The Hustle and Glow Podcast with Francesca Alexander

Women in Politics: Does It Belong in the Office?

We are often told there are two things you should never discuss at work.

Money.

Politics.

But for women, those two subjects are already deeply connected to the workplace.

In this episode of Hustle and Glow, Francesca Alexander looks at why women’s working lives are already political, whether we acknowledge it or not.

We talk about pay, promotion, leadership, maternity, workplace culture, political fluency and why silence is not always neutral.

We also unpack the complicated reputation of feminism, the famous “60% versus 100% qualified” hiring claim, and why women should understand what they are giving away before somebody convinces them it is impolite to ask.

This episode is not about turning the office into a campaign rally.

It is about understanding power.

Who gets heard?

Who gets promoted?

Who gets paid what?

Who makes the rules?

Who is expected to stay quiet?

And what happens when women decide not to.

In this episode

You’ll hear about:

why politics is already present in the workplacehow feminism became harder to talk about than the inequalities it describeswhy pay transparency mattersthe difference between silence and neutralitywhy women’s visibility at work matterswhat political fluency can look like in everyday working lifehow company values are revealed when equality becomes inconvenientwhy asking the question can sometimes be the most important thing you doCompanion article

Read the full article on Social Global Grind:

https://www.socialglobalgrind.com/women-in-politics-does-it-belong-in-the-office

Find Francesca, Social Global Grind, Hustle and Glow, events and more

https://www.socialglobalgrind.com/socialglobalgrind-com/francesca

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Before La Catrina became an icon, she was satire. Before Frida Kahlo became a global symbol, she was a woman living inside pain, identity and defiance.

In this episode of Hustle and Glow, Francesca Alexander explores Día de los Muertos through the women behind the imagery, the families behind the altars, and the quiet work of remembering.

From José Guadalupe Posada and Diego Rivera to Frida Kahlo, ofrendas, family stories and the women who keep memory alive, this is a reflection on death, identity, ancestry and legacy.

Because Día de los Muertos is not really about dying.

It is about relationship.

It is about who remembers.

And it asks a beautiful question:

What of us will remain alive after we are gone?

Read the full companion article:

https://www.socialglobalgrind.com/las-mujeres-women-behind-day-of-the-dead

Find Francesca, Social Global Grind, Hustle and Glow, events and more:

https://www.socialglobalgrind.com/socialglobalgrind-com/francesca

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Short promo blurb

A spoken-word reflection on La Catrina, Frida Kahlo, Día de los Muertos and the women who keep memory alive through food, photographs, stories and ritual.

Read the full article:

https://www.socialglobalgrind.com/las-mujeres-women-behind-day-of-the-dead

Find everything here:

https://www.socialglobalgrind.com/socialglobalgrind-com/francesca

How to Vote Like a Democratic Socialist or a Socialist in New Zealand

What does it actually mean to vote according to democratic-socialist values?

In this episode, I break down the research method I use to evaluate candidates, parties and policy promises across New Zealand and the United States.

We look at Zohran Mamdani’s approach in New York City, what parts of that model do and do not translate to Aotearoa, how Labour and the Greens frame their 2026 policy programmes, why legislative history matters, and what voters should check before trusting a political label.

The focus is not on telling you who to vote for.

It is on asking better questions:

What has actually been delivered?

Who benefits?

Who pays?

What law has to change?

What happens if the policy fails?

And how do you separate campaign language from measurable results?

I also share a practical ballot-research framework you can use with AI while keeping your own judgment firmly in charge. The episode is built around the idea that labels like socialist, progressive or conservative are never a substitute for evidence.  Pasted text

Read the companion article on Social Global Grind:

https://www.socialglobalgrind.com/

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Francesca Alexander is the founder of The Intelligent Marketing Studio at Social Global Grind and host of the Hustle and Glow Podcast. She writes about marketing, business, AI, workplace culture and building businesses that support the lives people actually want.

Find Francesca, Social Global Grind, Hustle and Glow, events and more:

https://www.socialglobalgrind.com/socialglobalgrind-com/francesca

Gen X Needs to Grow the F*ck UpThere is a very specific kind of workplace conversation where nobody is yelling, everybody thinks they are being reasonable, and somehow the actual problem is sitting right there in the middle of the room.

That is what caught my attention in a TikTok from Delaney Feezell.

She had been working part-time in marketing, had absorbed responsibilities after a full-time role disappeared, and was trying to explain something a lot of businesses still do not want to hear:

The scope had grown. The hours had not.

In this episode, I talk about why this is not really a Gen Z versus Gen X argument.

It is about management.

It is about the difference between owning marketing and personally executing every part of it.

It is about what happens when a business wants social, email, paid ads, influencers, events, partnerships, content and strategy, but budgets for one part-time person.

And yes, it is also about us, Gen X.

We were taught to stay late, pick up the coffee, do the errand, take the extra work and call it paying our dues.

Some of that built resilience.

Some of it was just bad management.

The fact that we survived it does not mean the next generation should inherit it.

In this episode, I get into:

why “I had it worse” is not a management philosophyhow poor systems and approval bottlenecks can look like poor performancethe difference between ownership, oversight and executionwhy younger workers may simply be asking questions we were trained not to askwhat reciprocity actually looks like at workwhy managers have to keep learning tooand why suffering is not institutional knowledgeBecause the job you need and the job you are willing to pay for are not always the same job.

