The Jeff Crilley Show

Every entrepreneur has blind spots their team and spouse won't point out. Alison Canavan, an international speaker and transformational coach, has made it her life's work to help people see those blind spots — and she earned that expertise the hard way.

A former international model who represented Ireland in the Ford Supermodel of the World competition at 16, Alison spent decades in the spotlight while privately struggling with addiction, depression, and anxiety. Eleven years sober, she now speaks on stages worldwide about energy management, self-awareness, and the power of reconnecting with yourself in a disconnected world.

In...

Most people who pitch corporate sponsors get ignored—not because their event isn't worth sponsoring, but because they don't know how to speak the brand's language. Audra Broad has spent over thirty years on the other side of that conversation, and she knows exactly where pitches go wrong.

Audra is the President of Broad 360 Marketing. She spent nine years at Walt Disney ABC Radio building a nontraditional revenue department, then went on to manage corporate sponsorships and media for nationally ranked DFW events including Taste Addison, Kaboomtown, and Oktoberfest. She packaged Kaboomtown into a $250,000 Anheuser Busch sponsorship de...

What happens when the business you built starts running you? Many founders hit a point where growth brings stress, team challenges, and the uncomfortable realization that everyone is watching how they lead.

On this episode of The Jeff Crilley Show, Gayle Goodman Lynch, Business Life Coach and founder of CoEqual Network, shares how she helps entrepreneurs navigate that turning point. A 17+ year business owner, former corporate marketing executive, and host of the Choice Wisdom podcast, Gayle works with leaders who want to grow their companies without losing themselves in the process.

In this conversation, you’ll...

Most mortgage professionals talk about rates. Ross Wright talks about relationships — and then backs it up with over two decades of results.

Wright runs nobodybeatsmyrates.com and works through Nexa Mortgage, which gives him access to over 300 different lending investors. That means when a big-box bank says no, he usually has another path forward. He's particularly passionate about serving veterans, who he calls one of the most underserved groups in the mortgage industry.

In this conversation with Jeff Crilley, Wright explains:
- His no-closing-cost refinance strategy and how he once refinanced a single client 11 ti...

We load up on coffee to get going and pour a drink to wind down—then do it all over again tomorrow. Ayako DeRuby thinks there's a better way.

Ayako is the founder of The Alchemy Yoga, a wellness studio built around yoga, meditation, and sound healing. She's been practicing Vipassana meditation since 2014, sits for two hours a day in silence, has led sold-out retreats in Costa Rica for three consecutive years, and authored "Mind Alchemy," a guide to establishing a meditation practice.

In this episode, she and Jeff Crilley talk about why we explode wh...

Texas' 32nd Congressional District covers eight counties, stretches from Northwest Dallas County almost to the Louisiana state line, and includes everything from dense urban neighborhoods to small rural towns losing their hospitals and pharmacies. Councilman Dan Barrios wants to represent all of it.

Barrios currently serves on the Richardson City Council, where he puts in 40-45 hours a week in what is essentially a volunteer role. He grew up in Brownsville, Texas — 1.2 miles from the Mexican border — and was the first person in his family to graduate from high school and college. He's called North Texas home for...

DIFFA Dallas has been putting on one of the most spectacular charity fashion events in the country since the 1980s—and it started as a group of friends raising money for friends during the AIDS crisis.

Jeff Crilley welcomes three key figures behind the upcoming House of DIFFA: Richard Rivas (Trustee, DIFFA Dallas), Grant Farmer (Trustee, DIFFA Dallas), and Robyn Chauvin (Creative Director & Producer, House of DIFFA). Together they're responsible for an annual runway spectacle that's part Broadway performance, part charity gala—featuring roughly 80 models, nearly 200 looks, a two-story stage, and only one rehearsal.

In t...

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A neurologist gave Sandra Yancey’s daughter a 1% chance to live after a routine doctor’s visit went catastrophically wrong.

Standing over her intubated daughter in the ICU, Sandra leaned in and whispered:
 “You’ve been a one percenter your whole life. Here we go. Here we go again.”

Months later, the same neurologist pulled down her mask and said six words no one expected:
 “You got a miracle.”

