What if earning more starts with ditching the BS toxic hustle culture we’ve been sold?
In today’s episode I’m sitting down with Amanda Goetz — two-time founder, four-time CMO, single mom of three, and author of Toxic Grit: How to Have It All and Actually Love What You Have. We’re talking about how to earn more, buy back your time, and redefine ambition on your own terms without falling into the trap of hustle culture. From the rise and fall of the “girlboss” era to the guilt that comes with labels like “tradwife” and “soft girl,” Amanda shares how to find balance between building wealth, protecting your peace, and creating room for every version of yourself. If you’ve ever felt torn between chasing big goals and actually enjoying your life, this episode is for you.
Key takeaways:
Hustle Without Intention Becomes Toxic Grit
Amanda defines toxic grit as “hustle without intention.” She reminds us that ambition isn’t bad — it becomes harmful when we never set a finish line or constantly move the goalpost. The key is to know when to sprint, when to rest, and when to celebrate instead of waiting for “someday” to enjoy your life.
You Can’t Outsource Self-Trust
After her divorce, Amanda realized she had handed over too much power — financial and emotional — to others. Reclaiming it taught her she was more capable than she believed. Her lesson: learn the systems, understand the money, and know the process before outsourcing. You can delegate tasks, but not self-trust.
Buying Back Time Is a Form of Wealth
Amanda explains that earning more isn’t just about income — it’s about freedom. She breaks down how she systematizes daily “rituals” to delegate them, freeing up hours each week. Whether or not you can afford help, the mindset shift is the same: value your time like money, and invest in reclaiming it.
Success Has Seasons — and That’s Okay
The new model of ambition isn’t constant grind; it’s seasonality without guilt. Amanda shares that after selling her company, she allowed herself two years to slow down, rebuild stability, and regrow stronger. Success, she says, isn’t linear — there are times to bloom and times to root down, and both are equally valuable.
Embrace All Versions of Yourself
Amanda introduces the idea of “character theory” — recognizing that multiple versions of yourself coexist, and not all of them align perfectly. Rather than striving for perfect “balance,” allow space for contradictions: ambition and softness, independence and connection, hustle and rest. Fulfillment comes from honoring all your identities, not suppressing them.
The Permission to Want What You Want
Amanda’s final mindset shift? Give yourself permission to go after something just because you want to. No justification, no guilt, no need to make it look palatable for others. It’s okay to chase money, passion, love, or rest — simply because it matters to you.
Notable quotes
“Survival is a beautiful fertile ground for resilience because you have no other choice.”
“We reserve fun and levity for a certain endpoint that never comes.”
“The biggest mindset shift I want women to make this year is permission to do something just because they fucking want to.”
Episode at-a-glance
≫ 01:23 – Amanda on Applying Mindset Shifts
≫ 02:06 – The “Girl Boss” Era and Its Impact
≫ 04:06 – Competing Versions of Ourselves
≫ 05:02 – Seasons of Hustle and Avoiding Burnout
≫ 07:10 – Defining Toxic Grit
≫ 09:15 – Surviving Divorce and Building Resilience
≫ 12:18 – Outsourcing, Rituals, and Reclaiming Time
≫ 15:55 – Scarcity vs. Abundance Mindset
≫ 19:54 – Defining Toxic Grit for Women
≫ 21:15 – Creating Checkpoints and Avoiding Spin Cycles
≫ 23:28 – Burnout, Alignment, and the Ambition Cycle
≫ 29:31 – The Five-Phase Ambition Cycle
≫ 33:34 – The Importance of Rituals and Transitions
≫ 38:48 – New Models for Ambition and Redefining Success
Amanda’s Links:
Book: https://www.toxicgrit.com/
Website: https://www.amandagoetz.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theamandagoetz/
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Meet Amanda
Amanda Goetz is a 2x founder, 4x CMO, and single mom of 3. She inspires over 150,000 people every week through her social insights and weekly newsletter, Life’s A Game. Her debut book Toxic Grit: How to have it all and (actually) love what you have comes out October 2025 and inspires people to create space for all the roles they play in life.
Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
If you’re ready to earn more money and buy back your time without subscribing to hustle culture, these are the mindset shifts you need to make that happen.
Amanda Goetz:
Survival is a beautiful fertile ground for resilience because you have no other choice.
Tori Dunlap:
Amanda Goetz is a two-time founder, four-time CMO, and single mom of three. She inspires over 150,000 people every week through her social insights and weekly newsletter, Life’s a Game.
Amanda Goetz:
I think we tell ourselves these stories many times from whatever our upbringing was or also just the situation we’re in that we are not as good at this thing, and so we’re going to let somebody else take it over for us.
Tori Dunlap:
Amanda’s new book, Toxic Grit: How To Have It All and Actually Love What You Have, empowers people to create space for all the roles they play in life. What is one mindset shift you want women listening to make about ambition this year?
