Empowered Business

The Empowered Business Podcast® is the go-to show for online entrepreneurs and content creators who want to create and sell digital products using smart, scalable strategies without getting overwhelmed or chasing every new trend. Hosted by digital product strategist and AI educator Monica Froese, each episode delivers practical insights on how to build a sustainable online business using AI, sales funnels, and streamlined systems. Listeners will learn how to turn their knowledge into high-converting digital products, leverage AI to work faster and more efficiently, and implement marketing strategies that move the needle. From product ideation and content creation to optimizing funnels and growing an e-commerce shop, this podcast breaks down what’s working right now and how to apply it. With a clear focus on real results (not recycled tactics), The Empowered Business Podcast empowers creators, coaches, and online business owners to confidently grow their revenue. New episodes every Thursday.

Empowered Business is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 115 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts Empowered Business, a business show with 115 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #115

  115. AI Emails That Sound Human with Ruth Poundwhite

  Aug 14, 202648 min

  I have a bad habit I am not proud of. Claude writes me an email, it uses a word I can’t stand, and instead of telling it so, I go into the HTML and fix it myself. Every single time. Which means I am training it on nothing. Ruth Poundwhite does not do that. She has been writing professionally since 2008, and she has built an AI email workflow that actually gets smarter every time she uses it. In this conversation, recorded live at AI Exposed, she walks through how she trained Claude on her voice down to the ampersands and the kisses at the end of her name, the skill she built to catch AI-isms before an email ever goes out, and how she gets a real email written in 10 minutes. She also demos the free subject line skill she uses on literally every email she sends. If you have ever looked at an AI draft and thought “this is not me,” this one is for you. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: Ruth's resistance to AI and what actually shifted it Why the training is the whole game The Ruthisms list Asking AI why it got it wrong instead of just telling it what to fix Building a self-correcting email workflow Why we both write our emails in HTML now Projects versus skills, and what belongs in each Editing an AI draft by talking to it Example skills we use Why fewer, more human emails beat more emails Resources Mentioned: Some of the links below are affiliate links. If you buy through them, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I actually use in my own business. Learn more about Ruth at ruthpoundwhite.com . Listen to Episode 99 with Ruth Poundwhite , our first conversation about AI and self-belief. Join the Aligned AI Lab , Ruth’s new membership for using AI in a way that fits your energy and values. Read Quietly Ambitious , Ruth’s book on building a business without being loud or pushy. Try Wispr Flow , the voice dictation software Ruth uses to speak her email drafts and give paragraph by paragraph feedback instead of typing. Manage your list with Kit , the email service provider we both use, including the connector that lets Claude write directly into your emails. Check out BlockBuilder , the embeddable block tool from our fellow Weird Hermit Steph that Ruth uses for the poll in her Sunday newsletter. Tired of piecing it all together on your own? The Empowered Business Society® is where creator business owners implement AI strategies, get real feedback, and stay current on what's working. Monthly Get It Done Weeks, live Coffee Chats, exclusive training, and a community of people who genuinely get online business. Join for $49/month! © 2021-2026 Froese Media LLC | All Rights Reserved Find us on Skool , LinkedIn, Facebook , Instagram , or Pinterest . Visit the Empowered Shop®

