So my definition for toxic grit is hustle without intention. Like I'm not here to tell you not to be ambitious. And yet so many people are like, rest, it's okay. Like, let's it's like, no, many of us are here to do big things, but how do you create the intentionality? So a lot of the things we talked about, those different versions of yourself, how do you create space for them? So that not one takes over because that to me is when burnout happened. All right, you all, so we're back.
Um, so I'm really pumped and excited today's guests. I'm to look down because it's such a good introduction, um, that, through all these ways of great producers and chat GPT and every once in while, my brain, come up with something good to say, but today we had a lot of good to say. So today's guest, it's someone who has redefined what it means to build boldly and live intentionally.
Amanda gets, she's the former VP of marketing at the knot, the founder of house of wise, a premium wellness brand. And now the voice behind life's a game of movement and mindset reshaping how we think about success, self care and entrepreneurship. She's built brands, raised capital, navigated personal challenges and stayed fiercely authentic through it all. Amanda, welcome to the necessary entrepreneur. Yeah. So what about that introduction? Is that accurate? Does there need to be more there?
No, it feels accurate. mean, when you've had a 20 plus year career, you're like, yeah, okay, we've done some stuff. 20 plus years. What's your mindset or perspective on the career and the place you're at now versus 20 years ago, how Amanda was processing things. There's a book called The Second Mountain. I don't know if you've heard of it, but it so accurately describes where I'm at right now. So I turned 40 this year and I've got my three kids.
And the book defines like your first mountain that you climb is all about the ego and titles and building up your ego. Then you kind of go through this valley of like, who am I? What is my purpose? And then your second mountain is all about shedding your ego and living with intention and impact and purpose and building alongside people and collaboration. So the first mountain is really like individualistic.
The second mountain is about bringing other people with you and how do you, and I feel that like I spend a lot more time coaching and mentoring and. It's less about me building my own startups and businesses and now supporting other people to be successful. Do you think we should do it differently or that's the way it just has to be? first and second mountain. Think that you, when you're, think about your 20s.
I have three kids and I know as a parent, anytime I tell them, hey, I've done this mistake, don't do this mistake. There's a huge benefit to them making that mistake and learning from it themselves than me avoiding it for them. Cause they're not going to learn through it and through that kind of individualistic, egocentric life, you also learn a lot about who you are so that you can make better decisions. I just think that your 20s and 30s are all about learning, exploring, and discovering.
And then you can kind of take the, like, the clay of life and start to mold it into something that's actually going to last beyond when you're gone. It sounds like inevitable pain. Isn't that life? I guess that's what we're trying to, yeah, I guess we're just trying to help people shorten that some, not to take it away, right? Because I think what you're speaking about with your kids is for them to develop resilience through some of these hard times.
Yeah, I know we were talking a little bit like I come from a very humble upbringing. My dad was the town plumber and I grew up not wealthy at all. Like we were pretty poor and my parents have never been on an airplane. Like they don't really leave the state of Illinois. Like they're very small town people. I grew up on a farm and I think about a lot like going to college was hard for me. Like I had to learn everything for the first time.
And then I got a divorce in my thirties with three young kids. like all of these things that have happened to me made me stronger and have these moments of self-reflection. And anytime I meet someone that I really am like drawn to magnetically, I... tend to find that they've gone through hard stuff and it builds character and it gives them resilience but also empathy and context and nuance.
Because when you don't go through hard times, it's really hard for you to have empathy and nuance when you're looking at other people's situations. So many places we can go here. What, um, what are you really, what, what'd you learn in those twenties and thirties? Cause we could probably sit and talk for a five or a six hour podcast and set records right on all the hardship and how you overcome it and all the moments where it felt like, it possible and is it worth it?
I every human goes through those hard times and you've arrived at this place where, um, you're more purposeful now about this next, um, season of your career, it seems, and what you're helping people work through than any of the previous ones that built the success for you. Yeah, I think throughout my whole career, it's always been about the process versus the outcome. And to me, that's what creates intentionality.
If you are constantly searching how to make a million dollars, you will live a miserable life. But if you start to get really, really passionate about a skill set, or like for the past two years, it's for me, it's just been about like, how can I become the best writer? What do I need to learn? How do I like, how do I keep refining my style and my voice? And that led to a book deal. And now I have a book coming out. It wasn't about I'm launching a newsletter to get a book deal.
was about the process of writing and We live in such a dopamine addicted society where we have everything served to us within seconds. Like AI gives us everything that we could ever want and think about. And I'm really, I say this a lot, like critical thinking is now going to be the superpower.