Amanda Goetz:
The biggest mindset shift I would want all women listening to take on this year is-
Tori Dunlap:
Let’s get into it. But first a word from our sponsors.
Amanda, if someone listening today trusted themselves enough to apply what you teach, what could their life look like?
Amanda Goetz:
If someone applied the things that I am talking about all the time, they would experience more pleasure, more joy, more presence, more levity in their life while still chasing after some really fucking big goals.
Tori Dunlap:
So we actually talked about the balance of ambition with Sophia Amoruso, the original #girlboss a little bit ago, and something you bring up in your book as a pivotal moment for you was that Girlboss era. So when we’re talking about pursuing goals, but also trying to balance them with everything else we’ve got in our life, how did the Girlboss era shape you?
Amanda Goetz:
I think the Girlboss era was the first real movement that felt like a label around ambition and hustle. And I think with any kind of movement, it swung in the direction that showed us what was possible. And so for me, that was when I was building my first startup in New York City in 2010 and I was like, “Oh, I have permission to go raise capital like a 27-seven-year-old white dude.” I felt permission.
What happened now with that label is that, and with any label we now have the tradwife label. It’s like with labels come guilt if you are not swimming with the stream of society. So for me, when I sold my last startup and I really wanted to focus on finding love again, I was a single mom with three kids and I’d been divorced for many years. I was like, “I want to build community. I want to find love again and maybe open myself up to that.” I felt guilt because I wasn’t doing what society was saying, which was continuing to push the feminist agenda forward. But now I’m hustling more than ever. I have a book coming out, I’m back in a CMO role, and now society wants us to soften and be a tradwife or be in our soft girl… And it’s like, I’m done with the binary constructs that just are injected with guilt because that’s what it is.
Tori Dunlap:
I don’t know if I’ve ever heard somebody describe it just as eloquently as you did, but it is very true of even the labels that we think are feminist or better for us are still labels, which are, yeah, the amount of times I’ve heard in the last couple of years, “Yeah, you need to stop hustling and just relax and de-escalate your nervous system.” And I’m like, “Okay, all of that sounds fine, but I also still have to make money and I also still have to do life. I can’t just frolic in wildflowers and make milk from scratch.”
Amanda Goetz:
Same.
Tori Dunlap:
And I think that is the appeal of the Tradwife movement is this idyllic version of life. But as we’ve talked about on the show before, the only reason you know what a tradwife is because she owns a business talking to you about the milk she makes from scratch. She is not not making money, she’s just monetized this lifestyle.
Amanda Goetz:
A hundred percent. And I think that the key that you just talked about is we have diverse characters inside of us. We have all of these versions of us. I have the tradwife version of me inside of me, but I also have the girl who came from no money and wants to build generational wealth and wants to be extremely independent. And then there’s this part of me that loves being in a relationship and growing with someone. Then there’s the part of me that wants to go say, “Fuck it all,” and travel the world. But we have all of those competing versions of us and we’ve been fed this line of, “Find alignment, bring your whole self to work.” None of those versions of me actually vibe together. They don’t fit nicely in one singular human. And so for me, what led to writing this book and creating character theory was the idea that I needed to allow compartmentalization and to honor the diversity that’s actually happening within me and allow ourselves to create more space for and not or.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and one of the things I discovered in my life is that there are seasons of hustle. Now, I’m not promoting capitalism. I’m not saying that this is good for a long stretch of time, that is where we lead to burn out and overwork, but you’re in the midst of promoting your book. When I was in the midst of promoting mine, I was like, I want to put it all out on the field because I don’t ever want to regret that I didn’t do what I wanted to do. I had to do certain things in order to achieve the goal I wanted to achieve. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I sprinted and then I let off the gas a little bit. The issue is when you’re sprinting too hard and you burn out or when you’re like, “Oh, everything’s going to be fine.” And again, “I’m just going to live this soft girl life for my entire life.” If you are an ambitious person, that is unfortunately not how anything is going to get done.
Amanda Goetz:
And most people don’t have the financial safety net or ability to do that. So I think that that’s a real acknowledgement too. And I think there’s three things that I say is really what Toxic Grit is, which is hustle without intention. So you have kind of this first feeling that you are meant for more and you have a drive to go do something and chase a bigger goal. That’s great.
But then where it grows toxic is you’re doing it without an end point. There’s no kind of finish line that you have to create for yourself because otherwise life just becomes a series of, “Oh, when things slow down, I’ll enjoy this,” or, “I’ll work out again,” or, “I’ll do this.” It’s like, no. So that’s number two. And the third one is it’s at the expense of all these other versions of yourself. I turned 40 this month as well with the same month as my book coming out. This weekend I’m going to the Catskills with all of my best friends, many people would be like, “You literally have…” If you looked at my calendar for the next six weeks, it’s the most intense work period probably of my career and yet I am allowing myself the space for levity, fun, celebration, connection because I’m not withholding that for a certain outcome to be able to enjoy my life. And I think that that’s the real toxic trap we fall into is that we reserve fun and levity for a certain end point that never comes.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and you also just mentioned that you went through a pretty intense divorce. So what did that process teach you about hustle culture, money, ambition, all of that?
