“I get two big things done a day before I look at anything else, and that adds up to five or 10 big things a week, which is more than I've managed teams as large as 50 people doing 10 big things a week is more than most people do in a month. And that to me is like the true secret.” - Amanda Goetz
Joe Casabona: That's Amanda Getz. And she just shared the secret that transformed her from a burned-out Corporate Executive juggling three young children to a million-dollar solopreneur who actually has time for school pickup.
Amanda's a two-time founder, four-time CMO, and the creator of the weekly newsletter, Life's a Game. Her debut book, Toxic Grit, comes out this October, and she's built a thriving community to help people develop what she calls portfolio careers.
But here's what really caught my attention. Amanda has cracked the code on something that most of us struggle with daily. How do you get meaningful work done when you're constantly being pulled between business and the demands of family life?
Her answer isn't about working harder or finding more hours in the day. It's about systems so simple that they actually work. We talk about a bunch of things from her Two Do Method. That's Two Do Method to how she uses AI to manage social media without losing her authentic voice and so much more. We also obviously talk about being a parent. If you've ever felt like you're spinning your wheels trying to do everything and get nowhere, this conversation is going to give you some serious clarity.
If you're overwhelmed by a chaotic business that's stealing time from your family, Streamlined Solopreneurs for you. Hey, everybody. My name's Joe Casabona, and I've been there. And on this show, I will show you how to turn chaos into clarity so you can stop checking your email at the playground.
All right, I am here with Amanda Goetz, who writes the weekly newsletter Life's a Game, has a book coming out called Toxic Grit. Amanda, how are you?
Amanda Goetz: I'm good. I'm in New York right now. Things are good and I can't complain.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. Well, you know, longtime listeners will know that I identify strongly with New York. I always say I live in Philly, but I'm from New York. Very important to me.
Amanda Goetz: I say I'm raising my kids in Miami, but like, New York City is my home because I was here for 12 years. So that speaks to me.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. Awesome. So then I do have to ask, are you a baseball fan? Because I'm a huge baseball fan.
Amanda Goetz: So I grew up in Illinois. And my dad is die hard cubby. So that was my like childhood, and I was born in the 80s. Cubs and Bulls and Bears, like that's just my trifecta.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the Cubs are good this year. Pete Crowe, Armstrong and Boyd, I think. Right. Really both, really good. So very nice. Very nice. Love it.
Okay, let's dive into this. So I really like to focus on like kind of the workflows and running the business. Something that people have been asking me is like, what really successful solopreneurs do I know? Do you consider yourself a solopreneur? I know you have team members, but I don't know if that's like…
Amanda Goetz: I really don't. I have one EA that I hired through Athena, so she's in the Philippines, and it's cool because she works the same hours as me, but that was really the first and only hire I made. And then yeah, it's all just me.
And when I think about the word solopreneur, it's like there are lots of people that call themselves solopreneurs and have massive teams. So it's a tricky thing. Are you a content creator? Are you a solopreneur?
So the term that I started to use was that I'm just, I'm developing a portfolio career. And what that means is, and the way I categorize it is I'm monetizing multiple income streams. I still consult, like I still take on fractional CMO work as a marketer. So the five Cs of a portfolio career in my mind are consulting. Do you still like go and work for clients or whatever content? Do you make money from the content you create? And in my case, I do. I have a newsletter. I consider book to be under content. Speaking engagements under content. The third C is courses. Do you create a course and then sell it? That's like a very typical kind of like digital creator income stream. Then there's community. Do you build a community and monetize that? And then the last one's coaching, whether that's one one-on-one coaching or group coaching.
And over the past two years since I left kind of my traditional life of like a 9 to 5, I view it like that. But I think the thing that people get caught up on when they think solopreneur is they forget that like consulting can be a big part of that. And for me, when I'm playing with like the levers of courses or community and content, consulting's been actually kind of my table stakes of like paying the bills while I build these other things. And it also keeps me a practitioner. Like, as I'm still a CMO and going in and helping companies launch or build or grow, I feel like I learned so much more about what it takes to be a good marketer these days.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, I think that's really important, right? I mean, like, there's like the old adage that those who can't do teach, right? That's like, I don't know if you've heard that.
Amanda Goetz: I don't want to be in that adage. Like, I want to be like, oh, she's still doing and she's teaching.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, like, I think that that, like, authenticity and credibility is so important these days. Was it you who said if someone's teaching a tactic, then it's what worked a year ago or something like that?
