[00:00:00] Katy Ripp: Hey there. Welcome back to Hashtag, Actually, I can. My name is Katy Ripp, and I am your host for today. I wanna take a moment just to thank you for your patience. Maybe last week you missed the women’s playbook. Episode, and that is because my mom actually passed away about a week ago now, and it’s been a whirlwind.

[00:00:22] Katy Ripp: Not only that, we moved into a brand new house on Friday. My birthday was on Saturday, and got the call that she was on life support and she passed away on Sunday. So, not to depress you right off the gate, but it was a shit show of a week. And I’m back now. I love me a routine, and I’m so happy to be back here chatting with you guys.

[00:00:45] Katy Ripp: So without further ado. We are talking the Women’s Playbook. So if you’ve been following along in this series, you know what we’re doing here. We are trying to rewrite the outdated patriarchal business playbook one rule at a time. So we’ve already dismantled the grind or die rule, which number one, that is absolutely the rule that we need to rewrite the play.

[00:01:10] Katy Ripp: Small rule, the don’t talk about money rule, the keep it impersonal rule, and last. And the competition rule. Each one has had the same through line. We’ve been trying to succeed in a system that was never built with us in mind. It was built. With gray suits. It was built with guys in gray suits with wives at home, taking care of the rest of their lives in the 1950s and sixties.

[00:01:37] Katy Ripp: So we are far beyond that, but it seems that the business playbooks have not caught up. So today’s rule might sound a little bit different, but it’s just as sneaky, and it’s the follow the blueprint rule. This is the belief that there’s a right way to build your business, and if you just follow someone else’s steps closely enough, you’ll arrive at success.

[00:01:58] Katy Ripp: And on paper, this sounds super appealing, and I am absolutely the victim of this. Someone’s done it before, so why reinvent the wheel? You just plug and play, do A, then B, then C. But here’s the problem. Most blueprints were written for someone else’s life, someone else’s goals, someone else’s values. Think about a blueprint, actually.

[00:02:21] Katy Ripp: A blueprint is made for someone’s home. A home is built around their life, and everybody’s life is different. It doesn’t make sense if you don’t have a dog to put a dog wash or a dog room in a house on a blueprint that doesn’t match your life, especially if you have cats. So that’s what we’re talking about today.

[00:02:44] Katy Ripp: When you follow someone else’s formula too closely, you end up building a business that looks great on paper, but feels actually nothing like you. We’re talking about how I learned that lesson the hard way, and I still learn it over and over again, and why? I really just don’t believe that one size fits all, that strategy just doesn’t work anymore.

[00:03:06] Katy Ripp: And what it looks like to build your own blueprint. So let me tell you a little bit of a personal story. I’ve bought my fair share of blueprints over the years. Let me tell you, I am a course junkie. I love courses and programs and memberships, and I have built I have bought. High-ticket Masterminds and high-ticket courses and programs that I was really confident would work, and honestly, I went into them with the best intentions.

[00:03:35] Katy Ripp: I am a lifelong learner. I love a good strategy. Give me a system, a spreadsheet, a process I’m totally in. Now, that actually doesn’t match who I am as a person, but I have been duped just like you probably have. One in particular really stands out to me. It was a high-ticket coaching program that promised me clarity and structure, and pre-predictable revenue and even a money-back guarantee that if I didn’t make $10,000 in the first, I think 90 days I was to get my money back.

[00:04:07] Katy Ripp: And on the first call, they laid out that magic formula. So if I wanted to scale. I needed to send 30 to 40 cold DMs via Instagram a day for 90 days minimum. So this is after I’ve already paid. That was the strategy. That was the secret sauce, and I remember sitting there thinking. You have got to be fucking kidding me.

[00:04:31] Katy Ripp: And everything in my body said no, like full body recoil. I could barely send one cold DM without wanting to crawl out of my skin. And now they wanted to make it my daily practice. No thank you. And I could see why they promised people. Money back guarantee because if you didn’t actually do the 30 or 40 and have that proof, there’s no way that they were going to give me my money back.

[00:04:55] Katy Ripp: So I ended up going to maybe the first group coaching call. But basically I just flushed that money down the toilet and when I’m talking big pick ticket, when I’m talking big ticket, I mean it was significant money and money I probably didn’t have at the time. But they were the experts, right? They had a huge following.

[00:05:18] Katy Ripp: They had all these anecdotal testimonials from people that really had made millions with this method. So for a little while I did try to make myself fit into that system, but I hated every second of it. It felt completely real. It felt completely robotic, forced, I, forced in a way that I was like, I really cannot do this and sleep at night, and really completely disconnected from the kind of business I wanted to build anyway it’s not that I didn’t wanna make $10,000 in a month or in a week or whatever.

[00:05:52] Katy Ripp: They were promising, but it was not rooted in relationship. It was rooted in pressure and sales, and I really was not interested in that at all. And I remember thinking to myself if this is what success looks like or if this is what it takes, I actually don’t want it at all. And it really made me question if I wanted to be a coach at all.

[00:06:16] Katy Ripp: But that was my turning point. I realized that I wasn’t lazy or unmotivated. This was just misaligned for me. I was not doing this wrong. I was just following someone else’s blueprint, and I’m sure that worked for them. It did work for them because I got a cold DM and I did go and find it and go down that rabbit hole and ended up purchasing their coaching program.

