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

This week, we're doing something a little different. Instead of our usual dialogue, we’re sharing two short solo segments originally recorded for the Evidence of Humanity audio summit, hosted by Michelle Pontvert . This means we get a break from recording and editing but you still get a fresh episode. While because as Meg says, “Jessica loves a cadence”, taking breaks and thoughtful repurposing of...

How do we build businesses and community inside a broken system—without replicating that system in our own work? By leading through an intersectional, feminist, and collective lens. In this episode, we talk with Becky Mollenkamp about what it means to build and lead this way: grounded in shared power, mutual care, and collective growth. Becky shares how her work as a coach and podcaster has evolve...

Most business advice assumes you're wired like everyone else. What if you're not? In this episode, we sit down with Diann Wingert —former therapist, business coach, and host of the ADHD-ish podcast—to talk about what it really means to build a business that works with your brain, not against it. We unpack the myths around ADHD, how to radically accept your own wiring, and what happens when you fin...

What does it really mean to “stay solo” in a world that won’t stop telling you to scale? That’s the question we explore with Maggie Patterson , whose new book Staying Solo challenges the endless drumbeat of “bigger is better.” In this episode, we dive into Maggie’s journey from agency owner to solo business advocate, the messy parts of writing (and marketing) a book without turning it into a perfo...

In this riffy, delightfully unstructured episode, Jessica and Meg ditch the outlines, frameworks, and “polished” content in favor of a real-life check-in, some AI trivia, and a sneak peek at Jessica’s summer program, Relationship Rhythms . We talk about how building relationships is about more than just dropping into people’s inboxes—and how Relationship Rhythms is designed to bring playfulness (a...

Have you ever sat through a slide deck that felt like death-by-bullet-point? Or tried to sound like a LinkedIn thought leader only to bore yourself? Have you ever struggled to consider yourself “interesting” when you haven’t gone to space or climbed a mountain? Most importantly, how can you tell a story that AI cannot replace? Story coach and speaker whisperer Mike Ganino joins us to talk about ho...

“And a lot of people say, oh gosh, you know, friendship is so hard because everybody's so busy. I'm so busy, our schedules don't align. Therefore, “friendship is hard”. And I'm like, are you sure about that? Or is it actually that scheduling with busy calendars is hard. Prioritization is hard. Saying no to things so that you can say yes to the things you actually want to say yes to is hard. Those...

“If you want a sales pipeline, you are responsible for creating it. What we've been told and what we see online is the kind of constant content creation that is designed to bring you clients…so that you can essentially do a lot of marketing to avoid ever having the sales conversation. But the quickest way to make a sale though is to get to that sales conversation as soon as you can and to make sur...

In this episode, we’re talking about play. Hear us riff on the power of play and personality in our lives and businesses. We explore our different expressions of play as children and how it impacts our businesses today ( hint: Meg was a dancer and playwright and Jessica loved to tinker with her Erector sets and handwoven crafts. Totally on brand for both of us ). We talk we both experiment in our...

Automation. Funnels. AI-generated content. Scale at all costs. New leads. You’ve been sold a load of garbage about what it takes to grow a business today. And in this episode of Aggressively Human , we’re getting back to the truth about sales. Max Traylor —agency churn physician and LinkedIn truth-teller—joins us to break down why so much of what passes for “sales strategy” today was never actuall...

“Nickelback had the last big rock song of our generation because songs just aren't counted the same way. So I feel like this is actually a fairly good example of: what is popular is Nickelback, but it's not the best music. It's not the critically acclaimed music. This is what gets played on the radio because it can be played while you're barbecuing and it's non-offensive. And that's what AI-curate...

In the age of AI-generated content, content repurposing, and ideas being “created” with a screenshot of your site, the question of ownership is more urgent than ever: How do you protect what you’ve created when so much of what you’re creating lives online? In this episode of Aggressively Human , we’re joined by Erin Austin , founder of Think Beyond IP, to dig into what intellectual property really...

