Ever feel like you're doing everything your coach told you to do... but it's just not working?

In this episode, I'm joined by husband-and-wife duo Kristina and Herb Heagh-Avritt, co-owners of Vibrant Family Education. Their journey is a masterclass in trusting your gut when the traditional playbook doesn't fit—and still building something meaningful.

After 27 years in public education, Kristina left the classroom to help families outside the broken system. But starting their business came with its own challenges. They hired coaches, followed all the "right" strategies, and tried to build the perfect sales funnel with all the hype and urgency tactics everyone talks about. The problem? It felt completely inauthentic.

What you'll learn in this conversation:

1. Why "if I can do it, you can too" doesn't work for everyone: Not every personality type thrives with the same strategies—finding what fits YOU is everything
2. The power of consistency over hype: Three years and 160+ podcast episodes later, they're being discovered organically without the "big launch" fanfare
3. Building on integrity, not speed: Why Herb's systems-thinking approach means planting seeds now that bear fruit in 3-5 years
4. The hidden cost of "overnight success": What really happens behind those "I made $100K in 90 days" claims
5. Finding your people as a B2C business: How they're reaching parents through podcasts, library storytelling, summits, and community partnerships
6. Creating what you need: They're launching a family platform with a calendar, meeting planner, and growth compass—because Herb wanted to solve his own problem first

Kristina and Herb's story is refreshingly honest about the messy middle—the pivots, the shiny squirrels, the three years of hard work that's finally starting to pay off. If you've ever felt like everyone else's marketing strategies don't quite fit your soul, this conversation will validate everything you're feeling.

Connect with them at vibrantfamilyeducation.com

Join the free Facebook Community! Connect, Learn, Grow, Build https://www.facebook.com/groups/freedomentrepreneurcommunity

Biz in a Box CRM is the ultimate all-in-one solution designed to simplify and scale your business. Imagine managing every aspect of your operations — from smart contact segmentation and automated follow-ups to call and text functionality, calendar booking, funnels, websites, and even social media scheduling — all from one intuitive platform. No more juggling multiple tools or paying for endless subscriptions. With built-in AI employee support, Biz in a Box CRM doesn’t just organize your business, it actively helps you run it. It’s like having a full-time team behind the scenes, so you can focus on growth, impact, and freedom.

Book your demo: https://bizinaboxsolutions.com/crm

What happens when passion meets reality in online business?

In this episode, I sit down with Kameran Thompson Al-Areqi, founder of Recognizing Potential Coaching and a certified relationship coach through the Gottman Institute. Kameran's journey from elementary school teacher to full-time marriage coach wasn't overnight—it took four years of grinding while teaching full-time, solo parenting, and trying to do everything herself.

This conversation is packed with real talk about the mistakes we make when starting out. Kamera n shares how comparing herself to other coaches making "10 grand a month" led her down a rough path of burnout and stretching herself way too thin. She juggled 10 different courses, tried to learn all the marketing herself, and gave herself a "D+ in every area of life" while attempting to coach others.

Key takeaways from our conversation:

1. Why you need to listen to your people: Whether it's a partner, best friend, or mentor who sees what you can't see, their perspective is gold
2. The danger of doing it all alone: Kameron waited four years to ask for help, and she breaks down exactly how hiring a virtual assistant and delegating content creation changed everything
3. Branding mistakes that cost you: Her rebrand story (including losing thousands of Instagram followers to a hacker) offers crucial lessons about choosing names that are easy to spell and search
4. Setting boundaries saves your business: Now she only works with seven couples at a time and takes intentional breaks between her men's and women's groups
5. Building recurring revenue: How she uses School and mini-courses to create income that doesn't require her constant presence

If you're just getting started or feeling burned out from trying to do everything yourself, Kameron's story will resonate deeply. She keeps it real about the messy middle, the importance of getting crystal clear on what you don't want, and why consistency in just one or two things beats being scattered across every platform.

