The bell struck one-o’clock. I pressed my shirt down nervously, checked my reflection in the mirror, put on some fresh chapstick. The portal window opened, and the women poured into the room. Souls from all over the world. And there I was, leading a brand-new group of people who didn’t know each other, on a topic that would scare the pants off of most h…

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You do not have to become a person who never feels jealous, resentful or rejected.

You have to become a person who can handle knowing that these feelings are all a part of being human.

This is excellent news for anyone who has ever had a deeply uncharitable thought and immediately followed it with: Wow. I thought I had worked on myself.

Psychologist and author studies self-worth and secure attachment. She is the author of the recent book Worth: The New Science of Self-esteem and Secure Attachment —essentially, how we stay connected to other people without losing our connection to ourselves. One thing she has noticed is that our growing fluency in mental health can be both helpful and, occasionally, another stick to beat ourselves with.

“There’s this newfound literacy of mental health and emotions,” Franco says. We understand more about boundaries, codependence, narcissism and attachment styles. That language can help us recognize unhealthy patterns and protect ourselves from harm.

But it has also, Franco says, “led us to shame ourselves for not being healed enough.”

We feel abandoned and decide we are failing at secure attachment. We miss an ex who was terrible for us and wonder why all those therapy appointments have not yet transformed us into a serene person who wishes them well from a tasteful distance. We feel jealous of a friend, resentful of someone we love or irrationally hurt by a perfectly reasonable cancellation—and then judge ourselves for not having a more enlightened response.

As Franco puts it, “Healing is about accepting the messiness of our emotions.”

That does not mean every feeling is a fact, a command or a reason to send a six-paragraph text. It means we can notice what is happening inside us without immediately trying to hustle it out the back door.

Franco has been practicing this in her own life.

She says she used to confront her feelings once they became obvious and overwhelming, but the smaller ones were easier to miss: “Sometimes I feel a flash of jealousy, a flash of anger, and a part of me pulls me away from that so quickly that it’s hard to know it’s even there.”

Many women are especially skilled at this disappearing act. We have been taught that being a good person means being understanding, accommodating and unbothered. Jealousy is petty. Anger is unattractive. Resentment means we are insufficiently generous.

So we say, It’s fine.

Sometimes it is fine.

Sometimes “fine” is simply where we store a feeling until it grows teeth.

Franco shares the example of a friend who had to cancel plans after getting into an accident. Franco loved her friend and felt genuine compassion. Of course she wanted her to rest and take care of herself. She also felt hurt.

There had already been an imbalance in the friendship, and the cancellation pressed on that tender spot. Franco knew the situation was not about her, but a part of her still felt rejected. Previously, she might have rushed to correct herself: You shouldn’t feel that. Your friend was in an accident. Be reasonable.

Instead, she paused long enough to admit, “I feel a bit rejected.”

Once she acknowledged the feeling, it could move through her. Then she could tell her friend to take care of herself—and mean it. Her kindness no longer felt like people-pleasing or a performance designed to prove she was a good friend. She could care for her friend without pretending her own hurt did not exist.

“Being securely attached is not about never being triggered,” Franco says. “It’s about actually being able to tolerate your triggers without acting out.”

That feels like a much more welcoming version of healing.

There is no prize for never feeling the wrong thing. There is no gold star for becoming impossible to disappoint.

Our difficult feelings may not tell the whole truth, but they usually tell us where to look. Jealousy might point toward longing. Resentment might reveal a need we have not voiced. Rejection might wake up an older fear that has little to do with the person standing in front of us.

Franco suggests imagining the wounded part of yourself as a five-year-old approaching to say, I feel abandoned. You probably would not respond, “That’s an anxious attachment response, and frankly, I expected more progress from you.”

You would make room. You might ask what hurts.

“What is vulnerable is universal,” Franco says. The feelings we fear make us uniquely selfish, needy or broken are often simply part of being a person among other people.

Healing is not becoming someone who always has the right emotional response. It is learning that even when an uncomfortable, inconvenient or embarrassingly human feeling appears, you do not have to abandon yourself for having it.

You are allowed. Consider this your permission slip.

About the Author, Hannah Howard

Hannah Howard is the author of the memoirs Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen and Plenty: A Memoir of Food and Family. She writes for Food & Wine, Travel + Leisure, and Bon Appetit. Hannah lives in Chicago with her family and loves stinky cheese. Subscribe to her Substack, Letters from Hannah. She is also a member of The Wise Women’s Council.

Over a full year, Hannah is writing about her experience inside of The Wise Women’s Council. She’s written about changing her relationship to rest, slowing down to be present to her own life, and the dangerous trap of comparative joy. She’s also writing about the guest teachers and speakers we have who join us in the Council. We were so grateful to have Dr. Franco join us for a deeper conversation about friendship, self-esteem, and well-being.

If you’re looking for a group coaching program for women, check out The Wise Women’s Council and apply to join us this Fall.

I want more places where people can actually talk to each other.

Not networking events. Not webinars where you sit muted while someone talks at you for an hour. Not another Zoom call where you’re supposed to leave with seven action items. We don’t need more information—we live in a world where content comes pouring out of all of our social feeds in a stream that never stops running.

What’s missing is deep, wandering, important conversation. Space to say things out loud, hear the sound of our own voices, and reflect back to each other what we’re thinking. I want to be in rooms where we can bring a good question, learn how other people are thinking about it, and even (if we dare), begin to tell the real truth about our own lives.

This kind of conversation is powerful, because it breaks down the worries, the fears, and the insecurities that social media can so powerfully build up in our minds. These are designed to be participatory. You don’t need to prepare anything impressive. You don’t need to be an expert. Come as you are, and come ready to talk. Open to women, including trans women and nonbinary people who feel at home in women-centered spaces.

What’s missing in modern life is slow connection, meandering conversation, and the space to say things out loud to each other.

Social media is not connection. Liking posts, scrolling feeds, listening to YouTube, watching lectures on Zoom … none of that is the real stuff of listening deeply and being heard. Come join us for a 90-minute session focused on storytelling, rambling, and sharing what’s true for you. You can be messy, in progress, struggling, full of emotions, and more. Show up as you are. We’d love to see you.

Join us for one of our Salons. You can find all of our upcoming events at wisewomenscouncil.com/events, and we update them quarterly, so check back! Below are some of the events we recently hosted, as a guide to the events we do.

— Sarah K Peck

PS: Paid backers often get discounted tickets and free tickets to these kinds of events. Be sure to upgrade your subscription to become a paid backer!

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Summer and Fall 2026 — Events

I’m hosting a little series of book clubs, salons, and round-table conversations. The September Salons, which are in collaboration with The Wise Women’s Council, is a series of women-only salons about friendship, reinvention, work, identity, and the things we don’t always have a good place to say out loud.

Wise Women’s Salon: A Conversation About Female Friendships

Wednesday, September 2
1:00–2:30pm ET

How do you make new friends in midlife? How do you deepen the friendships you already have? What happens when a friendship changes—or ends? How do we build the kinds of friendships and communities we actually want around us? This is a conversation about the strange, beautiful, sometimes painful world of adult female friendship.

Join the conversation →

Wise Women’s Salon: Saying the True Things Out Loud

Wednesday, September 16
1:00–2:30pm ET

There are some things you can’t figure out by thinking about them harder. Sometimes you need a room where you can finally say the thing out loud. Kristina Flynn of Story EQ and I will lead this intimate, confidential salon about the things we’re carrying—the questions, changes, desires, frustrations, truths, and stories that don’t always have an obvious place to go. Join us for a private, intimate event where we tell our stories and witness the real lives of other women navigating the ALL of it. This isn’t a networking event or a lecture. It’s a salon, which means we’re focused on conversation and connection.

