Startup Parent

#209 — Innovator Avni Patel Thompson is the founder and CEO of Modern Village, a family tool-building company that creates offerings like Milo, “the world's first app built to tackle the invisible load of running and raising a family.” 

For Avni, running a startup is like conducting the science experiments she did to obtain her undergraduate degree in chemistry: it’s all about the margin of error. 

On Episode #209, Avni shares the familiar tale of how her career changed when she had children and why being a mom has inspired her — sometimes obsessively so — to build businesses to make parents’ lives easier. 

Tune in to this episode to hear Avni describe how she bounced back after closing Poppy in 2019, how she plans to continue helping families, and her thoughts on assembling her own village to assist with the mammoth task of raising kids. 

#208 — "Real self care is a verb. It's not a noun," Dr. Pooja Lakshmin tells host Sarah K Peck in this week’s enlightening episode of Startup Parent.

As women, we're taught that our value lies in being perfect, selfless mothers. But what if there's more to motherhood than martyrdom?

In this episode, Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, founder of Gemma, and Sarah K Peck discuss how to redefine motherhood, overcome mom guilt and prioritize self-care. They explore the intersection of mental health and gender, and how the language of individualism can exonerate poorly designed systems. They also delve into the importance of creating safe spaces for women to have conversations about motherhood. Pooja describes how Gemma is providing a platform for women to redefine wellness and challenge systems of oppression.

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin is Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the George Washington University School of Medicine and a psychiatrist specializing in women's mental health. As the founder of Gemma, a digital community focused on women's mental health and equity, she has spent thousands of hours taking care of women who are struggling with burnout, despair, depression, and anxiety. Dr. Lakshmin is a contributor to The New York Times and her work focuses on the intersection of mental health and gender. She is also the author of Real Self-Care: A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness (Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble Baths Not Included), which aims to redefine self-care in a way that prioritizes asking ourselves different questions.

Disclaimer:

This episode includes discussions of suicide and suicidal ideation. While we believe it is important to have open and honest conversations about mental health, we also understand that these discussions can be triggering for some listeners.

If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available. In the US, the number 988 is the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7 in English and Spanish.

Si hablas español, llama a 1-888-628-9454. Lifeline ofrece 24/7, gratuitos servicios en español.

#207 – "Being able to see how people operate in their mind and body during a crisis is really important because you get to see how they are coping and then you can offer support and help them work through it," says Michelle Stephens in this powerful conversation with Sarah K Peck.

Have you ever found yourself mentally falling down the side of a mountain, unable to climb back up?

In this emotionally raw episode of the Startup Parent Podcast, host Sarah K. Peck and Dr. Michelle Stephens delve into the dark and difficult topic of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. With vulnerability and empathy, they share personal experiences of sliding down that slippery slope and the importance of seeking help to get back on track.

The conversation also touches on the inadequate resources available for those struggling with mental health issues. They discuss the importance of acknowledging and validating mental health struggles, the challenges of being a parent while dealing with depression, and the value of seeking therapy as a way to cope with life's difficulties. Listen in as they explore these topics with vulnerability, insight, and compassion.

Michelle was inspired to pursue pediatrics when her brother passed away from a congenital heart defect when she was seven. She is a certified pediatric nurse practitioner. Michelle pursued her PhD at UCSF, where she researched early childhood stress physiology and its connection to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and lifetime health. She realized that the single most effective antidote to childhood stress is for children to have intimate relationships with their caregivers, which led her to co-found Oath Care, a community-based healthcare company that supports new parents and families.

#206 – Dr. Michelle Stephens Michelle (she/her/hers) is clinician, scientist, and entrepreneur who is passionate about mitigating ACEs. She has a PhD in early childhood stress physiology from the University of California, San Francisco. She is the co-founder of Oath Care, a company that provides community-based healthcare to support new parents and reduce childhood stress.

"When kids experience stress and it's not buffered by a caring adult, the adult and themselves put themselves on a worse health trajectory,” says Dr. Michelle Stephens. “...They're even multiple times more likely to die earlier, like, ten to 20 years earlier."

What if the experiences we have as children shape our health outcomes later in life? Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) have been linked to a range of negative health outcomes, from chronic diseases to mental health issues.

In this episode of the Startup Parent podcast, host Sarah K Peck talks to Dr. Michelle Stephens, co-founder of Oath Care, a community-based healthcare platform that aims to support parents during the critical time of early childhood. Michelle discusses how her experience as a clinician led her to create Oath Care, and how her team is working to address the impact of ACEs on the health of parents and children.