In this powerful episode of The Jeff Crilley Show, Sand...

Domestic oil production has skyrocketed, yet the United States hasn't built a major new refinery since the early 1970s—until now.

John Calce, CEO and founder of America First Refining, joins Jeff Crilley to discuss his twelve-year mission to build a state-of-the-art refinery in Brownsville, Texas, designed specifically for American shale oil.

In this episode, we cover:
- Why the U.S. currently sends crude oil to Asia only to buy it back as gasoline.
- The "pizza oven" analogy for why old refineries can't easily process new shale oil.
- How th...

Everyone says AI will replace your workers, but the reality is more nuanced. Matt Rosen, Founder & CEO of Allata, points out that when Starbucks tried to automate everything, they actually ended up hiring more baristas because customers still craved human interaction.

The real risk today isn't that AI takes your job—it's that you ignore AI and lose your competitive edge to someone who didn't. 

In this episode of The Jeff Crilley Show, Matt rejoins the studio to discuss how he transitioned Allata from custom dev to an AI-first consultancy. He shares:
✅ How they used...

Most of us start the day telling ourselves some version of "this is going to be hard" — and according to Dr. Lucette Beall, that one sentence is enough to keep your brain filtering out every solution available to you.

Dr. Lucette is a veterinarian turned best-selling author, speaker, and mindset coach. After surviving cancer as a single parent with no safety net, and then nearly going bankrupt while trying to rescue her brother from a state mental hospital, she rebuilt her life — going from several hundred thousand dollars in debt to running a million-dollar business in roughly two...

Most businesses have a name. Very few have a brand. Linda Ayoade has built her career closing that gap.

Linda is the Founder and CEO of LOI Agency and The Posh Savant, two companies that help entrepreneurs and growing businesses develop brand strategies modeled on Fortune 500 approaches. She's also the creator of the Wow Conference—Walk on Water—an annual event that combines business education, motivational content, and production-level entertainment.

In this episode, Linda walks through how LOI Agency took a client from napkin-stage idea to a sold-out women's event in six months. She explains why...

The 1901 Spindletop gusher didn't just change Texas — it made the automobile affordable and reshaped the modern world. Julie DeWees Sparks spent forty years in the oil and gas business, starting at Getty Oil Company, and she's channeled all of that experience into her book Under Texas Skies.

Julie sits down with Jeff Crilley to talk about the wildcatters who drilled dozens of dry holes before striking it rich, the ranching families whose land sat atop massive oil fields, and the legendary names — Sid Richardson, the Hunts, Monty Moncrief, Glen McCarthy — who built fortunes and then gave back throug...

Could a handwriting sample tell you more about a job candidate than three rounds of interviews? Anagha Deshmukh thinks so — and she's built a practice around proving it.

Anagha is a leadership expert, culture architect, and certified handwriting analyst with 23 years of experience as an electrical engineer leading global teams in corporate America. She now works with small business owners and C-suite executives to accelerate hiring decisions and unlock team performance using handwriting analysis.

In this episode, she and Jeff Crilley talk through:
— How handwriting reveals over 150 personality traits and what that means for hiri...

There's a massive shortage of electricians and registered nurses in America right now — and one Marine veteran is working to fill the gap from both sides.

Jared DeRuby is the CEO of Talent Corps and Medical-Talent, two staffing companies he built from scratch after getting fired from a corporate job where he'd been the top sales producer for eight or nine years straight. A fourth-generation electrician and U.S. Marine, Jared now places thousands of skilled tradespeople on data center projects and utility-scale solar builds, while his healthcare arm handles thirteen-week travel nurse contracts and same-day-pay PRN sh...

A prospect fed three roofing bids into Claude, and by 9 AM the AI had already picked the winner. That single story frames the whole conversation Jeff Crilley has with Steven Paul Matsumoto, president of Stigmare—a marketing strategist and serial entrepreneur who doesn't just theorize about growing businesses but has the receipts.

Steven spent years as a senior leader for fixed operations at Lithia Motors before launching Stigmare, which offers fractional CMO services, AI search optimization, and digital PR for small and mid-size companies. He also took Juno's Liquor from $8,000 in monthly sales to over $1 million in an...

