Conversations With #AskAsh

In today’s episode, I had the pleasure of diving deep with Bree Carroll, an event strategist and founder of B Carroll Events. Bree shares her journey from being a military wife and mom to becoming a leading figure in the event planning industry. In our conversation, Bree opens up about her initial career in civil engineering and how her skills as a problem solver and project manager seamlessly tra...

The person behind the business. There’s nothing like unpacking the finer details of someone’s story. I see the threads of details that aren’t common to the naked eye. With Jess’ story, she shares her personal journey of facing a fatal car accident at a young age and the impact it had on her life. Instead of letting the tragedy consume her, Jess found the strength to turn her pain into purpose and...

Honesty and intentionality are two key components that lead to empowerment, as demonstrated by Gabrielle Haye’s story. In this episode, Gabrielle shares her journey of transitioning from a product management consultant to launching a career empowerment firm. Gabrielle's insights on finding one's authentic voice, leveraging feedback, and staying true to oneself while pursuing entrepreneurial endeav...

In this episode, you will learn from my favorite Business Process Consultant Marquis Murray as we discuss navigating business growth from his early days owning a recording studio to building systems with Think Ditto. Listen in as Marquis reflects on his fascinating path from a childhood passion for Lego and model planes to his present-day expertise in systems and organization. This conversation is...

How does Software Engineer build a business centered on virtual summits? Krista Miller takes us on a journey from her early days as a website developer to building successful and impactful virtual summits.   Explore how Krista's faith has impacted her entrepreneurial journey, as she reflects on how God has shaped her trajectory of her business. Discover the humble beginnings of Summit in a Bo...

In this digital-first world, we are seeing a shift in the way we are approaching everyday work. From AI to Automation, the focus is on adopting a mindset for agility and the increasing reliance on technological advancements to streamline project execution. The motivating catalyst behind these technological advancements is efficiency This is the central theme of many teams and organizations. How ca...

Are you ready to risk it all? This is the question that I love to ask everyone! Every project is risky. That’s the nature of the game. You will always be uncertain about the outcomes, tasks, budget, and how it’s all going to get done. But the real question is, how do you plan for project risk? In today’s episode, we will follow Casey Nicole Jackson as she navigates identifying and managing risks....

We gotta talk about the MONEY! A budget can make or break your project. We do not have enough conversations on creating and developing a budget strategy for projects and programs. In this episode, we discuss the critical role of budgeting in project management, insights from the Slack report on productivity and the potential of AI and automation, and continue with our episodic case study involving...

If you don’t have the right foundation, nothing that you build will last. For most project leaders, we’ve experienced the pain, confusion, and outright frustration of being dropped into a middle of a project with no documentation, wondering what is going on. Perhaps, you’ve been handed a project with barely any direction or scope. This is why the start of a project is just as important as how it i...

Welcome to the explainer episode of Season 7 - Built From Scratch. If you are like me, you have a favorite home-cooked meal, perhaps it’s apple pie or homemade biscuits. I know when I take a first bite of that apple pie, it makes me wanna scream! And I always say this, “What did you put in this pie?” The response is always, “A little this and a little that.” Similar to your favorite home-cooked me...

All this talk about communication might have you thinking– what is the true cost of poor communication? If you’ve got that question in your head, you’re in the right place! This episode is largely my rant on how to spot and improve poor communication.  We’ve got some hard statistics on the almost unimaginable expense to productivity and profitability that poor communication causes. Once I pai...

Alright entrepreneurs! Well, not just entrepreneurs, but for anyone that works with clients on a daily basis, this one’s for you!  Today we’re joined again by Qwantel Mosley, a great friend of mine who left her job to become an online business manager. For those of you thinking of going out on your own to coach, consult, freelance or anything else having to do with clients– Qwantel is your gi...

Who’s still working from home? The world was forever changed when COVID forced us all out of the office and into the home office. But every company, team and manager is different when it comes to ongoing work-from-home policy. For today’s show, I invited Juan Alvarado back on the podcast to discuss what’s really driving the decisions around working from home. We get into all the details about how...

Knowledge is power! But your knowledge is only as powerful as it is accessible and appropriately distributed throughout an organization. Thankfully, in this episode we are tackling the topic of knowledge management from top to bottom! You may or may not have heard of knowledge management before, but as a concept, it’s been around for quite a while! We explore some of the more well-known and proven...

Let me paint this picture for you– it’s 9 AM Monday morning, and you’re scrambling to pull your calendar up to join the team's meeting to prep for the executive meeting where you’ll prepare for that big client meeting coming up next week. What fun! Most people don’t love meetings they feel are unnecessary. There’s a variety of reasons why your teammates may feel like that, and we’re going to break...

Now that we’ve laid out some of the important pillars behind communication throughout the earlier episodes of this series– let’s get down to business! How does one actually apply these learnings to create a communications plan ? You might think creating guidelines for the way your organization and its components communicate is overkill, or may even make things awkward or inefficient. Rather than f...

I wanted to cover a subject that I feel is a bit underrepresented, especially in the dynamic of a professional setting– and that is the subject of conflict!  There’s an art to fighting, and I’m not referring to Martial Arts when I say that. I’m talking about the art of arguing with grace when conflict does arise. Even when conflict makes us uncomfortable (as it should!), there may be valuable...

When it comes to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI, I feel that there’s often a more nuanced conversation to be had. So to create that conversation, I invited Jesse Ross on the show!  Jesse is a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant, executive coach, and international speaker who has delivered over 400 speaking engagements at colleges, conferences, corporate and nonprofit companie...

What is an async world? In this episode, we breakdown asynchronous communication and how to make it work for you and your team! Asynchronous communication has been around in some degree for quite a while, but our circumstances with the pandemic and remote work have drastically increased the amount of async communication that we have in our teams on a day to day basis. Since none of us were handed...

Welcome to the season of communication breakdown! After a brief hiatus and period of reflection where I consumed different information from expert podcasters and business professionals, had open conversations with podcast producers, and prayed for creative inspiration, I had an epiphany that led to the theme of this season. Communication is the lifeblood of your organization, and needless to say,...

As we wind down the Power of Team season, this episode focuses on Ashley's 5 core areas of team development: Sharing the Vision Creating a Team Values Statement Team Agreement Personal and Professional Development Team "Work" Process With the future of work evolving and new emerging technologies, finding innovative ways to improve team culture and performance is essential to growing your brand and...

In this episode, meet The Digital Jane. An all-star cast of business execution strategists that are dedicated to serving their client's most pressing problems through streamlining their business operations to project launches and everything in between. The words on this page don’t begin to describe the level of brilliance of these wonderful women. The Digital Jane brings grace, style, profess...

It’s not a game with Systems Saved Me, led by the force, Jordan Gill. Team Systems Saved Me is disrupting the online business industry with a new business model called: VIP Days. Through their signature group coaching program and biannual virtual conference, attendees and DID students are shattering the norm in business by creating a life that brings them joy, peace, and recurring revenue! So what...

In today’s episode, we are getting a behind-the-scenes look at Layla Pomper & the ProcessDriven team.  This is an incredible team that is changing the game in terms of how we as business owners and leaders rethink processes in our business. We discuss what’s trapped in our brain (processes) and how to release it, the origin story and mission behind ProcessDriven, how ProcessDriven leverag...

This is the conversation, you didn’t know you needed to have. Krystal Clark, Higher Education Professional, and Leadership Programs Consultant goes DEEP into how to create meaningful performance conversations, why PERFECTION amongst a team is suspect, managing conflict, why transparency during the hiring process matters, and the importance of leaders having coaches. If this episode has inspired yo...