Amanda Goetz: By the time you're teaching things, it's a hindsight bias. You don't have the macro factors. It's not ever apples to apples. That's why, like I always say, founders going on and sharing their kind of founder journey and how they sold and exited a business. It's like, yeah, they can talk about how smart they were in their marketing strategy or whatever, but they're not talking about the economic climate and the timing for that industry.
So there's a lot at play there. But, yeah, I think marketing now more than ever is shifting so fast. I talk, I recently was talking to a dean of a college and they were like, it's so hard to build curriculum every year that's, like, consistent because everything changes every single year. Obviously there's still the foundation, but how do you keep marketers marketable in the field right now? So, yeah.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I mean, like at the college level, things move. You know, I used to teach Computer Science at the University of Scranton, and, like, I taught, like, newer stuff and, like, all of the older teachers were like, oh, this class is on autopilot. Right? And I'm like, no, like, things are changing so fast. This is the course I put the most effort in because it's like such a base-level thing. And, like, if I was still teaching it today, like, I'd definitely be talking about, like, generative AI. Like, there's no way around it. So.
Amanda Goetz: Exactly.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Super interesting. Okay, cool. So I want to get into, like, some of the tools and workflows that, like, keep your business afloat but also help you be a present parent. I think that's a really important aspect of it for the show. So what is one tool you couldn't run your business without?.
Amanda Goetz: One tool I couldn't run my business without is probably... So, you're going to hear a very common theme here. My systems are so simple because I found in my 20-year career, if I try to overcomplicate something, I don't adopt it, and thus it doesn't work.
So, tools that I can't live without.
First of all, is like my to-do list. I talk about this a decent amount. But what my to-do list is, at the end of every day, I take a post-it note and I write down two things from a parking lot of tasks that I've thought of or idea, and I take two of them and I write it on a post-it note, and yes, a pos- it note. Like we're talking paper here in the world of AI. Like I'm gonna sound like archaic here, but hear me out.
Then I shut everything down in my computer except for the things that are applicable to the two things I wrote on the post-it note. So I shut off my email, I turn off Slack, and let's say that one of the things is to write a newsletter. So then I have just the newsletter template in front of me, so that when I sit down, I know exactly what I'm working on.
And studies have shown that the more that you have in front of you, even if you're trying not to focus on it, like say you have email on another tab and you're not looking at it, our brain is still subconsciously trying to process and think about all the things that might be happening in there. So, this to-do list has become a tool and a system for me that I get two big things done a day before I look at anything else. And that adds up to five or 10 big things a week, which is more than I've managed teams as large as 50 people.
Doing 10 big things a week is more than most people do in a month. And that to me is like the true secret. If everybody like turned off the podcast now, it's like that is really the thing that has helped me in my entire career. Even when I was working at a big organization, it's like I would get in before I got sucked into emails and Slack and everybody's pick your brain meetings and whatnot. I would have a deck done. I would have thought out a new plan or strategy, or I would have like come up with a new content arc or whatever. So that is like the tool we can get into, like actual software tools too. But like that's the tool that I use all the time.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, I love that. I think that's really important. No knock on analog tools here, because you could see the whiteboard right behind me here.
Amanda Goetz: Oh, that's like my dream.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. That's where I write the things I have to do. Because if I ever start wandering, I just look at my whiteboard and I'm like, yes, this is, that's what I need to focus on. And, like, coming from the developer world, like, we love our monitors. I am down to just one monitor plus my prompter. But, like, that's a teleprompter. So, like, really important because I'm very distractible. I think a lot of us are probably. But having that focus is so smar, and I love that. It's for those who may have not. I'll link to Amanda's LinkedIn post where she talks about this. But it's to two do list, right?
Amanda Goetz: Yeah. Two. Like the number two. Yeah, exactly.
Joe Casabona: Yes. Awesome. Okay, so, like, the next question I have here is, if you could only keep three apps on your phone for business, what would they be? This might be a slight setup, but, like, just generally, what apps do you like that you need on your phone?
Amanda Goetz: The apps that I frequently like look, I'm a content creator, so I am constantly on social media. Like, not constantly. I have blocks of time for social media, but I have social media on my phone. But I would say Notes and Otter, I use Otter AI to voice memo when I'm out for walks. There's a lot of tools out there that can do this, but I have it set up so that if I am thinking through something or I am wanting to tell my EA something, I will record it when I'm out on a walk. And then I can easily send that to her, and she can then transcribe it or pull the transcription and add It's like, oh, I gotta add this to this and change this email or respond to this person. She's got it all.
