Most female entrepreneurs are trapped in hustle culture. They just don’t realize it.

What if the “boss babe” mantra is just a prettier version of the same grind? When success is measured solely by overwork, women pay the price—sacrificing time, mental health, and true fulfillment without realizing it.

In this episode, Tonya and Gwen peel back the layers of the so-called “boss babe” movement to reveal its similarities with traditional dude-bro hustle culture. You’ll discover how the relentless pursuit of more—more clients, more followers, more revenue—often masks a deeper issue: conforming to a masculine blueprint of success that doesn’t align with your authentic self.

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Are You Ready To Break Free From Hustle Culture?

Pink Wrapping Paper: Hustle Culture In A Different Outfit

For years, women in business were told that the problem was dude-bro hustle culture. That is why the advice being given did not match their lived experience. We, as women, the fempreneurs and the mompreneurs out in the world, created something new, which is boss babe culture. That became such a big deal. It’s trademarked, so we won’t be using that terminology very much. The term boss babe is trademarked. I can’t tell you who holds the trademark, but there’s somebody.

It has become synonymous with women in leadership and women who are running successful businesses, especially in the online space. Yet, what if we didn’t change the system? What if this trademarked boss babe culture is no different than the dude-bro hustle culture that it was trying so hard to escape? What if it’s in a different outfit? Gwen, I want to kick this over to you because this is something you and I have talked about over time. We can come up with a different name for boss babe, but it’s this one-word amalgamation that is to represent the female CEO conquering it all.

When you first mentioned it, it cracked me up because it’s true. Most of the things that are shared under any of those monikers about lady boss, girl boss, or boss babe, all of that is still about, “Work. Make this thing happen. You will be large and in charge.” It’s not that there’s a problem with that. The problem is thinking that is not hustle culture. That is still hustle culture. That’s what the problem is.

It’s not that doing all of those things is a problem. That is okay. Thinking that it is so much different than the dude-bro hustle culture that’s going on is where the problem is. Often, they’re purporting to say, “We’re going to do this completely different marketing activity.” It’s like, “That’s the exact same marketing activity done in pink. This is the exact same sales tactic, but done with slightly more feminine words.

All of the tactics are lining up exactly.” When someone says, “This is so different,” it’s like, “Tell me how it’s different.” That’s the place where a lot of women who are trying to buy into their own person and their own CEO-ness in a very feminine way are getting stuck. It’s because it’s still a masculine definition of it. Instead of saying, “What truly aligns with me? What are the things that matter to me? How are we going to approach it?”

To me, that’s where this challenge is and why it’s important that we bring it up. It’s easy to get caught up in the femininity that comes with all the mompreneur, fempreneur, and all of the things when they are still wrapping around a very masculine approach that has existed for years. It’s about being careful that it’s not just in pink wrapping paper.

I had put a little throwaway sentence in one of my newsletters.

It cracked me up.

The Settling Trap: When Success Doesn’t Feel Like Enough

You get my newsletter, so you’ve read it. I was talking to a client. For the reader’s benefit, I’ll summarize. In 2025, she doubled her revenue and is fully booked with one-on-one clients. She booked a session with me because she wanted to discuss doing more in 2026. Her big thing was, “I need a leveraged offer.”

She’s walking through all these different options, such as group programs, paid workshops, membership, and all the things. We started talking about the math, like, “How much do you think you would sell this for? Sell this many at this amount. What makes sense for you? How much would you have to make for this to be worthwhile?” Everything was not penciling out for her. What we came to was, financially speaking, she does not need to make more money. She’s good.

When we were talking about that, I’m like, “Why can’t you say you’re good and move on?” She was like, “It’s hard to say that out loud because I could be doing so much better.” It’s like, “How, if you’re paying your bills, you have enough for vacations, and all of those things?” It came down to, “I’m not paying myself six figures.” In a six-figure business, a lot of women are told that that is the mark of success.

