Ask yourself a dangerous question: if you stopped working today, how long before the revenue stops?

Michele Bonds spent ~20 years at the top of Wall Street — chief of staff in the C-suite of an elite law firm through the 2008 crisis — and still ended up owned by her own output. When COVID leveled her and willpower finally failed, she rebuilt her whole life as a sculptural paper artist… and ran the studio like an operator.

She breaks down the dual operating system that protects the creator while the machine finds the collectors: the front-end systems that end "convince mode," the switching boundary between business time and creative time ("the divine has its own timeline"), her three trained AIs — "a writing coach, not my writer" — the 80/20 market double-down, pricing with zero benchmarks, and the first-hire math she can't unknow: one plus one equals eleven.

And stay for the last three minutes. Johnny asks what she'd tell the version of herself lying in bed with COVID — and after a long silence: "There is a point to all of this. It's worth it. Keep going."

Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OYBaNDtm1CI
Find Michele: michelebonds.com · Instagram @michelebondsart

🎙 Text the show — your question might end up on air

📬 The letter mentioned in this episode: The Intentional Operator — one installable system every Tuesday, free. intentionaloperator.substack.com

Support the show

Text OPERATOR to 806-337-0141 to talk about The Intentional Operator Mastermind.