I don't use Notion on my phone. That's a desktop thing. I try to keep as much work stuff off my phone as possible because as a parent, it can be such a slippery slope. I'm very big on compartmentalization in my life in general. That is what my entire book is about. It's about creating the space for you to fully focus on the thing in front of you, stop it when it's time to stop, and then move to the next thing and give a hundred percent.
So I will say, like, I have all the normal ones, like email Et cetera. But I really try to view this and as, like, not something I use for work.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, I agree with you 100%. Like, I remember I have no social media apps on my phone anymore because I just remember, like, one day it was... My wife's a nurse, so she was at where it was a Saturday, she was at work, and my kids were doing something, and I just, like, peeked in on LinkedIn of all places. Like, it wasn't even, like, one of the more, you know…
Amanda Goetz: juicy.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, right. Yeah. Like, you know, the ones that are actually, like, trying to, like, spark conflict. And I just, like, read something that annoyed me and, like, that annoyance, like, yeah, like, jumped out of the phone and into me, and I took it out on my kids, and I'm like, this is not the kind of dad I want to be.
And so, like, got rid of all social media apps. I have the brick. Have you seen this?
Amanda Goetz: I am… Do you like it?
Joe Casabona: I do. I think it's great. I'd love to hear your opinion about it, though.
Amanda Goetz: I want to try it. I've talked about this so much in therapy and work like, especially when you're gearing up towards a big goal. Like my book launch, it's like, okay, if somebody big, like, posts about my book, like, I want to be able to, like, say thank you. And, like, you feel like you're missing something if you're not checking it. But the reality is those two traps that we fall into, the significance trap and the urgency trap. It's actually not that urgent. Like, I can go and grab my phone at some point. I have a lot of blocks on my phone. Like, social media ones that are not tools for my business are now limited to, like, 20 minutes a day. Like, I'm not allowed to just scroll TikTok till the end of time. I'm gonna look into the block, I think, for next year after my book tour and just, like, really start to separate.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, I think it's. You know, I've used apps like Screen Time Plus, but, like, the problem with any of those is, like, you can bypass it. You can bypass it, whereas the brick, you can't. Like, so if I scan the brick and leave the house, unless I want to use one of my five, like, emergency unbrick, I don't know if it's like, five forever or, like, five a month. And I don't want to blow one just to figure it out. So, like, so it's like, once I do that, I'm done. Right. And so, like, I even brought it with us when we went to Disney World and I like bricked my phone Before we went to the parks.
Our family was like one of the only families that was like barely on. Like, my kids weren't on screens at all. But like my wife and I, only when we had to coordinate. So, like, it really helps with my impulse control because now since I don't have social media apps, my impulse when I pick up my phone is like, check my email, which is also not my favorite thing. But I can't delete my email app because it's like two-factor authentication or whatever.
Amanda Goetz: Right, right.
Joe Casabona: It's very hard to. Yeah.
Amanda Goetz: Like, when you're a solopreneur a lot, like your sales, your marketing, your ops, your finance, there's a dose of reality and realism that comes with it. Like, I would love to be able to never look at social media. But I've created the systems that I need to have in place.
So, for example, I batch-create my LinkedIn content. Okay. So I do two-week sprints. So that's done. I have a formula system. It's done. I put it all in Taplio, it's all queued up, and I don't have to do it.
Then I have my assistant there when it goes live to respond to all the comments and do the proactive because that's during my morning time, where I need to be writing and creating.
In the second, I open social media in the morning, something happens to my brain where I can't have original thoughts anymore. Now I'm just consuming everyone else's thoughts. And when you are a creative, like, I have to come up with plans for businesses, but also like, I write content, I write books. And so much of what's out there feels just like different flavors of, you know, what else is out there. And so I'm like, I need to guard that original time.
And then I have right now a social media team helping me with my book launch so that I don't have to go to Instagram, because Instagram is a slippery slope, because that's where all my friends are and all that. And I needed to be able to say, like, social media is a tool for my business.
Just like anything, I have systems for all things that I'm working on. So social media has to be a systemized approach.. And all of my friends now know, like, don't DM me. I'm not going to see it right away. And they'll text me.
