the bossbabe podcast - 39. Hacking Your Own Flow State To Increase Your Productivity, Creativity, and Performance with Hollywood screenwriter Jessica Bendinger

Episode Date: October 2, 2019

In this awesome episode, Co-Founder Danielle Canty is chatting with Jess Bendinger. Jess is an acclaimed Hollywood screenwriter who launched onto the scene with her original script BRING IT ON. She was a writer on the Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning Season Four of SEX AND THE CITY and her directorial debut STICK IT had the highest per-screen average on its' opening weekend, and was the #1 download on iTunes for 7 straight weeks. Jess shares her powerful story as a creative, how to live with a student mentality, taking risks and overcoming rejection. Together they talk about how to get started in a creative career, flow state and creating a culture that’s conducive to high-performance and productivity. Discover how to grow your audience on Instagram by 10,000 ideal clients in 30 days: https://bossbabe.com/growthatinsta

Let your curiosity take you somewhere and then when you're there, let the curiosity inform you and learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. Everybody's got their own culture brewing and you better get aligned as quickly as possible. And if you can't get aligned, get prepared, right? So you can do what you want to do. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Danielle Canty, co-founder and COO of Boss Babe and your host for this week's episode. Although I'm going to have to stop saying this week's episode because if you haven't already heard the news, we are releasing not one,

not two, but three Boss Babe podcast episodes every single week moving forwards. So Natsy's going to be doing an interview. I'm going to be doing one. And we're also going to be hosting mini trainings with the whole team. So they're going to be giving away all of these loads of golden nuggets, loads of highlights and all the things that we're going to be giving away all these loads of golden nuggets, loads of highlights, and all the things that we're utilizing to grow and run Boss Babe. So they're definitely not to be missed. Now, without further ado, I'm really excited to introduce you to this week's guest, Jessica Bendinger. Now, for any of you who are in your late 20s and late 30s, you will have almost definitely come in contact with Jess during your life because she is an acclaimed Hollywood screenwriter who launched onto the scene with her original script

Bring It On and she was actually a writer on the Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning season four of Sex and the City and her directional debut Stick It had the highest per screen average for its opening weekend and was the number one download on iTunes for seven weeks straight. Now Jess is absolutely amazing and this conversation really is going to be speaking to the hearts of so many creatives because you know me, I love getting you guys all the details. So I really dug deep into how Jessica got started with her creative career, how she finds her flow state to create so many amazing pieces of work. And also we talked about creating a space for high performance and

productivity, what that means to her and how you can find it yourself. So amongst all these things, we also chatted a little bit about the dark side of being in the arts and how she has adopted a growth mindset and the impact that's had on her on taking risks and overcoming rejection. And so because of that, the boss babe quote that I've chosen for this episode is, decide what kind of life you actually want, then say no to everything that isn't that. Because I think whether you're pursuing something in the arts or whether you're growing a business or whether you're making headway in your career, it is all around deciding what you want, being able to say yes to the things that are going to help you get there, but

also saying no to the things that aren't and moving on when perhaps no's are presented to you. So if you enjoy listening to the episode, please don't forget to tag myself, Jess and Boss Babe with all your takeaways. You can find us at, at Danielle Canty, at Jessica Bendinger and at bossbabe.inc. And we cannot wait to hear what you've loved about this episode. This episode is brought to you by the Boss Babe Insta Growth Accelerator, a 12 week program designed to help you grow and monetize your Instagram account.

If you're ready to grow your audience with your absolute ideal clients who are throwing their credit cards at you, then listen up. I've created a completely free 90-minute training to show you how to do exactly that. I'm taking you through the step-by-step strategy to attracting 10,000 ideal clients as followers over the next 30 days. If you know that growing your audience with ideal clients who can't wait to buy from you would completely change the game then then this training is for you. As I said, it's totally free. I just recommend turning up with a journal and getting rid of all distractions as we waste no time getting into the nitty gritty specifics. You know that I love specifics. To get started with the training, just head to bossbabe.com forward slash IG dash growth, or hit the link in the show notes below.