Come say the true things →

Reinventing Yourself, Reimagining Your Career

Wednesday, September 30
1:00–2:30pm ET

Maybe you’ve outgrown the thing you worked very hard to build. Maybe you’re considering a career change, starting something new, returning to work, or questioning what success even means to you anymore. Or maybe you just have that persistent little feeling: I think I want something different now.

Join us for Reinventing Yourself →

Fall Book Club: Communion by bell

Wednesday, October 14
1:00–2:30pm ET

This fall, we’re reading bell hooks’ Communion: The Female Search for Love.

It’s a book about women and love—but also friendship, intimacy, self-love, aging, partnership, and what happens when we begin questioning everything we were taught about how women are supposed to find and experience love.

Read the whole thing. Read half of it. Dog-ear forty pages and come ready to argue with them. Come talk with us.

Join the Fall Book Club →

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Below are your access codes to join all of the events for free. (If you’re not yet a paid backer, you’ll unlock the entire archive of past posts, plus event tickets and more, by upgrading today. Thank you for making this work possible!)

Last night, my four-year-old Julius woke up with a barking cough.

I went into his room in the dark and did the things mothers do. I gave him water. I gave him a chewable children’s Tylenol. I curled my body around his small, hot one and sang “You Are My Sunshine” in the half-whisper I use when I’m trying to keep the whole house asleep.

Meanwhile, my brain was doing math.

The next day was supposed to be my first real workday after vacation. It was supposed to be his first day at a new camp. We had already packed a lunch featuring turkey pepperoni, as per his request, and set out his favorite hot dog T-shirt. I had imagined a glorious productivity sprint: inbox, client work, edits, strategy, maybe even the kind of deep thinking that requires an actual uninterrupted thought.

Instead, at 2:17 a.m., I was Tetrissing my calendar. Could my husband take a morning shift? Could I move the call? Could I work during Bluey? How sick was too sick for camp? What kind of cough were we dealing with? How many hours of sleep could I lose and still be a decent mother, writer, editor, colleague, human?

Once upon a time, I thought leadership meant being exceptional. I pictured achievement. Recognition. A woman in a beautiful blazer walking onto a stage with great hair, a Steve Jobs mic, and impeccable boundaries. I thought leadership meant rising above the mess of ordinary life.

Now I think leadership means tending to what has been entrusted to you. Children. Communities. Ideas. Friendships. Teams. Drafts. Clients. The small rituals that help people feel safe enough to grow.

Motherhood has changed my understanding of leadership more than any job title ever could. It has taught me to make decisions with incomplete information. To stay steady while someone else melts down. To adjust, and adjust again. To think in both the next five minutes and the next five years. To care deeply without believing I can control the outcome.

That last part might be the hardest and most useful lesson of all.

In my work, I see this everywhere now. At ParentCo., the website I edit, leadership means helping overwhelmed parents feel less alone and more equipped for the day in front of them. In Write Up, my community for writers, it means creating a space where writers can be ambitious, vulnerable, practical, and human at the same time. In friendships, it means showing up with honesty, encouragement, and sometimes dinner. In my own creative life, it means protecting the work long enough for it to become what it wants to become. It means learning to be nicer to myself at 2 PM at 2:17 AM when my half asleep brain is churning with worries from the existential to the totally banal.

None of this feels separate from mothering. It all comes from the same place.

Care is a form of intelligence. Consistency is a form of vision. Stewardship is a form of power.

Yielding to what’s in front of us—and changing plans to make it work—is leadership, too. Our task is to meet what is in front of us, not what we expected it would be. And the truth is, the day ahead is not yet known.

I still want the big stages. I still want the books, the rooms, the conversations, the work that reaches people. Ambition is very much alive in me. But it has been reshaped by all these nights and mornings, by the packed lunches and fevers and deadlines, by the communities I am helping to build and the people I am lucky enough to love.

At 25, I wanted to be impressive.

At 39, I want to be trustworthy.

Today, I know that leadership is also about relationships. To lead means to care for other people. To be in charge of other people means relinquishing the myth of heroic individualism.

The idea that all of my time is luxuriously my own? That’s only true if I’m truly alone.

I want to be someone who can hold things with care. Someone who builds places where people feel braver and less alone. Someone who keeps singing in the dark while also quietly, stubbornly, reimagining the whole day ahead.

That feels more like leadership than ever.

— Hannah

This year, I asked one of our WWC members if she would write about her experience inside of The Wise Women’s Council, my ongoing group coaching program. Previously, she wrote about changing her relationship to rest, slowing down to be present to her own life, and the dangerous trap of comparative joy. This month, we’re digging into our core values and how they help us make decisions about the way we show up to our lives. If you’re looking for a group coaching program for women, check out The Wise Women’s Council and apply to join.

— Sarah K Peck

Hannah Howard is the author of the memoirs Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen and Plenty: A Memoir of Food and Family. She writes for Food & Wine, Travel + Leisure, and Bon Appetit. Hannah lives in Chicago with her family and loves stinky cheese. Subscribe to her Substack, Letters from Hannah. She is also a member of The Wise Women’s Council.

Related & Recommended Reads:

A few weeks ago, I asked some folks if they’d want to be in a writing group together. Nothing too formal—just a Zoom link, a weekly calendar invite, and a place to write in community. The reason I asked was simple: I want to write more, and I’ve been struggling to do it. It turns out that writing can be a lonely endeavor, and sometimes you need your friends to sit next to you and make sure that you write. Sometimes we do this human thing better when we’re together.

This is not my main quest, of course. There are bigger projects that I’m focused on—I’m teaching a cohort this Fall all about running group programs, and we’re about to announce when applications open for the next round of The Wise Women’s Council. This is, admittedly, a side quest. But it turns out that side quests are deeply important for neurodivergent people, and for that and many more reasons, I’m putting together a Writing Club.

Writing Club is a space for deeper work and accountability. Whether you are writing a series of essays, a newsletter, working on a book, or mind-mapping your way out of a rut, this is a place to show up week over week and commit to the writing you want to do. Writing can be a solitary pursuit, which is why community and accountability are important along the way.

Every week we'll gather online for 60 minutes. We'll start with a gentle warm-up, I'll offer one or two optional writing prompts, and then we'll settle into uninterrupted writing time for 30-40 minutes. At the end, there will be space to share a few sentences, a paragraph, read out loud to each other, and celebrate that you showed up.

Before I put the group together, I asked people to tell me more about what they wanted most in a writing group. I could tell right away that these are my people. They said things like “I have too many ideas and a huge backlog,” and “I want to find people who get it, who understand that the creative process is full of twists and turns.” They said, “I need it to be a group that values showing up, that values consistency,” a group that’s somehow “low pressure but just enough accountability to get your butt in the seat so that the writing happens.” “I need more encouragement,” one person wrote, “and a group of people to check in on me.”

Here are a few more phrases that stuck out:

• I want to participate in a space that I don’t have to host or hold.

• I want a group, a community, with actual attendance. I'm currently in one writing group that is very loosely put together - there were weeks that only one or two people showed up. It'd be great to practice together in a group, in real time, that is a bit larger.