Being able to refine your own thinking and skillsets and be able to like pursue something with like passion and novelty, when you could leapfrog and just get to the end, the magic and like the intentionality comes from the process itself. So I love it because it feels so simple to you now. Yeah. I was in love with the process. this, the same with like, I built a VC back company and sold that a few years ago. And the same thing, I wasn't starting a company with the end goal of selling it.
That is a outcome that happens. I was starting a company because I was so passionate about the mission of helping women create space. for all the roles that they have in life. And the more and more I like honed in on that problem and how I'm uniquely positioned to solve it, the company would grow and grow and grow. The second I just start to like focus on, my gosh, we have to hit a million dollars this month or, know, whatever like KPI things would go south every single time.
If I could just keep focus on what's the mission, what is the problem I'm trying to solve, that's when things would go well. Do you think that you are perfectly or uniquely positioned because of your experience going through a divorce, single mom in your 30s, how you grew up, the life experience? Yeah, I think now more than ever, people connect with the humanity behind somebody. This is why I'm so like big on building portfolio career in a personal brand.
Because if you think that you can start a business and not show up and have some human connection, that's you, you're making it 10 times harder for yourself because people can. not only connect with people, but they also now more than ever care what you stand for and who you are and what your belief system is. There's tons of research that shows, especially if you're trying to reach younger generations, they care about where you stand. Isn't it funny you say younger generations?
When did that happen when we weren't a part of that? I think when uh my kids became in those younger generations. Um, earlier when you, spoke about critical thinking, it seems like that's the unlock. So you made an argument that you shouldn't start with the end in mind of selling the company based upon KPIs and multiples and all that. But are you saying, or am I putting words in your mouth that you should start with the end in mind on what the company should be? Mission always.
Mission critical at the top of the top level. Yeah. Yeah, I've been a CMO now four times and every single time it's not about like, you think about Maslow hierarchy of needs, right? It's like, if you're just talking about products and features, you're at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Like we let, let, let's do like Coca-Cola, for example, Coca-Cola is a drink. Like it's a sugary drink. If they did a marketing campaign that was like. sugary drinks here, like you, no one would buy it.
But if you move up Maslow's hierarchy of needs to the self-actualization, think about what Coca-Cola and all of their marketing and advertising does. It's about belonging and being together. Coca-Cola brings people together. The polar bears are sitting around the fireplace together, drinking the Coca-Cola. It's not about features and attributes. It's about the feeling that someone gets when they engage with you or your products.
Do think they had to build a good product first or is that synonymous with? 100%. You can't like, look, good marketing can take a bad product oh a decent ways because you just fill the top of the funnel constantly. But you have two levers in building a successful business, top of the funnel and middle of the funnel retention. Like how do you actually retain people to keep coming back and recurring business?
That is a really exhausting way and a really expensive way to build a business just doing top of the funnel. If you can't get people like my last company was in two vice categories. It was a CBD business, which was still at the time fairly new and like very regulated and Not mainstream at all like it is now. No, and I couldn't use Facebook ads. was a vice category. And then we were also a sexual health and wellness company, also a vice category. So we couldn't do traditional advertising.
And I talk all the time about how we grew so fast by focusing on a great product and then activating the people who experienced a great experience with the product. We had them go out and talk about it through like you know, affiliates and word of mouth and referral programs and all of that. But yeah, you can't a great product with great marketing is, is, is where you want to be. top of the mountain.
Yeah. When you, when you spoke about critical thinking earlier, how can you break that down to someone, um, that wants to jump into the entrepreneurial world or they're struggling and they want to improve and grow a brand. Um, if they've been an inline, I'm just going to stereotypically call it nine to five employee for 10 years or 15 years. They want to break out of it and they haven't necessarily been a critical thinking environment. It's just been process in process out.
Let's get to the end of the day. What do you mean to the average person out here? When I say average person, I go back to the beginning of my journey. No one was talking about, have to be a critical thinker. There weren't people challenging most employees to do that internally. So what's that really mean? The basis of it without some big, long book. Hey, develop the ability to be a critical thinker. Yeah. So let's, let's break down a few things here.
So if you're in a nine to five, there's still intrapreneurship that I'm very passionate about. Like find ways that you can own something and develop your, your own DNA as part of the company so that you have that skillset of I created something from scratch. Like I saw this problem in our company. I went out and showed that I could build the solution and go do that. You don't have to quit your nine to five to validate your ability to step outside and build something.
