This week Dani is chatting with Leah Lakins, editor, writer and publisher, or as she sometimes calls herself - a wordy, nerdy, quirky girl from Baltimore. You may have seen her name and words in popular books like Steve Harvey's New York Times Bestseller Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, Act Like a Success, Think Like a Success, and his most recent project Jump.

Leah shares her early dreams of what she wanted to be when she grew up and how her high school journal revealed pieces of her current reality. We get to learn about how her variety of career opportunities has prepared her for life as an entrepreneur doing what she loves - sharing the stories of others.

Dani is chatting with Felicia Gibson Jaycox, the founder and executive director of The Power of You Teens - a Harlem based mentoring and empowerment group for girls ages 10 - 18.

For Felicia, this organization started at a time when she was in a lot of pain. She shares about the unexpected loss of her brother and how she coped with the help of a supportive sisterhood.

Dani is chatting with Evelyn Badia, the hostess with the mostest. She has been an Airbnb host since 2010 (before airbnb was cool and a verb).

When the economy shifted, Evelyn couldn’t find work in her industry as a TV producer. She stumbled upon Airbnb in the NY Times and decided to try it as a way to save her home. Evelyn shares about how her lifestyle changed and what it was like moving out of her home as a way of income. She tells the stories of how she started her listing and her first guest. We learn in this episode the lessons she’s learned from hosting - like setting boundaries and establishing realistic expectations with clear communication. She also shares about some of her favorite guests and funny moments, like when the guy ate her avocado.

Evelyn is the ultimate hostess because not only does she create a special experience for her guests but she also contributes to her community, lending her home to neighbors during challenging times like Hurricane Sandy and home repairs as well as for their families’ visits. She equips her guests with recommendations to give them the best NYC experience while also supporting local businesses in her neighborhood.

Dani is going deep with Tatiana Dellepiane - a sex and relationship expert and tantra teacher. She helps women connect to their sensuality, which she believes is our superpower.

She works with them through movements and their body to break through from shame and reach their full potential out in the world. It is her mission and her work to help women remember who they truly are.

We are chatting with Bernice Wooden - entrepreneur & educator, who has been in the entertainment business for 10 years. She started her own production company, Be Nice Productions, which includes videography, photography and workshops. Bernice has recently written a book How to Get a Degree in Celibacy: 10 Steps to Keeping Your Lips Closed, where she is sharing with the world about her sex life,or lack thereof.

In this conversation, we learn about Bernice's journey to where she is today in her career. She shares about the unique challenges she faced and how she overcame them and the lessons she learned from them.

The Black Sheep Podcast is BAAACK!

In this episode you will head from Nicole on what caused the long delay in between seasons, what to expect in upcoming seasons of the podcast and how to get your initiatives, products and services in front of our audience.

This episode is an interview by past guest Danielle Fontus who is back to interview Nicole.  This episode kicks off the “Take Over Season” where Nicole invited Danielle to take over the mic for honest chats with women who are daring to live life on their terms as a Black Sheep.

If you would like to find out about the amazing power of Argan Oil and the health benefits associated with eating it, you're going to love this week's show. Most people don't even know that Argan Oil is edible, so listen in and find out how Nicole's guest, Victoria Akkari managed to figure it out.

If you would like to know what it's like to have psychic abilities, or how a person gifted with clairvoyance or clairsentience uses those talents to help people, listen in and find out, as Nicole's psychic guest, Tanya Brown, shares her story, on this week's show. Join her and Nicole this week's show to find out more about her and about how she uses her gifts to help her clients with their lives and in their businesses.

If you're interested in finding out about what drives and motivates someone with an active social conscience, join Nicole and her guest, Sharee Johnson-Cammon, on this week's show. Listen in and find out about Sharee and what she does to educate and raise the awareness of her community.

Sharee is from Houston Texas and she's the founder and owner of the BAM Black Friday Market, which she started in 2015. Listen in this week and find out what Sharee does to raise community awareness and create business opportunities for black people.

This chat was super insightful and inspiring. Dara is the founder of Brevity Brand which is launching its first piece of apparel the Do Anything Jacket. 

