#127 — Should I stop podcasting? As we geared up for Fall, I felt the urge to stop this podcast for a while. To be honest, it scared me a little—I couldn’t stop, could I? So I asked the group of smart women in our online Startup Pregnant community group and got a ton of wonderful feedback. You all helped me think about this process and what felt like a hard decision from so many new angles.  In this episode, I share some real talk, behind-the-scenes of what it takes to be a content creator, why I feel like the podcast is blocking other work that I want to make, and just how hard it is to build a business as a working parent sometimes. Honestly? I just want more time! But in lieu of that, I had to step back and make some hard decisions. Listen in to hear where the podcast is going next. FULL SHOW NOTES Get the complete show notes with episode quotes, photos, and time stamps at http://www.startuppregnant.com/127.

Every week, I get questions from listeners about business, life, parenting—and more. And I want to answer them! From building a company vision to dealing with burnout to negotiations in your partnership, I’m willing to go there and share everything I know. So, we are experimenting and trying something new here at Startup Pregnant. We're starting a private monthly podcast, a fireside chat session between me and you. From time to time I'll bring on guest experts to help answer the questions, and you'll get to listen in to all of the challenges people bring our way. Right now, I’ve got a long list of questions from all of you, and I’ll be rolling through them and publishing these conversations as a private Q/A podcast. In today's episode, I'll share with you how to submit your question to us, some of the juiciest questions we have so far, and what you can do to get access to this private podcast. SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS:  www.startuppregnant.com/question GET ACCESS TO THE NEW PRIVATE Q/A PODCAST: When you become a backer on Patreon at the $7/month level, you'll get exclusive access to all of these episodes, including the back catalog of past episodes. Head to www.patreon.com/startuppregnant to become a supporter and get immediate access to the episodes.

#125 — What's next? We’re back from summer hiatus, and it was wonderful. Better than expected, honestly. I didn’t take enough time to rest after either of my babies, and this break, while three years delayed, was everything. In today’s episode, I share how we set up a family sabbatical, why breaks are essential for entrepreneurs, and what’s next on the horizon for Startup Pregnant. If you’re struggling with entrepreneur burnout, if you’re in need of a break, or you’re curious about what’s coming up next on the show, come join and listen in. FULL SHOW NOTES Get the complete show notes with episode quotes, photos, and time stamps at http://www.startuppregnant.com/125.

#124 — Summer Break? Where Do the Kids Go While Their Parents Work and Other Thoughts On Summertime Summer break. As a child there was no sweeter words in the English language. With its promises of long, warm, lazy, school-free days, summer break was essentially synonymous with freedom. But now that the vast majority of households include two working parents, summer means something very different: the end of the public school year, gaps in childcare, expensive camps, and impossibly long waitlists for affordable care options. Today, Sarah digs into her own family’s experience with summertime care gaps (hint: it involves lots and lots of logistics) as well as her personal and professional goals to take a true summer break. She also pulls back the curtain on Startup Pregnant’s two year history (!) and shares the advice she’d give someone starting out on their own business building venture (hint: take a break). IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT The existential summer break question of the modern era of two working parents: what actually does happen to the children? Have we solved for that yet and what does it look like? How there are 81 days every single year when kids are out of public school but parents are supposed to be working and what solutions people come up with to make conflicting schedules work. Sarah reflects on where this podcast started and shares some of her process for why she decided to take a summer break and why she’s so excited about it. Sarah shares that taking an August break is a decision she made for herself as a person and as a business owner, but also because she believes deeply in the power of rest for all people, including her audience. The benefits of taking maternity leave as an experiment in stepping back from the day-to-day of running a business. What the pace and intensity of Startup Pregnant interviews and podcast will look like beginning in September and moving forward into 2020. How Sarah noticed her attachment to consistency and doing things the way they’ve always been done and how that worked in the beginning but how it now possibly holds her back. What she’s looking forward to in this time away and hoping for the audience during the break (hint: if there is someone in your life in the thick of parenting or entrepreneurship, share this podcast with them)!  FULL SHOW NOTES Get the complete show notes with episode quotes, photos, and time stamps at http://www.startuppregnant.com/124. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE www.startuppregnant.com/ask www.startuppregnant.com/courses IF YOU ENJOYED THIS EPISODE, CHECK OUT The Future of Work (and Feminism) Is Flexible — Episode #002 With Annie Dean