So I always like to start with that because I think that we've created this binary construct of you're either a nine to five or you're an entrepreneur. And the reason I felt so confident becoming an entrepreneur is because I led a lot of innovation at a lot of companies. So. there's a way to build that muscle in your current nine to five.
And I would very much implore people to do that if they're thinking that they want to step out, but they can't do it they don't have the financial safety net, which is something that we need to talk about. Like not everybody can be like, yeah, let me just quit my job and go do something. They need health insurance. They need, you know, a steady paycheck. So that's number one. Number two, if you are ready to kind of step out and do something.
I always, when I'm coaching somebody, we start with like, what are you an expert in? Like what would somebody, call it the 10K time saver. Like what would somebody pay you $10,000 to do for them because they'll either, it'll make their business go faster, it will save them a ton of time, it will save them a lot of money, like whatever it is. Like what is something that you think that if you showed up and you're like, you have me for a week, pay me $10,000. Here's what I'm going to do.
That's your expertise. That's your secret sauce. something that I see a lot, like, look, we are in a rapid expansion with AI. Like they're the ability to start a company is easier than ever. And so that can cause a lot of paralysis because you're seeing a lot of people. starting companies and you're like, well, I was going to kind of start that, or I was thinking about doing something similar to this. It's already out there.
You have to find there's kind of three subsets of a company that make yours your own kind of secret sauce. It's what problems are you solving? How are you uniquely able to solve them? And who specifically are you solving them for? And Those three things cannot be replicated by anyone because the middle one, which is like, why are you uniquely equipped to solve them? And if you can think through those three things, don't worry about what's happening out there.
And then you just start to, you don't have to launch a full company. say, okay, what does an MVP of this look like? How can I market test this idea? Because I can assure you, if you see somebody launching something, like, well, I'll just kind of recreate that for this. You are not that person. You are not their customers. And you're not that same time when they launched that.
Like macroeconomical conditions of when you launch a business are so under discussed in the how I built this of the world. Like you cannot compare apples to apples, even now. Somebody starting a business six months ago is very different than somebody starting a business today. So you have to have all three of those things and look at them with a clear, like to go back to what is critical thinking, like your own perspective on each of those.
Because if you're just trying to copy and paste, it's not critical thinking. You're not actually doing the work to say why this, why me and why that. Do you think that there's always been a really high failure rate in business and entrepreneurship way back to before when me and you were little kids. And do you think that that can be improved now with systems that you're building and platforms and coaching?
that, or, is this just a process that you just don't know what it's going to be until you get, you're in the midst of it? Can we improve this failure rate? Cause it goes back to like, it. Is it learned or are we, you know, it's a DNA thing, right? Are we born or are built?
think the definition of failure is also something that I'm like, when you're asking that question, I'm kind of like my first startup failed, but I wouldn't have had the skill sets from the first startup of managing engineers, launching a tech product that I would never have gotten the job I did at the not um had I not built the skill sets. again, it's. to replace failure with learning. Yeah, it is. Like, again, it goes back to what's the outcome.
Are you approaching starting a business because you want to become better at business? If so, now is probably the best time. Like, look, my legal bills over the last year have gone down immensely because of chat. Like I can pressure test and get a contract 90 % of the way there and have my lawyer like look at something. So We are in an era where you have like your own personal board of directors sitting on the backend, being able to coach you through scenarios.
But again, if you don't have critical thinking and a point of view, you will not go far because basically you're just asking AI to build your business. And I just don't think that AI has the nuance of timing, market conditions, consumer trends. They're not understanding contextually what makes your business unique. Did you have a coach when you were going through these moments of you're learning my failure, right?
The whole world has a big debate, but, I love like back to, think, uh, Marie for Leo wrote with the book. Everything's figure outable. That's that's right. That's big for her. What did she learn from her mom? That's kind of what you're talking about. Did you have a coach and a mentor or did you just already have, were you born? That's, that's the big question. oh When you were going through all these moments. It's something I think about all the time as having three kids.
like, can I, I have three kids, they're 21 months apart on each side, and yet they're so drastically different. Their inner drive, how they're motivated, all different. So there is something to it of like what drives you. And I think that there's probably a lot of psychoanalytical work that can be done to say like, because a lot of people's superpowers you'd find if you peel back the layers were actually coping mechanisms from like early trauma.
