You Are a Badass

I picked up You Are a Badass when I was stuck on money and work stories. It came out in 2013 from Running Press, 272 pages tied to ISBN 9780762447695. Jen Sincero went from broke freelance writer living in a garage to successful coach and author. She writes like a funny friend who swears, tells on herself, and gives homework. If you hate woo, parts will annoy. If you like straight talk with exercises, it helps.

This is not research heavy. It is stories plus tools. Twenty seven short chapters in five parts. How you got this way. Money. Manifesting. Doing. Each ends with a takeaway and an action. Read with a notebook or it slides off.

How you got this way

Sincero starts with the subconscious. She says we run on old tapes from parents, school, church. Money is bad. Rich people are jerks. You are not smart enough. She tells her own tapes. Raised in a house where success meant selling out. Majored in things that paid little. Lived on credit. Told herself artists starve nobly while resenting friends who paid rent easily.

Her turn came when she spent money she did not have on a coach. She borrowed, paid, panicked, then did the work. Coaching asked her to say what she wanted plainly. She wanted money without shame. She wanted work she liked. Saying it aloud felt greedy at first. Then it felt honest. She started raising rates, finishing projects, asking for referrals. Income grew slowly, then fast.

The exercises here are simple. Write beliefs about money you heard as a kid. Mine were artists starve, rich people are rude, wanting more is selfish. Write whose voice each is in. Mine were dad at dinner, a teacher who praised sacrifice, a church line about camels and needles. Write a new belief to replace. Mine became money lets me help and rest. Meditate for five minutes with breath counts. Forgive someone, including yourself, with a letter you do not send. I wrote to a client who ghosted on an invoice, then to myself for waiting six months to follow up. Both letters went in trash. The charge around invoicing dropped the next week. Sincero does them herself on page, showing crossed out lines and doubts. That modeling helps skeptics. She is not a guru on a hill. She is a writer in leggings doing morning pages.

I liked the humor inside self help. She calls her ego Big Snooze. She describes affirmations in the mirror feeling stupid until her dog stopped leaving the room. She admits she manifested a parking spot and missed rent the same week. Jokes keep the work from feeling precious. You can laugh and still do the list.

What may annoy is language about the universe. Source energy. Vibrations. Frequency. If those words make you close books, skim to actions. The actions stand without belief. Write goals. Track money. Call one scary person daily. Those work whether you call it energy or attention. Sincero says as much. Pretend the universe is a catalogue if you must. Order clearly.

Money

The money section is the core. Sincero says she hated rich people until she met generous ones. She says she feared charging because she feared rejection. She raised prices in steps. First free work for portfolio, then low, then market, then premium. Each raise lost some clients and gained better ones. She shows numbers without bragging exact millions on every page. Enough to trust. From garage to house. From debt to savings.

Key ideas are practical. Decide how much you want to earn and write it on paper where you see it. Calculate what you need to charge per client or hour with taxes and slow months included. Save a little even when broke to prove safety to yourself, even five dollars moved to a separate account. Stop saying I cannot afford and ask how can I afford without shame. Tithe time or money to break scarcity, an hour volunteering or a small donation. None of this is new. Dave Ramsey says save. Seth Godin says ship. Sincero packages with stories that make you act the same day. I wrote my number on a sticky note and put it on a monitor. Seeing it during calls changed what I asked for within a week.

One story stuck. She wanted to go to a mastermind that cost thousands she did not have. She put it on a card, went, felt sick, took notes, implemented one idea about packages instead of hours, and made the fee back in a month. She does not say debt is good. She says investment with a plan beats waiting for confidence. Readers in debt should read carefully here. Risk helped her. Risk can harm. Take the planning part seriously. Do not take the card part as permission.

Another useful bit is about boundaries with clients and time. She fired a client who paid late and insulted her assistant on calls. She lost rent money that month and gained sleep without dread Sundays. Next month two better clients came from referral by the assistant she protected. Scarcity says keep bad pay and endure. Worth says release and fill with better fit. Easy to write. Hard to do when rent looms. She gives scripts for the talk. I need payment by Friday to continue work. My rate for this scope is X starting next month. Say it once on a call, then quiet on email. Do not over explain. That scripting helped me more than vibrations talk. I used her lines to end a draining project and freed ten hours a month.

The chapter on jealousy reframes well for creative workers. When you envy someone success, ask what specifically stings. Their schedule with free Fridays. Their clients who pay on time. Their ease on stage with jokes. Then copy the skill, not the life. She envied a coach speaking fees until she learned the coach practiced talks daily in a car with a timer. Practice, not luck or looks. That turn from envy to study is worth the book for freelancers who scroll and spiral. I made a list of three envies and the skill under each. One became a course I took. Two became habits I dropped as not mine.

