• WRITING A BLOG POST OR NEWSLETTER
• RECORDING A PODCAST
• WRITING AND DESIGNING A NEW OPT-IN/CONTENT UPGRADE FOR OUR NEWSLETTER
• DESIGNING A KEYNOTE PRESENTATION FOR AN UPCOMING TALK
• REFRESHING OUR BRAND IDENTITY
• WRITING AN OUTLINE FOR A BOOK
• SCHEDULING SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS
• EMAILING A PODCAST SPONSOR ABOUT OUR PARTNERSHIP NEXT QUARTER
• OUTLINING AND DELEGATING A TASK LIST (COMPLETE WITH DUE DATES) IN OUR PROJECT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
• BOOKKEEPING AND ADMINISTRATIVE TASKS
Listen, nothing kills the paralyzing power of self-doubt and insecurities like the act of creating something. We’re not talking about launching the thing, or promoting the thing, or even selling the thing. It’s in the MAKING of the thing, which can take the most work of all, which is why we believe in the hustle.
We want to tell you what our hustle looks like, but let us begin by telling you what hustle doesn’t look like: finding purpose, planning, dreaming, wishing, thinking, journaling, reading, learning, researching, meeting, engaging, or Instagramming. Do these things matter for the success of our businesses? ABSOLUTELY. We spend a good chunk of our time planning, dreaming, thinking, learning, and meeting—because they’re absolutely necessary to create the business of your dreams, but those things are not hustle. Hustling is doing the work that it takes to convert your ideas into something that takes shape in this world. It’s all the things you’re doing to rock your career or the avenue that you’re taking to make money to support yourself.
You need both the vision and the hustle. You need a big picture and a step-by-step plan. You need work and you need rest. You need structure and you need flexibility. You need community and you need competition. Your capacity to live in the tension of the “and”—and your ability to recognize when to push and when to pull—is what will make you a creative, productive, and happier boss. And that’s what this book is really here to help you do: find confidence and self-reliance in the blend and the balance of being boss.
With all of that said, we try to not glorify the hustle, but getting shit done is how you build a life you love. Sometimes that looks like spending a week working out marketing plans, rocking a client project, or building your new product line. And other times getting it done is more of a life hustle that looks like finally booking that massage, taking that vacation, or actually showing up at yoga class. The secret to finding some balance between life and work is to pair your work hustle with life hustle.
Life hustle is all the things you’re working hard for, and sadly it’s the part of the puzzle that most people push aside because work leaves them too tired and a Netflix binge is just easier. When you’re done with work for the day, your work is not yet done—if you’re hustling out your life, you will continue to nurture your relationships, throw down on that passion project (not for profit but for fun), and go on epic adventures. Of all the things that you do, create, launch, and make, your life hustle will always be the hardest but also the most rewarding.
It’s not about making the hustle cool. Instead it’s about taking action—establishing a habit that continually drives you toward health, wealth, and happiness for yourself, your family, and the people you serve.
Shortly after beginning the Being Boss podcast, we began seeing patterns and themes in our conversations with each other and other creative experts. We started talking about these themes all the time and realized that they form the foundation of being boss in work and life. Each subsequent chapter of this book expands on one of these themes. It’s important to note that none of them stands alone—they all work together and often overlap.
MINDSET: You can’t be boss if you aren’t in the right frame of mind. The challenges we tackle when it comes to creating a fulfilling career and life require the right mindset: having confidence in who you are and the decisions you make, seeking out motivation and inspiration, committing to big ass goals, trusting yourself to do the work, knowing and practicing your values, remaining positive, and tackling fear and imposter syndrome.
BOUNDARIES: Boundaries are the physical, mental, and emotional “rules” that you define for yourself. These rules keep you from feeling overwhelmed and overworked. Boundaries will also help you decide which opportunities you say “yes” to, what you say “no” to, what you let in, and what you let go. Boundaries enable you to carve out time to do what you want, prioritize what matters, and determine your own rules for working and living.
HABITS AND ROUTINES: If mindset and boundaries get you emotionally and intellectually prepared for doing the work, your habits and routines govern how you get the work done. From setting goals and establishing a morning routine that sets you up for success to taking care of yourself outside work, habits and routines are how you behave like a boss.
YOUR WOLF PACK: It takes a village to build a boss life and work, and cultivating a pack of just the right people is easier now than ever before. Your wolf pack will support you, encourage you, and assist you and will include your friends, family, mentors, peers, and collaborators. We’ll share our insights into how to meet new people, nourish relationships that are mutually beneficial, and collaborate, partner, and ultimately work with others to build something really boss. Relationships are everything, and they’ll help you go far.