Through a combination of virtual support and in-person care, Michelle believes that Oath Care can help families build resilience and improve health outcomes. Whether you're a parent, a clinician, or someone interested in the intersection of health and technology, this episode offers a fascinating look at the potential of community-based healthcare to transform the way we approach health and wellness.

Dr. Michelle Stephens is a clinician, scientist, and entrepreneur who is passionate about mitigating ACEs. She is a certified pediatric nurse practitioner and earned her PhD in early childhood stress physiology from the University of California, San Francisco. Michelle co-founded Oathcare, a company that provides community-based healthcare to support new parents and reduce childhood stress. Her research has shown that intimate relationships with caregivers are the single most well-understood antidote to childhood stress. Through her work, Michelle is on a mission to change the healthcare system to better support maternal and child health.

#204 — Marisa Renee Lee is the author of Grief is Love: Living with Loss, a book that guides readers through the pain of loss and offers a unique perspective on what healing truly means. A former appointee in the Obama White House, Marisa has served in various leadership roles, including Deputy Director of Private Sector Engagement and Senior Advisor on the Domestic Policy Council.

She is also the CEO of Beacon Advisors, a social impact consulting firm, and the founder of the Pink Agenda, a national organization dedicated to raising money for breast cancer research and awareness. With her expertise in grief and loss, Marisa is a sought-after speaker and contributor to various media outlets, including Glamour, Vogue, MSNBC, and The Atlantic. She lives with her husband, son, and dog in the United States.

SHOW NOTES

#199 — Women have fought for equality in the workplace for a long time. From equal rights to equal pay, equality in the public sphere is a vocal conversation.

But what about our not-so-public lives? What about equal partnership in our lives at home?

For many women, there is nothing as maddening as coming home and realizing that there is the second shift and an incredible amount of work that disproportionately falls on your shoulders. For women across the country, this includes the domestic labor of the home, caring for children and all of the maintenance required from invisible labor to mental load. Some would call this emotional labor to the organizational and the logistical work. Well, it’s enough to drive people crazy, or to divorce.

The hardest part is that once children enter the picture, people who believe that they are in equal partnerships often find that women are still the ones that take on the burden of domestic work. 

One of the hardest parts is that fathers will take on a lot more work than their fathers did — up to 35% of the domestic load. Because their workload has increased so dramatically, it's infuriating to be told that you're not doing enough. Yet the data show that women take on 65% of the domestic load in even the best partnerships. And often, when women get divorced, they are happier post-divorce than men.

On this episode, originally aired in 2019, we invited Darcy Lockman on the show to talk about the unequal load at home. Darcy is a former journalist turned clinical psychologist and the author of a book called All The Rage: Men, Women and the Myth of Equal Partnership. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Psychology Today and Rolling Stone, among others. She lives with her husband and children in Queens. 

She joins us to talk about where the breakdown in equal partnership is most apparent, and why parenting tends to throw a wrench in most couples’ plans for equality.

#199 — When we get pregnant, everybody talks about the baby. But what about the mother?

Becoming a mother—even thinking about becoming one—involves complex feelings and emotions. But the “Bliss Myth” idea says that we should feel one note about becoming a parent, and that note is happiness and joy.

If we don’t feel joy, and we don’t love motherhood, then are you a bad mom?

No! It’s totally normal to feel a huge range of feelings, including ambivalence, anger, regret, disappointment, love, tenderness, exhaustion, frustration, and more. Having feelings, especially multiple conflicting feelings, doesn’t make you a bad mom: it makes you a human being, like the rest of us.

Alexandra Sacks, MD is a reproductive psychiatrist who popularized the concept of matrescence, or the period of transition surrounding becoming a mother. Her 2018 TED Talk reached 1.5 million views worldwide, and she wrote a New York Times article called The Birth Of A Mother that was the number one most read piece of 2017 for the Well Family Section.

The truth is more complicated, and Dr. Sacks says a huge range of feelings about motherhood is all totally normal. Things like panicking when you find out that you’re pregnant, or feeling ambivalent at first when you see your newborn, or having new feelings about your partner or your own parents are all absolutely reasonable feelings to have during your pregnancy and parenting journeys.

In this episode, we talk to one of America’s top reproductive psychiatrists about the range of emotions and feelings that come with motherhood, and why matrescence is totally natural and normal.