[00:06:41] Katy Ripp: But when I finally gave myself permission to throw out that formula, everything really did get easier because when you stop trying to build on someone else’s dream, you can make space for your own. So this is how this rule shows up for us. It comes in sneaky ways, even when we think we’ve outgrown it, and it sounds she said that this is the only way to scale, so I guess I should do it too.

[00:07:07] Katy Ripp: Or maybe this course worked for her. If it doesn’t work for me, it must be my fault. I must be a failure. I must not be a entrepreneur or a good business owner, or blah, blah, blah. I just need to follow the steps. Exactly. Then it’ll click, and I’m notorious for this. Like I’ll sit down and be like, okay, this is the course that I’m finally gonna follow, step to step, step by step, and it’s gonna work for me.

[00:07:32] Katy Ripp: This is my limiting belief. This is how it sneaks in for me personally, or I’m not ready yet because I don’t have the full plan. We crave certainty, especially in business, especially when we feel like we don’t know what we’re doing. This is a human, this is human. But the truth is most of us are just trying to find safety in someone else’s structure.

[00:07:59] Katy Ripp: We don’t necessarily trust ourselves yet, and when we, what we really need is to trust our own tuition. We crave certainty, especially in business. This is human, but the truth is most of us are trying to find safety in someone else’s structure when what we really need is trust our own intuition.

[00:08:22] Katy Ripp: Blueprints feel safe because they promise control. That’s the point. But the reality of entrepreneurship and life actually is that control is totally an illusion. What you actually need is clarity, and clarity only really comes from experimenting, from feeling your way through, from building something that fits the shape of your actual life by aligning to your values.

[00:08:48] Katy Ripp: The follow the blue, the Follow the blueprint rule doesn’t work because it assumes we all have the same resources, energy, and seasons of our life, but we don’t. We are women and we are all very original beings. Some of us are raising kids or caring for aging parents. Some of us are rebuilding after burnout or divorce or navigating chronic illness.

[00:09:10] Katy Ripp: Some of us. Some of us have full-time jobs or side hustles or emotional labor that just never stops. There’s no one size fits all formula that can hold that kind of complexity. And yes, maybe some of these rules were built with men in mind and a very simple strategy that matched. Most men at the time, men in gray suits with wives at home running their lives.

[00:09:39] Katy Ripp: They were going to the office every day. They had the same exact layout of their day. We as women are completely complex and complicated beings with complex and complicated lives. These don’t match. The thing is the old rules of business were not written for us. The blueprint was designed for someone who could pour a hundred percent of their energy into that hustle, whatever it was.

[00:10:05] Katy Ripp: That is just not us. We live cyclical lives, creative, emotional, physical cycles. That affect how we show up. And that’s not a flaw. It’s actually an advantage if you let it be, because when you build your business around your real rhythms, it becomes sustainable. It stops feeling like you’re constantly fighting yourself.

[00:10:27] Katy Ripp: I.

[00:10:27] Katy Ripp: Okay, so here’s the new rule. Build your own blueprint. There’s no single right way to build a business. There’s only your way, the one that fits your values, your energy, and your life. That doesn’t mean you never learn from others. Quite the opposite. It means you filter everything through your own lens. So when you hear a new strategy, ask yourself, does this align with my values?

[00:10:54] Katy Ripp: Does this fit the life that I actually want? Does this move me closer to freedom or just into another kind of box? If the answer is no to any of those questions, let that shit go. You don’t need another guru’s permission slip. You need your own voice leading the way. When I threw out that high pressure sales strategy, I started listening to my own rhythm.

[00:11:18] Katy Ripp: I stopped trying to be everywhere and focused on being fully somewhere, and that place was my place. I built my offers around connection, not conversion. I stopped chasing a calendar full of calls and started creating space for the kind of deep work that actually lights me up. I went deep rather than wide.

[00:11:39] Katy Ripp: And that decision really did change everything for me, not overnight. This is still a work in progress, but in a real, steady, grounded way for me. When your business is built around your values and your vision, it doesn’t drain you. It sustains you. So if you need to hear it today, you don’t need another blueprint from somebody else’s architect.

[00:12:02] Katy Ripp: You need to trust that you already have the materials to build this on your own. So here’s my challenge for you this week. Audit your business for borrowed blueprints. Where are you following someone else’s shoulds? Where have you convinced yourself that if you follow the formula, it finally will work?

[00:12:23] Katy Ripp: And what would it look like to do it your own way Instead, maybe that means simplifying an offer or changing your schedule, or re-imagining how you launch something. Whatever it is, make one small shift toward alignment. Your intuition is your most underutilized business tool, and the more you use it, the stronger it gets, I promise.

[00:12:46] Katy Ripp: The follow the blue, the follow the blueprint rule tells us that there’s only one right path, and we just know that’s not true as women intellectually, that’s just not a true statement. There is just no single path. There’s only yours. Here’s the new rule. Build your own blueprint. So if this episode hit home, go check out the full blog post.

[00:13:09] Katy Ripp: It’s linked in the show notes. And if you know a woman who’s been trying to squeeze herself into a business model that just doesn’t fit, please send her this episode or send her my information. I’d love to chat. I. Don’t forget, you can join my email list to get every new rule delivered straight to your inbox, plus behind the scenes updates as I turn this series into a book.

[00:13:30] Katy Ripp: Thanks for being here today and thank you for your patience, and I’ll see you next week when we take on the old rule, the Never Show weakness rule, and why vulnerability is actually your greatest power move.