Sarah Peck - Lessons startup founders should learn from parents!

I think there's just so many variables that you have to take into consideration before you can really figure out what works for you. And one of them is who your baby is. Right. So variable number 1 is the baby. I think like variable number 2 is how much support you have. Number 3, I think would be money. The 4th one I think is who you are as a person.

Hmm.

So are you neurodivergent? Are you hypersensitive? Um, do you need alone time? Are you introverted?

Hmm.

Um, all of those different things. How do you recharge? Do you need other people? I think if I added more, I would call like, you know, 5 and 5 would be, do you have a spouse? So the spouse and baby support money, who you are, um, Oh, the work. What your job is. What's the nature of your work?

Welcome to the Undefeated Underdogs Podcast, where I unpack and narrate stories of ambitious people who turn obstacles into opportunities. My goal for this podcast is to create a platform to narrate underdog stories and maybe play a small, teeny tiny role in inspiring you. I intend to highlight the underdog mentality and make authentic conversations with people who play the long game. Take action with a chip on their shoulder and convert obstacles into opportunities. Buckle up as I'll be bringing some authentic founders, VCs, community builders, and content creators who got underestimated their whole lives, and yet they beat all the odds to become insanely successful. Now today I want to tell you a little bit about our awesome sponsor acquire.com. Selling a business is as tough as building a business. As someone who went through this process once selling my own startup, I know the pain it takes to get to the end zone. This is where our sponsor shines. Imagine this. You're a founder who's built a solid SaaS product, acquired customers, and generating consistent monthly revenue. The problem is you're not growing for, for whatever reason, lack of focus, lack of skill, or just plain lack of interest. And you feel stuck. What should you do? The story I'd like to hear is you buckle down, somehow reignited the fire, get past yourself and the clichés and start working on your business rather than just in the business. You start building an audience, move out of your comfort zone to do sales and marketing, and in 6 months you triple your revenue. The reality isn't as simple. Situations may be different from every founder facing this crossroads, but too many times The story ends up being one of inaction and stagnation until the become business— the business becomes less valuable or worse, worthless. If you find yourself here or your story is likely headed down a similar road, I offer you a third option. Consider selling your business on acquire.com. Capitalizing on the value of your time is a smart move. Acquire.com is free to list and they've helped hundreds of founders already. Go to try.acquire.com/sharath and see for yourself if this is the right option for you. Now let's get into today's episode. Howdy folks, how's everybody doing? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Undefeated Underdogs podcast. Fun fact, today, a year ago today, I launched my first episode and I'm recording, I think, 33rd episode with with my awesome guest today. So very excited, very grateful for everybody who's tuned into the podcast episodes, gave me feedback, and really came forward to support me. It means a lot, and this is something I really enjoy. And without further ado, I want to introduce the guest, Sarah Peck. Welcome to the show. How are you feeling today?

Congratulations on your 1-year mark. That's huge. Podcasting is so hard. I think it's just so much work. It's so rewarding, But that's such a huge milestone.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for the kind words. It is. I think last year around this time, I went on a couple of podcasts as guests. And quick story, I kind of felt that I was driving the conversation, and I accidentally discovered that, you know what, I can do it. I can really hold a conversation, and I really enjoyed it. I came out of feeling that I went to moon and came back. Like, you know, it felt like so adrenaline. I felt that effect. And then I took the courage and you know what I said, let's actually like ship it. And since then I'm really enjoying it. One of the things I look forward is to find interesting things about how people think their life, startups, you know, all things. and try to implement in my own life. So I'm kind of doing this for myself and in the process find audience. But enough about me. I'm really excited about Sarah being on the show for 2 reasons. One is this is going to be like a different episode for folks who are listening. Just a red alert because we are going to cover a lot about parenting. how founders with kids should think about life, prioritize life, work-life balance, and all that stuff. And also, of course, I want to touch about some tactical stuff Sarah mastered, like writing, comms, and whatnot. But let me give you guys like a brief intro of Sarah. Sarah is an author, startup advisor. She's been writing so much that Harvard Business School and a bunch of prolific publications featured her work. And predominantly she's well known for Startup Parent, one of the top 1% globally listened podcasts about founders with kids like myself. So that's where I got tuned into it. And one other thing, she's really good at comms, which I want to touch about marketing and the other tactical stuff. And before we dive into the episode, I want to give a huge shout out to Amanda for introducing us, connecting us through Twitter. And here we are recording the episode. I'm stoked, Sarah, and shout out to her. Again, I think, like I said, I was talking to Sarah and this is kind of like a 2-part episode in one episode, 2-piece, I would say. One is we want to touch about parenting and whatnot, and we can dive into the tactical stuff, but right off the bat, why Startup Parent?

I love that question. I also, I just, I want to say something, if it's all right for people listening, if you don't have kids or you're like, parenting doesn't apply to me, like, I don't, you know, let me just tune out right now. I find parenting conversations so fascinating. And if you're never going to have kids, you probably are going to hire a whole bunch of people that have kids. You're probably going to be surrounded by a whole bunch of people who have kids. I'd wager a bet that you were a kid at some point in your life, right? Parenting is one of those universal things that actually touches all of our lives. So if you're like, wait a sec, I'm going to check out, hang out with us for a little bit longer because I like to look at the intersection of parenting as it touches lots of different things from mindfulness, you know, like how does it affect who we are to why do your friends with kids turn into a-holes if you're not having kids, right? Mm-hmm. Like if you're not having kids and your friends start to act like a-holes, You're like, they never have time for me anymore. There's a reason and there's a really important conversation to be had there. So, um, yeah, I hope people hang out.

No, no, I think it's— you've touched upon a very interesting point. There is no escape. Like, parenting is such a— if you're building something, creating something, you're already a parent in a way because your startup is a baby. Or your newsletter is a baby, a product of yours, just like kids are products of ours, right? So it's so funny that you mentioned that because on the other day I was thinking, sharing with my wife about this. A lot of people, I think, I don't know if being civilized is the right word to call when you get married, when you get kids, you get more civilized is what they say, right? Like you get more systematic in a way, because you have a routine, you can't be reckless, you can't take risks and whatnot, right? And I can talk about myself. I became 10x ambitious after got married, after having kids. Before I was like single, just like I had everything to take risk about. I'm taking more risks now, And I'm finding that courage because, A, it's like I'm being very responsible and I want to actually build a better future for my kids, for my wife. And that really drives me, right? Like, I have a 2-year-old son and whenever he comes from daycare, I see him and that drives me. It's literally that, like, in every morning, how can I make his life a little better? Not like great. I can't promise everything, but that is something that people should realize. A lot of people postpone either having kids or even getting married, right? They think that their nomad life is going to destroy— the married life is going to destroy their nomad lifestyle and whatnot. And people just postpone because they think that settling down.

Yeah,

exactly. Shutting down and whatnot. I feel more responsible and I feel like, you know what, now I have to even stretch more, like, you know, more weekends, do more things again mindfully. I don't want to burn out myself. But anyway, but you've touched a very great point. I feel it's absolutely true. There is no escape. Everybody's a parent in one way or the other way, especially when you belong to startups.

