Before I killed my inner Good Girl, she made me very successful.

She built companies. Raised millions in capital. Invested in female founders. Spoke on stages around the world. Helped women build startups and navigate venture capital.

She knew how to perform competence. How to impress the right people. How to succeed in rooms that rewarded a very particular version of a “successful woman.”

Polished. Professional. Impressive. Competent. Controlled.

And she was good at it.

The Good Girl didn’t fail me. She built the woman who knew how to survive, achieve, execute, and win. But somewhere along the way, I confused the strategy that got me here with the woman I was meant to become.

The Good Girl had taken me as far as she could take me. But eventually, the very version of me that had helped me succeed became the version keeping me trapped.

Because underneath all that polish, performance, discipline, and control was another woman dying to be expressed.

My inner Bad Bitch

Artistic. Sensual. Playful. Audacious. Wild. Irreverent. Free.

She wasn’t less ambitious, less intelligent, or less powerful. She was simply the part of me I had learned to suppress in order to be taken seriously.

The woman with loud opinions.

The woman with a massive appetite.

The woman with a dangerous edge.

The woman who wanted to make art, move her body, wear the outrageous outfit, say the provocative thing, take up space, be seen, and be completely fucking alive.

For years, I kept her under control because some part of me believed success required restraint. That power had to look polished. That ambition had to be palatable. That being respected meant being edited.

But eventually, suppressing her started to feel like self-abandonment.

I was exhausted from diminishing myself to fit inside rooms, roles, identities, and definitions of success I wasn’t even sure I wanted anymore.

So I stepped away from the professional world and deeper into the artistic one.

And I unleashed Baddie Li. The audacious, sensual, creative, irreverent, fully expressed woman I had spent years keeping contained.

In the past year, I wrote more than 20 songs, released multiple singles, dropped my first music video, performed in front of 2,000 people at Art Basel, and brought my music into rooms filled with hundreds of women.

I stopped treating the artist in me like a side note. I gave her the mic.

At first, I called Baddie Li my alter ego. But the more I expressed her, the more I saw the truth: She was never somebody else. She was me. She was the most authentic part of me I had exiled in order to fit in.

Reclaiming her made me realize:

Go from Good Girl -> Bad Bitch

And maybe your Good Girl has made you successful too.

Maybe she made you disciplined, dependable, easy to work with, good at doing what was expected of you, good at being the version of yourself that people understand, and approve of. Maybe she helped you build your career, your business, your reputation, the life that looks impressive from the outside.

But maybe she has also taught you to shrink yourself, to wait until you’re perfectly ready, to ask for less, to choose what is sensible over what actually excites you, to build a version of success that earns approval while quietly abandoning the parts of you that want more…More visibility. More freedom. More abundance. More aliveness.

At some point, the question stops being:

How do I become even better at being the woman everyone expects?

And becomes:

Who would I be if I stopped building my life around being liked and approved of?

I'm ready to be a Bad Bitch

Your Good Girl may have gotten you here, but that doesn’t mean she gets to decide where you go next.

Because the next version of you may not require more discipline, more polish, or more proof. She may require you to finally reclaim everything you were taught to suppress.

Ask yourself: What parts of yourself did you decide were too loud, too demanding, too emotional, too sensual, too ambitious, too weird, too wild, too selfish, too much?

Killing the Good Girl isn’t about destroying who you are, it’s about letting go of everything you learned to be in order to earn approval, acceptance, and belonging, and reclaiming everything you left behind along the way.

• What would your brand sound like if you stopped editing your opinions?

• What would you create if you stopped needing everyone to understand it?

• What would you charge if you stopped worrying about being too much?

• What opportunities would you pursue if you stopped waiting to feel perfectly ready?

• How visible would you become if you stopped making yourself easier to digest?

• What kind of business would you build if pleasure, creativity, freedom, wealth, and impact were allowed to belong in the same vision?

Because that’s what I’m interested in. Helping you uncover the woman underneath all that conditioning and giving her the power to decide what you build next.

Join me in the GOOD GIRL TO BAD BITCH MASTERCLASS, my free live masterclass on Tuesday, August 25.

We’re going to confront the Good Girl patterns still running your life and business, reclaim the parts of yourself you’ve been taught to suppress, and begin unleashing the woman underneath them—so you can build a brand, a life, and an empire that are as unapologetic, powerful, and fully expressed as you are.

JOIN THE FREE MASTERCLASS

My new banger ANY MORE CHAMPAGNE and the Official Music Video is here.

This song and video is one giant celebration of something I believe deeply:

They can try… but they can’t put a Bad Bitch in a box

In the music video, I play seven different characters.

I’m the club owner and the club dancer.

I’m the casino dealerand the high-rolling gambler.

I’m the woman running the cash register, the room, taking the risk, commanding attention and celebrating herself through every version.

Because why should we have to choose just one version of ourselves?

Why do we have to be powerful or playful?

Ambitious or sensual?

In control or completely free?

