Online businesses must transcend the digital if they want to survive. Awareness of the harms of the social internet and associated technologies, and how corporate greed and lackluster policy have made it so many of the harms outweigh the powerful good, is continuing to increase. So what's an online business to do? This is the audio version of an essay first published at thinkpiece.fyi This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus...

When I narrowed the scope of what is possible, I found more possibility. A paradox perhaps, but true. Trying to keep all paths open, to never choose, to have it all is what prevents growth, creativity, and clarity. Listen to the full audio essay here and then join the conversation at thinkpiece.fyi This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahmchappell.substack.com/subscribe

Artists feel the temperature shifts of our culture and economy before others even think to walk outside and see what the weather is. At this fulcrum moment of the Algorithmic Age, artists are up against some challenges: Generative AI threatens jobs, algorithms are overloaded and make it harder to reach customers, and niche communities have become professionalized at the expense of true connection. But Edgar Fabián Frías isn’t afraid. Edgar is a boundary-breaking multidisciplinary artist based...

Who gets to touch the world? Spatial computing replicates the core human desire to impact our surroundings while preventing us from doing that at all. This is the audio version of an essay published at Think Piece. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahmchappell.substack.com/subscribe

AI AI AI. It’s all anyone online can talk about. What is it? Does it do anything useful? Who will it harm, and how? Can creative jobs even exist in the age of machine learning? For artists, creatives, writers, and other intellectual property-driven professionals, the generative AI platforms continue to provoke confusion and dismay. How were these corporations able to train the Large Language Models that support these tools on a vast corpus of copyrighted works without permission from or...

Who would you be without your business? Your mind may first go to the financial impacts: without your work, you might struggle to pay your bills, save for retirement, or care for your children. But that’s not the only potential challenge: would you completely lose your sense of self if your identity as a business owner were gone? In this episode, I’m joined by coach and creator Khe Hy to discuss the challenges of creating a post-achievement life, one governed by your aliveness rather than the...

I finally did it. After years of wrestling with Instagram and trying to figure out how to use it in a way that supports my work without making me want to die, I have left the platform professionally. I tried to outsource it. I tried only posting promotional content. I tried only posting personal content. I tried content buckets and content maps and content plans and content repurposing systems. And while I have made plenty of money from these hacks, none of them have solved the problem: my...

Hustle? Find it? Like it’s a good thing? If you read that title and wondered if you’re on the wrong podcast feed, I get it. I’ve spent years decrying the hustle, and trying to help founders and creatives break out of that mode to create a more holistic approach to business. But sometimes, we just have to do the thing. Sometimes, we just need to get paid. Sometimes, we have to hustle. As a business grows, we naturally shift our sights to longterm sustainability. But that often comes as a cost:...

For business owners and other online denizens, time is a challenging needle to thread.

Learn what to do now to make the most of the end of the year, as well as how to harness the momentum of the moment to lay the groundwork for the year to come.

Whether you're trying to take more time off, get away from your computer, or clarify the scope of your client relationships, you must make a strong effort to define and communicate those needs and decide how you will support them.

Online course sales are down from their lockdown-era highs. Completion rates remain challenging, and engagement has dropped off. What can we do to revive online education?

Social media is a mess, ad conversions are down and costs are up, and SEO is collapsing under the weight of AI content. So, what is actually working in 2023?

Closing a successful product can feel like a failure. But what if it's exactly what you need to do to create the next step of your business?

A successful offer creates a unique business problem: the fear of messing it up. After three years of running the Holistic Business Academy Membership, Sarah is sharing her top lessons and the mistakes she made out of fear.

Many online tarot readers, astrologers, and coaches saw a massive revenue increase in 2020 but steady declines since. Tarot professional Liz Worth shares how as economic and consumer trends shift, tarot readers and other online service providers must adapt if they want to get clients.

We are taught that growth is an economic requirement, a fact rather than a choice, and the only path to business success. But what if degrowth is what we need, both as a collective and as small business owners?

Electional astrology is a powerful tool to help you work with the heavens to find divine timing for your business decisions. But your personal sovereignty is just as important, and astrologer ZamboniFunk shares how to active both.

Choosing the right model for your online education business is crucial for your wellbeing and your customers' success. Tune in to find out how you can select the perfect online education model for your offer.

Is your membership business making you feel trapped, overwhelmed, and burnt out? Tune in to find out why your membership isn’t working, and what you can do to make sure that it helps both you and your customers thrive.

Curious how you can address your burnout, boost your income, and help more customers? Listen to Ward Sandler, CEO of MemberSpace, discuss the foundations of building a membership business that creates consistent recurring revenue at an accessible price for your customers.

If you’ve ever asked yourself “why are my sales so low?” this episode is for you. Take a listen so the next time you launch an offer to crickets, you know how to assess and take action.

Graphic designer Christine Lieu, the expert behind CL Designs and the Brand Party Podcast, outlines what great branding makes possible for holistic businesses: clear communication of values, more potential customers, and increased ease and cohesion during launches.

Can a four-day work week accommodate small businesses, whose operations often involve just one person or a very small team who have a hefty load of work to accomplish each week? We tried it at the Holistic Business Academy for six weeks. Tune in to find out how it went!