I really like what you said. You said, I'll speak from my experience, because I think one of the things that I'm trying to do as a founder, and one of the things that I think is so important is it's one of our core values is to use the words in my experience when we're talking, because I'll paint a couple of pictures, but some people, you know, they want to find a partner and they're not going to get married until they find somebody who's actually a good fit for them. Correct. Maybe they really, really want to be married at either 27, 28, 29, and they don't find a partner until 50. And, and some other examples in parenting, some people, it sounds like you got really motivated and there's more meaning and more ambition and more drive. And there, there's just such a whole range of experiences that one of our goals with Start a Parent is to tell hundreds of stories that are each individual. So you get the, you kind of get the Full flavor and the full texture because some people become parents and they lose motivation for something. Some people become parents and they feel like they're drowning. Some people become parents and they have a lot of depression. Some people, I'm going to say this; it's going to be very controversial because this is not something we talk about in our society. But some people regret becoming parents, and and they're really it's really hard for them. Some people absolutely adore it. Some people find it. Easy. Some people find it like intuitive. Some people find it confronting. It's just it is such a huge thing to bring another person into the world, and that journey, that journey can begin far before people see it because I know people who you know struggle with infertility for seven or ten years. People who desperately want to have kids, and they will. They try everything and, and then they try adoption. They don't realize most people don't know this, right? Adoption can cost $10,000, $20,000, $50,000, $100,000, right? Surrogacy can cost $100,000 or you don't have a partner. So you freeze your eggs and you don't realize that there's only a 5% chance of that working out. So, you know, the odds you can freeze your eggs, but That's not an insurance policy. It's kind of a last chance policy. So all of that to say, I just named 100 different stories. All of that to say, it is such a huge undertaking. It is so big. It covers almost everything, your emotions, your feelings, loss of control. And I work with a lot of people. So I run Startup Parent. I work with a lot of people that They just want to carve out a little bit of time for work for themselves to do, to like, to stay with. I've got this idea. I've got even more drive. I want to do something really meaningful. And, and I'm suddenly responsible for the life of another human being. And I'm, I'm terrified. Like, I'm terrified. I'm overwhelmed. This is hard. I'm not sleeping. Yeah.

So I just want to add on top of what you said. It's definitely not easy, right? Or it's not like something— every day is not like sunny day, beautiful, with a lot of like, you know, only highs, that emotions about like being— you're interacting with the kid and whatnot. I've had shitty days. As a matter of fact, literally yesterday night, My two-year-old decided to wake up at four a.m., and he didn't go to sleep. No, he said hell no.

Sorry.

I want you to pick me up, and we struggled with him. Like hey, I was talking to him and all not, and I literally lost. I only slept like what five six hours or even less than that. It is freaking hard. It is always hard. I think. The hardest thing is always there. It's like building a startup. It's not easy. Everybody would have been billionaire by now if it is so damn easy, right? And same thing, everybody would have been a parent if it is that easy. It's freaking hard. Everything is a learning curve. Every day is a new day. I feel the way I overcome that stress, anxiety, that overwhelmingness is What I realized before even having kids is that being a human being is ridiculously hard itself. That's like,

yeah,

the odds are completely against— it's like 400 trillion to 1. That number freaks me out all the time. So if you're a human being with full healthy body, with eyes, with legs, functional organs, that means you're already hitting a lottery. And if you're bringing a kid with all things like, you know, working like not an MVP, like a full-fledged product. That means you are so privileged, right? Yeah. And whenever I have like hard days, I tell this to my wife and vice versa. We just like think that we are ridiculously lucky, like so lucky that we are a reason for a human being on this planet. There are like 7 8 billion people out there. And that is the perspective I try to either convey, because all these problems go away. Yeah, I can sleep 2 more hours today, for example, just to go back to my sleeping complaint. And it's good that we should complain because that's the way we vent out certain things. So that it won't hold us, you know. But yeah, I became more ambitious and, you know, I never stopped working because we have to. And that actually gives me like a good motivation. But why Startup Parent? Why did you build that? I know you've done a ton of things before Startup Parent, I think before 2016 for a longer time. What was the reason? Like, okay. it is the end. I saw your story. I read the story on, on the, on the website as well.

Yeah.

Uh, but yeah, we want to hear from your own words.

Sure. I, I've worked 30 or 40 different jobs. I've been in all sectors, you know. I've been a grunt gardener. I've been in retail. I have a degree in psychology and a degree in architecture, and I spent some time in urban planning. Which is for all intents and purposes, it's systems thinking. It's like, how does, how do all these pieces go together? What's the bigger picture? And I started freelancing. That was my foray into entrepreneurship is through freelancing, doing ghostwriting for CEOs, doing graphics, doing storytelling. So that's my, my background in communications. And I had built up my own profile. you know, my own website under sarahkpeck.com. I have a number of courses there. I'd written 300 or 400 blog posts. I've been blogging since 2010.

Wow.

And after I had a suite of courses online, I, I ended up chatting. I, I was both doing some freelance work for startups. I was helping them with some of their communications and their pitching and their PR. So I was helping startups write about their products. And then I ended up chatting with a friend of mine who was building a company and he said, hey, all of your course building experience and your writing experience would be really valuable at my company. Would you ever consider joining? And I take a pretty fluid approach to work. There's, there's these odd binaries of like, you either are an entrepreneur or you're working corporate and you can't ever go back and forth and you're one or the other. And it's like, A project is a project and people are people. Like, find a cool project and you don't have to be the project manager for all projects. You can go work with awesome people. So, I went and I worked with this amazing person who's since started another company that's fantastic. His name's Matan, Matan Graffel. Mm-hmm. And I was the 6th person at his company. And there was some really, I think, lovely, moments that happened in talking with him. One of the things I said, I was 29 or 30 at that time, I said, hey, I'm looking at my 30s and my 40s, I'm planning on having children, I have no idea if I'm going to be able to or when that's going to happen. But that's something I want to talk about with you before I join your company. And the conversation we had was so fantastic because He said something along the lines of, like, well, we're a startup. Our job is to figure things out. So if you have a kid, we'll figure it out. And it was very much we were on the same team. Like, OK, we'll figure this out. And from that, I learned so much about how, like, you know, you can— an employee can quit at any moment. Someone who's pregnant is going to give you, like, not 9 months, but at least, like, 5 or 6 months of notice. You know, you have so much notice if you have a pregnant employee. And yet, we're terrified them were like, oh God, can't hire a woman because she might get pregnant. And it's like, first of all, getting pregnant is really hard. And second of all, you're gonna have some notice. Absolutely. And so we just had this great chat. And so I joined and then exactly a year later I got pregnant. So I worked with them for a year and we were, I don't know, we were 10 or 12 people. We had 30 contractors. We were growing. But we had no maternity leave policy because we're this teeny tiny company. So he goes to me, he goes, well, what should our maternity leave be? And so I'm splitting the difference because I'm like, I know how much money we have left in the bank and the numbers we have to hit. And I'm like, well, if we pay me for a really long leave, then I'm going to take a bunch of money from this company. But I also need to take some leave because I know how important this is. For everything. So we ended up doing— yeah, we ended up writing a maternity leave policy because we were so young. I think it was— oh, I'm gonna have to look it up because it's been 7 years now. I think it was 10 weeks paid. I think it was 10 weeks paid. It might have been 12 weeks.

