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April 18, 2025 16 mins

If your 9-5 is draining the life out of you and your evenings are slipping through your fingers, I get it—because I’ve been there. In this episode, I’m sharing the exact 5 steps I followed to take back control of my time after work and completely change my life in just six months. I’ll walk you through the real sacrifices I made, how I scheduled every single minute of my day, cut out distractions, earned my time off, and built my own personal curriculum to grow. If you’re tired of wasting your evenings and you’re serious about creating the life you actually want… it starts here.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:00):
Welcome to business and the podcast for people making it
all happen. Running a successful business completely takes over your life,
but I'm a believer that there is still room for
some ands like health, wealth, beauty, and maybe even some fashion.
On this podcast, I'll share with you what's working for
scaling my nine figure business while keeping you up to
date on the latest trends, news and fun finds. This

(00:23):
is a place for business and let's dive in!

S2 (00:26):
You can change your whole life in just six months
by taking back your 5 to 9. These are the
five steps that I took to take back my time
working a $50,000 a year job that I hated to
making millions of dollars working for myself if I had
to do this all over again. This is exactly how
I would use my 5 to 9. The first step
is to sacrifice your comfort for six months to build

(00:49):
your future. Most people fail because they don't make the
sacrifices necessary to reach their goals. Because let's be real,
sacrifices are not sexy. It sounds sexy when someone's saying
sacrifice for your dreams. But when you actually have to
make sacrifices, it sucks because the sacrifices sound like not
spending time with people you love, not having the free
time that you want to have, doing things that are hard. Mentally.

(01:12):
Staying in the game can be so challenging. The way
that your life is today is built off of what
you want to do, and the results that you have
are directly tied to the way that you spend your time.
The only way to make sacrifices sexy is to tie
your sacrifices to who you want to be, where you
want to go, and what this future state of your

(01:32):
life actually looks like. I can't tell you how much
hate I get online from people saying, I don't know
what I'm talking about. I only have business acumen because
of the man I married. I'm just some blonde dumb
gold digger. Super cool. They could say that about me
ten years ago, and I might feel some sort of
way about that. I might feel a little bit down

(01:52):
about myself and then honestly think, why make sacrifices if
I'm not going to get the life that I want
to have? This is the worst way to think about
what you have to do in order to create the
life that you want. Do not fall into this trap,
because the coolest thing about making sacrifices is only you.
Get to know the sacrifices that you made. And the

(02:13):
bigger the sacrifices are, the better you are going to
feel about yourself when you get to where you're trying
to go because you know it wasn't luck. The worst
thing that can happen to somebody is they just get lucky.
They stumble into success. They fall into it. When you
actually take the time to say, I'm going to dedicate
myself from 5 to 9, from when I'm off work

(02:35):
until the time I go to bed, to becoming this
next version of myself. And as you do this for
six months and you make those sacrifices, no one can
take that away from you. No one can ever throw
stones at you, and you are going to be completely
unbothered by anything people say. Why? Because you know what?
It took this sacrificial phase in the process of you
becoming successful is the power. So lean into it and

(02:59):
in your brain, rewire it. Make it so that you
think sacrifices are sexy because the result at the end
is super sexy. But it's not sexy just to get
there because you happen to get lucky. No, you got
there because you made sacrifices and you can be proud
and stand tall next to those sacrifices. And this is
the intense balls to the wall phase. You got to
be real honest with your family, real honest with your

(03:20):
friends about how your time and commitments are going to
look over the next six months. It's going to be different.
That is okay if they don't support you. See you later. Bye.
They were never really your friends to begin with, but
when you let people know around you that you're going
into the sacrifice phase, you're removing the excuse that the
people in your life are going to be. The thing
that holds you back. Next is number two, which is
to really think about where you're spending your time. I'm

(03:44):
challenging you to map out every minute of your day
for the next six months. There's nothing more important than
mapping out your day, especially the time that you have
between 5:00 pm to 9:00 pm, which is the before
and after your current 9 to 5 job. Now, some
people think I don't have enough time to work on
my goals. That is a lot of freaking time. Now

(04:05):
I want to make something really clear here. I'm not
recommending that you build your next thing during your 9
to 5. You should not be building your next thing
during the time that you are currently in what you
are doing right now. If somebody is paying you a paycheck,
do not screw that person over. Do not start spending
the majority of your time creating this other thing. Why
you are always going to think and feel shitty about
the fact that somebody else is doing that to you,

(04:26):
especially if you're wanting to become a business owner. If
you become a business owner and you build that business
on the back of somebody else paying you and you
didn't do a good job with them, you are always
going to think that your team members are doing that
to you. They're going to be trust issues. Don't do it.
It is the wrong way to exit. You can work
full time, 9 to 5 for somebody else, earn a
paycheck for doing that work while still being able to

