Imagine speaking to a room of 200 people. You’d talk about it for months, post the photos, and put it on your speaker reel. So why does 200 views on a video feel like failure? In this solo episode of Between Meetings & Motherhood, host Alexa Starks breaks down why mom founders feel so cringe about posting online, and how one reframe can get you to hit publish.

Cringe is fear of what strangers think of you, and those strangers aren’t paying your bills. Alexa shares what her first LinkedIn and Instagram posts felt like, why confidence comes after action instead of before it, and why you’ve already done something far more exposing than posting a carousel: you grew and birthed a baby.

In this episode:

• The 200 people in a room reframe: why 200 views is a packed event, not a flop

• The math: five posts a week at 200 views a day is 10,000 new people seeing your business

• Why cringe is really fear, and how to find where it shows up in your body

• Why a stranger’s opinion shouldn’t decide how you show up in your business

• The corporate-to-entrepreneur mindset shift: you can’t care about everyone’s opinion anymore

• Why confidence comes from doing, and the “but did you die?” test for posting

• Why it took months of daily posting before LinkedIn and Instagram took off

• Why most businesses quit around month two, and what 40 weeks of showing up looks like

• Your homework: post the cringy thing today, tag Alexa, and she’ll reshare it

Posting is easier when someone’s cheering you on. That’s what the Mothered Founders Club is for: a global membership for mom founders who want real business growth together, with collaborations, referrals, partnerships, and other moms who get it. 280+ mom founders are already on the waitlist, and the link is in the description.

Join the waitlist, doors open mid-November! Members get exclusive priority access and discounted pricing.

🎙️ Between Meetings & Motherhood is hosted by Alexa Starks, founder of Mothered Media and editor-in-chief of Mothered Magazine, a podcast for ambitious moms building businesses and raising families at the same time.

#MomFounder #MomEntrepreneur #PersonalBranding #SocialMediaTips #ContentCreation #Visibility #MotheredFoundersClub #MomPodcast #BetweenMeetingsAndMotherhood #MotheredMedia #WomenInBusiness #LinkedInTips #InstagramTips #DoingBigShit

In this episode of Between Meetings & Motherhood, host Alexa Starks sits down with Nina for a funny, honest conversation about how to prepare for postpartum, build your village, and share the mental load with your partner from the day you see that positive pregnancy test.

In this episode:

• Why you should treat your third trimester as postpartum prep, and what to do in the second trimester to get ahead of it

• How to write a postpartum plan: the pelvic floor therapist, lactation consultant, and mental health therapist to research before you need them

• What to put on your baby registry instead of another bouncy seat: meal delivery, house cleaning, a postpartum doula, a night nanny

• How to build your village while you’re still pregnant, and what to do if you can’t afford to outsource

• Postpartum depression, anxiety, rage, OCD, PTSD, and psychosis: what the perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) are and why none of it makes you a bad mom

• Why Nina treats a birth plan like a flowchart instead of a wish list

• Nina’s experience with placenta encapsulation and why some of her clients swear by it

• Nina’s planned home birth: three hours of pushing, a baby coming out crooked, and the EMTs arriving just as he was born

• The fetal ejection reflex: why her second birth was completely different

• The invisible load starts at the positive pregnancy test, not when the baby arrives, and how partners can carry their share from week one

• Why people spend more time on the wedding than the marriage, and more time on the nursery than on parenthood

• Nina’s big goal: a full education and community platform that becomes a “nest” for moms from pregnancy through postpartum

Nina’s book The Baby Chick Guide to Positive Pregnancy is a week-by-week guide with partner tips, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, and Walmart.

📲 Find Nina: baby-chick.com (2,800+ free articles, her book, birth and postpartum courses, and baby planning services) | @thebabychick on Instagram

🎙️ Between Meetings & Motherhood is hosted by Alexa Starks, founder of Mothered Media and editor-in-chief of Mothered Magazine, a podcast for ambitious moms building businesses and raising families at the same time.

Join the waitlist for our upcoming Mothered Founders Club, for ambitious mom founders globally who want to build businesses together.

#PostpartumPlan #PostpartumPreparation #PregnancyTips #BabyPlanner #Doula #PostpartumDoula #PostpartumSupport #MomPodcast #BetweenMeetingsAndMotherhood #MotheredMedia #PositivePregnancy #BirthPrep #MentalLoad #PostpartumDepression #NewMom

Today’s post is brought to you by…learning how to pause doing bit shit for a few days to listen to my body!

Alrighty, if you’re new here, I talk about doing big shit. I talk about mom founders doing big shit, setting big goals, doing awesome big stuff.

And I work my ass off to build up my business - Mothered Media, a global media brand of research, events, and support for moms and working moms, Mothered Magazine, the only global magazine spotlighting working mothers, and now the Mothered Founders Club, a new membership for ambitious mom founders who want to actually build businesses together.

But I also have 2 toddlers. So most days, I work all day, pick up the kids at 5, put them to sleep at 8pm, and then work fro 8-10pm or 11pm every night. And on weekends.

And for the past two years, it’s been this pattern of hustle and we’re in this big business growth phase too so it’s hard to slow down.

Well…I finally hit the perfect storm, of 2.5 years postpartum after 2 back to back kids, burnout from work, and burnout-induced PMDD. Now, I had to even dig in to figure out what PMDD is, because I had never heard of it.