A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own Hi Jessica, welcome to the Voss Babe podcast. Hello, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. I am honestly so excited that you're on because I have to, I'm a little bit starstruck to be honest because I was a raving fan of Bring It On. I remember learning routines in the garden with my friends. And I was also a huge fan of Sex and the City, which I know you also had a part in and part of writing that. So welcome and thank you for joining us. And I'm really excited for our listeners to learn so much about how you've been this amazing creator and turned it into an incredible

career. Thank you so much. And yes, as the mother of Bring It On, I'm very happy to meet one of my daughters. I feel like I have all these kids out there who grew up on Bring It On. And it's always exciting to hear all the stories about how many times they've watched it and how, you know, that's what you hope for, right? To make something that has that kind of enduring cultural power. And so I'm very touched. Thank touched thank you amazing and I guess like we need to acknowledge that it wasn't just success overnight so what did the story look like for you deciding why I want to be a writer I want to make it in Hollywood like where did that all begin for you right that's a very good question and it usually as it is for so many was a 10-year overnight success story, right? So I was fortunate enough to have creative parents. And I think what you could do with creativity from a very young age.

And I definitely didn't want the struggle of my mom's creative life. I saw the up and down of the paycheck and I appreciated the steady paycheck of my dad's creativity working at an ad agency. So I think those two influences really had a huge impact on me. And I recognized, oh, okay, I'm going to have to figure out a way to subsidize my creativity that's functional and not dysfunctional. And so I started interning in college in these creative outlets. I started interning at Spin Magazine. I started interning and then worked at MTV News. And I was just trying to be a fly on the wall and be a low paid part of the kind of pipeline and figure out, okay, how am I going to make this work? Let me study, study,

study, study, study. And that kind of has been my way in as I think it is for so many creatives. Let your curiosity take you somewhere. And then when you're there, let the curiosity inform you and learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. And so from a young age, that's how it started. Wow. I love that. And something you've just said that has really kind of sparked my interest. You say study. What do you mean by that? Because I always think it's, you know, as a creative, like how you like study your art is really interesting to me. So just tell me a little bit more about that.

Yeah. Well, look, you know, as an entrepreneur and you guys have built such a wonderful platform for other young entrepreneurs, you know, you know, when Instagram came along, you were learning by using, right? So sometimes study can be actually experiential. And I think we often discount that. But you log a lot of hours in the use of something. So I would say for me, in going into meetings, being in Spin Magazine, watching how people worked, being at MTV News, watching the different roles, watching how people

worked, that ended up being a form of a master's degree in learning passively, right? You're experiencing what's going on around you. And I just kept using that. So anytime I wanted to learn about a subject, I would try to immerse myself in it somehow. So I would try to, you know, when I was researching cheerleading, I instantly went to cheerleading camps. I went on the message boards. I think curiosity is such a powerful catalyst for composting what we're thinking about into the flower of an idea, right? And I think that works for a startup. And I think that works for a creative idea. I think they're actually pretty similar. Yeah, I see that now. Like you say, you're discussing it. I'm like, yeah, you're so right. Like how there's so much synergies between the two and so obviously you you became a writer but did you always want

to be a writer with the like a musician as a mother and a copywriter as a father like was it just that stability that attracted you to writing or did you find that you had that natural talent for it as well well so nobody would call writing a stable career at least back then they didn't I don't think they do now. It's a creative career. So you're definitely taking a risk. And I didn't, I wanted to mitigate the risk as much as I could. So I did a lot of other kinds of writing. I remember I did pharmaceutical sales writing for a stretch because it paid really well.

I did different kinds of PR writing in order to subsidize my creative writing. I was a baker at a bakery in Brooklyn for about a year. And I worked there from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. in order to subsidize the writing ideas. So I think there's this push and pull. Look, I think the starving artist archetype is overused and done. Like, I didn't want to live that archetype anymore. I wanted to live a functional life that I could be happy in. And I think for creatives, that's a big struggle. Sometimes our wounding is what draws us to a creative life, right?