More money. More growth. More scale. It’s not enough to be a six-figure business, you have to be a “seven-fig mentor” and even a billion-dollar creator. The online business world feeds us a constant stream of messages about needing to do more, earn more, and be more. But what if you don’t want a million-dollar business? What if you want a smaller business that’s satisfying ? In this episode, co-ho...

Should we stay or should we go? Leaving social media has been an increasingly popular choice in the past few years. But is leaving always the most impactful choice? In this episode, we sit down with Illana Burk , business coach and advocate for human-first business, to talk about the messy middle of visibility, values, and doing business inside systems you didn’t build. Illana shares why she’s cho...

You have the right offer. The right audience. A launch plan you’ve run before. So why… isn’t it working? This week, we go behind the scenes of a real launch with Dusti Arab , founder of Referral Worthy and longtime marketing strategist, to talk about what happens when a launch starts strong—and then doesn’t go to plan. Dusti walks us through what she planned for her latest launch, what actually ha...

Real community isn’t just a forum full of brand users—it’s something deeper, more intentional, and, if done wrong, more likely to fail. So what does it actually take to build a community that works , one that people want to return to again and again? And more importantly, should you even be building one at all? April MacLean joins Aggressively Human to break down what real community building looks...

No matter your relationship with social media and Big Tech… you can’t argue that it’s become more saturated, more based on the algorithm ( bye bye followers, hello “for you” feed ), and more “pay-to-play”. So, you decide to focus on your newsletter and stop building on rented land. But in order to grow, you’re told to give even more money to the platforms for ads, or spend time every day posting a...

Email automation specialist and Kit Ambassador Bev Feldman believes that we can use email marketing software as a way to build relationships while giving your subscribers agency over their inbox experience. There are the illegal “no-nos”: the most egregious email practices that make us want to throw away our phones or hit the spam button. There are the morally gray areas of more manipulative email...

In the constant push for growth, productivity, and squeezing every ounce of output from our businesses, we rarely stop to ask: What if the goal isn’t to do more? What if it’s to create more space? Operating at 150% capacity might feel like the norm, but that’s only because we’re operating with what Susan Boles calls “default decisions.” Instead, what if we focused on building businesses with margi...

In a sea of marketing advice and growth hacks, let’s address the elephant in the room. What if the product is the problem? If your product - your podcast, your service, your course - isn’t good enough, no amount of marketing is going to make that product grow. And yet, most courses, cohorts, or even higher-priced coaching programs don’t get into the actual experience of your work. Many providers a...

“It's because even if you end up completely rewriting it, it starts out without the human soul. And it's really hard to add the human soul. But if you can start with even the messiest human written draft, and then use AI to make it better, it has human soul to begin with, and it just ends up a much more human and resonant piece of writing.” - Jessica M You’ve probably noticed it—the emails that do...

Who hasn’t set up a system (or hired someone else to do so) that seems to make your efficiency dreams come true... and that just didn't happen. Or worse? Broke your business. The alternative? Embracing Simplicity over Systems. Embracing Simplicity over Systems, another core Aggressively Human pillar. How can we be thoughtful about where and how we use systems to be in service , instead of just buy...

“So maybe we're leaving or maybe we're staying, but we're staying as a person versus as a business owner. But then everyone is scattering. As a business, how are we marketing to people when it's diffuse? And then as a person, it's like, well, where's everyone going now? And how can I be there with my friends?” - Jessica Every year, it feels like January is just the longest month ever. But this yea...

“AI cannot come up with new ideas. It can paste things together in new ways perhaps, but it's still it's still the monkeys on the typewriters, right? It's still the infinite monkey thing. It's just mashing together old ideas in new ways perhaps, but it can't come up with truly unique new ideas.” - Lacy Boggs This week, we’re talking with Lacy Boggs , founder of the Content Direction Agency but als...

“I don't want to calculate my churn without knowing every single person who leaves.” - Meg For businesses like ours, community is the lifeblood of a strong business. And when we are talking about community, we’re not just talking about an online platform where you can post in a forum. We’re talking about, as Meg says, “people who give a sh*t about each other”. In today’s podcast, we dive into the...