Sacred Business Stories

Why Most Creators Don't Know About This Until It's Too Late

This week we talked with Matt Brown [https://substack.com/profile/420828413-matt-brown], and here’s the thing… we allowed ourselves to go a bit off-script. Matt runs a boutique email performance agency. He helps entrepreneurs make sure their emails actually land in inboxes instead of spam. It sounds dry. But oh so important. Most first-time creators don’t think about deliverability until they have a problem. They build an audience, they send emails, and suddenly half their emails are landing in promotions or they’re getting spam complaints they don’t understand. By then, the damage is harder to undo. Matt is the person you call when that happens. I’ve called him. When we were moving our list from ActiveCampaign over to Kit and connecting it with Substack, when we needed to understand what was actually happening with our email health, and that’s when I reached out. What makes Matt different is that he can explain something genuinely technical and boring and make it clear. He doesn’t overcomplicate it. He doesn’t hide behind jargon. He just says: here’s what’s happening, here’s why it matters, here’s what you do about it. What We Talked About We went deep on how email performance actually works. Not the copywriting part. Not the psychology. The mechanics. The infrastructure. The stuff that determines whether your best email ever written lands where people can see it or disappears into the void. We talked about: * Why your sender reputation matters more than most people realize * What happens when you import a list incorrectly (and how to catch it) * How to keep your email health strong as you scale * What to look for if your deliverability starts dropping * Why the platforms you choose (ActiveCampaign, Kit, Substack, whatever) have different capabilities for protecting that health The conversation was technical. But it was also practical. Matt has built his entire business around the reality that most founders and creators don’t know this stuff exists until they need it. Why You Should Listen If you’re building an audience and you send email, this is relevant. Not because you need to become an email infrastructure expert. But because you need to understand the baseline. You need to know when something’s off before it becomes a crisis. Matt also has a gift for making complex things sound simple. That’s rare. And if you ever hit a deliverability wall, you’ll want to know who to call. He’s building at deliverabilitynow.com [https://deliverabilitynow.com]. Subscribe to his newsletter. It’s good. Helping you get clear, get seen, and get paid by aligning who you are with how you show up, all while building a business that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside. Get full access to Sacred Business Flow at love.sacredbusinessflow.com/subscribe [https://love.sacredbusinessflow.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Billy Broas: Marketing is an argument, not a fight

So, Billy Broas [https://substack.com/profile/18366571-billy-broas] was on Sacred Business Stories [https://love.sacredbusinessflow.com/s/sacred-business-stories] with us this week. For context, Billy is the guy who supported the creation our messaging foundation for Sacred Business Flow back when we were too close to it to see it ourselves. Author of Simple Marketing for Smart People. Creator of the Five Lightbulbs framework, which we still apply almost daily. He just launched a new Substack called Fractal Faith, and the conversation we had with him went somewhere I wasn’t expecting. Most marketing conversations stay in tactics. This one started in tactics for about six minutes and then went somewhere I rarely hear marketers willing to go. Billy uses a metaphor early on about fish, water, and what we’ve all been swimming in without realizing. I’d heard him use the metaphor before, but the way he applied it to the entire marketing industry stopped me. Where he takes it from there is the part I want you to hear from him directly. He also names a single question, near the end, that he says will tell you whether your marketing is crossing a line or not. One question. He gives it to you in a simple sentence you can sit with for yourself. Carolina said something in this conversation I had almost forgotten about her. She confessed she rejected marketing entirely for the first three years of her previous business. Why she changed her mind, and what she heard from Billy that supported her own growth, is a pretty nice moment in the episode. And there’s a story Billy tells about leaving his energy industry job at twenty-nine, expecting his side business to take off. What actually happened next, and the phrase he uses to describe that in-between place, is worth pressing play for if you are feeling stalled out right now. Another fun surprise connection was hearing about Brian Clark [https://substack.com/profile/18025426-brian-clark]’s influence on Billy’s journey, after just having him on the show a few weeks ago. The whole thing runs about fifty-five minutes. If you’ve ever caught yourself avoiding marketing because something about it felt off, or you’ve quietly wondered whether there’s a way to do this work without giving up your dignity or theirs, this is the conversation for you. For more from billy, check out his new substack at Fractal Faith and marketingisanargument.com [https://www.marketingisanargument.com/] Phil (& Carolina) Helping you get clear, get seen, and get paid by aligning who you are with how you show up, all while building a business that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside. Thank you Josh Woll [https://substack.com/profile/121213711-josh-woll], Prof. Barbara Bernier [https://substack.com/profile/2398139-prof-barbara-bernier], Marvin L Mitchell [https://substack.com/profile/293792476-marvin-l-mitchell], and many others for tuning into Sacred Business Stories [https://love.sacredbusinessflow.com/s/sacred-business-stories] with Billy Broas [https://substack.com/profile/18366571-billy-broas] and Carolina Wilke [https://substack.com/profile/262727079-carolina-wilke]! This essay was originally published on sacredbusiness.com [https://sacredbusiness.com/billy-bross-marketing-is-an-argument] on May 5, 2026. You can find the canonical version [https://sacredbusiness.com/billy-bross-marketing-is-an-argument], along with related essays on sacred business and nervous system work there. Get full access to Sacred Business Flow at love.sacredbusinessflow.com/subscribe [https://love.sacredbusinessflow.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Leo Babauta conversation we almost didn't publish

