. He said no every single time.

And then he wrote The Legend of Johnnie Swann, a novel featuring a kickass female street fighter whose fighting style he personally created and taught. The Vietnam veterans in the book were real friends who shared their real stories and trusted him to carry them.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Zac opens up about the six-year-old who never forgot what he wanted, the Hollywood grind that tried to break him, the hero he refused to compromise, and what it means to write a novel that honors veterans who gave you their truth.

This conversation is for every writer who has been told their story is not commercial enough, their hero is the wrong gender, and their vision is not what the market wants right now.

Zac Baldwin is proof that the story worth telling is always the one you refused to change.

🎙️ Host: Imma

✍️ Guest: Zac Baldwin: Dancer/ Stuntman/ Playwright/ Novelist

🌐 [email protected]

📚 The Legend of Johnnie Swann: Amazon

Beyond the Draft/ Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.

Pull up a chair. Pour yourself a glass of iced tea. And get ready to smile.

Because today's guest is going to remind you that the best writing lives are not always built in quiet studies and writing retreats and carefully curated creative routines.

Sometimes they are built in classrooms full of students who needed someone to believe in them. On blind dates in high school that turn into four decades of love. In small Arkansas towns that the whole world overlooked, and one writer decided to set her entire series in anyway.

Susan Gooch is a Southern girl through and through. She will not be caught dead in public without her hair and makeup done. She prefers everything fried and smothered in ketchup. She drinks enough iced tea to keep the South in business. And her favorite place in the entire world is at home in her pajamas, curled up with a good book.

She also reads more than 200 books a year, champions other authors through her Instagram spotlight Y'all Have Got To Read This, and has built a romance writing career set entirely in her hometown of Searcy, Arkansas because she believes it is the best place on earth to raise a family. And she dared anyone to tell her otherwise.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Susan opens up about the blind date in high school that became her favorite love story, and how much of it has quietly found its way onto her pages. About the decades she spent in the classroom helping students find their voice and what all of that teaching gave her as a storyteller. About closing the classroom door for the last time and stepping fully into a writing career and whether it felt like freedom or like falling. And about the most beautifully optimistic thing a writer can believe, that the best book is always the one you are about to write.

This conversation is for every retired teacher who has a novel in her head. Every grandmother who has been saying someday. Every homebody who has a whole world inside her that no one has read yet.

Susan Gooch just gave all of them permission to finally sit down and write it.

And she delivered it, warm, funny, deeply wise, and smelling faintly of sweet tea and fried everything.

Welcome home.

🎙️ Host: Imma

📚 Guest: Susan Gooch: Southern Storyteller/ Romance Author/ Retired Educator/ Book Champion

📖 The Carrington Series: Susan Gooch.Author

📸 Y'all Have Got To Read This on Instagram/ Susan Gooch Author

Beyond the Draft — Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.

Every morning you open your wardrobe, pull something out, and walk into the world.

You probably never stopped to think about what just happened.

Courtney Barriger has. And after this conversation, neither will you.

She is an award-winning artist, published author, founder of ReFashion Workshop, and the founder and designer of Holding Court Inc, a sustainable luxury fashion brand built on the radical belief that what we wear is not decoration. It is a declaration. A choice. A responsibility. And sometimes, a health crisis hiding in plain sight.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Courtney pulls back the curtain on everything the fashion industry does not want you to know. She talks about the microplastics living inside your clothing right now and making their way into your body. About how what you wear affects your actual physical health, not just your mood or your confidence. About why conscious consumerism is not a trend, it is a survival skill.

And then she goes deeper.

She talks about mythology and the subconscious mind, and where they live inside the clothes we choose every single morning. About storytelling and identity in the digital age ,and whether the self we present online is a story we are telling or a trap we are building. About what it means to remain fully, defiantly human in the age of artificial intelligence. And about why the most powerful stories are not always the ones written on the page.

Sometimes they are the ones we wear.

With over 100,000 followers and readers across Instagram and Substack, Courtney has built a movement around the idea that getting dressed is a conscious act, and that every choice carries a consequence the industry has trained us not to see.

This conversation is for every writer, every creative, and every person who has ever opened their wardrobe on autopilot and walked into the world without asking the question Courtney Barriger has spent her entire career answering.

