Aggressively Human: Online Business in the Age of AI, Algorithms & Automations

Taking the whole month of July off breaks the weekly cadence we’ve held all year—and one of us is famously bad at taking time off. But this isn’t a best-of rerun or a quiet fade; it’s a deliberate choice to downshift, and we wanted to talk openly about why we’re making it and what it actually takes to pull off. In this episode, we get into what’s behind our summer sabbatical: the planning required...

When you need a VA, a podcast producer, or just a new place to get your nails done, what do you actually do? You ask someone. But we don’t recommend someone who just gets the job done — we recommend those providers with outstanding customer experience. In this episode, we talk with Nikki McKnight—Meg’s romance-podcast co-host, operations expert, and newly minted Certified Customer Experience Profe...

SEO in 2026 doesn’t look anything like it did even a year ago, or even a month ago as you’re reading this in June of 2026. If you’re still thinking in terms of domains and backlinks and keyword-driven page views on Google, it’s time to update your worldview. In this episode, Meg breaks down entity-focused search and discoverability: the shift from optimizing the domain versus optimizing the entity...

Most email marketing advice gets written for one audience: other online business owners. The cadences, the launch sequences, the “reply and let me know what you think” CTAs — they all assume the person on the other end is in the same world you are. They’re not, if you’re a therapist or a financial advisor or a lactation consultant. Your clients may not reply to your emails with “loved this!”, don’...

Getting ripped off online used to feel like the worst-case scenario for putting your ideas out there. Now it’s a near-certainty — your work has already been scraped, ingested, and trained on, whether you wanted it to be or not. But, on the other hand, if you don’t claim your expertise early and often… you can’t be the one cited and known for your work. In this episode, we talk about the tension be...

After nearly two years and a survey of 50+ members, Jessica’s Deeper Foundations membership had clearly outgrown its original container — and Jessica finally had the data to prove what was working, what was friction, and what needed to be rebuilt. In this episode, Jessica walks Meg through the full arc: how the membership started as a 10-lesson video library for 20 superfans, grew to 150+ members...

AI coding tools have made it possible for anyone to build an app by just describing what they want. And solopreneurs are doing exactly that—from quiz tools to iOS apps to full CRMs. However, there’s a lot more to this conversation. In this episode, we’re joined by Joe Casabona of the Streamlined Solopreneur . Joe has a master’s in software engineering and spent 20+ years as a developer before pivo...

The AI adoption conversation in early 2026 is loud, fast, and full of warnings that you’ll be left behind if you don’t move now. But for most of us, the real question isn’t how fast you can adopt every new tool—it’s whether the tool or use case is right for your business. In this episode, Jessica shares her own journey from existential AI FOMO in January (OpenClaw! ClaudeCode! Opus! Oh my!) to a m...

Business governance — LLC, C-Corp, Co-Op…. sounds boring as hell. But is it? Instead of setting up a traditional partnership or agency, Anna and Janel of Strange Birds did something different — they spent a year building out the governance structure of a worker-owned cooperative . Anna has been running Strange Birds , an idea specialist consultancy for over six years; Janel joined two and a half y...

AI clones and GPTs are increasingly common, which brings forth so many questions! But the “aggressively human” question we’re exploring today is how much care, curation, and legal scrutiny goes in before you release it to real people. In this episode, we talk with return guest Diann Wingert, ADHD business coach and host of the ADHDish podcast, about Di AI — her newly launched digital coaching clon...

We’re both mid-launch as we record—and neither of us is following the big launch playbook. In this episode, we turn the mic on our own businesses as we’re launching while life-ing. Meg renamed her core program from a membership to a mentorship— the Signal Mentorship —and is figuring out how to re-sell something she’s already sold many times over when the positioning has changed. Jessica sold her s...

Which version of you is running your business right now? It might be your inner 16-year-old who thinks networking is stupid, or your inner 6-year-old who learned the only way to be seen was to prove how smart she was. Your nervous system doesn’t really care whether you call it mindset or trauma — it’s going to do what it’s going to do. In this episode, we talk with Nicole Lewis-Keeber, MSW, licens...

