Surprise! Or, you can at least pretend to be.

After two weeks of amazing guests, we’re back in the rhythm to bring you an Appleyard classic of life updates laced with takes about marketing in the digital age. We cover:

• “Robot Friends” and another reason not to trust Mark Zuckerberg

• Our unique dilemma as millennials raised by the internet

• The recent resurgence of early 2000s indie music

• Why TikTok is undeniably the “cooler” platform

• Colour science and an (allegedly) new hue gracing our eyeballs

• Bon Iver’s incredible album launch campaign

• And obviously… moving to Barcelona

If you loved this episode (or have any discussion requests for the next one) review / comment / tell all your friends!

From building an app in public to hosting events with major brands, Camber founder Mady Maio is proof that messy action is where the magic happens. Cozy on our couch in LA, we giggle and yap and go deep on:

• How Mady manages her personal brand online while building a business beyond herself

• Her experience stepping away from her popular podcast, Okay Sis, and what self-expression looks like without that medium in the mix

• How she’s using Substack to expand the Camber community

• The ChatGPT and content creation debate, where it helps with efficiency and where it hinders our confidence

• Fostering brand relationships with major partners like Netflix and Amazon Prime and how that has supported Camber’s ability to create so much valuable free content

• Pivoting a brand in the public eye and having the stamina to stay the course as it evolves

• Her experience creating an app from scratch and the lessons learned as they get ready to relaunch it as a web platform

To connect with Mady:

Instagram

TikTok

To learn more about Camber:

Website

Instagram

TikTok

Substack

This guest episode with Hannah was SO full of rich reflections on content, self-trust, leadership, and committing to living a creative life on your terms.

We cover:

• What it means to live and lead unapologetically

• Behind the scenes of Hannah’s prolific content creation process

• Juggling a multifaceted career as an agency founder + content creator

• Betting on yourself and figuring it out along the way

• Staying connected to your vision and being open to surprising yourself

GUEST LINKS:

Follow Hannah on Instagram

Listen to the How I See It podcast

Work with Unapologetic Strategies

SPONSOR LINKS:

Pitch Perfect (Get 10% off ‘til April 28th)

Last week’s debt episode sparked so much discussion, we recorded a follow-up! In this episode, we answer some of the most common questions while shedding light on a few different dimensions of our money journey to add further context to the conversation.

We discuss:

• How we decided to invest in a local natural wine shop last year, and what it will look like when we leave LA

• The profitability of short-term rentals and our experience investing vs. profiting off of the spaces we’ve listed on Airbnb

• The negative implications of the Airbnb industry and our future plans for navigating the short-term rental space

• Our personal finances and what accounts we keep separate

• Why Xanthe is the primary breadwinner, how that affects our relationship dynamic, and how we navigate running the household and business on a single income

• Things we disagree on when it comes to money

• The emotional elements of purchasing properties and making large investments

• Mindsets that helped us get out of the debt and overspending cycle

PS. Everything in our online shop is on massive sale right now! Stack your social media skills for 34% OFF using code ERA34 at checkout.

Tax season is bringing up lots of money shit for our community so we wanted to shed some light on our entire business finance trajectory — what it took to get the business off the ground, the financial struggles along the way, and a full rundown of where we’re at now in terms of debt, investments, and perspective on financial risk.

We cover:

• How we finally saved enough to pay our taxes this year

• Our finances when we met and how Xanthe finally stopped living in overdraft

• What we invested to start the business and where our finances were at when we launched

• How we bought our Tulum house and the debt incurred from purchasing + renovating it

• Why we had to shut down our agency and the financial implications of that decision

• Selling our Tulum property and where we reinvested the cash

• What debt we’re currently carrying and our repayment goals

• Beliefs around debt, taking financial risks vs. being “responsible”

This is a robust conversation about both financial failure and financial opportunity — with a very loud acknowledgement of the privilege that has underpinned every success we’ve had, money and otherwise.

If you have any questions about any of the topics or experiences we covered, please reach out to @frankappleyard or @xanthe.appleyard on IG! We’d love for this dialogue to continue and deepen!

There’s an energy of RECKONING happening in the online business world right now, with so many of us rethinking offers, restructuring systems, realigning messaging, and entering Q2 with new perspective on how we want our work/life to feel. This episode is a response to THAT.

We cover:

• How to predict revenue for offers you’ve never launched before

• What to reflect on before you tear it all down to make sure you rebuild a business you actually LIKE

• Quarterly visioning and updating (or abandoning) goals you set at the top of the year

• Why we’re retiring the majority of our education offers this month

• What to order at our favourite restaurant in LA (Night+Market, we miss you already)

• The “soft matter” of ranch dressing (and another creamy condiment we’re obsessed with right now)

• An absolutely genius marketing campaign around the cost of eggs

• Strong hot dog-related opinions

• A disgusting fish that is actually just misunderstood

This week’s episode is a mishmash of life updates (see: title), marketing musings (like the “not knowing what you want to say” epidemic, and the goldmine of opportunity that is long-form content), a viral delusion that has TikTokers losing a lotta money, and speaking of a lot of money, is social media just the new gambling addiction? Unpack it all with us wherever you get your pods.

We discuss:

    •    Frank is a pilot!

    •    8am workout classes

    •    Airport Theory

    •    Prune fingers as an evolutionary trait

    •    Puppy yoga and a revision of the dog hierarchy

    •    Good books vs. bad books

    •    The dual-sleeper honeymoon suite in Business Class

    •    Xanthe’s digital detox reflections and the gambling addiction that is content

    •    How to escape the “not knowing what you want to say” epidemic

    •    The goldmine of opportunity within long-form writing

    •    And of course: LEAVING LOS ANGELES

Tune in and let us know whatcha think! P.S. you can still join Social Life right HERE.

Today's episode is PACKED with a productive conversation around being chronically online, and how to make it feel less shitty, despite all the screen time. We go deep on the things we all FEEL but never really SAY about spending all our goddamn time on the internet, like:

    •    How much less time we have to get shit done in a day

    •    The fact that being online actually DOES contribute to our success

    •    Social media usage as a habit vs. a choice

    •    The loneliness epidemic and where we’re missing the point on digital connection

SOCIAL LIFE:

The only social media platform you won’t need a detox from, is live for your perusin’ right here.

REFERENCE:

We’re riffing off a few stats we heard in this podcast episode!

HUMBLED was how I felt after recording this episode with World’s Best Website Copy Girl (and IRL best friend) Sara, from Between The Lines. We chit chat about our LA trip a little, but mostly Sara live-coaches me on getting my website’s shit together, drops tons of tea on how to build a ridiculously successful business with an exceptional reputation without needing to rely on social media much at all, and we go in on the concept of showing up as your whole self on the internet while exposing a few of each other’s best-kept secrets, along the way.

Part two of this episode comes out Thursday on Point Of The Story where we get so fucking for real about what it means to actually be a LEADER in the current online landscape, so make sure you’re following so you can follow the plot, with us.

SARA’S IG

SARA’S WEBSITE

SARA’S COURSE

SARA’S POD

SARA’S SUBSTACK

In one of our richest conversations around social media politics to-date, we reflect on the article “You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism” and the role we all play as leaders in supporting our communities in not just reacting to what we share but taking action on it (political or not).

We also dive into the concept of the Two Tiered Internet, debating whether public search engines are becoming obsolete (or at minimum, totally useless), explore the horrors of the 60-hour work week at Google, declare it “MAKE SHIT HAPPEN MARCH,” and tell some tales from our Hawaii trip because we’ve gotta have some silly shit in here, too.