(04:48):
build the next thing that you want to go after
and you want to do. And you use the time
after work, not during work, after work, to go build
that thing. That is the right way to do that.
But the time that you have after work from 5:00
pm to 9:00 pm is a vital. It is important.
That is like the gold treasure time that you have,

(05:08):
and every single minute of that time should be planned out.
2 to 3 hours of your 5 to 9 every
single day should go towards study and application. These things
go together. You can't just study something for six months
and assume that you're gonna become great at it. I
one time took this approach. For years I studied public speaking,

(05:29):
and the study made me think that I was making
progress towards public speaking. Let me just tell you something.
You can read every freaking book, you can watch every
YouTube video, you can talk with other public speakers and
get their advice. But if you never actually publicly speak,
you are not going to get better at public speaking.
So the study has to come. Yes, you should learn
how to make a presentation in Canva. You should learn

(05:50):
the basics of storytelling, but as soon as you learn
that thing, you instantly move into application, study and application.
So knowing that you have a 5 to 9 chunk
on a Monday night, you would study Canva. You would
actually understand. How do I make things and put it
in the right order and make transitions so that it
makes the presentation interesting? Cool. Then for an hour that

(06:12):
night you're going to actually use Canva. You're not just
going to take this information. All this inflow without outflowing.
That is my rule. If you inflow you must also outflow.
You're getting information. You're receiving knowledge. Okay. Great. We're going
to apply that. That is how you make progress in
your 5 to 9 over the six months. Instead of

(06:32):
feeling like you're just making all of these sacrifices for
this long extended period of time without really seeing, am
I able to get a result in the field of
study that I am currently investing my time into? Now
I'm going to ask you to really look at where
do you currently spend your 5 to 9? If you
have a one hour commute to the office? First off,
maybe you should move closer to work because an hour

(06:54):
of your time is valuable. It is precious. It is
one of the most important things that you have. And
if you are spending that full hour driving where you
can't pay attention to really learning something new, you are
robbing yourself of valuable time. Now you can use that
time in order to learn something. Listen to podcasts, but
your full attention isn't there, and I would just strongly

(07:15):
recommend get as close as possible to the places that
you have to go every single day, because it's going
to give you more time back in order to do
things and create things that you might not right now
have time to do because you're stuck in a car driving. Now,
if you're unwilling to move closer to your work because
you want to make it easier for yourself to be
more successful and you are just committed to this one

(07:36):
hour commute, this actually means that you don't have a
5 to 9. It means you have a 6 to 9,
so you just shrink the total amount of time that
you have and you have one less hour. Now you
can still get a lot done from 6 to 9,
but you will have to be extra vigilant about where
that time is being spent, so you can make progress
towards getting to where you were trying to go. Now

(07:57):
that brings us to tip number three, which is that
errands are distraction. Have you ever wondered why rich people
don't go to the grocery store. It's because somebody else
can go to the grocery store for them. That is
the least valuable thing that they could spend their time doing.
It's not because they're so important or think so highly
of themselves. They value their time and they can't get

(08:19):
that time back. What I like to think about is
if I want to make $1 million, I want to
be $1 million earner. I can't also do things that
somebody who makes $50,000 a year does. Because if I'm
doing things that somebody who makes $50,000 a year does,
I can't then make $1 million a year. I can't
be both people. It's confusing. I'm gonna be strategic. I'm

(08:42):
gonna sell. I'm gonna learn all these valuable skills while
also spending my time doing something that has no value.
So think about your groceries. You can have your groceries
delivered to you. Think about a workout. You can actually
work out at home. You don't have to drive somewhere
to work out. You can shrink and use effectively the
time that you once wasted by outsourcing and optimizing where

(09:05):
you spend your time. The mindset shift is what I
really want to hammer into you. Because if you do
not value your time, you're going to add things that
just waste your time and wonder why you're not making progress.
One of my hacks to get my time back very
early on in my career was having all of my
food in frozen containers that I would put in the

(09:27):
freezer at my office so I could microwave it for
2.5 minutes and be able to eat it while I
took more meetings. Now, some people aren't willing to do this.
They're like, oh, I need time. I need to decompress.
I have to check in with things. What the frick
do you have to check in on? If you're trying
to change your life, you need to spend more time
that you don't have right now doing productive things. Something

(09:47):
that's productive would be eating as fast as possible so
that you're able to actually talk to people, move an
initiative forward, learn something new. So I don't add time
to me having a meal. I try to eat as
efficiently as possible. Now. Today I am no longer eating
Lean Cuisines for lunch. However, I don't hate on Lean Cuisines.
I think Lean Cuisines are fantastic and if that's what
you need to do in order to get your time back,