So my ability to have a large capacity and do a lot of stuff on my own is actually because I was alone a lot as a child. So I had to. So there's that. There's the nature piece of that that I believe is there. you can set yourself up to build resilience, build grit, build all of these things and have a great support system.
One of the, mean, I'm sure people have said this on this podcast before, but you have to know what you're good at and what you suck at and stop pretending to be good at the things you suck at and just voice those quickly. Like I'm a starter, not a finisher. I can generate and start from scratch a lot and I can get it to like 80 % of the way there. But then I stall out and I always have to surround myself with people who are not starters, they're finishers.
They're really good at the details and the weeds and they will get in there and they will make sure that we have tied every loose end up. Just knowing that and then supporting yourself with people who are I call it coaches versus pacers. Coaches are people who have played the game. They know how to coach you. They have successfully navigated the thing that you're doing. I was a basketball player my whole life. You love Gino Oriyama then? I don't even know who that is.
He's the, he's the coach of the Yukon women's basketball team. He's like, he's one of the best coaches ever. If you go and do some research, he's, he's won more national championships than any collegiate coach at anything. Okay, okay. I'm like very much um like Coach Wooden's like. yeah, yeah. So those are the two, right? Those are the two. Yeah. Okay, so you have coaches and you wouldn't hire like a tennis coach if you play basketball.
So like you've got to find coaches who have gone before you. But then there's Pacers. And I don't know if you've ever run like a marathon or something, but like, about. So Pacers are the people that you are running the race with and that you can be like, dude, I'm getting tired. Like I think I need to walk and they're like, no, you got this. Like, and they're in it with you and they're there every step. I have a lot of pacers in my life.
I have tons of group chats that we are in it and we're like, I'm having a rough day. Like this happened, this fucking deal. sorry. That's good. You've unlocked it now. Here we go. Sorry, that's that blue collar coming up. No, like a deal hit the fan. It's not coming through and we were banking on our payroll. Whatever it is, you're in it with them. And that's, you need both of those people. And I think that because of ego, we tend to only look for coaches, not pacers.
So we're like, oh, I'm supposed to look like I've got this all together. they look like they've got it all together. So I do think that women do this a little bit better than men because Women got a later start to the business game than men did. And so we've had to be like sharing notes saying, how are you doing this? How are you navigating this situation? Whereas I think for men, it's a little bit harder to say like, we're supposed to know how to do this.
So I'm scared to like open myself up and show that I'm actually like really failing over here. Are you saying men have big egos, Amanda? Me? Um, so I mean, the stuff you're talking about is in line with, you have a community right now. It sounds like it's like a pacer's community. Is that, that's what. meet every Monday, we do group coaching every Monday and we do two hot seats where people come up and they talk about what they're struggling with and we problem solve.
I coach them live and it helps other people not only like hear what I'm saying to the person like, I'm stalled, like I'm not getting any new prospects for my company. Like what can I do? Let's talk through this. So there's the tactical piece, but then there's also the emotional piece, which is like, oh. Okay, like other people are struggling too, like keep going. Like I've got this. Um, I have this saying that we all think we're so unique.
Yeah. But there are patterns in so many humans that you can see it coming. You can indicate the progress on where it is based on their mindset. um There might be a few categories we fit into, but there's some unique parts about us, but our behaviors and our patterns indicate so much. don't know if you've experienced the same thing. percent. I mean, look, the TikTok algorithm, constantly, I'm like, okay, cool. So we're all just having the same human experience.
Like I'll get served the most unique thing that I'm like, oh, okay. So we're all feeling that way. Cool. I thought that was just me. But yes, there's that that's the fun part about like getting to this stage when you have built companies and you've managed teams, you see a lot of patterns. and you can help coach them through it faster. And that's why coaches are really important because coaches usually have more at bats and they can see the patterns that are happening and help you.
When I say coaches, I also like want to throw in therapists into that bucket because I have both a coach and a therapist and a therapist will help unlock like why a coach might say, this is your pattern. What are we going to do about it? But a therapist will say, why do you even have that pattern? Where does that come from?
And I've worked with incredible therapists who will like go back to where you originally made that decision about yourself, that decision that you're too much or the decision that you have, you. or not enough as well. You don't deserve it. Yeah, like whether you consciously recognize that you have those programming's or not. If you have not done the work to go back and say like at some point someone made me feel like I was not worthy or deserving of this success. Is it going back?
