Rethinking Work and Parenting with Sarah K Peck, CEO & Founder of Startup Parent

About this episode:

Sarah K Peck is the founder and CEO of Startup Parent and the host of The Startup Parent Podcast, an award-winning podcast featuring women in entrepreneurship, business, and parenting. She writes about work, culture, and parenting, and her work has been featured in Forbes, Inc, Fast Company, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and more.

Topics Discussed:

How Sarah advocates for women and parents in business
Her tips on setting boundaries and becoming better at saying no
Why she believes parenting helps us develop essential business and life skills
How being in touch with and identifying her feelings helps Sarah find and live her joy

About Sarah:

Read a raw, unedited transcript of this episode:

Thank you for joining us, Sarah. Tell us about startup parent and why you decided to create it.

I got pregnant while I was working at the tech company in downtown Manhattan. They went through Y Combinator. I was the sixth person to join, by the time I got pregnant, I think there's 12 people. But no one else looked like me. Nobody else was having kids and nobody else was doing what I was doing. I think there is one guy who had kids, but he didn't work in the office and I just had no idea how to do parenting and working at a startup. When you look out at the broader world, do you look at these pregnant women on the cover of Ink Magazine and they look perfect, right? It's like how I got this million-dollar company while pregnant. And then I couldn't figure it out. Day to day life, I felt like I was totally drowning. I was struggling shock at getting pregnant. I didn't even know this lifelong dream was like, Wait, do I want to be pregnant? What am I doing? What am I getting myself into? And that loss of my own identity and the slipping away of my freedom. I just needed a resource. So I started documenting my own journey, which involved a lot of like this food worked to combat Niger. And I have this side blog for a while and the blog turned into a book proposal. The book proposal turned into a podcast. I had a six month old and the podcast launched and I don't know about anyone else out there, but picking up more free work when you have a six month old is not that great. So I asked for sponsors. We got $30,000 some sponsorships to launch the podcast. And that is the evolution of the business. As it started. It was it was not a light bulb moment. I knew exactly what I was going to do. It was more of an evolution. And we're five years in now and we have a community for women to support them. And we're launching founders with kids later this summer.

Good for you. And I love that you bring up such a good point about seeing the women on the covers of the magazines and how perfect they look. But it's so perfectly imperfect when you look at the real day to day life. And when your kids are younger, you're just struggling to keep up. I'm a mom of eight year old twins, and I supported myself in L.A. since I was 19 until I got married. I love to work. I find so much joy in work. And I found myself sitting in a nursery, which I love. I love the twins so much. I loved every moment of being a mom. But you lose a certain side of yourself that you always had and you think, How do I find that? And How do I maintain it? And the struggle to do that looks different now.

for me, I just felt so confused and overwhelmed because I felt like everything I thought I knew about motherhood was a lie. And I know that no one does it on purpose, but it's like, Oh, pregnancy's so great. You're glowing, you know? No, it's. It's really rough on your body, you know? It's morning sickness. No, it's all day sickness. you're going to be able to have a natural pregnancy or birth. There's no such thing Like you don't have a natural root canal, you get drugs for that. And I was so discouraged and disappointed that no one told me about this and no one was saying like, it's okay not to like motherhood all the time and it's okay to feel like you're totally overwhelmed. And by the way, that whole myth of doing it all and having it all is total B.S.. I wish someone had said, and I recorded a video about this the other day you're not going to have it all. You're not going to be able to do it all. And you probably won't get your body back after baby. And those things are totally fine. Yeah, of course. You bring a life into the world. You create this whole new life. It affects all of your relationships. It changes how you think about work. Maybe it magnifies it. Maybe it makes you more passionate about it. Maybe you quit your job, maybe it makes you desperate to get the things that you used to have. But to expect that it won't change you is so weird when you think about it. It's it's so true. Because no one tells you. No one really tells you because if you say certain things, you might be looked at as not appreciating what it is you have or the kids. And so,] we love our kids, so we want to make sure that we convey that. But we're not always honest about what's going. I went through IVF. I remember sitting through a meeting and. Parker is my daughter, Parker, who's eight now. Her head was sticking in my rib and for 2 hours I was in pain, trying to have a good meeting and convey myself and what I was introducing in the right way. and no one really talks about that. I mean, I went home and have maybe even never mentioned it again to anyone else, but it's it's painful. And going through IVF, I was a vice president in a company and I said to my husband, I'm going to be putting drugs into my system. So I might not act the way I normally act and just know that that's because I'm putting something different into my body every day. But we don't always talk about that.