The thing we're trying to heal inside ourselves maybe, or the thing we're trying to fix, we want to fix that with our art. But ultimately, you have to, I think for me, I had to heal my own life in order to become a better writer. And so diving into my curiosity, whether it was with personal growth stuff, whether it was with creative growth stuff like Julia Cameron and The Artist's Way was a big influence on me. There's a woman named Barbara Sher who wrote a book called Wishcraft that was a big influence on me. There's a woman named Barbara Sher who wrote a book called Wishcraft that was a big influence on me. These kinds of personal growth explorations were fundamental in my development as a creative professional, believe it or not. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been

singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place, so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi to all of my clients and students so if you're listening and haven't checked out

Kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe I think that's what's amazing isn't it like you can get personally you can get that development from so many different angles. It doesn't always have to be like the place that you expect it. And I really just love what you just said there about like healing your own life. Like what drew you to write something like Bring It On? Were there things that you wanted to explore when you were reliving through your own period in high school?

Or like how do you feel like you relate to healing your life with some of the things that you've created? Sure. Well, I think my goal was to inspire through entertainment. And one of my personal missions is to kind of teach and heal through story and talk about things that matter to me. So kind of bringing socioeconomic inequality and putting that into cheerleading skirts and hiding the medicine of inclusiveness in the candy of a cheerleading comedy was important to me. You know, I loved hip hop. I loved the very kind of edgy or social, pro-social hip hop of like Public Enemy. I loved this idea that you could do conscientious uplifting through hip hop

and like talk about what was really going on. And so it was important to me, believe it or not, just going to Columbia, which has a long history of activism, trying to, as I call it, put the medicine in the candy of the movie was always very important to me. And it seems like maybe I succeeded, maybe the work succeeded in some way. And I think with Stick It, too, a movie that I wrote and directed, which is very dear to me, you know, trying to put female empowerment in leotards and trying to talk about abuses of power and authority through the medium of entertainment in what looks like just a sports movie was a fun challenge. And I think when I look at what

happened with, you know, not to get too heavy, but when I look what happened with the Larry Nassar case, in a lot of ways, I like to think that the gymnasts got some positive modeling and mirroring from Stick It about how to band together and stand up to an abusive power and authority, right? So you never know when you really try to put the healing in your work, you never know how it's going to show up for other people or how it's going to affect other people. I think that's really important to recognize, isn't it? Like how we can be creative and how we can thread these such like important themes into creative arts. And I really believe in like the power of the arts and the healing and the

remedy of the arts and how we can all explore that like I'm very much like the systems girl now but my actual background I used to play the clarinet and the piano and although I've never been a natural writer I used to do arts like dance and stuff and just like I remember like choreographing something you know which on the surface looked one, but if you peel back a few layers, actually had a completely different meaning behind it. And I think that's what's so amazing. So I just want to bring you back to when you start writing any of your big successful movies, like Bring It On or Stick It or I say Contributing With Sex and City, like how does it start for you? Because I know that we have so many listeners who are those creatives, who are those visionaries.

And sometimes it's like, where do I start? Where do I start with my blog? I know I have something to say, but where do I start? That's a great question. And I think what motivates and catalyzes artists, it's different for every artist, but I would say where I start is what's making me angry? What's upsetting me? What do I think is unfair?

What do I think is unfair? What do I think is a little unjust? And when I think about those injustices or that on those, let's call them inequities, that fuels my creativity. I think, well, how could I fix it? That's a big problem to solve. How could I build the bridge between where we are now and a healed space for that idea? And so I think of creativity for me, one of the big seeds for me and the big motivators for me is to use it as problem solving. And I think for people who might be lost or worried about the blank slate or worried about, and actually use that to fuel you, right? In the case of me, it was socioeconomic inequality. It was a lack of inclusion. That helped fuel me. What if? And I just start asking what if questions. What if there were more African-American participants at the

National High School Cheerleading Championship? What if somebody had been stealing their routines? What if? And in asking those questions, you take yourself down a road of imagining the end result, right? And if you track it and allow yourself that iterative process, you're going to come up with something fresh. I love that. And so what are your tips for writers in the sense of like, you know, what if they want to write something and they don't really know how to get started? Or do you have like rituals around your writing? Like you write at certain periods of the day? Do you do things to inspire your writing? Like how do you get in the zone? Because we talk about a lot about morning routines and evening routines, or we also talk about like batch working our content. So what are your tips that allowed you to create such amazing content?