Amanda Goetz:
It taught so much. When you go through a divorce, and ironically, I was at the height of my career, I was leading a big marketing team at The Knot while going through my divorce, which the irony is not lost on me there. A couple of things that it taught me. There’s so many people that look back on that season of my life, I had three kids under the age of four and was now financially responsible for myself and now three kids. People are like, “How did you do it?” And it’s like, I had no choice.
Tori Dunlap:
You had to.
Amanda Goetz:
Survival is a beautiful fertile ground for because you have no other choice, and so I think that it taught me how strong and capable I actually was. And then it also taught me how many things that I had given to someone else to hold for me that I should never have, things like my self-worth, my financial understanding, where my money was all going. I got married so young and my partner that I got married to was in finance. So I was like, “Okay, yeah, this is your thing. I’ll let you do that.” And I think we tell ourselves these stories many times from whatever our upbringing was or also just the situation we’re in that we are not as good at this thing, and so we’re going to let somebody else take it over for us. And when I had to by brute force take all of those things back, I realized how capable I actually was in doing all of them.
And so finding my strength and the self-trust that I had that I could actually handle these things, and that now carries over to business. It’s like, there’s so many things, especially when you’re a solopreneur that you want to outsource to agencies because you’re like, “Oh, someone’s going to fix this problem.” It’s like, I need to acutely understand the problem before I ever outsource it to someone else, otherwise I’m just falling into the same trap of not trusting myself to know it enough to hire more smartly.
Tori Dunlap:
I mean, I couldn’t agree more with that. I also can see somebody though hearing that and going, “Okay, so the answer is I take it all on myself and I never ask for help.” So what is the difference between owning certain parts of your life, having knowledge about certain parts of your life or a business or money, and when do you decide, actually I do need help or I do need to not try to do this all myself?
Amanda Goetz:
So I have a full-time EA now that I hired, probably before I ever needed one. And if you saw how I optimize and delegate now, that was the skill set I had to get really good at really fast, which was, okay, I’m now a single mom, three kids, and at that time I had raised a couple million dollars for a VC backed startup that I was the founder of. So I needed to figure out how to get everything that’s in my brain out of it so that other people could think like me and still perform the tasks I’ve…
And so everything, I have two cohorts of things that I think about rituals and tasks. Rituals are things that happen every day, every week, every month, every quarter, every year. They happen all the time. And so I record myself doing them in Loom, and that goes from checking email, looking at my CRM, things that I need to do all the way to date night. Every Wednesday I want to have a date night. Well, I can outsource that. I can say, “Step one, look at…”
And this is how I would do it, I would look at co-parenting calendar. Do I have my kids, yes or no? If yes, call one of these three babysitters, secure them, then make a reservation at one of these 10 places, then put it on my calendar and schedule the Uber. Great, I have now outsourced this thing that I would’ve done and I can easily do, and it may take me 20 minutes, but those 20 minutes every week add up to hours of my life in a year that I need back so that I can create space for all these other things that I want to be able to enjoy.
So I am crazy about getting these rituals off of my plate and getting somebody to be able to see how I would do it using a Loom video, turning it into an SOP so that anybody can see how they could run my life.
And then there’s projects, tasks that come up one-off. It’s like, “Oh, I need to run this project. I need to find every indie bookstore in America that runs author events.” It’s like, that’s a project that you then work with somebody to do. But the ritual piece is where I had to get really good about outsourcing and not feeling guilty about outsourcing. It’s like every Friday I pay the sanity tax of I want somebody to come in and clean my house so that I don’t have to do that so that I can focus on my business and use those hours to make more money, but also let’s get smarter about that, have the groceries arrive while she’s here and she can put them away and my assistant can order the groceries every Friday morning. And these things have become efficiencies in my life that genuinely when I figured out how to unlock this time, I started to make more money because it freed my cognitive load up to actually solve the problems in my business that needed to be solved so that I could make more.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and I want to translate that for anybody who’s like, “I can’t afford an executive assistant,” or, “That’s not in my life.” I think what Amanda’s talking about is figuring out, where is your time best spent? Because when you’re in a scarcity mindset, your currency is money. When you’re in an abundant mindset and when we’re able to get you there using everything we talk about with financial feminists using Amanda’s book, then you can start using your currency. It’s not money, it’s time. Time is the most important thing.
So if you’re just starting to ask yourself, where can I save or protect my time so that I can do the things that make me the most money or I can prioritize the tasks or the actions that make me the most money? Ramit Sethi, who’s another financial expert, talks all the time about how people spend countless hours focusing on $5 decisions as opposed to $50,000 decisions. Everybody worries about their $5 latte and how that’s impacting their budget and how they can find a coupon and they’ll spend 30 minutes trying to find a coupon, and it’s like, take the 30 minutes that adds up over time and instead say, “Okay, I’m going to compile those four blocks of 30 minutes into two hours that I’m going to spend actually learning how to invest,” because that’s the thing that’s actually going to grow your wealth.