We had a great chat where we talked about what Dara learned about entrepreneurship from watching her immigrant parents run a donut shop waking up at midnight everyday, to launching a successful KickStarter campaign, to ignoring naysayers going against the grain and trusting your gut.

This week Nicole brought Lupita Santana her online buddy for a friendly jam on the way we experience being Latinas. 

The idea for this conversation came when Nicole learned that like her, Lupita was married to someone from a different Latino culture, and was now living in her husband's native country.  Having spent time living abroad in a Latin country Nicole was curious about Lupita's experience being an 'Latina expat' in a Latino country. Nicole shares about her experience moving to Chile for a year and her challenges with in fitting in and the hard chats with folks who saw her as simply American vs what he was used to in the states being seen as a Latin American.

Please note, there may be some points of views expressed that some people may not agree with as we are speaking from our POV and perspective.  As always, all feedback is welcomed. 

This week Nicole welcomed Aycee Brown to the podcast to talk to us about the launch of Good Night Darling Co. her company dedicated to helping us get better sleep. 

Aycee is so awesome she even created a special promo code just for Black Sheep Podcast listeners. Enter BLACKSHEEP to score 15% off any product in the store.

Listen in to this week's show and find out about different ways that money can be organized and managed in your personal and professional life and also get some actionable tools and tips, that you can take away and apply.

This week we break the news - we are breaking up! Jes is going to be stepping down from the Black Sheep Podcast and the Live Black Sheep brand. We know, we know...shocking!  But it's all love and all good. Tune in to hear our candid conversation where we process this decision together for the first time since we made the decision with love and grace. 

We came to this decision in late January as it became clear that at this point Jes doesn't have the time to devote to the podcast. We then went through the process of working through the logistics mainly over email. This chat is our first time we got on the phone since that call to discuss and process the end of our partnership.

In this week's episode we explore decision making.

How do we make decisions, how do we prioritize? Each in every day there are a lot of decisions that need to be made. Join Jes and Nicole in a candid chat about how we approach decision making in our lives and catch up with each other on the decisions we are weighing in our lives.

As we celebrate International Women's Day support the March 8, 2017, called "A Day Without A Woman." We are excited to share our chat on the joys and challenges of being women of color owned business and certifications that one can apply for as a minority and women owned business. 

Want help finding awesome women of color owned business? Get on our list to access our latest Buy Brown Guide is coming out soon. Don't miss out on these amazing products by women of color owned businesses. Sign up here http://bit.ly/buybrownguide to be notified when the new guide is released.

We don't know about y'all but it has been really intense in these parts! Things have been so busy and intense here at Black Sheep HQ that we paused the podcast release and took two weeks off to get healthy and caught up on the insane amount of everything February threw at us! Anyone else? 

This week Nicole and Jes keep it light in a fun discussion on ways we can take care of our external selves that serve to support our internal workings (you know feelings, emotions etc :) and yes we talk about money!!

What do you love to invest in? Let us know @liveblacksheep or in the Black Sheep Society our community group.

This week's episode is all about giving back in a way that is sustainable to your life and maximizes impact around your cause.

"When you give of yourself you reap more so much more in return." - Nicole

This episode had a freebie you can download at www.liveblacksheep.com/findyourcause

This episode is a training for those of you new and seasoned entrepreneurs who want to re-examine and re-commit to your online presence.

In last week's episode we introduced you to a TED Talk: What I Learned from 100 Days of Rejection. This week we are officially kicking off our #BlackSheepAsk Challenge. Until Feb 15th we can use #blacksheepask to share our about our asks, no matter how big or small

This week we talk about motivation and momentum and what we each need to maintain both. 

Topics we explore include:

• What is the difference between motivation and momentum?

• The importance of values-based motivation + doing work that is meaningful
• The importance of growth and education + learning in maintaining momentum

What motivates you or enables you to keep up momentum? Send us an email at hello@liveblacksheep.com and we will feature your response in an upcoming episode!