Jessica Spawn wrote her first children's book during one of the hardest seasons of her life — a divorce that left her feeling like an orphan kitten. That book became The Christmas Kitten, and it kicked off a series that now includes Vacation Kitten, a water safety title that cook children's picked up this year with 9,000 copies in circulation.

Jessica is the host of Gal on the Prowl, a podcast and platform built around female empowerment with the mantra "rise, rebuild, and roar." She's also four and a half years sober and a passionate advocate for the CAVA ba...

Ever notice how companies love to promote their best workers but almost never teach them how to actually lead? That gap is exactly what Glenna Hecht has spent her career closing.

Glenna is a leadership strategist, author, and speaker who came up through training, human resources, and theater (yes, theater). On this episode of The Jeff Crilley Show, she explains why leading people today is harder than it's ever been, and why the old "my way or the highway" approach flat out doesn't work anymore.

One moment that really lands: Glenna talks about how we...

What happens when a leader's revenue is climbing but their best people keep walking out the door? Aaron Antillon found out on his 40th birthday, staring into a mirror and realizing that the quiet quitting, high turnover, and stressed-out teams in his church and two businesses all traced back to one source: him.

Aaron is a DISC master trainer, personality strategy expert, and keynote speaker whose upcoming book Blind Spots lays out a framework for identifying the leadership weaknesses most people can't—or won't—see in themselves. He's coached everyone from corporate teams to former Dallas Cowboy Greg...

Melvina Hayes was four years old when she first appeared on television, and she never looked back. Three decades of performance and two-plus decades of writing later, she runs The Mpower Mint—a creative storytelling business with two distinct arms: a service engine producing marketing collateral for brands and corporations, and an IP division where she writes, directs, and produces her own work.

Her current flagship project is DFW Hype, a micro-drama series set in Dallas following three women navigating power, loyalty, and ambition. She produced the pilot over the past year with cinematographer Timothy Alexander White an...

What happens when you check the organ donor box on your driver’s license? More than most people realize. One decision can help save up to eight lives and impact many more through tissue donation.

That’s why this conversation matters.

On this episode, we welcome Kelli James, Director of Marketing and Communications for Southwest Transplant Alliance. She joins us to share how organ donation works, why awareness is so important, and how a simple choice can create a lasting legacy.

Most people get promoted because they're great at their job—not because anyone taught them how to lead. Amayea Maat has spent years coaching leaders inside Fortune 100 companies and entrepreneurial startups alike, and she's tired of the sanitized leadership advice that fills most bookshelves.

Amayea is the Owner and Chief Inspiration Officer of Growth Peaks and author of the just-released Leadership: The S Bomb That They Don't Tell You. She joins Jeff Crilley to talk about what actually goes wrong when new leaders take the reins without training, why the old "my way or the highway" ap...

Six years after the pandemic shut the world down, the mental health crisis it triggered hasn't gone away—it's just quieter. Dr. Christopher S. Taylor, founder and CEO of Taylor Counseling Group and an existential psychotherapist with a doctorate in counseling, joins Jeff Crilley to talk about what he's seeing in his practice and why he believes we're still in a "loneliness pandemic."

Dr. Taylor shares how his practice nearly folded during lockdown before telehealth saved it, and how Taylor Counseling Group has since expanded to over 55 therapists and 10 locations across Texas. He explains his values-based therapy ap...

Doctors spend an average of seven to ten minutes per patient—not because they want to, but because documentation demands and misaligned technology force their hand. Roxana Valeton has seen this problem from every angle. She immigrated from Cuba at 21, worked front desk and ultrasound tech roles, and launched her first healthcare company at 25. Now, with over twenty years of operations experience, she's built MedTells, a real-time orchestrator platform that sits on top of existing EHR systems and other tools to unify data and align it with actual clinical workflows.

In this conversation with Jeff Crilley, Roxana ex...

