In this concise five‑minute Business Blast podcast, host Tyler Wagner interviews Ariel Black, the public relations officer at ACA Wise. Ariel shares her top business advice—maintaining a conscious brand and building mutually beneficial relationships with audiences. She outlines her productivity approach: evaluating systems, setting specific goals, and leveraging tools like the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer for crafting effective headlines. Ariel offers health tips, recommending regular gym visits, a balanced diet, and standing breaks for desk work, as well as mental‑health advice to take time for creative outlets. She emphasizes that true happiness comes from within, warning against seeking it externally. When asked about regrets, she says she has none, focusing instead on future effort. Her favorite business book is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, which she credits for deepening her understanding of audience communication. Her favorite quote, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars,” reflects her commitment to giving 110% in all endeavors. The episode closes with Ariel’s online presence—Facebook and Twitter at ACA Wise, plus the company website and blog, where she updates listeners on ACA compliance, notably the March 2 deadline for 1095‑C filings.
Chapters
All right, everybody, welcome back to the Business Blast podcast. I'd like to welcome Ariel Black today. She is the public relations officer at ACA Wise, a full-service ACA reporting and compliance solution designed for applicable large businesses. So welcome, Ariel. And just because we only have 5 minutes, I'll just dive right into the first question. Uh, the first one is, what's your best piece of business advice?
I would have to say, just as a public relations professional, is just being conscious of your brand and public image and just build a mutually beneficial relationship between you and your company, uh, your company and your audience or public.
Great. And what's the number one thing you do to increase productivity?
Evaluate systems, set specific goals, and find ways to increase productivity with those systems.
And what's your favorite online business tool?
It's gotta be CoSchedule Headline Analyzer because most of the stuff that I do is either blogs or, uh, Press releases, the titles need to be very specific, so that always helps me a lot.
Perfect. We'll have to get a link to that for all of the listeners then after the show. And what's your number one tip for increasing your physical health?
Just going to the gym and eating a well-balanced diet. Especially for me since I sit at a desk all day, it's really important that I'm regularly standing up and exercising and eating a nice healthy meal.
And what's your number one tip for increasing your mental health?
Taking time for yourself and finding a creative outlet that you love and spending time in that and doing the things that you enjoy without focusing too much on the burdens of running your business.
And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
Create happiness within yourself. If you seek happiness from anywhere else beside yourself, you're only gonna be setting yourself up for disappointment. So I think it's really important for everyone to find it internally and not find it from other people.
Yes, and I just have to chime in there, I agree 100%. And what's the best business, or excuse me, what's your biggest regret and why?
Honestly, I don't think I have any regrets. I don't tend to dwell on those very much. I feel like what's in the past is already done, there's nothing I can do about it, but I would like to push forward and remember what I've done in the past and just put more effort in. I really like to look more onto the future Great. Instead of looking back at the past.
I like it. What's the best business book you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from it?
It's gotta be Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. I feel like that's such an amazing book even though it's almost 100 years old now. It's so amazing about how it understands people and being in public relations is really an amazing book to basically understand who you're talking to even when you're just writing an email to go out to 100 businesses or however many clients businesses that we're working with, it's really important to understand how they're gonna read a message and how to be able to talk to them and how to be effective.
I agree. Again, that's one of my top books. And last question before we find out where people can find you online is what's your favorite quote and why?
It's probably gonna be, "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." Again, this just comes back to, I believe, like, I'm going to try to do my best every single day and Anything that I do, I'm gonna make sure I give it 110%. And even if I don't reach my goal, as long as I've tried my best, I feel like I've done an effective job.
Well, listen, amazing job, Ariel. We finished in record time. So, you know, where can people find you online? Or, you know, what are the best social medias and website?
You guys can always find me at Facebook at ACA Wise, as well as Twitter at ACA Wise, or just go look onto our website. I post a daily blog. So you can find all the updated news about the ACA and employer mandates, especially that is coming up to the filing season. So we're looking at the March 2nd is the deadline for the 1095-C for recipients. So that's definitely on our minds right now.
Perfect. Well, thank you again for coming on. I really appreciate it, and I'm sure our listeners will too. And have a great day, Ariel.
You too. Thank you. The podcast you just heard was made using Anchor. Ever thought about making your own podcast? Anchor makes it really easy for anyone to get started. It's a one-stop shop for recording, hosting, and distributing podcasts. Best of all, it's 100% free. Sign up now at anchor.fm/new. That's anchor.fm/new to get started.