Joe Casabona: This is really great. I think this is like. So I'm gonna kind of jump ahead in our document here because I think like the systems deep dive is important. I'm like an automation tech nerd guy. Yeah. But like you mentioned, your VA manages your social media, and your VA is in the Philippines. So, like this has been like a mental block for me. Like my VA also in the Philippines, she does a lot of stuff for me. Like I keep telling, like I keep giving her raises just to be like don't leave me or my business will crumble. I haven't been able to let go of commenting or managing on social media. How were you able to let go of that or like build that trust with your VA?
Amanda Goetz: So I've written over a hundred newsletters, I've obviously written a hundred thousand-word book. I trained a GPT for this reason. She has a whole system where she will literally, I have a list of 10 people she has to comment on every single day, and she will take their post, put it into the Amanda GPT, and it will spit out the comments. And some people may say like you're removing the social from social media. But I'm focused on the real-life interactions. Like anybody who is like, hey, would love to connect with you. Like okay, great, now I can free up more time to have meaningful conversations. But in the beginning what I will say is I have built up a community so that I can do that, and I've built up enough content so that my voice is very distinct and trainable.
When I was just starting out, I don't think you can net new go onto social media and try to use AI to grow. Because the way that I've grown, whether it was on Twitter to over a hundred thousand followers or even now on LinkedIn, it's the offline connections. Right. I remember like early days when I first started tweeting, that was when like, like Sahil Bloom was just starting out, and Greg Eisenberg was just kind of starting out and Matt Kobach and a couple of other guys that like I just became friends with because of the platform. And then we started just growing together. And that piece, like if you think that you can start a social media channel and set it and forget it, you're never going to grow. Because it is first and foremost a community of people, and you have to understand the community and know who's there and who you want to connect with.
So I just don't want anybody to hear my system and be like, great, I'm gonna steal that. It's like I put in five years of showing up everyday real real-time interactions so that I can get to this point. And I think that this is the graduation step of the scale that is important. But you do things that don't scale in the beginning because you need to figure it out.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, like, I'll say I learned in the pre-show, in the pre-record that we're almost exactly the same age because I'm also going to be 40 this year. And so we learned math the same way. I'm confident in saying that.
Amanda Goetz: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: It's like how they taught us the long way to do something before teaching us the shortcut. Right. Because if they just taught us, if we just learned the shortcut, we wouldn't understand the actual math problem. Right. You have to do social media or whatever the long way before you build the shortcut.
Amanda Goetz: 100%. It's like anything. Look at the study that came out of MIT where the college students that were using ChatGPT to write their papers they had three cohorts. The first cohort used ChatGPT to write the whole paper. The second cohort was able to use Google and then write their paper. And the third cohort had to like, net new only books, like write the paper. After that, they asked the three cohorts to kind of like explain what was in the paper. And the first two group, like, literally was diminishing because if they use ChatGPT, they don't recall any of the information.
So why do we write papers? Why do we read books? It's so that we can ingest the information, create empathy, nuance, and context for the things that are happening. You read a book so that you can understand and be in someone's shoes who went through something on the other side of the world that you'd never have a conversation about. You read that book so that you can internalize that information and formulate like a new informed opinion about things. We are trying to shortcut nuance, context, and humanity. And that's why, as a writer, I won't let ChatGPT touch any of my original writing. Doesn't touch my newsletter. It doesn't touch my LinkedIn posts. It doesn't touch, obviously, a book, because publishers have tools for that. They won't let you.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Amanda Goetz: But it's so important, and I think we're missing that in this over-optimization and over-systemization of our lives.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, I think that this is first of all, really refreshing to hear because I hear all, well, I just set up like a shortcut thing. I use Whisper memos for my voice memos, and I set one up that's like, can I reasonably dictate an article? Right. If I'm like, and about. And so I have a very clear prompt that's like, don't change, don't add. Just basically, like, proofread what I've said.
Amanda Goetz: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: I'm, like, trying it on for size to see if I like it, but there's, like, there really is nothing to me, like, sitting in front of, like, a blank cursor or, like, a loose outline and saying, like, okay, I'm going to actually, like, like, pen these words. Right. Like, I think that's super important.
Amanda Goetz: Yeah, I do, too. I think if you want to actually know something, teach it, write about it, and, like, force yourself to understand the information. But if you're constantly just using ChatGPT like these college students do, it's like they're going to. What is the point? We're missing the point.
