بهانۀ نهم: دختران خوب هیاهو به‌ پا نمی‌کنند

EXCUSE 9:

GOOD GIRLS DON’T HUSTLE

I’m a hustler, baby.

—JAY-Z

Don’t you hate it when an author starts a chapter with a quote? As a longtime book nerd, I have read approximately seventy thousand novels, and the quote thing has always felt a little self-aggrandizing to me. Like, “Oh, just read this elegant prose from Tennyson, and prepare yourself for a similar level of talent!” It’s even more annoying when the quote in question has literally nothing to do with the chapter you’re reading.

No. Thing.

And you find yourself wondering, Is this esoteric? Am I supposed to understand the correlation between a Whitman quote and this dragon-shapeshifter love story? You would be shocked to know how many books about vampires falling in love with single moms or aliens falling in love with librarians start each chapter with a random quote.

Yes, I read horrendously cheesy romance novels. Stop judging me.

The point is, I hate chapters starting with quotes.

But this chapter was a bonus in the last book—shout-out to all of you who snagged the Hustler’s Edition!—and I loved it so much and felt like it was such an important topic that it gave me the idea to write this book, so we’re going to start with the most iconic line on hustling I can think of. A Jay-Z lyric.

A bonus chapter is like Equestria or a Kardashian birthday party—anything can happen here. So I’m bringing in Jay-Z lyrics just for my gals who are chasing down a dream, who want something more and aren’t afraid of hard work and audacious goals!

Let’s talk about hustle.

I have been an overachiever for as long as I can remember. I was a dreamer from the very beginning. I would imagine elaborate scenarios my future grown-up self would be part of. I knew what my mansion would look like, could foresee the vacations I’d take, the prince I’d marry, and the horses I’d own. Horses because, well, I was seven and having my own horse was the ultimate fantasy. I was going to name her Calliope, and I’d only ride her wearing the special tan pants that rich, equestrian-inclined girls wore in Lifetime movies circa 1991.

A little girl daydreaming isn’t anything unique, but perhaps what was unique was I knew even then that I could achieve anything—if I was willing to work for it.

I don’t remember anyone ever saying that to me. Maybe I just understood it through observation and osmosis. When you grow up in a home that struggles financially, it doesn’t bother you until you’re exposed to the opposite. I realized at a very young age that there were people who didn’t live paycheck to paycheck, who didn’t scream at each other over money, who could walk into Target and buy anything they wanted.

I was eleven when my goals for my future solidified. My parents had broken up again—it happened so many times over the course of my life, I honestly cannot tell you what number it was that time. The difference in this particular instance was that my mom decided to move out, and she insisted I come with her. Nobody asked me what I wanted or gave me a say in the matter. They simply announced that it was happening. My three older siblings would stay with my dad in our family home, and I would move into a crappy apartment with my mom. It was one of the darker years of my childhood.

I rarely had access to my siblings, and the financial strain of parents who were now dividing resources to pay for two places to live meant that we had even less than before. I have a photo from that time of my eleventh birthday party with a handful of friends from school in this run-down, shabby apartment. I remember being embarrassed. I remember the boxed cake mix baked in an old Pyrex. I remember that we couldn’t afford decorations. I remember being hyperaware of two things. First, I didn’t want the kind of life where I lacked funds for special occasions. Second, it’s not very convincing to assert your independence—from my mother, in this case—if you don’t have the financial means to back it up.

I vowed to myself that day that I would be wealthy when I grew up. It was my birthday-candle wish. I stood in that tiny dining room on stained carpet, in front of the yard-sale table, and I promised myself something better. I will never live like this when I have the ability to prevent it. I was vehement in this: someday I would be rich.

I’m not supposed to say that, I know. Social media is filled with hundreds of male CEOs and self-made entrepreneurs who tout the power of wealth and the justification for achieving it. But, if you’re a woman, it’s frowned upon. It’s impolite. It’s not something good girls do.

Good girls don’t talk about money, and they certainly don’t claim it as a life goal, regardless of their reasons why.

What I learned in childhood? “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.”

That meant I should be happy with whatever life handed me, gracious and thankful for whatever came my way. But what was coming my way as a child and later as a teenager was a mostly crappy existence, and because I was a child, I couldn’t do anything to change it. But I knew after that birthday party that the second I was in control I would never be forced to settle again.

There is a big difference between gratitude for your life and blind acceptance of whatever comes your way.

I wanted more.

I wanted more than I had grown up with. I wanted more access. I wanted more experiences. I wanted more knowledge. I wanted more challenges. I wanted more influence. I wanted the ability to help others who were in difficult financial places, because I knew exactly how they felt—I understood even then that monetary resources would make that possible. I wanted so many big, grandiose things. When I was a child, people thought it was adorable. They’d pat me on the head and tell me how precious it was, but in my early twenties I quickly learned what was and wasn’t acceptable to my family, friends, or husband.

When I started my own company, everyone saluted my moxie, but two years later, when I was pregnant with my first child, people immediately asked when I would be quitting. The business, they concluded, was just this cute thing I was doing to keep myself busy until my real calling started: being a stay-at-home mom (SAHM).

It’s worth stopping right here to qualify that statement. I sincerely believe there is no harder job and no more important job than being a SAHM. I have so much stinking respect for my SAHM friends, and I’m not for one second implying otherwise when I tell you that it’s just not for me. Next to my husband, my children are my greatest blessings. But, y’all, if I had to stay at home with them full-time, I’m not entirely sure any of us would survive. It’s not my spiritual gifting. It’s not in my wheelhouse.