Oh, we don't talk about miscarriage. We don't talk about fertility now that I'm I've lived through it and I've interviewed 200 parents on my podcast and then another 100 through the Wise Women's Council. I just love talking about it because fertility one in six people are going to struggle with fertility and not just women like the guys also struggle with fertility And one in four pregnancies ends in a miscarriage, which means if you're in a room with three other women, one of you is going to have a miscarriage. And we just need to talk about it more so we can say, Yeah, that was hard. What was it like for you? How did you get through it? What do I need to know instead of this hush hush, never talk about this. Because remember, when you're teenagers are like, don't get pregnant, don't get pregnant, pregnant. It happens like this you're going to be 35 and you're like, that happened the way that I thought it was going to happen. Right. And on the flip side of that, how do we maintain work if that is something we want to do and if that is part of our identity? It's messy and you just have to get up every day and keep going. And I can see how having that support around you can really help.

And I am so passionate about women being able to make decisions for themselves. Same with dads, right? Same with all parents. Binary non-binary. Like you being able to make your own decisions and have agency in your life is really important. And especially for career moms, people that want to work, people that love what they do. I work with business owners and founders and entrepreneurs. The 30% of women. This is before the pandemic. 30% of women that wanted to work dropped out of the workforce because there's no daycare options for them. There's no paid leave or parental leave options for them. They suffer from pregnancy discrimination and the motherhood discrimination. And this is a whole bunch of people that they just want to work great. Like it's not like they're dropping out because they don't want to.

Yeah. And it's we as women, we have these moments where that necessarily men don't always have I worked for the Los Angeles Dodgers and I remember standing there looking around, going, if I had kids, how would I maintain going to 80 games a year and working the 9 to 11 hour days during the season that I was working? How do I keep working in sports and have a family? and not everyone is has to ask themselves that question, and you know, when you're in these certain work environments, I when I got pregnant with the twins I was the only woman in a team of men. And I remember thinking, I can't tell them I'm pregnant. And I was lucky because we were all across the country. I think I was three months pregnant and I think they thought I just gained weight, but I thought I cannot tell them till the very last minute. And then they wanted me to apply to a meeting and I had to tell them. Then I said, I can't fly. I'm on the no fly list. You know, they said, What are you talking about? I said, Well, I'm pregnant. And I did not tell them I was having twins though. because I thought if I tell them, they're going to think I want to step back from this project and that I'm not going to be as invested. And so after I had the babies, they said, oh, how was your pregnancy? what did you decide to name him or her? And I said, Well, babies. And they said, babies. And I said, Yes, I had to go.

The story that you told, the thing that stands out to me is that other people think that they can do the thinking for you. And this happens so much in workplaces where you're like, well, I'm not going to tell them because then they're going to think that I don't want to work. And that idea that they can take my ambition and drive and make choices for me is I have all the swear words for that. I'm not going to say them right now, because I enjoy working. when I was six months, not six months, six weeks postpartum, I you can't do everything. I just want to be totally clear to people listening. But I would skip showers so that I could write. And I loved my writing and I didn't want to miss it. I had all these ideas and all this creative energy. But I was able to do a little bit because I wanted to. And I think taking that away from people and saying You shouldn't work at all or you should be back and you should be perfect and you should look like nothing has changed. Those are so extreme. And I wish that we move towards a world where you're able to say, Hey, I got a kid in here stabbing my ribs. And actually I'd be way more comfortable if I could just walk in circles around this conference room. And I may just need to stretch, but that doesn't affect my thinking. That doesn't affect my capacity. All it means is that I have to stretch. Stretch because I'm a human and a body wild. Right. And it's not going to affect your ability to work or your future want to work. And maybe what we do ends up shifting a bit and that's okay and we have to look at it that way. My background was in corporate for Marriott and AT&T and the Los Angeles Dodgers, and after having the twins, for a while, your identity, you think, Who am I now? And we have to be okay with having that change.