Yeah, no, well, I'm a big fan of flow states and trying to hack your own flow state is a really fun thing for me. So I definitely am a big believer in get up first thing I meditate while I'm still in bed. I make it really easy for myself. I do a five minute meditation before my feet even hit the floor. Then I have a bit of a coffee ritual where I make my coffee and I light a candle and I do a little bit of gratitude journaling to kind of just start greasing the wheels and put pen to paper and feel like I'm in an easy flow state, right? I want low hanging fruit and easy wins to kind of lift me into the day. And then I walk my dog.

And on that walk, I just let my imagination wonder, what am I curious about? What am I thinking about? What are the problems I'm trying to solve or the things that are nagging at me? And I know in that free walking state, that flow state, good things will come. And if I need a lift, if I need a little bit more of a boost, I'll add music because music then becomes a soundtrack for the idea, right? And so you're walking and listening to the music and looking at nature, hopefully looking at something that kind of cleans the slate. And I just watch what happens and I watch what flows from that. And then I write it down. I'm a big believer in the what if process and also the what's your secret obsession process, which the internet has made it really easy for us to indulge in. So where am I finding myself

spending time? What am I looking at? What am I focused on these days? And that's giving me really important information. I'm tracking X or Y. I'm trying to think of recently with this project, Mob Queens, I kept found myself looking up true crime and mob stuff, which is so not me. And I realized, oh, I'm trying to heal this genre. I feel like this genre, something has been left out of this genre, and I'm trying to course correct it towards a more balanced view. And who was left out of the genre? Women, minorities, gay and lesbian people. And I thought, oh, how fun.

What if I could retell this history from an inclusive perspective? How cool would that be? And I just followed my enthusiasm. I just followed my curiosity. And before you knew it, we'd racked up four years of research just as a part-time hobby, my friend Michael Seligman and I, he works on Drag Race. And we just took this on as a fun little side collaboration. And before I knew it, we were at the On Air Fest in New York, a podcast festival, pitching it to somebody at Stitcher. And here we are. We've made this show, right, that really started as a hobby and this

kind of little secret side curiosity I had that I didn't really know what to do with, that turned into this full-blown, unbelievable adventure with a friend that I could have, you know, it's happened faster, more easily and better than I could have dreamed possible, quite honestly, right? And it all started as a little bit of a nagging curiosity. So nagging curiosities. I love that. I'm going to, the way forward, and I'm going to come back to Mob Queens because I'm so, so excited to talk about that. But I just want to bring you back to something that I keep picking up from you, Jess, which I think is really interesting. You, like, for a creative, you're so analytical. You analyze yourself a lot.

Like, okay, what am I doing? And you're incredibly good at analyzing and asking questions of your surroundings. Like, okay, well, why is there not more women here? Or why is there, like you say, not more diversity in this genre? Do you find that you, like, I, I'm interested like how you create the, you protect that space because what I see a lot, obviously, you know, growing Boss Babe,

we have a lot of, one side is very creative. We're like creating content on Instagram. We're working with people to create content for our blog, et cetera, and videos. And then we have the other side of the team, which is very like operational driven. And it's about, okay, ticking things off one by one. And I'm really interested in how you

