In today’s episode, I am interviewing two great businesswomen Ashley and Brittany Silfies, the co-owners and creators of Pink Picasso and Modern Monet.  Both companies are owned and run by a woman-owned team with a goal of providing a beautiful, quality product.

Ashley and Brittany started the company in the middle of a personal crisis, and so many things were crumbling around them. However, neither allowed the chaos to take over what they knew their purpose was. At the time, Brittany worked hard to provide for their new family. On the other hand, Ashley was very aware she would not cut it. She was taking care of their youngest daughter and two other little children. Ashley would sit in that apartment looking at a white wall, and it was in looking at that white wall that she got the inspiration for her business. 

If you are looking forward to starting a business, or you are in a business that you are already questioning why you started it since it is not yet paying off, it is a beautiful reminder that things that are most rewarding are also the most challenging. As a business owner for 13 years, Ashley and Brittany resonate with me so deeply at that level. Not even considering the personal aspects the two of them were trying to overcome this time. Listen up as they share some advice to a business owner, someone starting a business, or even a life change.

Timestamps

[06:45] Brittany’s advice to business owner

[07:50] Knowing your truth

[11:59] Questioning Authority respectfully

[17:30] Being a woman in business, avoiding validation and new standards for the coming generation

[21:30] Advice to women the season of change

[24:24] What it means to commit

[26:10] Parting Advice

To connect with Ashley and Brittany: 

Pink Picasso Website 

Pink Picasso Instagram 

Modern Monet Website

Ashley Silfies Instagram 

Brittany Silfies Instagram 

To learn more about my coaching, photography, podcast, and to stay connected, visit me at:

Alisha Crossley Website

Alisha Crossley Photography Website

Alisha’s Amazon Favorites List

Alisha Crossley Photography Instagram

Alisha Crossley Official Instagram

To learn more about The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course, click on the link below:

The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course

 

With a bunch of shared stories and experiences, we can connect with one another and move forward with life. What things can you avoid and learn quickly that I didn’t?

I first looked for ADHD after a recommendation from my cardiologist, who referred me to a psychiatrist. I actually went to talk about the need for better focus. I was struggling with the ability to stay focused and stay present. Since our first baby was born, I was always diagnosed with anxiety and depression. I struggled with both until a few months ago when I visited a psychiatrist to discuss the focus issue. In doing so, I only imagined a new antidepressant or probably a different dosage. I didn’t have high hopes for anything major changing.

Truthfully, being a mom of three and running a business, I am always trying to find ways to be efficient. The focus issues that I experienced and had always experienced were tied to being an overachiever, someone who had a million things going on and had a hard time saying no. It turns out that the inability to plan and understand time well, the anxiety, depression, and so many things were connected to ADHD diagnosis.

So in this episode, I get to talk about very specific time management tips; if you have ADHD or suspect you have it, that will be beneficial. Over the years, I have sought out so many professionals for help to manage my time better effectively and be the best I could be. Tune in and learn how you can get better at it!

Timestamps:

[07:20] Why do we lack the ability to plan?

[10:15] Planning backward

[13:36] Scheduling tasks

[15:14] Putting everything on a timer

[17:04] Creating rewards for finishing tasks

[20:25] Running project narratives

[23:40] External versus Internal ability

[26:10] Change your self-talk and keep a time management win list.

[30:19] Doubling or tripling the amount of time you think a task can take

[32:31] Having a planner or planning app.

To catch our previous episodes on ADHD

• Episode 6: Could It Be ADHD?
• Episode 9: Late Life ADHD Diagnosis and Entrepreneurship with Certified Coach Cathy Rashidian
• Episode 14: 3 Things I Had NO Idea Were Connected to ADHD

To learn more about my coaching, photography, podcast, and to stay connected, visit me at:

Alisha Crossley Website

Alisha Crossley Photography Website

Alisha’s Amazon Favorites List

Alisha Crossley Photography Instagram

Alisha Crossley Official Instagram

To learn more about The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course, click on the link below:

The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course

On today’s episode I’m focusing on being hyper focused. I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, and I’ve had a real learning journey since the diagnosis to try to manage my condition and to understand how my brain works. I want to encourage you to get to know yourself too, so that you can function better in your relationships and in your business and find out how to work from your magic. Once you get rid of limiting beliefs about yourself and your abilities, you can start to achieve the things you want from life. 