So when we’re talking about this, I think that the way somebody without an executive assistant or without house cleaners can think about where is your time best being spent and what is your hourly rate? If you had to break down what does it cost to be you for an hour, how can you prioritize your tasks accordingly? And also it might be, yeah, I’m going to hire somebody even just once a month to come clean my house. And that’s something I started doing a year or two ago, and it saves me so much time and energy so that I can make more money in the business. You’re exactly right.
Amanda Goetz:
And I would add that for me when I became a single mom and I was like, okay, I need to figure out, these are the things that are really affecting my sanity and I… Okay, let’s add them up, how much will this actually cost me more a month? Okay, maybe it’s around $2,000 extra a month. I’m going to spend my energy figuring out how I can make 2,000 more dollars a month to make this work because I can do that. We can do that. You can figure out… So that might be, I might charge a little more for that speaking engagement because I now know what my threshold is, my sanity threshold so that I can invest in these things that give back to me as a mom and a CEO.
Tori Dunlap:
That is one mindset shift that everybody listening needs to start applying to their life is not just how can I save money or how can I scrimp? How can I make more money to accommodate what I want to do? And again, that’s another example from scarcity to abundance or from the more traditional personal finance into the stuff that men have been taught forever, which is, how do I make my money work harder? How do I start a business? How do I invest? How do I buy real estate? How do I negotiate my salary? How do I get a bonus at work? Those are all the conversations we need to be having as women that unfortunately is not socially acceptable. You have this great quote at the beginning of your book in the first pages, “As children, we are taught to embrace the multitudes that exist within us and then we grow up.” Why did you include this in the first part of your book?
Amanda Goetz:
There’s an excerpt from a children’s book that I read to my kids, it’s called Quick as a Cricket, and the whole book goes through these juxtapositions like, “I’m as quick as a cricket, I’m as slow as a snail.” And it just keeps going through these juxtapositions. And it’s a reminder to children that you can embrace these kind of opposing sides of you. You can be angry in one moment and super happy the next. And I think that we as adults are… My social feed’s constantly telling me how to find alignment. Again, it’s this, “Be whole and one with yourself.”
And I’m like, “I am lots of things in a day.” I can go from super excited to like, “Oh my gosh, I just want to curl up in a ball and be done with everything.” And it’s embracing these multitudes that we have within us, and to summarize the whole book, it’s to give somebody permission to remove the guilt from their life. Because whenever we feel these opposing forces within us, we feel guilty. It’s like, “Oh, I should be more this than this.” And it’s like, “No, you can be both.” Everything is a sliding scale and it’s up to you to determine where that sliding scale is going to land today.
Tori Dunlap:
How do you define toxic grit and what does it actually look like for women?
Amanda Goetz:
Toxic Grit is hustle without intention. We’re being fed a lot of headlines right now that hustling is bad. And I want to implore anyone listening who has a big goal that they’re scared to go after because they’re going to be seen as hustling, it’s like, to go after that goal, but to create a checkpoint, we run through life.
I’ve run a few marathons in my day and I think about the fact that when I hit mile 20 and 21, if somebody were to show up and been like, “Just kidding, we’re moving the finish line to mile 30,” I would just collapse. But we do that to ourselves in life all the time. So I have an entire chapter called spin cycles, which a spin cycle, when you do the laundry, it’s that last cycle of the washing machine to take out all the water so that it’s not so heavy before it goes into the dryer so the dryer can go faster. Think about how many times we sprint to a thing just to say, “Oh, just kidding, I’m just going to go a little bit further. I’m going to push to the next thing.” So hustle without intention is this idea that you are not building agency into your life to create these checkpoints where you stop and you look around and you say, “Huh, I’ve been driving really fast, I might want to drive the speed limit for the next couple of months.”
Tori Dunlap:
What you’re talking about is so interesting, especially at this moment because you’re exactly right. We had the hustle culture, girl boss era, which was hustle all the time, never take your foot off the gas. And I don’t think Sophia actually intended that, but that’s what kind of came of that era, as it’s like… Yeah, it felt very capitalist. It felt very just prone to burnout. It was just like, “Go, go, go,” no matter what.
And then we were talking about before we have then also demonized any kind of hustle because we went too far with it. So then now we don’t have enough. So we’re at this weird point where it’s either, it’s too much or it’s actually too little. And I love what you’re saying is… There’s another quote, I’m trying to remember who said it, but basically, burnout doesn’t happen from work, burnout happens from unaligned work.
And I run my life in a way that I think to a lot of people might look like burnout, especially a couple years ago, but to me felt very aligned because I really cared about it. I gave a shit about what I was doing, and also I wanted things really badly. And yeah, I could have taken my foot off the gas, but I was willing to sacrifice temporarily, temporarily sacrifice things that I was okay giving up because I wanted this other thing more.
