True Confessions of a Boss Bitch

Lessons for life, love and maybe happily ever after

This is not a story about “How I Read My Employee’s Private Text Messages,” nor is it a confessional, “The Boss Bitch Sleeps Her Way Up the Ladder” tale.

Sorry, if that is what you thought when you clicked.

In fact, I didn’t even know what a boss bitch was when one of my employees describe me that way. Being referred to as a bitch — well, I was shocked.

When I mentioned this to my daughter, she laughed and said, “Just look it up, like you look up all the other stuff you are too old to know about.”

I felt better when I found boss bitch in the Urban Dictionary.

Yeah, I like to think I was a boss bitch — a woman who elevates other women because she’s confident in her own lane; a woman who fixes other women’s tiara’s because we are all queens.

The lessons I learned along the way, you know the ones they don’t teach you in school, may surprise you. I confess it is the life lessons, some hard-knock, that mattered the most and helped me get out there and make my success happen. Along the way, I was lucky to have good mentors and, in turn, support others, women and men, in their careers.

Life is a short time, and then…

Some say life’s a bitch and then you die. Yup that sums it up, and the older you get, the faster it goes. If this is causing you existentialist angst, imagine how you will feel at the end of it all. I have always wanted to have as few regrets as possible. At a bare minimum, I try to make every single day count.

I set many goals and spent my energy following my passions.

If you don’t know where to start, set a goal for each day. It can be something grand or something small, something for yourself or someone else. Even making your bed every day counts, but I hope you will aim a little higher. Have one mission, don’t compare to someone else’s achievements, get it done, and move on to the next goal.

One small victory at a time will add up to a lifetime of achievement.

Seriously, just marry the nice guy

There is no knight in shining armor and no path off into the sunset, so stop searching. After 30 years, I am stunned by how I feel about the nice guy who sleeps in my bed every night. I like him as a person, and I love spending time with him. I marvel about this daily.

Blind passion fades, so what? It is replaced by absolute trust, unquestioning love, and solid support.

Nice guys can be the strongest and most determined people you know, pushing you to be your very best. They are the ones that believe in you and support your hopes and dreams as much as you do. It helped me immeasurably to have someone like that by my side. It’s a bonus if they bring you coffee in the morning and empty the dishwasher.

You only get one chance to be memorable

I could always tell a lot about a person when I first met them, by the way they shook my hand. A limp handshake made me cringe.

Like most aphorisms out there, “you only get one chance to make a good first impression,” is one of the corniest but most accurate. Your number one opportunity to make an excellent first impression is when you greet someone. Get off your butt, look directly at them, offer a firm handshake, smile, say your name, and ask them to repeat theirs if you didn’t quite catch it. If you can’t think of what to say, “it’s nice to see you,” always works, and covers the bases in case you have met them before and forgotten (happens when you get older).

Heartbreak has a silver lining

The worst emotion, the one that turned me inside out, is heartbreak.

Heartbreak happens when the person or thing we love moves out of our lives, or out of our reach, and at the moment when we should let go, we cannot. Over time maybe, we can start to let go and gradually heal. Sometimes we simply can’t, and we live with heartbreak.

The good news is that heartbreak gives us a sliver more of empathy and a radar for fellow sufferers. Conversations change; they became more meaningful as I really cared about what others were going through and cut the small talk.

Heartbreak is real, and teaches us to see differently, listen differently, hear more. From the depths of heartbreak, I found compassionate connections and courageous individuals that inspired me in every part of my life.

Determination + perseverance > skill

What always caught my attention on a CV or when interviewing someone for a job are signs of determination. The person might not have all the skills required for the position. Still, I was impressed when they participated in competitive sports, or worked weekends through school, or failed calculus twice and succeeded the third time, or climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise funds for cancer. Those are the kind of people I hired, and they usually acquired any missing skill in no time and were valuable team members.

Forget about being smart, lucky, there at the right time, and any other “be an overnight success” scam. Hard work, plus determination and perseverance, are 90% of any success story.

Nobody gets there on their own

I don’t know if I always took the time to be as grateful or thankful as I should have been to those who helped me along the way. Now when my day goes well, or someone has helped me, I am ecstatic and appreciative.

When something positive happens in your life, take a moment to acknowledge the fact. Your co-worker did a great job? Take a moment to say thank you. Your partner or a good friend is supportive of your project or during a difficult time? Remind them you love them, and you appreciate their support.

When we voice our appreciation and gratitude, the recipient and we both feel genuinely uplifted by that positive human interaction. Imagine the ripple effect when you do it often.

Practice random kindness

Ah, the final lesson and the most important. Treat everyone the way you want to be treated. There is no unimportant or insignificant act of kindness, and every gesture of kindness has a ripple effect. It’s crazy out there now, and this is the one human gesture we all can easily do. Period.

Get on it, my queens and aspiring boss bitches.

Alice Goldbloom is a recovering serial entrepreneur (aka she is retired). She shares her stories and is interested in the stories of other people’s lives. She finds that writing is therapeutic, and it smooths the edges of her day, just like a couple of glasses of chardonnay used to.