Did you know that up until 2002, women weren’t included in generalized studies of ADHD? Presentations of ADHD in women are quite different, and it can often go undiagnosed because little girls don’t tend to cause problems in the classroom, so they rarely get specialist referrals. They can often ‘pass’ as neurotypical, and it’s not until later in life when their ADHD really starts to cause a problem, when they’re juggling work, family, relationships, and other responsibilities. This was exactly my story, as I thought that my ADHD was anxiety, and that my anxiety was preventing me from focusing on my children and relaxing with my family. Since my diagnosis, I’ve turned my ADHD around and used my hyperfocus to succeed in my business, and to learn more about my condition. 

In this episode, I walk you through my mental process since the diagnosis. I also share three behavioral tendencies that are part of an ADHD diagnosis. I want you to think about whether any of these tendencies are present in your life, as if so, they could be worth talking to a medical professional about, so that you can start to get the help you may need. 

To learn more about my coaching, photography, podcast, and to stay connected, visit me at:

Alisha Crossley Website

Alisha Crossley Photography Website

Alisha’s Amazon Favorites List

Alisha Crossley Photography Instagram

Alisha Crossley Official Instagram

To learn more about The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course, click on the link below:

The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course

 

 

Shaun Austin Gordon is the founder of Kiss Books, a photography album business for photographers based in the Midwest. He started out as a photographer himself and at one stage he was photographing more than 60 weddings a year, all while raising a family. He has had to work a lot on himself to get to where he is now, including attending counseling with his wife of 20 years, and is happy to share his advice and perspective with others. When he’s not working, he loves to play tennis and travel. 

On today’s show, I was so happy to spend some time with Shaun Gordon, the CEO of Kiss Books. Shaun has been on a journey of self-discovery, and he walked me through some of the milestones he met along the road. This journey began with a text from his wife, who said that she wanted to divorce him because she couldn’t cope with continuing in the marriage as it was. They went to marriage counselling and Shaun was able to open up to his wife about his history of sexual abuse. He’d never been able to talk about this dark and difficult experience, and in his teens he turned to hard drugs as a way to cope and subsequently became an addict. This revelation at marriage counseling not only reshaped his relationship with his wife, but also with his parents, which Shaun and I explored in detail in the episode. I’ve had my own experiences of difficult relationships with my parents, and Shaun and I talked through the pain of acknowledging that our parents did the best they could with what they had. Although it can be hard to cope with the feeling that our parents let us down, we can still try to salvage the good parts of those relationships, and we can use our stories as a stepping stone to try to make things better for ourselves and for our own children. We’re not perfect people, but we can try to move forward and make each generation a little more healed from trauma. 

Shaun and I also discussed how we can start to move forward from these difficult traumas, such as including a ‘To Be’ list next to your ‘To Do’ list. Shaun gives this advice to everyone, especially entrepreneurs, as it helps us to move towards the   person we want to become. Listen in to find out how to write out your ‘To Be’ list, how to include gratitude in your life, and how this will fill you with a new sense of achievement and purpose.