Joe Casabona: Like, how are you going to differentiate yourself? It's like, how my oldest is 8, and she will ask me for help, and I'll be like, did you try to do it yourself first? And she's like, no. And I'm like, do it. And then she does it, and she's like, oh, wow. And I'm like, yeah, do things yourself. I will help you if you need help. I will teach you if you need to be taught. But, like, you need to try.
Amanda Goetz: Okay, so we're the same age. Do you remember the, like, I don't know if it was PBS, but it was like, the rainbow. It's like, the more you know.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, the more you know. Yeah, yeah.
Amanda Goetz: Right. So that's what doing is actually about. Right? Like, so that you can gain knowledge. And I think we're right now in this, like, the more you do phase of hustle culture, it's like, churn out as many articles as possible, as many posts as possible. And, like, it's so sloppy. It's so gross. Like, I know we're still, like, in this kind of iceberg of being able to identify ChatGPT. Like, I believe you and I, who spend a lot more time with ChatGPT than maybe middle America or people, like, who aren't fully adopting AI. Like, we're still in the early adopter slope, but over time, people are going to be able to see what's written by chat. You can tell. You can see the rhythm. You can see how it's written.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, it's more than just, like, the EM Dash. Right. Like, I was using the EM Dash in 2018 or whatever. So, like, It's. But it's very like, you're right. There's like a fake, like, poetry to how ChatGPT will write something. And yeah, you're right. Like, it is obvious, and I want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I've been pretty right every time I thought that it was an AI computer.
Amanda Goetz: And here's where we're going. Like, whether or not it's AI writing the post, commenting, at the end of the day, what's actually happening, it's a lack of trust. Right. Because there's not real humans having a conversation. So I'm really bullish right now on, like, what are the mediums that are showing real humans? communities? Podcasts. Like, where do you need to be? video content? It's like Twitter and LinkedIn are going to need to continue to push into video so that they can battle the misinformation. And obviously, with generative AI and like, the ability to make videos based on your avatar, like, I get that, but still, like, how do we continue to show the realness behind the content?
Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a perfect segue into the next kind of thing I wanted to talk about with you, which is you have these really good frameworks for social media. Right? Like, I mean, you've talked about time boxing, so you have like, no, Social Media Mondays is. I don't know if that's still a thing that came up in my research. Right. So, like, there's that, and then you have the 4e framework. And I know at Craft and Commerce, you talked about. The Lighthouse is the one I remember the most. But, like, the type of light, like, I forget the exact way you worded it.
Amanda Goetz: Yeah, Well, I just say that there's three types of content creators out there. The first is the Lighthouse. This is the person that feels miles away doing something that you're like, it's that's out of reach, but it's still inspiring me to head in that direction. Those are the people for me, like, that are getting up at 4:30 am or 5am taking ice baths. It's like, that's okay, cool. Like, I may think of them when my alarm goes off at 5 and I'm like, okay, I'm not going to an ice bath, but I will get myself to coffee. Like, I can do that. So there's the lighthouse.
The second one is the flashlight. The person who is constantly shining a light on where you should look and how you should think. And these are the people who, like, I think I put about Like, James Clear. Like, it's hard to find a lot of pictures of James Clear. He's just showing ideas and where in frameworks and where to look. So he's a flashlight. It's not just about him. Follow me. It's like, look at all this stuff.
And the third one is a porch light. Porch lights are the people who are like, hey, we're in this together. Come on in. I don't have all the answers, but I'm gonna hear what's working for you. You're gonna hear what's working for me. I'm gonna share what I'm struggling with.
And it feels like you're inviting somebody in. And I like to say that, like, when I think about content creation, the people who are going to really continue to succeed and grow are the porch lights. The people who feel like you're just sitting next to them and you're a part of this with them.
Joe Casabona: I love that. That really resonated with me when you talked about it. I think it's true. Cause, like, I don't want to talk badly about anybody. At least I'm from New York, so I do that a lot anyway.
Amanda Goetz: But, like, I'm from the Midwest, so we don't do that at all.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. But like, like, you know the four-hour workweek with Tim Ferriss, like, as soon as I read that book, and I'm like, this is not real. Like, I don't believe that this is true. And then, you know, you see, like, really big influencers now saying, like, skip recitals and miss friends' weddings. And I'm just like, why are you telling people to do that? Like, nobody wants their gravestone to say, died sad and alone, but had a lot of money.