What are you really saying to yourself, to the planet, to the world when you choose what to put on your body today?

After this episode, you will never stop asking.

🎙️ Host: Imma

👗 Guest: Courtney Barriger/ Artist/Author / Founder of ReFashion Workshop /Designer of Holding Court Inc.

🌐 Holdingcourt.co / Courtney Barrier

📖 Amazon

Beyond the Draft/ Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.

Most brands do not have a strategy problem.

They have a story problem.

They know what they sell. They know what they do. But when they sit down to say who they are and why it matters, the words come out flat. Generic. Like someone else entirely. And no amount of marketing budget or content strategy fixes a story that was never really found in the first place.

Madeline Sargent has spent her career fixing exactly that.

She started by writing for Alaska Airlines Magazine , learning early that the best stories are never the ones with the most impressive credentials. They are the ones that make you feel something. From there she translated dense academic research and complex financial content into stories real people actually wanted to read. Because she understood something most communicators miss: information without emotion is just data. And data does not move people. Stories do.

Armed with a Masters in Strategic Communication from American University, she built MadlyCreative , a consultancy helping founders, entrepreneurs, and creative teams do the one thing in business that nobody warns you will be the hardest: saying clearly, honestly, and compellingly who they are and why it matters.

Her philosophy is simple and radical. Strategy without soul is just noise. And a story without strategy never finds the people it was meant for. You need both. Always both.

And then in 2025 ,because building a thriving consultancy was apparently not enough ; she launched She Says It. A podcast and creative project built entirely around celebrating the stories of women. Stories about business, creativity, and becoming. Stories that have gone untold for too long because the women carrying them were never given permission to believe their voice deserved the space.

Madeline Sargent has spent her entire career proving that it does.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, we go deep into what it actually takes to find your true story and tell it in a way that connects. We talk about the brands that do not know their own story and how she helps them find it. About authentic messaging in a world drowning in content. About what coffee shops, travel, and collecting stories from women around her have to do with great brand strategy. And about why she built She Says It, and what women's stories she felt the world was not yet hearing loudly enough.

This conversation is for every founder who has stared at a blinking cursor on their About page and given up. Every creative who knows their work is good but cannot find the sentence that makes someone else see it. Every writer with a message burning inside them who is still searching for the words that do it justice.

Madeline Sargent is about to hand you back your own voice.

And once you have it , she is going to show you exactly how to use it.

🎙️ Host: Imma

✍️ Guest: Madeline Sargent /Brand Strategist/ Writer /Founder of MadlyCreative/Host of She Says It

🌐 MadlyCreative:Madlycreative.co

🎧 She Says It Podcast: She.Says.co

Beyond the Draft/ Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.

What does it look like when a person does not just study change, but becomes it?

Brian Gorman started as an introverted Eagle Scout at Syracuse University, quietly trying to convince his school to change a mascot that had been there for decades. That one act of courageous, persistent refusal to accept things as they are became the opening line of one of the most extraordinary lives of purposeful transformation you will ever hear about.

What followed was decades of living change at every level, personal, organizational, and social.

He became a TEDx speaker, An author, A podcast host. A change catalyst and consultant working with everything from brand new startups to century-old global corporations. An AIDS activist, An LGBTQ plus rights activist. A volunteer dedicated to helping heal survivors of child sexual abuse.

And through all of it,one thread ran through everything. Change. Not as a concept. Not as a framework. But as a lived, daily, lifelong commitment to sharing everything he knows about moving through transformation with everyone he can reach in every way he knows how.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Brian pulls back the curtain on the journey that turned a quiet introvert into one of the most compelling voices on human and organizational transformation working today. We talk about the difference between changing yourself, changing an organization, and changing a society,and which one is hardest. About what a TEDx stage teaches you that a consulting room never can. About the activism that took him into rooms most people avoid entirely. And about why he finally decided to write it all down, and what the page gives his message that no stage or session ever could.

This conversation is for every person standing at the edge of a change they know needs to happen in themselves, in their organization, or in their world, but who cannot yet find the first step.

Brian Gorman just gave them everything they need to take it.

🎙️ Host: Imma

🎤 Guest: Brian Gorman/ Author, TEDx Speaker, Change Catalyst , Activist.

📚 Available on Amazon

🌐 [email protected]

Beyond the Draft / Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.