In this episode we talk about:

• Matrescence as an extended phase of all women’s lives, including women who choose not to have children or who experience infertility, and Dr. Sacks focused work on the period of pregnancy and the first year of motherhood.
• The Bliss Myth and other honest stories we’re missing about motherhood.
• The harmful trope of the “bad mother” as the cornerstone of evil characters in myth and popular culture.
• The idea of the “Good Enough Mother” as permission and guiding light for mother’s overwhelmed by messages of perfection; that we should aim for not superhuman perfection but providing a safe, stable, loving childhood.
• How being a “perfect” mother can actually harm our children in the long term, leading to decreased resiliency, slowing the learning process, and interfering with children’s ability to grow and achieve independence.

#198 — Lily Nichols is a Registered Dietician and Nutritionist, a Certified Diabetes Educator, and the author of two best-selling books on pregnancy nutrition. Her first bestseller, Real Food for Gestational Diabetes, has helped tens of thousands of women manage the condition, and went on to influence nutrition policies internationally. Lily’s next book, Real Food for Pregnancy, became #1 in the Pregnancy and Childbirth category on Amazon.

The problem with conventional policy and food guidelines for pregnant women can be summed up like this: the current recommendations for prenatal nutrition were estimates based on men’s bodies, not women’s. Early nutrition recommendations were adjusted mathematically for a smaller frame—and then modified again to account for fetal growth.

This is… not great.

In this interview (originally aired in 2018), Lily shares how she put these books together: she reviewed 934 studies on food and health, as well as her successful pilot programs that helped people cut gestational diabetes by half.

Plus, we talk about the entrepreneurial path Lily took in her own life, how she figured out a “pieced together” childcare plan while writing her books, and why she decided to become an entrepreneur.

This interview originally aired in April 2018.

#197 — Never drink coffee! Don’t have sushi! And cats are dangerous!

Getting pregnant means entering into a world of advice and fear about all the things that could potentially go wrong.

But what does the data say? Are these “pregnancy rules” based on truth or myth?

When economist Emily Oster got pregnant, she also got curious about the advice she was getting. Some recommendations were based on her age alone, and sometimes she found it difficult to get any answers at all. So, she started digging into the data.

#196 — What do you really know about your menstrual cycle—and where did that information come from?

Young girls and women are often taught about menstrual cycles in relationship to two things: periods and pregnancy.

That is, don't get pregnant! And also, periods are gross. 

This is such limited and almost useless information that doesn't support overall health and wellbeing. Plus, pills are often prescribed as a blanket solution to fix irregular cycles, alter heavy periods, or manage symptoms. 

Then, many women are flummoxed when they come off the pill after years or decades of use to find the old problems return immediately. The symptoms are only hidden by the regulating power of the pill, not resolved.

In this episode, we look back at our conversation from Episode #108 with Lisa Hendrickson-Jack where we talk about fertility, menstruation, and the vital signs of our bodies.

Lisa is the author of The Fifth Vital Sign: Master Your Cycles & Optimize Your Fertility. She is a certified fertility awareness educator and a holistic reproductive health practitioner. She teaches women how to chart their menstrual cycles for natural birth control, for conception and for monitoring your overall health. Her book, The Fifth Vital Sign is all about why your cycle is one of your vital signs in your body if you are a woman and how it can play a powerful tool in diagnosing and healing our bodies.

In this episode we talk about: 

• Optimizing your fertility as the gateway to healing your body.
• Being a medical advocate for yourself: why it’s extremely difficult and also crucial to your long-term well-being. 
• The idea that in any examining room there are two experts: the doctor, who is the expert in a field of medicine, and the patient, who is the expert in their body and their experience. 
• How a family history of painful periods, fibroids, and hysterectomies led her to seek out cycle charting from an early age.
• Lisa debunks the myth that regular ovulation is only important when you want children, because we need to recognize that the menstrual cycle is part of our entire biology and physiology. She presents an evidence-based approach to fertility awareness and menstrual cycle optimization. 
• How the body is seen as low—base, even!—and unpredictable. That means that men and women have been culturally conditioned not to experience life through our bodies. This becomes a bigger problem for birthing and postpartum women, who can experience the trauma of birth itself and then can compound that damage by feeling like they can’t or shouldn’t listen to their bodies reaction to trauma in the wake of birth. 

By only revisiting our cycles when we decide to try to conceive, we miss out on the opportunity to come into deep understanding with our bodies and to heal ourselves rather than mask symptoms. Today, we get to talk to Lisa Hendrickson-Jack about how in taking the time to chart, learn about and understand our cycles, we can not only optimize our fertility but gain crucial information about our bodies. Join us as we talk about the menstrual cycle, fertility, and the opportunities we all have to learn more about our bodies simply by paying closer attention to them.