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  Episode #114

  114. The Invisible Funnel: How Kate Kordsmeier Turns Feedback Forms Into Client Retention

  Jul 30, 202646 min

  I have a confession. Over 200 people filled out the welcome survey for the Empowered Business Lab AI, and I did not respond to a single one. Not one. If that stings a little, you are in good company. Almost every business owner I know collects intake forms, feedback surveys, and check in forms that quietly disappear into a folder nobody opens again. This episode was recorded live at my AI Exposed event in June 2026. My guest is Kate Kordsmeier of Success with Soul. Kate built something she calls an invisible funnel, a system where every single form her clients submit gets a personalized, thoughtful response drafted by AI and reviewed by a human before it ever reaches their inbox. Her clients have told her things like, this made me cry, and you have a customer for life. It has been running for two years, and Kate built it as a self described low capacity entrepreneur, managing chronic illness, two small kids, no big team, and no social media presence at all. Then halfway through our conversation, we did something completely unplanned. We rebuilt her entire workflow live in Claude Cowork, cut Zapier out of the process, and it took about ten minutes. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: What the invisible funnel actually is Every form Kate's business runs on Why check in forms became a selling point Do clients know it is AI? Building a skill from her entire course library Why Kate keeps a human in the loop What this means if you are not tech savvy Resources Mentioned: Grab Kate’s Invisible Funnel Prompt Pack , the prompts she uses to draft personalized replies to intake and check in forms, free for attendees of the AI Exposed Summit. Learn more about Success with Soul , Kate’s business helping coaches and creators build high profit, low maintenance businesses without social media. Join Kate’s Skool Community – VIP Soul Circle. Tired of piecing it all together on your own? The Empowered Business Society® is where creator business owners implement AI strategies, get real feedback, and stay current on what's working. Monthly Get It Done Weeks, live Coffee Chats, exclusive training, and a community of people who genuinely get online business. Join for $49/month! © 2021-2026 Froese Media LLC | All Rights Reserved Find us on Skool , LinkedIn, Facebook , Instagram , or Pinterest . Visit the Empowered Shop®

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  Episode #113

  113. Sandra Booker Built a 6-Person AI Board of Directors & Here's How to Replicate It

  Jul 23, 202649 min

  Right before I recorded this, I spent the whole morning inside Claude working through my next big decision. And the entire time, I could not shake the feeling that it was just agreeing with me. That is the exact problem Sandra Booker solved, and she solved it in a way I have not stopped thinking about since. Sandra is a fractional COO for online service providers, and she built her own AI advisory board inside Claude. Six board members, each modeled after a real business mind, each with their own expertise, their own personality, and their own job to do when she is facing a big call. One of them exists to remind her that she actually has to sell things and make money. Another exists purely to challenge her so the AI stops telling her what she wants to hear. I recorded this session live at my AI Exposed summit, and we sat in on one of her real board meetings while she worked through whether to relaunch one of her programs. It is a little less polished than my usual episodes, but the content was too good to keep in that room. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: Why AI keeps telling you what you want to hear Meet Sandra’s board members How to decide who belongs on your board Why every advisor is its own Claude Skill Where the decisions actually go How she built the whole board in one conversation Getting the good side of a boardroom without the toxic part Why an AI board beats asking real people Whether this helps or hurts your critical thinking Resources Mentioned: Follow Sandra Booker on Instagram , where she shares more about her AI advisory board work under the handle Sidekick COO. Learn more about Scale Society , the group program Sandra and Monica walk through relaunching live during the board meeting. Explore more from Sandra at Sidekick COO , her home for fractional COO services and resources for online service providers. Tired of piecing it all together on your own? The Empowered Business Society® is where creator business owners implement AI strategies, get real feedback, and stay current on what's working. Monthly Get It Done Weeks, live Coffee Chats, exclusive training, and a community of people who genuinely get online business. Join for $49/month! © 2021-2026 Froese Media LLC | All Rights Reserved Find us on Skool , LinkedIn, Facebook , Instagram , or Pinterest . Visit the Empowered Shop®

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  Empowered Business

  112. Bot Squads: What Happens When Your AI Tools Finally Talk to Each Other (with Kelly Sinclair)

  Jul 16, 202649 min

  I have nine custom GPTs inside one program. They should work together. They don’t. So I built my students a map: use this one first, then take that output and drop it into this one, then move over here. It works, but it has never been seamless, and I have always known that. This episode is the first time someone showed me a real fix. I recorded it live at my AI That Sells event with Kelly Sinclair, co-founder of a brand new platform called wAIv by Gravia Studio. Kelly is solving two problems that hit every creator once they have built more than one AI tool. The tools do not talk to each other. And there is no clean way to sell one as its own product without handing someone your entire IP, instructions and all. She gives a full demo of her Bot Squad – this demo changed how I am thinking about some of my own AI setups. I think it will do the same for you. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Kelly became an accidental tech co-founder The delivery friction problem The IP elephant in the room Expert-backed AI as a product Bot squads explained Why one mega-bot backfires The AI tool launch playbook Building a bot squad in real time Non-deterministic AI and your brand voice LLM flexibility and privacy Where I’ve landed on selling my IP Resources Mentioned: Explore wAIv by Gravia Studio , Kelly’s new platform for building, protecting, and selling expert-backed AI tools in a bot squad format. Visit Kelly Sinclair’s site , her one-page hub for her latest AI resources, workshops, and contact info. Listen to Entrepreneur School in the AI Era , Kelly’s podcast on running a business in a world where AI is suddenly everywhere. Follow wAIv on YouTube for behind-the-scenes looks at the platform as it rolls out. Tired of piecing it all together on your own? The Empowered Business Society® is where creator business owners implement AI strategies, get real feedback, and stay current on what's working. Monthly Get It Done Weeks, live Coffee Chats, exclusive training, and a community of people who genuinely get online business. Join for $49/month! 🙌 © 2021-2026 Froese Media LLC | All Rights Reserved Find us on Skool , LinkedIn, Facebook , Instagram , or Pinterest . Visit the Empowered Shop®

