No, we're not just sharing a bunch of unpopular opinions in this She Built This episode...

We don't kick it off by saying, "I don't know who needs to hear this..." but we DO dive into the world of online business and unpack some of the myths, tricks, blanket advice, and generic business building tips you see flying around on the internet.

I'm joined by special guest, Jessica Lackey, to debunk myths about online business and more.

What's inside the episode:

• Inbound vs. outbound
• Marketing vs. relationship-building (how even THAT sounds sleazy!)
• Scaling
• The elusive, yet magical seven-figure mark of success
• Is it a niche or is it a pattern?
• Reels - are we doing this? Yay or nay?
• Cultivating a playlist vs. pushing noise into the feed
• Finding communities that are a good fit
• And so much more!

About Jessica Lackey

Bio:

Jessica Lackey is a strategy and operations advisor who is on a mission to radically disrupt mainstream business culture in an effort to create sustainable businesses with a human-centric approach. With a background in corporate leadership, McKinsey & Company consulting, and a Harvard Business degree, Jessica knows a thing or two about hustle culture and what it feels like to judge success by the bottom line…at all costs.

Now, she combines her deep experience in consulting, Fortune 500 operations leadership, and coaching to help businesses grow without sacrificing the well-being of their clients, team, and community.

Connect with Jessica:

Listeners can connect with Jessica, take her free Radical and Rooted Business Lifecycle Assessment, and learn about her services, including next steps by visiting the following link https://www.jessicalackey.com/welcome

Website:

https://www.jessicalackey.com/

Social links:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessicalackey_consulting/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-lackey/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jslackey

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jessicalackey

About your host, Emily Aborn

I'm Emily Aborn, Content Copywriter, Speaker, and Podcast Host of Content with Character and She Built This. Since 2014, I've had experience running brick-and-mortar as well as online businesses. I've worked with 100+ industries as a copywriter, and help my clients write original copy and content they can feel confident in. For fun, I love nerdy word games, reading, listening to podcasts, and hiking in the woods with my husband, Jason, and our dog, Clyde. Email: emily@emilyaborn.com Website Facebook Instagram LinkedIn Book a Strategy Session with Me

Content with Character Podcast

Friendships can be challenging...

Regardless of who you are. No matter whether it's a friendship with a coworker, colleague, fellow business owner, or BFF from grade school. As my guest Danielle Bayard Jackson shares in this episode, female friendships are especially complex while being incredibly important!

Because I've had my fair share of complex and complicated female friendships throughout my life, I had many questions! I thought you might as well, so I decided to bring in an expert in the matter, Daniel Bayard Jackson, who believes that it's worth fighting for our friendships.

Danielle is a female friendship coach and educator who speaks about platonic women relationships and the science behind it. Her podcast, Friend Forward, is dedicated to teaching us how to create and maintain better female friendships.

We get into:

• What makes female friendships so unique and different
• Why female friendships are worth fighting for
• Whether or not you should strive to find friends outside of business and / or entrepreneurship
• How to find friends
• And more!

Danielle Bayard Jackson is a female friendship coach and educator who speaks nationally about the science of women’s platonic connections. Her coaching business, Friend Forward, is dedicated to teaching women how to create and maintain better female friendships.

Danielle’s expertise has been featured in The New York Times, NBC News, Psychology Today, Wall Street Journal, FORTUNE Magazine, and Oprah Magazine, various talk shows and a host of other media outlets.

A former high school teacher, Danielle now uses her teaching skills as an educator to coach women through common friendship conflicts. As a member of the American Sociological Association, she uses the latest research to create practical, tangible strategies to help women create more depth in their platonic relationships. Companies like TikTok, the NBA, NFL, and Etsy have all booked Danielle as a speaker to address the topic of connection psychology.

As the resident friendship expert for the global app Bumble For Friends, Danielle shares her insight weekly on The Friend Forward Podcast, has several viral videos on TikTok, and recently signed a book deal to bring her practical, research-based strategies to the masses in May 2024 (tentatively titled Fighting for our Friendships).