It’s like, “You told me you don’t need to pay yourself six figures and you’re good.” She’s working the hour she wants, doing what she loves, paying herself a fair rate, and has time for family and hobbies, but she’s a failure because she’s not paying herself $100,000 a year and has fewer than 100 email subscribers and fewer than 1,000 social media followers. She was like, “It doesn’t feel enough.” Gwen, I was speechless.

How many women tuning into this would kill to have that sort of scenario? They’re paying themselves enough, having hobbies, having all these things, not overworking, and all of that. First of all, most of us would be happy. It’s not that this woman wasn’t happy. It’s that she genuinely believed she was “settling” because she’s surrounded by influencers who are telling her that she needs to aspire to more. They don’t say this overtly, but it’s implied that the very fact that you have a hobby or the fact that you don’t work weekends automatically means you could be doing more.

You’re not working to your fullest. I’m going to ask you two questions, Gwen. One is, have you ever fallen victim to this sort of thinking, and why or why not? Maybe you’re the unicorn, and you never get sucked into this trap. I can fully talk about me getting sucked into this trap. Also, if you have been sucked into the trap somewhere along the way before you and I started working together, you got yourself out. Talk to me about your journey.

I have gotten sucked into it. I was like, “I should be doing better. I should be doing this. I should be doing that.” I’d love to say I never get sucked into it, but I do get sucked into it. Where it happens is when we’re spending lots of time with other people. It doesn’t have to be women. It could be on social media, in person, virtually in networking rooms, or in memberships. The list goes on and on.

It happens when we’re in groups, and we allow ourselves to fall into the comparison trap. What we’re doing is comparing 1 or 2 points of data that we have about somebody else with our 1 or 2 points of data that match up. We’re like, “What’s their top line revenue?” whatever thing happens to be coming in. It could be, “They’re driving a nicer car.” I don’t care what it is. The list goes on and on.

We usually only have 1 or 2 points of data, and we’re comparing those two and saying, “They’re so much better.” We feel like we should be able to do that as well. Especially if you’re like, “I know I’m smarter than them. I know I have more experience. I know I deliver a better offer.” All of those things. It’s like, “Why do they have that and I don’t?”

The other reality is that we don’t know all of the data points. We usually don’t even know a reasonable number of the data points to make a choice. I’d love to say I never get sucked into it. I still get sucked into it. We have those conversations. You know that I still get sucked into it. I’m able to pull myself out pretty quickly because I can identify that I am doing the comparison trap. We did a whole episode on the comparison trap.

We’ll reference that episode with this one.

The Comparison Trap And The Mindset Of Scarcity

That, to me, is where we get caught in the “I should be doing better.” To me, that’s a place where we’re coming from a mindset of scarcity. We’re like, “Somehow, I don’t have enough. I need more of the pie,” whatever it is. Sometimes, we do need to do better, so I’m not saying that that’s always the case. Sometimes, we do need to do better for all of the reasons.

If, truly, things are in alignment and I’m making enough money, paying my bills, and doing the things that I want to do. I have time when my brain can rest and do other kinds of things. In my world, we call those hobbies. I’m spending appropriate amounts of time with my family and friends. I’m not feeling exhausted. I’m not feeling overwhelmed constantly. It’s not that I don’t ever feel exhausted and overwhelmed, but that’s not a standard life experience day-to-day. Maybe it’s okay to be okay.

That’s a hard thing for us as people, particularly in a capitalistic society to accept. Even more so for women in business because we’ve always been taught we are behind the eight ball. That’s the message we’ve been getting from day one. It’s like, “You’re paid less, so you have to work harder.” All of these things. It’s not that that’s not true because it is true. We’re still paid less. We still earn less. All of those things are still true, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we keep having to do more. There’s a point at which we can say, “This is good enough. I’m okay.”

