- Performance: Romi Neustadt narrates her own work with the direct, confident cadence of a professional speaker, which suits the book's blunt coaching style.
- What it covers: priorities over perfection, boundary-setting, letting go of guilt around unmet obligations
- Feel: Candid and energizing
- Our call: A blunt, self-narrated priorities guide that lands hardest for overcommitted women ready to hear direct advice in the author's own voice.
Between a client call and a school pickup, Romi Neustadt says she finally landed on the sentence that gives this audiobook its title: you can have everything you want, just not all of it on the same day. Neustadt is a working mother, entrepreneur, and speaker who built a following on candor rather than polish, and her second book expands on the direct, unfiltered voice that made her debut, Get Over Your Damn Self, a bestseller. This one narrows its focus specifically to priorities: how to choose what actually matters and stop apologizing for everything you decide to let go.
The Tenth School Request for Home-Baked Goods
The premise is simple on its face, pick your priorities instead of chasing every obligation at once, but Neustadt builds real structure around it rather than leaving the advice at the level of a motivational poster. She walks through concrete moves: recognizing your worth as a provider and partner, establishing boundaries that actually hold with coworkers and family, and, in one specific and relatable example, learning to say no to the tenth request from a kid's school for home-baked goods without spiraling into guilt about it.
Reviewer Holly Brewer makes an important distinction that separates this from a lot of adjacent self-help writing: it is clearly not just a "love letter" from the author, but a "step by step manual" for figuring out your own version of having it all. That framing matters, because a book built entirely around one person's specific hustle can alienate listeners whose circumstances look nothing like the author's; Neustadt's emphasis on process over her own résumé keeps the advice more portable.
Reframing a Decade-Old Debate Around Sequencing
This book joins a long-running public conversation about whether women can genuinely have it all, one that stretches back at least to Anne-Marie Slaughter's widely discussed 2012 essay questioning that very premise and runs through Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In a year later. Neustadt's contribution sidesteps the yes-or-no framing those earlier works got pulled into, arguing instead that the real fix is sequencing, not sacrifice, which reframes a decade-old debate in more actionable terms.
The title's profanity is a deliberate register choice, not incidental flavor. Plenty of career and boundary-setting books soften their language to sound universally palatable; Neustadt's decision to keep the damn in the title signals upfront that this will read like a blunt friend's advice rather than a polished corporate keynote, and the book's actual content follows through on that promise consistently.
Priorities, Babe Lands Harder in a Vocal Register
Neustadt narrates her own book, and for a speaker and coach whose career runs on live audiences, that choice pays off directly. Her delivery carries the cadence of someone used to holding a room, which suits material built on direct address and blunt language rather than academic hedging. When the book tells you to kick fear of not being lovable or good enough to the curb, hearing Neustadt say it herself lands with more conviction than a hired narrator reading the same line cold.
Reviewer E. Martin describes smiling through the entire listen, not because the material is played for laughs but because Neustadt's specific insight into what overcommitted women actually feel kept landing. That is a strong endorsement for the audio format specifically: a book this conversational, built on direct-address advice and personal anecdote, benefits from hearing the author's actual voice carry her own conviction rather than a narrator's interpretation of it.
One specific line is worth close reading: the book promises to help readers stop feeling like an impostor in their own life, not just at work, which is a meaningfully broader claim than the usual career-focused impostor syndrome discourse. Most professional-development books confine that anxiety to boardrooms and performance reviews; Neustadt extends it to parenting, marriage, and friendship too, which matches the book's overall refusal to treat career and home life as separate problem sets.
Priorities, babe is the phrase Neustadt uses to sum up her entire philosophy, and hearing her say it herself matters more than reading it on a page. It carries a specific tone, warm but no-nonsense, closer to advice from a friend who has clearly done the work than a coach reciting a slogan, and that particular vocal register is exactly what a hired narrator reading someone else's catchphrase would struggle to replicate with the same easy confidence.
Her Own Bio as Proof of the Thesis
The title's irreverence is not just marketing flavor; it sets the book's actual register. This is blunt, occasionally profane, no-nonsense coaching rather than a research-driven or academically footnoted approach, and listeners who prefer their self-help grounded in studies and citations may find Neustadt's personal-experience-first style thinner on external evidence than they want, even as it stays consistently practical and specific.
This is technically Neustadt's second book, following Get Over Your Damn Self, but nothing here requires familiarity with the first title. The two share a voice and a general life-coaching philosophy, and listeners who enjoyed the earlier book will recognize the same energy immediately, while newcomers can start here without feeling like they walked into the middle of an ongoing conversation.
Neustadt's own bio, mom of two, wife, daughter, entrepreneur, speaker, coach, functions as a quiet demonstration of her own thesis. She did not build all of those identities simultaneously at full intensity; the book's framing suggests she developed them in sequence and shifting priority, which is a more honest and more useful model than the simultaneous-superwoman image the phrase having it all usually conjures.
The book's central move is worth stating plainly: it never asks readers to downsize their ambitions, only to embrace them more fully while discarding whatever isn't actually serving them. That distinction separates it from the more common self-help instinct to counsel smaller dreams as the realistic fix for burnout, and it is arguably the most useful reframe the book offers.
Neustadt's Brisk, Repeatable Advice for Commutes
Overcommitted professionals, especially working mothers and women building a business alongside family responsibilities, are the clearest audience, particularly anyone who already senses that the problem is not ambition but sequencing. The six-and-a-half-hour runtime suits a few focused commutes rather than demanding a long-term reading commitment.
That brisk pace across so much practical ground, priorities, boundaries, toxic relationships, habit formation, fear, suggests Neustadt favors direct, repeatable takeaways over extended case studies rather than padding chapters with academic throat-clearing. Listeners who want a fast, actionable listen rather than a slow-building argument will likely find that approach a genuine asset rather than a shortcoming.
Skip it if you are looking for a data-heavy, research-cited approach to career strategy, or if blunt language and casual profanity in nonfiction narration is not your preference. Neustadt's style is personal and direct by design, and listeners wanting a more clinical tone should look elsewhere.
Do I need to listen to Romi Neustadt's first audiobook before this one?
No. This audiobook stands on its own, though it shares the same voice and philosophy as her debut, Get Over Your Damn Self.
Does Romi Neustadt narrate this audiobook herself?
Yes, she reads the entire book, which suits her background as a professional speaker and coach.
Is this audiobook only useful for entrepreneurs?
No, the advice targets any woman juggling multiple roles, including employees, parents, and caregivers, not exclusively business owners.
How long is this audiobook?
It runs six hours and forty-two minutes, short enough for a handful of commutes.