In 2026, “community” is the new trend. The barrier to entry to launch a membership or community is lower than ever, which means the bar for making one worth staying in has never been higher. In this episode, we talk with Becky Pierson Davidson, founder of Affinity Collectiv e, a boutique agency and the digital product partners behind memberships and apps that actually work. Becky spent a year as h...

In this episode, we talk about frameworks — what they actually are, why they matter more than ever for getting found in AI search, how they set your work apart, and how they work as a sales tool without turning your discovery call into a free consulting session. Search has changed — and with it, that means how we approach our content has changed. Five years ago, a broad range of posts and decent k...

Many conversations about AI in the entrepreneur space default to content generation — blog posts, social captions, first drafts. But that’s only one layer of what AI can do, and for a lot of people, it’s not even the most useful one. In this episode, we’re joined by Meighan O’Toole of Ops+Bots , a Notion architect and workflow specialist who helps small teams build scalable systems they’ll actuall...

What if the answer to growing your business wasn’t building a funnel or crazy AI workflows, but being human, and building discernment and relationships? In this episode, we talk with Shannon Mattern, founder of the Web Designer Academy, where she teaches web designers how to package, price, position, and sell their services. She came up through freelance web design herself—undercharging, over-deli...

The narrative surrounding self-employment is often binary: you’re either running a full-time business or you’re not. But is that the reality? What would be possible if we treated self-employment as a spectrum? And what do we face as we move across the spectrum in terms of time, money, and momentum? For this discussion, we’re welcoming back Softer Sounds founder, Off the Grid host, and author Ameli...

Every business owner hits that point where the thing that used to light them up now feels like a slog — and it usually happens right when the work matters most. Whether it’s February fatigue, launch number seven, or the creeping suspicion that you’ve said everything you have to say, the impulse to burn it down and start fresh is real. But is it burnout, boredom, or just a season? In this episode,...

Most podcasts don’t make it past episode 10. But somewhere around the year mark, something shifts—what started as exploring ideas and meeting people can quietly become something bigger, with more weight and more responsibility than you signed up for. In this episode, we explore the difference between hosting a podcast and leading a movement. We talk about the three types of motivations for a platf...

Social media in 2026 is definitely not the same as before 2020—and not even the same as it was last year. And for our “Aggressively Human” take on how social fits in your marketing stack, we’re bringing on our favorite Mindful Marketing mentor and return guest Andréa Jones. In this episode, we’re talking about what’s actually happening on social platforms in 2026, especially for expertise-led busi...

Lately, a lot of well-known course creators have closed their flagship programs or shut down their podcasts. Other online course creators who will “never again sell live training”…. well, they’re back with live training. Is the course bubble over? Will AI shut down courses? Or is this just an industry hot take to get clicks and views? In this episode, we talk about what’s actually happening with c...

In this episode, we talk with Lex Roman , founder of Revenue Rulebreaker , about why solopreneurs and micro-business owners are almost invisible in mainstream business media—and what happens when someone actually builds a platform for them. Lex shares how Revenue Rulebreaker grew out of a personal experiment in becoming a full-time creator and turned into an independent media publication focused o...

The longer you’ve been doing your work, the harder it can be to explain it. In this episode, we talk about what we’re calling the expert’s paradox : why people with real experience often struggle to publish clearly, while less-experienced voices seem perfectly comfortable shipping simple advice. We see the seven-part blog post that will take 21 hours to write, and know we can’t stop with the simpl...

It’s New Year, New You Time - which means it’s time for goal setting! (Cue the cheers and the groans). But we have thoughts on traditional goal setting. In this conversation, we talk about how outcome based goals are often ineffective (and the fast path to burnout), and instead focusing on what’s in our locus of control. We talk about the difference between “bottoms up” and “top down goals”, and h...

(FYI - the last 10 minutes has more f bombs than usual if you’ve got kiddos with you). Who doesn’t want to fit in to their local entrepreneurial communities—but how many communities miss the mark, especially for solopreneurs and expert-led businesses? We’re joined by Raven O’Neal , co-founder of Startup Women NC and founder of Savvy Gal Media , to talk about what actually keeps a community alive o...