That's the usual norm in the US.

Totally, totally. Which is also absurd for other countries. It's so short. Dads, if you're listening to me, by the way, take 12 weeks. Just take the leave. Don't take one. There's everyone's like, oh, I'm gonna take a week. I'm gonna take 2 weeks. Don't do that. Like, take more leave. I can, I can give you all of the math for why it's gonna make your family so much more money. Um, but so, yeah, so, and then, and then, uh, I went back to the company, but I was one of my side projects. I was writing and I pitched a book proposal called Startup Pregnant at the time. Like what, what it's like to be in the startup world and to be pregnant because I was wandering around Manhattan, like puking into random trash cans. Wow. Because I was so sick with this pregnancy. And I worked with a team of mostly dudes who nobody else had kids in the company. And I just didn't know where to go. I didn't, I was like, who can, like, who's been through this? Like, who's gonna help me? What am I doing? I'm so overwhelmed. And so my book proposal got accepted by a really big agency in New York. So I talked to the co-founders. I was like, hey, I, I want to go spend a year trying to write this book. And they sent me off. They sent me this huge basket. Um, yeah, it was— I'm still such good friends with him. I just went to his wedding. It's like the epitome of what you hope working with someone would be like.

Right, right. And very few people are empathetic too, right? Like, especially in this world, everybody wants to like grow faster. They want to get results faster. They want everybody's attention and whatnot. You know, priorities change between people, and I'm glad to hear that it didn't go the other way, which would have caused even more stress when you were already going through a lot.

Yeah.

As pregnant. Uh, glad that that happened. And talk to me about like, uh, what was like the transition of going working at a company to almost like kind of writing this book and building your own thing, right? Yeah. There is definitely like freedom, but you kind of also had another soul with you. It's not like you're doing this like previously, right? Like, talk to me about that transition. Like, is it overwhelming? Like, how did you manage Doing all things being a mom in the first early few days?

I mean, it's kind of terrifying. I think overwhelm and fear are really familiar emotions. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. It's a very familiar position. And then I cry, I go for a walk or a bike ride. I give myself a pep talk and I'm like, okay, we're going to figure this out. Right? Because that's it. We're just figuring stuff. You're just staying one step ahead of your customer and one step ahead of your child. That's it. We don't have to have all the answers. I find this to be one of the most bewildering parts of adulthood is that so many people are looking to you for answers and you're looking around being like, I guess like, no, this, we're just out here in the woods trying to figure this out. Oh, that's, you know. Right. But the transition, it was kind of scary because I was leaving an income and now I had a small baby to care for. I never had any, um, like ideas that I would stay at home with a baby the whole time. I've, I've written this article and y'all can look, it's on my Substack. It's called The Parenting Math That Doesn't Add Up, but there's 168 hours in the week, you know, 24 by 7. Daycare is 40, right? Daycare is 40. You still got like 90-odd hours with your kid. Right. Like if you put your kid in daycare 40 hours a week, it doesn't mean you've abandoned them. It means that you're just getting a small amount of support to do things. So that was always our, our plan was we're going to get daycare or some sort of care because we, we aren't, we aren't going to hold the belief that we can be full-time parents and full-time entrepreneurs. Like I, I can't think straight by myself, let alone with children around. You know, I just need a couple of minutes. To just try to think. Um, and the thing that surprised me was you'll get daycare for 40 or 45 hours and then everything has to fit in there. Everything. So my doctor's appointments, prenatal, postnatal, my therapy, my dentist appointment, you know, like the nap when you only get 4 hours of sleep and you're like literally trying to get into your office and you walk into a wall instead, you're like, well, missed the door.

Yeah.

I guess I'm a little tired. Um, so, so that, but that's a real cost. Like daycare is pretty expensive. It costs about the same as a 2-bedroom, a 1 or 2-bedroom. So wherever you are, like if you're in Michigan and a 1-bedroom is $900 a month, then your daycare will probably be about $900 a month. I'm in New York City. It's about $2,500 for a 1-bedroom. It's about $2,500 for my daycare. Right. Uh, just talk to me about those 2, those 2 years when I had 2 kids and daycare. Oh, it was $5,000 a month just

for

those 40 hours a week. Um, and you're like, okay, uh, pressure's on, gotta make a little money, right?

I think that's the thing that should drive people, right? You shouldn't worry about, hey, how can I get $5,000 or whatever X dollars to support my kid? it's like half glass empty. If you think that way, always there is always half glass empty, you know, in that scenario. You basically have to like roll up your sleeves and you basically have to say, hey, how can I actually make more money? You know, what else can I do? What else can I— how can I stretch myself? How can I go one extra mile, right?

Yeah.

Without losing being sane. I'm not saying go insane. Don't, don't do like bonkers stuff that destroys your mental peace. I think people miss that and they just snap out and they just declare, or they see friends who are going through that phase. And I see a lot of my friends right now who are just postponing parenting because they think that it's a financial burden on them. They're committed for their house or a car loan or whatever the shit they— that is not important to bringing a child, right? So anyway, didn't mean to stop you. I

just wanted to— No, I like, I like where you're going with this. It's if you, if you want kids, I think one of the things I would say, if you know in your heart that you want kids, if you've done the soul searching and you know that this is really meaningful for you, I don't think people talk enough about like, it might not happen for you, right? It's not a guarantee. Sure. And

you can't take things for granted.

For men too. I think a lot of men don't realize that their fertility is being deeply affected right now. Like, it's something like 1 in 6 couples have struggles with fertility right now. And there's stuff happening with the microplastics and the hormone disruptors and all the different things where, you know, I know we see Insert famous actor having a kid at, you know, 75. But it's just not true for all men. And if you know you want to have kids, why, like, it's worth asking yourself, like, what am I afraid of? Or what am I waiting for? Because it's always going to be a catastrophe. It's always going to be a mess. There's always going to be an economic crisis around the corner. It is going to be a crazy amount of money. You're never going to be able to save up enough for it.

Yep.

But you will be able to figure it out day by day. Like you will be able to, if daycare costs that much money, right? Let's say you're like, oh, I don't have $1,000 or $2,000. I just don't know how to do it. There's a number of questions I would ask myself. Number one, how can I make an extra $1,000 a month?

Hmm. See?

The simplest, the simplest thing might be raising your prices or asking for a raise.

Right, right.