Connect with Kameran on Instagram @marriedandconnected or check out her podcast, Married and Connected.

Join the free Facebook Community! Connect, Learn, Grow, Build https://www.facebook.com/groups/freedomentrepreneurcommunity

Biz in a Box CRM is the ultimate all-in-one solution designed to simplify and scale your business. Imagine managing every aspect of your operations — from smart contact segmentation and automated follow-ups to call and text functionality, calendar booking, funnels, websites, and even social media scheduling — all from one intuitive platform. No more juggling multiple tools or paying for endless subscriptions. With built-in AI employee support, Biz in a Box CRM doesn’t just organize your business, it actively helps you run it. It’s like having a full-time team behind the scenes, so you can focus on growth, impact, and freedom.

Book your demo: https://bizinaboxsolutions.com/crm

"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...

What if you could create one piece of content that reaches people at every stage of awareness—and keeps working for you for years?

Morgane Rose got made let go from her job twice in five months. When a dream job offer landed in her lap, everyone expected her to say yes. Instead, she felt crushing anxiety. Something was telling her: Don't do it.

So she didn't. She started her own business instead—even though she had no concrete plan.

That leap led her from personal development coaching to discovering a strategy most online entrepreneurs completely ignore: SEO-optimized blogging that converts while you sleep.

In this conversation, Morgane reveals:

The Social Media Burnout:

1. Why she'd rather clean her cat's litter box than post on Instagram (her words, not mine)
2. How the "consistent hamster wheel" of social media made her feel like everything would collapse if she stopped
3. Why she deactivated Instagram two weeks before this interview—and doesn't care if it never comes back

The Long Game Strategy:

1. How she got 16 pages ranking on page 1 of Google in just 6 months with a brand new domain
2. Why one blog post works harder than 100 Instagram reels (and lasts infinitely longer)
3. The three phases of awareness (problem unaware, solution aware, ready to buy)—and how ONE blog can reach all three

The AI-Proof Approach:

1. How to optimize blogs so ChatGPT and Claude recommend YOU when people ask for help
2. The local page strategy that works even if you serve clients worldwide
3. Why 800+ word blogs with depth, context, and semantic keywords beat generic AI-generated content every time

The Vet Story: Morgane optimized her local vet's website, then tested ChatGPT: "Can you recommend a good vet?" Not only did ChatGPT recommend her client—it analyzed why he was the BEST choice based on website optimization, service range, and local targeting. Then she revealed she was the one who did the work, and ChatGPT congratulated her.

The Bottom Line: If you're exhausted from creating content that disappears in 48 hours, this episode will change how you think about building your business. One well-optimized blog beats a month of social media posts. And it keeps working while you sleep.

Morgane's non-negotiable rule: No keyword stuffing, no surface-level fluff, no copy-paste AI content. Give Google (and AI) what they actually want: depth, expertise, stories, and your unique voice.

ABOUT MORGANe ROSE:

Morgane Rose is an SEO copywriter and website content strategist who helps online business owners get found on Google—without the social media hamster wheel. After two redundancies in five months and turning down a "perfect" job offer that felt completely wrong, Morgane launched her business in 2016, starting in personal development before pivoting to copywriting and SEO.

Fluent in both English and French, Morgane has self-published over 30 eBooks and specializes in creating evergreen content that compounds over time. Her approach combines strategic SEO optimization with authentic storytelling, helping clients...

What if the secret to building a thriving business isn't hustling harder—it's letting it grow organically without the pressure of survival mode?

Johanna Godinez, founder of BAY Lifestyle (Beyond Asana Yoga), started her wellness journey in 2008 with a Yellow Pages directory and zero online presence. Today, she runs a globally recognized yoga teacher training school on three acres in Puerto Rico—complete with immersive retreats that attract students from Australia, France, Chile, and beyond.

But here's what makes Johanna's story different: She's never put her business in survival mode.