• Collective bravery, the occasional gut-check, cheeriness and regularity.

• Accountability. Scheduled time to write. To be in community of my peers of writers.

• A dedicated time and space. A safe place and a group to encourage me to keep writing.

• People who are committed to the craft. I enjoy being around beginning writers but I am looking for a place with peers (people who’ve put a decade or more into their skills). But that’s okay if that’s not what this is.

• Celebrating one another, a group to encourage each other.

We’re going to start with small-ish group folks and write together for an hour. This is a simple offer — a group of committed professionals and writers who want to be a part of a group that shows up week over week. You’ll get a calendar invitation with a zoom link. I’ll create a member bio book so you can get to know each other, and keep a simple attendance tracking sheet for a bit of light accountability.

This is a community of practitioners, experienced thinkers, professionals, and creatives. Almost everyone in this group has experience writing—newsletters, Substacks, blogs, essays, research, children’s books, literary journals, novels, and more.

Our core values in this community are depth, kindness, community, compassion, and courage.

If you’re curious about it, you can read more about it here and sign up for the interest list here.

— Sarah

One of the greatest gifts of The Wise Women’s Council is the women themselves. For the past ten years, I’ve run an intimate women’s group coaching program, where I have the privilege of learning alongside founders, executives, consultants, creatives, coaches, and leaders who are navigating real questions about work, life, leadership, family, ambition, identity, and change.

The internet often rewards certainty and polished answers. But the women in this community remind me that wisdom is something different. The older I get, the less interested I am in expertise alone. I'm interested in practice. I’m interested in the messiness of everyday life, and how we show up in the moments that become our years.

I want to know how women are navigating business building alongside a culture that didn’t want women in leadership positions for the last two hundred years. I’m hungry to learn from women who let the house be messy, who shift the mental load into visible spaces; who stand up for what they believe in; who give a damn about their own rest and well-being. I want to know how women are navigating business-building alongside caregiving. How they make difficult decisions. How they rethink success. How they manage when they feel like they’re failing at everything. How they stand up for what they believe in. How they create lives that are aligned with their values—not just impressive from the outside.

The women in this community teach me every day. So I decided to start sharing some of their stories. This new series, Wisdom In Practice, is written in collaboration with , a member of Wise Women’s Council. My goal is to shine a light on the remarkable women in our community and the lessons they’re learning as they move through life and leadership. Through conversations and interviews, we’ll explore their work, the challenges they’re navigating, the lessons they’re learning, and the ideas they keep returning to again and again. Read more about the full series here.

Below is our first essay featuring decision engineer and coach Michelle Florendo. She’s been a part of The Wise Women’s Council since the very beginning, and her work has helped thousands of founders and leaders figure out how to make better decisions.

These are not stories about having it all figured out. They are stories about paying attention. These are stories about letting go of who we were, so that we can leap towards who we are becoming. These are stories about changing how we move through life.

I hope you’ll enjoy meeting the women of Wise Women’s Council as much as I’ve enjoyed learning from them.

— Sarah K Peck

Want to learn more about my group coaching program and practice? Check out The Wise Women’s Council and consider applying to join.

The Data Hidden Inside Your Feelings

What Happens When You Stop Optimizing Everything

Essay below written by

When I talked to Stanford-trained Decision Engineer Michelle Florendo, she was mid-move: boxes, logistics, the constant deciding of what stays and what goes. She mentioned it casually, like this kind of complexity was familiar terrain.

Then she said: “My brain loves optimization puzzles.”

“But the real challenge,” she added, “is communicating to all the other parties involved the things that are in my brain.”

If you’ve ever tried to explain the invisible spreadsheet in your head to a partner, a team, or a child who insists the blue cup is a catastrophe—you get it.

Michelle’s work sits at the intersection of structure and humanity. As a decision engineer and executive coach, she helps professionals and small business owners make big, complex decisions with less stress and more clarity. Her background is rigorous—engineering degree, MBA—but her core insight is surprisingly simple.

When I asked what one skill she’d teach everyone, she didn’t say productivity or confidence or morning routines.

She said: the ability to understand what your emotions are telling you—the data inside your feelings.

We’re taught to treat emotions as distractions from “real” decision-making. Michelle argues the opposite. Especially in complex situations, not all useful information is measurable. Emotions are signals—pointing to needs, values, and constraints we haven’t fully named.

Here’s the framework she uses again and again:

1. Notice and name the emotion.

Not just “I’m fine” or “I’m just stressed.”

Actually name it: frustrated, anxious, resentful, disappointed.

2. Ask what’s underneath.

Is it a real need—rest, clarity, support, recognition?

An outdated one—approval, perfection, control?

Or something you haven’t given yourself permission to want?

This is where decision-making opens up.

As Michelle put it, “If you don’t like the options in front of you, your job is to creatively generate more.” Emotions help you see where the existing options are failing—and where new ones might exist.

She sees this everywhere: in four-year-olds learning to manage big feelings, and in executives navigating burnout, recognition, and power. Naming what’s happening turns fog into information.

Michelle didn’t set out to be an entrepreneur. She’s risk-averse by nature. But motherhood made it clear the more traditional paths didn’t work—and instead of forcing herself into a bad choice, she built a better one.

She’s also clear about what’s missing from professional conversations: honest talk about constraints. Time. Energy. Caregiving. The reality that you can’t optimize everything at once.

Decision-making isn’t a game of being perfect. Perfectionism is a trap.

Decision making involves backing up from binary thinking and asking yourself to think more broadly about possibilities. Before jumping into a “pro-con” list, Michelle says it’s best to first figure out what your objectives are from the gate. She reminds people not to get too narrowed into a flipping back and forth over one single option.

Instead, ask yourself to consider a broader range of ideas. What are ALL the possibilities or courses of action that you could choose from? Are there more ways of going about this? What else could be possible?

Your emotions are essential data, because they’re telling you to look more deeply at what’s in front of you. Chances are, if you’re feeling resistance, if you’re feeling irritation or overwhelm, you could be stuck in a pro-con trap.

Maybe, maybe there’s another option that you haven’t thought of yet.

BONUS TIP: Invite a friend who is really good at divergent thinking to help you out with this part. Ask them what you haven’t yet considered.

Part of the work of decision making is the ability to think creatively and explore options beyond what you first see.

Michelle’s work is a relief, not because it makes decisions easy, but because it makes them honest. It makes them fuller. She helps people slow down long enough to hear what actually matters, instead of defaulting to what’s expected, efficient, or externally approved. The result isn’t a perfect choice–it’s something better. It’s a choice that feels true to you, grounded in your values, your dreams, your constraints, and your real life.

In a culture that rewards powering through and second-guessing yourself, that kind of clarity isn’t just useful. It changes how you move through your life.

MEET MICHELLE FLORENDO

Michelle Florendo is a Stanford-trained Decision Engineer, executive coach, speaker, and founder of Powered by Decisions. She helps leaders, founders, and high-achieving professionals make decisions with less stress and more clarity by combining decision science, coaching, and practical frameworks for navigating uncertainty. Over the past decade, she has coached hundreds of leaders, taught decision-making at Stanford, and helped redesign the decision-making curriculum for Stanford’s renowned Designing Your Life program.