I’ve worked under the hood of some of these 7-figure or 8-figure businesses. First of all, I know the staff that runs these. I know that there are some cases where the CEO is there on a mic, saying that they don’t work weekends and they’re off at noon every day to hang out with their children. That is 100% true, but what they leave out is the fact that there are fourteen other people who work until 6:00 every day, and some of whom work seven days a week. It takes a village, whether that village is one person working 125 hours a week or a big team each working 40 hours a week. There’s that piece.

That goes back to the fact that we don’t know all the data points.

This is another thing that I would say. This is a little bit about not knowing all the data points, but it’s a little different. When these people are talking about “Get off the television. Don’t do this. Don’t do that.” It is entirely possible they’re not talking to you and me. It’s entirely possible they’re talking to a different self-proclaimed entrepreneur who is pre-revenue after being in business for 3 years, 5 years, or whatever. They’re trying to live the laptop lifestyle before they’ve ever sold a thing. Our thought is that when those people are talking to the “lazy people”, they’re talking to us.

That is a true thing as well. We often put ourselves in a position that is not the position of the experts, influencers, or whoever we are talking to. It’s not uncommon.

The Myth Of Having It All

We’ve diagnosed the problem here. We have agitated the problem, as the dude-bro marketers would tell us to do. What is the solution to the problem, Gwen?

We talk about it all the time, so it’s not new information. If you’ve read more than 5 or 6 of these episodes, I’m sure you’ve noticed us say this before. You’ve got to be clear on what you want and what matters to you. Not what all of the other voices that are swirling around are saying. That could be your family, friends, business colleagues, associates, networking power partners, influencers, or social media. Whatever you want to call them. The list goes on and on.

  

  

You’ve got to get clear with yourself about what’s important. It needs to be important enough that you’re willing to not only own it, meaning do the work to get it. Also, own it and be able to say the thing that is not popular in all the rooms. It’s to say, “I don’t work on the weekends. I don’t have a staff of twenty. I also don’t take home $10 million.” There are pieces. It is realizing, in some cases, that means there are going to be choices that need to be made. The whole idea of you can have it all is another version of hustle culture. You cannot have it all. That is not the way it works.

Gwen, I can have it all. I just can’t have it all at the same time.

That’s not even true either. You can’t have it all. There are always going to be trade-offs. What’s important is, are we trading off what’s most important for things that are less important. Are we trading off things that are less important for things that are more important? My mom is exceedingly wise. She said, “It’s not about having what you want. It’s about wanting what you have.” Be careful about what you want. It’s a slippery slope when what I want is this, and it’s like, “Do you? Why do you want that? What is that going to get you?”

It’s not about having what you want. It’s about wanting what you have. Share on X

It’s not so much about being careful about what you want. It’s getting clear on why you want it.

That’s what I mean by being careful about what you want.

Is it what you want? Is it what somebody else wants for you? Is it what you’re told you’re supposed to want because of your upbringing, your past, or whatever? I’ve had enough experience with women and men in business. I’ve worked with people who are striving to attain validity in the eyes of somebody else. Quite honestly, it doesn’t matter how hard you work and what your results are. They will raise the bar.

Good people in your life don’t dangle carrots for you to earn your success or your acceptance. I’m not a therapist, but I’m pretty sure a therapist would agree with me on that one. I do know people who are like, “My mom says. My husband says. My significant other says. My kids say.” That’s another thing. When you get to a certain age and you have adult kids, your adult kids start telling you what success is supposed to look like. It’s a weird reversal of roles.

  

  

You brought up a good point. It’s knowing what you want and why you want it.You’ve told a story to me before. I don’t know if we’ve talked about it here on the show. I’m going to say it, and then you can fill in any gaps if I’ve misremembered the details. It’s about somebody who was working to build a 6-figure or a 7-figure business, which is irrelevant, so they could have more time with their children, but they worked their children’s childhood away.