Hey, I've been working here for 3 years. I've been doing a standup job. Inflation's been 6% for a number of years. I'd love to talk to you about like when my next raise is coming along, right? A side hustle. Who can you consult a couple hours on the weekend? Is there a skill or an expertise? What I did with several past companies, and this is where non-binary thinking is really important, Is what if you go to daycare 4 days a week, right? 20% less, a little bit less. Or start with 3 days a week. Can you alternate with your spouse if you have a spouse? So there's a lot of creative ways to figure it out. Can you make a little more money? Can you live in a slightly smaller home? Can you refinance your car? Can you get a smaller car? Right? Like all of these different pieces where you, you can, I mean, not everyone, but there's wiggle room sometimes to find that. If you have to.

It's, it's all about like, uh, I think it kind of like becomes more organizing, right? You're basically organizing your shelf. You do a bunch of different ways you fit in the extra luggage. For example, uh, it didn't fit in, like, you know, you just move something else and it's all like, you know, fitting in, fitting out, like, you know. It's all like, in a way, like you said, math. Quick, what advice do you give for founders who are again postponing, like, you know, for lack of perspective or lack of having all the facts, or even like lack of realizing that the other side is much more beautiful than Where they are right now?

This, this is such a hard question because I can't know. I, you know, someone listening, you're listening to me right now. I can't know your heart and mind. I don't know what you want. I don't want to use that cliché of like, go to therapy and talk about it, right? Because therapy is expensive. And again, and also, you know, Sometimes friends, you can, we can talk about it with friends. My husband and I, when we met, he did not know if he wanted to have kids. And I definitely wanted to have kids. I've known since forever. And the way that we had the conversation, I said to him, you know, I am going to have kids in my life, whether they're biologically mine or not. I'm gonna be volunteering with kids. I'm gonna be leading high school groups. I'm gonna be, I'll probably be adopting kids.

Mm-hmm.

I may foster kids, right? So kids are gonna be a part of my life. This is part of the package. I really wanna have my own children. Mm-hmm. Um, and he was like, I gotta think about it. Mm-hmm. And I didn't know this, but he went and he had some conversations with friends and he said, hey, I've always said I don't want to have kids. Can we talk about this? Can you like go for a walk with me? And he read a bunch of parenting books. He journaled a whole bunch. And it was 3 weeks later and he said, I think I could have kids with you. I like, let's keep dating and let's keep talking about this. Hmm. And so I share that story only in as much as If you're in that place of not knowing, ask a friend or even someone that you, you really like the way they think, but you maybe you don't know them and say, I just wanna have a really serious conversation about kids. Would you be willing to talk to me for 30 minutes or go for a walk with me?

Right.

Um, trying to figure out if now is the right time or not. And don't do it with a work colleague. That would be my advice. Sure. Do it with someone else and just ask some deep questions. If you get stuck, change the channel. So what I mean by that is, if talking isn't working, try journaling. If words aren't working, try moving. If moving's not working, try doodling. Try images, try listening. There's a lot of different ways we can access our own inner wisdom. And sometimes we can get on loop in the, in the words that we use and in the way that we think to ourselves. So if you can get it out of your head onto the page, you can talk to someone else that can ask you interesting questions that can really open it up.

It's awesome. Yep. Love that advice. Let's talk about the biggest thing everybody worries about, especially when they become parents. work-life balance. If they have like, you know, like a full-time job or they're running something or they're creating on the side, whatever it is, right? It's always like you said, both ideally, but it's sometimes either this or that. Like, that's why we send our kids to daycare. How, in your experience, you've been running Startup Parent for a while now, 7 years, you've kind of gathered a lot of work-life balance frameworks or different ways people actually do it. There is no single answer for this. So if you can, I know it's kind of like a ridiculous question to ask, but what do you think is the optimal way to achieve work-life balance?

Oh, I love this question. Okay, I want to try to build a metaphor here. I haven't come up with one, but let's build one. I think there's just so many variables that you have to take into consideration before you can really figure out what works for you. And one of them is who your baby is. So like, who is this baby? And You— this is the, like, one of the most terrifying things is you don't know who this kid is going to be until you meet them. And someone told me, this is not an official number, but like 20% of babies are good sleepers. Okay. 20% of babies are good sleepers. They're easy babies. They go to sleep. Okay, great. So I had one of those. One of my kids would just fall asleep. It was not me. I didn't do anything. He just slept. He slept like a log. He was this big, fat, chunky baby. He came out at all, he was like 9 pounds, 10 ounces.

Wow.

He just slept everywhere. Right. And so I was able, and he slept in these 3 or 4 hour naps. I know there's, if parents are out there listening to me, you're like sending me evil daggers through the airwaves. 'Cause you're like, I hate you. I understand. I totally understand. So, right. So I was able to write because I could predictably rely on his nap. There are other babies that come out and they, for some reason, have some sort of angst with the world and they will scream for 6 months.

Mm-hmm.

And you, your nerves will be frayed. Your nervous system will be shot. Your eyes will be bloodshot and you'll be like, I don't understand how to balance. It's not your fault. It's just this baby, right? This baby needs you constantly. And also it needs more than you because you need someone to give you a break so you can sleep. So variable number 1 is the baby. I think like variable number 2 is how much support you have. And that's the invisible support. And this is where I think I get the most frustrated because there's so many— I'm going to go into gender here, but there's so many male entrepreneurs out there who have a full-time stay-at-home spouse.

Hmm.

And then there's so much entrepreneurship advice out there and writing advice. You go back to like the 1920s and the 1930s, and it's like, I just get up at 5 AM and then I write until like 12. And, you know, and then I do all my editing after lunch. And what you don't see is the subtext. And the subtext is, All of my children are taken care of by my spouse. My wife brings me my breakfast. I don't even cook for myself. My wife brings me my lunch. Like, and that's fine. There's nothing— I don't want to shame that particular scenario. That scenario sounds amazing. I would love that scenario. You know what I mean? Like, I would love to have that.

Who wouldn't say no to that, right?

Totally. Except if you're then giving advice about how to have work-life balance from that vantage point,

Yeah.

Well, what about all the women who are the wives?

Yeah.

They don't get that, right? Like, there are women out there who have stay-at-home husbands, but that's very few and far between. So number 2 is the support. And the support also is like, do you have helpful parents? Right? Are they grandparents or the in-laws or the aunts or the uncles? Do you have a village? Because there are people who, right, they drop their kid off on Fridays. And they get their date night because grandma and grandpa are able to take them. I want to ask you all about this. Like, I want to, I want to know your situation. Put a pin in that because I will. Sure, sure. But there's the support. Number 3, I think, would be money, right? Are you working? We have a value system where different jobs are paid differently, and yet they're not inherently better or worse. It is not, it is not morally superior to work at Twitter than to be a kindergarten teacher. Right? Like, there's no— they're both fantastic jobs. One of them you can get paid $300,000 and the other one you can get paid $50K. You know? And like, that makes a difference.

Right.

So money, baby support. I think a 4th one, and then I'll stop. The 4th one I think is who you are as a person. Mm-hmm. So are you neurodivergent? Are you hypersensitive? Um, do you need alone time? Are you introverted? Um, all of those different things. How do you recharge? Do you need other people? I think support— I think if I added more, I would call like, you know, 5 and 5 would be, do you have a spouse?