Learn more about Michelle:

• Website: Powered by Decisions
• About Michelle: Michelle Florendo Bio
• LinkedIn: Michelle Florendo on LinkedIn
• Podcast: Ask a Decision Engineer

The older I get, the less interested I am in expertise alone. I’m interested in practice. I’m interested in what happens not in perfect circumstances, but when we’ve been in the mud, when we can’t see out of one eye, when we’re trying to find our way forward in a new reality. For this reason, I keep turning toward women in midlife, curious to learn from them and to really listen. How are you navigating sleeplessness, perimenopause, new motherhood, teenagers, companies, business pivots, AI, and more? HOW!? And more than that, what must we do differently in order to navigate this world we’re in?

I’m interested in the messiness of everyday life, and how we show up in the moments that become our years. I want to know how women are navigating building their careers and their businesses alongside a culture that didn’t want women in leadership positions for the last two hundred years. I’m hungry to learn from women who let the house be messy, who shift the mental load into visible spaces, who refuse to dance for the patriarchy’s chains, who stand up for what they believe in, who give a damn about their own rest and well-being, who care deeply about their communities, and who aren’t hyper-focused on their individual success at the cost and expense of others.

This is one of the reasons that I first started The Wise Women’s Council. Because I wanted—longed—to talk to more women and to hear their stories, to learn what people are doing in real time, mistakes and all. I wanted to hear more than the superficial magazine cover or the glossy tips about how to have it all or do it all. No more retrospectives, thank you. I need to know how you’re dealing with it in the middle of all this mess. So I started asking people to join me in a masterminds and communities, and those conversations still haven’t stopped.

One of the greatest gifts of The Wise Women’s Council is the women themselves. Every month, I have the privilege of learning alongside founders, executives, consultants, creatives, coaches, and leaders — each of whom are navigating real questions about work, life, leadership, family, ambition, identity, and change.

But I want to do a better job of sharing the work and the wisdom of the Wise Women’s Council here, with all of you. We have such strict confidentiality rules in our community that I can sometimes forget to shine a light on the incredible women and the work that we do together. So I reached out and asked several members if they’d be open to me sharing a bit of their stories. This series, part of our new Collected Wisdom newsletter, is written in collaboration with , a member of The Wise Women’s Council.

Introducing: Wisdom In Practice

A collection of stories, conversations, and lessons from the teachers, alumni, and members of The Wise Women’s Council.

Wisdom in Practice is a series of stories, conversations, and reflections from the Wise Women's Council community. Some essays will feature a single person’s story. Others will gather perspectives from many voices around a shared question. Some will explore ideas from teachers, authors, and experts whose work has shaped our thinking.

Together, they’re an attempt to showcase the deeper conversations we have inside our community. They address a series of questions I continue to return to:

• What does wisdom actually look like when it meets real life?

• How do we choose to live in a way that is most aligned for us?

• How can we live better?

Over the coming weeks and months, I’ll be sharing stories from The Wise Women’s Council community to show you more about the ways that women are living, thinking, and leading differently. I’m excited to tell you about what they’ve learned, the lessons they have to share, and the work that they’re doing.

For the past ten years, I’ve run an intimate women’s group coaching program focused on creating peer-to-peer conversations that don’t often have a landing place to happen elsewhere. It’s a place for women to bring up hard topics, to be real, to pull down the masks and the makeup, to let ourselves be more vulnerable and raw, and to be in council with each other around the deeper questions of our lives.

Want to learn more about my group coaching program and practice? Check out The Wise Women’s Council and consider applying to join.

The internet often rewards certainty and polished answers. But I want more depth than a shiny blog post can give. I want the kind of wisdom that is lived, that is earned, and that is an active practice. And it’s the women in this community that continue to remind me that wisdom is something different. They show me how they wrestle with the questions that their lives are asking of them. They are honest about what it takes to really build, to really lead — and to do the inner work of leadership that’s required for real change.

My hope is that you’ll discover new ideas—ideas that help you learn more about your own inner wisdom.

My hope is that you’ll meet remarkable people—people you can follow and learn from and connect with.

My goal is to shine a spotlight on the remarkable women who make up our community. Through conversations and interviews, we’ll explore their work, the challenges they’re navigating, the lessons they’re learning, and the ideas they keep returning to again and again.

These are not stories about having it all figured out. They are stories about paying attention. These are stories about letting go of who we were, so that we can leap towards who we are becoming. These are stories about changing how we move through life.

I hope you’ll enjoy meeting the women of Wise Women’s Council as much as I’ve enjoyed learning from them.

— Sarah K Peck

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You can also find me on LinkedIn, Substack Notes, and Threads.

PS: If you’re thinking about applying to join us in the ​Wise Women’s Council​ this year, we’d love to see you apply if you’re looking for a community of driven, business-focused women navigating ALL the mess and joy life brings us.

I’m writing this from the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport, sitting at a tiny table outside a Dunkin’ Donuts, waiting for my flight home to Chicago. Around me: rolling suitcases, half-drunk iced coffees, families trying to reorganize themselves before boarding. There’s something oddly vulnerable about airports — everyone in transition at once. Between places. Between versions of themselves.

I almost didn’t come on this trip.

It’s the middle of May, otherwise known to parents everywhere as Maycember: the completely unhinged sprint to the end of the school year. Next week alone I’m chaperoning a field trip, and my daughter has a ballet recital, a cheerleading performance, and kindergarten graduation. There are permission slips and snack requests and spirit days and laundry and work deadlines and all the invisible labor that keeps a family moving.

The list felt so long before I left, that saying yes to a work trip almost seemed irresponsible.

And yet, I came.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot in relation to this month’s conversation around values, vision, and the operating systems we inherit versus the ones we choose.

Because I think one of the operating systems many women — especially mothers — absorb is the idea that our own expansion should always come second. That if something is not strictly necessary for the functioning of the household, it becomes optional. Extraneous. Self-indulgent, even. But sitting here now, tired in a satisfying way, I know this trip mattered to me for reasons beyond work.

Yes, I was here to write and report and gather material.

But I was also here because curiosity is one of my values.

Growth is one of my values.

Aliveness is one of my values.

And increasingly, I think honoring those values makes me a better mother, not a worse one.

This trip reminded me that I am not only a person who keeps things running, I am also a person who wants to see new places. Who wants to learn. Who feels energized by conversations with strangers and the texture of unfamiliar cities and long dinners and gathering stories.

I got to travel with a friend, which felt meaningful in its own quiet way. Adult friendship can become so logistical in this phase of life — voice notes, reschedules, quick check-ins while unloading groceries or sitting in pickup lines.

And suddenly here we were, walking through Cincinnati together, talking without interruption, laughing over cocktails, deciding where to go next with no one asking us for a snack or help finding a shoe.

I got to sleep in a pitch-black hotel room where nobody touched me or woke me up all night.

I sat down with the cheesemakers at Urban Stead Cheese and tasted through their cheeses while we talked about the inexorable link between cheese and community — how the best food is never really only about food. How it becomes a gathering point, a language, a way people care for each other. We talked about place and fermentation and neighborhoods and risk and building something slowly with your hands.

I lingered over earrings in a tiny shop because I could. I drank a very esoteric pét-nat with a delightfully foul-mouthed winemaker who clearly loved to hear himself talk, and somehow that, too, felt life-giving — this reminder that the world is still full of deeply specific, eccentric, passionate people.

And that’s part of what travel gives me. Not just rest. Not just inspiration. But texture.

It breaks the spell of hyper-functionality.

At home, especially during seasons like this, it is so easy to become a machine for managing life. Scheduling life. Optimizing life. Moving everyone through life.

