#110: It's Time to Redefine #GirlBoss

It’s time to redefine #girlboss. Thanks to Sophia Amoruso and her spectacular rise to fame for quirky fashion and a quick run on Netflix, #girlboss is synonymous with fashionable/thin/childless/white/young/ambitious women. My claim to #girlboss has nothing to do with any of that, except the woman part. 

And the ambition part. 

Like the ambition I have to out-earn my husband. I used to feel it was taboo to say out that loud, even to him. 

Have you experienced some kind of business shaming or judgment, whether it’s the voice in your head or people in your life who want you to tow the line as they have? I’ve felt the shaming so many times in the past three years while running my own business. And it is exhausting. It’s the reason I’ve built the business I have. I needed to find my people. The women who want to unapologetically chase success. #Girlbosses. Women like us know we’re good at what we do and the unique way we do it.

But knowing we’re good at what we do isn’t enough. 

Do you know what a makes million-dollar #girlboss different from everyone else who’s jealous of them? It’s not vision. Or revenue, although that helps. Or even having enough time.

You’re a #girlboss when you start treating your business like you run it, and stop treating it like just another job where you’re the hardest-working employee.

I want to reclaim #girlboss, so that’s it’s not just a synonym  #Girlboss isn’t just a word for ultra-feminine women who happen to run businesses. #Girlboss is a movement for ambitious women.

So that means understanding our financials beyond revenue, profit, and expenses. 

Running a team. Setting goals and knowing how to hit them. 

If we can’t do the things that make our businesses stable, then they won’t grow. Why do we expect that burning ourselves out on client work will ever get us to the level and platform we want to get to? 

This is the conversation we need to be having. 

So let’s start it right now. How DO you become a #girlboss?

This is the Reclaiming #girlboss Framework

Set bold goals. 

Embrace the numbers. 

Love marketing + sales. 

Protect your time by building systems and processes. 

Don’t let the inner mean girl keep you small.

Over the next five weeks I’ll be diving deeper into these five elements that help you transform from the number one employee to the girlboss, and I’ll be bringing on a few experts to help. Setting bold goalsis more than writing goals in your favorite notebook. (Although, that’s fun!)  It’s about knowing where we’re driving our businesses and being able to map out the steps to  get there. It’s about the guts and the vision and following the path that YOU set for this business. Embracing the numbersis yes, knowing your profit/loss and revenue. But it’s also ripping off the bandaid to look at them consistently. To know what metrics we should look at and what story those numbers are telling us about our businesses. 

Loving marketing + sales is about how you talk about and sell your business, and understanding you can’t have one without the other. Marketing doesn’t do you any good if you don’t sell and you can’t sell if you don’t know how to talk about what your products and services do for your customer. And if you don’t know how to talk about your products and services,  you’re not doing marketing. 

Protecting your time is about building businesses that can grow beyond the one-woman team. It’s about treating your business like you’re the boss. Stepping into leadership, hiring for the things you shouldn’t and can’t do, and one day -- building something that could run without you. And finally, silencing that inner mean girl. Focusing on your mindset, manifesting, and the “woo woo,” is too often sold to us entrepreneurial women as a cure for what ails our businesses.

I think it’s over-emphasized, or at least, emphasized with no...

It’s time to redefine #girlboss. Thanks to Sophia Amoruso and her spectacular rise to fame for quirky fashion and a quick run on Netflix, #girlboss is synonymous with fashionable/thin/childless/white/young/ambitious women. My claim to #girlboss has nothing to do with any of that, except the woman part. 

And the ambition part. 

Like the ambition I have to out-earn my husband. I used to feel it was taboo to say out that loud, even to him. 

Have you experienced some kind of business shaming or judgment, whether it’s the voice in your head or people in your life who want you to tow the line as they have? I’ve felt the shaming so many times in the past three years while running my own business. And it is exhausting. It’s the reason I’ve built the business I have. I needed to find my people. The women who want to unapologetically chase success. #Girlbosses. Women like us know we’re good at what we do and the unique way we do it.