It’s “PMDD stands for Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. It is a severe, chronic medical condition and hormone-based mood disorder that acts as a much more intense form of premenstrual syndrome (PMS).”

Essentially, the week/week and a half leading up to my period have become extremely low lows, severe depression, low energy, emotional, extreme fatigue, irritability, anger… And then, once my period hits, it’s like a fog lifts.

And it came on about 4-5 months ago, and confused the hell out me. I’ve pushed through it, powered through those hard weeks, and it finally broke me.

I hit my lowest low this past Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And I mean, scary looowwwssss. And the hardest part of it was being with my kids. Because I would look at them and feel the weight of pain in my chest, feeling like I couldn’t breathe, but all I wanted to do was tickle them on the floor and smile and laugh with them and run around and squeal and snuggle. And it took every ounce of energy just to watch them play together while I sat there.

And I felt like a failure. I felt like I forgot how to be me, how to be mom, how to feel.

And that’s been the hardest part of this, that before the fog lifts, those few days are excruciating and mind-twisting. It makes me forget what “normal” feels like, and it makes me feel like there’s no way out of this. That this is forever.

And now that the fog has lifted about 50%, I know that’s not true. But fuck if it isn’t the worst feeling in the moment, for days.

So here’s what I’m doing to pull myself back up:

1. I reached out for help. To a few therapists, counselors for moms.

2. I told my husband too. I need his help, but if he has no idea what’s going on, it makes it worse.

3. Clearing out my calendar a bit more. Giving more to my team to handle so I have less meetings during the day.

4. Better boundaries at night and less meetings too. Shut my laptop earlier.

5. Supplements: ashwaganda, magnesium, vitamins, creatine.

6. Meditation: i’m putting it here to hold myself accountable too, but committing to meditating 5 minutes each day, at a minimum.

7. Some things have to give, so I’ll probably not post on my personal IG as much, and probably here on Substack too. I know it hurts growth, but I can’t do everything in this season and I need to protect myself.

So that’s all for now… I didn’t think it was possible to hit burnout, but here I am. So, going to pull back and do a liiiiittle bit less for a little bit.

Did you do anything to protect your mental health, burnout, or experience PMDD?? So curious to learn more about it and how common it is.

Please share if you have

When I look at my daughter and tell her how strong and powerful she is, a piece of me heals.

When I look at my daughter and tell her how capable she is of doing anything, a piece of me heals.

When I help my daughter back up after she falls, a piece of me heals.

When I hold my daughter in my arms when she cries and she snuggles into me, a piece of me heals.

When my son looks into my eyes and tells me how much he loves me, a piece of me heals.

When my son says he just wants mommy, a piece of me heals.

I had no idea that parenting would be therapeutic. Especially parenting my two toddlers, every day there is something deeply healing that happens, even through the exhaustion and the meltdowns and tears and everything.

There is something so healing about being someone’s everything, someone’s safe space, someone’s warmth, to hold so much overwhelming love for another human and feeling them want all of that love is so deeply healing.

I had no idea, truly could never have anticipated how much I would love my kids. It’s addictive the way drugs are addictive, the way I think about seeing my kids again when I pick them up from daycare, the way I scroll through pictures of them and feel my heart exploding with love, it’s almost painful, just to the edge of pain because love can be so overwhelming and it needs somewhere to go.

Sometimes this is what fuels the desire to have more babies, because look how perfect I created these two beautiful little people, what if there were two more of them. More love, more snuggles, more giggles and laughter and just a love fest.

Every time my babies run into my arms with excitement to be picked up, a piece of me heals.

Every ache, every regret, all the years of trauma and pain and grief and sadness, feels like it is slowly healing every time I look at my babies, every time they snuggle into me and every time I tell them how much I love them and in their little voice they say “and I love YOU mommy.”

In this episode:

• What “doing big shit” actually means — and why revenue and hustle have nothing to do with it

• The test: if saying your goal out loud doesn’t give you a pit in your stomach, it’s not big enough

• Why moms are constantly given permission to be ambitious — but only a little bit — and why that’s holding us back

• How Alexa went from maternity leave coaching to building a global media company to shift the cultural narrative around motherhood

• Why working backwards from a scary goal is the only real business strategy

• Why the biggest goals are never achieved alone — and why competition is the wrong frame entirely

• The Mothered Founders Club: a global community for mom founders to do big shit together — collaborations, referrals, workshops, quarterly goal sprints, and rooms full of women who actually get it

• How to join the waitlist today as a founding member (link in description)

Your homework: write down your big shit goal — the real one, the scary one — and send it to Alexa on Instagram or LinkedIn. Or comment it below.

Founding member waitlist is open now at https://www.motheredmedia.com/founders-club

🎙️ Between Meetings & Motherhood is hosted by Alexa Starks, founder of Mothered Media and editor-in-chief of Mothered Magazine — a podcast for ambitious moms building businesses and raising families at the same time.

#MomFounder #MomEntrepreneur #BigGoals #MotheredFoundersClub #MomPodcast #BetweenMeetingsAndMotherhood #MotheredMedia #MotheredMagazine #WomenInBusiness #MomBoss #FemaleFounder #MomCommunity #AmbitionAndMotherhood #StartupLife #DoingBigShit

I hear so many mom entrepreneurs say the same things, especially when just starting out.