Um, yeah,

right. Like, my sister's a single mom to 2 kids. There is no spouse. She doesn't have anyone to just, you know, she can't leave the house without taking her children with her.

There is no tag it. Like, you just have to do it, right? Yeah.

And we got to keep in mind, I think it's 40% of households are now, um,

well,

uh, stood up by a single mother. In America. So the spouse, and then, oh, there was one other thing. Baby support money, who you are, the spouse. Oh, the work, what your job is, what's the nature of your work? Because let's say you're like an astrophysicist and you require your brain, or you're a surgeon and you like, you have to have good sleep. Mm-hmm. Versus, I don't know, like I'm a writer. I like my stuff isn't as it's not life or death.

Right, right. You can manage.

In the same way. Exactly. I can't think, so I need to be able to think, but it's not life or death if an essay doesn't go up versus like if I'm working on somebody's brain. So when we talk about work-life balance, I think it's the metaphor that I would build is it's like Are you planting your seed? That's— I don't mean to be— I'm not trying to be a pun. Like, think of like an acorn seed. Are you planting it on a rocky cliff that gets very little rain and you're trying to grow in between like 2 rock crevices? Mm-hmm. Are you planting it in like a lush valley that gets regular watering all the time, um, you know, with robust soil and the soil's been filled? So I just I don't have an answer to your question of work-life balance. I think that is my answer.

No, it's absolutely true. I think, like I said, right, there is— I wish we all wish there is, like, you know, this is not just for parents generally, like, whoever, everybody, like, who has 2 lives. One is they have a personal life, they have a professional life, uh, any life, any kind of life. One, there is like people who go out, meet friends versus personal life, whatever it is. Like, you know, there's like 2 buckets. But I would add one more, which I sort of kind of dealt with work-life balance, is setting expectations.

Hmm.

It's like both ways, like, you know, setting expectations at work. Hey, before I had 18 hours of time myself with my wife and whatnot. I don't have someone to take care of, so I'll be— I won't be spending 18 hours, I'll be spending 10 hours. For example, same thing, like, hey, my wife, me both, we used to go to like dates once in a week. You can do that. Let's, you know, lower our expectations. So expectation setting is something that, that I practice a lot, especially having my kid. And, you know, it really— like, before, I actually saw the other end, which is not setting expectations, and I went crazy. I went like bonkers.

Yeah.

We had like fights, we had like arguments, we were like, hey, who, who needs to take care of it? There is no system. There is no nothing like, hey, you, you wake up Sunday morning, I wake up Saturday morning. type of like, you know, trade-off. There is no tag it, like that concept. And even at work, even with myself, I used to work on my side projects when I had like full-time job, like over weekends. Now, hell no, of course not. Yeah. And I have to kind of take a step back in everything so that way it will be like, okay, We'll all be happy when we are intentional, right? So there is an intentional expectation setting that I practice that I think is— at least that's the answer to me whenever someone asks about work-life balance. It's intentional expectation setting, whatever it is, right? Like with parents, with anything. Work, go back. With your friends. Yes. take a step back with yourself. Take a step back. I used to go, I used to meditate like every single day before Rohan, my 2-year-old, was born. Me and my wife, we both had that habit. After that, he came and he destroyed that. Like, now I made peace with, okay, I won't be meditating like 30 minutes a day every single day, or I wake up in chaos sometimes. So it's okay, right? Like, you basically have that type of mindset that will help you. Because I think all other factors, you know, it's really— you can't really control, right? Like, they come, they kind of come at a point where unexpectedly something hits you. So, yeah, and even then, even with this expectation setting practice, there will be a ton of turmoil. It's not like super, like, you know, straightforward, but at least you kind of do certain things at control, right? So yeah, that's the 7th point I would add to your all 6 points.

Yeah,

but

the, um, the, the agreements, the expectations, the communication is so critical, right? So critical. I, I wanna— I have a pin in this. I wanted to ask you, can you tell us what your support looks like? Like, what is your—

yeah. So I'm from India. I moved here like 10 years ago. And so frankly, I don't have close family where I stay. If I were in India, I can really— there is that village concept where I can literally leave my child after he or she came to this earth, and I can peacefully wake up, sleep and wake up like 3, 4 years because they'll take care of the child. It's like the support system is so ridiculously well formed in India, countries like India. But here I think, yeah, we rely on daycare and we make sure that my parents, my in-laws, they come stay with us at least 4 months to 5 months once in a year so that it revolves. We kind of like use them as advantage. Like, you know, they come stay with us 5 months, they leave, and we have our own time with the kid. That's what happened in the last 2 years. They came, my parents came, they lived for 5 months. In your house? In my house, yeah. And they took care of him, which is kind of cost saving. Again, math, right? Because we only spent somewhere around like $3K To fly them. To fly them.

Yeah.

And the regular food and all, it's like nothing nullified. They won't eat much and they're not high maintenance, but we save like close to $1,500 every month. Not the 5 months, like whole— every month we have to like pay $1,500 for daycare. So that's how we kind of like, you know, manage and Yeah, we sacrificed a lot, of course. You know, we didn't go to any concerts or comedy stand-up shows. We just go to— I think we switched from dinner dates to lunch dates because lunch is where you kind of like, you know, he goes to daycare and we can pick a weekday. We don't even go out on weekends because it's really hard to find like a babysitter because, you know, With Ruhan, my kid, it's really about the person, other person. If he likes them, then yes. But he's very picky and you won't want to take a chance. So, but yeah, support-wise, yeah, we just rely on daycare mostly. Like you said, most of them, most of the time, you know, I've spent his day, he's at daycare now. I can like, you know, do such things like podcasts and whatnot.

And is it 40, 45 hours a week? Is it half care? Like, what does that look like?

Yeah, it's 5 days. Uh, we try to spend, uh, we'll send him at least 7 hours, uh, 5 days. Yeah, 7, 35, 40 hours. Yeah.

And are you a dual? Are you both working?

Yeah, both working, both, you know, with, uh, high capacity, meaning it's not like, you know, we can We can— there is no wiggle room. There is like, we have to perform well because we have— we're in a position where we need to like, you know, show up and kind of lead. I have my own team at my work. She has her own team. So it's competitive, but that's where I think we made a few sacrifices. Like, you know, we won't be doing certain things. It's fine, you know.

Absolutely.

Yeah, we just like kind of traded for the better life.

We invite our friends over for early dinner. So we say like, if you can like leave work for happy hour, like you're going to go to happy hour, come to our house from 5 to 8 and we'll have dinner and then we'll go put our kids to bed and you can go to your next event because they're going to go out at 9 because we're in New York City. Right. And we're like, you all keep living your life, but just come over, we'll feed you. And then your, your bill later will be cheaper because you won't have to, you know.

You won't need to.

Totally.

That's a good way. That's a good way.