#184 — Growing up, James Breakwell never had to think about what jobs he wasn’t allowed to pursue. That changed when he had kids.

As the father of four girls — one of whom recently said she wants to be a construction worker, and another who asked if she could be the Pope — he’s had to put himself in the shoes of the females surrounding him at home.

#183 — Creative dynamo Amber Anderson is the founder of Tote & Pears, a branding and marketing agency with a female focus. For her, becoming an entrepreneur was about more than the business. It was about creating possibilities for her family, establishing a set of core values for her family, and aligning her business values and family needs holistically.

We first interviewed Amber on Episode #029 all about the birth of her son and her business. We invite her back to talk about what marketing to women looks like, how brands and agencies can better understand their target audience, and how to build a business that works for you and your family.

Tune in to this episode to hear returning guest Amber describe how she aligns family values with work values, the rebranding of her marketing to become female-focused, and why she is committed to keeping work and home life intertwined (while keeping her work weeks around 40-50 hours).

#182 — How badly is this year, this pandemic, messing up our kids and us, as parents? Dr Courtney Bolton has a PhD in counseling clinical and school psychology, and she is a parenting coach focused on evidence-based strategies for the development of kids. She's a mom of four and she helps parents make contextual, intentional parenting decisions that work for them and their families. I asked her to join me to talk about parenting, stress, and the pandemic.

In this episode, we talk about: 

• How to help little ones manage their emotional and mental understanding of all that's changed — and specific tools for how to talk to our kids across age groups.
• How to help parents deal with all of the stress and life changes that are happening.
• Stress strategies for dealing with the coming months and not calling it "new normal" but really naming what it is and what's happening.
• The grief and loss that's happening in so many different ways in our homes, including the loss of income, work, career, meaning, purpose, and time.
• How to talk to kids about loss and grief.
• The 6 P's framework she has for recentering and adjusting as a parent.

Also, because we're in a pandemic, you'll hear our kids in the background, and we have to move offices to make this interview work. This was recorded at the end of last summer, but like the music, better late than never.

#181 - Welcome back to co-host Cary Fortin! We're back for another friendship episode, where Sarah and Cary talk about business design, parenting stress, and dealing with the pandemic. In this episode, we take you behind the scenes of The Wise Women's Council and the Class of 2021, and the ways that we think about community design and creating strong containers for personal growth.

If you haven't heard the story of how the Wise Women's Council started, listen in as Sarah describes what it took to create a program while pregnant with her second kiddo (and with a toddler at home). Business as usual wouldn't work, so she thought differently about what a mastermind community might look like, and how to bring a network of teachers in so that she could run a program while also taking leave in the middle of her own program.

In this episode:

• How too much ego can get you into trouble if you design a business where you (and your personality) has to be at the center of the business.
• How we are scaling the Wise Women's Council and what it looks like to grow a program and a community while maintaining intimacy.
• The container and the structure set-up, and the work it takes, to create truly intimate and honest conversational space.
• What many business owners miss when trying to create strong communities.
• Some of the lessons learned from running masterminds, retreats, and events for over a decade, and how to create a great program and experience.

This episode is a casual conversation with lots of sideways chatter and banter between long-term friends Cary and Sarah. We also have episodes with guest experts and speakers, but this one includes everything that friends talk about (including adult language), so listen with headphones if you have kids around.

#180 — We are not the same as before. What we went through last year, and what we are still going through, is beyond comprehension and imagination. Many are still trying to survive, out of work, and picking up the pieces from last year. Many are grieving deeply and some of us don't have a clear roadmap for grief or recovery.

It's been so long since I've been able to sit down and put together a real podcast that I almost feel like I've forgotten how to do it. I invited Cary Fortin to join me as we talk about what the last year has been like and how we're finding our footing again. Cary was my guest co-host from the original Friendship Series (Episodes 81 through 86 for longtime listeners), is a dear friend, and has been my go-to pandemic buddy as we talk (and rage, and vent) about the events of the last year. She joined today to help me talk through some of what we've been through in the last year.

#177 — Dr Shani Cooper is a Naval Veteran, Licensed Acupuncturist and Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, who began studying the human body in 2010. She is also the parent to Sage, an eight-month old who arrived in the world bright and early, two months before his estimated arrival window!