• They aren’t seeing results yet and want to give up

• They want to know when things will pick up and start seeing the return or sales/success

• Feeling too cringe to post something

• Feeling unsure and lacking confidence in selling or pitching their services

The list goes on…but it boils down to their fear.

And every single time, I want to just reach through the computer screen (or if I happen to be in person) and shake them by the shoulders and tell them “Don’t be the thing that stands in your own way.”

Frustrated because you aren’t seeing results as quickly as it seems on social media? It takes time. Don’t give up too soon, don’t lose your consistency and discipline, don’t be the thing that just gives up too early to see the results.

Feeling too cringe about a post means you’re fearful of what other people (strangers usually) think about your post. Don’t put their opinion of you over your success. Don’t let your fear of their opinions get in the way of your success.

Lacking confidence or feeling unsure about selling or pricing yourself? Guess what? It’s a new skill! You probably never had to do that in your corporate job. But I bet on your first day in the corporate world you were also nervous a little bit, and had to learn and grow and become good at your past jobs. Same concept applies here. It’s a new skill, you have to practice and get comfortable before the confidence comes.

Confidence comes from doing. Not before.

Only 200 people saw a reel you made? Guess what? If you stood in a room on a stage and spoke to 200 people, that would be incredible, you’d post all day about it, you’d be ecstatic that you spoke to 200 people. And yet, because so many people go viral on IG and have a big following, we naturally compare our posts to theirs (even if we don’t have the same audience) and think, ‘oh, only 200 views, that’s so low.’

It took me months, MONTHS, before I started seeing results come in. Before my LinkedIn started gaining traction, before my instagram started building up. And even here on Substack I have to apply that same discipline and consistency (although tbh I’m so busy that this platform has been taking a backseat sadly) if I want to grow here.

Don’t give up too quickly because things haven’t taken off in 2 months. Don’t be the thing that stands in your way of success. Don’t let your mindset, your fear, your concern of others’ opinions, your anxiety, get in the way and stop you.

I love the saying, “What if you fail? But what if you succeed?” and that’s the mindset you need to have.

Every time you look fear in the face, you get stronger. Every time you look fear and anxiety and discomfort in the face and do it anyway, you build your confidence. And you get one step closer to success.

Don’t give up too soon. You’re almost there.

If you’re a mom founder, join our free monthly mom founder networking virtual meeting: https://luma.com/mothered-media

And we’re launching a new Mothered Founders Club, a membership for ambitious mom founders to actually collaborate, network, partner, and grow your business together. Join the waitlist here, doors open soon: https://www.motheredmedia.com/founders-club

In this episode of Between Meetings & Motherhood, host Alexa Starks sits down with Brooke Orloff, co-founder of Mone Wellness — a comprehensive postpartum platform that brings together evidence-informed education, symptom logging for mom and baby, community forums, and a directory of 200+ vetted women’s health providers, all in one place.

In this episode:

• What Mone Wellness actually does: articles, videos, logging, community forums, and a provider directory all in one app

• Why postpartum education needs to start prenatally — and how Moan is built around that

• Her second birth: prodromal labor for weeks, a traumatic delivery, and what it took to process and heal before her third

• How her third birth — calm, efficient, and smooth — changed everything, including her recovery

• Still breastfeeding her 16-month-old and why she can’t quite bring herself to wean

• The identity shift that hit hardest after her second baby — and the fragmentation she didn’t see coming

• Starting Mone just days postpartum and why she calls it her fourth baby

• Why she went from massage therapy to doula work to lactation counseling — and how each step led to the next

• The big goal: Mone as the recommended postpartum resource integrated across OB offices, birth centers, midwifery practices, and doula networks nationwide

• Why every birthing person deserves a doula — and what happens when partners are properly prepared for birth

Brooke is also featured in the October issue of Mothered Magazine — read the full interview at motheredmagazine.com.

📲 Find Mone Wellness: monewellness.com | Available on Apple & Android | @moanwellness on social | Brooke Flynn Orloff on LinkedIn

🎙️ Between Meetings & Motherhood is hosted by Alexa Starks, founder of Mothered Media and editor-in-chief of Mothered Magazine — a podcast for ambitious moms building businesses and raising families at the same time.

#PostpartumSupport #PostpartumRecovery #Doula #LactationSupport #MomPodcast #BetweenMeetingsAndMotherhood #MotheredMagazine #MotheredMedia #NewMomSupport #MomsHealth #PostpartumApp #MomFounder #BirthSupport #Breastfeeding #MaternalHealth

In this episode of Between Meetings & Motherhood, host Alexa Starks sits down with Charlee Tchividjian, founder and CEO of Every Mother’s Advocate (EMA) — the October cover of Mothered Magazine — for a conversation about motherhood, mission, burnout, and what it really means to fight for families the system has written off.