And if your only defence of a bad workplace practice is that somebody once did it to you too, we are old enough now to know better.

Grow up.

Read more from Social Global Grind:

https://www.socialglobalgrind.com

Listen and follow Hustle and Glow:

https://hustleandglow.com/

Francesca Alexander is the founder of The Intelligent Marketing Studio at Social Global Grind and the Hustle and Glow Network, a business community for founders building with intention across Auckland, New Zealand and Los Angeles, California. She hosts the Hustle and Glow Podcast, a long-form conversation series on marketing, identity, community and what it actually takes to build something real.

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

Freedom sounds gorgeous in an Instagram bio.

It feels considerably less glamorous at 9:47 p.m. when you are answering another “quick” client question, approving work only you can approve and wondering why the business you built for freedom cannot function without you.

Most founders say they started their businesses for more choice, control and flexibility. Then they create companies that depend on their constant availability, personal delivery and emotional labour.

That is not freedom. That is employment with worse boundaries and a boss who knows all your passwords.

In this episode of Hustle and Glow, Francesca Alexander examines what it means to make freedom part of your company’s actual operating system.

We’re talking about:

• Pricing that creates financial margin

• Offers that do not turn every client into a custom emergency

• Boundaries that protect your time and energy

• Teams that can make decisions without waiting for you

• Systems that hold information outside your head

• Technology and AI that return time instead of creating more noise

• Building a company that can continue when you step away

Here is the uncomfortable question:

If you disappeared from your business for seven days, what would break first?

The answer reveals where your company still depends on your self-sacrifice.

Freedom is not the reward you receive after the business becomes successful. It is one of the specifications the business should have been built to meet.

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The Business Was Growing, But Was I?

A business can be doing better on paper while your actual life gets smaller.

More clients. More revenue. More responsibility. More people needing something from you.

And somehow less space to think, create, travel, rest, change direction or even remember what you wanted the business to make possible in the first place.

In this episode, Francesca Alexander looks at the uncomfortable gap between business growth and personal growth.

Because those two things do not automatically happen together.

You can become better at delivery while becoming less creative.

You can build a stronger company while becoming more tired.

You can increase revenue while losing freedom.

And you can spend so much time becoming the person the business needs that you stop asking whether that person still feels like you.

This episode explores what happens when the business starts expanding faster than the life around it, and why growth should create options, not just more obligations.

In this episode:

Why revenue growth can hide personal stagnation

The difference between a bigger business and a better life

How founders disappear behind delivery, admin and responsibility

What to measure besides revenue

Why energy, creativity, confidence, health and freedom count too

The danger of scaling a business you do not actually want to live inside

Why the next stage may be about assets, IP, media, systems and reach, not simply more client work

The question every founder should ask before trying to double the business

If the business doubled next year, would your life become better or just busier?

That is the question underneath this episode.

Because a growing business should expand your life, not quietly consume it.

Find more from Francesca at:

Social Global Grind: https://www.socialglobalgrind.com

Hustle and Glow: https://www.hustleandglow.com

Francesca: https://linkin.bio/francescahustles

Francesca Alexander is the founder of The Intelligent Marketing Studio at Social Global Grind and the Hustle and Glow Network, a business community for founders building with intention across Auckland, New Zealand and Los Angeles, California. She hosts the Hustle and Glow Podcast, a long-form conversation series on marketing, identity, community and what it actually takes to build something real.

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

You can tell yourself you built the business for freedom. Your calendar may have a very different opinion.

In this episode, Francesca Alexander looks at what your schedule is really saying about the business you have created. Not the business you describe on your website. The one you are actually living inside.

Who has access to you? What gets moved first when the week gets busy? Where does your own creative work sit? Is your health protected, or is it still the easiest thing to sacrifice?

Francesca also introduces the idea of looking at business through four ledgers: money, time, energy and identity. Because a business can be growing financially while quietly taking more from the other three.

This episode is about Life by Design, but not in the glossy, colour-coded-calendar sense. It is about whether your business actually fits the life you say you want.

A packed calendar can mean things are going well. It can also mean everyone else has access to you and nobody has questioned the arrangement in years.

In this episode:

 Why your calendar may be more honest than your vision board  The difference between being busy and being well designed  Why client work will take every hour you give it  How other people’s urgency starts running the business  The four ledgers: money, time, energy and identity  What Life by Design looks like in a real working week  Why freedom is visible in the calendar before it is visible in the bank accountRead the companion article and take the 60-second calendar quiz:

https://www.socialglobalgrind.com/your-calendar-knows-youre-overwhelmed-before-you-do

Find more from Francesca at:

Social Global Grind: https://www.socialglobalgrind.com

Hustle and Glow: https://www.hustleandglow.com

Francesca: https://linkin.bio/francescahustles

Francesca Alexander is the founder of The Intelligent Marketing Studio at Social Global Grind and the Hustle and Glow Network, a business community for founders building with intention across Auckland, New Zealand and Los Angeles, California. She hosts the Hustle and Glow Podcast, a long-form conversation series on marketing, identity, community and what it actually takes to build something real.

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

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.