"I backed into it."

That's how Barbara Grassey describes building a six-figure ghostwriting business that's allowed her to move to Portugal and work from anywhere. No grand plan. Just one friend asking for help with a 37-page "book" written in 14 different fonts.

Twenty years later, Barbara has ghostwritten for real estate gurus, business coaches, and consultants across the country. Her projects start at $25,000. But here's what nobody tells you about the writing business: Even after 20 years, you're never quite sure if your work is good enough.

In this conversation, Barbara reveals:

The Accidental Business Model: Barbara started in real estate investing right before the 2008 crash. One favor for a friend turned into referrals through a JV group of national gurus. Her advice? Start where you already have contacts and a reputation. Branch out later.

The Passive Income Pivot: After 20 years of trading time for money, Barbara's building multiple income streams:

1. Substack bringing in a couple thousand/year
2. $200 online memoir course
3. Fiction books (light mysteries and paranormal cozies)
4. Free book funnels that sell series

Her philosophy? Build 10 small income streams like rental houses—"the toilets never clog."

The SEO Shift to AI: Barbara's marketing friend has been optimizing for Google for years. First it was blogs. Then Pinterest. Now? Optimize for AI, not Google.

The hack? Publish on Reddit, Substack, and LinkedIn Articles. These platforms have AI credibility—your content shows up in ChatGPT searches even if your website doesn't. This is the new .com bubble. Get in early or become noise.

The Self-Doubt Reality: "This has already been said. I'm just a little guy."

Barbara's response? The big names forgot what it's like to be in the trenches. YOU are closer to the people who need help. You bring your own perspective—that's your value.

The Amazon Truth: "Putting your book on Amazon is like having a kiosk in the Mall of Americas. You're in a place with lots of traffic, but nobody knows you're there."

Books make $2-7 per sale. You need volume. But Barbara's playing the long game with fiction that compounds over time.

The Pricing Wake-Up Call: Barbara consulted for a $22K/year mastermind, giving one hour/week of advice. She realized: "These people are paying $22K for me when they could hire me directly and get way more value."

Sometimes you're paying big bucks without getting real value. And sometimes you're undercharging because you're comparing yourself to the wrong people.

The Bottom Line: Start where you have contacts. Build small income streams that compound. Optimize for AI. Don't compare yourself to gurus—you have your own value. And remember: it's all figureoutable.

ABOUT BARBARA GRASSEY:

Barbara Grassey is a ghostwriter and book coach who's spent 20+ years helping business coaches, consultants, and entrepreneurs write authority-building books. She offers ghostwriting starting at $25K, book coaching, and online courses. She's also building passive income through Substack, fiction books, and ad revenue.

Barbara lives in Portugal and works with clients globally. She believes in starting where you have contacts, building multiple income streams, and remembering that websites are like rental houses—the toilets never clog.

Connect with Barbara: 🌐

Your emails are going to spam. Your open rates are tanking. And that list you bought? It's about to get your account shut down.

Welcome to 2026, where email marketing got a whole lot more complicated—and a whole lot more important.

Melissa Seideman didn't plan to become an email marketing expert. She was a high school history teacher for 15 years, selling curriculum online to make extra money because daycare was too expensive. Then something happened: She started sending emails. Really good emails. The kind that made a couple thousand dollars per send.

Other teachers noticed. They started asking: "What are you doing that I'm not doing?"

Fast forward to today: Melissa runs Not Another VA with a team of eight (all moms, mostly former or current teachers), managing email marketing for 30+ clients across wildly different industries—curriculum sellers, therapists, anxiety coaches, HVAC companies, brick-and-mortar businesses, and digital shops.

And she's seen it all: accounts shut down for breaking the new rules, clients losing entire lists overnight, open rates plummeting from 80% to 20% after switching to AI-written emails.

In this conversation, Melissa reveals:

The New Email Rules (Ignore Them at Your Peril):

1. Paid domain emails are mandatory (no more gmail.com or yahoo.com)
2. Domain verification is non-negotiable (you must own your business domain)
3. List warming is essential (even if you switch platforms or get a new domain)
4. Double opt-in protects you (and keeps your deliverability intact)

The Client Who Didn't Listen: One client ignored Melissa's warnings and kept sending emails without following the new regulations. Result? Every single email landed in spam with a warning: "This is not a safe sender." Her sender reputation was destroyed.

