Meet Alison Blackman

 

We were lucky to catch up with Alison Blackman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Alison, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

How do you continue when your twin sister, best friend, co-author, and business partner drops dead at age 48?

That’s what happened to me just as the Advice Sisters and our website were getting well known.

My twin and I started the advicesisters https://advicesisters.com in 1998. Both of us were good writers and communicators, and we wanted to work together. Advicesisters.com began as a relationship website after we had worked for other websites for a year or so. We wrote our first of several books together “Recruiting Love, Using the Business Skills You Have to Find the Love You Want.” The publisher didn’t have money for promotion, so we decided to go online and do it ourselves. That’s when we created advicesisters.net and the current site, htt[s://advicesisters.com.

By the time we were established, we were widely haied as “the next Ann and Abby for the new millennium.” We were appearing in US Magazine the weekend my sister dropped dead. Then I had to go home and tell my Dad that my twin had died suddenly. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

Now I had no business partner or do-author. I lost my best friend and a pending book deal. I didn’t know what to do. However, my readers and followers were loyal and I’d worked so hard for success. I couldn’t continue the two views for every question signature “double take” Q&A we did together. So I decided I’d switch from relationship advice to advice in general, focusing on lifestyle (beauty, fashion, travel, tech, food, etc.).

I don’t think anyone knows how much resilience they have until they are forced into showing it. In my situation, I got up every day, thought “this stinks.” Then I just kept going. I believe most people are stronger than they think. It comes from within. When you need it, I hope you remember resilience is in you …and use it!

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I think I told my main story in the resilience part of this piece. I love to write, but I’m more than just an editor/writer/author. I don’t have to do it but it’s one of the things I look forward to every day. I’d like to write some more books. But I don’t have time right now.

I love photography and it’s one of my hobbies. You can see a lot of my photos both from advicesisters.com and my personal life and travels @alisonblackman on Instagram.

Everyone thinks they can give advice. You can. But it’s one thing to advise your best friend, and another to become the de facto “online best friend” of thousands, maybe millions, of people around the world that you don’t know. Cultural, religious and other norms are so different. You can’t assume that how you would handle a situation given your socio-economic and educational status is the same as everyone else. Emotions, for example, are universal, but how you might handle a situation might not be. I feel so blessed to be able to help people around the world and see things in a unique way that can help them.

What I’m learning is to take care of myself too. It is hard to say “no” but I am getting better at it.

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

The most important skills are knowing how to write and how to read. It’s sad how many people can’t do this at all, or very poorly. I am always mentally editing emails and wondering if the author ever finished high school!

Learn to communicate. I mean not just the phone, and notjust for emojis and texts. Personal interaction is essential in everything you do in love, work, friendship, and more.

If you can, find a mentor. I didn’t have one, but I joined some success groups and the support was very helpful. . If you find a support group or people who can encourage and help you life is so much easier and better.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

As an author, there are so many books that have influenced me. But the now somewhat dated but still must-read book in my life: Is how to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. If you’ve read it, read it again. Ifyou haven’t read it, get it NOW.

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