#123 — How to Focus When You Feel Totally Overwhelmed or Unclear You wake up in the morning, look at your to-do list, and find that you have 27 things on it. Then throughout the day, somehow projects just keep unfolding and expanding in front of you. No matter how much coffee you drink or deep breathing you do, you just feel totally overwhelmed by it all and don't know where to start.  Sound familiar? It's an experience almost all of us can relate to, and these feelings of being overwhelmed can take even the best of us down. Today Sarah shares her three best tips for how to focus and regain clarity when you're in the fog of overwhelm, so that you can keep going and get your most important work done.  Having clear priorities, using quarterly and monthly planning, and getting a good nights’ sleep are all great tools for planning and mapping out your time—but as a parent? Yeah, that’s harder. Invariably, as a mother and a worker, unexpected projects and challenges will constantly get thrown in your lap. So how do you handle those days when you just can’t seem to get ahold of your to-do list or even figure out how to get started when so much is being asked of you? If you are feeling swamped, or you're back in that place where it's hard to focus and you don't know what to do, listen in. This one's a good one. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT The three tools Sarah uses when—despite her planning and best of intentions—she ends up feeling overwhelmed. The danger of prioritizing little wins and counting on that momentum to guide you through the day.   How many big projects Sarah believes people can truly prioritize at any given moment.  What “Yak Shaving” means and how to stop yourself once you realize you’ve gotten off course.  Why, intense metaphors aside, working moms need to not just “kill their darlings” but “stab their YouTube dreams in the eye.” How to use your calendar to prevent overwhelm and account for even the smallest tasks.  FULL SHOW NOTES Get the complete show notes with episode quotes, photos, and time stamps at http://www.startuppregnant.com/123. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE www.startuppregnant.com/ask www.startuppregnant.com/courses startuppregnant.com/question Annual, Quarterly, and Monthly Review Templates   IF YOU ENJOYED THIS EPISODE, CHECK OUT Taking a Maternity Leave When You Run Your Own Business — Episode #031 With Stacey Trock

#122 — How to Win More Business, Make More Friends, and Get More Money, aka: How to Listen Better What happens when we listen fully? Without interjecting with our own opinions or experiences? Without asserting a best possible outcome or stating facts to support a specific viewpoint? How often do you leave a conversation—with a friend or colleague—and think to yourself, “They just don’t get what I mean/how I feel/how complicated this is.” How often do you catch yourself offering advice or trying to fix a problem for a friend before you realize they really just want a safe space and a friendly ear to empathize and process with them? Sarah digs into these overlapping experiences and asks the big question, “How can we create space in our personal and professional conversations to allow for real connection, true empathy, and beautifully nuanced understanding of one another?" Today we’re talking about how deep listening and thoughtful questioning lend themselves to much more open, nuanced, thoughtful conversations and relationships. Sarah is going to share the incredibly simple and astonishingly powerful tool she uses in her personal and professional life to connect more deeply with people, to grow her business, and to be of the deepest service to her clients, friends, and mastermind groups.  IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT How we tend to believe we know what’s best for others based on our own experiences, information, and desires. How quickly we lose sight of the true goal of conversation—connection—and instead move into problem solving, telling our own stories, or moving on to the next point. Sarah’s experience in her second birth of hiring and then ultimately choosing not to work with a doula who, rather than listening to Sarah and Alex’s preferences and desires, attempted to “educate” them into choosing a different path. The delicate and crucial difference between presenting useful information so someone can make a thoughtful decision for themselves and believing that someone “ought” to choose a specific choice due to the information you have. The profound power of a woman’s birth story and her decision to experience a pain-free birth. Why we strive at Startup Pregnant to present a wide range of experiences of pregnancy, parenthood, and work and why we always begin those stories with “in my experience.” The not-so-secret reason that coaching and therapy are so highly in need in our current culture. The super simple, incredibly effective tool Sarah uses in her life, masterminds, and with her corporate clients to build relationships and close deals. FULL SHOW NOTES Get the complete show notes with episode quotes, photos, and time stamps at http://www.startuppregnant.com/122. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE startuppregnant.com/ask startuppregnant.com/courses 

