Smart Creative Women

Check out this short video and join us for Smart Creative Style! Everything you need to know is right on the registration page! This course is such a unique and fabulous journey to help you understand your aesthetic, your brand and your business. It is the last time I am running it in a 6 week format and I have new special pricing! I really want you to join in so be sure and check out the EARLY BIRD pricing it only goes until Thursday Feb 19th!

All the info is here!!

Today my guest the energetic, Bari J. Ackerman. She is a fabric, designer, seamstress, artist and all around can-do woman. After this interview, I realized that Bari is a woman who is simply not afraid of anything. If she sets her mind to learn a new skill, she is just going to push up her sleeves and do it. She started out designing bags and then needed her own fabric for the bags...so what does she do? She taught herself to design fabrics digitally! She took her graphic artist skills, a Wacom tablet and she was off to the races. She has designed sewing patterns, several best selling fabric lines and now she is on the March to have her designs on everything. Her tenacity is remarkable. If you are on the cusp of throwing in the towel on any project, tune into today's episode! Bari's example will light a fire under you!

I love her motto:

"If you don't ask, you don't get!"

Tara is one of my favorite guests! She is an expert of women's leadership and well being. I think she is an all around wise woman! She has packed her wisdom into her new book Playing Big.

It really is a must have for any woman's book shelf! You need this book, I need this book, your niece needs this book, your girlfriend...Listen to today's podcast to her us discuss this important book.

"Tara Mohr saw how women were "playing small" in their lives and careers, were frustrated by it, and wanted to "play bigger." She has devised a proven way for them to achieve their dreams by playing big from the inside out."

I just got back from Alt Summit (in time for a blizzard here tomorrow-sigh.) I wanted to do a quick podcast of an overall trend I see in the creative community and it is really good news. I came back refreshed and at peace as I solidified my own journey with Smart Creative Women, Smart Creative Style and with Monica Lee (the hand bags! YAY!!) Tune in to today's short podcast and hear my takeaways. I know you will be excited, maybe even relieved to recognize this interesting trend, (think soft lapping waves instead of giant take the world by storm waves.) Ladies, this year more the ever is your year to flourish by being genuinely creative and by being the original spirit you were designed to be!!

Links mentioned in the podcast:

Smart Creative Style Newsletter, runs end of Feb. More info at Smart Creative Style.

Jessica Swifts Pattern Camp, runs Feb 7-8

Remember those hand writing lessons you had in school? Debi Sementelli certainly does! Debi has turned hand lettering and calligraphy into a profitable career-even after she put it all on hold to raise her children. Tune into the interview and learn how Debi reentered the creative workforce and hear how she sincerely believes her work can help other small businesses. She gives the ins and out and tech talk of what it is like to create fonts and glyphs for fonts, yikes! It is an art for sure and her fonts have been selling like hotcakes!

I met Kate virtually when I sat in on a webinar to learn about podcasting. What? I already have a podcast! Well, true confessions-when I first started pushing my 3 years worth of Smart Creative Women interviews out into this new format, I had no idea how people even found the podcast. I had Meghan, my intern, get me set up to go live onto iTunes and I knew certain tech aspects but I was not fully engaged in understanding the in's and outs of moving the interviews into audio format. (Not good.)

I sat in on a webinar to introduce me to Podcasters Paradise and I saw some keying tech moves that I had not set up right AND they involved my statistics! Ugh! Important if you are looking to work with sponsors. I am in the process of digging into this community and lessons to make sure I have my backend ;) set up right.

I needed help-and fortunately in the process I found Kate, she works along side her long time boyfriend John Lee Dumas, at Entrepreneur on Fire-a wildly popular podcast. (They even post their monthly earnings online-yes, every month!!) They are a dynamo team and I love that Kate offers solid advice in today's episode about working from home and being and entrepreneur!

Whether you have ever considered doing your own podcast or are just determined to make it owning your own business , tune into so you can stay FOCUSED.

Here is a link to Kate's own podcast Kate's Take: The Entrepreneur on Fire Audio blog . Here is a link to the Entrepreneur on Fire Podacast

So today I want to hear from you! What does flourishing in 2015 mean to you? Since this is my theme word for 2015, I explored what it meant to flourish to me personally and I was surprised by my own answer! It involved risking taking which in turn, I realized makes me vulnerable to failure. I realized that my attitude about the word "failure" could either stop me dead in my tracks or spur me on to greater innovation.

Tune in to this short episode as I pull apart the beauty of stumbling around like a toddler trying new things. Then I want to hear from you in the comments,

What does it mean to flourish this year (or even this week!!) for you? Let me know in the comments!

Breaking it down can help, because if you want to walk on water...ya gotta get out of the boat!

John Mavrakis and Melissa Schulz from Ideaologie have teamed up to form a strategic partnership to help businesses “holistically.” What do they mean by that? Well, for one, they believe that just like individuals, no two companies are exactly alike, and they have set out to help each client on an individual basis.

Amen, to that! You know that I don’t like cookie cutter approaches either!

The Ideaologie philosophy reads: “Our years of experience have taught us that each company is unique and requires unique direction. We know that companies must evolve and change with time and market conditions in order to be successful. This success must be founded in and developed from a strong strategy for growth.”

They have a great track record of solid experience, between the two of them they have worked with some very well know national and individual brands, just take a look here. I wanted to get to the bottom of what they exactly they are offering. After all, they have quite a list of services! How do they help young (and established) business figure out the next step? Tune into this episode while Igrill oops! interview them, haha! They are FULL of great info and insight in the retail market place as it is TODAY! I learned a lot from them and am sure you will too!

Do you ever feeling like your are trying to manage everything? Even how people think, respond and their outlook on life? Yikes! I have had to learn to surrender some of my "management" skills when I realized that I had a death grip on a few too many things!

I have come to the conclusion that holding on so tightly to joy (an other people's joy) well, squeezes all the joy away. Easy for me to type and easy for you to read but much harder to do in real life! It always seems that the holidays magnify anything that needs work in your spirit.

Tune in to this short podcast today. You might relate to my ride as I try to take my loop do loop roller coaster down to kiddie ride. I realized I had too many roads coming into my rotary and I knew I needed to step back and surrender the timing of some of my "big plans." My conclusion surrendering is what we need during the holidays or we miss the joy of the entire season.

My amazon's Author page now shows all on the Flourish Planner designs and notebook designs! Head over and grab your favorite design! I can't thank you enough for purchasing the planner and for your notes of encouragement! It really means the world to me!