So here’s what happened. We sat down with Leo Babauta [https://substack.com/profile/240519-leo-babauta] last week. About twenty-five minutes came through in the replay. The first fifteen didn’t. Substack swallowed the opening. Honestly, I was pretty gutted, and I sat with the recording for a few days wondering whether to share the replay at all. Then I caught myself. This was a conversation about beginning before you’re ready and shipping the imperfect thing. And I was about to scrap it because the recording wasn’t perfect lol. Honestly, Leo’s been someone I’ve considered a friend for years now. So here it is. Imperfect, missing the opening, but still some great food for thought, as Leo is one of the wisest dudes I know. I listen to what this guy has to say, and you should too. A few things from this conversation I think are worth drawing attention to: There’s a moment where Leo names a particular trap AI is setting for ambitious people, and and interesting framing. He calls Claude his “best cheerleader.” Why he frames that as a problem is the part you should check out. Carolina asked him about fear and resistance. He answered with a sewing project he’s been working on for years. (Yes, sewing.) Where he took that, and how he tied it back to his own Substack, was also a great moment worth watching. And toward the end, he answered a question about growth in a way you might not quite expect from someone who’s built the audience he has. The line started with “growth is a loaded topic for a lot of people.” The whole thing runs about twenty-seven minutes. If you’ve ever caught yourself opening twelve tabs because Claude told you all twelve ideas were brilliant, this one’s for you. Phil (& Carolina) Thank you Josh Woll [https://substack.com/profile/121213711-josh-woll], Noelle Richards [https://substack.com/profile/350223153-noelle-richards], Rebecca Weston [https://substack.com/profile/132718831-rebecca-weston], Inge van de Graaf [https://substack.com/profile/324346859-inge-van-de-graaf], Claire Machado [https://substack.com/profile/168845660-claire-machado], and many others for tuning into Sacred Business Stories with Leo Babauta [https://substack.com/profile/240519-leo-babauta] and Carolina Wilke [https://substack.com/profile/262727079-carolina-wilke]! Helping you get clear, get seen, and get paid by aligning who you are with how you show up, all while building a business that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside. Get full access to Sacred Business Flow at love.sacredbusinessflow.com/subscribe [https://love.sacredbusinessflow.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

On Boredom, AI, and Closing the Loop of Wonder w/ Mia Kiraki

We had Mia Kiraki 🎭 [https://substack.com/profile/362428399-mia-kiraki] on Sacred Business Stories [https://love.sacredbusinessflow.com/s/sacred-business-stories] this week. She writes a Substack called Robots Ate My Homework. Half Armenian, half Romanian. Film studies in London, two master’s degrees, a decade in B2B content marketing, a content agency built with her husband, and now one of the most interesting voices on AI on Substack. Her tagline says it. AI with brains, taste, and an unreasonable amount of depth. And then, somewhere around the twenty-minute mark, she turned a question back on me. I don’t want to set it up too much. The full exchange is on the feed and it’s worth hearing in her voice. What I’ll say is this. The question pulled at a habit I’d already been quietly questioning. The moment that followed left Carolina and me looking at each other across the call. The line that closed it landed in one short phrase I haven’t been able to put down since. That’s one of three or four moments in this conversation that really made me go “woah”. Among the others. She doesn’t write tutorials. Her brain, in her own words, is 99% on the creative side, and her code “fights back” when she vibe-codes. So when AI shows up and the rest of the field is racing to explain it, she’s doing something else entirely. She lets the trend sit. Watches what people say about it for a week or two. Then connects it to a book or a film or a note she jotted down on a different day. The newsletter that comes out of that process sits on three pillars I think most people writing about AI right now are missing. I won’t spoil them. They’re worth hearing her name. She also said the thing substack writers don’t usually like to admit on a podcast. She started Substack as an outreach engine. The first posts were about her product. Then something shifted and she stopped pitching. When I asked her how she made the call, her answer was a single sentence and one of the cleaner reframes of “strategy” I’ve heard in a while. Carolina caught it before I did. And on connection, which is the thing most people on Substack are quietly anxious about, her advice was almost embarrassingly simple. The kind of simple you only earn after ten years. The conversation runs about thirty minutes. If any of the above is making you curious, watch the the full episode above. Mia’s publication is Robots Ate My Homework. Both worth your time. And if you’re wondering what her question was, you’ll have to listen. Helping you get clear, get seen, and get paid by aligning who you are with how you show up, all while building a business that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside. Get full access to Sacred Business Flow at love.sacredbusinessflow.com/subscribe [https://love.sacredbusinessflow.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Recovering from brain surgery, Brian Clark quit his best-paying business

