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Small Business Casual: Content Marketing, Productivity, Customer Experience for Entrepreneurs & Creators

Welcome to Small Business Casual, where we focus on designing a sustainable, cozy, and thriving business tailored to your LIFE. Not the other way around!

Here, small business meets your favorite pair of slippers. It's a little quirky, not too buttoned up, one less accessory, ahhh… just right.

From customer service, business productivity, and content marketing to making sense-of-the-behind the scenes, chaos, I walk alongside you as we make life and business less of a roller coaster ride and more like a walk in the park (with snacks, of course!).

I offer Small Business Copywriting & Content Marketing Consulting to interior designers, home trade professionals, service providers, coaches, consultants, non-profits, and entrepreneurs with a big mission!

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Small Business Casual: Content Marketing, Productivity, Customer Experience for Entrepreneurs & Creators

What If There's Nothing to Prove?

July 28, 2026 • Emily Aborn

0:00 | 23:15

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The performing to earn our worth, our rates, our friends, our place at the table, our right to take up space... here's the lesson I keep learning: All that proving doesn't get us the thing. In fact, it usually blocks it.

In this episode, we get into the invisible engine of proving and how it can run so much of our striving and doing.

I'm sharing candid stories and honest takeaways from letting go of the need to PROVE plus some practices you can put into place right away!

Quotes:

"What if there's nothing to prove?" -Kevin James Thornton on Jen Hatmaker's podcast "For the Love" @KevinJamesThornton
"You don't need to deliver to deserve." -My therapist
"Our capacity to make peace with another person and with the world depends very much on our capacity to make peace with ourselves." -Thich Nhat Hanh
"I was holding on for dear life, but dear life was waiting for me to let go." -@ReviveYourRoar

To Try This Week

Catch yourself in the proving. Notice where you're performing instead of just being.
Get ahead of it. Before the meeting, the pitch, the occasion, remind yourself. There's nothing to prove. You just get to show up!
Keep practicing receiving. Let someone fill the tank, take the help, keep the compliment.
Ask Kevin's question. If I had nothing to prove, what would I make, say, or do? Who would I be?
Let it be easy more often than not. Spend the bulk of your time with the people and places that make you calm and settled. Places you don't feel you need to prove.

About the Host, Emily Aborn

Emily Aborn | Small Business Copywriter & host of Small Business Casual. 12+ years of copywriting experience in 122+ industries. I help you step into becoming (and sharing) the real YOU. For fun/downtime, I love reading, writing, hiking with friends, and moments of uninterrupted silence.

Got a Question for the Show? Email Me! emily@emilyaborn.com

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