Drum roll, please! Alexia Petrakos has been awarded the first 2Chicks Seal of Approval. We are so proud of this excep­tional chick and can’t wait to share our expe­ri­ence in doing busi­ness with Alexia. Yolanda loves stuff, as our reg­u­lar read­ers know. And Alexia has great stuff for sale.What a match!

To learn more, read on. Alexia tells all. It would be a mis­take to miss a sin­gle word, so read, lis­ten, and look. Alexia shares her home busi­ness ideas exclu­sively for you great 2Chicks readers.

Impa­tient? Want to lis­ten to great dis­cus­sion and work from  home infor­ma­tion, click the link to jump to the audio of the phone inter­view with Alexia and Yolanda and CaZ.

And be sure that you don’t miss the video of Alexia’s awe­some­ness when it comes to prod­uct pre­sen­ta­tion. Find out what caught our eye about Alexia’s work from home phi­los­o­phy and what great per­sonal flair she brings to the table when mar­ket­ing her prod­ucts and services.

Alexia Think­ing Cre­ative Thoughts

Alexia on Work­ing From Home

Alexia is an artist. We sus­pect that she’s really an ART­pre­neur. (Made that up, we did…means an artist who makes money doing art stuff.) 2Chicks caught up with Alexia not long ago (we think she slowed down and let us catch up) to ask her riv­et­ing ques­tions about her busi­ness and life.

2Chicks: How do you describe your business?

“My ‘secret’ mis­sion is to tell the world that artists (and other cre­atives) don’t have to starve or lose them­selves to a soul-sucking day job. In fact, it’s their God-or-whateverhigherpoweryoulike-given duty to do what they love.

Ouroboros — (We think it’s bet­ter that the ser­pent eats itself than chicks)

If they don’t they’re sin­ning against God and them­selves. Every artist’s desires and tal­ents and cre­ativ­ity was given to them for a rea­son and to hide it is ridiculous.

And in order to share your stuff, you need to make money so you can make your stuff. Which means you need to sell your stuff. Which then leads to money so you can make more stuff.

It’s very cir­cu­lar. Feeds on itself. Like the Ouroboros.

So I cre­ated Thrive Cre­ative Coach­ing to help peo­ple stuck believ­ing the starv­ing artist myth get over them­selves, the myth, and what “every­one else” tells them they can’t do and just Kick ASS doing what they were born to do.”

Alexia shared three links to her busi­ness sites with us that we’re going to share with you, as well. Each will open in a new win­dow, so be sure to come­back and fin­ish read­ing all about Alexia!

ARRRT! Go ahead. Say it out loud. You have to do it. At least once. Arrrt! must be said with an eye patch, swash­buck­ling sword, and pointy hat with feather perched at a fetch­ing angle firmly in  your mind. This is a great web­site. This is Alexia’s “cre­ative play­ground. She makes and sells one-of-a-kind jour­nals, hand­bags & other fun stuff. She also dab­bles in mixed media art, col­lage & paint­ing.”

Art­fire Shop This is where Alexia sells her cre­ative soul. Nah, it’s really where she sells fan­tas­tic cus­tom, one-of-a-kind jour­nals. Won’t find these in the 75% off bin at Barnes and Nobles. There are other cool things, too—like book neck­laces and unique art prints.

Thrive Cre­ative Coach­ing: Killing the Starv­ing Artist Myth. This site is a place where Alexia has ban­ished “Soul-Sucking Day Jobs” and where she “helps artists, writ­ers, musi­cians and other creative-types sort through their over­whelm­ing mess of ideas, find the gems and cre­ate a busi­ness that enables them to make money doing what they love.”

2Chicks: What a great con­cept Thrive Cre­ative Coach­ing is. What about the other side of your busi­ness? How does it com­pare?

“ARRRT! is the small­est part of what I do. ARRRT! is the phys­i­cal prod­uct side of me. It’s where I make stuff that thrills the pants off of me and hope some­one else likes it as much as I do.

I really don’t like repro­duc­ing stuff on any scale, so I decided that my pieces are all going to be one-of-a-kind. Because that’s how I roll. Once I make some­thing cool, I want to make some­thing dif­fer­ent, and maybe even awesomer.”

Unwrapped Pack­age

2 Chicks: How do you describe your products/services?

“Unpol­ished. Unique. Unicorn.

Seri­ously — my prod­ucts (jour­nals, mostly) are places where trea­sures are writ­ten and kept. That’s how I treat each jour­nal I make. And why I try to make them as dif­fer­ent as pos­si­ble, with paper that I would use in my own journals.”

2Chicks: What is your favorite prod­uct or ser­vice that you offer?

“My favorite? The Book Neck­laces, I sup­pose. But if we’re talk­ing about ALLLL the things I do (because I can never set­tle on just one thing), it would have to be my newest thing at Thrive Cre­ative Coach­ing. I love talk­ing to cre­ative peo­ple and help­ing them fig­ure out how to make their cre­ativ­ity make them money.”

Still In The Box

2Chicks: When Yolanda received the jour­nal she ordered from you, she videoed the box opening!

“Thank you so much. That actu­ally really made my day! The only unbox­ing that I’ve ever actu­ally video­taped were my Mac’s.”

No, it’s not that Yolanda has no life. That sub­ject will be a post in the near future, no doubt. Yolanda videoed the unbox­ing because she real­ized even before she took the jour­nal out of the USPS box just how cool the pre­sen­ta­tion was going to be. And Yolanda is all about shar­ing with our favorite Chicks!

So, watch the video and then keep read­ing. More good­ies to be revealed.

2Chicks: How long have you been work­ing from home?

“Full-time since 2007, but I’ve been pok­ing my toe in since 2002.”

2Chicks: What prompted you to work from home?

“I real­ized that no one else was going to let me do all the things I really wanted to do, wouldn’t let me change my mind about what I wanted to do when I wanted to, and wouldn’t give me the poten­tial to build some­thing that’s uniquely me. That and I really don’t like it when oth­ers tell me what to do.”

2Chicks: What are your biggest at home challenges?

“Time man­age­ment. I’m not nat­u­rally orga­nized so I miss things like meet­ings and appoint­ments and dead­lines if I don’t have them on at least 4 dif­fer­ent cal­en­dars (all synced, of course!) that beep at me sev­eral times start­ing an hour before­hand. Also, I get bored eas­ily with mun­dane tasks, so things like keep­ing track of the money is not one of my strengths. I plan on get­ting me some min­ions later this year.…”

2Chicks: What is the best thing about work­ing from home?

“Not being con­fined to a sched­ule that doesn’t work with me (I’m most cre­ative in the evenings).”

2Chicks: What is your best at home advice for our readers?

“Set aside your office space & hours and keep ‘em. Even if they’re from 5pm — mid­night. You need both the phys­i­cal and men­tal space to devote to your work, and those are sacred. Closed doors work won­ders.”

2Chicks: What would you like to tell us about your busi­ness or phi­los­o­phy that has not yet been communicated?

“Fol­low the happy. With­out for­get­ting you need to pay the bills.”

More about Art-preneur Alexia

Click the play but­ton to lis­ten in on what two coffee-holics and a tea afi­cionado have to say about work­ing from home and run­ning a home busi­ness is all about.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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We hope that you have enjoyed learn­ing about Alexia and her home based busi­ness as much as we did. Do you have a favorite work from home per­son? Have you had an out­stand­ing expe­ri­ence with a ser­vice or a prod­uct pro­vided by a home based busi­ness? Share it with us. If we agree, your rec­om­men­da­tion could earn them the cov­eted 2Chicks Seal of Approval.