In this conversation, Johanna reveals:

The Hybrid Model That Works:

1. How she teaches yoga philosophy and theory online, then brings students to Puerto Rico for hands-on alignment training
2. Why community and physical presence still matter in the digital age
3. How she includes lodging and meals at competitive pricing (because she owns the space debt-free)

The Organic Growth Strategy:

1. Why she refused to take loans and instead saves profits from each training to fund the next expansion
2. Her rule: Don't quit your job until your business can actually support you (removing crushing pressure that kills most yoga studios)
3. Why 4 out of 5 yoga studios fail—and how she avoided that fate

Beyond Certification:

1. How she mentors students through business setup: LLCs, branding, pricing strategies, marketing
2. Why she helps graduates figure out if they want to teach at churches, schools, eldercare centers, or start their own studios
3. The mastermind component that most teacher trainings skip entirely

The Expansion Vision:

1. Building a floating wellness deck with sauna, cold plunge, hot tub, and chakra healing space
2. Growing from 10 to 20+ student capacity
3. How divine timing beats forced timelines every time

Johanna's philosophy? Have a vision, but keep the blinders off. The universe is smarter than your five-year plan.

Connect with Johanna: 📞 815-501-5070 🌐 baylifestyle.com 📱 Instagram: @baylifestylepr

Welcome to the Online Business Launch Podcast

This is your library of crowdsourced wisdom for building, launching, and scaling an online business.

What Makes This Podcast Different:

Every episode is titled with the KEY TAKEAWAY you can expect—not clickbait, not vague promises. Think of it like a reference library where you can jump straight to exactly what you need, when you need it.

Whether you're just starting out or you're a seasoned pro looking to scale, you'll hear from entrepreneurs in the trenches with you—people solving real problems, building real businesses, and sharing what actually works.

Meet Your Hosts:

Lindsay Sutherland has been podcasting for 5 years and brings a unique blend of corporate experience and entrepreneurial grit. After 20 years in the automotive industry (where she jokes she got paid to earn an MBA), she discovered her zones of genius: marketing and sales.

When her father—a flooring contractor—passed away, Lindsay and her sister took over his business. That was her first real taste of entrepreneurship, and she was hooked.

Today, Lindsay runs her business from a log cabin in Northern Idaho on a 5-acre mini homestead with her husband, kids, sheep, and Muscovy ducks. Why Idaho? Because both her parents passed before retirement, and that shaped how she thinks about life: Live your dream lifestyle today, not someday.

Emily Tornatore is the operations extraordinaire and automation genius. With years of experience helping business owners streamline with systems, Emily spent nearly 20 years running her own massage business before transitioning into what she does now.

She operates from sunny Florida by the ocean (yes, mountains meet ocean in this partnership), and like Lindsay, she lost her father young—a shared experience that drives their mission to help entrepreneurs build businesses that support LIFE, not consume it.

What We Specialize In:

Helping you build monthly recurring revenue products that create scalable income—so you stop hustling month after month just to hit your numbers.

We interview entrepreneurs at every stage, extract the key lessons, and package them into titled episodes you can reference like a business library. No fluff. No filler. Just actionable insights from people who've been where you are.

What You'll Find Here:

✨ Real entrepreneurs sharing real experiences (not just highlight reels)

✨ Tactical advice you can implement immediately

✨ Stories of pivots, failures, and breakthroughs

✨ Strategies for building recurring revenue and scalable businesses

✨ Operations, marketing, sales, mindset, and everything in between

How We Can Help Beyond the Podcast:

If building recurring revenue excites you, book a free business consultation with us. No high-pressure sales. Just an honest exploration of what's possible for your business.

We promise: This is a strategy session, not a pitch-fest.

Join the Community:

Connect with us (and many of our guests) in the Freedom Online Business Builders Community on Facebook. It's where real connections happen and where you can ask questions, share wins, and get support from people who get it.

Subscribe now and start treating this podcast like the business reference library it's designed to be. Jump to what you need. Learn from people in the trenches. Build the business AND life you actually want.

Links:

📞 Free Business Consultation: