The Combative Client Is Usually Not the Problem

There was a time when I would have told you a combative client was simply a difficult client.

Experience changed the diagnosis.

In this episode, Francesca Alexander breaks down what actually sits underneath most tense client relationships: unclear expectations, moving briefs, missing communication, vague approvals, pressure around revenue, and the moment a conversation about marketing quietly becomes a conversation about trust. 

This episode covers why some clients arrive already carrying the damage of previous agency relationships, why the brief is not admin but protection, why the client has deliverables too, and why communication is how you keep the room. Francesca also looks at the difference between data and defensiveness, what to do when somebody is trying to relocate a wider business problem onto marketing, and why contracts need to describe reality rather than fantasy. 

There is also a harder part of the conversation: when better documentation, better communication and better process are no longer enough.

Sometimes the relationship is simply over.

And sometimes the most professional thing you can do is leave the room without setting it on fire.

Because there is a cost attached to emotional chaos, and businesses are strangely reluctant to put it on the spreadsheet.

Find everything at https://linkin.bio/francescahustles

Join the community at hustleandglow.com and click on Network to find upcoming Hustle and Glow events, workshops and founder sessions.

For done-with-you and done-for-you marketing support, visit socialglobalgrind.com and hit the Find Your Path button. In about sixty seconds, you will know exactly how we can best support your business.

The Hustle and Glow Podcast is hosted by Francesca Alexander, founder of Social Global Grind, The Intelligent Marketing Studio, and the Hustle and Glow Network. New episodes drop regularly. Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss one.

If this episode helped you, share it with someone who needs it. That is how good information travels.

On Our Knees Is One of the Smartest Business Books of 2026

What happens when the thing that made you successful is the thing you now need to let go?

That is the question sitting underneath Regena Thomashauer’s new book On Our Knees, and it is why Francesca Alexander thinks business leaders should be paying attention to a book that will probably never be shelved in the business section.

In this episode, Francesca takes you inside Mama Gena’s launch at House of Yes in Brooklyn, where dancers, goddess mythology, public rage, erotic movement and women literally dropping to their knees became something much more interesting than a book event. Underneath the theatre was a founder talking openly about what happens when success becomes unsustainable, when identity becomes tangled with the thing you built, and when continuing is no longer the most intelligent choice.

This episode explores why failure gives you permission to stop but success often does not, the difference between resilience and endurance, why the founder herself is part of the operating system, and what business culture gets wrong about control. Francesca also looks at the idea of the “underworld” as part of the business cycle, why destruction and creation are often consecutive stages, and what happens when the numbers say continue but your life says stop.

At the centre of the conversation is one question most business books avoid entirely: how do you recognise when something has completed its purpose, even when it is still working?

Pussy: A Reclamation was about desire. On Our Knees is about what comes after reclamation, when desire changes and the woman who built the thing has to decide whether she is still inside it.

That is not failure.

That is intelligence.

Find everything at https://linkin.bio/francescahustles

Join the community at hustleandglow.com and click on Network to find upcoming Hustle and Glow events, workshops and six-seat founder sessions.

For done-with-you and done-for-you marketing support, visit socialglobalgrind.com and hit the Find Your Path button. In about sixty seconds, you will know exactly how we can best support your business.

The Hustle and Glow Podcast is hosted by Francesca Alexander, founder of Social Global Grind, The Intelligent Marketing Studio, and the Hustle and Glow Network. New episodes drop regularly. Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss one.

If this episode helped you, share it with someone who needs it. That is how good information travels.

Cambridge Analytica, The Silicon Poppy, and Why Discernment Is the Skill of 2026

In 2016 a company most people had never heard of used psychological profiling and micro-targeted advertising to influence an election. The technology that made it possible has not gone away. It has gotten smarter, faster, and significantly harder to detect.

In this episode Francesca Alexander breaks down exactly what Cambridge Analytica did, why the conditions that enabled it are more sophisticated now than they were a decade ago, and why the women opting out of AI fluency are the ones most at risk from what is being built right now.

This episode covers the OCEAN psychological model and how it was used to engineer fear rather than manufacture lies, the connection between the Silicon Poppy and civic vulnerability, why talking about politics in community is not divisive but necessary, and a five question discernment checklist you can use in four minutes before you share anything.

Also in this episode: what happened at the first Hustle HQ Fluency AI agent build session, why six seats changes everything about how people actually learn, and how to find your seat at the next one.

The Eventbrite link for Hustle HQ Fluency is in the show notes. First Wednesday of every month. Wynyard Quarter, Auckland. Fifteen dollars. Six seats.