So much of life teaches women to become one understandable, acceptable version of themselves: Pick a title. Pick a role. Pick a lane. Make yourself easy to explain.

But your power lies in refusing to reduce yourself into a box.

You are allowed to be the woman who built the table and the woman who dances on it.

You are allowed to reinvent yourself.

You are allowed to surprise people.

You are allowed to celebrate every version of who you are becoming.

That is what Any More Champagne is about.

Remembering your power. Knowing that you are the prize. Doing what you want without asking for permission. And pouring the champagne before anyone else decides you are worthy of celebrating.

🥂 WATCH THE OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO

Listen to the song on on Spotify, Apple Music, Anywhere you get your music.

Turn it all the way up and tell me which version of Baddie Li is your favorite

▶️ Watch the Music Vid

🎧 Stream Any More Champagne

Always remember,

Bad Bitches Never Settle.

It’s been a minute!

I haven’t sent an email in months because I’ve been letting this next era become real before I brought it back to you. As much as I wanted to keep sharing publicly, sometimes we have to give ourselves grace in transition periods—to create, to evolve, to become, and to trust that what’s meant to be shared will reveal itself when it’s ready.

After spending this season in LA on my creative journey, unleashing my inner artist (after a lifetime of suppressing her!) building the world of Baddie Li, and stepping into a whole new era of unapologetic self-expression, I’m so excited to share that I’m coming back to NYC for the first time in over a year.

It feels powerful to return to the city where so much of my ambition, identity, and reinvention began. And I’m coming back for something special.

I’m partnering with Bad Bitch Empire member Sarah Marilyn to host Hot Girl Vibe Coding on Wednesday night during NY Tech Week, an evening at the intersection of AI, creativity, music, feminine ambition, and unapologetic world-building. Because the future can’t only be built by men in hoodies in Silicon Valley. It should be built by women with vision, taste, power, creativity, and fire!

I’ll be performing my songs live (which you can listen to on Spotify & Apple Music to get in the bad bitch energy) and helping you think through how to leverage AI not just to be more productive, but to build the brands, businesses, platforms, communities, art, and futures we actually want to see exist.

We already have 250 baddies RSVP’d, and I cannot wait to bring this energy to NYC.

RSVP: Hot Girl Vibe Coding

And then, right after, I’ll be flying back to LA to host a private Baddie Li VIP Listening Party in a state-of-the-art music studio in West Hollywood, where I’ll be debuting the unreleased songs I’ve been working on for the past six months in a room of friends, collaborators, and supporters.

This is where you’ll get to hear the new music before it drops publicly — the songs, the stories behind them, the creative evolution, and the world I’ve been building behind the scenes.

Baddie Li VIP Listening Party
Saturday, June 6th, West Hollywood, LA

RSVP: VIP Listening Party

From tech & business in NYC to music & artistry in LA. Building worlds in both.

This is what it means to embrace all of who you are.

To be multidimensional.
To be creative and strategic.
To be powerful and whimsical
To be business and art.
To be the vision and the vessel.
To stop cutting yourself into pieces just so the world can understand you.

That is the energy I’m bringing into this next era.

And I can’t wait to see you there.

There’s much more to come, but in the meantime, I hope to see you IRL.

Always remember, Bad Bitches Never Settle
Baddie Li

(P.S. Some of you know me as Lisa Carmen Wang. But this next chapter is all Baddie Li. The music, the movement, and the full expression of Bad Bitch Empire)

"I have the same goal I've had ever since I was a girl: I want to rule the world." -Madonna

If you’ve ever been told you’re “too much,“ too ambitious, too demanding, too bold, you already understand the world Madonna walked into. In the early 1980s, female pop stars were expected to be desirable but disposable: sexy on command, silent on business, grateful for whatever deal the label offered.

Madonna agreed to the visibility. She refused the disposability.

She didn’t just participate in the male gaze. She learned it, bent it, and then used it as leverage to take back her image, her music, and eventually her money. What started as a tiny, standard record deal for an unknown 24‑year‑old became, over time, one of the most powerful empires in music history.

This week we’re not asking, “How do I copy Madonna?” We’re asking: How do I apply Madonna’s leverage playbook to my own empire?

Let’s get into it.

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Madonna: The Bad Bitch Who Turned the Gaze Into Leverage

In 1982, a 24-year-old Madonna signed with Sire Records, a Warner Bros. imprint, on a deal that paid her only $15,000 per single as an advance, not even a full album. It was a tiny, standard‑issue contract for an unproven artist. She took it because she needed a way in. But she never confused that small number with her actual worth.

From there, she engineered power. Across the 1980s and early 1990s, she:

• Released blockbuster albums like Like a Virgin and True Blue, making her one of the best‑selling artists on Warner’s roster.

• Used music videos and live performances to present female sexuality that was provocative, confrontational, and self‑directed, sparking constant controversy and attention.

• Pushed boundaries with projects like Like a Prayer, whose video mixed religious imagery and sexuality, provoking backlash from religious groups and the cancellation of a major Pepsi ad campaign, while the song and video dominated pop culture.