In this episode:

• The moment in South Africa that changed everything — and why Charlee’s heart went to the mom, not the baby

• Why less than 10% of children enter foster care due to abuse — and what’s really driving family separation

• How EMA works: trained volunteers, professional case managers, and a wraparound model that gets moms from crisis to stability

• Starting a nonprofit from a college dorm room at 20 years old — with zero business background

• Becoming licensed foster parents before having biological kids — and what watching birth moms fight the system did to Charlee’s mission

• The hustle culture reckoning: working 80-hour weeks in the name of a noble cause — and why COVID forced her to slow down

• What a 50/50 partnership with her husband actually looks like in practice

• Why it might take her longer to get where she’s going — and why she’s made peace with that

• From 17 cities to millions of moms: the open-source, app-based model she’s building to multiply EMA’s reach

• The big dream: bringing EMA back to where it all started — South Africa

Charlee is the October cover of Mothered Magazine — read the full exclusive interview at motheredmagazine.com.

📲 Find EMA: ema.org | @charleetchividjian on Instagram & LinkedIn

🎙️ Between Meetings & Motherhood is hosted by Alexa Starks, founder of Mothered Media and editor-in-chief of Mothered Magazine — a podcast for ambitious moms building businesses and raising families at the same time.

#FosterCare #MomNonprofit #FamilySeparation #MomPodcast #BetweenMeetingsAndMotherhood #MotheredMagazine #MotheredMedia #MomsInCrisis #MomFounder #SocialImpact #EveryMothersAdvocate #WorkingMoms #MomEntrepreneur #MaternalSupport #NonprofitLeader

In this episode of Between Meetings & Motherhood, host Alexa Starks sits down with Cheryl Przezdziecki, founder and clinical director of the Women’s Center for Healing for one of the most honest, grounded conversations this podcast has had about childhood trauma, reparenting, co-regulation, and what it actually means to break generational cycles while raising daughters.

In this episode:

• Why motherhood — not a classroom — was what finally launched Cheryl’s mental health journey

• What holistic, trauma-informed therapy actually looks like and why it starts by going back before you can move forward

• Reparenting: what it is, why it matters, and how to become the inner parent your inner child always needed

• The question that changes everything: what kind of parent did you wish you had?

• Why your kids mirror your own inner child — and what to do when a certain age or phase suddenly triggers you

• Co-regulation with toddlers: why letting them have the meltdown is sometimes the most powerful thing you can do

• The mom timeout: going to your own room instead of putting your kid in one

• Why children owe their parents nothing — not even a relationship — and what that reframe does for how you show up

• Raising daughters to name patriarchy, challenge body image messaging, and never shrink to fit a system

• What Cheryl learned about herself raising two daughters through every phase — and what she sees now that they’re in college

• Why she built the Women’s Center for Healing: because the gaps in care were too big and the people falling through them too important to ignore

• The best advice she gives her daughters right now: if you don’t fit the system, create one

Cheryl is also featured in the October issue of Mothered Magazine — read the full interview at motheredmagazine.com.

📲 Find Cheryl: thewomenscenterforhealing.com | @thewomenscenterforhealing on Instagram

🎙️ Between Meetings & Motherhood is hosted by Alexa Starks, founder of Mothered Media and editor-in-chief of Mothered Magazine — a podcast for ambitious moms building businesses and raising families at the same time.

#MaternalMentalHealth #Reparenting #GenerationalTrauma #MomPodcast #BetweenMeetingsAndMotherhood #MotheredMagazine #MotheredMedia #TraumaHealing #MomTherapist #RaisingDaughters #MomMentalHealth #WorkingMoms #MomFounder #BreakingCycles #WomensMentalHealth

In this episode of Between Meetings & Motherhood, host Alexa Starks sits down with Dr. Katie Davis, author of the new book Actually You’re Fine — a book that challenges everything modern parents believe about their kids’ development, the overdiagnosis crisis, and why “fine” is exactly where we should want our children to be.

In this episode:

• Why fine is not a problem — and how we convinced ourselves it is

• The pressure to be excellent: where it comes from, who benefits, and what it costs our kids

• The Saturday math class dilemma — and the principal who asked “do you want a kid doing advanced math or a kid who’s happy?”

• Why the US overdiagnosis crisis is driven by a desire for a quick fix — and why that fix almost never works

• The difference between identifying a problem and pathologizing one

• Why you don’t need a diagnosis to intervene — and the mental health primary care gap nobody is talking about

• ADHD, learning disorders, and medication: what actually helps and what parents get wrong

• How to tell if your kid is genuinely struggling or just being a kid

• The natural consequences strategy for toddlers who bolt — and when to let it go

• Why giving kids more responsibility than they’re ready for is one of the best things you can do

• The message every American parent needs to hear about consuming resources that belong to the most vulnerable kids

Actually You’re Fine by Dr. Katie Davis is available Oct. 13th at all major US, UK, Australian and New Zealand bookstores — and if you can, support your local independent bookstore.

📲 Find Dr. Katie Davis: reach out directly if you want a sanity check on your kid — she’s licensed across multiple US states through SidePact.

https://www.drkatiedavis.com

@readteensights
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/dr-katie-davis/actually-youre-fine/9781668659892/

🎙️ Between Meetings & Motherhood is hosted by Alexa Starks, founder of Mothered Media and editor-in-chief of Mothered Magazine, discussing about ambition and motherhood.