Travel interrupts that. It reminds me to notice things again.

The curve of the Roebling Bridge against the gray sky. The way a restaurant sounds when everyone is slightly tipsy and happy. The sharp creaminess of a cheese tasted at exactly the right temperature. The pleasure of wandering without urgency. The strange intimacy of airports.

Every time I leave home — even briefly — I come back slightly rearranged. More awake. More present. More myself.

And I think that’s the value underneath all of it.

Remembering that I am still a person with a mind and a palate and ambition and curiosity and a hunger for beauty and conversation and discovery.

Someone still becoming.

This year, I asked one of our WWC members if she would write about her experience inside of The Wise Women’s Council, my ongoing group coaching program. Previously, she wrote about changing her relationship to rest, slowing down to be present to her own life, and the dangerous trap of comparative joy. This month, we’re digging into our core values and how they help us make decisions about the way we show up to our lives. If you’re looking for a group coaching program for women, check out The Wise Women’s Council and apply to join.

— Sarah K Peck

Hannah Howard is the author of the memoirs Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen and Plenty: A Memoir of Food and Family. She writes for Food & Wine, Travel + Leisure, and Bon Appetit. Hannah lives in Chicago with her family and loves stinky cheese. Subscribe to her Substack, Letters from Hannah. She is also a member of The Wise Women’s Council.

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For most of my life, writing things down was a way for me to understand things better. But as I became more and more sleep-deprived, as my body changed, I found it harder and harder to write. The massive adventure ahead of me of pregnancy, giving birth, becoming a mother—it was daunting. It was no small fact that my identity, life, and known world would be subject to massive upheaval. I didn’t know how to make sense of it. I felt lost and insecure.

Pregnancy: I wanted to understand it. I wanted to catalog it. I wanted to explain it, tell the stories of pregnancy. Yet all I could write were the worst clichés, and then wincing, knowing that that wasn’t it. How could I go through something so deeply human and yet struggle for words to explain it?

I decided to use my friend’s Clarity Card process2 as a structured way to journal towards the end of my pregnancy. The method is simple and beautiful, and I ended up in tears just by having this as a guide. Below, I’ll walk you through the four-step process he outlines — and how I used it to chart out ideas, insights, and clear perspectives on being pregnant. Plus, I’ll include some of my original notes from when I wrote this out when I was eight months pregnant. It helped me.

A 4-Step Guided Framework for Journaling and Gaining Clarity

Much like Julia Cameron writes about in The Artist’s Way, just getting pen on paper and making a list can be an extraordinary way to dive into your mind. The mind, I’ve learned, is an incredible tool that can be cued with phrases and questions. All you have to do is let your mind respond to the questions you put forth.3

Here’s how I did it:

Full credit goes to of Think Clearly. These are his Clarity Cards, which I purchased, and they are fantastic (no affiliate link, just love).

The deck of cards was surprisingly easy to use. They walks you through four steps.

For each step, you take 2–3 minutes to write down as much as you can. You can go longer if you’d like, or keep it short and simple.

The first step is the simplest, and by getting your pen onto paper quickly, it makes the process easier.

Prep: Grab some pages to write on.

I have a Moleskine I love using, and so I cleared fresh sheets and got out a teal blue pen to write with, because that sounded like fun. Make sure you’re not distracted (I prefer a Moleskine or loose paper on a desk without any other items on it — no computer, phone, or other distractions.

Also, have a timer ready. The timer is important.

There’s research that shows that limited-duration journaling (10 to 15 minutes, no more than 20 minutes) is very effective, but if you go for longer—especially when it comes to trauma—it might not be as helpful and could even end up being harmful.)

Choose a topic or area of focus.

Choose a topic or a subject. I suppose you could just let something tumble out, or try to define a problem. For my sake, and as the example in this essay, I chose “Pregnancy” as the topic, because I was struggling to understand it, and these prompts helped me unpack it.

I then stacked the four sets of cards out face-down in front of me in four piles, and started a timer.

There are four sets of cards:

• Facts (what happened)

• Feelings (how you feel about it)

• Insights (interpretations or analysis)

• Actions (things you can do)

Step 1: The Facts

The first set of prompts is related to “the facts.” I pulled my first card, and it simply said, “What are the facts?”

I began by making a list.

• I am pregnant.

• I have swollen and sore feet.

• I am doing Mathias’ Clarity Cards.

• I’m in the 9th month.

• I weigh 40-50+ pounds more.

• I don’t fit into my shoes anymore.

• No one stands up on the subway for me.

• It takes me 2-3 hours to stop barfing in the morning.

I pulled another card and continued listing facts.

The prompts said things like “What is going on?” and “What is happening?”

I continued:

• I cry so much more than I thought I would. Probably every day. I just can’t stop crying? It feels like the tears are always at the ready. I’m so emotional, and everything is so big.

• I don’t know many other people who are pregnant right now.

• Everyone at the office is younger than me.

My observations: It was easier than I thought to begin with a simple list of what the facts are. Even just the act of writing “I am pregnant” somehow makes it seem more real. I know, of course, that I’ve got a watermelon belly and I’m waddling around the city stopping to pee at every coffee shop I can find, but still — it helps to list out all of the pieces of this puzzle, no matter how obvious they are. There’s something about writing it down and getting out of the swirl of my head that just helps.

Lists are really helpful. It’s not writing, per se. It’s just making a list. And that, in itself, is the way to ease into it. The act of list-making can be profoundly useful as an instrument for getting inside of your own mind and beginning the process of journaling.

Step 2: Feelings

The second set of prompts asks you to write down how you FEEL about the situation. Prompts included questions like “What gives you energy?” and “What are you sad about?” and other guided questions to help you understand how you feel about the situation.

Again, I spent a quick 3-4 minutes on the next blank page in my journal, jotting down as much as I could—about a minute per card, writing whatever came to mind first.

Observations: It was wonderful to parse out facts versus feelings. It’s one thing to be pregnant (fact), and it’s a completely separate thing to have a set of feelings about it (excited! happy! scared! kind of in shock!). My list included things like “I feel like a beached whale,” and “My stomach is really tender in the center,” and “I feel much more vulnerable and in need of protection than my normal, ambitious, athletic self.” It went from physical feelings to deeper emotional layers, like “I feel like my identity is transforming,” and “there are parts of me that are changing so quickly, it’s hard to get used to.”

Some of the harder stuff to write down:

• I feel really tender and scared, and vulnerable. I’m afraid that people might run into me, or push me over, or hurt me and my baby in some way.

• I feel absolutely sick to my stomach about the subway smells and the horrific underground heat, it makes me scratchy and itchy and miserable.

• I feel deeply alone and unsettled, like I’m doing this all on my own. Where are the other women who have done this before? Why does everything I read about pregnancy feel like a lie? I feel really lost and confused, and the branding and messaging around pregnancy feels like a shiny superficial thing—it doesn’t seem real to me. It doesn’t seem like anyone is actually speaking the real truth about what happens.

Reflections: In journaling, it can be difficult to separate out feelings and facts, and then things get very jumbled. Yet this four-step method felt like I’d discovered a shockingly easy way to do it. In addition, the act of taking time to focus just on feelings let a lot of them tumble out. If you’re not used to talking about your feelings, having a guided set of cards prompt you through it can help you find awareness.

Step 3: Insights

The third set of questions invites you to probe a bit further. This step takes you from observation to analysis.

• What are you learning, deducing, and understanding?