Yeah. But, um, fascinating. Okay. I wanna, I wanna, that's really helpful to know. I think that that's one of the invisible conversations. People don't talk about the, the amount of support or the amount of care that they have. And so one of the things when I'm working with different entrepreneurs or different moms, I'll say like, we can't compare. Some people are building businesses on 10 hours a week of nap times, right? And that's all they have to build their business. And other people are building their businesses where they have 50 or 60 hours a week of childcare, plus they have a nanny in the evenings and they have year-round grandparent support. And so they have 80 to 100 hours of village support and they happen to have an easy baby.

Yeah.

I mean, that's a unicorn, right? Like That's a unicorn, but I'm just painting the example.

That's like scripted. That's straight, straight, straight away scripted. Like, you know, if you, whatever you said happened with someone, I would be so positively jealous because—

So jealous, but it's not, it's not true. It doesn't happen because this is something that I've learned. I turned 40 this year. Everybody has something.

Yeah.

Like you don't, you don't get to see it all the time because people don't know how to talk about it, but everybody's dealing with something. They have a health issue or a sister has a health issue or a mom or a dad or somebody's passed away or they're going through a fertility journey. So like when we do that comparison, if there's any of that bitterness that creeps in of like, oh, their life is so easy. It's like, trust me, it's, it's not. You just, you're not close enough. Everyone, life is, you said it earlier, life is Pretty tough.

By itself, just to be.

Yeah, I have. I have a couple more thoughts on the on the balance. Do you have time to go?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, please, please. Yeah, for sure.

Okay. So once you once we go through that whole you know litany of all of these different things and you realize like oh it's not me. I just have a really challenging baby and I need more support and I don't have it. Balance-wise, if you're about to welcome. a kid, some of the things that I do that really, really help, um, I generally try not to have meetings on Mondays or Tuesdays. Just keep those, I keep those really light. Um, every, every parent I've talked to is like Monday between the morning and noon is recovering from the weekend.

Right.

Like you're just, you're making that transition and I happen to work from home. And so y'all are going to laugh so hard, but I scrub cleaned our couch. I was like scrubbing it. And this is what I did. No joke. I scrub cleaned the couch with my 45-pound kettlebells. So I would do 10 deadlifts with my kettlebells, then I would scrub the couch. And then I, so I was taking a rest, but the entire time my brain is sorting and processing and getting into work mode.

Hmm.

Right? Like, it's this transition time. I've dropped off my kids. I'm getting all the, I don't know what it is, strawberry syrup off the couch. Like, like what? Right. Um, and, and then doing my deadlifts. So I got my workout in, I got the couch cleaned, I take a shower, it's like 10:30, and I'm like, okay, I know what I'm doing for the day. Like, that's cleared my head and I've gotten into it. So number one is as few meetings as possible on Mondays and Tuesdays. Mm-hmm. Um, number 2 is the month, right? Let's call it 4 weeks long.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Pick 1 week of the month to schedule no meetings. Mm. 1 week. For me, it's the 4th week.

Hmm.

And obviously there might be some breaks, right? You might have some, but for the most part, I do no teaching. I do nothing the 4th week of the month. The reason for that is because as a new parent, you are going to have so many viruses enter your household.

Oh my God. We can do a whole new episode on getting sick. Oh my God.

You will get sick once a month. I'm so sorry. You will get sick once a month. Um, I'll tell you my rules, by the way. Uh, daycare. They don't go to daycare if they have a rash, diarrhea, vomiting, a fever, or COVID. Green boogers, they go to daycare. Cough, they go to daycare. But those 5 things, right? If they, if they didn't go to daycare with green boogers, they would never go. You're just making a donation payment because they are going to have green boogers the entire time. But if they have a rash, a fever, vomiting, diarrhea, or COVID, they don't go. Okay?

Right.

I'm not a doctor. This is not medical advice. This is just one parent telling you her rules. If they have green boogers, they go to daycare. So you're going to be sick once a month, and it's the same for you. If you have a rash, fever, diarrhea, vomiting, or COVID, then you get sick days. But if you have green boogers, you go to

work.

So I cannot tell you how many podcasts are me like, like coughing, and I have like Vicks VapoRub smeared on my face. Um, but, but so that 4th week Is so that when you get sick the 3rd week, it's really easy to reschedule everything. You just give yourself 1 week of buffer every month because things are going to get canceled. They're going to get canceled with so much frequency. If you build your schedule with no white space, you're hosed. I guarantee you, you'll be in the hospital within 6 months. You'll run yourself ragged. You'll be crying to all of your clients. So you have to leave. That's what I do. I leave a flex week the 4th week. Um, of every month. What else for work-life balance? Oh, the first year of life, if you have 40— the first year of your kid's life, if you have 40 hours of childcare, you can plan on getting 10 hours of work done. The second year of your kid's life, if you have 40 hours of childcare, you can plan on getting 20 hours of work done.

Yeah, things get a lot easier as they grow.

Totally.

That's for sure. You know, because totally they kind of become self-aware. They know, they learn things and some of the things you don't have to like go after, like, you know, after them taking care of it. But these are some great— I feel I really like the no meeting policy at least once in 2 days a week, or once in a week should be really like, you know, gives you that wiggle room if you treat it as that support.

Wednesdays, Fridays. Whatever day you can do.

Yeah. It is definitely important. Let's talk about the tactical stuff a little bit. You've had a ton of experience in comms, communications. You were VP of comms at, you know, previously worked for a while. And I believe it's one of the most important pieces for founders to actually take care of when building startups. comms to your customers, comms to investors, you know, comms to your free users, like whoever it is that your audience. And we do, we live in a day and age where there's a new set of comms that come, which is social media writing, right? And so on and so forth. Yeah. So what are some best practices that you found that founders or like anybody who's building businesses should really, really like, this is where I should, like, you know, you as an advisor, this is where founders should really focus their minds on.

Who are we talking to? Team, spouse?

Teams, I think mostly tactical teams, you know, their investors, their users, their employees, for example, like, you know, comms is such a Such an important thing, but most people, they just like outsource it either to marketing folks or like anybody else who— right now people are outsourcing it to AI. They just go to ChatGPT and like, right, how to write this investor update and whatnot.

Yep. Yep. I mean, I have lots of tiny tactical tips. I'm trying to think of the, like, what the most meta useful thing is here. I think most people undercommunicate. They have no idea how poorly they— sorry, guys— how poorly they communicate and how little they communicate. Communication is really, really, really hard. Mm-hmm. And it's, it's in part because of how people learn and how people listen and what we retain. And let me think about this. So we want to communicate more often than we think. We want to overcommunicate. Let's see, what are some of the problems that I see? I think people think it has to be perfect and they get really worked up. Oh, I've got to deliver this the perfect way. And it's kind of like building an MVP, except You end up building a product and you're trying to like make it perfect and you end up polishing the, you know, like spending days on the favicon, you know, you're spending days and days and days on this. You're like deep into the favicon and you're just afraid of releasing it. And it's like, no one cares. Use a generic gray circle. Like it does not, you don't need a favicon. Um, for people who don't know what a favicon is, it's that little teeny tiny image

on the browser

tab. On the browser tab. And like you can add it, but like it does not matter for your product.

Yeah.

