We’re looking forward to introducing you to Abagail Pumphrey. Check out our conversation below.
Abagail, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What makes you lose track of time—and find yourself again?
Writing! It feels a little ironic, as it used to be the thing I avoided. I thought I was bad, slow even. My grammar was garbage, and my spelling, well, thank God for autocorrect. But when I embraced it I finally found myself. It’s my favorite way to process things, share ideas, take people on a journey, or have them really feel something. And the best part is it is always accessible. I can whip out my notes app anytime, day or night. Whether I ever plan to share those words with anyone else feels irrelevant. It is a gift we can give ourselves and others.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Hey there, I’m Abagail.
I’m a multi-passionate entrepreneur, podcast host, writer, and designer here to empower you to build business your way.
As the owner and CEO of Boss Project—one of the top online business education companies—I’ve built a thriving, inclusive community of like-minded entrepreneurs. Recognized by INC and Forbes as one of the best podcasts for entrepreneurs, I also host your soon-to-be favorite twice-weekly podcast, The Strategy Hour.
I’ve reached millions and taught tens of thousands how to build a business that supports the life they want. I hope you’re next!
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
The funny thing about this question is I’m not sure anyone could possibly know. Since I was a small child, I was told I could “be whoever I wanted to be.” If I put my mind to it and worked hard enough, I could accomplish anything.
Then, as early as Kindergarten, we ask kids what they want to be when they grow up. Mine shifted a lot over the years. First, it was a teacher (because I loved school). Along the way, I thought about becoming an astronaut, war photographer, and to be incredibly specific, a Bariatric surgeon (my family had a long history of obesity, and I was swept up in the weight loss toxicity of the 90s), I digress.
Perhaps the most real I ever was with myself is when I rejected all the ideas of growing up to be a “professional” – I didn’t want to be a doctor, engineer, lawyer or any other expected kind of job.
I remember being obsessed with cereal boxes. Yes, really. I studied them every morning like my life depended on it. I was fascinated that everything that ever existed was at one point designed by someone. I thought someday I’ll design packaging that ends up on grocery store shelves (I dream I later realized). This niche obsession is why I ultimately went to art school and studied Graphic Design.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
It wasn’t until recently I even understood suffering. I know pain, we all do. But suffering was different. Suffering was the argument I kept having with reality.
Pain + Unacceptance = Suffering
Pain is nonnegotiable. Bad things happen on schedule and off it. Suffering, though, is optional. An interest payment on a debt already paid. And yet, without walking through it, I might never have learned the quiet skill of acceptance, the way you learn to breathe again after the room has been without air.
My childhood felt like holding my breath. One step in the wrong direction and I’d blow the house down. With both parents on permanent disability, life was managed more than it was lived. I spent more hours under fluorescent lights than on foam mats, learning to wait instead of play.
For years I carried the old weather inside me anyway. I moved through good rooms with a bad forecast, unhealed and, some days, more depressed in the safety of now than I’d been in the chaos of then. That’s the thing about suffering… it doesn’t need fresh pain to feed it. It will live on leftovers, reheating yesterday’s story until it burns your tongue.
Acceptance, I learned, isn’t a happy ending. It’s not approval or surrender. It’s a truce with the truth. A state of mind where you meet what is without judgment. You stop building altars to what “should have been.” You stop cross-examining the past as if a better verdict might fall from the ceiling.
Even success tastes flat without that truce. You can stack achievements to the rafters and still feel empty if you’re refusing to inhabit the life they built.
Contentment doesn’t arrive with the next milestone. It arrives when you lay down the argument and let the moment be exactly itself. When you see pain as just pain, and you decline the invitation to suffer.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
We’re made to believe money is the ultimate barometer of success.
Entire conferences, books, masterminds, and “seven-figure secrets” hinge on that single premise. If you aren’t bragging about a revenue milestone, you’re invisible. If you aren’t scaling, you’re failing.
And yet, I know very few people who actually want to build the next billion-dollar company. They say they want more, because that’s what ambition is supposed to look like. But scratch beneath the surface and most people just want something far less sexy: to feel safe, to have enough, to be free from the gnawing panic of bills they can’t pay.
Money has a purpose. Of course it does. It buys options—the kind of options that, without it, we’re often deprived of. A good school for your kids. A safe neighborhood. Healthcare that doesn’t leave you sleepless. The choice to leave the job that erodes your spirit.
But here’s the thing no one tells you: once security is established, the ultimate freedom is not more commas in your bank account. It’s choice.
Choice is what money was pointing to all along. Choice in how you spend your time. Choice in who you work with. Choice in what you say yes to and, maybe more importantly, what you no longer tolerate.
The lie isn’t that money matters. It does. The lie is pretending money is the final destination, when really it’s just the toll you pay to get onto the highway. What matters is where you go from there.
Because no one brags at the end of their life about doubling Q4 revenue. They brag about the adventures they had, the laughter they shared, work that mattered, people they loved well. They brag about time.
And yet, my industry keeps selling the mirage that if you just stack enough zeros, all those things will magically appear.
The inconvenient, less marketable truth is that the freedom we’re chasing isn’t waiting at the end of a hockey-stick growth chart. It’s available the moment we decide that “enough” is enough, and that how we spend our hours matters more than how we stack our dollars.
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
Generations from now it matters very little to me that someone knows my name. The real imprint I want to leave behind is a shift in entrepreneurial culture. A culture that told entrepreneurs success meant trading their lives away.
I want to see people respect the priorities they say they have, not just talk about them. I want people to see a business doesn’t just provide you an opportunity to grow financially, but earn ultimate time flexibility.
If life moves a little slower, feels a little less hectic, because of the work I do, then I’ve done my job.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bossproject.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/abagailsays
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abagailsays/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BossProjectChannel
- Other: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/strategy-hour-online-marketing-for-business-growth/id1186889023
Image Credits
Photographer: Jo Espejo