Find everything at https://linkin.bio/francescahustles

Join the community at hustleandglow.com and click on Network to book your seat at Hustle HQ Fluency, our monthly six seat workshop for founders who want the download without the overwhelm. First Wednesday of every month. Wynyard Quarter, Auckland. Fifteen dollars.

For done-with-you and done-for-you marketing support, visit socialglobalgrind.com and hit the Find Your Path button. In about sixty seconds, you will know exactly how we can best support your business.

The Hustle and Glow Podcast is hosted by Francesca Alexander, founder of Social Global Grind, The Intelligent Marketing Studio, and the Hustle and Glow Network. New episodes drop regularly. Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss one.

If this episode helped you, share it with someone who needs it. That is how good information travels.

I am going to lose some of you in the first line. That is fine. The ones who stay are the ones who need this.

In this episode of the Hustle and Glow Podcast, we are talking about desire as a decision-making tool. About why so many women build businesses that exhaust them, underpay them, and quietly drain the life out of them. And about the work of Regena Thomashauer, known as Mama Gena, whose book Pussy: A Reclamation makes one of the most commercially important arguments I have ever encountered dressed up in the most provocative packaging imaginable.

This is a business conversation. It just does not look like the ones you are used to.

Here is the claim. Women were never taught to make decisions from desire. They were taught to make them from obligation, from fear, from what a good woman is supposed to want. Men were never trained to override their own wanting. Women were trained to do almost nothing else. And the businesses women build reflect exactly the size of the permission they gave themselves, not the size of the desire they actually carry.

Pleasure is data. Desire is a compass. The thing that lights you up is not a distraction from the strategy. It is the strategy.

Stay with me. This one is worth it.

Find everything at socialglobalgrind.com

Join the community and find upcoming events at hustleandglow.com

Register for our next live AI event in Auckland at eventbrite.co.nz/o/hustle-and-glow-network-120728162580

Find all things Francesca at linkin.bio/francescahustles

SHOW NOTES

This episode draws on the work of Regena Thomashauer, founder of the School of Womanly Arts and author of Pussy: A Reclamation. The ideas explored in this episode connect directly to the inner work that sits underneath every aligned business.

Topics covered in this episode include desire as a decision-making compass, why women build from obligation rather than wanting, the connection between pleasure and sustainable business strategy, what it actually means to make decisions from alignment rather than fear, and the practical application of Mama Gena's philosophy to your Tuesday afternoon business decisions.

This episode is part of the Hustle and Glow Podcast's ongoing series on the inner work of building a business that actually fits your life.

You were not bad at science. You were redirected away from it. And there is a significant difference between those two things.

In this episode of the Hustle and Glow Podcast, we trace the deliberate history of how women were welcomed into science between 1500 and 1800, then systematically expelled from it the moment it became professionally powerful. We look at what happened in New Zealand from 1877 onward, when the redirection was built into the national education system from its very foundation. We look at Los Angeles and California, where girls closed the math gap right before the pandemic, only to watch it collapse from 62 per cent of districts to just 4 per cent in five years.

And then we connect it to right now. Because the same coding that steered women away from physics and computer science is doing the same work in the world of artificial intelligence. The Silicon Poppy is not a new phenomenon. It is the oldest pattern in the book, wearing a new costume.

This episode will make you angry. That is the point. Because anger, the clear-eyed useful kind, is the beginning of refusal.

Part of The Silicon Poppy Series.

Find everything at socialglobalgrind.com

Join the community and find upcoming events at hustleandglow.com

Register for our next live AI event in Auckland eventbrite.co.nz/o/hustle-and-glow-network-120728162580

Find all things Francesca at linkin.bio/francescahustles

SHOW NOTES

The Silicon Poppy Series explores the digital version of Tall Poppy Syndrome and why women are being systematically redirected away from AI and technology the same way they were redirected away from science for the past two centuries.

The Coded Poppy is Episode Three in the series.

Season 11 Episode One: The Silicon Poppy. Tech was never meant for us. We never needed their permission.

Season 11 Episode Two: The Prompt Poppy. It is not as hard as you think. Here is where to start.

Season 11 Episode Three: The Coded Poppy. We were never encouraged. That was the point.

As we are all becoming more aware of identity politics, uncovering systems that do not suit us or get us near equality any time soon, I could not help but wonder. Is the Tall Poppy a syndrome or a manipulation?

I recently caught myself in a tall poppy moment, and I am not proud of it. I was in a networking room. Someone asked if anyone could help with a particular piece of software. I knew exactly how to answer. I said nothing. Because I did not want to seem like I was showing off.