You're of that. You don't. Yeah. You don't unlock it. it going back to a place where you started judging yourself in a different way? when you started making different decisions, like if you were to go back and realize that you had this like fork in the road, yeah. And then you realize that once you made that decision, I'm not worthy, go look at all the decisions you made on that path. Who did you start dating? Who did you, you know, like what bosses did you work for?
And you'll be like, oh, but then you go back with a therapist and you make a new decision. And then you start seeing how your path, you quit jobs faster, you end friendships faster, you're not afraid to protect and create boundaries. This is a wild life, this experience. It's fun though, right? It's fun. That's what she's trying to convince us of. fun. Hey, thanks for tuning in. If you like these types of conversations, be sure to follow the necessary entrepreneur on your favorite platform.
So you never miss out on future content. What's the new passion here with this new, you you had this trajectory. It's awesome for you to arrive here at 40 because you have so much time left and that time now can be used in a way that it feels like there's a passion. to help the amandas of the past that don't have the amandas now. And let me help you figure it out or do it better or make it easier. Like, what is it? How, how's it for you to explain it? Like this next 20 years.
And then let's talk about inside of that. I'm going to ask two or three questions and you can break it apart wherever you want. Um, you say that you can have it all, but the having it all should be based on actually what you believe having it all is versus rest of the world. All right. um And then also about what we've done wrong or even completely wrong about this idea of hustle culture and what that means to your brain.
What do you think it means to the rest of the world and how we can do this thing better? Cause usually what I've found as humans, we do it wrong until we care enough about figuring out what we can do better than to do it better. And I'll add to that. So the reason I got really passionate about redefining ambition, and I'll say that kind of in a blurry term for a second, I'll come back to it.
we had, for women, we had this girl boss era where it was like women on the covers of Forbes and building huge VC backed companies and unicorns and And it was this very heightened moment of what it meant to be a woman in business. Then what happened? one of those companies failed or one of the founders left or, you know, cancel culture, whatever happens, there was this pendulum swing that then happened where now it's like, oh, we're in our soft girl era. We're in our lazy girl era.
There's a trad wife movement happening where you're a traditional wife. And most women live in the middle. They want to build something, they want to be ambitious, they want to see how far they can go with their career or their success or their skill set. And they might wanna have a family or a partner or a softness to their life. And it's the and that we keep missing because social media doesn't love nuance. Right?
Like it's brevity, it's dopamine, it's here are five ways to be the best at this. So I got really passionate about bringing and breathing nuance back into this conversation of what it means to live in the middle. I love setting huge goals for myself and going after them. Like you, once I have my mind fixated on a goal, watch out. And I love being a present mom and being silly and goofy and doing all that, that, and having an amazing partner. getting married next year. Like, congrats. Thank you.
And, we've, we've created these notions that you have to pick a lane. And that's where I wanted, I wanted my next kind of chunk of my career to be because I kept finding that I was following the pendulum swings. I was either pushing for my career or I was like, nah, I'm just gonna be someone's wife. And that's not a bad thing, but it was not because I was being intentional about that that was my goal. I was just following society's trends.
You have to have an elevated level of confidence and belief in yourself and self-esteem to be able to do what you're talking about. and boundaries because the reason so many people struggle with this, men included, the, there's a couple of traps. I'll say one, the significance trap. Like is this thing as significant? Is that Slack message that just came in that important that you're going to pick up your phone during family dinner? we, where is that actually coming from?
It's actually people pleasing. Oh, I don't respond. What is this person going to think about me? They're going to say like, I'm not a good worker. I'm not this. I'm not as committed as this other person. So building out tools, which I talk about in my book, to help set yourself up for these traps that we fall in that allow us to not have these boundaries that allow us to have it all. Meaning you can't have it all at once.
but I can show up fully for work, give 100 % of myself to work, set it down, and then say, now I'm gonna go be a great mom. And those two versions of myself don't play well together. The second I start trying and letting work bleed into that time with my kids, I can feel myself being agitated and I'm like more quick to snap. like, I gotta send this email. gotta stop, stop, know. When I didn't have to send that email, it was, mean, I'm not saving lives here.
Like I could have waited two hours, but I had weak boundaries in that moment. So the understanding that you have different versions of yourself and you have to allow each of those versions to have a little bit of compartmentalization because a lot of those times, those versions don't mesh well together. And I say this often, like I would rather be a super present focused mom for one to two hours a day, then this like crazy, distracted, chaotic, like, like on edge mom for four hours a day.