And it was very similar to when I started my business. A lot of people asked me, “How did you manage Her First 100K as a side hustle with your nine to five?” And it’s like, because I wanted it, I wanted it badly enough where I was willing to give up some nights and weekends, where I was willing to be a little more frugal when it came to my budget so that I could have enough money to quit. And I think what you are trying to align is so smart, which is, how do we just try to stay at the point where we’re hustling for the things that we want without glorifying and romanticizing that hustle.
Amanda Goetz:
And telling ourselves certain lies that I think specifically more so men tell themselves, which is like, “Well, I’m doing this for my family.” And actually claiming that this lights me the fuck up. I wanted to get this book out there because I’m so passionate about helping women feel less guilt in their lives, and so this lights me up. Maybe it benefits my family down the line, but I’m not telling myself this fake lie that I’m doing it for someone else. And really owning and not demonizing the fact that it’s okay to want to do things that light you up and that fuel you, and that in the end will make me a better mother. It’s so fun because my daughters, they go to school and they’re like, “My mom has a book.” We are teaching them… If you want to tell your kids to go chase big dreams, but you refuse to do so, it’s a very much, do as I say, not as I do situation. So to model it is a really beautiful thing.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, we’re taught as women that selflessness is the goal. And I mentioned this in my book, but even the toys we’re given. We give boys trucks and Legos and things to build, and we tell them that their benefit to society and their value is in their own critical thinking and their own ingenuity and their own ability to knock things over and get back up again. Girls are given Easy Bake ovens and bridal veils and dolls. We give a two-year-old child, a literal, another child to take care of. That’s insane. But we’re telling girls that your value is in how selfless you are to others. So when women have the audacity to say, I have this big dream, and yes, it might make me money that will help me be more charitable, or yes, it might make me money or give me a platform so that I can talk about issues or take care of my family. All of that is great. And also I want women to just say, “I want it.” That’s okay. You’re allowed to say I want it, I want to see what I’m capable of.
Amanda Goetz:
Yeah, I love that. And another thing I kind of want to ask you too, it’s like during that season of time where you were building, for me, I have a list of non-negotiables. There are things that I refuse to let go off by the wayside, and in those non-negotiables, I have the ideal scenario and the minimally viable scenario.
Tori Dunlap:
Smart.
Amanda Goetz:
So moving my body is a non-negotiable. The ideal scenario is, oh, I get a full one-hour workout in and I am in the gym doing my thing. What’s the minimally viable version of it? I get 10 minutes of a walk, I get outside or I go on the treadmill and I get 10 minutes of a walk. If I do either of those things or somewhere in the middle, that’s a win for the day. And I have these non-negotiables again on this sliding scale because I think as ambitious women, we have such a gold star energy. It’s like, I want the A, I want the gold star. If I can’t do it perfectly, why bother?
And for me, it’s about compounding interest. If I have non-negotiables, if I only have 20% to give and I give 20%, then guess what? I gave a hundred percent that day of what I had. So being with my partner, having quality time with my partner is a non-negotiable. The ideal scenario is we actually sit down and talk and have a conversation and we maybe are intimate or whatever. Sometimes that doesn’t happen. What is the minimally viable version? It’s a phone-free 15-minute time before I turn on Netflix and veg out where we actually are looking at each other and connecting and being like, “How are you today? Is there anything I can be doing to support you,” whatever. We constantly look at things as an all or nothing because if we can’t be getting the gold star, then why bother? And it’s, no, that’s not how compounding interest works.
Tori Dunlap:
We had an entire episode we released a year ago called, Why the All or Nothing Mindset is Killing You, and it’s exactly what you just talked about. We’ll link it down on the show notes for anybody who wants to listen. But it’s that idea of I either go to the gym every single day for an entire year, for an hour, and I sweat my ass off or it doesn’t count, or I save a million dollars and I get 25% raises every single year, and I do it perfectly or I don’t do it at all. And yep, I’ve realized it in my own life of it doesn’t count unless you’re in pain or it doesn’t count unless you’re just dripping in sweat or it doesn’t count unless you’ve done it perfectly. And I think that is one of the most harmful things for our money, for our relationships, for our joy in our life, is we can’t be thinking it’s either we do it absolutely 100% every single time or we do absolutely nothing.
Amanda Goetz:
And when we think about these other parts of ourselves that bring us levity, joy, novelty, exploration, we tend to reserve them for vacation or the weekend, and what a high barrier to entry for things that are so easily accessible, maybe not in this multitude of a vacation, but you can find pockets of these things and that I’m very much in the mindset of I’d rather get 2% fun every single day than a few fun days a year.
Tori Dunlap:
You have this five phase ambition cycle that so many women recognize, can you walk us through that?