So it's like you're just, you're polishing, polishing, polishing and communication, you, that means you've, you've waited too long. So you wanna communicate regularly, you wanna be consistent and consistent doesn't mean every Monday at 9:00 AM. It's like, hey, I'm gonna talk to you like every week. I'm gonna talk to you every week or every couple of days. You're gonna hear from me. It's gonna be unusual not to hear from me. Consistent means I'm gonna talk to you most of the time in Slack, and if it's really spicy, it'll be an email, or it's always gonna be an email. It's always gonna be in text, right? You're gonna find something consistent to do. Communication is not about delivering messages. Communication is about Having a conversation between people, and so this is probably the number one mistake that people make, and this applies to teams as well as households—is thinking that because you have written something down, the message has been received. And that's ninety percent of the time. Like that's not true. Just because I told my spouse there's chicken in the fridge does not mean he remembers there is chicken in the fridge. Right? Just because because I told him that I'm— we're going out tonight does not mean he knows that we're going out tonight. Just because I put it on our calendar does not mean that he has internalized the message. So for example, this morning I just went into our Notion stack for our podcast, and I see that there's a bunch of messages for me from 3 weeks ago, and there was a handoff to me that I was supposed to finish an episode. I never saw those messages.

Hmm.

Whose fault is that? I mean, we don't need to get into blame. It's actually the responsibility of the person delivering the message, sending the message, to make sure, hey, Did you get my message? Did you see this? Is that received? Do you know that you're responsible? You're the point person for this now.

Right.

So a great example of this is: Do you ever go camping?

Not that often.

No.

Okay.

People are either campers or they're not. They do or they don't. It's um. It is. Sorry. I have like a. jokes about camping, but I'll leave those for later. I'll leave those for when we're off the air. But so I do this presentation with teams and it's like, okay, y'all, we're going to go camping. Like, we're all going to go camping together and it's going to be really fun. And like, what do you want to do when we're there? And then we've all got a picture of camping in our head.

Hmm.

But what we don't know is that one person has like a maxed out, glitzed out Burning Man RV. Right? And another person has an REI tent, like a regular standard Coleman tent. And another person is like decking out their backpacking equipment and like getting their filtered water tablets.

Different definitions.

Totally. And we're all having this conversation about camping, but we actually haven't agreed on what camping means.

Right. That's a valid point. Right.

So Not only do we have to have a conversation and you have to respond to me, number 2, we also have to agree on what that means. So those are kind of the 2 high-level— yeah, 2 high-level things.

Consistent communication. And I really like what you said. Communication should be conversational. It's not just like, you know, telling something. It should be like, there is a— there should be a 2-way mode instead of like just pushing from one way. A couple of other— a couple of really like, you know, again, some tactical stuff. Startup Parent itself is a big community, right? Like, you know, on Substack. And how do you— how did you grow the newsletter? And what are some tips that you, or like some lessons you learned growing the newsletter as well as podcast that people write? There are like a ton of, in my audience, there are a ton of newsletter writers. They're like podcast hosts, basically creators, right? So any tips for people who grow or about to grow their work on the internet?

Yeah, so the advice for growth It depends on where you are in what stage. So like if you are going from 0 to 100 people, I would give you different, a different conversation than if you were like in the 500 people range. And that would be different than if you're in like the 10,000 person range. Mm-hmm. And I think the, I'll, I'll assume that we're brand new. You don't have anybody yet. You're like in the 0 to 100. The common mistakes that I see people doing is they don't tell anyone that they're doing it. They just assume that, you know, magical email addresses will float through the air and then land on their newsletter list like a fungus gnat on a plant, like a fly to a piece of meat. Like, it's not gonna happen. Mm-hmm. And, and so you, you have to tell people about it.

You

have to tell people about it. And there's a couple of tricks to this. Number one is do not tell people to sign up for your newsletter, like your friends and your family. Don't be like, you have to sign up, you have to sign up, you have to sign up.

Hmm.

Tell them about it. Say, hey, I'm writing this thing. It's for these people. If you know anyone like this, tell them to sign up here. Because your mom is not your newsletter audience,

right?

Your brother is not your newsletter audience. Your colleague is not your newsletter. So when you start tapping into, um, their weak ties and close ties, when you start tapping into your close tie network of people that you actually know, the majority of them don't give a crap about what you do, which is fine, but they might know people who know you.

True, true.

Or sorry, who want what you have to offer.

Right.

So you're not asking them to be your subscribers and you're not spamming them and you are not putting them on your email list without asking them.

Right. Yeah.

But you are telling them, you're telling them like, hey, I made this thing. It's for these people. So folks listening, I write a Substack. It's called Startup Parent. It's for people who are founders with kids. I write a lot about motherhood. I write a lot about fatherhood. I write about dads who are lonely. I write about the injustices against parents.

Sure.

I have some raging feminist pieces. To be a feminist does not mean to hate dads. It actually means to care about dads. So I care deeply about the dads. I care deeply about the moms. I geek out about parenting. If you are someone who is a parent and you are thinking about business or you have a side hustle or anything like that and you want to be in conversation, you can sign up startup parent. .substack.com. If you know of a mom that would like something like this, we'll put the link in the show notes. I'm just doing that as an example, right?

Yeah, I think I like the way you're going after a persona-specific niche instead of broadcasting, saying, hey, I did this work. I think many people do that. Like, they just broadcast saying, I'm doing this, I'm starting this side project. I'm working on this product, I'm writing here, I'm doing this podcast. And like you said, magically expect universe do the work for them.

Yeah.

Instead of, like you were saying, I actually like the way, uh, what you said, don't ask for people to sign up, just express that I'm looking for a specific niche. And if you know that niche, Just pass it along. That I think is a very basic ask. You know, if you constantly, hey, sign up for this, sign up for this, sign up for this, I think that's kind of like really annoying. But if you ask for help, most people do that because it's in passing it on is such a, such a simple task. I love that tip for sure. A couple of more questions. One is on the other side. Sure. Do you want to share a founder story that really inspired you? A founder with kids, like, wow, they actually kind of, again, figured out by doing things, by experimenting. Any particular story? I think you've interviewed like more than 200 people, so that's what I'm curious about.

So many. I can't, like, I think the, the specialty. So I run a community, it's called the Wise Women's Council and it's for business moms. And I can give you, I'm not gonna share like the specific people because, you know, Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a private community, but the quality of the conversations we have. One of the things I try to do is carve out 90 minutes of space for you to have That big conversation, like we were talking about earlier. Do I want to have kids? Do I not? And we end up having these conversations where people are thinking, do I want another kid? Do I? Am I gonna have a third kid? Can I bring my spouse home? Like, am I making enough money for my husband to be a stay-at-home dad? Do I want that? Does he want that? Do I get a divorce? Right? Do I quit my job? Should I sell my company? I, those are the like bigger conversations that you need just a little more space for. You don't need a year. You need 90 minutes a couple of times to really start to unlock, unlock this. And what I've seen, there's one member who was with us for 4 years and she started a company, sold it, it got acquired. She helped build that from 20 people to 200 people. She exited and then she said, I don't know what to do next. And then spent 9 months researching to try to figure out like, okay, I really want to, I want to be strategic about the next company that I build and tested a whole bunch of ideas. And she's now on her 3rd media company. And so she's building another company. And it's really cool to watch. And she said, I can pinpoint each of those decisions to some of these conversations we had in your community, like because we had space.