That moment sent me down a rabbit hole. Where did tall poppy syndrome actually come from? Who benefits when we stay quiet in rooms where we have something to offer? And what does any of this have to do with why women are the least likely to be learning the AI tools that are coming for their jobs?

The data is damning. The history is darker than you think. And the connection between tall poppy culture and AI avoidance is the conversation nobody is having yet.

We are having it today.

Not sure where to start with marketing your business? Go to socialglobalgrind.com and hit the Find Your Path button. It will show you exactly where you are and what to do next.

Everything else is at linkin.bio/francescahustles

Emma Grede is a British entrepreneur, philanthropist, and one of the most polarising business voices of 2026. She is the co-founder and CEO of Good American, the founding partner of SKIMS, and the author of the instant New York Times bestseller Start With Yourself. The internet had very loud opinions about her this April. Most of those opinions came from people who had not read a single page.

This episode is for the ones willing to sit with discomfort instead of scrolling past it.

I have read this book three times. Not because I agree with everything in it, but because it keeps showing me something I have not finished learning yet. We go through the controversy, the three-hour mom comment, the work-from-home take, the work-life balance position, and the parts the internet completely missed. Including why a working-class girl from East London who dropped out of high school and became one of America's richest self-made women has more in common with how some of us were raised than the critics are willing to admit.

You do not have to agree with Emma Grede to learn from her. But you do have to read the book first.

The audiobook is narrated by Emma herself. It feels like a straight-talking conversation, not a performance. Get it on Audible here: audible.com/pd/Start-With-Yourself-Audiobook/B0FW2VSXFK

Not sure where to start with marketing your business? Go to socialglobalgrind.com and hit the Find Your Path button. It will show you exactly where you are and what to do next.

Everything else is at linkin.bio/francescahustles

Carrie Bradshaw had a column, a cigarette, and time to think. Ciara Miller has 986,000 Instagram followers and absolutely no intention of slowing down.

In three weeks, Ciara attended the Met Gala, landed a Love Island USA hosting announcement, corrected TMZ herself on Threads without a publicist in sight, and kept posting her breakfast and her cat Jasper in between. Not because she is reckless. Because she understands something most people building a public profile do not. Visibility is protection. Silence leaves your story to someone else.

Ciara Miller is 30 years old and solidly Millennial. But she is operating on social media with a precision and a lack of self-consciousness that most of her generation abandoned around 2019, when everyone got too polished and forgot that realness was the whole point.

This episode breaks down her real-time posting regimen, when to be messy, when to drop the tea, and what people building a public profile can take from the most sophisticated personal-brand play of 2026. None of which she is doing on purpose. Which is exactly the point.

Not sure where to start with your own visibility strategy? Go to socialglobalgrind.com and hit the Find Your Path button. It will show you exactly where you are and what to do next.

Everything else is at linkin.bio/francescahustles

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is here and Miranda Priestly is back. And the moment I watched it I could not stop thinking about one question. What if she were your client?

Not a fictional one. Your actual client. The one who sends emails at midnight with no subject line. The one who changes the brief after you have delivered the work. The one who never says thank you but notices immediately when something is off. The one who makes you better at your job simply because the standard of mediocrity is not an option in the room.

This episode is about what the Miranda Priestly archetype teaches us about working with high-standard clients, protecting your creative integrity under pressure, and what it actually means to perform at the level that the most demanding rooms require. We also talk about what the sequel got right about reinvention, relevance, and what happens when a legacy brand has to decide whether to evolve or disappear.

If you have ever worked with a client who pushed you further than you were comfortable going and been quietly grateful for it afterwards, this one is for you.

Listen to the full episode and find everything you need at linkin.bio/francescahustles

Today I am handing the mic to someone who has earned every bit of what she has built.

Maria Abercrombie of My Vibes Co is one of those rare people who combine genuine warmth with a seriously sharp business mind. She moved to New Zealand from Brazil in her twenties with a vision, built a career from the ground up, created a life that is genuinely beautiful, and is now helping small business owners do the same through smart systems, digital tools, and the kind of coaching that actually meets people where they are.

In this episode, we talk about what it really takes to automate and scale a small business without losing the human element that made people choose you in the first place. Maria brings the kind of practical intelligence that cuts through the noise and the kind of energy that makes you feel like you can actually do this.

She is a community leader, a business builder, a mother, and someone I am genuinely proud to call a friend.

Go follow her work and go listen to everything she is putting out into the world. It is worth your time.

Follow Maria on Instagram: instagram.com/me.vibes.co

Listen to her podcast on Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/65zlFF9iruorXiAQ1eEX5L