Website

Book: Fighting for Our Friendships

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About Emily Aborn Content Copywriter and Podcast Host:

Emily Aborn is a Content Copywriter, Speaker, and Podcast Host of Content with Character and She Built This. Since 2014, she’s had experience running brick-and-mortar as well as online businesses. She’s worked with 98+ industries and loves helping others increase their visibility, connect with their clients, and bring their dreams to life. For fun, she enjoys word games, reading, listening to podcasts, and hiking with her husband, Jason, and their dog, Clyde.

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Content with Character Podcast

Today’s episode is a bit of a different one!

It’s not a tips, how-to’s, action steps kind of episode, it’s the story. A story of where art meets science and the power of smell to transport us.

Today's episode is featuring Helida Dodd, owner of Marbella Perfumes, who loves bringing stories and scents together in a powerful way.

We get into how she started, where the path in the road took her on a totally different journey, and some of the things she has to face and overcome as a product-based, artisan business owner.

Our conversation covers:

• How Helida went from engineering to perfume
• Why smells are so important for connection
• Parallels between storytelling and scents
• Advice for for artisans, makers, and product-based businesses to overcome common fears getting in the way of their success
• And more!

Books and Podcasts Mentioned

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

The Ride of a Lifetime by Bob Iger

Content with Character Podcast with Emily Aborn

The Perfume Making Podcast with Karen Gilbert

About Helida:

Helida Dodd is a Perfumer for lovers of beautiful fragrances who can’t tolerate traditional perfumes.

She loves showing how perfume and smells are as a sensorial component to teach critical thinking, create new habits, and form cohesive teams.

She’s a former Industrial Engineer who spent many years in healthcare, logistics and supply chain management. Today, she uses her engineering and chemistry background to create intricate perfumes and showcase the relationship between art and science. When she’s not concocting her exquisite formulas or speaking, you can find her spending time with her husband and two teenagers, volunteering with the Children’s Voice Choir, biking, doing yoga, or daydreaming about traveling.

Connect with Helida:

Website

Instagram

Facebook

About Emily Aborn Content Copywriter and Podcast Host:

Emily Aborn is a Content Copywriter, Speaker, and Podcast Host of Content with Character and She Built This. Since 2014, she’s had experience running brick-and-mortar as well as online businesses. She’s worked with 98+ industries and loves helping others increase their visibility, connect with their clients, and bring their dreams to life. For fun, she enjoys word games, reading, listening to podcasts, and hiking with her husband, Jason, and their dog, Clyde.

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Content with Character Podcast

Stats show that communication is approximately:

• 55% Nonverbal Communication
• 38% Tonality (how we say it)
• 7% The words (the ones we choose to convey our thoughts)

Today's guest, Brian Galke, shares with us about that 55% as he digs into the nonverbal communication and information that can be found written on the face.

Brian is the CEO and Founder of Subtle Skills, a training ground for decoding faces to help you improve your communication with others, build rapport, and give them more time, attention, and presence.

For this episode, allow yourself to open up your mind to new possibilities and join me in following my own curiosity in learning something new!

Our conversation includes:

• How Brian learned about facial feature decoding and why he started down this path
• Benefits in facial feature decoding for our relationships and business
• Key features of the face to focus on for communication styles, information delivery, and more
• What makeup says about our faces
• The connection between overall body language and the face
• And more

Links and Resources Mentioned:

Books: Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss

You Say More than You Think by Janine Driver

What EveryBODY is Saying by Joe Navarro

YouTube link to this episode: https://youtu.be/iUbx7XpodhA

Brian's products: https://subtleskills.com/services/

About Brian Galke

Brian Galke is a renowned Facial Feature Decoding Expert with over two decades of experience in Business Coaching, Speaking, and Training. Brian's unique perspective on sales training challenges conventional notions by emphasizing the importance of creating a connection and finding a connecting point with your potential customer. As a "People Connector," Brian has a reputation for breaking down barriers and bringing out the best in people. His practical, street-savvy coaching style, fused with real-life stories and conversational techniques, connects with his audience at an intimate, intense, and individual level.

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Website

About the Host, Content Copywriter Emily Aborn

Emily Aborn is a Content Copywriter, Speaker, and Podcast Host of Content with Character and She Built This. Since 2014, she’s had experience running brick-and-mortar as well as online businesses. She’s worked with 98+ industries and loves helping others increase their visibility, connect with their clients, and bring their dreams to life. For fun, she enjoys word games, reading, listening to podcasts, and hiking with her husband, Jason, and their dog, Clyde.

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Content with Character Podcast

Leaning into the wisdom of the Love Languages can help to simplify your choices in personal relationships, in your business, and with yourself.

You can save yourself time, energy, and mental gymnastics when you're aware of your love language as well as those around you. You can also tap into the Love Languages when forging collaborations, working with clients, and overall in your business as you help others feel seen.

In today's conversation, my guest Lisa Zawrotny and I get into:

• What the five love languages are
• How we can use the love languages in our business and client processes
• How recognizing someone else's love language makes them feel seen, heard, and understood AND saves us time and energy wondering how to make them happy
• How using the love languages increases our productivity, motivation, and inspiration
• And more!

Links and Resources Mentioned:

Content with Character Episode: What's Your Marketing Love Language?

Positively Living Episode: How to Practice Self-Care Using the Five Love Languages with Miriam Wexler

Emily Aborn's Blog: Love Languages: Examples to Inspire Marketing Content

About the Guest, Lisa Zawrotny

Lisa Zawrotny is the founder of Positively Productive Systems, host of the Positively Living™ Podcast, and a Productivity + Accountability Coach certified in positive psychology and stress management. She helps multi-passionate entrepreneurs prioritize what matters and customize productivity approaches so they can achieve more by doing less. When she’s not working with clients or podcasting, you can find her playing music and watching movies with her husband and kiddos, or drinking iced coffee and reading while trapped under a cat.

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Positively Living Podcast

Connect with the She Built This podcast host, Content Copywriter Emily Aborn

Emily Aborn is a Content Copywriter, Speaker, and Podcast Host of Content with Character and She Built This. Since 2014, she’s had experience running brick-and-mortar as well as online businesses. She’s worked with 98+ industries and loves helping others increase their visibility, connect with their clients, and bring their dreams to life. For fun, she enjoys word games, reading, listening to podcasts, and hiking with her husband, Jason, and their dog, Clyde.

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Content with Character Podcast

Trust is of the utmost importance as an entrepreneur.

Trust in business impacts:

• Collaborations
• Subcontractor relationships
• Client experience and client relationships
• Decision-making as a business owner

This episode is way more than just the ol' "know, like, and trust" factor. This is about how we make and break trust as business owners and why it matters.

My guest, Kristin Messegee and I get into building trust as humans and business owners with ourselves and others.

The Role of Trust in Business She Built This episode highlights:

• What is trust? How is it defined?
• Different flavors and levels of trust
• Just because you trust them, doesn't mean you have to trust them with everything
• Trust doesn't look the same for everyone and everything
• As a business owner, how do you look for people you can trust?
• Building trust as business owners
• Trust in business red flags (and green ones too!)
• What to do when trust has been broken in business and relationships?
• Should we trust our gut?
• And more!

About Kristin Messegee:

Kristin is a Life Coach for Enneagram Sixes. She helps them live less in their head and more into their lives. She's the host of the Life Uninhibited Podcast, The Enneagram Six podcast. Kristin has a teen and an almost teen and loves this stage of parenting the most so far! She has always thought she was made to parent teens! She is happily married, living outside of Austin TX, though the Pacific Northwest has her heart.

Connect with Kristin:

Emily Aborn is a Content Copywriter and Podcast Host of Content with Character and She Built This. Since 2014, she’s had experience running brick-and-mortar as well as online businesses. She’s worked with 98+ industries and loves helping others increase their visibility, connect with their clients, and bring their dreams to life. For fun, she enjoys word games, reading, listening to podcasts, and hiking with her husband, Jason, and their dog, Clyde.

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Content with Character Podcast

This past year, life's felt a little more cluttered and confusing to me than usual.

As I was starting to do some of my end-of-year reflections and planning forward, I asked myself some of my usual questions:

"What do I want in the coming year? What do I want to create? What do I want in my LIFE?"

And a lot of my answers weren't really satisfying or deeply fulfilling. They were based largely on what I wanted to do and accomplish, and didn't really get into who I wanted to be.

Looking for more depth and clarity in what was REALLY burning inside me to create, I discovered Bonnie Wan (today's guest), author of The Life Brief: A Playbook for No-Regrets Living.

Today's episode is my conversation with Bonnie as she shares her own story and gets into what a life brief is and what it can do in your life.

