Danielle McDougald didn't plan on starting a business. She was home with a newborn during her husband's first deployment when a friend needed help with admin and social media in the early days of COVID, and that favor turned into The Virtual Helping Hand. Danielle talks with Svenja about building a fully remote business around military moves, the exact social media strategy she uses with clients, and the year she finally started telling her own followers what she did for work.

● Why Danielle kept her business separate from her personal social media for three years, and what changed in 2023

● The three content pillars she builds every client's social strategy around

● How Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook each reward completely different posting habits

● Why an unedited, imperfect video outperformed all of her polished content

● The affirmation practice she used to build the confidence to call herself a business owner

Connect with Danielle:

● Website: www.thevirtualhelpinghand.com

● Email: danielle@thevirtualhelpinghand.com

● Social: @virtualhelpinghand on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

SUPPORT THE CHANNEL

A few tools I use and recommend. Some links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

● Flodesk (email marketing): flodesk.com/c/LYONCREATIVES

● HoneyBook (client management): share.honeybook.com/svenja7629354

Audio editing by Mike at Nielsen Audio Solutions (https://www.nielsenaudiosolutions.com/).

Think your brand could use some work? Take the free Brand Audit Scorecard at lyoncreatives.com/brand-audit-scorecard and find out where you stand.

Listen: https://thismightgetcreative.riverside.com/

Gwendolyn Young built Your Virtual Admin Expert after a lupus diagnosis forced her to rethink what a sustainable business could look like. She talks with Svenja about starting from a makeshift website with zero virtual assistant experience, landing her first client six months in, and the systems that kept her operations running even through unplanned hospital stays. They get into the moment she finally hired help, what she got wrong the first time, and how her brand had to catch up to the level of work she was already delivering. It's a conversation about building a business around your life instead of the other way around.

In this episode:

• Why a lupus diagnosis became the foundation for how Gwendolyn structures her business
• The systems and scheduling automations that keep client work moving when she can't show up
• What finally pushed her to hire her first team member, and what she got wrong at first
• How her brand evolved once her marketing finally matched the caliber of her work

Connect with Gwendolyn:
Website: yourvirtualadminexpert.com
Social: @yourvirtualadminexpert (all platforms)

SUPPORT THE CHANNEL
A few tools I use and recommend. Some links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

• Flodesk (email marketing): flodesk.com/c/LYONCREATIVES
• HoneyBook (client management): share.honeybook.com/svenja7629354

Audio editing by Mike at Nielsen Audio Solutions.

Think your brand could use some work? Take the free Brand Audit Scorecard at lyoncreatives.com/brand-audit-scorecard and find out where you stand.

Listen: https://thismightgetcreative.riverside.com/

Stephanie Ohannesian spent four years producing events for NBC Universal without a single day off, until her body shut down and she landed in the ER. That crisis became Triage Coaching and Consulting, a burnout and stress mitigation company built on a bold idea: most of the stress patterns running your life were never yours to begin with. With a master's degree in decision-making sciences and social cognition, Stephanie breaks down the science of burnout, the warning signs we all ignore, and why building a brand is the most personal thing you will ever do.

In this episode we talk about:

• The red flags Stephanie ignored for four years, and why your body signals stress long before your brain admits it
• Inherited stress patterns: how survival responses get passed down through generations and quietly run your business decisions
• The 2:1 breathing technique that tells your nervous system you're safe before a high-stakes meeting
• How one clear sentence ("we rewire your stress circuitry") did what ten minutes of explaining never could
• Why 95 percent of buying decisions happen subconsciously, and what that means for your website and your brand
• Stephanie's two-column exercise for calling out imposter syndrome on paper

Listener offer: Stephanie is giving away her Low Road Audit, a free 90-minute session on where you stand emotionally with your brand and identity, to the first five to seven listeners who email Triage and mention This Might Get Creative.

Connect with Stephanie:

• Website: triagebalancedlife.com
• Podcast: The Raw Onion
• Instagram: triage_global
• LinkedIn: Stephanie Ohannesian

SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:

• This episode is sponsored by Flodesk. Get 25% off your first year: flodesk.com/c/LYONCREATIVES
• Run your client pipeline with HoneyBook: https://share.honeybook.com/svenja7629354

Think your brand could use some work? Take the free Brand Audit Scorecard at lyoncreatives.com/brand-audit-scorecard and find out where you stand.