#109 — Co-founders Elena Rue and Catherine Orr on being pregnant at the same time

The two co-founders were both already parents. They’d done the pregnancy thing before. Then they found out they both were pregnant again, and at the same time.

Elena Rue and Catherine Orr are co-founders of StoryMine Media, a company that creates documentary videos for mission-driven organizations. They’d been in business together for years, and were both already parents to young children. Yet they’d been able to balance being co-founders because one was always able to cover for the other one if a pregnancy came up.

This time, however, they were due within weeks of each other!

Both co-founders pregnant? Use it as a kick in the pants

Yet instead of panic and think that business was over, they decided to talk about how to go about planning for pregnancies as entrepreneurs in a different way. They decided to use their joint pregnancies as a kick in the pants to implement changes that they’d been wanting to make as a business for years.

The intersection of entrepreneurship and pregnancy is a place I’m fascinated with at Startup Pregnant, and every interview we do shares another story of how to tackle this life design challenge in new and interesting ways. How can we make business better because of pregnancy? What if we looked at our bodies slowing down or our need for rest not as a curse on business, but as a fascinating opportunity for renovation and re-design?

Not that we’re saying this is easy

None of us are saying that this is easy or wonderful to go through—change sometimes feels like it comes through with a sledgehammer—but it is, in some cases, an opportunity for growth and leveling up.

IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT:

• How to unroll your pregnancies and announce them strategically (and where the balance is between being authentic and also being strategic).
• Using pregnancy as a leverage point and changing project timelines, expectations, and deliverables accordingly.
• How to build a better team, and get better at building teams.
• Why they finally took advice they’d been hearing over and over again and actually implemented it (pregnancy was the thing that made them take the advice to heart, and take action).

Today you’ll get to hear not just from two pregnant women, but from three pregnant women, all in their third trimesters! Why? I recorded this interview back when I was also 38 weeks pregnant, so you’ll get to hear it all from all of us. Yes, we’ll tell it like it is. Listen in to this joint conversation as we talk about what to do when you find out your co-founder is pregnant at the same time as you.

FULL SHOW NOTES

Get the complete show notes with episode quotes, photos, and time stamps at http://www.startuppregnant.com/109.

LEARN MORE ABOUT STORYMINE MEDIA AND THE CO-FOUNDERS ELENA AND CATHERINE

StoryMine creates documentary videos for mission-driven organizations. They capture real stories and human moments, that connect people to a cause. The greatest thing you can do to serve a mission, grow awareness, and inspire action, is to find the real people, specific m