Love At First Search (formerly Social Slowdown)

After nearly three years of podcast silence, I’m reviving this feed — but not to pick up exactly where Social Slowdown left off.

Search has changed. My work has changed with it. And the questions I’m most interested in now are less about ranking for keywords and more about how experts become easier to understand, trust, and recommend across Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, YouTube, and the rest of the public web.

In this reintroduction episode, I explain why I decided to revive an old podcast feed instead of starting from scratch, what happened when dormant listeners immediately started downloading three-year-old episodes again, and how I’m thinking about the value of old content, existing audiences, and accumulated authority.

I also lay out the experiment I’m running across the blog, YouTube, this podcast, and LinkedIn: taking the same core concepts, translating them into different formats, and tracking both how humans respond and how search and AI systems pick them up.

Over the next several episodes, we’ll get into:

• recognition vs. recommendation
• the Unmistakable Authority Method
• entity clarity
• semantic territory
• authority architecture
• public evidence and reinforcement
• why you can’t build authority in private
• how omnichannel distribution can strengthen your signal
• positioning and narrative differentiation
• what to do when years of accumulated content start making you harder to understand, not easier

If you’ve been here since Social Slowdown, thanks for sticking around. If you found me more recently, welcome.

Love At First Search is now about expert authority, discoverability, and the future of search.

Explore the AI Findability Library: loveatfirstsearch.com/ai-library

As an entrepreneur, who DOESN'T want to get better clients with bigger budgets? Well in this week's podcast episode, Ilise Benun tells us exactly how she helps her clients do just that. We discuss:

•  How to bring your creativity to the business side of your biz
• How being in a different stage of the buyer's journey means adjusting the wording on your platforms to cater to those needs
• The importance of being clear and creative in who you're serving
• 3 tools in the simplest marketing plan
• What you DON'T have to do in order to market yourself and your business 

More About Ilise Benun:
Ilise Benun is a business coach for creative professionals with a focus on mindset, money and marketing. She is also a national speaker, author of 7 books and multiple online courses, including the Simplest Marketing Plan & founder of Marketing-Mentor.com, the go-to online resource for creative professionals who want better projects with bigger budgets. 

Connect with Ilise:

• Marketing Mentor
• Sign up for Quick Tips

Support the Show.

Jessica Abel's background as an author led her to assume that mass marketing and a large audience was the ONLY way to succeed as a business owner; Thankfully, she finally figured out that her business models needed to first pay her bills, and THEN she could make decisions about audience and marketing style.

In this week's episode, Jessica (she/her) and I discuss:

• How to think about choosing a business model, and why/when you may choose one over another
• Choosing a business model that allows you to make more money in less time
• Working with fewer clients for more money versus working with more clients for less money
• Figuring out how social media fits into your marketing - what do you need it to do for you?

Connect with Jessica:

• Learn more on Jessica's website
• The Autonomous Creative podcast

A little bit about Jessica:

Jessica Abel (she/her) is a graphic novelist, author, creative business coach, and the founder of Autonomous Creative, a coaching company that helps mid-career creative professionals build businesses that can pay their bills AND honor their creativity. Abel founded the company in response to the ever-greater struggle creatives face in making a living. Pushing back on the “starving artist” mythology, Abel focuses on business fundamentals, stripped of jargon and adapted to the unique needs of creative professionals, and puts the tools of making real money in less time—without creative compromise—into the hands of the artists, writers, and entrepreneurs who need them.

Support the Show.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit loveatfirstsearch.substack.com

By now we know that what works for one, may not work for another. And in this week's episode, I'm talking with Jessica Lackey all about business models, and how sometimes what makes sense for other people may not make sense for you and your business. Maybe the traffic-based business models that we're sold can actually be less profitable than a lower, slower pace of business.

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.

Here's what you can expect from this episode:

• The importance of community and relationship marketing
• The "cult-ish" side of social media (in regards to online business)
• Why you DON'T need to build your business like everyone else
• Business models and the math behind scale

Connect with Jessica:

• Sign up for her newsletter and/or take the quiz "What’s Your Stage of Business?"
• Learn more about Jessica

Support the Show.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit loveatfirstsearch.substack.com

Marissa Lawton is an 8-year online entrepreneur and conduit for ancient women’s wisdom who guides feminine seekers to reclaim their divine power and channel it into their businesses.

As a former licensed therapist who left the medical model of mental health care, Marissa had a behind-the-scenes look into how patriarchal systems and structures continue to diminish women’s ability to co-create the lives and businesses that serve their innate needs.

And her Work in the world is to change that.

By helping women reconnect to nature’s rhythms, Marissa aims to reintroduce long-denied mysteries and reestablish deep feminine roots in the entrepreneurial space.