It's surprisingly simple and yet, lends itself to endless possibilities.

In our interview, Bonnie Wan shares:

• Her personal story and breaking point: what inspired her in this work of helping people with their Life Briefs and writing her book.
• What is a life brief and who should try writing one?
• The power of a daily brain dump
• What to do if you're keeping yourself stuck by playing small
• How to bring to light the places you're hiding
• "Chase your goosebumps!"
• "Actions are a byproduct of clarity"
• And so much more!

Quote by Roger Housden (paraphrased) "Writing is like rearranging the furniture of your mind."

Connect with Bonnie Wan:

BONNIE WAN is an author and speaker, as well as partner and head of brand strategy at the world-renowned advertising agency, Goodby Silverstein & Partners. As creator of The Life Brief, Bonnie helps people live with greater clarity, creativity, and courage by teaching them how to write creative briefs for their lives. The Life Brief has evolved from a SHORT FORM BIOGRAPHY agency talk into a workbook, workshops, and speaking appearances at Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, Jane Goodall’s Activating Hope Summit, the 3% Conference, SXSW, Accenture, Apple, Google, Change.org, and more.

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Pre-Order the Book: The Life Brief: A Playbook for No-Regrets Living is a hands-on guide for boldly living with intention and imagination, from the inside out. It’s available now from Simon Element, Simon & Schuster’s division dedicated to personal transformation.

About the Host, Emily Aborn Content Copywriter

Emily Aborn is a Content Copywriter, Speaker, and Podcast Host of Content with Character and She Built This. Since 2014, she’s had experience running brick-and-mortar as well as online businesses. She’s worked with 97+ industries and loves helping others increase their visibility with clear messaging and strategic content. She lives in New Hampshire and for fun, enjoys nerdy word games, reading, listening to podcasts, and hiking with her husband, Jason, and their dog, Clyde.

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Content with Character Podcast

Note for listeners: Please censor accordingly as there is some explicit language used.

What would it look like to DO the damn thing you REALLY want to do in your life? Do you know where to start identifying what that thing is and how to make space for it?

To wrap up 2023, I wanted something new, fresh, and inspiring vs. just the normal old goal-setting and planning. I wanted to get super solid on WHAT I'm focusing on in the coming year and WHY. I want to go after my biggest dreams 150%!

In order to get clear on what that looked like, I needed to dump all the puzzle pieces of my life onto the table and see which ones fit and which ones didn't (some belonged to someone else's puzzle entirely, and I have no idea how they got in my bag!).

It was in Taking Inventory personally and professional and doing a little soul-searching that I met today's guest, Bevin Farrand, author of Your Damn Manifesto which is a guide to getting clear on your vision and putting it front and center at all times.

In this episode with Bevin:

• Why she encourages us all to just do the damn thing in life!
• What a personal manifesto is and what it can do
• How to identify your most meaningful dreams and goals (even if you want to do #allthethings)
• How micro-steps can help us get the miles
• Why the "moments" matter more than the "minutes"
• What to do if someone "poo poos" your idea and dream
• What to do about your mindset if it's not in the right place to get started
• And so much more!

About Bevin Farrand:

In 2019, after an unexpected loss just 5 days after she returned from a whirlwind trip to France with her husband, Bevin Farrand founded the Take the DAMN Chance movement and created the Do the DAMN Thing Method. Her DAMN framework has inspired thousands to connect with the people that they love, do the “crazy thing” that makes all the difference and, when given a choice, to take the damn chance. She is the author of Your DAMN Manifesto: Discover the Keys to Personal Transformation and Bringing Your Biggest Dreams to Life and a coach that supports women in achieving their goals, even after going through deeply challenging experiences.

Website

Podcast

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Facebook

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Book: Your DAMN Manifesto: Discover the Keys to Personal Transformation and Bringing Your Biggest Dreams to Life

About the host, Emily Aborn

Emily Aborn is a Content Copywriter and Podcast Host of Content with Character and She Built This. Since 2014, she’s had experience running brick-and-mortar as well as online businesses. She’s worked with 96+ industries and loves helping others increase their visibility, connect with their clients, and bring their dreams to life. For fun, she enjoys word games, reading, listening to podcasts, and tromping about in the woods with her husband, Jason, and their dog, Clyde.

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Facebook

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Content with Character Podcast