Shani joined us last year in The Wise Women's Council when she was pregnant with her little one, who you will hear and enjoy in the background of this recording. I asked her if she'd join us to talk about what WWC was like for her navigating pregnancy, childbirth, and growing in-person business practice, and a pandemic.

#176 — What's it like to run a team of 40 people, in a pandemic, with a 1-year-old, and get pregnant with your second kid? Jess Kamada, VP of Client Services at Bamboo, a top growth marketing firm based in Seattle, joined me for a special episode to talk about how she managed the pandemic and the last year.

Jess joined us in the 2020 Wise Women's Council, and I asked her if she would be open to sharing her story and experience on the podcast, and share some insights into what it's like to be in the Wise Women's Council, why she chose the Group Coaching level, and what she got out of the experience.

#174 — The other day, I was reading an article on Time Magazine that I couldn't stop reading. Dr. Kyl Myers, an author, had written a long-form piece about gender, sex and parenting. Dr. Kyl Myers holds a PhD in sociology and studies and speaks about gender. They are an award-winning educator and a globally recognized advocate for gender creative parenting. Since 2016, Kyl has been speaking and writing about gender creative parenting and using their own parenting story to help the world learn about and embrace a new type of childhood. Kyl Myers goes by "she" and "her" pronouns, as well as "they" and "them." Dr. Myers is the author of Raising Them: Our Adventure In Gender Creative Parenting.

If you'd like to hear a fascinating conversation about parenting, gender, and what we can do as parents to help reduce gender violence, oppression against women and men, and create a more playful world, come join us on this episode of the podcast.

#173 — Why is default motherhood so white in our cultural storytelling? In America, the word "mother" is nearly always describing white motherhood. That's what Nefertiti Austin, a single African American woman, discovered when she decided she wanted to adopt a Black baby boy out of the foster care system. Eager to finally join the motherhood ranks, Nefertiti was shocked when people started asking her why she wanted to adopt a "crack baby" or told her that she would never be able to raise a Black son on her own.

She realized that American society saw motherhood through a white lens, and that there would be no easy understanding or acceptance of the kind of family she hoped to build. She is the author of Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America, which went on to become an Amazon bestseller.

Nefertiti Austin joins us on the show to talk about motherhood, race, adoption, and the white lens that is applied to motherhood stories in America, and more broadly, in Western cultures today. We talk about being a single mom and her journey from being a law student to becoming a fiction writer to today, her career in nonfiction writing and publishing. We dig into the mistruths around what's told about being a single mom, adoption, and blackness.

#172 — There's a coaching tool that I really love, that is an important concept to know and practice throughout your work and life. It's called "areas of control," and I'll share how to think about it in your life, relationships, and with regards to real-world events. From there, I want to give you one of my favorite practices—something to look forward to.

#171 —  Lions + Tigers Panel Replay. School is back in session, and parents everywhere are fatigued, overwhelmed, and still in the lurch. Workplaces are less and less forgiving, and yet the problems created by the pandemic are still here. What's a working parent to do?

Last week, Lions + Tigers, spearheaded by Brea Starmer, gathered a panel to talk about specific steps parents can take to strategically plan ahead for the last quarter of the year, what to do to advocate for yourself as a working parent, the option parents have with schools and how you can think about creating a 'micro school' to get childcare set up in areas where remote schools aren't feasible, and how to navigate and set up your workplaces to be more compatible with the working parents in your organization.

I was lucky enough to be able to host this panel, so I got to interview some talented experts all about all of these questions. Joining me on the panel were Shauna Causey of Weekdays, Blessing Adesiyan of Mother Honestly, and Brea Starmer of Lions + Tigers.

#169 — In some mythical fantasy, we tell women that they can have it all and be it all if only they just work hard enough. Yes, you too can be a perfect mother, a lovely wife, and have a full-time career if only you just have the right productivity strategies, tools, and mindsets. Don't forget about self-care!

Tiffany Dufu is here to burst the bubble of stressed-out mothers everywhere to talk about the reality of being a working parent. The author of "Drop The Ball," Tiffany's life and work is focused on leadership for women and girls. She's been named to Fast Company's League of Extraordinary Women, serves on the board for Girls Who Code, and is now the founder of TheCru, a networking and peer-to-peer group creator for people who need a cru.

This interview was first recorded in 2017, but her message to ladies everywhere is more relevant than ever. It's time to drop the ball and really, really lower our expectations. Don't do the things that don't matter. I'll share a personal story: We didn't dress our kiddos in real clothes this whole summer. We just went with pajamas straight from day to night.