Amanda Goetz:
Yes. Okay, so at a high level, the cycle of ambition is, okay, let’s start with you’re burnt out. You’re burnt out, you’re completely in ashes. Then all of a sudden you get a little spark of something like, “Oh, maybe I’m going to go do this thing.” And maybe it’s completely different than your job, you see something that you’re like, “I’m going to go start a YouTube,” or, “I’m going to do something else.” Then you start throwing everything into it, and then you hit a point where you maybe have some friction, it doesn’t grow as fast as you want to or something-
Tori Dunlap:
You’re not actually good at the thing. Yeah, yeah.
Amanda Goetz:
Yeah. So then you falter and you stumble, and then you get this second inkling of maybe you get a email that was like, “Oh my God, your video helped me so much.” And it lights you back up again. And then you just keep pushing and pushing and pushing until you burn out again.
And then at that point of burnout, you have this next, “Okay, where can I…” I need to now throw myself into something else. And sometimes self-care is actually another version of our self hatred and perfectionism. It’s like, “Oh, I’m going to go self-care the shit out of myself.” I’m going to do the 20 step skincare routine. I’m going to really focus on relaxing. But then you get that… Again, the cycle feeds into itself. It’s like, “Well, now how do I do this the best that I can?” And the takeaway for me with this cycle of ambition is you will continue to repeat the cycle if you don’t step off the hamster wheel and acknowledge that certain things need to be designated just for fun, just for pleasure, just for peace, and you don’t have to over optimize every single cycle that you’re in.
Tori Dunlap:
Read me for filth, that’s fine. No, but you’re so right. So I’m a big reader and I don’t read a lot of nonfiction. I will read your book, but I don’t read a lot of nonfiction because my life is a nonfiction book. And I’m like, I just want to read my little dragon smut and be okay. But the interesting thing is, the last year or two, I’ve had reading goals of how many books I want to read, and I find myself sometimes going, “Oh, you’re behind. You said you wanted to read 40, you need to get through this book really quick.” And then I’m like, “Well, why are you doing this, if you’re just going to rush through the very process that you’ve said is pleasurable?”
So I still like having a reading goal because it gets my butt off my phone and it gets my ass in the chair to actually sit down and read. But I do have to check my brain when it does that of like, “Oh, read quicker, read quicker. Do this thing, listen to this audiobook while you’re doing this chore.” And it’s like, if that actually is what I want to do, great, but if I’m just doing it because I want to be able to check it off to say I’ve read it, that’s not helpful. That’s the very thing I’m trying to do to make my life more pleasurable, and instead I am now putting a measuring stick on it.
Amanda Goetz:
We tie so much of our happiness to the output of the goal and not the process in itself.
Tori Dunlap:
[inaudible 00:33:20] Manager [inaudible 00:33:20] destination, isn’t it?
Amanda Goetz:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay, so you talk about the five to nine in your book, and we have so many listeners who are trying to figure out, how do I not only get my time back from my job that maybe I don’t really like, but also how do I potentially build something for myself? So how important are those hours to getting your life back?
Amanda Goetz:
The five to nine is such a critical time period, and the biggest mistake most people make is, “Okay, I’m going to start a side hustle.” And then they completely block themselves out and they’re like, “I’m going to do this every night this week.” And then what happens? That’s sustainable for maybe two weeks, three weeks. So my biggest piece of advice is if you’re going to reclaim your five to nine for any part of yourself, maybe it’s to really fuel the CEO who’s not getting the need for significance from work or creativity from work. If you’re designating some non-work hours to that version of you, maybe it’s to the version of you that wants to go on dates and find love. Maybe it’s the version of you that wants to go build friendship and build community, whatever part, start small, pick one night a week that you’re going to guard with your time and communicate that.
No employer needs to know what you’re spending your time on, but to say, “Oh, every Tuesday I have a commitment,” and that could just be a commitment to yourself, but starting small starts building the muscle of self-trust that you said something was important, and are you going to create the boundary for it? And in the absence of information, most employers will make up their own information. So if you just start going off the grid after five o’clock every night, some people may be like, “Hey, where are you?” But in my experience, if any person, whether they worked for me or it was me working for someone else, if I said, “Hey, I have a commitment Tuesday nights, Thursday nights,” whatever, “I’ll check email around 8:30 when I’m back home. If there’s anything urgent, I’ll jump in at there.” It’s almost never a problem. But it’s the hiding that time is kind of the first issue because somebody’s going to not understand when they have access to you.
And then the second issue is you allowing other people to become the priority when you said something else in your life was the priority. Where does that come from? It usually comes from deep limiting beliefs that you will lose someone’s love or attention or admiration if you are not there the second they need you, when, by the way, if that’s the relationship you have with an employer, with a friend, with a partner, that’s probably not a healthy one.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And also understanding that you saying I have a commitment is a full sentence, you don’t need to explain what the commitment is. You don’t need to justify it. And I think especially with, if you’re a mother, if you’re a woman in general, it’s like, “Oh, because of my kids.” Or, “Oh, because I’m doing this other thing.”