YOUR WORK: As a creative, you work to make money doing what you love while staying true to who you are 100 percent of the time. This work takes dedication to your craft, unwavering focus on your goals, and reliance on your own skills to take you from dreaming and scheming about what’s next to actually doing the work.
YOUR LIFE: As much as we love our work, we don’t define ourselves just by the work we do or the bottom line in our bank accounts. The most admirable bosses we know prioritize connection, relationship, family, friendship, travel, and really good food (yeah, we like our food) over making money or being a slave to their Rolodex (if you don’t know what a Rolodex is, just Google it). Bosses are curious about life outside work and use their resources to enthusiastically pursue what they find interesting.
The word “boss” might make you think of someone who is in charge of a team of employees, but when we talk about being boss, we’re talking about an attitude of owning who you are and being intentional about actively creating the work and life you want to be living, and the impact you want to have on the world. So you might be a one-person shop, a freelancer, or a small business owner with a team of employees; you might even have a day job you love (with a boss of your own), or a creative side-hustle you’re aspiring to take full-time one day. No matter what your circumstances are, when you use the principles we outline in this book, you will be boss.
Being boss isn’t necessarily about wanting to make a million dollars. It’s about gaining expertise in your craft, truly becoming a master of your work, and then being compensated for the work you’re best at. And hey, we’re not opposed to getting compensated millions doing what we love, but when we asked our podcast listeners how much money they wanted to make in their creative career, they told us they wanted to make just enough to pay the bills and have the freedom to call their own shots. When we asked them to get specific about what that number was, we were surprised to learn it wasn’t anywhere close to a million! In fact, for a big chunk of our listeners the yearly salary they needed to pay the bills landed somewhere between $35,000 and $60,000 per year (before taxes!). But whether you make minimum wage or five figures a month, we don’t want you to make just enough to pay the bills: we want the work you love to support the dreamiest lifestyle you desire—whether that’s a house on the beach, the flexibility to home-school your kids between deadlines, a job that leaves you plenty of time for hobbies, or simply being able to buy an off-season avocado for $3 without thinking twice about it…
Money is part of a rich life, but it’s a small part of a rich life.
—RAMIT SETHI, BEING BOSS, EPISODE 57
In our experience, running creative online businesses has afforded us the flexibility, freedom, and cash money we desire to live the work and life of our dreams. We’ve successfully imagined our ideal days into reality by working smart, consistently creating content, positioning ourselves as experts, delivering quality work, adopting productive habits and routines, and employing systems and processes that keep our ships running tightly. We routinely look at what’s going well and what’s not, and test and change how we’re working accordingly.
With creative work, it’s your duty to do work that you believe in. Work that brings you joy. Work that allows you to express yourself in the best way(s) you can. You need to create, make, coach, guide, and share. You need to believe. You need to spread your soul’s message far and wide through whatever medium you have at your disposal. If you don’t, you’re wasting your talents. You’re not fulfilling your destiny. You’re putting a stopper on your potential for happiness. By embodying your creativity, you’re taking the first step toward living what you love.
As an entrepreneur, you have the drive to make money doing just about anything. You have a business-owning bone somewhere in your body that’s pushing you to monetize, to make a viable business model. As an entrepreneur, you see more risk in not taking the leap than in taking the leap. There’s magic in that.
You have the capacity and the ability to support yourself and your family. You have tools at your disposal to make it work—to reach an audience, share your passion, make a difference. If you can survive the challenges, the testing and changing, the trial and error, and the learning curve—if you have a real entrepreneurial streak in you—you’ll make it. You’ll make profit that provides for your life while doing work that you believe in.
You’ll sacrifice—we all do. But the payoffs will be worth it. So what’s at stake? Your happiness. The happiness (and health?!) of your loved ones, of your children. Your potential. Your here and now, as well as your future. We don’t mean to be melodramatic, but everything is at stake.
Being boss is not just about hustling from 9 to 5 and then kicking up your feet with a beer and a bag of something sweet or crunchy (or both!) and that being the end of it. Instead, we believe that being boss in your work should be the catalyst for you to live the life of your dreams, and the life of your dreams is probably more complex and exciting than beer and snacks. Being boss involves a certain kind of self-defined balance between your career and your life that allows you to thrive. We believe in the “work hard, play hard” philosophy, and it’s a duality that all of our favorite bosses share.
In this age of boss, gone are the days of looking up to the sixty-five-year-old CEO retiring with a gazillion bucks in the bank but no admirable personal qualities, family, or friends to speak of. Our kind of boss focuses instead on being a whole, curious, responsible human outside the realm of work, too, and such a life has more purpose than bringing home a paycheck.