• How are you interpreting these facts and feelings?

• What insights have you gained?

I stumbled a bit here, because the first question was “What insights have you gained?” and I felt myself think dismissively, “Um, none.” So I began this third step the same way I’d done before, which was: keeping it simple and starting with the basics.

My first insight? “Drinking a lot of water helps the headaches go away.”

From there, it became easier to write out insights, and because I was writing quickly, it was almost startling how fast I dug into deeper insights. Once I started, it was like they were ready to come tumbling out of me. “Rest yourself as often as you recharge your iPhone, if not more,” and “It’s your own learning process and your own journey, unique to you,” and “Take time to reconcile external readings and advice with your own internal wisdom.” These made it onto my list of insights about the experience of pregnancy.

Wow, yes, this. I didn’t know I had this in me. And I didn’t know just how much I needed to read this and see this written down.

“Your feelings about this matter, even if you don’t see yourself reflected in other people’s stories.” — “It’s okay to feel heartbroken and alone when you don’t have any family around you.” — “It is objectively miserable to be puking all of the time—having a stomach bug for a few days is awful enough, doing it for nine months is horrible!” —“Trust yourself, and keep writing things down.” —“Don’t let other people tell you how you are supposed to be feeling.”

I felt smarter just writing it down. Nodding my head. It was like the wisdom was there all along, but I didn’t have a clear way of seeing it.

Intuitively, I know that each of these things is true. Somehow the act of writing them down made them stronger, more powerful. They reminded me how important they are. They clarified, for me, what insights I have at my fingertips, if I’m willing to sit for a few minutes and record, reflect, and listen.

Step 4: Actions

The fourth and final section is about creating a set of actions that you’re going to take.

• What can you do with what you’ve observed, noticed, and felt?

• What steps can you take next?

Again, I was confounded at first. What “actions” do I take with “pregnancy”? There was a list I could draw up quickly, like “pack your hospital bag, set up an email auto-reply, stock your freezer with food,” but those seemed like just another list of tasks and errands. I could make a to-do list in my sleep; how could I apply this more broadly to a reflective session focused on the holistic concept of “pregnancy” and everything that it entailed?

But the magic of putting a prompt in front of your brain is incredible. The brain wants to find patterns, ideas, and solutions. When you put a set of frameworks in front of your mind, and give it a beat or two, it begins to generate answers for you.

Again, within a few moments, the ideas came forward. They seemed both obvious and silly, which was my experience throughout doing the cards. I wrote them down:

Decisions to be made:
— It’s okay for the baby to come.
— We are ready.
— This will be great.
— We can handle this.

What am I going to do?
— Give birth.
— Become a mom.
— Work hard during labor and delivery!
— Rest fully and recover well.

What is the next step?
— Rest. Allow. Enjoy. Be.
— Ask for help.
— Brainstorm ways to feel less alone.
— Ask for pregnancy and birth stories, and talk more to people who have been through this before.

And the deepest exhale.

Twelve to fifteen minutes of writing later, and I felt a renewed sense of calm about the transition that was about to come for me. Recognizing that then, at the end of my pregnancy, I was getting ready to meet my little boy and bring him into the world — this made me tear up.

And it’s okay. It’s okay that I’m scared. It’s okay that I’m a jumbled-up mess of feelings. It’s okay that this is overwhelming. I’ve never done this before, and I need a lot of support. This is a massive upheaval to my life, a shift in identity, and a physical challenge that I’ve never done before. This is a lot, Sarah. This is a massive work of art, an identity shift, a radical transformation.

The next things to do are to acknowledge that all of this is happening.

And to decide: decide that it’s okay, that we’re ready, and that it’s time.

And also to rest, allowing the process to unfold.

I am terrified, I am in awe, and I am on a brave adventure. One I’ve never been on before.

Of course it makes sense to be feeling this way.

— Sarah K Peck
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​Angela Parker described this workshop as “rewiring her brain,” and others have said that these scripts were “life-changing” because they “didn’t require a harsh line, but rather created exactly the space they needed to be both kind and clear.”

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In December, she wrote about renegotiating her understanding of rest in a culture that says rest should always come last, after the work. “No one taught me that proactive rest could prevent that collapse. That choosing to repair myself before I was depleted wasn’t lazy or indulgent, it was strategic, sustaining, even brave,” she wrote. Women leaders are often some of the most hard-working (and exhausted) people I know.

One of the deeper truths we touch on in the Wise Women’s Council is the idea that we don’t win if we compare joys or sufferings. We are each individuals having very unique experiences; the pain and joy we feel in each of our bodies is relevant, even with everything else going on. Diminishing our own suffering because someone else has it “worse” can accidentally lead to smashing your own feelings away, which doesn’t always work in the long-term. Now, it’s not always appropriate to spill your guts and pour your feelings over everyone, but moderating how we display our emotions is part of EQ and maturity. But denying ourselves our real stories and bodily wisdom is unwise. That’s why we talk about this idea of comparative joy and comparative suffering. Hannah writes about it below for her January reflection. This is Hannah’s second year in The Wise Women’s Council, and the essay that follows is by her.

— Sarah K Peck

No One Wins the Pain (or Joy) Olympics

by

I’ve noticed something lately on work calls.

Someone will say, almost apologetically, “I know the world is so intense right now…” and the rest of us will nod, as if we’re all collectively agreeing not to take up too much emotional space. As if there’s a moral economy of suffering and we’re afraid of overdrawing our account.

calls this the “Pain Olympics” — the belief that suffering and joy must be ranked, that only the biggest tragedies deserve attention, that anything else is somehow embarrassing or indulgent.

But here’s the thing I know now, not just in my head but in my body: that belief almost killed me.

For years, I didn’t think my eating disorder was “real enough” to deserve care. I wasn’t starving in a dramatic way. I wasn’t visibly sick. I was functioning. I was working. I was productive. I was praised. In a culture that equates discipline with virtue and thinness with success, my suffering was rewarded—which made it even harder to name.

Diet culture gave me a perfect hiding place.

It told me my hunger was a moral failure.

It told me my body was a problem to solve.

It told me that wanting less space in the world was noble.

And because I was, by any objective measure, deeply lucky — educated, housed, loved, successful — I internalized the idea that I had no right to be struggling. I had read the books. I believed the politics. I knew all bodies were supposed to be beautiful. I just didn’t believe mine was allowed to be one of them.

So I did what so many smart, thoughtful women do: I turned my pain into self-improvement.

I told myself I wasn’t sick — I was disciplined.

I wasn’t anxious — I was “health-conscious.”

I wasn’t disappearing — I was becoming better.

Meanwhile, my nervous system was living in a state of constant emergency. Food was never just food. It was math, control, fear, worthiness, and relief all tangled together. My head could recite feminist theory, but my body was trapped in a loop of deprivation and panic.

And here’s the part no one tells you:

You cannot recover from something you don’t believe you’re allowed to have.

Healing didn’t begin when I found the perfect framework. It began when I said, quietly and without justification, This hurts. When I stopped asking whether my pain was impressive enough, dramatic enough, tragic enough to qualify.

It turns out the body doesn’t care about your résumé.

Trauma doesn’t ask if you’re privileged.

Hunger doesn’t care if you “should know better.”

What changed everything was kindness. Not the Instagram kind — the actual, daily, uncomfortable practice of treating myself like someone whose life mattered. Letting myself eat without earning it. Letting myself rest without apologizing. Letting myself feel grief, fear, and longing without ranking them against anyone else’s.