I remember wanting to take a walk in the middle of the day, even 10, 15 minutes when I worked a corporate job that was in person, and I would go out and get a coffee even though I didn’t want to drink the coffee because I felt like I had to justify the break. I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to do something.” And it could just be I’m walking around the block and that’s fine. So yeah, it’s a full sentence. Okay. So you’re saying five to nine is so important, and I agree, and I love that you’re also saying there’s other goals besides just, how do we make more money, but for people who just feel too drained after work to change anything about that five to nine, how can they start without just adding another item to their to-do list?
Amanda Goetz:
I would really, if somebody is struggling with the looking at their medium-sized screen all day to go into the couch and looking at their big screen while scrolling their small screen, if that is the state that you’re in, I would really implore you to start to honor transition sequences. We used to have them built into our life. You go to work if you were at an office and then you’d commute home. Many of us don’t have that anymore. Honoring that you need a transition sequence to get you into the mindset of whatever that thing is.
And I have a whole chapter in the book about transition sequences because I can’t go from work mode to mom mode cleanly. I can’t go from work or mom mode into date mode cleanly. I need to build in these even 10-minute buffers that allow myself to recognize that I’m stepping into a different version of myself, acknowledge that I need to let go of the previous version/ character I was in. Set a time parameter, okay, I’m going to be in this version, I’m going to be in mom mode for the next two hours and then allow myself to truly step into that.
And during COVID, when I was working from home and all three kids were in the house with me, I created a commute bath where I would go take a bath at 5:00 P.M. every day, and I was like, “Guys, I’m going to go become a mommy.” And they’d be like, “Okay, we’ll see you in 30 minutes.” I’d put on Bluey and I’d go take a bath, because otherwise I’d been on board meetings, investor pitches, I wanted to bark Shopify percentages at them, and it’s like I needed to come back and allow myself to soften.
And when I’d come out, I’d be like, “I’m in mom mode now for the next two hours.” If she is in the spotlight of the movie of my life, she doesn’t give a fuck what slacks are coming in. She doesn’t care what emails… For two hours, I’m letting this character fully be embodied in this moment and allowing myself these kind of… It’s almost like time blocking of your different versions of yourself to give you the freedom to fully be present in that mode, which I think is really hard for women because we pride ourselves as being these multitasking experts. But when in reality, when you step away from something, when you’ve been juggling multiple of these characters and trying to hold them in the same balance at once, you actually walk away feeling shitty because you realize you didn’t give any of them your full attention.
Tori Dunlap:
I love what you just said of, I’m becoming a mom, “Give me 30 minutes.” It’s like a costume change. It’s like, I got to go become Superman, or I’ve got to take off Superman to be Clark Kent. That is a transition that takes a second, and I’m literally going to start doing that in my life. I love that.
What you’re also mentioning is rituals, and I think that when life gets so crazy or when you’re just moving from thing to thing to thing, life gets very black and white, and I mean quite literally the color dulls and you stop having things to look forward to. Can you talk about the importance of rituals in our lives and why those can add moments of joy or moments of grounding when things feel so crazy?
Amanda Goetz:
Yes. I mean, first and foremost, the power of rituals in these transition sequences allow you to fully acknowledge what you’re about to do. And a lot of times when we’re in a robotic state of mind, we are not acknowledging the beauty of the moment that’s happening. And I have an exercise, a visualization exercise that I call the 90-year-old me, which is if I’m sitting there reading a book to my kids at night, work Amanda’s trying to jump in and be like, “I’m going to draft an entire newsletter sequence into my brain while I’m reading Good Night, Good Night Construction Site.” I have to then pull myself out and be like, “If 90-year-old me could come in and watch this moment, what would she actually look at?” And I’d be like, “Oh my God, Grayson’s fingers are so small still, and he’s still got that chameleon that he sleeps with every night.” And you start to actually say the things that are so beautiful in that moment.
And I think these transition sequences… I have a transition sequence before I go to the gym, before I’m going on a date with my partner, so I can say, “Oh my gosh, in this moment, this workout, I just lifted a little bit stronger this week,” or, “I am improving in this way,” or whatever. And it allows us to just be present in the moment.
I think a lot about hiking. When you go on a hike, especially a really hard hike, you have to look down at your feet because if it’s rocky terrain or big rocks, if you don’t step correctly, you will roll your ankle or fall. And we kind of go through life just constantly one foot in front of the other, but the reason you go on a hike is to look at the scenery of the hike around you and you have to stop and go, “Oh, wow, now the sun is hitting the trees in this way.” You stop and you take it in. And so it’s kind of, these rituals allow you to do something very similar, which is, you pause, you look around, and you’re like, “Oh, there’s some really beautiful things in this moment right now that are happening.”
Tori Dunlap:
So how can somebody start implementing these transitions in their life? What needs to change about their mindset? What needs to change about their calendar management? What needs to change in order for these transition sequences to happen?