Yeah. I love that. We live in a culture that doesn't want people to change. Oh, you said this on Twitter 20 years ago. You know, I'm a different person, Malik, who you met in high school. My body has regenerated itself eight times since that I wish we had more generosity with each other, and grace around that being like, Oh, you know what? Flying might be really hard for you because I understand what feeding a baby looks like during the first year, going to 80 games might be really hard. What job could be really well-suited to keep you plugged in here? how can we you know, we move people around on baseball teams all the time. We move people around on the football field. Like, why can't we do that in our offices? Hey, this job doesn't work for you, but like right now you should do this. And then maybe later on, once your kids are not needing you and interrupting you every two and a half minutes, there's a chance for you to have full thoughts.

Again, I actually said that during COVID. I said to a friend, I said, set your timer for every 15 minutes and pretend someone's coming to ask you a question and you actually have to physically get up and respond to it.

That's what it was like homeschooling twins during COVID, So again, I had to take a mindset of This is where life is right now. You know, I have to give to my family, but I'm not going to stop my dreams, my goals for the business, what I want to accomplish. They just might not happen at the pace I want them to right now, because this is the life we're living at this moment. And at times that can be hard to do. You believe in fixing a broken work culture and we talked about this a little bit. Yeah. How do you believe that we do that? Part of it is. There has been a shift even over the last 30 years, where workplaces have gotten more and more intense and more and more demanding. And the way that shift has happened looks like now you have two jobs instead of one. Years ago, you might have only been a journalist at the New York Times. Only I say, because that's a really tough job. And now you have to be a journalist at The New York Times and run your entire Twitter feed on The Daily there. That's two jobs. Plus, maybe you're doing six more jobs as well. Maybe you've added the number of articles that you're writing. I'm just using that as an example. But in most jobs, you have the McKinsey's, you have the Deloittes, you have the Bain and companies coming in and looking for efficiencies. Efficiencies look like removing labor most of the time. How can we streamline jobs and cut them back? You see it in retail services where you know you'll have a service worker or a retail worker like a Gap employee, and they come in for a shift from 6 to 10 a.m. And then they're scheduled for another shift from 2 to 4 p.m. and another one at closing at 10 p.m. And the computer algorithm thinks that's fine because it's efficient, because we've gotten those 8 hours and we've covered the peak demand, but there's no humanity in it. you can't open and close and then have it something in the middle of the day and maintain any sort of freedom of your own life. When do you even sleep? So we're really at an inflection point where workplaces have become quite toxic. And luckily because of the pandemic, and I say luckily carefully, because the pandemic's not great, but labor has more power now and it might not be for a long time. But advocating for yourself in workplaces is going to be the first step. And I have lots of thoughts on the future of work, but that's one of them.

And there's such a shift in the culture of work today, how we're buying and selling products. I think it's exciting, but it's all shifting so fast. And to your point, because of technology, because we took that time away, but we also increased our amount of time, we're using technology because we had to just speed everything up so much faster.

Yeah, we have instantaneous expectations, like I'm going to buy a package and it should be here by tomorrow. So if you're a small business owner, you're expected to now do overnight shipping for everyone. That that's really challenging. The consumer expectations are extremely high. it's also to your point on technology, we're up at 6 to 8 answering emails and then we go to the workplace and then we check in while we're at the soccer and then we do some quick emails at 10 p.m. and then we're working all day Saturday and Sunday. And so now we're giving twice as much for a job that wants us to work twice as much. I want to step back and be like, is it worth it? Are we able to step back and look at it and evaluate, Yeah, this is exactly what I want to be doing with my life. It gets so hard because we're trapped in hustle culture, so everyone else is doing it around us and we think it's normal, but it's not. People burn out consistently, repeatedly.

And this is a perfect transition to my next question. You're an advocate for setting boundaries and saying no. What are the five phrases that we can use to set better boundaries?