And my kids feel the same way. So if that means they have to watch Bluey for an hour, so I can focus and finish on something at work, then I can go play Legos with them or cars with that. Like, and so it's about knowing the traps and also knowing which version of yourself of yourself you're you're giving priority to in that moment. Is that where this intentionality comes from?
Cause I'm thinking about this and I'm like as capable as driven, cause I'm going on a limb here, but when you said you set a goal, you go after it. You were probably that way since a little girl. Yeah. It's probably in the DNA. so why do we lose the intentionality on is it, I don't want to get caught up in the why too much because we'll sit here and play with it a ton, right? But so often If we would just ask ourselves, like, what do we want? What do we want? Not the rest of the world.
Not all these influences to your point on the outside. Like what, what, what do I want out of my life? So here, I'm gonna dive into it a little further. Yeah, let's go. I think we've gotten there as people. think we are at least at this first step of like, what do I want for my life? Here's where it needs to go a step further in what I explore in the book. What the version of you at work wants for your life doesn't agree with the version of you at home. Is that fair?
So I'm going have any conversation. I used to be here to argue, I'm here to grow now. Right. And so the question though is, is there's this idea that it seems like it's almost fact. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. I with that. So there's a ripple effect for sure. If you can set boundaries at work, you can set boundaries at home. So I agree with that. But my point is if we say, what do I want my life to look like as a general statement?
We're not allowing the goal setting to happen at a uh compartmentalization level. when you have a company, You set North Star goals for the company, but you also set departmental goals. Why, as humans, do we just set the North Star goal, but we don't actually set the departmental goals? What do you think? Do we not have the ability? Have we not learned the behavior to do it? What do you think it is? I still don't think we've actually thought, we've been taught alignment is the goal.
I need to show up as my full self. Well, that's bullshit because my full self doesn't agree all the time. If I was in mom mode right now, I'd be not fully present in this conversation because I'd be thinking about, we get the doctor's results for my daughter's blood test? Right? Like I'd be so not a hundred percent here.
we have to departmentally think about our life and say like, this is, look, I'm a divorced woman and I think about divorce often and not having the same intentionality that I do for my career that I would have for my marriage and like that pillar and department of my life. What are your goals? What are your goals for your marriage? What are your goals as a parent? And when you set those, starts, especially if you're an ambitious person that like things in work terms.
If I can say like, okay, for the next quarter, I really want to be a fun mom. Okay, let's break that down into a KR. What's the key result there? I'm gonna do one activity with each kid that is like a fun, like, okay, we're gonna go to graffiti making. I'm gonna go do a graffiti class. With my other kid, I'm going to go a baking class. Like, what does it look like? And you start to create tangibility to these things.
So that's why I just want to break it down into like what my life wants to look like, but also the departments of your life. Um, what do you think about education? mean, um, it's a, if we would have been, I'm a few years older than you, but in my forties, just turned 40. congrats on that too. 40 new life, man, the same great kids, but new marriage, new life, living in new locales. What the hell?
Um, but it seems like, you know, there's a huge debate in education right now about how we're educating these next generations. If you had to do it over again. Would you go back and educate Amanda differently? Cause I'm assuming you didn't have any Montessori environment. Those right. Yeah. The blue collar, you know, being raised. So would you do it? Would you do it different? it be done faster? Can it be done in a different way? How do you want your kids to be educated?
Are we doing that right now? Because what we're sitting here talking about, we're talking about people that become 20 and 22 and 24 and 26. And they, as well as coaches and people in the place you are. you're dealing with the outcome of what that education has looked like. Yes, mean, that's fixing the education system is a whole, we could probably talk for like a lot of time on that. I have lots of thoughts. What I will say both as a parent and as someone watching people come out of school.
You have to supplement your education with real world experience. What I mean by that, I'll use a tangible example from my own experience. So in college, I paid for college myself, so I had four jobs. In the morning, I was a personal trainer for all the staff and faculty and all that. Afternoon, I had to be at the ice arena, because I was a marketing intern for the hockey team. At night, I was a waitress, and on the weekends, I was a nanny.
I don't recommend anyone in college having four jobs because it was a lot. But what did it teach me? Time management, prioritization, um like Parkinson's law, however much time you give something, it will take that much time. I didn't have a lot of time, so I was so efficient with it. And I think about that often with like, what is not happening with the education system? The kids sit for eight hours and they fill the time.