To learn more about Shaun and his business, visit his links below:

Shaun’s Instagram

Kiss Books Instagram

Shaun’s Facebook

Links mentioned: Matthew McConaughey - This Is Why You're Not Happy 

Work Sheets:

“To Be” Sheets

To learn more about my coaching, photography, podcast, and to stay connected, visit me at:

Alisha Crossley Website

Alisha Crossley Photography Website

Alisha’s Amazon Favorites List

Alisha Crossley Photography Instagram

Alisha Crossley Official Instagram

To learn more about The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course, click on the link below:

The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course

 

December is such a special time to spend with family and friends and because I know you will be traveling a lot during this season, I wanted to do something special for this month. I have decided to do a year in review, and I will share with you the top 4 most downloaded episodes for 2021! Have a wonderful December and I will see you in the New Year with a lot of new content and interviews! 

Join me today as I interview my colleague and close friend, Neillie Kirk Butler, she is the founder and owner of Mariée Ami, a wedding planning and design studio.  She puts her heart and love into each and every event she plans, and you are able to see it through the results and the happy faces during and after the events.  She is the recipient of the Tory Burch Foundation Fellowship Award, a very prestigious award given to a select group of women entrepreneurs. She is also a three-time cancer survivor and through these experiences she has learned not only to survive but to thrive within her business and family life.

Her love for life, family, and her business shines through in everything she does.  It was a pleasure interviewing her and I know you will enjoy it too.   

 

Additional topics we will cover:

Not limiting yourself based on others’ beliefs

Believing in yourself, no matter the odds

Moving past judgments of yourself

Cultivating resilience

Fulfilling your purpose

And much, much more…

To learn more about Neillie and her business, visit her links below:

Mariée Ami Wedding Planning and Design Studio Website

Mariée Ami Instagram

The Tory Burch Foundation

To learn more about my coaching, photography, podcast, and to stay connected, visit me at:

Alisha Crossley Website

Alisha Crossley Photography Website

Alisha’s Amazon Favorites List

Alisha Crossley Photography Instagram

Alisha Crossley Official Instagram

To learn more about The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course, click on the link below:

The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course

Today’s episode is the second part of my interview with Sarah Selecky of the Sarah Selecky Writing School. Sarah and I dive in by discussing the process of giving feedback in the writing school, which places a heavy emphasis on primarily giving positive feedback. All students highlight what’s really working in each other’s stories, to hone their minds on what they do well so that they can continue to develop their skills. Any criticisms of someone else’s work are delivered only with the writer’s permission and are couched in terms of constructive criticism. 

At the end of the episode, Sarah drops an exciting hint regarding a TV show project that she’s working on, so stay tuned for forthcoming news on that front!

To learn more about Sarah, visit the links below:

Sarah Selecky Writing School Instagram

Sarah Selecky Writing School Facebook

Sarah Selecky Podcast

https://www.sarahseleckywritingschool.com/

To learn more about my coaching, photography, podcast, and to stay connected, visit me at:

Alisha Crossley Website

Alisha Crossley Photography Website

Alisha’s Amazon Favorites List

Alisha Crossley Photography Instagram

Alisha Crossley Official Instagram

To learn more about The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course, click on the link below:

The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course

 

I had such a wonderful conversation with my guest today, Sarah Selecky. Sarah is the author of Radiant Shimmering Light, This Cake Is for the Party, and the founder of the Sarah Selecky Writing School, a creative community for thousands of writers around the world. 

Topics we will discuss during Part 1 of this conversation are:

• The love for storytelling in the south
• Why Sarah started her own writing school, instead of becoming a professor or teacher
• The path to obtaining her MFA and whether it was worth the money and time
• Sarah’s writing process and when you should do your editing

To learn more about Sarah, visit the links below:

Sarah Selecky Writing School Instagram

Sarah Selecky Writing School Facebook

Sarah Selecky Podcast

https://www.sarahseleckywritingschool.com/

To learn more about my coaching, photography, podcast, and to stay connected, visit me at:

Alisha Crossley Website

Alisha Crossley Photography Website

Alisha’s Amazon Favorites List

Alisha Crossley Photography Instagram

Alisha Crossley Official Instagram

To learn more about The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course, click on the link below:

The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course

Welcome back to Part 2 of my interview with Laura Davis.  It was such an amazing interview that I wanted to make sure that you were able to enjoy it in a shortened format.  Today we will focus on the how and why of Laura’s writing and publishing process.