(10:09):
eat the Lean Cuisine. It takes three minutes in the freezer.
It takes three minutes in the microwave for you to
efficiently get food so you can get back to work.
But this idea of lunch breaks or spending a lot
of time eating breakfast or going out to dinner with
people just sucks time away from you. So what I'd
recommend you do is take an audit of your 5

(10:30):
to 9 for the last two weeks. Where do you
invest that time today and how do you batch those tasks?
So you do them all at once and make it
as efficient as possible. And for the ones that you
can't batch, how do you outsource them so that somebody
else can get that task done so that it frees
up your time and ability to make more progress? Next

(10:51):
up is step number four, which is you have to
earn your fun. There's no dinner with friends until you
hit your goals. Use the things that you want to
do as something that is a treat and a reward
for doing the things that you have to do. Nothing
feels better than getting a treat from hard work. A
reward for your sacrifices. When I'm in a period of sacrifice,

(11:14):
it's frustrating. As much as I try to sell myself
on sacrifices, sexiness is awesome. It feels shitty. It feels
crappy while it's happening. So I create these little treats
for myself to look forward to along the way. When
I first started working out, my treat was buying one
new article of clothing for every month that I was
consistent with my workouts, so I would look forward all

(11:36):
month to being able to pop into Lululemon and to
get a new top, or to get a new pair
of shorts, and it would feel so good spending that
45 minutes going around the store, because I knew that
I was making progress towards something that I wanted to
make progress in deeply, and it made me feel so
good to go around the store and to pick out
something as a reward for the sacrifices that I made. Similarly,

(11:58):
I remember during Covid it was such a crunch time
in my business, but every week that I actually executed
on the commitments that I made to myself with the
meetings and the training I did and the bedtime that
I had, I would reward myself with an hour long
trip to target, and I would walk around every single
aisle of target, and it made me feel so good

(12:19):
about myself and the weeks when I slacked off, which
was only one I didn't let myself go to target.
And during that four months of being heads down, so
locked in, spending morning till night working and creating value
inside our business, I was able to create these little
tiny moments throughout that allowed me to feel some sort
of a reward. It wasn't just four months of hard,

(12:42):
it was four months of hard with little tiny moments
of things that I could look forward to that helped
keep me in the game. One of my favorite quotes
is pay the price today so you can pay any
price tomorrow. Pay the price today. What are you willing
to sacrifice and give up on today in order for
you to get to where you're trying to go so

(13:02):
you can do whatever you want in the future? That
brings us to the last step, number five, which is
all about learning and practicing how to learn faster than 99%
of people. One of the fastest ways to learn something new.
Instead of going to college and paying some institution tens
of thousands of dollars, use ChatGPT to put together a

(13:23):
curriculum that is actually going to get you a tangible skill.
ChatGPT can be a wonderful tool to get you to
actually learn and then do, but it's only wonderful if
you prompt it to do that. So as you're having
it build you a six month curriculum to become a
master at sales, or to become a master in editing

(13:43):
videos or creating viral social content, tell it that yes,
you want the data and the information in the most
up to date places where you can go to become
an expert, but then have it give you quizzes and
practicals so you can demonstrate that you actually know how
to do that data. I give it all sorts of
additional requirements, such as how much time I actually have

(14:04):
to dedicate to this, and the exact types of quiz
questions that it should give me. Are they easy quiz questions?
Are they advanced quiz questions? Do I want it to
trip me up? I want ChatGPT to get me a
final result, which is my ability to do something that
right now I can't do. So the more I'm able
to structure a prompt to help it build me a

(14:24):
curriculum that over time I am working through, the more
effective it's going to be at actually getting me the
education that I need. And when you get the education
that you need and the implementation that can change your life,
everything changes. It is wild how fast you can start
to pick up new subjects, new topics, things that honestly,
you might have felt dumb about before. All because you

(14:48):
were able to get somebody to actually understand what you
do and don't know and fill that gap in the information.
Now it's going to provide this list. You have to
make the time, which is your 5 to 9. You
can't just tell ChatGPT you create me a six month
curriculum of me studying two hours a day and have
it give you that information without you taking the action.
But we live in a day and age where there's

(15:08):
no reason for you not to get the data that
you need in order to change your life. You have
the data, but now you need to use the time
that you have to actually learn and then implement it.
You can't just read and study. The way you become
confident is by creating competence, and you get competence through implementation.
If you're serious about changing your life, then the next

(15:29):
step is to build the right systems and habits to
make success inevitable.

S1 (15:34):
If you enjoyed this podcast, you are going to definitely
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sounds like. How do you fit business and all the
other things in your life so that you are up

(15:55):
to speed on fashion, beauty, wellness, all things that really matter.
If you want to subscribe and get this special gift
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