I know we’ve told it before. I know we’ve talked about it before. That’s the whole thing of, “I want the freedom. I want the flexibility. I’m going to work hard to achieve that.” It goes back to our friend, Nic Peterson, when he talks about bumpers. Is the thing you’re doing getting you closer to that thing right this minute? As opposed to is it taking you in the opposite direction in hopes of getting to that thing.

Is the thing you’re doing getting you closer to that thing right this minute? Share on X

He uses a similar example in his book, Bumpers, which is, if you want to spend more time with your children, do you take the giant contract that will give you good money? You’re like, “I can spend more time with my children.” This six-month contract is going to mean that you’re traveling four days a week every week for the next six months.

Is that getting you closer to having more time with your children? It feels like it because you’re like, “I’ll have more money. I can make other choices.” His point, which is a completely valid point, is that it’s not getting closer to having more time with your children. That’s making you have less time with your children. That’s part of it. Is the thing that I’m doing getting me closer to the thing that I want, or is it taking me this roundabout way because I think when I have that, I will be able to have the thing that I want?

That’s a good point.

It’s like the person who says, “I want to do this so that I can travel more,” and then never travels. They’re like, “I never take any time off because I’m working hard so I can travel more.” Wouldn’t it be better if you took three days off and did a little trip?

Integrity With Family: Drawing Lines In The Sand

I value my freedom and flexibility, and I have the freedom to work from vacation. We diagnosed the problem. We have addressed the problem. The solution, first of all, is to get clear on what you want and why you want it. The second part is confirming. Is that what you want?

Also, be careful that when you start down that path, you may realize you don’t, and that’s okay. It’s one of the things I talk about all the time. You can make a different choice. You starting down that path doesn’t mean you have to keep going down that path. Sometimes, we don’t know it’s the wrong path until we’ve taken a few steps down. It’s okay to stop and turn around and go back.

You can make a different choice. You starting down that path doesn’t mean you have to keep going down that path. Sometimes, we don’t know it’s the wrong path until we’ve taken a few steps down. Share on X

I have to say that I’ve had to do that several times, partially because I have fallen victim to what other people told me I should want, but also because my life has changed so much over the years. My circumstances have changed. There was a time when I had to be the breadwinner in this house. The goals I had and the circumstances required are very different from now, where it’s much more of an equitable contribution to the household.

It would be different if circumstances changed and I didn’t have to contribute to the household financially at all. I would know because that’s not a reality I’ve had. I might discover then that all I want to do are manis and pedis all day. I don’t see myself doing that, but I would have the freedom to make that decision when that time came.

I don’t want this to get lost. You credit Nic Peterson and Bumpers for it. It’s still a good second step of the solution, which is to stop doing the things or don’t do the things or draw a line in the sand where you will no longer do the things that don’t align with what you want. If picking up your children from school, and I’m a mom, so that is the first example I go to, is a priority for you, do not say yes to meetings or obligations that don’t allow you to do that.

If weekends off are important to you, don’t check your email on weekends. I know a lot of people don’t think that checking business email is working, and that’s fine. That’s up to you to decide. If you’re telling your family, “I don’t want to work weekends,” and they see you doing what they perceive as work, you’re out of integrity with them.

It was interesting. I was on a call with someone else. She has moved to a new area. She moved several time zones away. I don’t know which direction. She was talking about trying to make some more friends and have some more social things and whatnot. Her excuse, for lack of a better term, was that she already has clients that are established. Either she had to work later in the day. She has to work at 6:00, 7:00, and 8:00 at night.

That makes it hard to meet new friends, have dinner, and do the social things that we typically do. Most of us do social things after work. Not usually before work. Someone challenged her. It was great. I appreciate it. I was going to, but someone beat me to it. That’s always good. They challenged her, like, “Why do you have to have those appointments at that time?” I’m making this up. She was like, “When I was over in East Coast time, for them, their best time was 4:00 PM. Now, I’m over in this other time zone, and that changes it to 7:00 PM.”