One of the only pictures I took from Craft and Commerce was your Build a Porch Slide. Because that, like, really resonated. I think you see it now, probably.
Amanda Goetz: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: Because that, like, really resonated with me because it feels like I don't have, like, an online Persona. Like, I am me. Right. And like, whatever, like, you get. You get what you get. Right? And this, like, really showed me that I, like, I don't have to, like, bow down to some algorithm to show up authentically online or whatever.
Amanda Goetz: No. And if you play to the algorithm, that is a losing game. The more and more you just learn to storytell and talk about, like, pretend that you're just talking to people. That's like, that's the best way to do it.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah. So I appreciate, like, that your talk really, like, helps Solidify. Because, like I'll tell you before this, I attended Jay Clouse's like LAB IRL event, and it was great. And like anybody who is there, will be like the two things I remember about Joe is he is a New York Italian and he hates social media viscerally, and so I'm like I'm just not going to do it. But like through the cajoling of several people, and then like your talk showed me, all right, maybe I should like show up the way that works best for me.
Amanda Goetz: 100% and look where we are in the world in general is that personal brand has gotten such this like weighted definition to it, and really like what does it actually mean? It means increased serendipity. Because people need to know you exist and all that you do and you stand for so that they can put you in front of more people to further your mission. And so for me, when I get the ick about mysel,f because that happens quite ofte,n where I'm like this just ugh, cringe ick like we all have it. I remember that social media is a tool to help me further my mission of empowering women to create more space and take up more space, and to help working parents figure out this like fine line of wanting more and enjoying what you have.
When I think about my mission and it always comes back to your mission and who you're helping. Social media is a tool to increase the likelihood that you can actually achieve that mission.
Joe Casabona: I love that. I think that's a really nice bow to put on social media. I don't think there's anything more I can add to that. So I love that.
I do want to move into the parent stuff, though. I do want to ask because like I feel like I'm like teetering on asking questions about things that you have not told me but like you've posted on social media, and go for it has me thinking about like the parasocial relationship, right? Like you're a single mom, you have kids, you have a partner who I think you're maybe marrying, If I saw a post,
Amanda Goetz: Yeah. Getting married next year, yep.
Joe Casabona: Congratulations. And so I'm self-employed. My wife's a nurse, and she works three 12-hour shifts, so like we're not doing summer camp this year. We have a really flexible schedule. I'm always curious to see, and I guess I'll start with this right? Like during the pandemic, my wife worked a lot and my mother-in-law had cancer, and so I like I didn't see A lot of people, yeah, it was tough. And so, like, the thought I kept having was, I don't know how single parents do this all the time. So, like, what's that look like for you? Like, you have these systems in place that we talked about when the rubber meets the road. Right. I think you told an ER story about your son recently. Like, how does that look on, like, a daily basis when you are trying to manage work life and home life while running a business?
Amanda Goetz: Yeah, well, I get to get the, like, question a lot of, like, I don't know how you did Covid with. At the time I had three kids under the age of five and was a single mom, and I was building a business at the time.
And, like, the best way to respond to that is truly, like, there was no other option. And when you have no other options, you just, that's your reality, and you're just figuring out how to make the most of it. And, like, you, like, you have a wife that, like, obviously she's working crazy shifts, but, you know, the feeling of when she's there, it's way easier. It's like, I didn't have that alternative reality that I was waiting for it to happen. So you kind of sit in the discomfort and the chaos a bit more than, like, waiting for it to end, because it doesn't ever end. So that's number one.
And then number two is, it's wild. But, and I've studied this a little bit with some child psychologists, where children of single parents, it's like they perceive and understand where you are in your breaking point. And they also understand, like, there's no one else to tag team in, so they're not playing you off of, like, each other, and have a very distinct story. This is before COVID. I took my three kids to the Children's Museum in the Upper West Side, and it was one of my first outings with all three kids. And I was wearing my son. He was the baby. And I had the two toddler girls. And I said to them, I said, we all have to stay in the same room. If anyone leaves the room that we are in, we are leaving the Children's Museum immediately because there's only one mommy, and I can't lose you. Made it through the first room. We were good. I was like, okay, we're now going to the second room. We have to stay in this room. The middle child wanted to go wander to the next one.