Welcome Black Sheep! Today we are talking about being seen. There’s no one better to have this discussion with than Danni Dares. She’s an event concierge and does she ever make an impression! She’s constantly in search of a one way ticket to a fascinating destination. 

Is being seen and being heard different? Well, we have our own opinions about it and we aren’t necessarily all on the same page. Some people with big brands are introverts, and it’s interesting to see how it plays into how people actually connect with the messages we are putting out.

This week on the Black Sheep Podcast we are taking a little Halloween break before we push to end the season and launch a series of projects we are working on behind the scenes to support our tribe.

Tune in to hear about what is in store for the podcast and for 2017. 

And if you have yet to listen to our first episodes where we introduce the Black Sheeps take a listen after the intro.

We had two special guests this week – Leora Edut, founder of Goddess on the Go http://goddess-onthego.com/ and mother to 15 month old Cariel.  As working momma we invited Leora on the show along with Cariel. There will be background sound but nothing says Black Sheep like recording with your kid. #workingmomhustle

This week we tried something different. Nicole was visiting family in Denver, Jes was in JPD offices and our guest Leora was home in Long Island City.

Although we aim to showcase women of color on the podcast practicing what we preached a few episodes ago, we decided to bring on a white ally for a conversation on embracing diversity and raising biracial kids, while also taking about the importance of sisterhood in our lives. 

In this episode we pull back the curtain and take you through the steps needed to launch a podcast by giving your behind the scenes of launch. If you are considering launching a podcast this episode is a much. It was recorded as a free training with a free worksheet to accompany this episode that can be found at http://liveblacksheep.com/freebie-launch-podcast

This week we welcomed coach and creative, Ariane Hunter to the show for a conversation about going for your dreams. She shares her journey from MBA + corporate employee, to fulltime photographer, to one-on-one life coach at www.arianehunter.com and now founder of http://www.shewentforherdreams.com/

In this episode Nicole, Jes and Ariane shared our journeys - the joys + challenges - of taking our leaps of reinvention – from corporate marketer to non profit employee, from fulltime employee to entrepreneur, from creative to coach.

For this episode we asked Ariane to share some coaching tips for someone with a dream for change and added a few of our own! Whether you want a new job, a new career or new services for your biz, we created a place to start in our free worksheet. Download it at http://liveblacksheep.com/freebie-dreams

When you love what you do, and are in the flow it can be hard to not work, but when does the scale tip into workaholicsm and unhealthy behaviors? We explore this in a candid conversation that led to Jes having a break through on air as Nicole coached her to remove blocks around an area she was stuck in that was preventing her from scheduling the final stage of her company’s rebrand.  

This is a great episode for anyone with challenges around schedules, working too much, and needing some coaching to push through. There is a ton of free coaching for listeners both – live on air and in the show notes.

It’s Nicole and Jes this week in what ended up being a full-length episode exploring three keys to success for Living Black Sheep.

We started off doing an episode on failure but as the conversation evolved we found ourselves needing to also talk about the role of risk taking and vulnerability in failing. It was a candid conversation where we explore failure in our own lives and businesses. Furthermore, if we #liveblacksheep as #WOC, trailblazers in our families or communities, taking risks, the stakes are even higher and the spotlight shines even brighter and that must be addressed.

Patia Braithwaite is a memoirist + essayist based in Harlem, NYC currently working on her book based on dating around the world on Tinder. In this conversation Patia shares her tips on getting featured as a writer on the inter-webs and her process for coming up with her pitches. She talks about how to keep the creativity flowing and how writing from life has been key to her success. She ponders the challenges of being women of color occupying space as creatives and entrepreneurs and shares that T-Boz is her TLC archetype. It was an insightful and fun conversation filled with tid bits for anyone who needs to write as part of their work or life, as well as anyone looking to get started. 

In this mini episode Jes and Nicole share five steps for effectively launching a website. It is expected that there will be over 1 billion websites launched by end of 2016. Whoa! And while there are a ton of DIY options for those of us with no design or coding skills, the truth is there is a lot of planning that should go into not just the design but the content and launch plan for your site.