We will also talk about how a beta reader helped her come up with the title that she ultimately used for her memoir.  We will discuss how helpful it is to have beta readers read through the book before it gets published so that you can get honest feedback.  

Additional topics we will discuss:

• The publishing process and how it has changed over the years
• Strategies behind publishing a book
• Knowing your audience
• Pre-selling your book
• Writing for the stage of life that you are at now

Click on this link to read the first five chapters of her memoir: www.lauradavis.net/chapters

To learn more about Laurie, visit the links below:

Laura Davis Website

Laura Davis Instagram

The Writer’s Journey Facebook

To learn more about my coaching, photography, podcast, and to stay connected, visit me at:

Alisha Crossley Website

Alisha Crossley Photography Website

Alisha’s Amazon Favorites List

Alisha Crossley Photography Instagram

Alisha Crossley Official Instagram

To learn more about The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course, click on the link below:

The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course

 

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Laura Davis, an Author, Writing Teacher, and Workshop Leader.  She is also the founder of The Writer's Journey.  She has written 7 books and has sold 2 million copies and has had them translated into 11 different languages.

To say I was thrilled when one of my favorite authors agreed to allow me to interview her is an understatement. Her most recent book, The Burning Light of Two Stars: A Mother-Daughter Story, is a memoir that touched my heart and has helped me view my story for what it can do to help not only me but those that have lived through the same experiences.

This interview really dives deep into Laura’s writing process and the story behind the memoir. We will also talk about surviving sexual abuse, raising children, and inspiring others to heal from childhood traumas .  It was a beautiful interview and I know you are going to enjoy it, just as much as I did.

Click on this link to read the first five chapters of her memoir: www.lauradavis.net/chapters

To learn more about Laurie, visit the links below:

Laura Davis Website

Laura Davis Instagram

The Writer’s Journey Facebook

To learn more about my coaching, photography, podcast, and to stay connected, visit me at:

Alisha Crossley Website

Alisha Crossley Photography Website

Alisha’s Amazon Favorites List

Alisha Crossley Photography Instagram

Alisha Crossley Official Instagram

To learn more about The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course, click on the link below:

The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course

It was a pleasure for me to interview today's guest Scott Miller. Scott is a speaker, the author of The Mess Into Success Book series, and the voice behind the Franklin Covey Leadership Podcast (yes, the people that brought us the famed 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). 

Scott breaks the mold of the tedious business book, with powerful lessons delivered in easy-to-digest pieces. Always one to meet the market's demands, Scott’s books are available in various forms - even video! As the executive vice president of thought leadership and host of the Franklin Covey-sponsored podcast, we are thrilled that Scott is sharing his powerful insights into how we can turn our "mess" into success.   

Not one to shy away from his career failures, Scott shares everything from demotions to being fired from Disney and how it has helped him become a better leader. He is drawing from a fountain of both intimate knowledge to advice that he has received from thought-leaders like Matthew McConaughey, Rachel Hollis, and Nick Vujicic, to name a few. 

Topics discussed:

• Discover what toxic positivity is and how to manage setbacks with a realistic approach.
• Why owning your mess as an entrepreneur is a critical first step in the success process. 
• What Seth Godin taught Scott about being fearless vs. reckless 
• The truth about creating synergy between your business and family

Also, follow me on Instagram and I will be posting on how you can enter for a chance to win 1 of 4 books written by Scott Miller.

To learn more about Scott, visit this link:

https://www.scottjeffreymiller.com/

To learn more about my coaching, photography, podcast, and to stay connected, visit me at:

Alisha Crossley Website

Alisha Crossley Photography Website

Alisha’s Amazon Favorites List

Alisha Crossley Photography Instagram

Alisha Crossley Official Instagram

The Artisan’s Advantage Signature Course