We’re back from summer hiatus, and it was wonderful. In this 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.
Allie Siarto built a company that was extremely successful, by all of our current measures of success. She even had an offer in hand to buy the company—and then she hesitated. She decided to walk away, and rebuild her business and life from scratch. Here’s why.
After losing her father at the tender ago of 25, Randi Zinn moved away from a traditional path in media to instead follow in her “fascinating hippie visionary” entrepreneurial dad’s footsteps. She depicts with honesty and vulnerability the struggles she felt leaping into a world she wasn’t prepared for and how her current success is most clearly understood alongside her several years of “non-linear” progress. After the birth of her son, Randi turned her passion for yoga, hosting events, and spirituality into uncommon and highly successful in person events and retreats. It was not until she was part way through throwing one of these mixers that she realized the business she wanted to create was staring right at her: Beyond Mom, a website, book, and community dedicated to exploring and nourishing our non-mother selves.
“Two-career couples have the assumption going into having a family, ‘Of course this is equal co-parenting. It’s 2019. What else would we do?’ But it so rarely plays out that way.” Despite the hope for equal partnership, it’s often mothers who are still doing the lion’s share of the unpaid, invisible labor of managing children and the home. Why is this?
Her whole life, Lucy Knisley wanted to be a mother, but when it was finally the perfect time for conceiving, it turned out to be harder than anything she’d ever attempted. Fertility problems were followed by miscarriages and her eventual successful pregnancy was plagued by health issues and led to a dramatic near-death experience during labor and delivery. She chronicled this experience and more in the book that she recently wrote called “Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos.” The book is funny and terrifying and informative and useful and real and raw, just like our conversation with Lucy today.