#Parenting #ChildDevelopment #Overdiagnosis #ADHD #MomPodcast #BetweenMeetingsAndMotherhood #MotheredMedia #ParentingTips #KidMentalHealth #NeuropsychologyNeuropsychologist #ActuallyYoureFine #PositiveParenting #ToddlerMom #MomLife #ParentingAdvice

In this episode of Between Meetings & Motherhood, host Alexa Starks sits down with Samantha Hays, founder of Explicitly Motherhood (explicitlymotherhood.com) — an online community built around raw, honest, judgment-free storytelling from real mothers, designed to be a complete antidote to the highlight reel culture of modern motherhood.

In this episode:

• Why the internet fails new moms when they need help most — and what actually works instead

• What postpartum really looked like for Samantha: hormone crashes, no sleep, constant crying, and feeling like she was failing her baby

• How one honest conversation with another mom did more than any parenting hack ever could

• The mental load of motherhood and why it leaves so many moms feeling completely alone

• What Explicitly Motherhood actually is: a weekly question, a library of 50+ real mom stories, searchable by how you’re feeling

• Why written story creates more honesty than photos and videos ever will

• The social media reality check: why the prettiest posts go viral and the realest ones don’t

• Sleep deprivation, postpartum anxiety, and the things nobody warns you about labor and delivery

• Her big goal: to spark an online revolution where spaces are built for real connection, not division

• First 50 moms get a complimentary lifetime membership — link below

📲 Find Explicitly Motherhood: explicitlymotherhood.com | Substack: Explicitly Motherhood | @explicitlymotherhood on Instagram

🎙️ Between Meetings & Motherhood is hosted by Alexa Starks, founder of Mothered Media and editor-in-chief of Mothered Magazine — a podcast for ambitious moms building businesses and raising families at the same time.

#PostpartumAnxiety #NewMomLife #MomCommunity #MomPodcast #BetweenMeetingsAndMotherhood #MotheredMagazine #MotheredMedia #PostpartumDepression #RealMotherhood #MomMentalHealth #MentalLoad #NewMom #MomFounder #MomLife #HonestMotherhood

For many women and entrepreneurs, being asked to speak at an event, is great progress in your brand-building and expertise. But even moreso to be paid to speak. This is like the golden ticket of entrepreneurship. And it can be very nerve-wracking to price yourself, and especially as a woman where we’ve been conditioned to not ask for too much.

Let’s back up. A few weeks (months??! time flies by) ago I did a post about how I quoted a big company a large amount for a sponsorship package. Well this quote was even higher.

Let’s break this down into chunks:

1. Understand the real work that is being required of you. I priced my speaking rate higher than ever before because I understood what I would have to do in order to make it a top-notch event. I understood the energy required of me to be at 150% energy for multiple days, all day events, to manage a crowd of thousands of people, keep people engaged, and more. (this was to host a multi-day all-day event) And I knew the amount of prep work that would be required to meet with dozens and dozens of people and rehearsal.

2. I also understood that doing that work and all the prep work takes me away from my actual business, and the time for the event and traveling to it as well.

You need to be thinking about the behind-the-scenes work when you start pitching or providing your speaking rates. Because it’s not just show up and speak. There’s usually a lot of prep work involved, and you need to account for that.

But you also need to know that most women undervalue and underprice their services. Stanford Research shows women typically underprice themselves 18% to 28% less than men. That’s a lot. Read that sentence again. The World Economic Forum found that male freelancers make 48% more than female freelancers for the same job. I could go on and on about the gender pay gap, but needless to say, you need to think about how you’re pricing yourself and all the backend work and upfront work that you will also be doing.

Then, my biggest recommendation is to add 20% to the initial price you land on. For example, if you’re going to say I charge $5,000 to give a keynote, add $1,000 (20%) to that number so when you actually provide your rate it’s $6,000.

Say it and stop.

The next and equally important thing you need to do is say your pricing and end it with a period. A full sentence. My keynote rate is $6,000. Full stop. Not ending in a question, don’t say you’re open to negotiation right away, just leave your pricing there. Picture a mic drop moment, that’s what you’re doing.

They can always come back and negotiate. And in fact, that’s the best sign that they are actually interested in you and see the value that you would bring.

So be ready to negotiate and have your bottom number of what you won’t go below. For example, if the lowest you’ll go is $5,000, and they ask if you’d do it for $4,000, you need to hold strong on your line.

This is where you can explain and rationalize your pricing if needed. For example, “The lowest I can go is $5,000 and that includes all prep work beforehand, rehearsal the day before or tbd, all meetings with event coordinators, post-event syncs, etc.etc.”

And another thing if they say budget is tight, DO NOT LOWER YOUR VALUE. Add value, or hold the value and cut the amount of services you offer. Do not discount your services. So for example, you could say, if budget is tight, that $5,000 is for a 45-60 minute keynote. But if budget is a concern, I could do a 25-30 minute keynote for $2,500.

That way, you’re not discounting your services or your worth. Hold strong on the value that you bring, the expertise that you bring, your worth. Know it. The more confident you are in your worth and the value you provide, the more they will feel that.

Another option is to add value. Keep your $5,000 bottom-line offer for that keynote, but you can add added-value services on top. For example, you could offer to do some added-value promotion to your audience on social media, or do an additional Q&A at the end, but this way you are holding strong on the value of your keynote and just adding value to make it a sweeter deal.

Get comfortable with no.

This may be the hardest thing to come to grips with, but be okay if they say no or ghost. It will happen, especially the more you start pitching or providing your rates like this.