#168 — 40% of American households believe that it is bad for society if mothers work. That mothers should not work. This is wild. Sexism is a global phenomenon, but in America, we have a unique maternal bias against women in the workforce, and as we watch the pandemic unfold, women are losing jobs at extraordinary rates.

In 2017, we had Sarah Lacy, founder of Chairman Mom, previously the founder of Pando Daily and a journalist in tech, talk about her journey from thinking sexism was not really a thing to fierce feminist. Today, we're revisiting that conversation and taking a listen to how the world of work is extremely biased against women, especially mothers, and how many ways we've made the world of work (and parenting) harder on women. We're going to dig into why the patriarchy—aka men, especially white men at the mantle of an unequal power structure—is so bad, and why it's not okay to set up a system where some people live at the expense of other people's lives and rights. That's not okay. Join me as I go back and take a listen to this powerful episode.

This episode is brought to you by Nanit, the only baby monitor you need.

#167 — The advice around pregnancy and food is intense. Suddenly there are so many things to do and so much you need to pay attention to. Luckily we have Lily Nichols, prenatal nutritionist, registered dietician, and bestselling author of Real Food For Pregnancy to talk to us about what matters, and how to eat as healthy as possible for you and your kiddo. In this episode, she goes over how backward most prenatal nutrition advice really is (did you know that most dietary recommendations for females are just guesses based on male bodies?). She dug through 934 research studies to find what really matters to your metabolism and your health. Dig in, eat real food, and enjoy this episode with Lily Nichols.

This episode was originally published in 2018, but we're re-broadcasting it because it's been one of our best-ever episodes, downloaded more than almost any other. Enjoy!

This episode is brought to you by Splendid Spoon, a meal delivery service that creates whole, healthy, plant-based soups and smoothies.

#166 — If you can be a parent, you can be an entrepreneur. We're back with our 2020 podcast tour looking at some of our all-time favorite episodes. If you missed it, this interview with Nicole Walters digs into all things money, growth, celebration, and entrepreneurship. She shares her overnight parenting journey (she adopted three kids all at once), her entrepreneurship path, and her secrets for getting rich and making your coin.

This episode is brought to you by Nanit, the only baby monitor you need.

#165 — Parenting is a 24/7 job, but we've found most employers treat it more like an extracurricular activity. 

#163 — What do you wish someone had told you about motherhood and being a CEO? Shama Hyder is a digital strategist, speaker, and bestselling author. She is the CEO of Zen Media, a global marketing and digital PR firm. She also has a 1-year old at home.

She gives us an honest accounting of how much work motherhood takes, and how many people it takes to run her business and her team while at the helm of a 30-person award-winning digital strategy organization while also having a one-year old at home.

She has been named the “Zen Master of Marketing” by Entrepreneur Magazine and the “Millennial Master of the Universe” by Fast Company. Shama has also been honored at both the White House and The United Nations as one of the top 100 young entrepreneurs in the country.

As the CEO of Zen Media, she and her team help both B2B and B2C brands to make meaningful connections with the modern-day customer via influencer marketing, experiential and digital storytelling — and then turning those into bottom line results.

In this conversation, we talk about how she got her start in business at the rise of social media. At that time major companies weren't paying attention—so she started her own company focused on the power of moments in galvanizing media attention.

She also tells us honestly about her experience of motherhood and parenting, including:

• How it took a while for her to really fall in love with her kiddo and get to know them—it wasn't an instantaneous jolt, like she thought it would be.
• She's always been a night owl, working late and sleeping in late. Children? They get up early. After a few months with her newborn, she and her husband decided to figure out a way to make it so that they could still do do the night work they prefer. Today, they have a nanny who comes in at 7am and they (the parents) sleep in until 11am most days and work late, keeping their night owl schedules.
• Her plans for maternity leave, what she expected to do, what actually happened, and why there were differences.
• How she thinks about social media and content creation, and how she batches and repurposes things to get the most leverage for her online work.

#162 — When coronavirus first happened, many of us were adjusting to figuring out the shut down. How long would it last? Would this just be a week or two? What were the next steps? Then a month passed, then another month, and we realized we might be settling in for the long haul here. For some people, that meant adjusting to work-from home; for others, they were essential workers very much in the day-to-day work of fighting the virus.

For many of you reading this blog and listening to the podcast, you have also been trying to figure out your birth plans. How do you give birth in a pandemic? What do you plan for, when everything keeps changing?