Was the early imagery male‑gaze centered? Absolutely. She entered a system built on men’s fantasies of women. But instead of being a passive object in that frame, she made herself the author of it:

• She chose how far to push.

• She chose when to shock.

• She chose when to pivot into vulnerability, spirituality, or power suits.

Madonna took the tools of the male gaze and weaponized them. If people were going to look anyway, she was going to decide what they saw, and get paid for it.

As her star rose, so did the imbalance: top male artists at the time were often making significantly higher royalty rates around 12-15%, while women, even powerhouses, tended to earn significantly less.

By the early 1990s, Madonna was one of Warner’s most important artists financially and culturally, but still operating inside an industry built on double standards.

So she did what bad bitches do when the math doesn’t add up. She took matters, and her money, into her own hands.

In 1992, she signed a landmark deal with Time Warner to create Maverick, a joint‑venture entertainment company that included a record label and other businesses.

It was one of the most lucrative artist deals ever, $60 million with a 20% profit participation and control rarely granted to artists, especially women. It gave her a bigger share of the upside, more say in her work, and an infrastructure of her own.

She didn’t just make music. She leveraged the system into building her own empire.

They Tried to Crush Her. She Restructured the Game

By the early 2000s, the Maverick partnership had deteriorated. In March 2004, Madonna and Maverick sued Warner Music Group and Time Warner, alleging financial mismanagement and claiming that Warner had allowed Maverick to lose tens of millions of dollars. Warner countersued, arguing that Maverick’s losses were on Madonna and her partners.

This is usually the part of the story where the artist gets crushed.

Instead, in June 2004, the parties settled. Warner bought out Madonna’s 50% stake in Maverick and took full control of the company. Madonna received payment for her share and continued as a recording artist with Warner under a separate deal.

Madonna used leverage to walk away with cash, without losing her recording pipeline or her catalog relationship. She didn’t just win the battle. She completely reorganized the relationship on terms that worked for her.

Fast forward: Madonna is still the highest‑grossing solo touring artist in history, with more than $1.5 billion in tour revenue, and a net worth of over $850 million. In 2021, she signed a new deal with Warner Music covering her entire catalog, further cementing long‑term control and monetization of her work.

She started as a sexualized pop girl on a tiny advance. She built an empire as a global symbol of female autonomy, wealth, and artistic sovereignty.

Now let’s translate that into your empire.

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👑 Your Bad Bitch Empire Moves

The most powerful position isn’t being the prettiest picture in someone else’s frame. It’s learning how the frame works, then using it to build your own structure of leverage and ownership.

Here’s how Madonna’s playbook applies directly to you as a powerful woman.

1. Control the Gaze, Don’t Just Participate in It

Madonna didn’t avoid femininity or sexuality. She controlled it. She gave the world something to look at, but on her terms, with her hand on the dial.

For you, that means:

• Don’t tone down your femininity, sensuality, or raw power just to seem “safer.”

• Don’t over‑explain why you show up the way you do.

• Anchor everything in a clear philosophy, worldview, and stick with it consistently

Takeaway: If people are going to look anyway, decide what they see, and make sure it ladders back to your power.

2. Turn Controversy Into Distribution

Madonna understood a simple equation:

Outrage → attention. Attention → leverage. Leverage → negotiating power.

When religious groups condemned Like a Prayer, when critics attacked her videos or performances, she didn’t retreat. The controversy amplified her visibility, and that visibility strengthened her hand in every negotiation.

For your empire, that looks like:

• Saying your truth even if it triggers other people

• Letting strong reactions expand your reach instead of shrinking yourself to avoid them.

Takeaway: You don’t exist to be inoffensive. Let your sharper ideas act as signal flares, drawing in the ones who are ready, and filtering out the ones who aren’t.

3. Reinvent Yourself to Stay Sovereign

Madonna never stayed one archetype. Across decades, she shifted from:

• Ingenue to Material Girl

• Erotica‑era provocateur to spiritual seeker

• Pop star to cultural institution

From the outside, people called it “shocking” or “desperate.” From the inside, it was sovereignty: she refused to let the industry freeze her in one version of herself.

For you, that means:

• You allow your aesthetic, offers, and tone to evolve as you do.

• You don’t trap yourself in your current “brand era” out of fear of confusing people.

• You keep your values and purpose constant even as the visual language changes.

Takeaway: Reinvention is how you evolve and avoid being trapped in yesterday’s version of yourself.

4. Build Optionality Through Multiple Revenue Streams

Madonna didn’t rely on album sales alone. Tours, merchandising, film, publishing, and later catalog deals all layered into her financial power.

For you, a Madonna‑style structure could look like:

• Front‑end magnet: visibility platforms (social content) that draw attention

• Ideology container: podcast, newsletter, or thought leadership where your doctrine lives

• Core offering: repeatable offers or retainers for stable income

• High‑ticket depth: premium intensive ways people can work with you

• Partnerships: brand deals or collaborations that amplify reach on your terms

Takeaway: Don’t build an empire on one revenue stream. Build optionality so no single partner, platform, or algorithm can pull the plug on your power.