But most likely, they aren’t put off by your pricing. (unless you did something outrageous like $100k to speak) But most of the time, they found someone else who is maybe a bigger name, has more expertise, and maybe is a little cheaper. For example, I’d have to fly to that event so I said all travel and accommodations must also be covered. That’s an additional expense that they’d have to cover compared to someone who lives near them and doesn’t have to stay at a hotel for 5 days and fly in.

But at the end of the day, every ‘no’ that you get still gets you one step closer to the yes. Think of it as practice for pitching, practice getting comfortable stating your worth.

As women, we’re taught from a young age to just accept the first offer, we’re not taught to negotiate, we’re taught to be lucky to be there. It wasn’t that long ago that women could be fired at will for becoming pregnant, or just before that, were barely allowed to be secretaries and that was it. So women felt ‘lucky’ to be there, and would accept the bare minimum. And that thinking turns into conditioning that gets reinforced the next generation.

So it takes practice to state your worth and know your inherent value. And don’t forget, add 15-20% on top of whatever first price you landed on.

Join us for our monthly free & virtual mom founder networking meeting https://luma.com/mothered-media

I love talking about doing big shit and setting really big shit goals, but there’s always the practical response of, okay yeahh but how do I actually achieve that now? It’s so big I have no idea where to start.

And the other side of not knowing where to start, is trying to do too much all at once to make it happen and achieve this big shit goal, that you burn yourself out in the process.

My dad used to say, “how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” So let’s take this big shit goal, one bite at a time.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you set a big shit goal of wanting to make $100,000 in revenue this year. But right now, you’re at $20k. So in order to achieve that goal, you start running more ads, booking more sales calls, and now you’re in back to back meetings all day and working late at night to send out proposals and recaps and follow ups. So you’re getting less sleep, no down time to relax and rest, and you’ll inch yourself closer to burnout trying to hit this big shit goal really quickly.

But the secret that no one is going to tell you about trying to achieve this big shit goal is that you will likely need to change up how you were doing business in order to go to the next level.

I was taking all the sales calls myself in the beginning of my business. Working late to follow up, working early to prep, in back to back 8, 9, 10 meetings every single day. And I wanted to scale…but in order to do that, without me burning myself out taking on MORE work (because tbh, I inched real close to burnout) I had to change up how I was going about this.

So I hired a team. Before I was really ready, before I really had good systems and infrastructure in place (and it’s still a WIP) I hired a team of independent contractor sales executives to help manage this sales process. And this was the best move I could have made, because I couldn’t afford a full-time salaried employee, but I could afford to pay someone a percentage of the sale when they made the sale. So when they made money, I made money.

And this freed me up to work on other aspects of the business and bigger picture partnerships and visibility to grow the business so it was even easier for them to close deals.

But I had to change up how I was doing business in order to hit that big shit goal.

SOOOO….think about what you can change up in your business in order to achieve that big goal. Let’s go back to our example of hitting $100,000 in revenue. Maybe you expand your offering, so instead of just 1 offer or 1 thing (let’s say, 1:1 coaching) maybe you expand to do group coaching as well. Or a community, or a one-off one time strategy call, or consulting, or paid workshops, or speaking, or write a book.

And then think about what you need to do to also help achieve that. Is your current visibility and marketing strategy going to be sufficient to reach that goal? Or do you need to diversify that strategy so you can better meet it (and without just dumping more money into meta ads). Maybe you go on more podcasts, do some free co-hosted webinars or IG lives or social media collab posts. Maybe you guest-write on someone’s Substack or start posting on a new social media channel to reach a new audience.

The bottom line: what got you to where you are now, may not take you to where you want to go. And in order to achieve your big shit goal, you have to expand yourself in order to be the person who can accomplish it. So the actions of what got you here, and the comfort zone of where you are now, will need to expand.

Start brainstorming about what you can expand, what you can change up and do differently in order to grow.

And eating that elephant one bite at a time? That means making sure you’re taking sustainable mouthfuls. Instead of trying to eat the elephant all in one go, take small bites each day. I love to have a top priority list that I need to do today in order to get one step closer to my big shit goal. If you try to do everything every day, you’ll inch yourself closer to burnout. You got this.

XO,

Alexa Starks

A tired mama doing big shit this week for National Working Motherhood Week and 2x toddler mom. Always caffeinated and under-caffeinated at the same time.

We meet monthly in our free Mom Founder Networking event too, join here!

And if you’re a mom founder, don’t forget to apply for the 2026 Mothered Founder Awards!!