The 100K Email Disaster: Another client sent emails to 100,000 people without warming up her domain. The email provider shut down her account immediately. She lost everything—her entire list, gone.

The AI Email Experiment That Failed: A client left Melissa after three years to use AI for emails. Her open rates dropped from 80% to 20% overnight. Why? The emails didn't sound human. They were too polished, too obvious, too robotic. People could tell.

What Actually Works:

1. Consistency matters more than frequency (one email/month consistently beats sporadic bursts)
2. Size doesn't matter (Melissa has a client with 3,000 people who made $200K in 4 years)
3. Engagement beats volume (80% open rate, 15% click rate = consistent weekly sales)
4. Human touch is irreplaceable (AI can enhance, but it can't replicate your stories, your voice, your relationships)

The $4,000 Tiny List Win: Lindsay shares a client story: A Christmas decorator with just 500 people on her list (built organically over 2-3 years) sent one simple email per week during her season. Total revenue: nearly $4,000. Small list. High engagement. Real results.

The Email Sending Domain Hack: Melissa and Lindsay dive into a technical workaround most...

Most business owners treat their bookkeeper and tax preparer like two separate entities—and it's costing them thousands.

Matt Green, founder of Ledger Medial, didn't start out in accounting. He moved to Nashville to become a musician, studied audio engineering, and played drums in a band. But when he moved back to South Carolina in 2009 with three kids and zero job security, he made a dramatic pivot: from the most unstructured career (music) to the most structured (accounting).

That unconventional path gave him a perspective most accountants don't have—and it's why he's built his firm completely differently.

In this conversation, Matt reveals:

The Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make:

1. Why commingling personal and business accounts isn't just messy—it destroys your liability protection (piercing the corporate veil)
2. Open a separate business bank account with $100 and never transfer money between accounts
3. Why depreciation trips up even smart business owners (that $200K shop you built? You can't deduct it all at once)

The False Sense of Security: When your bookkeeper and tax preparer don't talk to each other, you think you're netting $50K—then you owe $30K in taxes you didn't plan for. Matt explains how keeping them separate creates a "false sense of profitability" that paralyzes businesses.

The S-Corp Sweet Spot: At what income level does filing as an S-Corp actually make sense? Matt breaks down the math: $30K net profit is where the benefits start outweighing the costs. Self-employment tax is 15.3%—eliminate it strategically and you keep thousands more.

The Inventory Trap: Why putting inventory straight to Cost of Goods Sold instead of properly accounting for it on your balance sheet can wreck your financials (and why your CPA should have caught it).

How to Vet Your Accountant:

1. Ask if they've worked in your industry
2. Check Google reviews obsessively
3. Demand responsiveness (ghosting is an "epidemic" in accounting)
4. Verify credentials (degree, IRS Enrolled Agent, CPA, or equivalent experience)

The Virtual Advantage: Matt launched Ledger Medial in August 2020—100% virtual from day one. No physical location. Clients in Washington State, Virgin Islands, New York, Florida, Texas, California, and everywhere in between. He charges way less than the typical $300/hour CPA firm rate because his team structure is smarter.

The Software Trap Keeping Accountants Local: Why most accounting firms stay "landlocked" to 2-3 states: Their software (like Ultra Tax) charges them $26-40 PER RETURN for every state outside their package. Matt's system? Built for nationwide work from the start.

Red Flags You're Overpaying: If your bookkeeper doesn't understand tax implications and your tax preparer is making "adjustments" to your books every year—you're literally paying twice for the same work.

Bottom Line: Stop separating your bookkeeping and tax prep. It's not more cost-effective—it's more expensive and more dangerous. One cohesive system saves you money, stress, and surprise tax bills.

ABOUT MATT GREEN:

Matt Green is the founder of Ledger Medial, a fully virtual accounting firm serving clients across all...