#121 — Redefining Startup Success: Shutting Down A Lucrative Startup  What happens when your vision of success changes while you're building a wildly "successful" company? Allie Siarto built an incredibly successful company by all of today’s metrics and standards. She and her partner were ready to sell the company—but then she hesitated.  What changed?  In today's episode, we talk with Allie about how walking away from a “successful” business taught her to rethink what success really looks like. Together, she and her spouse decided to shut down a wildly crazy successful business and fire all of her employees shortly after having her first daughter. She realized she could not stand the thought of sending her to daycare and then going to work every day to work on something she didn't love.  Redefining startup success: shutting down a company to build a vision of a different life. The business had been all about making money and pursuing the idea of success that other people had told her she should pursue, but it had not been about creating the life that she really wanted for herself. When she shut down the business, she worried, of course, what other people would think and whether or not they would think she had failed as a business owner, especially. She worried about what her employees would think of her, but the result was that it left her with more time to pursue a completely different business, a more fulfilling and flexible career, one where she built a team of wedding and portrait photographers. Her clients used to call her at all hours with all sorts of emergencies and cause a huge amount of stress in her life. Now, she plans her schedule way in advanceShe also spends a month in Florida every year and plans sailing trips across Lake Michigan without worrying that she will miss an urgent call from a demanding client.  Today, we’re going to talk about how she shifted from one to the other. We cover what it felt like to walk away when Allie had little kids at home and how to stop worrying so much about what other people tell you success should look like: instead, focus on what you truly want and need in your own life right here, right now. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT The early days of building Loudpixel (her first company), and the stress it caused on her life and partnership. How she listened in to what “selling” felt like and how she realized she was building a company—and trying to sell it—for reasons that weren’t really hers. Why the birth of her first daughter prompted her to rethink what she was building in business, and why she eventually shut down the company. How the space and freedom from shutting down a company let her rebuild a new vision of success, with her life and priorities in mind, and what she is now doing today. FULL SHOW NOTES Get the complete show notes with episode quotes, photos, and time stamps at http://www.startuppregnant.com/121. LEARN MORE ABOUT ALLIE SIARTO    Allie Siarto runs a team of award winning portrait and wedding photographers out of East Lansing, Michigan, along with the Photo Field Notes Podcast, an educationa

#120 — Beyond Mom: Exploring and Nourishing Our Non-Mother Selves  What does it look like to take your work from the corporate world to the freelance world and begin the path of entrepreneurship? How do you take the piecemeal career acquired from many different projects, companies and job-hopping and then go into starting a business? One of the things that I am fascinated with here at Startup Pregnant is the idea that we are in perpetual startup mode in many senses of the word: in our own lives, in our own careers, in our own journeys. We don’t just pick corporate versus entrepreneurship. That is a false dichotomy. Instead, I find that people end up with these really interesting layered careers where they follow projects or purposes or people and they embed their time and their energy in these various different projects whether or not it looks like a traditional tried and true company, or it looks like building a new endeavor on the side as a branch of a company, becoming an entrepreneur, starting a new initiative or starting a freelancing or side hustle career or even starting a company on your own. Today, we talk to Randi Zinn, who is the founder of Beyond Mom. Randi lost her father when she 25, which affected her emotionally, philosophically, psychology, and also, it set her on a new career path. Her dad was an entrepreneur, and while she thought that she would be going straight from graduate school into a world of media, she ended up on a slightly different path. Randi is an author, a wellness expert and the founder of a site, company, blog and suite of tools called Beyond Mom. Beyond Mom is a company that provides things like wellness retreats, mindfulness at work, encouragement for women an overall philosophy and ethos supporting women interested in taking back their right to self-love, self-care and community. Randi encourages moms to cultivate a life beyond mom, one that embraces the gifts of motherhood, but expresses all that they are as individuals. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT How Randi’s first pregnancy ended in miscarriage but going through a loss with her husband brought them closer together. How as an only child herself, Randi loves to learn about the sibling relationship by watching her son and daughter together. The way the loss of her father impacted her career trajectory, leading her away from a traditional path in media to following in her entrepreneurial father’s footsteps. How yoga entered her life as a stress mediator through this process, but that once she was a mother, teaching and “schlepping” from studio to studio became untenable. Her surprise at meeting other mothers who were using their transformation into mothers to gain momentum in changing their career paths as well. The organic origins of Beyond Mom and how by spending time with and serving her ideal customer, Randi was able to create an authentic, deeply desired service and brand. Beyond Mom’s focus on supporting the entire woman, both on her journey through motherhood and, above all, on her personal journey as she evolves and grows as a whole person. How in the inspiration behind her book was to make her message and platform accessible across socioeconomic and geographic lines. Why, despite all of the challenges, she commits a large portion of her business to bringing women together in person because that is w