5. Own the Narrative Before Others Do

Madonna never let critics or tabloids define her long‑term. She kept outputting work, interviews, visuals, and eras that reinforced her story of who she was.

For you, that means:

• You define how you show up: your language, your values, your aesthetics, your standards.

• You decide what success looks like for you: and you stop borrowing metrics from people who don’t live your life.

• You treat your core values as doctrine, not content ideas. They don’t change with trends; everything you put out flows from them.

Takeaway:
If you don’t author your narrative, the world will write a smaller one for you.

6. Don’t Chase Approval, Build Long-Term Inevitability

This is the deepest Madonna lesson.

She was never trying to be universally liked. She was trying to be culturally undeniable.

That required:

• Consistency in her message of autonomy and self‑determination

• Visual cohesion within each era (even as she reinvented, each chapter was clear)

• Repeated phrases, gestures, and themes that imprinted her identity

• A standard she refused to bend, even under backlash or ridicule

Takeaway: Stop optimizing for being “relatable.” Start optimizing for inevitability.

Remember, a Bad Bitch is not just here to be liked, you're here to deliver a message that reshapes the world, and your job is to become so consistent, so clear, and so powerful that your doctrine becomes the new standard.

Always remember, Bad Bitches Never Settle

xo Baddie Li 🎶

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This week on the Bad Bitch Empire Podcast, I sat down with Heidi Zak, co‑founder and CEO of ThirdLove, a lingerie company that disrupted a male‑dominated, Victoria’s-Secret-era industry by daring to say: women deserve better. She built a billion‑dollar, women‑first empire around fit, inclusivity, and actually listening to women.

In this episode, we talk about what it really takes to build a category-defining brand, pitch a bra company to rooms full of men, publicly challenge an industry giant like Victoria’s Secret, and lead with calm, intuitive, data-informed power.

👉 Before you dive into the breakdown, go listen to the full conversation with Heidi on The Bad Bitch Empire podcast. Hear exactly how she navigated 100 investor no’s, trusted her intuition, challenged an entire industry, and built a billion-dollar lingerie empire on her own terms.

Listen/Watch on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Heidi Zak: The Bad Bitch Who Refused the Old Script

Heidi didn’t grow up dreaming of being a founder. She started in banking in New York, went to business school, then worked at a retail company and later at Google. Entrepreneurship wasn’t on her radar until she moved to San Francisco, got immersed in the startup scene, and had one of those quiet but dangerous thoughts:

“If these guys can do it, I can do it too.”

The idea for ThirdLove came from her own experience:

She was a busy working woman commuting long days to Google, and one day needed a bra, and did what every woman was trained to do: drag herself to the mall and walk into Victoria’s Secret. The experience was outdated, inconvenient, and completely disconnected from what she actually wanted.

Driving home she asked herself:

• Why am I still going to a store for my bra?

• Why can’t I buy this online?

• Why is there no better bra brand?

• Why do we all keep shopping at the same place when none of us actually likes it?

When she started researching, she realized: there were no online bra brands. Direct‑to‑consumer wasn’t even a phrase yet in 2013. There was a giant gap in the market and no one was building what women actually needed.

Once the idea landed, it wouldn’t leave. She talked to women. Every conversation confirmed it: “We don’t know why we still shop there. We just do.” Not a good enough answer for a bad bitch.

So she decided to build the thing that didn’t exist.

The ThirdLove Difference: Built For Women, Not the Male Gaze

From day one, ThirdLove wasn’t “just another bra brand.” Heidi and her team rebuilt the category from the ground up:

• Fit Innovation:

Heidi discovered she was a half cup size—something traditional bra companies ignored. ThirdLove pioneered half cup sizes so women didn’t have to choose between “a little too small” and “a little too big.” Today, about 25% of their sales are in half-cup sizes—proof that trusting her gut on this “non-standard” idea was right.

• Tech + Intuition:

They built online fitting technology to help women find their size without stepping into a fluorescent-lit fitting room with a stranger and a measuring tape. Buying a bra is hard in-store—harder online—so they solved it with smart tools.

• Inclusive Imagery (Before It Was Trendy):

When they went to their first shoot and the photographer asked, “Who do you want to look like?”, the answer was: No one. There is no one we want to look like. Every other lingerie brand was stuck in the same narrative:

• Push‑up fantasy

• One body type

• One narrow definition of “sexy”

ThirdLove shot real women: different sizes, ages, life stages. They sought out models outside the standard 34B sample size and standard measurements, even when the industry made that difficult.

• Brand Vibe:

Heidi sums up ThirdLove’s energy in three words:

• Confident – women who feel sure of themselves in their own skin

• At ease – comfort that looks and feels natural, not forced

• Smart – products that solve real problems for women

This wasn’t lingerie to be sexy for someone else. It was lingerie that made women feel sexy, confident, and comfortable for themselves.