Sarah K. Peck is right: comparative suffering is a lie. But so is comparative healing. There isn’t a more respectable kind of brokenness. There isn’t a purer kind of recovery. There’s just this person, in this body, trying to live.

I think that’s why this resonates so deeply now. So many of us are navigating a world that feels genuinely overwhelming, politically, economically, emotionally. And we’re trying to be “good” about it. We’re trying not to complain. Not to take up too much space. Not to be selfish.

But silencing ourselves isn’t strength. And minimizing our pain doesn’t make us more compassionate.

What actually makes us capable of showing up—for our kids, our work, each other—is letting what’s true be true. Letting joy exist even when the world is burning. Letting grief be named even when others have it worse.

Recovery taught me this:

You don’t heal by disappearing.

You heal by staying.

By being here.

By eating.

By feeling.

By refusing to make your own life smaller in order to seem more acceptable.

There is no prize for suffering quietly.

There is no virtue in not needing.

There is only this moment, this breath, this body—asking, again and again, to be treated with care.

Hannah Howard is the author of the memoirs Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen and Plenty: A Memoir of Food and Family. She writes for Food & Wine, Travel + Leisure, and Bon Appetit. Hannah lives in Chicago with her family and loves stinky cheese. Subscribe to her Substack, Letters from Hannah. She is also a member of The Wise Women’s Council.

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Before kids, on the Upper West Side of NYC, I took a spin class on a random Tuesday morning — nothing special about it except that I remember it with startling clarity. I was drenched, legs shaking, heart pounding in my ears. The studio smelled like rubber and ambition. The music thumped; the lights pulsed; I felt like I was working my whole life out on that bike.

We were in the middle of intervals — these brutal sprints followed by what I always thought of as the “throwaway” part, the little rest periods where you catch your breath before you suffer again. The teacher called out over the music, “Remember: the rest is just as important as the work.”

I nearly laughed. What?

In what universe?

I had spent most of my life believing rest was the reward for work, not part of it. Rest happened at the end, after I’d earned it, after I’d emptied myself out. But here was this person shouting as if it were obvious: rest is equal to work. I didn’t understand it yet, but something in me cracked open.

Then I became a parent, and the lesson arrived again, this time much louder.

Before kids, I used to think I was pretty good at rest. I could squeeze it in around the edges: the flop onto the couch after a long shift, those miraculous fifteen minutes between emails, a walk around the block when my brain felt fried. It wasn’t especially intentional, but it kept me going.

When you have babies, though, the edges disappear. There are no scraps. I remember people telling me, “Sleep when the baby sleeps,” and I wanted to say, “Great! And when do I live my life? When do I be a person?” There simply isn’t enough time, and whatever time there is rarely looks like rest.

What I learned at the Wise Women’s Council changed everything. Rest is not only sleep. Rest can be — and often needs to be — something else entirely.

I fell in love with this acronym: EAT.

Rest is the Energy, Attention, and Time we return to ourselves, explained Jordan Maney, one of the guest speakers this year.

Energy: noticing what drains me and what fills me.

Attention: giving myself even a sliver of the focus I give my clients, my kids, my work.

Time: choosing to spend a few minutes on something that’s for me and no one else.

Entrepreneurs and parents are Olympic-level givers. We pour our energy, our attention, our time into so many people: children, partners, coworkers, clients, family members. It’s easy, almost effortless, to put ourselves last on the list. And we all know what happens to the things at the bottom of the list: they go to die.

The truth is, I didn’t grow up seeing rest modeled in any intentional way. My parents worked incredibly hard, at work, and then at home. There was always a project around the house, always a meal to cook, always something to be done. There was creativity and purpose in that, and I’m grateful for the example of dedication. But rest, when it happened, was the collapse — the exhale when every tank was entirely empty.

No one taught me that proactive rest could prevent that collapse. That choosing to repair myself before I was depleted wasn’t lazy or indulgent, it was strategic, sustaining, even brave.

What does rest look like for me today?

Sometimes it’s going to bed a little earlier so I can curl up with a novel under the covers, letting the story soften the edges of the day. Sometimes it’s taking an extra minute — or five — in the shower so I can belt out a song and remember I have a voice outside of work and parenting.

Sometimes rest looks like connection: leaving a rambling, too-long voice note for a friend because I crave the feeling of being known.

Sometimes it’s sweetness: giving my four-year-old an unhurried cuddle just because it fills something in me that nothing else does.

Sometimes it’s uncomplicated joy: tossing a toy for the dog, letting myself laugh at his goofy enthusiasm.

Sometimes it’s choosing to watch K-Pop Demon Hunters with my kids — to actually be with them — instead of multitasking my way through the moment with one eye on my email.

Learning this hasn’t happened in a single epiphany. It’s slow and ongoing. It’s me catching myself reaching for my laptop at 9 p.m. and asking, “What would EAT look like right now?” It’s stepping outside for five quiet minutes between meetings because my body needs air more than it needs inbox zero. It’s closing my eyes in the middle of a chaotic day and remembering that I am not a machine.

I’m still unlearning the version of rest I inherited, the kind you collapse into only when you’re spent. I’m learning the kind that refuels you before you break down. The kind that makes the next interval possible.

Because maybe that spin instructor was right all along. Maybe the rest is the part that transforms the work from something we survive into something we can sustain. Maybe rest isn’t what happens after you give everything away, maybe it’s what allows you to give in the first place.

Maybe rest is the interval that carries us forward.

Hannah Howard is the author of the memoirs Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen and Plenty: A Memoir of Food and Family. She writes for Food & Wine, Travel + Leisure, and Bon Appetit. Hannah lives in Chicago with her family and loves stinky cheese. Subscribe to her Substack, Letters from Hannah. She is also a member of The Wise Women’s Council.

In about a week, the schools will close for the winter holiday, my kids will be home, and we’ll begin the holiday travels that happen at the end of December.

For too many years, one of the last things on my list was taking care of myself. If I even made the list. To be honest, it never crossed my mind to put myself on this list as a consideration — I just packed my stuff, through some stuff together, and crammed it all into the last minute.

I would run around the house, making sure the kids’ bags were packed; that each had a stuffy and a book and a blanket; that we had an abundance of their favorite snacks. I’d tidy the house, cleaning everything up, making sure the fridge was clean (no spoiled food!), and that mice wouldn’t take up home in our house while we were gone.

I’d go so far as to make sure the house was—what, exactly?—hotel ready?

WHY?

It just never occurred to me that I could do it any differently. Whether that’s from watching a million TV moms scramble during the holidays, or watching my own mother do the same, I never heard anyone say that it was okay to:

1. Slow down.

2. Take care of myself in exquisite fashion.

3. Plan ahead for my own comfort and joy (comfort and joy!)

This year, the layers of lessons we teach in The Wise Women’s Council are continuing to unfurl in my life, in the most beautiful ways. These lessons are subtle but profound. And I can see it in the way that I’ve been preparing for the holidays differently this year. I can see how I’ve let something beautiful, tender, and sweet into my life. While taking care of the house, the family, the children, the presents, the travel, the puppy, the car… I’m also giving myself room in here, too. To do beautiful things for me.

Here’s how I’m preparing for the holidays

The next two weeks will be a disruption for me — it will be filled with noise, chaos, shuffled schedules, changed sleeping arrangements, lots of travel, different lighting, brand-new food — all of it a recipe for over-stimulation and overwhelm. As a person who likes a bit of agency, and as someone exquisitely sensitive to sensory input and interpersonal dynamics — if I do a bit of preparation, I’ll be able to enjoy so much more of it.