Manifesting and doing

Manifesting chapters ask you to get clear, believe, and act. Sincero visualizes with detail. Not just money, but what it buys. Pay mom bills. Fix teeth. Travel without checking balance every hour. She writes a future scene in present tense and reads it daily. She also warns that vision without work is fantasy. Meditate, then email. Affirm, then call. The order matters.

Doubt gets a whole chapter. She calls fear normal. Do it scared. Start before ready. She started coaching before certification felt solid. She wrote the book before she felt author enough. She sent pitches with typos and followed up anyway. Perfectionism, she says, is fear in a fancy coat. I underlined that. My drafts improved when I sent rough work to trusted readers instead of polishing alone for months.

The doing section is best for procrastinators. Make a list of three money making actions daily and do them before email. No zero days. Batch admin on Fridays. Turn off phone for ninety minutes with a timer on the desk. Ask for the sale directly with a clear price and date. Follow up twice, three days then seven days later. Most freelancers fail on follow up, not talent. Sincero gives exact follow up lines. Checking in. Still need help with X. I have Tuesday or Thursday. Copy, paste, send. I used that template for a week and booked two calls I would have lost to vague maybe later. Simple and effective. She also suggests tracking asks in a sheet, name, date, result, to see that no rarely means never, usually means not yet.

She also covers failure with unusual honesty for the genre. Launches flop. Talks bomb in half empty rooms. A program she loved sold two seats after weeks of posts. She cried in a closet, asked buyers and non buyers why not with a short survey, rewrote the promise smaller, relaunched at lower price with clearer outcome, sold out a beta. Shame wants hiding and quitting. Data wants questions and edits. Ask, adjust, try again within weeks, not months. That loop, more than any mantra about vibration, built her business from garage to stage. Readers who want overnight will be disappointed by the work described. Readers who want a loop they can run will use it Monday. I applied it to a stalled offer, surveyed ten people, changed one line, and booked calls.

Health gets a short chapter often skipped by readers chasing money, but it matters. Sleep seven hours. Move daily even briefly. Drink water before sugar. Sincero admits she wrote tired and sick in the garage years, catching colds monthly, until she scheduled walks between calls. No preaching about perfect routines. Just noticing that badass energy needs a body that is not running on fumes. A ten minute walk before sales calls changed her voice from thin to steady. She tracked sleep and income for a month and saw calls go better after rest. Small, true, doable without a gym. Take the walk version that fits your streets and shoes.

What worked and what grated

What worked was tone and tools. Short chapters you can read between jobs. Actions at each end you can do in ten minutes. Write the belief. Call the person. Move the money. Humor that never mocks readers. Sincero insults herself first. She tells of crying in a car after raising rates, sitting in a parking lot with the engine off because gas cost, then getting a yes the next call from a client who said your confidence sold me. That normalizes fear without glorifying hustle. You can be scared and paid. I kept a list of her end actions on a card. Meditate. Write. Call. Ask. Move. Checking boxes beat reading more books about confidence.

Stories carry abstract points into memory. A garage with a mattress on the floor and a space heater. A coach bill that felt like a cliff edge. A first 10k month spent partly on dentist work delayed for years. Those images stick better than principles about vibration. When I raised my own rates after reading, I heard her voice saying charge for value delivered, not hours suffered. It helped me quote a project fee instead of an hourly wage. The client said yes faster than to low hourly bids. Value language respects both sides. Hours language invites haggling.

What grated was repetition. How many times can the universe be a catalogue. After the tenth metaphor, I skimmed openings. The book could lose thirty pages of cheerleading without losing tools. True believers will not mind. Skeptics will sigh. Both can still use the checklists if they skip pep.

I also wanted more on privilege. Sincero mentions starting broke and white? She nods to advantages briefly but moves fast. Readers with debt, kids, illness, or unsafe jobs face higher stakes for risk. A chapter on low risk versions, tiny raises, free actions, community help, would balance the invest big stories. As is, the advice skews to those who can borrow or hustle extra hours. Take what fits. Leave card debt as a lesson, not a plan.

Still, for motivation with actions, it delivers. I finished with a raised rate, a follow up list, and a cleaner desk. Small wins count. If you do the homework, you will move. If you only read, you will laugh and stay.

Content notes. Strong language throughout with f bombs. Talk of debt and scarcity stress. Brief mention of therapy and forgiveness letters. No diet or medical claims beyond general wellness. Business risk stories that should be read critically, not as financial advice. No explicit sex. A kiss and a date mentioned in passing.