Interview with Yoli Ray: Self-Image & Identity Coach, speaker, author
Aug 31, 2026
Yoli Ray, PCC, is a Self-Image & Identity Coach, speaker, author, portrait photographer, and Human Design practitioner specializing in identity, communication, and self-expression. She helps accomplished women reconnect with who they are, raise the internal standards shaping their choices, and create lives and businesses that reflect the women they are becoming.
She is the founder of Sparkle & Soul International and creator of The Diamond Standard™, a transformational framework centered on identity, self-love, self-trust, visibility, and self-leadership. Her work brings together evidence-based coaching, Human Design, personal development, and more than two decades of leadership experience.
Yoli is also a contributing author to Million Dollar Moves and Top 100 Women in Power. At the heart of her work is a simple belief: some of our most powerful transformations don't begin with doing more. They begin with seeing ourselves differently.
What kind of work do you do?
At the heart of my work, I help women redefine who they are and raise the internal standards shaping how they live, lead, and make decisions.
I primarily work with high-achieving women who are successful on paper but have reached a point where the version of themselves that created their current life is not necessarily the woman they want leading the next chapter.
Through coaching, Human Design, workshops, speaking, and The Diamond Standard™, I help women strengthen self-trust, deepen self-worth, become more fully expressed, and make decisions from a more authentic and self-led identity.
I also work as a portrait photographer, which might seem like a completely different business, but to me it isn't. Coaching and photography both invite a woman to confront the same question:
Can you see yourself clearly enough to believe what is already there?
What inspired you to get started as an entrepreneur?
I don't think there was one dramatic moment when I decided, "I'm going to become an entrepreneur."
For me, it was more like a persistent knowing that there had to be more.
I've spent years building a successful corporate career, raising a family, pursuing education, developing my photography business, studying coaching and personal development, and continuing to ask myself, "What am I really here to do?"
Eventually I realized I didn't want to simply create another business. I wanted to build work around the ideas I care most deeply about: identity, freedom, personal growth, self-expression, and helping women recognize their own capacity.
Entrepreneurship became one of the ways I could create that freedom and make that contribution.
What was your biggest struggle to get things going for your online business?
Clarity.
Not because I didn't have ideas. I had plenty of those! My problem was probably the opposite.
I could see so many possibilities that it was easy to create offers, change directions, learn another modality, or pursue another idea before fully allowing one thing to become established.
Eventually I realized that my business challenge wasn't simply marketing or strategy. It was identity.
I had to become clear about what I believed, what I wanted to be known for, and the identity I needed to lead from in order to build the business I envisioned.
That lesson eventually became one of the foundations of my work: change begins at the identity level.
Was there a time you thought about giving up? What kept you from quitting?
Absolutely.
There have been many moments when it would have been easier to decide that entrepreneurship simply wasn't working quickly enough and go back to treating it like a hobby.
But I kept coming back to the same question: If I quit, does the desire actually disappear?
For me, it never did.
I may have changed the business model, changed the offer, learned something new, or taken a different route, but the desire to create meaningful work and build something of my own kept returning.
At some point you realize persistence doesn't always mean stubbornly following the same path. Sometimes persistence means being willing to evolve while staying committed to the vision.
What have you learned since beginning?
I've learned that business will introduce you to yourself very quickly.
It will show you where you trust yourself and where you don't. Where you are willing to be visible and where you hide. Where you believe your work has value and where you're waiting for someone else to validate it.
I've also learned that strategy matters, but strategy works very differently when the person implementing it believes herself.
That is one reason identity has become such an important part of my work.
What’s the best advice you’ve received?
One of the most valuable lessons I've learned is that you don't have to know the entire path before you take the next step.
I used to think clarity meant having everything figured out.
Now I think clarity often comes from movement.
You make a decision. You experience what happens. You learn. You adjust. And little by little, you become someone who trusts herself to navigate what comes next.
What advice would you give someone just starting out?
Don't spend so much time trying to look like an entrepreneur that you forget to become one.
You don't need the perfect website, brand photos, funnel, logo, course platform, color palette, and seventeen certifications before you can help somebody.
Start solving a real problem for a real person.
Pay attention to what people consistently come to you for.
Get close enough to your clients to understand what they actually need instead of building what you assume they need.
And give yourself permission to evolve. Your first version doesn't have to be your forever version.
What’s the professional win you’re most proud of?
I'm proud of earning my Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credential through the International Coaching Federation because it represents both the skill and integrity I want to bring to my coaching work.
But I'm equally proud of creating a body of work that finally feels like mine.
The Diamond Standard™ brings together years of leadership, coaching, Human Design, personal development, photography, and my own lived experience around identity and self-worth.
There is something powerful about reaching the point where your work stops feeling like a collection of things you've learned and starts feeling like an expression of what you believe.
Which book(s) would you recommend to help entrepreneurs with success and personal development?
I'm an avid reader of personal development, so narrowing this down is hard, but a few books have really stayed with me.
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz is one of my all-time favorites. It's deceptively simple, but the principles around the stories we tell ourselves, the assumptions we make, and taking responsibility for how we move through the world have influenced me for years.
The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest is another favorite because it explores self-sabotage and the internal patterns that can keep us from creating the lives we say we want. I believe so much of meaningful change requires understanding what is happening beneath our behavior, not simply trying harder to change the behavior itself.
