This as told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lauryn Bosstickthe 40-year-old founder and CEO of The Skinny Confidential, based in Austin. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Before its founding The skinny confidentialI was bartending five to six nights a week while studying full time. I also taught Pure Barre and Pilates.
I did what you were ‘supposed’ to do, but it didn’t make me happy. I was tapping to the tune of what society was telling me to do, and I felt incredibly entrepreneurial, but I didn’t know what to do.
I started The Skinny Confidential as a lifestyle blog in 2011, during my freshman year of college. From the beginning I saw it as a brand. It was a place where I could share what I was genuinely curious about, from beauty to relationships and routines, but I was just as curious about other people and their habits.
I worked on it seven days a week for three years before I made a cent. I was completely focused on building trust with the audience. Monetization came later through advertising. When I started making money from the blog in 2014, I decided to go all in. Here we are, twelve years later: it was a slow, strategic build-up.
In 2021, I launched a clean beauty brand to take women’s daily routines to the next level. I co-host a podcast called “The Bossticks” with my husband Michael. I am also an investor and mother of three children.
My family moved from California to Austin in 2020 to live a slower life. Here’s a look at a typical day in my life.
I wake up every morning at 7am
I don’t reach for my phone as soon as I wake up, and when I sleep it’s not around. It’s in the other room on airplane mode.
I’ve learned through trial and error that the worst thing for me is waking up and grabbing my phone. I don’t look at texts, emails, notifications or Instagram until around 11am
I don’t like having to respond to what others need from me. I need to spend my morning in creation mode: visualizing, meditating, and thinking about everything I want to achieve.
If my kids are still asleep at 7am, I have about 30 minutes to meditate
I go to the red light bed in our house and meditate for 20 minutes, or I put my feet up on the wall in my bed and lie there, usually around 6:30 in the morning.
I also moisturize immediately with it electrolytes.
I have a baby and we are going for a walk around 7:45 am. The phone is not with me. I am present, I think about my day. Our walk takes about 20 minutes.
At 8.15 am I get the children ready for school
I help them eat and get ready, and at 8:45 am I am making the bed and changing clothes. I have help. It takes a village in every field, and I’m definitely someone who is very open about that. I have a sweet babysitter who helps us.
I do the same thing every day. I have an outfit I like to wear to the gym in different colors; it’s the same pants, socks and shirt.
I have the same breakfast: cottage cheese with a little mango or kiwi, or three scrambled eggs with Sriracha. When I run out the door, I have one Ballerina Farm chocolate protein foam with fiber.
The water I drink before going to the gym is mango amino water with a scoop of creatine. My babysitter helps me get it ready; she knows the cup I like, the amount of ice cream, and it’s all chosen.
I train from 9:30 am to 10:30 am
I am 100% present at the gym. After the gym, I usually start drinking my coffee around 10:30 am and start my day
My coffee is a mold-free coffee from Kion. I will add milk. Sometimes I sprinkle some cinnamon on top, froth it with ice cream and I’m good to go. Then I address the text messages, emails, questions and calls.
I am a big supporter of the office and work there five days a week
When I’m in Austin, I’m in the office. We travel a lot for work, we interview guests all over the country, and sometimes we’re in LA or New York, but I still go to the office there.
It’s about 25 minutes from the gym to the office, and I listen to an audiobook on the way. I like to come to the office fresh and prepared.
I listen to the same audiobooks every day. It’s Robert Greene or Dr. Wayne Dyer. I notice that monitoring my thoughts and how I think determines my life.
I arrive at the office around 11am
Once I get there, it’s back-to-back meetings.
If it’s a podcast day, I get my hair and makeup done while I’m on the phone. I get ten calls in an hour and a half, and then we go straight to the podcast room.
We podcast between two and six hours
If it’s not podcast day, I’m in my office doing interviews and writing. I write a lot. I’m currently working on a manuscript, so that’s taking up a lot of time.
The rest of the time is spent making creative decisions and developing a strategy for the show and product line.
I see AI as an incredible thinking partner
I use it every day to test ideas under pressure, challenge my assumptions, conduct research, edit my thinking, organize my thinking, and find perspectives I may have overlooked. One of my favorite questions is simply, “What don’t I see?”
I’m less interested in using AI to give me the answer and more interested in using it to sharpen my own thinking. The most valuable thing it can do for me is reveal a blind spot, challenge an idea, or show me a perspective I hadn’t thought of.
Lunch comes at 1:00 PM
I have the same order for lunch every day. It’s a chicken plate with jalapeños, a little bit of sweet potato and a black iced tea without sweetener.
If I don’t pick up my kids, I leave the office between 5 and 6 p.m
As soon as I get home, the phone is gone. Everyone knows what it feels like to have someone on the phone while he or she is talking to you, and it doesn’t feel good. I think about the telephone and its role in my relationship with my children.
About two years ago, I banned TikTok for myself. My Instagram feed is curated to work for me. It’s Dr. Wayne Dyer, or Louise Hay, or something uplifting in my feed. I don’t want anything that has low vibration.
We don’t watch the news at home either. I want my children to have a pure, simple childhood. I am a real housewife and love my feminine side.
Our dinners are high in protein
I’m no chef, but let me tell you, the dinner is definitely high in protein. There is lots of grass-fed steak, ground beef, chicken and lots of eggs in the evening. We always have breakfast for dinner. Sometimes we go out to eat when someone is visiting in town.
Our babysitter, Michael, or I cook. It depends on who does what and how much time we have. We love butter, and my kids and I eat butter toast almost every night.
I have a trick for parents. I don’t turn on the lights upstairs at night; I use red light. It works so well because it signals to children’s little brains that it’s time for bed when they go upstairs.
The children relax and go to bed together around 7 p.m
Each child chooses a book to read.
I also like to set the scene, so there are lots of clocks, frequency music, salt stone night lights and humidifiers.
I go to bed around 8:00 PM to 8:30 PM
My favorite thing to do when I get into bed is… Kindle. There is no telephone or TV in our room. I have my Kindle in dark mode and warm, so the light is low.
What can derail my day is having to work on a screen at night; that’s really hard for me. I think I’ve trained myself to be so militant about the screen at night that I don’t sleep well when I have to write or sit at my computer late. Then it snows in the morning.
I read for about an hour, sometimes two or three hours a day
I read a lot of personal development memoirs, biographies, historical biographies, and old Hollywood biographies.
I think reading has given me an edge in business and in life because I’ve gotten to know different characters, which makes me a better interviewer. Reading is probably one of the most important things I attribute to any kind of success I’ve had.
I sleep at 9:30 PM
I work 7 days a week, which means I also work on weekends
I won’t be in the office on weekends, but I can attend an event and use it to promote our product line. When I can, I like to keep my weekends sacred to my kids.
I am structured but also flexible. If I woke up and my kids needed something right away, and I couldn’t meditate or walk with them, that’s okay. I try to get it right 80% of the time.
For fun, I enjoy a skinny margarita on vacation, eat a buttered piece of sourdough with crunchy sea salt and a square of Hu dark chocolate while in bed, and enjoy reading, traveling, and paint-by-numbers with my kids.