Right.

Then we also, so I work a lot with people in opening up lateral possibilities. I think one of the most fantastic things about right now is that The world of work is changing so fast. It can be kind of terrifying. It's like, oh, there's all this consolidation happening, right? Like tech jobs are disappearing. This is disappearing. Like there's globalization. This is all quite terrifying. And we don't really have a playbook for what it looks like to be a woman in your 50s and 60s, right? We've got kind of the '80s model of the glass ceiling, like the concrete ceiling if you're a woman of color. Right. And it's like, well, where do we go? And the only real story is like the career ladder where you're trying to be a CEO. And one of the things we talk about is these lateral moves of becoming an angel investor, starting a venture fund, joining boards because you can get paid to be on board seats, starting a side hustle.

Mm-hmm.

Like, there's actually a tremendous number of possibilities for women who have 20 years of career experience. They're product managers, they're ex-product managers from Google. They're from, you know, they've done all of this fantastic stuff. And so another founder is, um, it's just low-key starting a venture capital fund.

Wow.

Yeah, it's really cool. And to be in a community of 100 other women where you're like, oh, she's starting a venture fund and she's starting this And she's starting this. I'm like, oh, you know what? I— so I will— I'll do that too.

Yeah, because I think you were part of a herd where everybody's shooting moonshots, so there is no other option but to choose, like, you know, try it, to try it. Like, you know, the best— the worst that can happen is you became— you remain in the same position where you were, like, you know, before. At least the best thing can happen is, like, maybe it'll work out, right? I love that mentality and, you know, kudos for bringing such empowered women together. And I think as a community builder myself, I find it very fascinating when people share these stories because I think that's all that matters, you know, getting inspired from one another, seeing some other win, being part of their wins in one way or the other way, directly or indirectly. And I think that makes the world a little better place than before. And that's why I love building communities, because if that is the ethos, we all become better. Last question before we wrap up. I asked this question, I started asking this question to every guest. What is an ambitious goal you're trying to chase?

There are a lot of them. Trying to think about which one. I want to write so many books. I want to write so many books. That's one of my goals. I have this secret dream. I don't know if it would be good for me or terrible for me, but do you know that show Survivor?

I know about it. I never watched it.

It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. I kind of want to be on Survivor.

I think you basically are abandoned in a remote location and you basically have to survive by yourself, right? I think

that's one show. This one is more like you compete with other people. The only reason I wouldn't go on is because people like dislocate their shoulders and hurt themselves. And I'm like, I'm not— I don't know, I'm old enough that I don't want injuries. So I'm like, no, no, no, I'm good with that part. But I kind of want to be on Survivor. And ambitious goals, I mean, I would love to interview like Allyson Felix or Serena Williams. Like, I would really love to interview people who are willing to go there and talk about the the issues with the institution of motherhood.

Right. I think, uh, I don't know if you've interviewed Alexis Ohanian, but, uh, he would be a great guest on Startup Parent because he's also— he's kind of trying, uh, you know that. I think you might know this very well. So moms, women get 12, 10 to 12 weeks of maternity leave. And think, man, that's very few companies give like that, 10

equal.

And yeah, but 90% majority, they only give what, 2 weeks or 4 weeks? That's like the, the law per se, I don't know. But he's actually fighting to make it equal for both parents so that, you know, they can spend the kids and, you know, it's actually like it won't destroy their livelihood, it'll make them better. So probably I think Alexis would be a great guest. Of course, Serena Williams, I saw her— their documentary on HBO. I don't know if you've had a chance to see that yet.

Not yet.

They actually shared, you know, how her pregnancy went and her complications and how she actually, like, you know, Fought

for herself.

For herself, like literally her life. Because at some point the doctor said it's either the baby or her. It's like they went to that point and she's a warrior. Oh my God, she's, she's, she's incredible. She's like, she's such an inspiration for me. And yeah, I would love you to interview her. I would be like your first listener. But Sarah, this has been great. There is so much intangible stuff. I feel like you said in the beginning of the episode, most of the things you said, it not necessarily need to apply for parenting, like parents with kids. It applies generally in life. Like if you're building a startup, everything you said, consistency, like overcommunicating, communication with clarity, you know, with your spouses or teams and and so many other things, like really, like, you know, the work-life balance, all the 7 points, 9 points, so on and so forth. These are all— they're all applicable for, you know, people who are building businesses anywhere in the world. So I genuinely appreciate you for, you know, drowning us with this wisdom and your experience and your knowledge. Anything before we wrap up? And you want to share anything before we wrap up?

I mean, a million things we could talk about so much. I will close the loop with Alexis Ohanian and what he's doing. Because you just reminded me, for dads who want to take equal leave, number one, I do a talk about why you should give equal leave. So if you want me to come do that talk, I've got a whole thing on on why it's so important. But the, the TLDR, the nutshell is like, number one, if you take equal leave to your spouse, your spouse's income stays higher. But for every week you don't take, she takes like a 2% hit or something like that. So women lose this huge amount of lifetime earnings when dads don't take leave. So if you want to make an extra $300K or an extra million bucks Mm-hmm. Number one, that's number one, like take the leave. Number 2, um, there's only 3 times in our life that we know about when your brain is, uh, gonna grow at a really phenomenal rate. It's when you're a baby, a teenager, and when you spend time with a kid, a baby. So if you want to have some of the most explosive brain growth and have like more neurons build in your brain, Spend time with a baby. So like for all those hackers out there trying to like hack your way to a smarter way of living, all you gotta do is spend time with a baby. Um, that's number 2. And number 3 is if you only take 1 or 2 weeks of leave, it's not actually good for your business. But if you take 12 weeks or you take 6 months, it forces you to create systems. It forces you to delegate. It asks you to do a whole bunch of stuff that's really powerful for your business. Right. So. That's my pitch in a nutshell. I have a whole talk on it. You can email me if you want me to bring it to your company. But take, you know, just if you want to make a million bucks, hack your brain to be better and then improve your business, take paternity leave.

That's awesome. That's, I think that's the great note. We can close it off. And for folks who are listening, you know, Sarah is very reachable. Her DMs are open on Twitter and, you know, she's, she's very approachable. You just heard yourself. But Sarah, again, appreciate you. Thank you for all the time. Thanks for all the tips. And folks who are listening, appreciate you all for tuning in. There are more amazing guests coming on the show in the next few months. I'm excited, excited as ever. A year from now, like previous year, I have no podcast, nothing experience in terms of sharing these incredible stories. But now I have a reason to look forward, and you are the reason, you know, partly I do this. So thank you for that, and take care of yourselves. We're approachable, and if you have any questions about kids— not kids, startups, anything— please reach us out. On that note, yeah, cheers, guys, and take it easy.