For women in business, I also love The Audacity to Be Queen by Gina DeVee. It challenges women to think differently about ambition, leadership, visibility, receiving, and what we're willing to allow ourselves to want.
And more recently, The Black Book of Power by Stan Taylor really made me think about conditioning, identity, personal power, and the unconscious programming that influences the way we operate.
Apparently, I have a type when it comes to books. I'm drawn to anything that makes me question what I believe, recognize where I've been operating unconsciously, and take greater ownership of who I'm becoming.
For me, entrepreneurship and personal development are inseparable. Building a business will eventually bring you face-to-face with yourself.
Do you have a routine that you attest to your success? If yes, what is it?
I don't have a rigid "successful people wake up at 4:47 a.m." routine.
What matters more to me is creating regular space to check in with myself before allowing the outside world to decide what deserves my attention.
I reflect on where I'm going, what matters right now, what decisions need to be made, and whether the way I'm operating actually aligns with the life and business I'm trying to create.
I've learned that productivity and progress aren't always the same thing.
Sometimes the most important thing I can do is stop, get clear, and choose deliberately.
How has social media played a factor in your success?
My relationship with social media has actually changed quite a bit.
For the past year, I've taken a significant step back from consistently posting and focused much more intentionally on relationships, personal connections, networking, and being in conversation with people.
Part of that came from understanding my Human Design more deeply. I have a 4-line profile, which places a strong emphasis on relationships, community, and opportunities that develop through genuine connection. That helped me release the pressure to feel like I had to feed the algorithm to be successful.
Some of my most meaningful opportunities have come through conversations, introductions, communities I'm part of, speaking, collaborations, and people simply knowing what I do and who I serve.
I still see social media as a valuable tool, and I'm beginning to return to it more intentionally. But I want to use it as an extension of relationship-building rather than treating visibility as a numbers game.
For me, a smaller network of people who genuinely know, trust, and understand my work can be far more powerful than a large audience that barely knows who I am.
What are the biggest social media mistakes you see commonly made?
Trying so hard to create content that people stop communicating.
There is a lot of pressure to follow formulas: use this hook, post this many times, create this type of Reel, say these words.
Those tools can be helpful, but people can feel when there isn't a person behind the content.
The other mistake is only posting when you have something to sell.
If you want an audience to trust you, let them experience how you think before you ask them to buy from you.
Share your perspective. Ask good questions. Teach. Tell stories. Have actual conversations.
What is the business tool that’s been most helpful?
Coaching.
And I don't just mean because I'm a coach.
Having someone who can help you see the assumptions you're making, challenge your thinking, separate fear from fact, and hear what you aren't hearing in your own language is incredibly valuable.
We tend to think our biggest entrepreneurial problems are tactical.
Sometimes they are.
But sometimes the problem isn't the funnel.
It's the person avoiding the decision about the funnel.
Is there something you wish everyone knew?
Yes.
Self-love is a standard, not a feeling.
We tend to think self-love means looking in the mirror and feeling amazing about ourselves every day.
I see it differently.
Self-love is a standard, not a feeling. Self-trust matters more than confidence. And both become visible in the choices we make.
You don't have to feel wildly confident every day to choose yourself.
And I believe self-trust ultimately matters more than confidence because confidence says, "I think I can do this."
Self-trust says, "Whatever happens, I trust myself to respond."
What’s coming up for you in the next few months?
This is a really exciting season for me.
I'm preparing for the launch of Million Dollar Moves, a collaborative book featuring women entrepreneurs and leaders, coming November 11, 2026. My chapter explores identity, self-recognition, and what happens when a woman becomes willing to believe the reflection other people have been seeing in her all along.
I'm also continuing to build The Diamond Standard™, including assessments, coaching experiences, workshops, and a six-month transformational coaching experience for women who are ready to redefine who they are and how they lead their lives.
And in early 2027, I'll be speaking on a topic that sits at the center of all of my work: Change Begins at the Identity Level.
There is quite a bit happening, and what excites me most is that it all feels like it's pointing in the same direction.
What has being successful taught you?
That success doesn't automatically make you feel successful.
You can collect accomplishments, degrees, credentials, promotions, income, recognition, and opportunities and still quietly move the finish line every time you reach it.
I've had to learn to recognize myself.
That may actually be one of the most important lessons behind The Diamond Standard.
There is a difference between becoming more accomplished and becoming more anchored in who you are.
The second one changes everything.
What are some fun facts about you?
I'm both a life coach and portrait photographer, which means I can spend one conversation asking you about your deepest beliefs about yourself and the next telling you to turn your chin two inches toward the window.
I love travel and am fascinated by how new places can completely shift our perspective.
I also have a thing for symbolism. Diamonds and swans show up throughout my brand because both represent becoming, identity, transformation, and recognizing what has been there all along.
And despite building a business around self-mastery, I am still very much a student of my own life. I don't believe growth ends because you become the coach.
How can our readers find you online?
You can connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube at @TheSelfLoveShutterbug.
You can also follow The Diamond Standard Diaries on Substack (YoliRay.Substack.com), where I write about identity, self-love, self-trust, becoming, leadership, and creating a life that feels as good internally as it looks externally.
Take the Diamond Standard Self=Assessment: LiveTheDiamondStandard.com
Website: www.YoliRay.com
Get Your Human Design Chart: YourSparkleCode.com
And I'd love for readers to watch for Million Dollar Moves, releasing November 11, 2026, and the upcoming experiences inside The Diamond Standard™.
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