For more resources about adoption planning from Spence-Chapin, visit https://www.motheredmedia.com/childcare-systems-planning

To download the HR Pitch Kit, visit https://www.motheredmedia.com/workplace-advocacy-negotiation

Anyhoo…I wanted to come and make a post about more moms doing big shit and being epic. I posted in the chat inbox (tbh still figuring out how that even works) and dozens and dozens of amazing moms replied with what they are working on and their big shit goals! Truly sooo inspiring, so here’s a few moms who are doing epic big shit and you should go follow and check out:

1. : She is an investigative reporter who was laid off this year, in the middle of the hardest year of her life during which her 3 year old was diagnosed with autism, her youngest was born, she was DEEP in the throws of post-partum depression/anxiety, but now she is pivoting her whole career to start writing/reporting on how the friends and communities of families of autistic children can better support them. Her big shit goal: to get a book published! Keep putting yourself out there (even if you feel like you’re gonna puke, that’s a good sign that you’re doing BIG shit!!) Check her out: madisonhopkins.substack.com

2. : She’s doing author talks (in-person and zoom) to groups of mothers and others about how to speak out to Congress for policies that affect their lives greatly. She also wrote two books about advocacy (”Advocacy Made Easy: How to Turn Civic Frustration Into Powerful Action” and “From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started). And her BIG shit goal this year is bring this message to bigger audiences post-election, so we can mobilize and tell our new Congress what we need. And if you know me, you know I love mobilizing moms to get louder, so I love this big shit goal! Check her out here: https://substack.com/@ccylevin

3. : She is pivoting her entire career after having her first baby! Just left a Big 4 firm she’s been with since she was 18 (that’s insane?!) whilst her baby boy is just turning 11 months old. She’s building a portfolio career around her favourite things: facilitation, connection & performance. Her BIG shit goal right now is to launch her Leadership Program for mothers returning to work with some epic aligned organisations. It’s called The Expanded Program and is Leadership capability program created around the neuroscience of the brain and identity shift that comes with becoming a mum (aka Matrescence). (I have a soft spot for this as I had two terrible return to work experiences after both my kids, so I love love love seeing this!) You can check out her work here: https://substack.com/@sophiehardman

4. : She is a mom of 3, a 20+ year corporate tech survivor (still in it!), and am building theoffload.ai; a family operating system with a big shit goal of relieving the mental load so mothers can instead focus on leadership, creativity and wealth generation. (I love anything that brings more efficiency for moms and eases the mental load, but ESPECIALLY one that helps increase wealth generation for women and moms!) You can find her work here: https://substack.com/@theoffloadai

5. : She is raising 3 kids under 2 while building Women Who Chose on Substack, interviewing women who are redesigning their careers, and slowly working on her own product. Some days she builds a business. Some days she successfully get everyone fed. She counts both as wins! (This is definitely a win, it’s all about balance over the long-term!) Her big shit goal is to build a community and business that actually helps women create careers around their lives, instead of constantly trying to squeeze their lives around their careers. Check her out here: substack.com/@vesnapavlovic

And that’s it for this week everyone, if you’d like to join in on our chat thread and share your big shit goal and what you’re working on, you can find it in the chat thread and share what you’re doing!

https://substack.com/chat/group/62ca557e-e0a4-4bae-bdbe-1c1de40ff629

As always, keep doing big shit and being amazing!

p.s. I have been swamped planning and getting ready for National Working Motherhood Week that launches monday, so apologies this is short and I Have been quiet on Substack the last couple of weeks!!

We meet monthly in our free Mom Founder Networking event too, join here!

And if you’re a mom founder, don’t forget to apply for the 2026 Mothered Founder Awards!!

And don’t forget to join National Working Motherhood Week, the biggest free virtual event for mothers in history!

Briana Succop was executive-functioning all day at her job, then coming home to become her kids’ EA — a travel-team schedule landing in her inbox at 8pm on a Sunday night, a mental to-do list only she could see, a household running on whack-a-mole instead of a system. So she built Cookie: a family operating app that turns the invisible mental load into something the whole household can actually see, claim, and check off — husband included.

In this conversation, Briana breaks down how Cookie works in practice: cookies as a currency her kids earn and spend (and now ask real questions about, like “what’s inflation?”), an audit workflow so nobody has to just take a kid’s word for it, and an AI shortcut that lets her capture a task — “dentist appointment tomorrow at noon” — at a stoplight before she forgets it again. She talks about why she built in NFL schedules on purpose, just to get the dads to open the app. And she gets honest about what it took to bootstrap a company while raising three daughters — including letting them see the stress and the tears, not just the wins, because “this expectation of perfection is what’s crushing all of us.”

It’s Briana’s origin story — and a preview of what she’s bringing to next week’s live Mapping the Mental Load Village Session, where she’ll lead National Working Motherhood Week attendees through the same exercise that changed her own household: writing the mental load down, naming it, and finally making it visible.

“If we write it down, if we have a parking lot for it, if we make it visible in a way that our entire family can see it... mapping this mental load is such a critical piece for you to be able to show up fully at work and at home — without the resentment, without the anger.” — Briana Succop

Live: Village Session — Mapping the Mental Load
Thursday, September 24 · 7:00 PM ET · Led by Briana Succop, founder of Cookie
Register: https://luma.com/3uqsy2bv

And register for the entire National Working Motherhood Week:

https://luma.com/national-working-motherhood-week

In this episode of Between Meetings & Motherhood, host Alexa Starks sits down with Cat Canada — award-winning brand marketer, mom of two, September cover of Mothered Magazine, host of the podcast It’s Called a Rebrand, and founder of Re:Brand — a Slack community of 2,000+ women navigating their own pivotal rebrand moments, wherever that takes them.