protect your creative space. Because I think sometimes to get into flow, you need to acknowledge that it takes time to get into flow. It takes research, it takes self discovery. And I'm just wondering, like, have you been challenged with that before? Have people been like, okay, why have you not written that quicker? Like, why have you not done that quicker? And why have you not take this task off? Rather than be like, actually, I'm nurturing this? That's a great question, carving out that space. Well, I'd say I am analytical, for sure. And you are hearing that accurately. One of my sayings is actually a business saying, believe it or not, by Peter Drucker. And the saying is culture eats strategy for breakfast. And what I love about that saying

is it reminds me that anytime I'm stepping into a new culture or a new work collaboration or a new environment, that generally the culture of that place is going to be influencing for better or for worse my strategy. And I have to prepare for that. So for example, I was consulting at a telecom on a $600 million content acquisition back in 2017. And it ended up being a failed endeavor. They ended up deprecating the division. And what I observed in, you know, here they are trying to launch a new streaming platform on phones. They're trying to attract users to this free service that they're going to have on their phones. And it was a bureaucratic nightmare, right there. It was an institutional bureaucracy that made their actual goal impossible. And you recognize culture eats strategy for

breakfast. There was no way they were going to be able to deploy that strategy with the culture that was in place there. And similarly with creativity, culture eats strategy for breakfast for me personally. If I go out and have a bunch of glasses of wine with friends, right, my strategy the next morning is probably going to be a little rough, right? Or I'm going to be in a bad mood and I'm going to write to that mood. So I have to mind my own culture in order to deploy my strategy properly. And that takes some vigilance, especially when, as you said, you're working with different deadlines or different agendas, it really, really pays off when you can sit down and look each other at the eye and say, okay, here's what I'd like to get done today. What would you like to get done? What's going on?

So we can kind of accurately assess the landscape and move accordingly. And I think so often we take things for granted within ourselves, within our partners, our allies, our collaborators, and really that human moment of acknowledging the culture before it eats us for breakfast, right, can be so powerful and so useful. Yeah, I completely respect that and see exactly where you're coming from. It is so true. And I love that. I love that quote. I'm definitely going to be utilizing that as well, because I think there's a. And I love that. I love that quote. I'm definitely going to be utilizing that as well, because I think there's a lot of truth behind that. It's a lifesaver for me and a creative saver for me and a time saver for me. Because honestly,

if you can look everybody in the eye and just recognize everybody's got their own culture brewing and you better get aligned as quickly as possible. And if you can't get aligned, get prepared, right? So you can do what you want to do. It's a great, it's been a game changer for me, that one. Yeah, it's really powerful. And I think also there's people who are starting off and they're like solopreneurs or they're solo freelancers and writers, just being mindful of your own culture as well, isn't it? Like having actual respect, like, okay, what is the culture that I want? Even if it's just me and my business right now, but going actually, you know you know i do i have these boundaries in place these are my values because

i think when you know what you're you're preparing for building on top and you're preparing for bringing people into your space i think it's a lot easier if you have that at the forefront of your own mind what you stand for and what you want your culture to be and how you will allow it influenced. I love the way you guys talk about this so frequently. It's so important. And, you know, I heard when you had Kate Northrup on, Natalie was talking about the mirroring, the unhealthy mirroring she was having with her husband. And I think we all have that, right? As women, we can be intuitive and maybe taking on things to support the process that aren't in our best interests. And so that clarity you're talking about, recognizing what is my purpose, what is my

mission? There's this great saying, how do I build a day I want to live in? How do you build a thing you want to live in, right? Because to me, there's no such thing as a happy ending to a miserable journey. So I'm trying to take every precaution I can to have a really nice process and a nice product. And that just takes vigilance, right? That takes a healthy awareness and a healthy balance inside to create that. It's not easy. It's not easy. You have to be mindful. Completely.