I think this is one of the superpowers of motherhood and parenting. Like you're under a baby and somebody calls you for something that in your previous life you might have, like really hustle to do. You're like, yes, I can get there. And you race out the door, whatever it is. a lot of people are scared to say no. And women in particular have trouble saying no because we're culture to look good, to not complain, to help other people, to be generous. But in that way that's serving everyone else and to make sure that everyone else gets what they need before we doin setting boundaries, it's a long conversation, but it starts with getting really clear with who you are. And that takes work over time in actually listening to those subtle signals in your body. For me, there's that story of like, it's a hell yes or a hell no. I was always confused because I never had that. I was like, Well, this is like a murky, like, well, I would start to talk myself into things. It was like, Yeah, this would make sense. Yeah. I could totally, you know, fly around the world and, like, stay up all night and do a talk. And this would be great for my career. And I realized that my hell no is actually when I tried to talk myself into something, when I try to rationalize it, when I use that exact sound, which is, well, that's my no. And so you as an individual have to learn where is it in my body that says, now, if you're new to this, you won't know right away. So you experiment, you say, Oh, that's a weird feeling I'm having. My stomach is doing these flip flop things and then go ahead and do whatever it is you said yes to and ask yourself afterwards, Did I like that? And then you start to pattern map between, You could start to get the clues of your own body and history.

I really like writing scripts for other people, so my friends will text me and they'll be like, Sarah, I got asked to this thing. What do I do? How do I think now? And Ooh, how could I say no? And I think about it and I write it out. So collecting those, I think I should make it into a book But my favorite one is Thanks for thinking of me. That's not the right fit. Good luck. And that's it. And the key word. That's not the right fit.

Right.

The trouble we get into is when we say things like, Oh yeah, Saturday doesn't work for me. What do you think the person's going to say? How about Sunday?

And you're right. That phrase, you really have nothing to say back to it because it answers every question.

When people ask me to do something, I've learned to, because I'm the kind of person who will write back immediately. I've learned to put my phone down for 5 minutes and walk around because so often I have responded that I think, oh, why do I do that?

Yes.

Why did I agree to that? It's because I didn't think it through long enough, and I just responded instinctively too quickly.

What is your approach to management and leading your teams, and what do you think is the most crucial element of leadership?

You. This relates to what we were talking about. a lot of managers defer decisions and they push them under their team. And the role of a manager is to really protect your team's time, to help them find out what are we going to focus on, what are we not going to do, what's the strategy? And to make sure all the players are on the same page. And if you say to your person, there's so many bosses that do this and it's just bad leadership. You've given them an assignment, you've given them a project. We're working on this, ] content initiative, and we're trying to get it done. And then they're like, Oh, we're going to do this other thing here, do it right, and they toss it on your plate and people are like, Wait, I just what I and they don't know how to say no and manage upwards because the bosses fail. The leader has failed in that regards. So one of the scripts and I will say I have a book with these five scripts start a parent dot com slash have I will send you the link so you can send it to people. But I write these all down so people can get them. But this one, when you're managing up to a boss, you say, Oh, I love it. I'm always positive in the first part. Like, I love this project. Oh, this is so cool. You give me project, I'll B, this is project C, which one should we stop? To do project c, c, you push back with a decision. They're going to say, do them all. And you say, I'd love to do them all, but I have to choose which one is first. Which one do you want me to work on first? Right. And this managing up, you communicate great. I'm going to work on that first.

That's good advice. I mean, setting boundaries and protecting our time is really important that way. The team member is also putting out the best work because they're not trying to juggle so many things on their plate.

You believe that parenting can make someone be a better leader and facilitator as a mom of twins? I completely agree with you. Why do you think that is?

Through parenting, you learn a tremendous number of skills that are really important for leadership. If you've ever negotiated with a two year old, you now have negotiation strategies and we've probably tried them all. Bribery, brute force counting down. But you can increase your negotiation skills. You also increase your patience and your tolerance to deal with other people's feelings. My little three year old, that's a really big feeling. It sounds like you're really frustrated. How did that make you feel like? I was really sad when you took that away from me. I was like, okay, but I'm like, what can we do about this? And he problem solved with me, which honestly is more skilled than a lot of grown ups that I know.So learning how to listen, learning how to be flexible, learning how to be present, learning how to negotiate all of these of the, quote unquote, soft skills that we want out of business, schools and parenting. Honestly, I wish the parents got an honorary MBA because what you go through is that instrumental.