In this episode:

• What a “rebrand moment” actually is — and why it’s bigger and deeper than a pivot

• How Re:Brand went from a LinkedIn idea to 200 members in 24 hours, entirely organically

• Why the motherhood transition is the ultimate rebrand — and why no one warns you it’s coming

• The highlight reel trap: why only seeing success stories keeps women stuck and afraid to start

• Hyper availability, always-on culture, and the cortisol rash she got after leaving corporate — her body’s delayed burnout signal

• The Women Who Run With the Wolves and her current rewilding era: what it actually looks like to stop performing and come back to yourself

• Why traditional networking is broken — and how Re:Brand brings community closer to friendship

• Building a fractional consulting business while running a growing community and raising two kids

• Why she’s entering an era of charging what she’s worth and saying yes to the uncomfortable big asks

• The podcast: telling the messy real stories behind the pivot, not just the highlight

Cat is also the September cover of Mothered Magazine — read the full exclusive interview at motheredmagazine.com.

📲 Find Cat: Re:Brand community on Slack | @cat.canada on Instagram | Cat Canada on LinkedIn | @catfromrebrand on TikTok | It’s Called a Rebrand podcast on all platforms

🎙️ Between Meetings & Motherhood is hosted by Alexa Starks, founder of Mothered Media and editor-in-chief of Mothered Magazine, the only global magazine for ambitious working mothers.

#MomEntrepreneur #WomenInBusiness #LeavingCorporate #MomFounder #MomPodcast #BetweenMeetingsAndMotherhood #MotheredMagazine #MotheredMedia #CorporateBurnout #MomCommunity #Rebrand #FemaleFounder #WorkingMoms #MomIdentity #AmbitionAndMotherhood

In this episode of Between Meetings & Motherhood, host Alexa Starks sits down with Gabriela Gerhart — pediatric nurse, physical therapist, immigrant founder, author, and the woman who quietly built one of the most comprehensive pregnancy and postpartum support centers in the United States.

In this episode:

• What the Motherhood Center actually offers: prenatal yoga, childbirth classes, postpartum doulas, nanny placement, breastfeeding support, massage, newborn care specialists, support groups — all under one roof

• Why Gabriela calls it the “Mami Country Club” — and why that’s actually the point

• Growing up in communist Czechoslovakia with zero exposure to entrepreneurship — and how she built a business from scratch anyway

• The moment that inspired everything: watching new moms cry as their postpartum doula assignment ended with nowhere to go

• How coming to Houston as an immigrant helped her understand exactly what isolated new moms feel — and why she was determined to fix it

• 100,000 clients served and still going after 26 years — what that longevity actually takes

• The world map on the wall: why the Motherhood Center’s international client base is one of her proudest achievements

• The prenatal yoga class that becomes a lifelong village — clients who met 20 years ago still vacation together

• Her big goal: a Motherhood Center in every city globally — and the conversations already starting about how to make that happen

• What she had to unlearn, build from scratch, and grow into over 26 years of leadership

Gabriela is also featured in the September issue of Mothered Magazine — read the full interview at motheredmagazine.com.

📲 Find Gabriela: motherhoodcenter.com | gabriela@motherhoodcenter.com | Gabriela Gerhart on LinkedIn | @motherhoodcenter on Instagram & TikTok

🎙️ Between Meetings & Motherhood is hosted by Alexa Starks, founder of Mothered Media and editor-in-chief of Mothered Magazine, the only global magazine showcasing ambitious working mothers.

#MotherhoodCenter #PostpartumSupport #PregnancySupport #MomPodcast #BetweenMeetingsAndMotherhood #MotheredMagazine #MotheredMedia #NewMomSupport #MomCommunity #ImmigrantFounder #MomFounder #PostpartumCare #PregnancyWellness #HoustonMoms #MaternalHealth

In this episode of Between Meetings & Motherhood, host Alexa Starks sits down with Sarah — a mom of one, person in recovery with 11 years sober, triathlete, and HR leader — for a candid conversation about ambition, identity, recovery, and what it really looks like to build a business around a four-year-old.

In this episode:

• Why so many women are leaving corporate America — and why return-to-office mandates are accelerating it

• What fractional HR actually is and why small organizations desperately need it

• How motherhood shifted her ambition — and why ambition doesn’t disappear, it just changes shape

• Why you can’t separate your work self from your mom self — and why trying to is hurting your culture

• What good HR actually looks like for working parents: flexibility, realistic maternity leave conversations, and zero butts-in-seat micromanagement

• 11 years in recovery: how hitting rock bottom shaped her leadership philosophy and her approach to building cultures with grace

• Raising her son in an open, honest home — and why breaking generational silence around addiction, bodies, and emotions starts now

• Doing a triathlon with a group of school moms — and why that kind of village changes everything

• What she wants her son to see when he watches her build her business

Sarah is also featured in the September issue of Mothered Magazine — read the full interview at motheredmagazine.com.

📲 Find Sarah: elevateconsultingcollective.com | @sarahdalaimo on Instagram | Sarah Alaimo on LinkedIn

🎙️ Between Meetings & Motherhood is hosted by Alexa Starks, founder of Mothered Media and editor-in-chief of Mothered Magazine, the only global magazine for ambitious working mothers.

#WorkingMoms #HRStrategy #MomEntrepreneur #MomFounder #MomPodcast #BetweenMeetingsAndMotherhood #MotheredMagazine #MotheredMedia #FractionalHR #MaternityLeave #WorkplaceFlexibility #SobrietyAndMotherhood #AmbitionAndMotherhood #MomLife #ReturnToOffice