#119 — The Myth of Equal Partnership in Parenting Why is it that the burden of childcare, children and the home is so unequally dumped on women's shoulders? Where did this come from? Why is it happening and what can we do about it? Women have fought for equality in the workplace for a long time. It’s something that is publicly talked about and advocated for and a current movement in today’s society. But what about our not-so-public lives? What about life 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 the ones that take on the burden of domestic work. Why is this happening? Why isn't it budging and why is it so enraging? Today we get to have Darcy Lockman on the show to talk about exactly this. 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. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT How Darcy and her husband entered both their marriage and parenting assuming that all household duties would be shared, but how Darcy nonetheless found herself managing most of her daughter’s needs herself.   The role resentment plays in modern parenting as couples enter parenthood assuming parity and find that culturally we’ve never gotten above men carrying 35% of the childcare load. Why Darcy decided to utilize her background in journalism and psychology to investigate her frustration with how differently her husband and she lived in their parenting roles. What Darcy’s goal for this book is: to draw attention to and move the needle on the amount of unpaid labor mothers do, because, as she notes, it's not without great cost to women’s well-being, potential career success, and earning potential. How cultural beliefs undermine potential parental parity from pregnancy with the belief that mother’s have an innate instinct for parenting. Meanwhile, the truth is that fathers and mothers undergo the same hormonal changes during pregnancy and have the same starting aptitude for parenting.  FULL SHOW NOTES Get the complete show notes with episode quotes, photos, and time stamps at http://www.startupparent.com/119. LEARN MORE ABOUT DARCY LOCKMAN    Darcy Lockman is a former journalist turned clinical psychologist. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Psychology Today, and Rolling Stone, among others. She lives with her husband and baby daughter in Queens.</

#118 — If You Work Hard Enough You Can Do Anything, Except Get Pregnant: A Journey Through Infertility What happens when the medical establishment ignores your concerns, complaints and symptoms? When your doctor tells you everything is normal even though everything in your body is telling you it's not? How do you recover from a traumatic birth and near-death experience that could—and should—have been prevented? Today we get to hear from Lucy Knisley, New York Times bestseller and author of the brilliant, brave, terrifying, and hilarious graphic memoir Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos about all of those questions. Having always known she wanted to be a mother and having considered herself very well-informed on reproductive rights and health, Knisley was shocked by how daunting the actual process of becoming pregnant was. In her words, “I was like, ‘All right. I'm informed. I know what to do. I'm healthy. I'm ready for this. We've got a home. We've got a stable environment to bring a kid into.’ They say there's no perfect time and there isn't, but we were prepared as well as we could be. Then everything went wrong.” Everything that went wrong included two miscarriages, uterine surgery, grueling nausea once she finally became pregnant and then total exhaustion later in pregnancy. Most frightening and serious of all, Lucy suffered through undiagnosed preeclampsia for much of her third trimester. By the time she finally gave birth to her son via C-section, she suffered a number of seizures, lost half her blood and was in a coma for several days. Knisley almost died because her experiences, symptoms, and fears were dismissed by several medical professionals over months of her pregnancy and birth. (Yes, we are enraged by this too.) Today we also hear from Knisley about the following: her very structured schedule for creating her graphic novels, why she has decided that it’s best for her son to be an only child, her partner’s journey through deciding whether he wanted to be a parent, and why, despite the deep trauma of her birth story, Knisley feels incredibly fortunate. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT Knisley's view on her comics and graphic novels as a way to share and connect while being true to her introspective, introverted self. How, despite volunteering at Planned Parenthood and receiving sexual education in school, Knisley felt shockingly uninformed about what it takes to actually get and remain pregnant. The way that experiencing miscarriages flipped her previous understanding of delivering a healthy baby as the top response to intentionally unprotected sex. The enormous disservice we do to all potential parents by not properly educating our children on the frequency of miscarriage, infertility, and undiagnosed infertility. How shame inducing and isolating it is to be told to keep early pregnancy to yourself, which also of course means, “Keep your losses to yourself. They’re personal and private.” How deeply alone and ignored Knisley felt in her grief over her miscarriages until she chose to share her own story. “After I started to talk about it, it seemed like everyone I had ever met had experienced something similar. All of a sudden, these stories came out of the woodwork and everyone had something to offer. That was so incredibly healing for me to hear these other stories of surviva