And I think it's just, I want to actually just kind of bring the subject around a little bit because I felt like we're talking so much about the positive side of, you know, being a creator and how you can protect that space. And I'm just curious, like, have you ever been in positions where you haven't protected that space and you've ended up with say like writer's block or real like challenges in creating what you want and really struggled with that? Yes, absolutely. I'd say for me, sleep is a huge factor in my performance. And back in the day, when I used to kind of burn the midnight oil or let myself get swept up into other people's timetables without really considering my own well-being, I would get really reactive, right? So you're working really hard. People maybe aren't acknowledging the work as much as you would like. You get irritated and you're suddenly in this cortisol state

where you're firing and wiring reactively versus proactively. And it really affects the work, right? And it affects the mood. So I've definitely been in some grinds earlier in my career where I got overtired, agitated, and ultimately the relationship for both sides, I don't think we wanted to work together again, right? Because it wasn't fun. It wasn't pleasant. And the creative work was probably less than as well. So I know firsthand what a deficit state can be and working from a deficit state. Yeah, it happened. I mean, I've worked on 20 films and I can tell you for definitely for about 25% of those

experiences, I was in grind mode and it was not a winning. It was not a win-win. And how would you recognize when you were in grind mode? What would that feel like to you? Well, now I think I can see it much more clearly, right? Hindsight is 20-20. But I'd say I was not prioritizing my sleep. I was not working on a schedule that served me. And I wasn't taking enough time under the bridge, as I like to say, just time to myself, time to restore, time to fuel up and gas up in order to reinvest that energy in the work. So I would be overtired, hungry, like always hungry, right? You're in that manic hangry state of you've forgotten to eat.

So hanger, as we'll call it, was a big cue for me and still is to this day that I'm out of balance. I need to drink some water, take a minute and refuel and recharge. I have a pretty high metabolism and that's a blessing and a curse when you are working hard. You've got to make sure you're filling the tank. So I'd say generally my body lets me know with hunger and irritation, quite honestly, if I'm getting irritable, what have I not taken care of today? What have I not prioritized? Yeah. And I just think it's so important whether you, any form of business, like whether you're a freelancer, you're working in teams, you're building a team, whatever that looks like. I hear it over and over again, all the successful people that we've interviewed, it's just that those foundations of your own health and mindset,

you know, you've already spoken about sharing with us about your meditations or to share with us about, you know, the importance of staying hydrated, sleep, food. And I think we all just need to take time and just so sometimes it's so easy to be like, okay, I want to do this.

I want to do that. I want to all these hours I need to work. But actually you are your greatest resource is what I always say. And if you don't look after you, then those other things won't come. And I just think we have these conversations over and over again, and they're so, so powerful. And any of our listeners, I just want them to like really own that look after yourself because, you know, what is success without, you know, if you're not feeling successful in yourself and who you are

and your health. Oh, self-care. I can't, you know, it sounds so indulgent sometimes, I think, as women, we want to give and share and help and nurture and feed. But really, you have to give that to yourself first. And I think it's hardest to do that when you're at those beginning phases, right, where you're maybe in a little bit more of the uncertainty, in a little bit more of the struggle. That's the moment right when you don't have too many obligations to really say okay how am I going to do this long term how can I set myself up in a way that will really work long term and support myself you know it's just it's so basic but it's so critical important and speaking about like self-care you're in show

business we all know it's very very difficult and you have to deal with rejection a lot so what were your go-to's for dealing when you did get rejected because let's just face it like we said bring it on was like 10 years in the making it wasn't an overnight success and so you know how did you protect that side of you oh wow well feeling rejected I'm human you know I first of you? Oh, wow. Well, feeling rejected, I'm human. You know, I, first of all, say just to let yourself feel it for a minute. It's when it's gone on for a year that you have to worry, right? You want to make sure.

To me, I have to allow myself a healthy grieving process. And I think where I got into trouble was when I tried to blow it off and act like it didn't bother me. I think I actually inadvertently extended the rejection feeling, right, for longer than I needed to versus just going, hey, ouch, that actually crossed my out line. And that hurts. And it doesn't feel so good. I think the realer I can be with myself about how I'm feeling and what I need, the quicker it metabolizes and I can move through it. But yeah, there's a