So true. I always tell people that having the twins took my multitasking skills to an entirely new level that I thought they were pretty good until I had the twins. Because, life is pretty predictable. But with twins, they'll go in two different directions. You never know what they're going to say or do. You have to be ready for every situation. And that goes into my business life every day. And you mentioned that counting down. It's funny, I can just say three and my kids and I had a parent say to me, wow, I go to five. I don't even start with one. I just go straight to three. And they know they think, Oh, something's going to be taken away from me. I'm going to lose iPad time. You're so, so right. And that becoming a parent teaches you so many different things about leadership.

I think it breaks you to a little bit and it's not fun to go through. But for many, ambitious, driven, talented type A perfectionist women out there, of which I will raise my hand. I've been in that category. Me too. I'm with you.

You learn at some point that actually you can't push through and do it all. Like that skill set will fail you at some point. And it's I think that's one of the toughest lessons I had to go through, because I want to be able to do everything. I want to be able so much that I want to do in this world. It is infuriating not to be able to, and that's when you have to start making those hard choices and say, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. And that is a superpower. But it can be, in my experience, pretty painful to learn. Yeah, absolutely. And it pushes you to the point where you have to take time for yourself.

I ask this question at the end of every podcast episode, magic happens and we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy. What is one tip you can leave with us today about how you find and live your joy?

I love this question. I for me, I have been learning very slowly over time that you can selectively feel some feelings and ignore others. And the more I let myself feel pain or sorrow or sadness, anger more than I understand what it is, where it's coming from, how to express it, The more I'm able to experience joy. Mm hmm. And that's. Those words are so important because so often we push the feelings away, and that doesn't really help us.

Yeah. My three year old the other day. He was so upset and I couldn't seem to fix it. And sometimes my impulses to like, how do we fix this? Right. I'm working on that. I'm giving them space to feel their feelings. And I asked them, I said, Where do you feel it? And he goes, My throat. And he looked so sad and I was like, yeah, I understand. You know, when you well up in your throat, it's all thick. I was like, Oh, buddy, sometimes we just have to feel it. And he's like, Yeah, it was really heartwarming. I know it sounds sad, but it was so sweet to hear him talk about like, this is where the feeling is in my body.

And it's great that you're doing that because then he'll think it's okay to have any kind of feeling. Yeah. And that's so important for kids and for us.

Yeah. Such great little boys. I mean, for all kids, all people, especially these little boys that are told Don't cry like man up, you know, don't show any emotion. No, no. That's where the healing is going to come from. Mm hmm. So your little kids are able to feel what they feel.

So true. I think about that a lot because I have a girl and a boy, and so my daughter tells me everything. So I know everything and all kinds of emotions, you know? And my son's pretty quiet. So I try to make a point to tell him, you know, it's okay to feel it's okay to feel anything, you know, come and tell me anything. You will never be in trouble. I'll never be upset at you. You know, it's okay to share your feelings because she does most 95% of the talking. It's already half the time and he talks, but she's, you know, very social. So, you know, I see that because I see it every day in them. So you're right. It's so important to just for anyone to understand that all feelings are real and validated.

I think this is like I think this is the work of leaders in the future. It's to understand what am I feeling? Why am I feeling it? How do I connect with another human being? Parenthood is such a good incubator for this, but so are so many other professions, so many other projects, you know, caring for any living thing.

And what are our teams going through and how are they feeling and how can we best support them in their day so that they provide the best work for you?

Totally agree.

Thank you so much for joining me. I feel like I could talk to you all afternoon. Please share with our listeners how and where they can find you.

Yeah you can find me over at https://startupparent.com/ and we've got a newsletter https://startupparent.com/newsletter. We're on Instagram and TikTok now as a startup parent

Guest UserJune 9, 2022