A Life of Gold & Dust: Alchemy, Authenticity & Courage with Samantha Wills

In this week's chat, I am incredibly excited to bring you our guest; the beautiful Samantha Wills. For those of you who are not familiar with Samantha, she is the creative powerhouse behind the Samantha Wills jewellery brand. Starting this business in 2004, as a fresh face 21-year-old from her dining room table, she grew it into a successful global business. She lived in New York for 10 years, had production houses in Asia and India, and offices in France and Japan. She then famously announced its closure in mid 2018, when it was continuing to enjoy widespread commercial success. Because there was a lot more going on behind the scenes. Samantha has recently written a memoir of her life's journey in her book Of Gold and Dust, which is a beautiful, unveiled, and honest account of what it took for her to build the Samantha Wills jewellery brand, the sacrifices that it required of her, and how it took her a two-year journey to come to the decision to close what was a highly successful business. Samantha is an incredibly talented and intuitive businesswoman; she has come up with some genius ways of creating business partnerships and staying true to herself. So, in today's conversation, we dive into all of this and cover everything from the rise of her business, to how she felt in some of those darkest times navigating very personal and professional challenges that she encountered, along with the resilience that you can find when you're sitting in the rubble of your life. And most importantly, the power that comes from rising out of that. We also dive into how the strength of her values guided her exit from the business and the courage and integrity that comes with that through to a fearful moment as she started to turn 30. And she was realising that she had been sacrificing so much for her business, she hadn't been ticking life's boxes or the boxes that we're told that we should be ticking. This is a conversation that will really going to get you thinking about your own life choices. It's going to have you nodding along in agreement, and it's really going to give you a good laugh along the way. She is a beautiful person both inside, generous with her energy and wisdom. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.   Melissa Marsden Instagram | LinkedIn | Website