huge amount of rejection in Hollywood. It's bananas. I couldn't recommend this to anybody. I honestly couldn't recommend this as a career. It's really so much rejection and the odds are so stacked in ways that are, gosh, just not great. If you're being accurate about the landscape of a career, it's really hard to go into a career where there's so little data. And Hollywood is such a horse and buggy business, believe it or not. It's really Stone Age. They haven't modernized. They haven't kept pace. And they're feeling the effects of it with streaming and digital marketplaces, right? So I got a little off topic, but I would say, yeah, there's a, if you're sensitive to rejection, you need to know that about yourself

and you need to have a plan in place. Okay. I think you say about honoring it. I think that's really important because we live in, sometimes if you are on that whole law of attraction and we're like into the positivity side of things, like, which is amazing. But sometimes I think we also need to acknowledge that it's okay not to feel positive all the time. Like it's, you have permission to feel like life was pretty shit today, or like, this is really hurting me. Like this upset me. And I think, you know, sometimes it does more harm than good not to actually acknowledge our feelings of hurt and our feelings of disappointment than it does to try and be

positive all the time. And I've certainly have like, okay, it's amazing to be positive, but now I've started to realize that I know my highs because I've had my lows. And if I led my life on this whole like flat line, like how fun would that be? So yeah, I'm just trying to like, I think personally, I'm trying to honor the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. And I guess sometimes. I love that. Yeah. You know, like just saying to listeners. I love that you're sharing that.

Yeah. I think that's really important. And what you're talking about for me, what you're reminding me of is polarity, which is a big principle for me in writing. And, you know, batteries need a positive and a negative to charge. I like that. You need both. And that creates magic when you're really using it in the right balance, it creates energy. And so I don't think of that polarity as

positive or negative, even though it's a positive and negative charge. I think of it as you just accept it. Just accept that life is going to throw you some curve balls. Don't dwell there. You don't need to stare at your gaping wound for too long, but tend to it, stitch it up, put a bandaid on and take a note if it's bothering you, right? If you move on and it's bothering you, you can go, oh, hang on. That's still bugging me. What's this about? Don't live there, but don't ignore it either. Yeah. Natalie and I sometimes say like, okay, I'm going to be upset about this for the next 10 minutes or like five minutes because you just let me rant about it and then I'm going to get over it, but I need to get this out.

And I think whether you do that with yourself or you like journaling or you do that with somebody that you have that relationship with, I think is so important because, and also just setting that boundary of time, be like, okay, I'm going to be upset about this for the next like X amount of time, but then I'm going to get over it and move on because that is not going to

continue to serve me. It's an exercise that I've found has been really powerful. What a great way to support each other. That's phenomenal. It does work well, but I've done it in journaling too, where I've just been, particularly if I've been afraid of stuff, I would say fear doesn't like to be named. And if I've had like these feelings of anxiety, I'll like write them down and then I'll write to myself from a different mindset about, okay, these are the reasons that you don't need to worry about this. And that I think self-nurturing has been really important to help me and my entrepreneurial growth

and dealing with those bits of rejection or negativity or whatever comes your way. Because I think, you know, life is ups and downs. That's what it's about. It's always care balls that we're not expecting and just trying to honor that, but in a way that serves me rather than feeling frustrated and upset about it. Naming it and claiming it. It sounds like you're doing that. That's wonderful. Exactly. So speaking about naming and claiming, I am so excited to hear all about Mob Queens because it is literally phenomenal and it's doing so well in the charts right now. So you touched on it earlier, you collaborated with Michael, you're completely in flow, but just share a little bit more about that with us, Jess. Absolutely. So I wanted to try a different medium. I love

podcasts. I'm a huge fan of podcasts. I love your podcast. I've loved, you know, Tim Ferriss, Serial. Over the years, I've been a devout fan of the medium. And my friend Michael and I had this idea. He basically was given a box of letters that were found in a storage unit from a dear friend of his who's passed a couple years ago, who was in his 70s. And when we started looking at these letters, they were written by drag queens in the 1950s. And the drag queens kept talking about this club they'd worked at called the Club 82, Club 82. And I was like, well, let's check that out. And when we dug deeper, it turned out that Club 82 was owned by the mob. And not only was it owned

by the mob, but it was run by a woman who was married to the head of the mob. And we were like, how do we not know this story? This is insane. And so just because, you know, and boss is such a word in the culture and boss and your boss, babe, and girl boss, we were so intrigued by her and also a little disgruntled that there wasn't a lot of information about her. And so we took it upon ourselves to just kind of start looking into her. And the deeper we got, the more we were into it. And the more we were into it, the deeper we got. And it took on a life of its own.

