Where to Start with Jen Sincero: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Jen Sincero — whether to begin with You Are a Badass or You Are a Badass at Making Money. A complete reading guide to the self-help author.
By Lena Fischer
Jen Sincero is the American self-help author and success coach whose You Are a Badass (2013) — self-published initially and then picked up by Running Press — became one of the most widely read self-help books of its decade through reader-driven recommendation, selling over five million copies without significant marketing spend. Sincero’s distinctive value in the crowded self-help genre is her voice: honest about her own failures and directionless years, funny in a way that most self-help books are not, and entirely free of the earnestness that makes many readers resistant to the genre.
Where to Start: You Are a Badass (2013)
The essential Sincero — and one of the most readable self-help books of its era. Sincero spent her thirties living in a converted garage, broke and confused, working as a guitar teacher and freelance writer while watching other people’s lives seem to move forward. At forty, she hired a coach and started doing the work she’d been avoiding. By forty-five she had transformed her financial situation, her relationships, and her daily experience.
You Are a Badass is the book she wishes she’d had at thirty. It covers the core obstacles: the subconscious beliefs formed in childhood that make self-sabotage automatic and invisible; the habit of seeking external approval rather than internal direction; the fear of failure that prevents starting; the way comfort masquerades as contentment. And it covers the practices that produce change: meditation and presence, gratitude, decisive action, trusting what you most want rather than what seems safe.
The writing is the book’s great advantage. Sincero is genuinely funny — the chapter titles alone are a relief from the portentous self-help register — and her willingness to be honest about her own years of underachievement makes the advice feel earned rather than prescriptive. The book assumes the reader is capable and intelligent and has simply not yet done the work.
You Are a Badass at Making Money (2017)
The financial-focused follow-up — same voice, same approach, applied specifically to money beliefs, financial shame, and the mindset shifts required for deliberate wealth-building. For readers who want to apply the Badass framework to their financial situation specifically.
Why You Are a Badass Is the Ideal First Book
For a reader new to Jen Sincero, You Are a Badass is the ideal first book because it is her breakout work and the fullest expression of her distinctive voice, the irreverent, funny, and energizing approach to self-help and personal transformation. You Are a Badass offers encouragement and practical advice for building self-belief, overcoming self-doubt, and creating a life you love, all delivered in a brash, humorous, and motivating style that sets it apart from more earnest self-help. As an entry point, it offers the purest expression of Sincero’s appeal, the irreverent humor, the motivating energy, and the accessible, no-nonsense encouragement to stop holding yourself back and pursue the life you want. It welcomes the newcomer with its humor, its energy, and its encouraging message, making personal transformation feel approachable and even fun. It is her best-known book and the one that best represents her voice, so that the new reader encounters Sincero at her most characteristic. For the newcomer, then, You Are a Badass is the natural and ideal starting point.
What to Expect as a New Reader
As a new reader, you can expect You Are a Badass to be an irreverent, funny, and energizing self-help book, offering encouragement and practical advice for building self-belief and creating a life you love. You can expect an irreverent and humorous voice, for Sincero writes with a brash, funny, no-nonsense style that sets her apart from more earnest self-help and makes the book entertaining as well as motivating. You can expect encouragement and motivation, for the book aims to build your self-belief, help you overcome self-doubt and the ways you hold yourself back, and energize you to pursue the life you want. You can expect practical advice alongside the motivation, concrete suggestions for changing your mindset and your life. You can expect an accessible and energizing read that makes personal transformation feel approachable. Expect, in short, an irreverent, funny, and energizing self-help book that encourages self-belief and the pursuit of a life you love, a motivating and entertaining introduction to Sincero’s approach.
Going Deeper After Your First Book
Once You Are a Badass has introduced you to Sincero’s irreverent approach, the reader who wishes to go deeper can explore her other books, which extend her funny, energizing style to further dimensions of personal transformation, including the specific challenge of money and wealth. Her other work applies her brash, motivating voice and her encouragement to build self-belief to the subject of money, helping readers change their mindset around wealth, as well as to the broader project of personal growth. Reading these after You Are a Badass deepens your engagement with Sincero’s approach, the irreverent humor, the motivating energy, and the encouragement to overcome self-doubt and pursue the life you want. Her characteristic voice runs through her work, and the reader who has been energized by You Are a Badass will find the same approach in her other books. Building your reading journey through Sincero’s work is a matter of following her energizing, irreverent self-help from her breakout book into her further writing. The reader who begins with You Are a Badass and continues through her work will find a consistently funny and motivating guide to personal transformation.
Reading Jen Sincero
Begin with You Are a Badass — it is the foundational book and the right introduction to her voice. Read You Are a Badass at Making Money after if financial transformation is your specific focus. Both are standalone.
For the full Jen Sincero bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the Jen Sincero author page on Editors Reads.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Jen Sincero?
You Are a Badass (2013) is the essential starting point — Sincero's self-help book written from the position of someone who spent most of her adult life broke, directionless, and confused before transforming her circumstances through deliberate mindset work. The book is funny, direct, and entirely free of self-help jargon; it became a word-of-mouth bestseller and has sold over five million copies. You Are a Badass at Making Money is the natural follow-on, applying the same approach specifically to financial transformation.
What is You Are a Badass about?
You Are a Badass is Sincero's guide to overcoming self-sabotage and building a life you love — covering the psychological patterns that keep people stuck (limiting beliefs, fear of failure, seeking approval), the practices that produce change (meditation, gratitude, decisive action), and the mindset shifts that make transformation possible. The book is written in Sincero's distinctive voice: funny, profane, and personally honest about her own years of underachievement. It draws on principles from coaching, positive psychology, and the law of attraction.
What is You Are a Badass at Making Money about?
You Are a Badass at Making Money (2017) applies Sincero's mindset framework specifically to financial transformation — examining the limiting beliefs most people hold about money, the relationship between fear and financial underachievement, and the practical steps she used to move from living in a garage to earning significant income. More financially specific than the first book; covers charging what you're worth, overcoming money shame, and making the leap from financial stagnation to deliberate wealth-building.
Is Jen Sincero's approach scientifically grounded?
Sincero writes in the tradition of popular self-help and coaching rather than academic psychology; she draws on the law of attraction, positive thinking, and mindset literature without extensively citing research. Her strength is honest, funny, first-person storytelling that makes self-development principles accessible to readers who are put off by more earnest or academic treatments. Readers looking for research-backed behaviour change frameworks will find more rigour in books like Atomic Habits or The Power of Habit.
