Aggressively Human: For experts choosing expansion over extraction.
by Meg Casebolt & Jessica Lackey
Latest episode
The week we almost ended Aggressively Human
The week we almost ended Aggressively Human
About this podcast
Aggressively Human is a podcast about building expert-led businesses around expansion, not extraction.
Hosted by Meg Casebolt and Jessica Lackey, the show explores what happens when conventional business advice meets the reality of the people who actually have to live with its consequences.
We talk about sustainable growth and business models, marketing and algorithms, AI and automation, expertise and authority, mental health and capacity, relationships, and the choices underneath all of it: What are you optimizing for? What do you gain? What does it cost? And does the tradeoff make sense for the actual humans involved?
We’re not here to prescribe a new set of rules for running your business. We’re interested in helping independent experts make thoughtful decisions about what to grow, what to automate, what to protect, and what they want their businesses to make possible.
Because your business should support your life. Not the other way around.
aggressivelyhuman.substack.com
Episodes
The newest 20 of 95 episodes
- The week we almost ended Aggressively Human · 48 minThere’s a so-called “best practice” for most business podcasts: release every week, book guests for about half your episodes, and don’t break the algorithm. This fall, keeping up…
- Running a community like a house party with Darnell Brown · 1 h 3 minIs your community a quiet library? Or a lively house party? And how do you design and market a community designed for the goals of you and your members? In this episode, we talk…
- The role of a website with Eleanor Mayrhofer · 52 minAnyone can spin up a website with AI now. But for experts who built their careers offline, the hard part was never the tool. It’s knowing what to publish, where, and why. In this…
- Our fall launches: What worked, what didn't, and what changed mid-launch · 57 minSpoiler Alert: Neither of us “sold out” our fall launches. But looking at who joined and why, we don’t think that’s the whole story. In this episode, we look back at our fall…
- “How do I know what I sound like” with Samantha Pollack · 55 minMost of the conversation about AI and writing is stuck on whether it can write well. Samantha Pollack thinks that’s the wrong question. The one that matters for your business is…
- Brand Voice vs. AI Voice with Justin Blackman · 54 minMost of us can spot AI-written copy now, even if we can’t say exactly why. With tools like Pangram scanning content for it, sounding like the default has real consequences, and a…
- Humanizing Data (and Strengthening Sales) with Tanisha Tate Woodson · 57 minMost research gets done to communities: someone extracts the data, publishes the paper, and is never heard from again. Tanisha Tate Woodson built a firm on the opposite premise —…
- Cold outreach... as a human?!? · 57 minMost of us have a very specific image of cold email: a stranger who never heard of us, selling something we never wanted, in language no human being would actually use. But “cold…
- How we designed our fall programs (and who they're actually for) · 58 minMost program pages tell you what you get — the calls, the modules, the bonuses. They almost never tell you why the thing is six weeks instead of six months, or why the schema…
- Why We Need a Party for Our Failures with Jess Manuszak · 45 min[A note before you listen: This episode includes candid discussion of suicide, suicidal ideation, mental health crisis, psychiatric hospitalization, addiction, and chronic…
- The secret to becoming referable · 53 minWe’re both getting pitched constantly by emails that clearly came from a bot that scraped our show notes, and the reason they don’t work isn’t the outreach itself. It’s that…
- Making a lifetime of work legible with Jessica Abel · 1 h 3 minMost of us who work for ourselves aren’t one clean thing—we’re cartoonists who also teach, consultants who also write, coaches who also run the whole business. And after a couple…
- We're back! Our summer hiatus recap · 48 minAggressively Human went on hiatus for July, and we’re back to talk about what the break actually looked like! In this episode, we catch up on what our month off actually looked…
- Our summer downshift (and our July podbreak) · 21 minTaking 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…
- "Would Recommend": How to build customer experience with Nikki McKnight · 55 minWhen 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…
- From Domains to Entities: Being Findable in 2026 · 59 minSEO 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…
- Using email as a service provider vs. creator with Bev Feldman · 60 minMost 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 —…
- "But what if someone steals my idea?" · 57 minGetting 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…
- BTS: Evolving the Deeper Foundations Membership from 20 to 150 members · 55 minAfter 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…
- Build it or buy it? Vibecoding with Joe Casabona · 55 minAI 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…