The Open Letter That Shook Victoria’s Secret

In 2018, an infamous Vogue interview with the then–CMO of Victoria’s Secret dropped. The title:

“We’re Nobody’s Third Love. We’re Women’s First Love.”

Inside were comments that revealed just how out of touch the brand was:

• Dismissing plus-size efforts as something that “didn’t work”

• Insisting the fashion show was exactly “what women wanted”

• Doubling down on a narrow, 90s-era fantasy of womanhood, with zero diversity in body, age, or representation

They even mentioned ThirdLove. They clearly felt the competition.

Heidi had never publicly called them out before. But that interview was a line.

So she wrote a full-page open letter in The New York Times: “Dear Victoria’s Secret…” She laid out everything ThirdLove believed:

• Women are many things, not one narrow fantasy

• Representation matters

• Inclusivity is not a trend, it’s baseline respect

• Every woman deserves to see herself reflected in the brands she buys from

So she came up with a campaign: “To Each, Her Own.” And they didn’t just talk. They backed it up with imagery of:

• An older woman

• A woman breastfeeding

• A woman with stretch marks

Real women. Real bodies. Real lives.

They took the campaign to New York subways and even put a billboard outside Victoria’s Secret’s office. It created a massive media wave, press, conversations, DMs from fathers who read the letter with their daughters and realized: “Oh, there can be something different.”

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How Heidi Leads: Calm, Decisive, and Deeply Herself

Heidi’s leadership style isn’t loud or performative. She describes herself as:

• Calm – She takes in information without spiraling, even in chaos.

• Decisive – She listens, then makes a call and moves.

• Clear – She communicates decisions and direction with clarity so the team can execute.

On decision-making, she blends:

• Data – essential for creative, product, and business decisions

• Intuition – that deep knowing you can’t always quantify, but ignore at your peril

A defining example: half cups. Manufacturing experts told her:

• It’s too expensive

• People tried before; it didn’t work

• It would never scale

She walked away from that manufacturer and found another who would do it—begrudgingly. Thirteen years later, half cups are a signature differentiator.

Heidi’s rule: experts don’t always know better than you. When your conviction is that strong, you fight for it.

She also refuses to cut off her femininity to fit an old “CEO mold.” In media training, people told her:

• Don’t use your hands

• Don’t cry

• Don’t be “too emotional”

But when she had to do layoffs during COVID, she cried in an all-hands. Because that’s what was real.

Her philosophy:

Be who you are. Amplify that. Don’t contort yourself into someone else’s idea of a leader.

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Your Empire Moves: The Feminine Power of Building a Billion-Dollar Empire (On Your Terms)

Heidi’s story isn’t just inspirational, it’s a playbook. Here’s how you can apply her moves directly to your own empire:

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This song flowed out of me in one day, written and recorded in just a few hours and it’s my fav track to date.

It’s that unapologetic, no-bs, bad bitch energy surge for when you’re ready to glow up and FCK SHIT UP.

Cost a Pretty Penny out now on Spotify, Apple Music, anywhere you get your music

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This song is for anyone who was once told they were “too much,” then realized that was the point.

For the women who were underestimated, overlooked, told to wait their turn… and swept the whole damn board instead.

For the ones who outgrew the room, the relationship, the version of themselves that played small.

For anyone who woke TF up and cut the strings of a toxic relationship, stopped letting others speak for them, and never looked back.

For the girl who used to be the puppet… and became the prize.

If you’ve ever been doubted, dimmed, or fumbled by a mediocre man who never deserved you in the first place… this song’s for you.

🎶💰Stream COST A PRETTY PENNY on Spotify, Apple Music, anywhere you get your music.

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I love you thank you for your support. Listen, share, and blast the song this weekend! I hope it brings you as much power as it does me.

Always remember, bad bitches never settle.

xo, BADDIE LI ❤️‍🔥

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If you’re a powerful woman with a visible brand, you know that people will judge you no matter what. The common mistake? Over-explaining or justifying your position, hoping to be properly understood. But the more you explain, the more material you hand over for others to twist your story into what they already believe about you.

The goal is not to be understood by everyone. The real goal is to build a brand so distinct and intentional that you hold the reins of your own narrative.

This week we’re studying a woman who executed narrative control so masterfully, she rewrote the very rules of power, and left monuments that made her story impossible to erase.

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Let’s get into it.

Hatshepsut: The Bad Bitch Who Rewrote Reality

Imagine having ambition so unprecedented that there’s literally no language for it in your civilization.

That was Hatshepsut’s situation in 1478 BCE.

Her husband, the pharaoh, had died. His heir, her stepson, was a toddler. She became queen regent—the expected move. Hold the throne warm until the boy grows up, then step aside into comfortable irrelevance.

Every queen regent before her had followed that script, but Hatshepsut decided to write a different one.

However she faced an impossible problem: Egyptian cosmology required the Pharaoh to be male, and every Pharaoh was the living embodiment of Horus, son of Osiris. Male god, male vessel. The entire religious, political, and social order was built on this gendered assumption.

There was no word for a female pharaoh because the concept was theologically incoherent.

So what did she do?

She claimed the narrative. She didn’t try to convince anyone a woman could be pharaoh, and she certainly did not ask permission.

Hatshepsut didn’t try to win an argument about gender and power, she made the argument irrelevant.

She became pharaoh and rebuilt the entire narrative infrastructure to make it make sense until her rule wasn’t a question to be debated, but a fact etched in stone.

The most powerful position isn’t defending your right to be in the room. It’s building a world where your power, status, and role is self-evident.

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Here’s how she did it:

1. First, she recreated divine origin. She commissioned temple reliefs showing the god Amun-Ra visiting her mother, making Hatshepsut literally god-born, a divine being housed in a female body. You can’t argue with a god’s child. You can only accept.

2. Then, she solved the visual problem. Every statue reinforced the pharaoh’s divine right to rule. And all that visual vocabulary assumed a male body. So she took control of that too. Early in her reign, she’s depicted as a woman in pharaonic regalia. Gradually, the depictions shift. Shoulders broaden. Chest flattens. The ceremonial beard appears. By mid-reign, her statues show a male-bodied pharaoh.

But here’s what fascinates me: she never hid being female. Court records use feminine pronouns. Everyone knew. She wasn’t pretending to be a man. She was separating the office from the body. The pharaoh is male. She is pharaoh. Both statements are true.

That is narrative engineering at the highest level.

3. Finally she built material proof: Massive construction projects, her mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri is still considered an architectural masterpiece. Trading expeditions to Punt returned with gold, ivory, incense, exotic animals. Wealth that made Egypt richer and proved the gods favored her reign.

Hatshepsut carved her story into stone, backed it with results, and she never once acknowledged that an alternative narrative was possible. She never defended herself. Never engaged with doubters.

She reigned for over two decades building peace and prosperity, and her legacy still stands 3,500 years later.

👑 Your Bad Bitch Empire Moves

The most powerful position isn’t defending your right to be in the room. It’s building a world where your power, status, and role is self-evident.

Narrative control sounds great in theory, but most of us are leaking power everywhere without even realizing it. Here’s how you can stand your ground and start creating your own reality as Hatshepsut did.

1. Stop Explaining, Start Declaring

Every time you clarify “That’s not what I meant,” “Let me explain,” “I think you misunderstood” you inadvertently admit your story didn’t land, and invite misunderstanding. Soon you’re caught in a loop, explaining more and controlling less.

• Takeaway: Stop explaining why you belong. Act as if the room was built for you. Craft your message and brand so clearly and confidently it stands alone. If it doesn’t, revise until it does.

2. Don’t Engage in Someone Else’s Battle

If someone criticizes you, don’t defend. If someone mischaracterizes your position, don’t correct.

Every single response accepts their frame as the battlefield. You’re now fighting on terrain they chose, with terms they set. Even if you win the argument, you’ve lost the war, because you validated their frame as worth engaging with.

• Takeaway: Advance your story on your own terms rather than responding to others’ narratives. Let the haters hate, let them talk, they’re just increasing your reach.

3. Control What Details Gets Shared

Sharing every messy detail in real time surrenders control of your story. The urge to share as things happen, to bring people along on the journey, to be “authentic” by showing the messy middle, I get it. It feels honest. It feels connective. But when you share in real-time, you can’t shape the arc. The unfinished, chaotic middle is easily misread. Hatshepsut shared only the finished monuments—the message, not the backstage.

• Takeaway: Process privately, then share intentionally. Let the story reach others only after you’ve shaped its arc.

4. Be Consistent Everywhere

If your colleagues, your clients, your Instagram followers, and your industry peers would describe completely different people when asked about you—you don’t have a narrative. You have noise.

Hatshepsut’s story was consistent across every temple, every monument, every inscription. Same message, every surface. That’s how you build something that lasts.

• Takeaway: Ensure your personal brand message is unified, so anyone, anywhere, encounters the same “you.” Consistency breeds endurance.

5. Act Without Waiting for Permission

“Do you think I should?” “Would it be okay if I...” “What do people think about...”

Every time you ask for permission, you signal that your story requires external validation to be legitimate. You’re telling the world that you don’t trust your own authority. Seeking constant approval signals uncertainty and cedes authority.

• Takeaway: Trust your legitimacy. Move as if your authority is self-evident, and others will take their cue from your certainty

6. Make Erasure Impossible

Hatshepsut built relentlessly—temples, statues, inscriptions—so that even after deliberate attempts to erase her name and image, her legacy endured. The scope and visibility of her achievements became an insurance policy against obscurity.

• Takeaway: Scale your impact until it can’t be overlooked. One achievement can be dismissed; a consistent, visible body of work becomes undeniable.

What was your biggest takeaway?

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Always remember, bad bitches never settle

xo, Baddie Li

We live in an era that worships speed. Launch fast. Scale fast. Post constantly. Be everywhere. The algorithm rewards those who move first, and we’ve internalized that so deeply that waiting feels like losing.