It seems that every week, the guidelines are changing. The stress on birthing mothers and parents is unparalleled. So many of you are figuring all of this out in real time, and I know it's nothing like what you'd hoped for or planned for. Many of you are also wondering if now is still a good time to get pregnant and whether your family plans still make sense. All of us are still asking: what will this year bring?

All of this reminded me of a friend of mine, whose story I heard about last year. She went through a challenging birth situation that in some ways, parallels what people are going through now. No, she didn't give birth in a pandemic—but she did have her family get the flu the week before her due  and she had to be quarantined from her mother, her husband, and her little son and figure out how to give birth without the two people she wanted to be in the room with her. Today we get to meet Megan Hale and hear her story.

For full show notes, episode sponsors, and quotes: 

#161 — A few weeks ago, Tara McMullin invited me onto her podcast to talk at length about mastermind programs—how we run them, how the pricing breaks down for each tier, how they're organized, how many people are in them, and more.

This episode is a very detailed, behind-the-scenes look at both of our online programs and how we've designed our mastermind communities.

You all have been asking to hear how other moms and small business owners are navigating the pandemic right now. I’ve been interviewing working parents about how they’ve been affected by the pandemic. Today we take a look at Kelsey Kerslake, the founder of Pinegate Road. She runs a design agency as well as a coaching business, and has a young kiddo at home. Her husband is an essential worker, so she hasn't had a minute of childcare or backup help throughout all of this.

A year ago, Kelsey became a mom for the first time. Today, we talk about her experience getting pregnant, the challenges with IVF, dealing with postpartum depression, getting support as a new parent, and finding her rhythm as a business owner who adores working and loves her job. Then, we dive into how the pandemic has shifted her work schedule and what's changed—and how she's dealing with it all.

• The signs and clues of postpartum depression, and how she and her doctor talked about recovery.
• How she wished she'd prepared for motherhood and the postpartum period, knowing what she knows now.
• The breath work practice she learned before having kids, and how she leaned on the breath and bodywork to help with some of the most intense experiences of early motherhood.
• What a day in the life of the business looked like pre-pandemic, and how she's shifted her schedule and work around now that her time is extremely limited.
• How long it took to build the business, how much money she started with, and what the financial picture looks like today.

#158 — You all have been asking to hear how other moms and small business owners are navigating the pandemic right now. I've been interviewing working parents about how they've been affected by the pandemic. Today we take a look at Caitlin Boland Aarab: she and her husband are both attorneys, and they own their own law firm in Great Falls, Montana. They have two kids at home and she's pregnant with their third kid. When everything shut down, the kids were sent home from school—but the courts weren't closed. Work was still in session.

#157 — My friend has an almost-two-year old and she asked me "So when do I need to think about potty training?" Yeah, as though you needed anything else to consider in the pandemic. Well, I took a few minutes to brain dump everything I remembered about potty training in a quick dash Voxer message to her, all while doing dishes and cleaning up the boys' room in our house. We both thought that these might be useful memos for you, especially if you happen to be in a similar situation.

Consider this an unofficial, scrappy overview of Potty Training that will help you do a good enough job ... for now. The best thing I can recommend is to read the "Oh, Crap" Potty Training book (it was relatively painless to read and well organized and laid out) and then take it slower than anyone else says it should take because it's really all about your kid and getting to know them and their potty (and learning) styles. My favorite part about the potty training experience was that you really have a chance to get to know your kid and understand how they learn and process. But it's tough! 

Here's what I learned and what I remember about potty training.

#156 — How do you push the reset button—that ability to feel like you've had a fresh cup of coffee, a good night of sleep, and you're ready to go at work? While we're all clawing at sanity and sobbing quietly into our fourteenth cup of coffee, it's really hard to find the capacity to work and keep your head above water right now.

Today's episode is for anyone trying to find a semblance of sanity amidst all of this. If you're stuck, feeling overwhelmed, feeling like you're in a rut—here are a few things that are working for me. Hope they are helpful.

#153 — "Wake up everyone, it's a brand new day!" Today my children join me on this episode of the podcast to give you a snapshot of life in New York City quarantine with two working parents.

Want to know how we're breaking down our workdays and figuring out our schedules? I break down the exact schedules I'm using with my partner, who works when (and why), and how much work we're really able to get done. (Hint: not a ton.)

Also, I'll share my thoughts on equality in partnerships, why specificity is so important, and why my business is able to handle seasonal fluctuations right now, which is keeping us afloat.

#152 — I don't know about you, but I'm finding it mighty hard to even get started in the morning. I know these last episodes have all been about finding patterns and rituals amidst the madness, and it's for a reason—finding my new normal (or a sense of it) is all I feel like I can do right now.