And so for COVID, I had my kids for a year and I homeschooled them for a year. And I saw how we could condense the tactical, the, okay, you need to learn your ABCs, you gotta learn how to write words, you gotta learn math, like, okay. But we could condense that into less time and then focus on real world. knowledge. Like my daughters learned Canva. you know, like we were filming and editing videos. That is where I wish and hope that we will move to where we teach financial literacy.
We teach things, time management, how to do your taxes. Like we don't teach things that are real world because we basically look at education system right now as like, you have my kids for eight hours. Yeah, and as a working parent, I love that. And my kids have had incredible teachers and I've had teachers that changed the trajectory of my career because like I was going to go follow my high school boyfriend to his college and not go to the college I had a full scholarship to.
But I had a teacher be like, what are you doing? And so I believe it's the people and this framework and like learning how to work in groups. But where I want to go and what I'm supplementing with my kids is like, you have have real world experience. so, like, for example, my middle daughter is very entrepreneurial. And she was like, I want to start a business. I want to start a business. I was like, okay, let's do it. And so we, she makes those little rubber band bracelets.
I was like, okay, let's talk about inventory. How much do you need to buy the cost? Like what's cost of goods? And then she went and sold them. And then she, I made her pay her brother and sister and me and like, and then she got the profit. And didn't like that part. She didn't, but she was, you know, she had to learn. it's like, how can you supplement that? And I wish that that stuff was happening in school. So how do we do that for adults now if they haven't had that?
Because you're talking about in the beginning though, like either be an entrepreneur, figure out how you can find a problem and go and try to solve it under the safe under the above the safety net, I guess of a corporate situation. Um, that's what I did at the not over and over again.
I constantly was like, Hey, what if we like looked at our marketplace and thought about it like this and like, okay, let's talk to the product team, this, this, and just get really curious, and that goes back to the critical thinking curiosity gaps that I think we're having, where we're waiting for someone to tell us what problem to solve, we have to actually go identify the problems. What are you seeing inside of your coaching platform, inside your communities?
it other than what we're just talking about the critical, really thinking critically, are you finding a consistent problem that you can help unlock? Like, is there going be people that are listening to this that are going to say, hey, that's a great conversation, but like, how does this apply to me in my exact situation? Is there something we can speak to them out? Because I think critical thinking, if someone can walk away and saying, okay, let me see if I can apply this in my daily life.
Is there something else big that's happening that you've been thinking about that like, Hey, this is really one of the, one of the blockades that people are going through right now. systems. if I could leave somebody with like the common blocker that I have in my community is not building systems for the things that you are doing in your life. So you're working so much harder than you need to and you are slowing yourself down.
So I think about this like let's use like hiring an EA for an example, right? Many times we are like, I can't I don't have 40 hours a week to give to somebody. Like could never pay $2,000 a month or $3,000 a month. I will walk them through, like, let's talk about your system with email. Let's talk about your system with Slack. Let's talk about your system with meetings. And they won't have a system. Let's talk about your system for generating more revenue.
Like how are you thinking about what is your next revenue stream? Are you going to launch a newsletter? you going to become a keynote speaker? Are you going to take on fractional work on the side of your nine to five? Build a system that allows you to automate or delegate 85 % of it and then build a flywheel that says, for me investing in an EA, I said, I'm going to give it six months. All of these things taking off my plate opens up at least 20 hours a week.
I have her for 40, but like at least 20 hours. Do I believe in those 20 hours I can generate at least 10K more a month? We know the answer is yes for everyone. oh It is. It is. So then why aren't you building the systems to offload the stuff that you don't need to do? And we know the answer. Amanda, how do I hire an EA? I can't even comprehend that. What do mean? Where do I get started? Are they virtual? Are they in the Philippines? Where are they? Mine is, she works the same hours as me.
So I use Athena. um There's lots of services, but yeah, she works the same hours as me. She works my hours. She's in the Philippines and I have everything, an SOP for everything. Oh, date night. One of my own chaos for my relationship is we want to maintain a non-roommate connection. We need a date night every week. I have an SOP. She knows, okay, first look at this calendar, then book this babysitter, then pick from one of these 20 restaurants and then block it on my calendar.
It's like, create SOPs so that you can live the life that you want. People stop at the, I'm not living the life I want. And then they don't know how to get there. So it's about... I would say the tactical thing from this conversation is thinking about SOPs and to break that even further, it's think about the things you do every day. Think about the things you do every week. Think about the things you do every month, every quarter and every year.