But here’s what I’ve learned: The women who build empires aren’t the ones who moved fastest. They’re the ones who moved strategically.

Strategic patience is different than passivity. Passive people wait for things to happen to them. Strategically patient people are in constant motion—learning, positioning, building relationships, stacking leverage—they just aren’t announcing it.

This is a kind of silent power women have wielded for centuries, often because we had no other option. When you can’t kick down the front door, you learn every entrance in the building. You learn which doors unlock from the inside. You learn who holds the keys and what they want. And sometimes? You learn to build your own damn building.

Let’s dive into two women who understood this principle and applied it successfully: one who turned 51 years of strategic waiting into an empire that lasted centuries, and one who spent 16 years building a billion-dollar company while everyone told her she was moving too slow.

👑 The Bad Bitch Icon: Wu Zetian

China, 637 AD. A 14-year-old girl named Wu Zhao walks into the imperial palace as a fifth-rank concubine—basically a glorified servant. One of thousands of women whose entire purpose is to exist in case the Emperor notices them.

She was beautiful. But the Tang Dynasty court was filled with beautiful women. What Wu Zhao had was something else entirely.

She could see the whole damn board.

For over a decade, Wu Zhao served Emperor Taizong alongside thousands of concubines. The imperial harem was bloodsport—women clawed for attention, formed alliances, destroyed rivals. The ambitious ones were easy to identify. They were also easy to eliminate.

Wu Zhao watched. She learned the rules. Then she decided to play a different game.

While others competed for the Emperor’s fleeting attention, Wu Zhao studied politics, power structures, and where alliances were waiting to crack. She was building a mental map of an empire. Nobody noticed, because nobody was looking at a fifth-rank concubine.

The pivot that shouldn’t have worked.

When Emperor Taizong died, Wu Zhao was 25. By law, she should have been sent to a Buddhist convent forever. Her story was supposed to be over.

But during those twelve years of watching, she’d noticed something. The Emperor’s son, future Emperor Gaozong, was insecure, nothing like his legendary father. And he had noticed her. Not as a sexual object, but as someone intelligent who understood things he didn’t.

When Gaozong took power, he brought Wu Zhao back from the convent and made her his concubine. The court was horrified. And Wu Zhao was exactly where she wanted to be.

Building dependency.

Here’s where most people would have made a fatal mistake—grabbed for power, made enemies, tried to win fast.

Wu didn’t reach for power. She patiently constructed it.

She gave Emperor Gaozong something no one else did: a genuine partner. She helped with administrative decisions, offered political analysis, made herself useful in ways that had nothing to do with the bedroom.

Just six years after her return. Wu Zhao became Empress Wu, she was 31 and just getting started.

The long game pays off.

Over time, through her competence and wit, Empress Wu made the Emperor dependent on her judgment. Then the bureaucracy. Then the military.

By the time the Emperor died, removing Wu Zetian wouldn’t have just been a palace coup, it would have meant administrative collapse.

In 690 AD, 51 years after she first walked into the palace as a teenage nobody, Wu Zhao declared herself Huangdi. Not Empress. She declared herself Emperor of China. She founded her own dynasty, ruled China for fifteen years, and died at 82, in power until the end.

The Bad Bitch Playbook.

Wu Zetian didn’t seize power. She accumulated it. So slowly, so carefully, that by the time anyone understood what was happening, stopping her would have meant dismantling the entire government that had grown to depend on her.

What she understood:

• Competence creates dependency. She made herself so essential that removing her would cost more than keeping her. By the time she had power, taking it away would have collapsed the system.

• Let rivals defeat themselves. Wu Zetian let the other women vying for empress defeat each other while she positioned herself as the reasonable alternative.

• Survive the transitions. She outlasted two emperors and multiple political purges by never appearing threatening until she was unstoppable.

• Compound small gains. Concubine → favored concubine → empress → regent → emperor. Each position was a platform for the next. She never skipped steps.

She played a 51-year game. And she won everything.

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Now let’s cross thirteen centuries to a woman selling fax machines in Florida, who also played the same game.

👑 The Modern Icon: Sara Blakely

In 1998, Sara Blakely was 27 years old, selling fax machines door-to-door in Clearwater, Florida. She had $5,000 in savings, no fashion connections, no business degree, and a “crazy” idea for footless pantyhose that every hosiery executive she pitched laughed at.

Two years later, she launched Spanx. Twenty years after that, she sold a majority stake for $1.2 billion, becoming one of the wealthiest self-made women in America.

The business press loves the “overnight success” version of Sara’s story. But that story is a lie. Her real genius was stategic patience.

She researched for two years before launching. Learned about patents, manufacturing, and retail while working her day job. Wrote her own patent to save legal fees. Called manufacturer after manufacturer until she found one willing to take a chance on her. She didn’t quit selling fax machines until Spanx was already making money.

She bootstrapped for sixteen years. While other founders chased venture capital and hypergrowth, Blakely took zero outside investment. Grew slowly. Grew profitably. Kept 100% ownership. When she finally sold, it was on her terms, at her timing, for her price.