You know what is in my wheelhouse? Building a successful business, managing a team, writing books, giving keynote speeches, crushing it on social media, strategizing, branding, PR, and planning live events where a thousand women fly in from all over the world to be inspired. But at the time, none of those things were proven. I was still so new to business. I only had an idea in my heart and a fire in my belly. I was figuring out how to run a business using books at the library and Google. I asked a hundred thousand questions to anyone who could offer wisdom.

It was slow going at first, but, dude, I was going. I got my first client, and I worked my butt off. I treated that one single client like they were the last opportunity I’d ever get. I didn’t have money, I didn’t have a ton of experience, but I did have an unmatchable work ethic, and I let it shine. I got the next client based on a referral from that first one. I did events for basically nothing in order to build up my portfolio. I took on any client I could find.

I was essentially like, Do you have a pulse and a need to plan a party? You do? I’m in!

So when I got pregnant and had to explain my choices over and over again to well-intentioned family members, it honestly sucked. For the first time in my whole life I understood that other people didn’t agree with the life I’d imagined for myself. They didn’t like the idea of a working mom, even though they’d accepted it early on when we needed the money. A couple of years later, when Dave’s salary increased enough that it was clear I didn’t “have to work,” the passive-aggressive people around me began to vocalize displeasure outright. Even when you’re strong, even when you’re committed to your goal, it’s hard not to second-guess yourself or take on guilt when it’s coming at you from every angle.

Open disapproval wasn’t enough to make me change my course, but I did stop claiming my course as my own. I wouldn’t recognize it until years later, but those opinions began to wear me down. I was like a piece of glass that gets thrown into the ocean. Other people’s opinions became my waves, their judgment the sand I was tossed against over and over until it began to chip away at all my jagged edges. I know that as a society we tend to think that being smooth and pretty, everything worn to a soft, rounded edge, is what we should aspire to. But the more I grow and learn and think about it, the more I understand that your jagged edges—the parts of you that stick out in odd directions and don’t match everyone else—those are what make you uniquely you.

My unique qualities? I am a leader. I am a teacher. I’ve built two successful companies through hard work and hustle and the wealth of knowledge that can be found from a Google search bar. My goal is simple, even if it’s grandiose: I want women to understand that they have the power to change their lives. It’s at the core of everything I do. It’s the platform I’ve built everything else on, and I truly believe it’s what I was put on this earth to do. I’m building a media empire around the idea.

No, I did not mistype. Yes, I just said A. Media. Empire.

Not a company, not a side hustle, not a small business—an empire.

The world tells me that good girls don’t hustle, and they certainly don’t stick a flag in the ground and audaciously shout that they want to be a media mogul. They for sure don’t feel so passionately about it that they have the word mogul tattooed on their wrist.

I know I’m not the only one who has ever bumped up against the expectations of others and then backed down because of them. In a desire to find community, I constantly seek out other women in leadership, and what I find again and again are women doing just what I did. They’re downplaying all that they’ve achieved, because they’ve been taught that it makes others feel uncomfortable.

You guys, astounding women are doing this. Women who have built hundred-million-dollar companies or are running massive teams with unbelievable revenues. Those kinds of women are afraid to admit that they’re good at their jobs or that they love what they do. Interacting with them has made me feel less alone, has made me understand that this is something many other women face down. So I’m telling you my story in the hopes that if you’re like us, you know there’s a tribe of ladies who feel the same way, even if not everyone has found the courage to say it out loud yet.

It’s okay to want something more for your life. In fact, hang out with me long enough, and you’ll discover that it’s one of the things I value most in people. Drive, hustle, the desire to work as hard as you can to chase down a goal? That’s my jam. Hustle is my love language.

I love a hustler. I love someone who is unabashed about what they want for their lives and refuses to let anyone talk them out of it. I don’t mean that they never feel intimidated by their own audacity. I don’t mean that they don’t occasionally fall into the trap of other people’s opinions. The hustlers I know, they’re human and they face the same insecurities as the rest of us. But when push comes to shove, they don’t overthink it or debate it; they just put their heads down and get back to work. That’s what hustle means to me: it means that you’re willing to work for it, whatever it is, whatever you want, and you don’t assume anyone is going to give it to you, but you know it can be yours.

Society tends to raise boys to go after what they want and tends to raise girls to go after the boys. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter what society thinks about you or your dreams. Heck, it doesn’t matter what your family, your closest friends, or your spouse think about your dreams either. All that really matters is how badly you want those dreams and what you’re willing to do to make them happen.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich said, “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” and there are hundreds of years of evidence to back her up.1 Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, the suffragettes, Marie Curie, Malala Yousafzai, Oprah, Beyoncé—not one of these women put up with the expectations placed on them by the society or the time period they were born into. None of them downplayed their gifts, resources, or the access they were given. Those women, and so many others like them, lived into their God-given strengths and talents regardless of what the world thought of them, sometimes against almost impossible odds and life-threatening oppression.

Are you a hustler? Me too. Do you secretly want to be, but you’re afraid of what other people might think or say? I’ve been there.

For many women the weight of other people’s opinions will be too big a burden to carry; they won’t be able to step outside the safety net because they’re too scared. But that’s not us. We’re willing to go after it, we’re willing to be audacious, and we’re willing to take it on because the chance to live into our full potential is worth any backlash that comes our way.

Some say good girls don’t hustle. Well, I’m okay with that. I care more about changing the world than I do about its opinion of me.