They were like, “You don’t have to tell them that you’ve moved and that you need to readjust the time.” That was one of those blind spots that she had. She was like, “All my clients will leave if I do that.” Someone might. I’m not saying that no one would because some of them might, but I don’t think all of them would. Most of them would say, “That’s what I need to do.” This is back to whether you are doing the things that you’re in alignment with. Are you saying, “I want to have more social time, but I’ve blocked all of my social time with business.”

Doing the thing is the first thing. What are the things that you need to do to hold your boundaries, be in alignment, and make those choices? I know, occasionally, you will schedule something over drop-off or pick-up time, but it is a very rare choice, and only when you’ve got enough notice and planning time to be able to make sure that that’s all handled in an appropriate way, because that is a priority for you. It’s one of the things that I’ve always admired. You know that’s where your priority is. Good for you.

Guru Chasing: Minimizing The Input

Thank you. For the reader, because I know that that can sound a little contradictory, is that in my case, there was a time when I traveled a lot. I traveled for at least a week every month. It was a time in our lives when we had a lot of support. We were able to access a lot of support that didn’t cost very much. As the girls are older, when I leave, it’s not somebody who can hang out with them. It’s somebody who can drive them miles every single day.

Replacing me at home is much more expensive. Part of it is that if I’m going to travel, it has to pay three times what it costs to replace me. Honestly, there are a lot of cases where I wouldn’t charge that much because it’s not worth it. I say no to those things altogether rather than even have the conversation. There are other cases where a person is like, “There’s got to be a way.” I’m like, “The way has this price tag.”

I’m like, “If that’s okay with you, it’s that price tag and this much advanced notice,” and then we can have that conversation. For me, there are firm criteria. It’s not wishy-washy criteria. When I do those things, my family knows exactly what the trade-off has been. It’s not so often that I have destroyed my own credibility in my home.

There is another solution to this problem that you have not brought up, but I know when I bring it up, you’re going to be like, “Yes.” I would argue you haven’t brought it up simply because you got past this a long time ago. I’m going to be blunt, maybe not make some friends here, and say that you have to limit the influencers you follow and who you allow to speak into your business and into your life.

Here’s what I’m going to say. This is if you are subscribing to email newsletters from amazing people. I don’t care how amazing they are. I don’t care if you would be their best friend if you lived across the street. If their newsletters make you feel bad about the choices you are making, unsubscribe. You can still proactively go to their website or follow them on social media if you desperately want to know something.

Whatever tips they’re giving you for free through their newsletter or through social media is not worth the guilt trip you put yourself through. You’re not living in alignment with what you think they would approve of. That’s the first thing. Minimize the input. Unsubscribe from newsletters. Unfollow social media accounts.

I have a former client. This was something that she did a couple of years ago. She realized that she was doing what she called guru chasing. She was always thinking that the next guru was going to have a better solution than the current guru. What she realized was that she was never getting ahead because she was bouncing between experts too much. She also realized that she tended to be attracted to experts who were like, “You are only successful if.” They were blunt because she felt a little indecisive.

She was like, “The easiest way to solve this and to save myself a ton of money is if I’m not aware of their sales by unsubscribing, unfollowing, and not doing that.” I’m not saying to turn off social media entirely. I’m saying minimize who you invite into your inbox and minimize who you invite into your feed. That is a very quick way to stop that comparison trap.

You’re right. I hadn’t thought about that because I am so anti-media on the whole. People are still shocked when I say I have not intentionally watched a news broadcast since 2000. It was probably before that, but it was definitely since 2000. We are in the early stages of 2026. It has been over 25 years. It’s not that I’ve never seen the news, because you see the news from time to time, depending on where you’re wandering around. I am very much about not getting bombarded with all sorts of information and data. That’s true.