Lately the strangest thing has been happening: I'm finding myself drawn towards social media, and wanting to connect more. So every morning, I've been sharing a small snippet of my morning routine on my Facebook page, and it's turned into my virtual coffee shop. Listen in for how it all works, and why it's helping me so much right now.

SHOW NOTES: 

#151 — Making sense of days that make no sense requires new patterns, habits, and routines. For me, trying to muddle through the cacophony of work and children and non-stop days at home is very, very challenging to my brain. So, to help, I’ve been building small rituals into the day to start to cue myself that yes, work is happening now, and yes, it’s a new day.

Some of my favorite “cues” are things that happen every day at the same time, that have a sensory component to them, and that remind me of something familiar. For this reason, perfume, coffee, candles, and lipstick all help remind me that yes, I’m a human, and yes, I might be able to do a little bit of stuff today.

SHOW NOTES 

#150 — Every morning lately, I've been posting a selfie to my Facebook page and my Instagram page. Right now it feels like going to the coffee shop—I get to pop in, say good morning to people all around the world, check-in with my neighbors and parents and friends, and then start the day. In any other moment of my life, I would not have said that going on social media first thing would help me be more productive, but right now is not a normal time. So, from my quarantined home in New York City, I've found a new way to say hello to people in the morning, and it's making my day so much better.

#149 — As we all adjust to the uncertainty and sudden shifts of what’s happening around the world with the global COVID-19 pandemic, I wanted to share a few small rituals that we’ve used in our household to find a moment of normalcy in our lives. Yes, most of our life is chaos, and much of it is very different than it was a few weeks ago. Also, one of the hardest parts of all of this is the not knowing: not knowing when things will change or what the next few weeks and months will bring.

In times of uncertainty, it's useful—and supportive—to create small moments of ritual and stability, both for ourselves and for the people around us. Here in New York City, my husband and I are leaning on a small ritual practice we usually do each night before bed. Right before we go to bed, we ask three questions:

1. What was the best part of your day?

2. What are you grateful for?

3. What are you looking forward to in our family?

In this episode, I share a few of the rituals we use and how it can serve as an anchor to help you make sense of an otherwise upside-down day. For all of you out there, consider creating small rituals that will help you get through your new normal. They don't have to be perfect, and they don't have to be forever.

Also, pick a couple of things that you have on your calendar to look forward to. Having a moment, an event, or a reason to stay positive and hopeful is also an excellent strategy. However—as I explain on the podcast—don't go too hog wild with it. Creating unreasonable expectations can set us up for disappointment, so, if you're a leader in your field, make sure to pick things to look forward to that you can be confident will come to pass. Leaders can do a disservice to the people around them by telling false stories about the future, but having something to anchor your hopes to, even if it’s small, can help boost morale during challenging times.

Whether it's for you, your family, or your company, create small rituals that help you get through your new normal. Pick a few things to look forward to, even if they are small—just make sure they are within your control and not subject to wild external forces. 

RESOURCES:

#148 — During times of stress, everyone responds differently. Some of us laugh, some of us go into denial, some of us get agitated, some of us panic, some of us get to work. If you’re feeling a bit all over the place, I want to talk about how stress affects each of us differently and why these reactions are coming up. As you start to see how we each respond to stress, you can also start to see how the weird ways your coworkers and partners are reacting might actually be a perfectly normal response… it’s just different than how you respond to stress.

This is another brief(ish) episode recorded from our studio in New York City during the March 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of this recording, my family and I are in self-isolation in New York City and we have not left the apartment in 14 days. It’s been interesting, to say the least! You will hear noises of my children in the background, and yes, there are times when I completely lose my train of thought. This is the new normal right now, and I’m right there alongside all of you.

If you’re feeling stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, fatigued, panicked, irritated, inspired, or like you need to crack inappropriate jokes, you’re not alone. Feelings are big right now and get magnified during times of stress. A few tips on dealing with feelings are:

• Listen to them and acknowledge them. Know that they don’t want to stay forever, they just want to be heard right now.
• Describe your feelings as physical symptoms—describe where they are in your body and what your body does with those feelings.
• Start a journaling practice—it can be so incredibly soothing and helpful for the mind.
• Try a body scan meditation.

Most of all, know that your feelings are a normal reaction to stress and that you don’t have to DO anything right now to get rid of them. You can simply feel them and seek to understand them.

RESOURCES: