This week, Gail welcomes Maddy Aucoin (she/her), a brand and messaging strategist for service providers who need the strategy and language to talk about why they do and why people should choose them. In a world where cool and smart professionals feel like they constantly say "trust me, I'm different!", Maddy helps them prove it with brand strategy, messaging, and copy. After 6+ years as an entrepreneur, she's also an experienced educator public speaker, and podcast guest, and loves nothing more than teaching other service providers how to stand out with their messaging and positioning.

In this episode, we talk about how to make your brand feel like YOU, why "just be yourself!!" doesn't get you there, setting business boundaries on social media, and so much more! So much of what we want out of our branding is to get to be ourselves and connect with our ideal client. But if your brand doesn't stand out, it's hard for your people to find you. We dive into our mutual love of pink, our loud af brands, and we break down our strategies for brand visibility, showing your personality online, and where the lines should be for the public container of your business.

You can learn more about Maddy and her work at her website, bymaddyaucoin.com, on Instagram, and Threads.

Our music is by Emily Bjorke, whose new single, Skeletons in Toronto, is available anywhere you listen to music.

You can find Where's Your Humanity on Instagram, or listen on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

To learn more about Gail and her work, you can go to her website, worksimple.io, or connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Tiktok.

This week, Gail welcomes Megan Upperman of SCRATCH for Growth – a marketing agency that provides Really Good Small Business Marketing for by People Who Really Care About Your Business. After a decade of leading teams at marketing agencies and venture capital-backed startups, she wanted to pursue work that made more of an impact on her community. Now, she leads a top-notch team that drives big results for businesses on tight budgets.

In this episode, we talk about why no, wanting to make money as a small business owner does not mean you are on a fast track to becoming a capitalist overlord. Small businesses are the cornerstone of our communities, make up 50% of the private sector, and are increasingly the place where people want to PUT THEIR MONEY. Megan talks about why this economy is the perfect time to go all in on marketing to the audience you want to attract by sharing your values and advocating for the things you care about. We also gush A LOT about our shared Minnesota pride.

To learn more about Megan and SCRATCH for Growth, you can go to their website, or connect with them on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Our music is by Emily Bjorke, whose new single, No Angel, is available anywhere you listen to music.

You can find Where's Your Humanity on Instagram, or listen on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

To learn more about Gail and her work, you can go to her website, worksimple.io, or connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Tiktok.

This week, Gail welcomes Asia Lareau of Aligned LLC and Girl, Grab the Mic.

Asia Lareau is a Los Angeles raised, Minneapolis-based visionary who partners with individuals and teams to align their purpose, power, and potential. She is a passionate people-first leader who doesn't believe in gatekeeping - she enables and empowers her communities with the knowledge she's acquired from corporate, MIT, and the Ivy League. Asia is the founder of Aligned LLC and the creator of the women's empowerment platform Girl, Grab the Mic.

In this episode, we talk all things embracing your personal evolution, even when they scare the shit out of you.  From portfolio careers to networking tips, a peek into Gail's many career pivots, to getting to know yourself and others. This is also a total love fest about Asia and the incredible communities she builds!!

To learn more about Asia and her work, you can find her on Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

To learn more about Girl, Grab the Mic for Twin Cities locals, you can go to her website or follow @girlgrabthemic on Tiktok.

Our music is by Emily Bjorke, whose new single, No Angel, is available anywhere you listen to music.

You can find Where's Your Humanity on Instagram, or listen on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

To learn more about Gail and her work, you can go to her website, worksimple.io, or connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Tiktok.

This week, Gail welcomes Kalyl Kadri of Words Hurt copy for a theatrical, silly, and deep conversation about how the rise of AI slop is driving people toward analog hobbies, in-person connection, and human-made work.

A former theatre-maker turned creative director, Kalyl writes brands with bite, identities that feel alive under the skin, messaging with vertebrae, and stories that refuse to sit quietly in the corner.

He has a decade and a half of experience directing performers onstage and nearly as long directing founders and creators on the page. He runs Words Hurt, where provoked businesses to put more FUN in their fundamentals, and get booked out while causing a scene.

You can find some of Kal on Instagram, Linkedin, Threads, and at their website, www.words-hurt.com.

Our music is by Emily Bjorke, whose new single, Skeletons in Toronto, is available anywhere you listen to music.

You can find Where's Your Humanity on Instagram, or listen on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

To learn more about Gail and her work, you can go to her website, worksimple.io, or connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Tiktok.

What does being evil and blocking your mom have to do with being a good steward of humanity? I guess you'll just have to listen to find out! 

This week, Gail welcomes Kim Lech of Oinopo Studio. Kim is a former brand designer, turned brand strategist & world builder, who creates cult leaders out of creatives & helps them become the person they need to be to say and do polarising things without melting into a puddle of anxiety. All with a personality packed visual identity & branded experience to support it.

In this episode, Kim breaks down what it means to be an obsession-worthy brand with a cult following, by leaning into your weird and owning your most polarizing takes. We also discuss launches gone wrong, corporate bullshit, and having a love-hate relationship with education.

You can find Kim on their website, Instagram, and Threads, and you can get their free Cult-Thinking Masterclass here.

Our theme music is by Emily Bjorke, whose new single, Skeletons in Toronto, is available anywhere you listen to music!!

To stay up-to-date on Where's Your Humanity episodes, you can follow me on Instagram, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, and subscribe on Youtube.

To learn more about Gail and her work, you can go to her website, worksimple.io, or connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Tiktok.

This week, Gail welcomes Fran Rescigno of The Passions Collective. Fran is a Client Experience Architect and firm believer that your client experience and backend systems should be human-centric: benefitting both you and your clients (and your team). She's passionate about building solutions that feel like the right fit for your brain, while enabling you to deliver a 5-star client experience that doesn't require you to be glued to your phone or computer 24/7. When she's not working, which is actually a lot of the time, you'll probably find her hanging with her 3 cats, reading a fantasy or sci-fi book, doing breathwork, or spending time outside with her partner.

In this episode, we dive in to all the ways Fran has engineered her business to give her the space to work with her brain and accommodate her neurodivergence, work fewer hours, and intentionally unpack some of the behaviors we accept as "normal" work expectations.

Having started The Passions Collective in her last semester of college, Fran also opens up about the struggles and instability of being an entrepreneur,  applying to 9-5 jobs for the first time in her life, and embracing this season of life and business, despite approaching some major change.

You can find Fran on Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, and at her website, https://www.thepassionscollective.com.

You can upgrade your own client experience with Fran's Dubsado and Notion templates in her Template Shop.

You can find Where's Your Humanity on Instagram, or listen on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

To learn more about Gail and her work, you can go to her website, worksimple.io, or connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Tiktok.

This week, Gail welcomes Christi Johnson of Christi Johnson Creative.

Christi Johnson is a compassionate business coach and the founder of The Dream Biz® Playground, where she teaches strategy through play to help creative and neurodivergent entrepreneurs build joy-driven businesses that actually feel good to run. After a mental health crisis in 2024 nearly cost her everything, she made it her mission to help others grow sustainably without burning out and with self-care as the foundation, not the afterthought. When she’s not working with clients, you’ll find her playing the piano, hanging out with her 25 nieces and nephews, or recording episodes for The Dream Biz® Podcast. You can connect with her on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Threads.

Christi shares her story of how getting diagnosed with ADHD at 30 made her close her business, crash out, and rediscover her own creativity.

Now she teaches other creative and neurodivergent entrepreneurs how to reconnect with themselves, make art (whether they're good at it or not), and express themselves in the way their true self wants to show up in this world and in their business. 

We talk about a lot of practical advice for bringing your dream business to life, and you can find some of Christi's free resources here:

Designing Your Dream Business

Creating a Joy Menu

Alt Business Owner Support/Accountability Group

You can find Where's Your Humanity on Instagram, or listen on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

To learn more about Gail and her work, you can go to her website, worksimple.io, or connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Tiktok.

In this episode, we talk all about how AI flattens your brand voice (YES, even if you "train" it), how to pick and choose what parts of your life to share online (and why defining these constraints makes your life a whole lot easier), and why it is a privilege to be inconvenienced (and to pay to outsource inconvenient tasks). 

Joining us is copywriter extraordinaire and the mastermind behind my own web copy, Andrea Shah. Andrea is a copywriter and marketing consultant for wedding creatives who want to spotlight their artistry and client experience. She has over a decade of experience working on websites and brand voice for Fortune 500 companies and luxury brands alike. She teaches wedding professionals how to use psychology, storytelling, and market research to make their perfect-match clients feel deeply seen and heard.

Andrea lives in Philadelphia with her family. She identifies as: an Enneagram 5, an average watercolor artist, a pretty good baker, a Midwest native, a speed reader, a mom of one, a horror movie fan, and a Francophile.

You can learn more about Andrea's work at www.andreashah.com, or on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads.

You can find Where's Your Humanity on Spotify, Youtube, and Instagram, and you can learn more about Gail and her work at www.worksimple.io.

Our theme music is composed and produced by my dear friend Emily Bjorke, and you can go stream her new single, Skeletons in Toronto, anywhere you listen to music.

Where's Your Humanity is an exploration of the deep value of human-centered businesses, building community, and cultivating a meaningful life in and beyond business.

Gail Fraser is your Operations Fairy Godmother and founder of Worksimple, helping creative service providers return to the work they love through systems that make sense.

In a world where hyper-individualism, exploitation, transactional relationships, and AI are promoted and normalized, "Where's Your Humanity?" is a question Gail asks herself so often. So this podcast will bring real conversations, with real business owners, and real humans that care about each other.

Follow ⁠Where's Your Humanity⁠ on Instagram, and learn more about Gail at ⁠Worksimple⁠, and ⁠@worksimple.io on Instagram⁠ and ⁠Threads⁠.