Another version of that, similar to what your story was, is that we had a client to whom I said this. I said, “You’re getting advice from too many people.” It’s a different version of the guru hopping. It can be where it’s like, “I’ve got a coach, a business mentor, a marketing expert, this, and that. I’ve got someone who’s helping me with my human design. I’ve got someone who’s doing semantics. I’ve got a VA. I’ve got this. I’ve got an OBM.” Unless they’re a team working together, which this was not what this description was at all, everyone’s coming with their own perspectives.

Most people don’t need more ideas. This maybe is going to be the perfect tagline to my one question. Most of us don’t need more ideas. We need people to help us sift through ideas. It’s helpful to have someone in your world that does have an outside perspective. When you’re too close to it, you can’t see it. I do this for others, but I need someone to do it for me. Even though I’m excellent at it, I can’t do it for myself. It’s the nature of the beast.

Most of us don’t need more ideas. We need people to help us sift through ideas. Share on X

You do need someone to help you with some outside perspective, but when you’ve got six voices giving you outside perspective, it’s just creating noise. It is understanding where you need it. The other thing I’ve gotten caught in this whole girl boss type of thing is I’m like, “I know I’m good at this thing, but I’m sure I could be this much better. I could be half an inch better. I could be at another point better.” That’s one of those places where we are chasing the wrong thing.

It’s a little bit about the validation piece that you were talking about earlier, which I see happen a lot with women. Most of the time when I have, for lack of a better term, wasted time and money. There was always something valuable that came out of it, but on the whole, it was not equivalent to the investment that was made. I already knew things. I knew a lot of things, but I thought that somehow, this next piece of information was going to take me over the edge in some massive way, instead of owning I already had 90% plus of the thing, which was 85% more than almost everybody else on the planet.

That chasing to be a little bit better is not the place you need to be chasing. It’s about saying, “Who are the voices that we’re listening to? What are they providing?” If you’re new, you need lots of information. When you’re past new, at some point, you don’t need a lot more information. You need people to help you have less information, less choices, discernment, feedback, and all of those pieces to figure out what the next thing is. Most people who are in the entrepreneurial track do not need more ideas. That is not their problem.

Quick Recap: Break Free From Hustle Culture

That is so true. This brings us to about the end of our time together. I want to do a quick recap. We started with this dude-bro hustle culture in a different outfit with a different font and a different color scheme. The problem is that we’ve somehow convinced ourselves that putting a script font on hustle and nonstop work somehow makes it a different explanation.

We addressed the problem, as a true marketer would do. We talked about how all the ways that make you feel worse oftentimes stand in the way of your success and put you believing that you are somehow further behind than you are. Then, we proposed some solutions. One of those solutions is to get out of the comparison trap. Stop agreeing to things that aren’t in alignment with what you want and why you want it after you have determined why it is you want the things that you want.

We talked about minimizing input, and then we proposed a solution, which you’ve already done, Gwen. You were so good at that. I didn’t know where we were going to end the episode, but I think it’s a perfect one. We happen to have a good solution. It goes back to the fact that most of you tuning in to this show, most of you attracted to a show called the Business You Really Want, are women who already have a measure of success under their belt. You’re already someone other people think has arrived, regardless of what a hot mess you feel like on the inside.

If you identify with that, the last thing you need is more information. What you need is less information that is more relevant to you, which resonates deeper. You need discernment. You need some curation. To start the path of sitting in the quiet and learning to discern is about making space for weekly reflection. That is what Gwen’s one-question email is.

Go to www.tonyakubo.com/Question. You can sign up there. It is one question every week. If you choose to reply, Gwen replies and gives you a direct response, personal to you. It’s not some copy-paste template-y thing that’s like, “Insert name here.” Gwen doesn’t roll like that. Her email does have templates. I don’t even know if she knows how to use them because everything is so personalized. I know her secrets. We will see you in the next episode.

 

  

Mentioned in This Episode

•  Gwen’s Really One Good Question
• The Comparison Trap: Redefine Business Success, Ignite Your Vision – Previous Episode
• Bumpers
• The Business You Really Want on Apple Podcasts

 

About Your Hosts

Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.

Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.