The snowboarding accident landed Brian Clark [https://substack.com/profile/18025426-brian-clark] in surgery for a subdural hematoma. He had a wife, a three-year-old daughter, and a new baby son who’d just arrived. What he wanted was simple. He didn’t want to keep spending his life on work he hated. The hard part was that his real estate brokerage had just become the first business he’d ever built that made more money than his big-law job would have. He had something to prove with it. And now, recovering from brain surgery, he was thinking hard about everything he didn’t actually want to spend his life doing. “I’m not doing this anymore.” Those were the words. Shocking, in his telling, because of the family he now had to feed. But clarity arrives fast when you’ve just been that close to the edge. What came next is the part most people already know in some form, because Brian is the founder of Copyblogger. He built three seven-figure no-employee businesses in three years, combined them into what became an eight-figure software and hosting company, did $70 million in sales between 2007 and 2017, and sold in 2018. Then, at an age when most of his peers were talking about retirement, he started a Substack called Further, built for the generation that employers start pushing out the door somewhere between 58 and 62. So we had him on Sacred Business Stories [https://love.sacredbusinessflow.com/s/sacred-business-stories] this week to trace the arc. The part most people don’t hear is what happened before the wins. He’d quit law in 1998. His first business failed. It was an email newsletter company, which, as he pointed out, is roughly the same thing everyone on Substack is doing in 2026. He just got there 28 years too early and didn’t understand how to sell anything. He thought you monetized content with advertising. The dot-com crash ended it for him, and in his words, that was a mercy killing. Then he read one line in Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing. “The Internet is the greatest direct marketing medium the world has ever seen.” That was the sentence that reset his path. He taught himself copywriting and studied direct response going back to the 1920s. By the time he launched Copyblogger in 2006, he was treating the internet as a relationship game rather than a publishing one. Two things stood out in the conversation. The first was a quote that’s stuck with me since we recorded. “Technology doesn’t change human nature. It amplifies it.” Apply that anywhere you like. AI, Substack, the dopamine feed on whatever platform ate your morning. The useful question is what side of you a given tool tends to amplify. The second was about values-based marketing. Brian made the point that values aren’t automatically good. Greed is a value. Figures like Andrew Tate [https://substack.com/profile/262644106-andrew-tate] have audiences because they’re marketing with precision to the values of those audiences, and it’s been okay on the internet for a long time, in his words, to be awful. Which means writers who sit on their message because they’re worried about being disliked are making the problem worse. They leave the space empty. Somebody fills it. Usually not someone you’d want doing the filling. His advice to anyone hesitating was unfussy. “If you try to create generic content because you’re afraid to say anything that matters, you will not succeed.” The shift Brian made after the brain surgery is worth naming clearly. He stopped building from an energy of having something to prove. He started building something he actually cared about. The irony, as he put it, is that the decade after that shift is the one that produced the $70 million. Which reframes a belief a lot of people carry into their work. The idea that purpose and practicality pull in opposite directions. Brian’s experience says they pull in the same one. The decade he made his most purpose-aligned decisions was also the decade he made the most money. You can find Brian writing at news.further.net [https://news.further.net/]. He speaks mostly to 45 to 70 year olds who aren’t ready to retire and aren’t going to be allowed to coast much longer either. Gen X, in his framing, is the canary in the coal mine for what happens next. Check out the fully replay. He doesn’t waste the hour. Get full access to Sacred Business Flow at love.sacredbusinessflow.com/subscribe [https://love.sacredbusinessflow.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]