She built dependency through distribution. Her early strategy was getting Spanx into Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale’s—not because that’s where the volume was, but because it created legitimacy. Once high-end retailers depended on Spanx for their shapewear department, her position was secure.

Sara Blakely understood what Wu Zetian understood: when you don’t start with power, you can’t take it. You have to build it patiently and carefully. By the time you have it, taking it from you would cost more than letting you keep it.

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👑 Your Bad Bitch Empire Moves

This is where we turn principles into action. The icons gave us the playbook. Now let’s apply it to your life.

1. Build the Map Before You Make Your Move

Read more

Last year was a wild ride, and it broke me open in the biggest possible way.

I took the leap into my musical artist journey, officially becoming Baddie Li, the rapper. I performed my first big show at Art Basel (BTS vlog here), and I dropped my first rap/hip hop singles (listen here!), which meant putting a part of myself into the world that I'd kept private for a long time (ep. on how I reinvented myself).

And while all of that was happening, I was also still actively sourcing female-founded investments for the Bad Bitch Empire venture fund.

Last month, we officially closed our final investment: a female-founded reproductive health company that I couldn’t be more proud to back. Women building solutions for women’s bodies. It felt like the perfect way to close that era.

And with that chapter complete, Bad Bitch Empire is returning to its roots. My core, the thing that started all of this, before there was a fund, before there was a book, before there was any of it:

Feminine Power.

If you’ve followed my journey through all its eras (and some of you have been here since the very beginning) you know there’s one question that has quietly driven every single chapter of my growth:

“Who is the most powerful and authentic version of me?”

I've been chasing the answer to that question my entire adult life, and a few years ago, I discovered something that changed everything: I was good girl brainwashed.

The good girl brainwashing was embedded so deep in me that I didn’t even realize the ways I was contorting myself to fit into boxes in order to be “appropriate” “professional” “palatable” or “pleasing.” Until I was just so fucking exhausted of shrinking that I decided I would rather just be ME, even if that meant being “too much” for others.

So I wrote The Bad Bitch Business Bible to break free of all those subconscious good girl habits that were keeping me small—people-pleasing, perfectionism, playing small— It was my way of deprogramming myself in public, hoping it might help other women see what I was finally starting to see.

But the thing about breaking free is, once you start, you can’t stop.

After the book, I kept going deeper. I started reading stories and watching shows about powerful women throughout history—queens, empresses, artists, pioneers, rebels, witches, goddesses, warriors. Women who wielded power in ways that fascinated me. Women who broke rules I didn't even know existed. Women who built empires and shaped civilizations and refused to be play small.

And somewhere along the way, something clicked as I discovered the truth about my own power as a woman.

Women have always understood power. We’ve ruled empires, built fortunes, shaped history from behind thrones and in front of them.

But somehow, we got sold a version of history that erased all of it

A version that made us think power was something we had to seek outside of ourselves. That we needed permission from the patriarchy to claim it. That feminine power was somehow lesser, softer, less strategic than the masculine version we were taught to admire.

That version is a lie.

The blueprint has been there all along. It is within all of us, written in our bodies, our intuition, our capacity for both nurturing and destruction. And it was laid out, by the lineage of bad bitches who came before us.

Bad Bitch Empire is about rediscovering that blueprint. It’s about studying how bad bitches before us wielded feminine power masterfully, and using those same principles to build our own wealth, influence, and empires today.

Every week, we’ll go deep on:

• One principle of feminine power

• One iconic woman from history who mastered it

• One modern woman applying it now

• Clear, strategic ways you can apply it to your own life and empire

• Plus strong doses of Bad Bitch Energy & Inspo from me as it’s channeled ✨

Think 48 Laws of Power for Baddies: where we’ll dive into the art of Feminine Power and how to wield it like a Bad Bitch

Oh and btw, becoming your most powerful self? There is no final destination.

I used to think that if I just figured out the right combination, the right mindset, the right strategy, the right version of myself, I would finally arrive. I would finally be her.

But power isn’t something you arrive at once. It’s something you refine, reclaim, and embody over a lifetime.

I’m living proof of this right now.

As I enter my next era as a musical artist, I’m navigating yet another male-dominated industry. Another space where the rules weren’t written for women. Another arena where I have to figure out how to be powerful without shrinking, without contorting, without losing myself in the process.

I don’t know exactly what’s in store, but I do know this: When we cultivate our feminine power deliberately, when it’s wielded correctly, strategically, unapologetically, we become unstoppable.

So welcome to this new era of Bad Bitch Empire. This era is more personal, more spiritual, more grounded, more wild, and more powerful than ever.

Always Remember, Bad Bitches Never Settle

xo Baddie Li

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P.S. The first full newsletter drops Tuesday. We’re starting with The Feminine Power of Strategic Patience, studying Wu Zetian, the only woman in 5,000+ years of Chinese history to rule as Emperor, and a modern day icon, who built her billion-dollar empire without taking a single dollar of outside investment. See you then. 💋