Stephen R. Orefice went from selling ads at Fox Television in New York City to slinging cell phones at the Poughkeepsie Galleria to running a full-service general contracting company in Dallas-Fort Worth. The through line? A relentless sales instinct he credits to growing up in a baseball family—his dad played in the Minnesota Twins system, his brother played D1, and Stephen caught for LIU CW Post before spending fifteen years coaching youth ball.

Stephen is the host of the Field of Dreams Business Podcast, where he's landed guests like Tommy Mello of A1 Garage Doors, and he...

How does a 14-year-old yearbook editor end up running one of North Texas's most respected arts PR firms for over three decades? Kelly J. Kitchens has the answer—and it involves Paul Rubens, Judy Garland, and an upcoming AI film festival.

Kelly is the CEO (Chief Enthusiasm Officer) of Kelly Kitchens PR, a publicity firm she founded in 1995 after serving as entertainment editor for The Met, a popular North Texas arts and entertainment weekly. She's been recognized as a "master publicist" by both the Fort Worth Business Press and The Dallas Morning News, and journalists regularly refer cl...

Roughly 28,000 children are in the Texas foster care system right now. When a child is removed from their home—often in an emergency—they may arrive at a shelter or foster placement with nothing but the clothes on their back, or sometimes less.

Kelly and Richard Archibald founded Qavah The Storehouse to change that moment. Their nonprofit assembles "first night bags": brand-new backpacks stocked with pajamas, an outfit for the next day, toiletries, and a handwritten note of encouragement. They deliver them to CPS offices and the Children's Advocacy Center so caseworkers can hand a bag to a ch...

Doctors told Catherine Ogie she had a 15% chance of survival. Blood clots in her heart and lungs, three blocked arteries, stomach paralysis—her body was shutting down. She refused surgery and bet everything on faith, lifestyle changes, and becoming her own fiercest health advocate.

Catherine Ogie is the author of the bestselling book Unshakable and a U.S. Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. On this episode, she walks Jeff Crilley through the full timeline of her health crisis, starting from the October 2022 emergency room visit where she learned she'd already had a heart attack without knowing it.

Janet Bernstein quit her corporate job on August 19 and had a bestselling book out by October 10. That kind of urgency doesn't come from ambition—it comes from someone who finally stopped ignoring what was wrong.

Janet is a keynote speaker, ten-time author, and Chief Glow Strategist who helps accomplished women stop shrinking and start leading out loud. On this episode, she sits down with Jeff Crilley to talk about the childhood experiences that turned her into a people pleaser (17 schools will do that), the corporate burnout she refused to call burnout until a single weekend of reading ch...

The Dallas International Film Festival is turning 20, and Jeff Crilley brings three of the people running it into the studio to talk about what's in store this year — and where Dallas filmmaking is headed.

James Faust, the festival's Artistic Director, has been involved since the beginning. He recounts the early days of partnering with AFI and rattles off a guest list that includes Robert De Niro, Charlize Theron, Jeremy Renner (who showed up with The Hurt Locker before anyone knew it was an Oscar film), and Adrian Brody. Dallas Film Commissioner Katie Schuck explains how Texas's newly fu...

The Catholic Foundation was born in 1955 when a Dallas bishop did something almost unheard of — he gave up control of the money. Matt Kramer, who has led the Foundation as President and CEO since 2013, joins Jeff Crilley to explain how that decision shaped a lay-led community foundation that now manages nearly $370 million in assets.

Kramer walks through the Foundation's record-setting 2024: $52.25 million in contributions and $32 million granted to 900 organizations across the U.S. He shares specific examples of where the money goes — from building a soccer field for kids playing on broken glass in one of Dallas's poorest neig...

What if the word "blessed" in the Beatitudes was never meant to sound religious—and actually just means "happy"? That single mistranslation, Pastor Mike Hayes and Dr. Jeffrey Garner argue, has shaped centuries of Christian teaching in ways that moved people further from joy rather than closer to it.

Pastor Mike Hayes founded Covenant Church in Dallas and has led it for 50 years. Dr. Jeffrey Garner is a scholar of spiritual formation who started as Hayes's ghostwriter before being "unghosted" as full co-author. Together they wrote Real Happy: Jesus' Surprising Path to Genuine Joy.