Amanda Goetz:
Step one would be to just take an audit of which characters are in the spotlight right now, and after you’ve understood which characters are maybe dominating most of the movie, you start to then say, “Okay, are there other characters that I really want to write back in?” Maybe I haven’t seen my friends in a while. Maybe I really have not felt sexual in a while. Maybe I am not prioritizing a workout and I feel like that would benefit me.
Okay, now you then say, let’s look and start to build this into my calendar. Putting yourself as a priority and building yourself into a calendar that you respect is such a muscle that you have to build over time, and it goes back to those traps that we fall into and significance. Is it really as urgent or significant as our nervous system feels it is, “Oh my God, I got this email from somebody I have to respond to right now,” do I really? Or could it wait until you’ve designated this hour of time that you’re at the gym to honor that?
Then you allow yourself to say, okay, from 12:00 to 5:00, I’m in work mode, and then I got to go into kid mode, could I actually do 12:00 to 4:45 and put in a 15-minute walk or a 15-minute shower or bath to allow myself to say, “Okay, I’m aware that I’m moving into another version of myself, what does that version of myself care about, need, love?”
And then I create a little ritual. What’s the ritual that I’m going to do? Before I go to the gym? Every single time I listen to the same song and I grab the same energy drink from my refrigerator, and it’s like Pavlovian at this point. I’m like, “Okay, workout Amanda is training to be an Olympic athlete. I’m going in and I’m just going to do this.” And it’s this awareness.
And actually the last piece of it is just saying to yourself, “For the next X amount of time, I’m in this part of me, I’m going to enjoy being with my friends and I’m going to soak this up because these friendships matter to me.” And then having that end point where you say, “Okay, and then afterwards I can go back to mom mode, work mode,” whatever.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. When we’re talking about ambition, what is the new model that actually lets women thrive?
Amanda Goetz:
The new model for ambition is creating seasonality without guilt. For two years after I sold my company in an equity deal, there was not a cashflow moment at the sale of my company, so I had to go get a job, just a regular nine to five. And for two years, I allowed myself to take the foot off the pedal of all things career. I paid my bills and I allowed myself to be kind of in the soil growing roots that I had maybe lost a bit, and I felt a little flimsy.
And during that time, I remember looking around being like, “Wow, everybody else is blossoming. It’s so pretty. They all have petals and I’m just down here in the soil and it’s not pretty.” And then that hit me where it’s like, no, this is beautiful because I’m getting stable and when I grow again, it’s going to be from a place of stability and strength. And so now I feel like, cool, I am coming out of the soil now and blossoming to the point where other people can see, but I want us to acknowledge the beauty in the time in the soil just as much as we do the time in the sun.
Tori Dunlap:
If hustle culture says that success equals money and status, how do you define success now?
Amanda Goetz:
Success is multidimensional. I believe that we have to allow for success in these other parts of ourselves and celebrate the multidimensional success of every person, whatever version of them that they are prioritizing to build up and grow, we need to celebrate that and stop creating these opposing binary constructs that are either or.
Tori Dunlap:
When you think about women listening, my last question for you is what is one mindset shift you want women listening to make about ambition this year?
Amanda Goetz:
The biggest mindset shift I would want all women listening to take on this year is permission to do something just because they fucking want to. If you want to go make money, you don’t have to over explain. If you want to prioritize your sexuality, you don’t have to over explain and create this perfect Instagram post about why you’re embracing. It’s just, you have permission to prioritize whichever part of you for however long with no explanation and just because you solely want to.
Tori Dunlap:
I love it. You know I’ve been following you for so long and been inspired by you, and we finally got to meet a couple of months ago, and I loved hearing you speak. You were absolutely phenomenal. I’m so excited for this book. Tell people where they can find it.
Amanda Goetz:
Oh my gosh, the feeling is so mutual. I remember I was fangirling when you were going to be in the green room with me, so I was so excited. Okay, so people can go to Toxicgrit.com to check out the book. It’s everywhere books are sold, Barnes & Noble, Target, Amazon, and they can follow me at the Amanda Goetz at Instagram or my newsletter amandagoetz.com for more of this every week in their inbox.
Tori Dunlap:
I love it. And please, if you can everybody order from your local independent bookstore, they need you. They need your support.
Amanda Goetz:
Yes, absolutely.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you. Thank you for your work.
Amanda Goetz:
Thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you so much to Amanda for joining us. Her book, Toxic Grit is out today wherever books are sold, and we would love if you supported an independent bookstore when you buy her book. Thank you as always, Financial Feminist for being here. Thank you for supporting feminist media. We’ll see you back here very soon.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist a Her First $100K podcast. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com. If you’re confused about your personal finances and you’re wondering where to start, go to herfirst100k.com/quiz for a free personalized money plan.
Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant. Research by Sarah Sciortino. Audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and Operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Sasha Bonar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Daryl Ann Ingman, Shelby Duclos, Meghan Walker, and Jess Hawks. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K community for supporting our show.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