If they happen at that recurring rates, you can offload it most of the time. My quarterly taxes, think about it. I need to pull out the business expenses. need to... cherry pick through my personal expenses. I need to combine that. I need to send it to my accountant. that, you know, like that can be done by someone else. So that would be my take. a new way of thinking. This is next level stuff. Where are we going to, we have a few minutes left here, but I don't want to miss on this.
Like what's your, um, what's your call to action for all the people that you're thinking about building your platform and writing the book and, marketing and branding yourself. What's your call to action for how you're going to be able to help people to put a nice bow around it on the conversation today? Like what's your system? What's your platform? um What's the DNA of the thing that you're doing and the people that you want to impact and how they're going to engage with you?
What's that look like? For me, it's showing up in your inbox every week with a very tactical newsletter to think about how you're playing the game of life. So have a weekly newsletter and that to me is like, that's my SOP, like right, that's the system. I help people every week.
And then if something sparks you and you're like, I wanna go further on this, then maybe it's in the community, maybe it's the book, maybe it's something else, but showing up in your inbox every week, is not only like a privilege, but also something that I, uh I really focus on giving tactical uh inputs. Like I have, I'll drop videos of like, here's my SOP life. The sounds like you're giving it away free initially. What's the, have this new book coming out. Are we allowed to know about it or no?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's not fully like uh out yet, but it's called toxic grit, how to have it all and actually love what you have. And it comes out October 21st. Give us the context, push back on some of the things I would say. I'm like, man, what a topic that people would just call me on the carpet about, man. um Toxic grit. Give us a few of the pointers here that make us want to go out and buy it and probably listen on Audible and all that. You have a really marketable and good voice.
I'm assuming you're doing the Audible. So funny enough, like you have to audition for it. You have to sell it obviously, so my agent's working on that, but then you have to audition for it. can tell them, you can say, I'm not letting anybody else do this. think I'm at that level yet, Mark. So we gotta give me a more books under my belt. start now. yeah, give us a few because we hear toxic grit. It's like, Oh, okay. What's she telling us here?
So my definition for toxic grit is hustle without intention. Like I'm not here to tell you not to be ambitious. And yet so many people are like, rest, it's okay. let's, it's like, no, many of us are here to do big things, but how do you create the intentionality? So a lot of the things we talked about, those different versions of yourself, how do you create space for them so that not one takes over? Because that to me is when burnout happens.
When one of those characters in your movie of your life takes over the whole plot line, you are not, all of your human needs are not met because we have human needs of connection, of fun. Most of the time, creativity, sometimes, many times our work does not meet our human needs of those things. So you have to create space for the other versions of yourself that are inside of you.
And you think about like, when you're in your 20s, like you would go out and like hang out with your friends because you didn't have these other responsibilities. And so it may not happen at the same frequency, but how do you create intentionality for these versions of yourself that you know exists within you? Like I still love to go dancing and have a tequila night with my girlfriends.
Doesn't happen as often because I have three kids, but if I let a like season of my life go by, and I don't allow myself to meet those needs, I don't feel fully satisfied with my life. So that's kind of a very like obscure example, but the book is just how do you create space for the, how do you identify the different versions of yourself? And then how do you create intentionality and space for them? There's so many books coming out it sounds like one that people can really benefit from reading.
Thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, a hundred percent. Um, I'm going to let y'all a few minutes early here because we had another seven minutes, but some more prep time for how you're going to be that awesome, fun mom picking up your daughter at three 15 today. I know, gotta go to pick up duty. Do you, there a competition for the, pickup line? No, I scoot around back my daughter's in the stage of life where she's like, do not get out of the car.
And I was like, okay, so I want to are you gonna be the person that has a big dance or something to try to embarrass her? Would that be you? she's ever late, I'll be like, I'm getting out to twerk. I'm going to do it. And she's like, mom, stay at the car. I'll be right there. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. What's the one place, the one platform, where should people come and find you? And so they can sign up for the newsletter. What's the one place. Yeah, just go to AmandaGuts.com.
So simple, you all, it means she's big time. She owns the.com. Thank you for joining us. Uh, toxic grit, this idea of being able to have it all, but our way, not the world's way and, uh, talking about making even this difficult experience of life more fun because Amanda believes it's so thank you. Thank you so much. look forward to following you a little bit and, um, getting, uh, getting really invested in this book. Thank you.