In th...

Every entrepreneur has a CPA—but how many actually hear from theirs more than once a year? Jessica Chompff and Charlene Carpenter, the sister team behind CC Group Advisors in Dallas-Fort Worth, decided that once-a-year tax prep wasn't good enough. They built their entire firm around monthly client meetings and working exclusively with business owners.

Jessica holds CPA, MST, and CTP credentials and handles deep tax research and strategy vetting. Charlene is the relationship builder and decision maker who got her start at a tax office after having her first daughter. Together they've earned the nickname "the CP...

Most entrepreneurs keep their faith life and their business life in separate boxes. Jenevy Sims thinks that's exactly backwards—and she wrote a book about it.

Jenevy is the author of Proverbs and Profits, a serial entrepreneur who runs The Evolve Firm (a visual communications company), and the Vice President of Business Professionals of San Antonio, the city's largest networking group. She also sits on the boards of Fashion for Life and Children's Rehabilitation Institute Teleton (CRIT).

In this conversation, Jenevy explains why she believes entrepreneurship is "spiritual warfare with a business plan" and walks th...

Women own and operate businesses at record rates, yet they receive less than 2% of all available VC funding. Linda Fisk has spent a decade trying to change that math.

Linda is the founder and CEO of LeadHership Global, a community of over 10,000 women leaders spanning Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, Nairobi, New York, Dallas, Vancouver, and beyond. She's a two-time TEDx speaker, six-time TV producer, international bestselling author, and a returning guest — her first appearance on the show was five years ago.

In this conversation, Linda and Jeff talk about the persistent funding gap for women-owned businesses, wh...

Self-injury is far more common than most people realize. Yet many therapists were never formally trained to address it in school.

Jeff Crilley talks with Lori Vann, an international behavioral health speaker and founder of the Institute for Non-Suicidal Self Injury, who has spent 26 years working with clients of all ages who self-harm. Lori has authored four books on the subject, trained school districts and treatment facilities, and appeared alongside Dr. Phil to discuss the link between social media and self-injury in teens.

In this episode:
- Why self-injury is not a suicide attempt...

Your harshest critic is usually yourself — so how do you learn to actually love the person in the mirror?

Elisabeth Gould is an author, professional speaker, and Growth Catalyst Coach who runs Speaking At Her Best. She self-published her devotional book, 31 Best Ways to Love Yourself, during the early weeks of COVID in 2020, and she still uses it as her own daily reminder when life gets hard. She's also a Nasdaq futures day trader who recently launched Pretty Girl Swag University (PGSU), a coaching platform aimed at women in corporate America who want to build new income st...

What happens when a corporate career ends abruptly and a completely different calling shows up?

Rosemary Bennett spent decades in sales leadership before COVID pushed her into involuntary retirement. Struggling to reinvent herself, she took a friend's offhand suggestion and entered the Miss Texas Senior America pageant — something she'd never heard of and had zero experience with. She placed second runner-up the first time, then came back and won the crown in November 2025.

In this conversation with Jeff Crilley, Rosemary talks about rediscovering her identity as a vocal performer after years away from music, what th...

Most men's jewelry looks the same. Avi and Nika Dubey got tired of that and started making pieces that actually mean something.

Avi and Nika are the husband-and-wife team behind AviNika Jewelry, a custom design house specializing in one-of-a-kind men's rings and statement pieces. Their origin story is personal—Nika designed Avi's wedding ring from scratch after they couldn't find anything meaningful at big-name stores. She comes from a family of artisans; her father makes jewelry in Ukraine and her grandfather has been crafting metal art for over four decades.

In this conversation with Jeff Cr...

Tanya Scott started charging kids a quarter for coaching advice on the playground when she was seven years old. Decades later, she's built a career helping leaders, performers, and everyday people move from burnout and brokenness to clarity and resilience.

Tanya is a master certified life and executive coach, a former Tony Robbins senior trainer, and the creator of Love Is An Inside Job and From Rat Race to Sanity. She's trained alongside John Maxwell and Joe Dispenza, worked at Coca-Cola in sales and training, and has over thirty years in the personal development space.

...