Meet Allisha Minor-Gaines

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Allisha Minor-Gaines. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Allisha, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

There are several experiences that led me to finding my purpose in wanting to work with couples to build healthier relationships and eventually women who struggle with relationship and dating issues. I remember starting as a pre-teen helping my grandmother along side her children and my cousins to help care for my grandfather who had a progressive stage of Alzheimer’s. Watching the love and care she gave him during this difficult time was admiring and I knew from there that I wanted to help others in some capacity in which my grandmother supported her husband. Watching my parents struggle with maintaining a healthy relationship as a couple while being able to have a good friendship was hard to witness growing up. Although I was the child that never saw her parents as a good fit for one another, I was able to recognize that I wanted them to be loved by some special person of their choosing. Being observant during my childhood and teen years of my parents relationships and dating experiences with each other and others, I felt there were some behaviors that were right and wrong for a relationship. However, it wasn’t until my own dating experiences as a young adult and working in different populations as a social worker, counselor, supervisor, and therapist that I recognized the dysfunctional behaviors that made relationships fail. Because of my own experiences and therapy work I have done with couples, this was the turning point in my career where I began to recognize my purpose in life. At this point in life I was able to reflect on how from a young age friends and family would come to me for relationship advice when their relationships were in trouble. Being able to hear the struggles of my couples while resonating with the issues they were expressing stuck with me to the point where I felt I needed to figure out how to do more. I needed to identify how to reach more couples outside of my private practice because of the cries I continuously listened to where my couples expressed prior to meeting me they felt lost and not knowing how to work through issues they were facing such as infidelity, communication, financial struggles, coparenting, sexual issues, and so much more. From these interactions with my couples and my own experiences, I realized my purpose was to extend my business to coaching and speaking in order to speak the truth on some of my couples issues and give real insight on how to work through the toughest relationship issues they were facing.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

As a Marriage & Family Therapist in private practice, I offer individual, couples, and family therapy. Seeing the need for additional support for couples that are not bound to ethical restrictions when doing therapy, I decided to create an extension of my practice to create a new business as a Relationship Coach & Speaker to be able to be my authentic self and share from my own personal story how to work through tough situations through a more direct and personable approach that is different from a therapist stance. As a Relationship Coach & Speaker, my goal is to offer online courses, inspiring content such as my new book that will be coming soon and offer merchandise that is motivating to helping couples to continue to work on their relationship issues.  

In my new business, Allishaz Distractions LLC, I cater to a diverse range of customers, including couples in both straight and LGBTQ relationships who are seeking to enhance their relationships and marriages. We specifically cater to couples who are just starting their journey together, providing them with the necessary tools to navigate potential toxicity and conflict that may arise in their relationship. Additionally, we work with couples who want to improve their co-parenting skills, connect better when facing infertility, and achieve better work-life balance within their relationships.
 
What sets my business apart is my unique approach in addressing distractions and empowering couples to recognize their own behaviors, thoughts, and emotions including through their generational patterns that exist in their families. In today’s society, relationships and marriages are often undervalued, but I aim to restore the foundation and improve the way relationships and marriages are viewed and experienced. I believe that each couple’s relationship is unique and should be nurtured and cultivated to reach its fullest potential. Through my programs and coaching sessions, I guide couples in developing essential skills to foster better communication, resolve conflicts effectively, and create deeper connections with their partners. By equipping couples with these valuable insights, I believe they can proactively build healthier relationships and marriages that thrive in the long run. 

I am most proud of the transition I have made from a marriage & family private practice to a relationship coach and speaking business. This transition will allow me to reach more couples and have a greater impact on their lives, relationships, and marriages. I am also proud to share my story and new term for my ethnicity to identify myself to a diverse range of couples. The combination of my personal experiences as an Afro-Latina who is a part of the LGBTQ community, along with my professional background as a marriage and family therapist, motivational speaker, and coach, allows me to offer a holistic approach to helping couples build and sustain healthy relationships. Drawing from my own journey and learnings, I deeply understand the significance of addressing one’s past and how this can shape behaviors and thinking. By incorporating both personal and professional perspectives, I am able to provide couples with a unique and comprehensive outlook that is inclusive and understanding of their diverse backgrounds and patterns they not only learned but have incorporated into their own existence including their relationships and marriages. Because of this, I am teaching couples not to hide, run, or mask their issues but rather stand in their truth through their awareness and ability to take accountability for change and growth to occur in their relationships and marriages.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The 3 things I take pride in when it comes to the journey that I have been on in my life is dedication, effort, and having a positive mindset. Every year on my birthday since my 21st birthday, I would set goals in a 5-year plan for myself. Based on these goals, I would dedicate a day each week to review those goals and the small steps that I would need to take each day that week to move closer to achieving those goals. I would start of each morning with positive affirmations that spoke to motivating me to achieve my goals. I would positively around what I wanted and dedicated myself every day to put in at least 2-4hrs in achieving what I needed to that day in order to be able to get closer to my goals and this included when I began to build my private practice “Minor Inspirations LLC”, wrote my poetry book “Distractions of the Heart”, and now with my new business “Allishaz Distractions LLC”. for relationship coaching and speaking. If I did not combine all three qualities, I would have allowed my goals to fall by the waste side. I would have believed all the negative things people would say about a young lesbian woman of color raised in North Philadelphia and how I would not make it out of the “hood”, graduate college, let alone be successful. I wouldn’t have been in a position to be a role model for my daughter to push her to achieve her own dreams and knowing she can reach her goals on being in the medical field once she graduates high school next year. If I had given up on myself, I would be in a successful marriage that also requires the same skills just applied differently. If I didn’t stay consistent in doing these things, life would have turned out differently for me and my career and family life would be non-existent. My advice to others who are on the journey to starting their career and/or own business is to be consistent in putting in the effort and dedication to your craft and purpose. Ensure you maintain a positive mindset not only to grow your business, reach your career goals, and serve your target audience, but also to divert your thoughts away from negativity talk being tossed your way. Believe in yourself even if there is only a small crowd who does or no one at all. And remember to embrace where you are until you get to where you are going.

Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?

My ideal client currently are couples who struggle with understanding why the issues they are facing exist or keep reoccurring in their lives. I have found that most of the couples I have worked with, along with my own experiences in relationships, lack the ability to see the distractions that are causing them to be in conflict with one another that leads to other harmful behaviors and experiences. My ideal couples whom I enjoy working with often express issues surrounding communication which looks like misunderstandings, not feeling heard by their partner, lack of empathy and validation, listening to respond, and not taking accountability. Some of my other couples with more severe issues who have worked hard to rebuild trust in their relationships through my support have dealt with infidelity, coparenting, lack of boundaries in their relationship as well as with family and friends intervening in their relationship, lack of affection, intimacy, and sex in their relationship, as well as financial issues leading them to disconnect from one another. These are my ideal clients because I know personally what it felt like to deal with these issues along side emotional, financial, spiritual, and sexual abuse. Knowing how hard it is to work through these issues, I want my couples to know they have a safe place to turn to, a therapist/coach who can actively listen and help them process in a way that forces them to dive deep into their issues. My ideal client is a couple who is ready to put in the work and do everything they can to not only build a healthier relationship but to see that their relationship is worth saving despite their differences, conflict, and toxicity. And it doesn’t matter if the couple is straight, gay, lesbian, transgender, polyamorous, and more. Why? Because we all deserve love and to be loved in the most healthiest form we all could envision for our lives.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Katie Kang
Jeanette Moore

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