We pitched it as a TV series. The entertainment business being what it is these days, they're not really looking at markets and data in the way that I look at them. I really do a lot of R&D on my subjects before I dive in. And we were like, this is a no brainer. Let's just do this. And we partnered with Stitcher. They have been amazing. It's been an amazing joint venture deal. They have such experience with crafting episodic stories over time. And so we've kind of been able

to build the plane as we're taking off. So we're still reporting and researching the story as we're telling it. And it's unfolding in ways we could have never dreamed possible. It's quite extraordinary as a creative process, as a project, as a story. So Anna's story, Michael's story, my own story, they're all kind of dovetailing into each other as we make this baby. Wow, this is amazing. And how have you found collaborating with somebody? Is this like the first time you've done like a real true partner collaboration? Or have you done this a lot before? I've collaborated. I mean, Sex and the City was a writing room and there were a lot of writers in the room. But in terms of a story that I, yeah, this is my first time really elbows deep in something with a friend and Claire Rawlinson, our wonderful showrunner at Stitcher.

Really making this as we go has taken, has required all hands on deck for sure. And look, it's a learning curve, but it's a fun learning curve. And Michael brings all his experience on Drag Race to the table, all his experience writing Mysteries and Scandals for E! for years. So he has that great what we might need. And then Claire has this great audio background. So her ears, she's just golden ears. So she can hear when it's not sounding authentic or offer up a great alternative way for us to think about things. It's been wonderful. I just love collaborations where like everyone's in that flow. It's just so amazing. And you always just see the results in that. Like it's always ends up and just creating the most amazing content or material or business or whatever that is.

So it's just amazing to hear that. And, you know, you spoke about earlier with bring it on and stick it, those kind of underlying like themes that run throughout it. Do you know, I know it's evolving. Do you know what it is with Mob Queens yet? Oh, for sure. That's a great question. To me, it's really so interesting and so inspiring to step into the landscape of a darker genre and apply the same principles, right?

Because to me, a true crime genre without redemption is just sensationalism, right? But genre with redemptive power, that's healing. And that's the healing power of art. So for me to combine true crime with the deeper narrative of the untold stories, the marginalized underdogs, all these, you know, to take these all inclusive truths and put them back into this genre, even if it's challenging preconceptions about the genre, that's what we're here to do. And how fun is that? I love it. Amazing. So fun. we're here to do. And how fun is that? I love it.

Amazing. So fun. And we get to do things that we absolutely love. So thank you so, so much, Jess, for coming on this podcast. It's been absolutely amazing. Just let me tell the listeners, like, or if you can tell the listeners where they can find you, that would be amazing. Thank you. We are on Instagram as our favorite platform.

And we are at MobQueensPod on Instagram. And then they can hit us up at MobQueensPodcast at Gmail if they like email. And then we're MobQueens.com as a website. So thank you to your listeners. Yeah. And thanks for having me. No, thank you. And guys, definitely check it out.

I listened to a couple of the episodes over the last couple of days and they're absolutely phenomenal. So thank you, Jess, for coming and sharing all your wisdom to our creative listeners as well it's really appreciative and good luck with mob queens thank you so much thanks if you enjoyed this episode we would love it if you subscribed and left us a review let us know what you enjoyed what your main takeaways were and who you'd like to see appear on the show. As a special thanks, we'll send you a copy of our Boss Babe 25. Now this is an awesome resource. It's the 25 essential things that you need for personal and professional growth. We've included everything from must-have products to books to rituals. This guide literally covers

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