Joe Casabona: It's always the middle child. I feel like it's always the middle child.
Amanda Goetz: And it was in that moment that I was like, I have to show them that I'm serious, because this is serious. Like, there's only one of me. There's three kids. I probably looked like the worst mom ever. I had three crying kids leaving the children's museum. But then it didn't really happen again. They knew I was serious. And the same goes for, like, it's the follow through for me that has been proven over and over again as a parent. If I tell my kids I have 30 minutes of work left, and then that 30 minutes becomes an hour and then an hour and a half, they will never believe that I'm going to be done. So guess what? They're going to interrupt me a thousand times. But if I set a timer on Alexa and I put a Bluey episode on and I say, when this timer goes off and this Daniel Tiger episode is over, I will close my laptop and I will be out, whether or not I'm done with my thing. And it just creates these mini trust moments so that they actually let me focus and finish on the thing.
So if I could just, like, share what I've learned, it's like follow through. And yeah, it's really follow through in all of those instances. If you say you get my attention for the next hour, like, I'll sit down with my son. And since I have three kids, I constantly use Amazon Alexa to be like, this is our time. For the next hour we're gonna play whatever you want. Mommy's with you right now, and we'll set the timer.
Now, if I start looking at my phone or I get up and I start doing dishes, like, they're never gonna trust and believe that that's really their time. So they're gonna throw tantrums, and that's gonna come out in other ways. So I use the timer a lot where it's like, okay, you want me, you have me. Let's do this. Like, what do you wanna do? Let's set the timer and play. And obviously, there's times where we're just playing, but I've found that it helps me to show my kids that I'm following through for them.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Wow. Feel personally called out on that one in a really good way. No, no, no. It's really. I. Like, I was telling my wife about this the other day. Like, the follow-through for consequences. Like, I focused on the follow-through for consequences. I've never turned that around on me because I'm always like, daddy just needs five more minutes. But then five more minutes Five more minutes becomes five more minutes. Yeah, right.
And I've just found, like, the best thing for me to do is not try to work. Like, especially when my wife is working. Like, not try to work in the morning because that's where I usually get into trouble. And so, like, I think that's a really. That's the thing I'm going to try. I'll write it on my whiteboard. I'm going to really internalize that one because I think it's super important.
Amanda Goetz: Well as a working parent, here's the thing that, like, I talk about in my book a lot. It's this idea that we have all of these roles to play, and society and all the narratives have been teaching us about balance. And at the end of the day, balance means equality, right? Like equal weight. When you have multiple roles competing, there's no equality in those scenarios. What you need to adopt is hierarchy.
So what you just told me and what I heard from you is that in the mornings, I am putting kids above work because I know that that's the role that demands the most of me, and I'm going to protect that. Maybe an email might creep in and I've got to respond to it. But, like, there is a hierarchy. I am not trying to be equal parts good parent and good worker. Those are, that's impossible. That is a losing battle.
So the more working parents can adopt the hierarchy, and there's so much guilt that comes from it, right? Like, oh, I'm being with my kids right now. Oh, but what if so and so wants something from me or I'm not there on that Slack, like, what does that say about me? And then vice versa, I'm putting work above my kids. What does that say about me? But at all times there is a hierarchy. And if you don't acknowledge the hierarchy and intentionally choose the hierarchy, you're going to feel pulled in so many directions all the time.
Joe Casabona: Like you're saying, right? That can change, right? Like in the mornings from 7 to 9 or whatever it could be for me, like the hierarchy as kids from 9 to 12, it's work, right?
Amanda Goetz: Exactly.
Joe Casabona: As long as. Yeah, that's so good. So I know that we are coming up on time. I want to ask you perhaps to, we'll skip the lightning round. We'll do these two questions, okay? How do you handle family emergencies during business? Right? Like, I'm thinking, like, snow days put me in such a bad mood. Like if my wife is working, working, right? Because I know I'm unexpectedly losing a day of work, right? And I'm like, this is not. I need to balance this better.