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  Episode #111

  111. The AI Aftertaste: Why Your Content Doesn't Sound Like You (And How to Fix It) with Bernadette Shepherd

  Jul 9, 202659 min

  I did the exact thing every AI expert tells you not to do. I opened a blank chat, dumped my entire brand into it, and expected magic. What I got back was a robot doing a bad impression of me. Bernadette Shepherd has a name for that feeling, and once she said it, I could not unhear it. She calls it AI aftertaste . In this session from our AI That Sells Summit, she walks through the exact system she built to get rid of it for good, the same one she now uses to run actual AI employees inside her business. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: What AI aftertaste actually is: Bernadette defines AI aftertaste, that unmistakable feeling when AI is trying to sound like you but missing the mark. She explains why it happens: AI is trained on general knowledge, not on your specific brand, so it defaults to generic phrasing unless you give it structure to work from. The Brand Brain framework: Bernadette walks through her Brand Brain , a system of documents that trains AI to write, think, and sound like you no matter which tool you use. I love that it treats AI like a new employee who needs real onboarding, not just a brain dump and a prompt. Brand voice and platform playbooks: Bernadette explains how she captures brand voice at a general level, then builds platform specific playbooks using real samples of your writing. The AI blacklist and negative prompting: Bernadette describes her AI blacklist, a list of phrases and patterns you never want AI to use, plus how to add your own custom restrictions. She explains why telling AI what not to do matters just as much as telling it what to do. Brand DNA, offers, and your ideal client: we discuss how the Brand Brain handles multiple offers and different transformations, as well as how the system captures brand DNA, offer details, and ideal client avatars (so AI stops guessing and starts writing with real specificity). Content hills and your spicy takes: We cover content hills, the strong opinions and mic drop moments that are uniquely yours. Learn why capturing these gives AI a much clearer sense of how you actually think about your industry. The story bank and phrase bank: Bernadette breaks down two of my favorite layers, the story bank that holds your wins, lessons, and transformations, and the phrase bank that captures the exact words and phrases you use so AI stops guessing your language and starts pulling it verbatim. System messages and avoiding content rot: We dig into what Bernadette calls context engineering, the system instructions that tell AI exactly which part of your Brand Brain to use and when. She explains why this keeps your conversations from breaking down as they get longer. Projects, skills, and where the Brand Brain lives: Bernadette and I compare notes on using projects versus skills inside Claude and ChatGPT, and how the right setup depends on your own workflow and how many brands or businesses you’re running. Building AI employees: Finally, Bernadette demonstrates how she uses her Brand Brain to run actual AI employees, including her content manager (Maya), who researches, drafts, and even spins up sub agents to handle multiple platforms at once. Resources Mentioned: Grab Brainer , Bernadette’s tool for building your Brand Brain, the 8 layers of brand context that train AI to write like you instead of everyone else. Learn more about Claude Cowork , the desktop tool I use to connect my Brand Brain files directly into my AI workflows. Join the Empowered AI Collective (my free community). Tired of piecing it all together on your own? The Empowered Business Society® is where creator business owners implement AI strategies, get real feedback, and stay current on what's working. Monthly Get It Done Weeks, live Coffee Chats, exclusive training, and a community of people who genuinely get online business. Join for $49/month! 🙌 © 2021-2026 Froese Media LLC | All Rights Reserved Find us on Skool , LinkedIn, Facebook , Instagram , or Pinterest . Visit the Empowered Shop®

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