In this week's episode, Marissa and I are talking about how you can bring more feminine energy into your business. We discuss:

• Living from a rooted place
• Intuitive decision-making for your business
• Listening to your intuition versus having an analytical mindset when it comes to business decision-making; Can you do both?
• What does masculine and feminine energy look like in a business?
• Traditional marketing with a mystical, sacred flare and how you can bring mysticality into your business
• Redefining your measure of success
• Some examples of how you can bring more feminine energy into your business

Connect with Marissa:

• RootedFeminine.com
• Rooted Feminine Podcast
• Follow Rooted Feminine on Instagram
• Marissa Lawton - Side Hustles for Psychotherapists
• Take the quiz: "What season of “re-rooting” are you in?"

Support the Show.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit loveatfirstsearch.substack.com

In this week's podcast episode, I'm thrilled to be speaking with Diann Wingert, a fellow female solopreneur with ADHD.

Diann Wingert became a business strategist, coach, and mentor after a 20-year career as a psychotherapist. Her mission is to help ambitious outliers with big ideas and busy brains get focused, fired up, and flame retardant. Diann is the creator of The Boss Up Breakthrough, host of The Driven Woman Entrepreneur Podcast, and an expert on creative female entrepreneurs with ADHD traits.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Therapy vs. coaching: What's the difference, and which one should you seek out?
• Why the shift from a social media-based marketing strategy to an SEO-based marketing strategy may be the exact thing you need and why many female solopreneurs are afraid to make this switch
• Rejection sensitivity, confidence, and fear of failure
• Social media and mental health
• How ADHD and giftedness in women can be both challenges and advantages in self-employment

Connect with Diann:

• Learn more about Diann Wingert
• Connect with Diann on LinkedIn
• Listen to The Driven Woman Entrepreneur Podcast

Support the Show.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit loveatfirstsearch.substack.com

This is the second part of my 2-part conversation with Briar Harvey about all things social media, online marketing, neurodiversity, mental illness, and accessibility. If you haven't already listened to Part 1, you can listen here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1887252/13429205

We also talk about our ability to focus, the importance of our choice of words, and how the average attention span has decreased significantly over the past decade.

About Briar Harvey:

Briar Harvey is a storyteller and systems witch. She believes that everything has a story and exists within a system. The trick then, is figuring out how to change the rules and tell a better story. She is an IDEA Consultant (that's Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility) with a focus on Neurodivergence (that's ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, etc). She helps companies create and implement accessibility plans that increase employee retention by at least 50%.

In her free time, she writes stuff and records podcasts. She’s the founder of The Neurodiversity Media Network, a collaborative and accessible media company that is hosting and curating all the news that is relevant to neurodivergent folks. Find her at briarharvey.com and neurodiversitymedianetwork.com

Support the Show.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit loveatfirstsearch.substack.com

Buckle up for Part 1 of a 2-part episode with Briar Harvey about all things social media, online marketing, neurodiversity, mental illness, and accessibility.

We talk about the fear of missing out on social media, what it's like to run an online business AND consume content as someone who is neurodivergent, and more.

Listen to Part 2 here.

About Briar Harvey:

Briar Harvey is a storyteller and systems witch. She believes that everything has a story and exists within a system. The trick then, is figuring out how to change the rules and tell a better story. She is an IDEA Consultant (that's Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility) with a focus on Neurodivergence (that's ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, etc). She helps companies create and implement accessibility plans that increase employee retention by at least 50%.

In her free time, she writes stuff and records podcasts. She’s the founder of The Neurodiversity Media Network, a collaborative and accessible media company that is hosting and curating all the news that is relevant to neurodivergent folks. Find her at briarharvey.com and neurodiversitymedianetwork.com

Support the Show.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit loveatfirstsearch.substack.com

This episode is all about planning your marketing strategy as an entrepreneur.

Michelle Mazur talks about the importance of figuring out your messaging before your marketing. We talk about:

• The importance of collaboration for your marketing strategy
• How you can do less, but BETTER and more efficiently - so you can do more of the things you love
• It's not just about the strategy - it's also about the metrics!
• The Expert Up Club

Connect with Michelle:

• The Expert Up Club
• Learn more about Dr Michelle Mazur and her business, Communication Rebel

More about Michelle Mazur:

Michelle Mazur works with brilliant business owners who are shaking things up...but having trouble talking about it. She combines the tools of successful social movements with the qualitative research skills she earned in her communications PhD to help them craft their powerful, captivating message. The author of 3 books (including the newly-updated 3 Word Rebellion) and featured in Fast Company, Entrepreneur and Inc., she knows that speaking about what you do in a clear and captivating way is the key to reaching the people you could help the most.

Support the Show.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit loveatfirstsearch.substack.com

In this week's episode, Jen Liddy talks about how her Facebook account got hacked and caused her to completely rethink her marketing strategy for her business.

We also discuss:

• When TikTok and other social media platforms can work for you, versus when it can be much harder to make it work for you
• The pros and cons of scaling your business
• The value and cost of labor
• Where your freedom comes from as an entrepreneur
• The importance of relationships as you grow your business
• Reexamining the relationship you have with your business: what do you want and why do you want it?

Connect with Jen:

• Learn more about Jen Liddy
• Content Creation Made Easy Podcast with Jen Liddy

Click here to read the blog post

Support the Show.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit loveatfirstsearch.substack.com