Amanda Goetz: Yeah, it's holding plans with an open hand. Right. Like, as you head into the week. Emergencies are a shift in priorities. Right. So I said this a little bit earlier in our conversation. The two traps that we fall into significance trap and urgency trap. Is this thing really significant for me to do right now? And is this thing really urgent for me to do right now? Getting a call from the school because your kid threw up is urgent. You have to move stuff around, remembering that the kids haven't been to the dentist in a while. Not urgent. Fairly significant can be moved into a quadrant of time where you're delegating those tasks that you're going to. I call them mosquito tasks. They buzz around your brain. And then you're like, I have a one-hour block for mosquito tasks. If it's buzzing around my brain, I put it on a list, and then I have like a one-hour where I just like, I gamify it. I'm like, I set a timer and I try to see how many mosquitoes I can kill. But at the end of the day, those moments are a chance to say, is it truly significant? Is it truly urgent? If yes, do I reshuffle my priorities in this moment? Which role do I need to bring to the top of the priority list so that I can handle this and for how long? Because that's the other thing.
As a working parent, going to pick up the kid can lead to, okay, now I gotta go to CVS. Cause I don't have Gatorade, and I need to now come home and like, they're throwing up every 30 minute,s and yet we keep trying to like go and like work for a little bit. And then you're sitting at your computer and you're like, ugh, I gotta go back. Like, they want something else.
In those moments is the perfect time to say, you know what? For the next eight hours, I'd rather be a super fair parent so that tomorrow I won't feel guilty about doing both. Bad, and it's the intentional imbalance of life. As long as you're telling yourself. I say this about being lazy, I will tell myself tonight, for the next three hours, I am not moving from this couch. I am eating like crap. I am like going to binge shows until I can't see straight.
But the fact that I intentionally said that allows me to just soak into it. And it's the constant competing of characters. Yes, there will always be kind of this multiverse overlapping. But to the best of your ability to create the separation and to say, I'm going to do this thing really well so that I can go back to work tomorrow and I'll feel like I was a great parent, but now I was there for you. If you're still sick tomorrow but you're feeling better and you're not puking your brains out, you're gonna watch Bluey all day, and I'm gonna work. And, like, that's the intentional imbalance piece that we have to accept and honor that you can't be both of those things at the same time really well.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. I think I picked snow days because we had superfluous snow days. And thenwe had off for the Eagles super bowl parade. I was just like, come on. That's a lot. I think that It felt like a lot.
Okay, we're wrapping up here, so I want to ask one more thing, which is how has launching a book changed the way you've worked?
Amanda Goetz: Launching a book made me so diligent about my morning and guarding it, guarding my brain. Because now it's so funny. Like, I'm in this break of, like, I wrote the first book. I'm on a break. I'll start writing the second book next year. And I'm on this break, and I wake up, and because I'm not in my writing flow, I'll, like, scroll, and I'm, like, ingesting everybody else's thoughts. And so writing a book made it so clear of how much we consume that dictates how we feel, how we think, how we show up for others. Like you were saying, like, when I start my day and if my feed chooses to show me really sad things, the weight I feel throughout my whole day is real.
So it made it super guarded because I had to write for two hours every day in the morning before anyone else got up. And guarding that time showed me how much better I felt when I wasn't allowing other people's thoughts and these stories to reside in my brain.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. Your kid, do they stay in bed for a while? My kids? Yeah, we have the clock. They're not allowed to leave until 7. They're not.
Amanda Goetz: We've tried that, and my kids are. I think it's because I'm an early bird and they're all. Or two out of the three are early birds. One can sleep. Now, she's in junior high, so she's now starting to hit the. Like, she's not out until, like, 9, 9:30, but the other two are still like, 6:30 watching cartoons. But we have a whole system. If they wake up while I'm still writing, I have a drawer full of, like, healthier breakfast-y snacks.
Joe Casabona: Ooh.
Amanda Goetz: And it's within reach. And they're allowed to eat whatever they want until I come out of the thing. So that's our rule.
Joe Casabona: I like that I'm gonna clock that. My youngest is three, so I don't know if that'll work for him.
Amanda Goetz: Yeah, you're not there yet.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. Amanda Goetz, this has been such a fantastic conversation. Toxic Grit is out soon. If people want to learn more about you or pick up the book, where should they go?
Amanda Goetz: They can go to toxicgrit.com. If you pre-order the book before it comes out, you get access to a bonus chapter, a workbook, and a webinar that I'm doing during launch week so you can learn more about the book. So toxicgrit.com to pre-order and you can just find me on all the platforms. Instagram is where I'm showing a little bit more behind the scenes.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it.
Amanda Goetz: This is awesome. Thank you, Joe.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I will have everything for y'all in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, I hope you find some space in your week.