But knowing we’re good at what we do isn’t enough. 

Do you know what a makes million-dollar #girlboss different from everyone else who’s jealous of them? It’s not vision. Or revenue, although that helps. Or even having enough time.

You’re a #girlboss when you start treating your business like you run it, and stop treating it like just another job where you’re the hardest-working employee.

I want to reclaim #girlboss, so that’s it’s not just a synonym  #Girlboss isn’t just a word for ultra-feminine women who happen to run businesses. #Girlboss is a movement for ambitious women.

So that means understanding our financials beyond revenue, profit, and expenses. 

Running a team. Setting goals and knowing how to hit them. 

If we can’t do the things that make our businesses stable, then they won’t grow. Why do we expect that burning ourselves out on client work will ever get us to the level and platform we want to get to? 

This is the conversation we need to be having. 

So let’s start it right now. How DO you become a #girlboss?

This is the Reclaiming #girlboss Framework

Set bold goals. 

Embrace the numbers. 

Love marketing + sales. 

Protect your time by building systems and processes. 

Don’t let the inner mean girl keep you small.

Over the next five weeks I’ll be diving deeper into these five elements that help you transform from the number one employee to the girlboss, and I’ll be bringing on a few experts to help. Setting bold goalsis more than writing goals in your favorite notebook. (Although, that’s fun!)  It’s about knowing where we’re driving our businesses and being able to map out the steps to  get there. It’s about the guts and the vision and following the path that YOU set for this business. Embracing the numbersis yes, knowing your profit/loss and revenue. But it’s also ripping off the bandaid to look at them consistently. To know what metrics we should look at and what story those numbers are telling us about our businesses. 

Loving marketing + sales is about how you talk about and sell your business, and understanding you can’t have one without the other. Marketing doesn’t do you any good if you don’t sell and you can’t sell if you don’t know how to talk about what your products and services do for your customer. And if you don’t know how to talk about your products and services,  you’re not doing marketing. 

Protecting your time is about building businesses that can grow beyond the one-woman team. It’s about treating your business like you’re the boss. Stepping into leadership, hiring for the things you shouldn’t and can’t do, and one day -- building something that could run without you. And finally, silencing that inner mean girl. Focusing on your mindset, manifesting, and the “woo woo,” is too often sold to us entrepreneurial women as a cure for what ails our businesses.

I think it’s over-emphasized, or at least, emphasized with no follow-up. If you don’t know anything about how to track your finances, when to hire and fire, or how to sell, you can have the most wonderful mindset in the world, but you’ll still have a failing business. Working on mindset is not a cure, it’s a practice.   You must take time to do the work, showing up time and time again to work through your inner demons, but getting stronger and faster at conquering them each time. But we must also know that that work is practice for the concrete steps we’re taking to grow our businesses. 

Reclaiming #girlboss is about empowering entrepreneurial women to actually do the thing they set out to do: build amazing businesses that matter, without losing who you are in the process, or waking up to realize you’ve accidentally built a monster that you don’t know how to tame. Let’s say those big dreams aloud. Decide how we’ll get there. Create businesses that support the dream. And find others along the way to make it oh, so fun. 

On the next few episodes we’ll be diving into how to scale a business like a boss with smarter strategies where I pull back the curtain on how I run and think about strategy for 7-figure businesses, guest Echo Huang breaking down how women can build wealth, strategist Kristen Westcott is going to make flow of your business feel sexy and more we’ll announce shortly. Let’s go Girlbosses!

About Marketing Magic:

The Marketing Magic podcast is where women entrepreneurs trying to do all the things come to get inspiration, business strategy, and on-air coaching on how to get their business noticed and growing. If you have a business that people need to know about in order for it to grow, you’re in the right place. This is the place to uncomplicate your marketing. Be sure to listen, subscribe, and leave a review! Join the conversation of other unapologetically successful women in her Facebook community, The #GirlBoss Club.