Some of the ways that I can prepare (and take care)—of me:

• Finding delightful novels to read. I went to Libby (the library app) and downloaded a selection of novels for me to pick from during the next two weeks. And! I started reading one of them, so I’m already absorbed in it.

• Packing the coziest clothes with the softest fabrics and the stretchiest waistbands. Because I want to enjoy all the delicious food and feel great.

• Bringing MY favorite snacks so that I can have delicious things when I want. (Favorite travel snacks: salted pistachios, pumpkin seeds, or macademia nuts; dark chocolate; something chewy and sweet like red vines). Sometimes I order them ahead of time to be shipped to location!

• Researching TV shows and series that I can watch while I’m there, including comedy that’s family-friendly, and downloading it to my devices.

• Coordinating with my siblings in advance to get a sense of schedule (and coordinate all the naps!) — I can go into detail on how we do this, by the way!

• Looking up gyms in the area(s) we’re traveling to, calling in advance, and figuring out what a one-week or one-month membership looks like.

• Planning walking routes by downloading AllTrails for the area(s) and bookmarking hiking trails and local walks.

• Writing a small index card of reminders with questions I’d love to ask people while I’m there (I don’t always think of things on-the-spot, so this helps me); another notecard with boundary scripts (for when I’m too tired to think, and I need support with my words), and a short list of people that I want to be in touch with and text to check-in on (and who often check in on me).

This is not to say that other people don’t have beautiful intentions—often, they do. But I don’t want to be my own afterthought at Christmas. I don’t want to get to the end of the day, resentful that I’ve carried the day for everyone else, too hungry / tired / dysfunctional to be able to do anything other than scroll memes and eat a million cookies (both of which I will be doing, of course).

But I also want to enjoy these moments. Savor them. Soak them in.

So I’ve taken up some time preparing for me, just like I do for my kids— well, okay that’s not exactly true, they will be getting 10x as more of my energy — BUT: each thing I look something up for the kids, like museums and activities and shows, I remind myself to make sure I look something up that’s for me.

Because I deserve to be taken care of.

And so do you.

Over to you: what do you do to enjoy the holidays? How do you take care of yourself? I want to hear all of the ways, no matter how big or how small!

— Sarah Peck
CEO. Writer. Founder.

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People ask me all the time: “Can I be an entrepreneur and a parent?” I’ve spent almost a decade working with founders who are also parents, and over time, I’ve developed a checklist for what makes it easier—and what makes it harder.

Here’s what I tell people when they ask me what to expect if they’re trying to build a business AND a family at the same time:

Yes, you can do this.

Yes, it’s possible. But it will depend a LOT on a number of factors, because every situation has a different “difficulty level” and that will make all the difference.

But every situation has a different DIFFICULTY LEVEL

How difficult the journey is, and whether or not it feels absolutely impossible, will vary a lot from person to person. Below, I’ve outlined the ten questions I’d ask to discern how hard it’s going to be.

For each one you say “NO” to, the difficulty factor goes up.

This is not a judgment. It’s a map.

WHAT LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY ARE YOU PLAYING AT?

1 — Do you have a partner / who is supportive? Do they take a good balance of the household work and parenting labor?

2 — Are your job(s) flexible and supportive? Sometimes there are “greedy jobs“ in the picture. Greedy jobs take an outsized amount of the attention, energy, or resources in a partnership.
​
​3 — Do you have extended family that’s supportive? Grandparents, local relatives, etc that you can lean for any type of support?
​
​4 — Do you have strong community? Ideally with people who are also doing some of this adventure around the same time as you, so fellow parents, caregivers, and/or entrepreneurs.
​
​5 — Are YOU stable and secure — mentally, emotionally, physically? Your body and mind are part of the operating system of your business, and they’re also the backbone of your parenting journey. If you have a chronic illness, postpartum depression, mental health challenges, trauma, or other challenges, this could be harder.
​
​6 — Are you financially supported? If you have a well-paying job, savings from previous work, access to resources, a low rent or mortgage, or any other resources that support you, you’ll be in better shape, and can afford to pay for household and childcare support.
​​
7 — Do you have access to paid parental leave? Ideally, you have access to 6 to 12 months of quality paid leave to support you and your family. America is woefully bad at this (human rights level bad), and so this makes everything so much harder.
​
​8 — Is your baby an easy baby? A lot depends on the kind of baby or child you have. Some babies are ‘easy’ babies that sleep well. The rest of them? Not so much. And if you have a more challenging child, a kid that won’t sleep, or a child with extra needs, you’ll have even more demands placed on you.
​
​9 — Are YOU able to sleep? This could be the most important thing. If you’re not sleeping, everything will be a thousand times harder.
​
​10 — Do you have access to quality, consistent childcare? Is it reliable, affordable, trusted? Half of Americans live in “childcare deserts” where there is not enough childcare for the people who want it.

I’m curious what else you would add to this checklist, by the way. Something I didn’t add was whether or not you have more care-taking responsibilities, like taking care of aging parents or other family members. What else would you add? Tell me in the comments.

Next, add up all the times you said “no” to the questions above. That’s your difficulty rating for your adventure ahead.

This checklist is here to acknowledge that each journey in parenting and entrepreneurship will be different. You might be playing at a Level 10 difficulty and need far more support than you currently have. You might be building a business with only a fraction of the hours you need.

Or, you might be building a business with a huge amount of savings on hand, local grandparents, and your kids in daycare 45-50 hours a week. This is also a reminder not to compare yourself to someone else — they are living a completely different life. Each story is different.

What level of difficulty are you playing at?

(Also, If your difficulty level is at max, then please apply for one of our 🎁 Founding Member Scholarships 🎁 to be a part of the Founders With Kids community!)

Your story is yours.

— Sarah Peck
CEO & Founder
​Startup Parent​

🟡 ​Substack Newsletter​ — Join 11,000 readers!
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JOIN ONE OF OUR WWC OPEN HOUSES!

Our final open house this year is on Dec 10th. Come join the ​Wise Women’s Council Open House.​ Bring your questions, your curiosity, and an open heart.

Here’s the link to register:​ https://www.wisewomenscouncil.com/open-house​

Have you ever searched for an image of a leader or a CEO?

When I search for images of leaders, executives, bosses, and founders, the pages of results are quite dismal. I did a screenshot series back in 2021, which is still relevant today, because these images are what LLM (large language models) are learning from.

Here’s what a quick search of UnSplash ga…

Read more

Ten years ago, I was in a Zoom room with twelve women, asking them to share what they were working on. But not in a pitch session, or a “networking” call kind of way. We were sharing things beyond the surface level.

• One was breastfeeding her baby while talking about her seed funding round.

• Another was leading a 40-person company, but wondering how to keep…

Read more

Read more

We will need you to download an app for the school dismissal system. Please tell us how you will be getting your child to school! Here is the new driving map, which has changed from last year. If your license plate starts with the letters A through K, your new drop-off line for cars now goes behind the school and across the tennis courts. If your license plate has odd numbers, we would like you to wait on the football field. Please don’t drive too hard, we need to maintain a pristine field! Even when it’s a parking lot. Please do not drive across the basketball court as we are re-paving it and your car will probably get stuck in the fresh asphalt!

If you are sending your child on the bus, we have good news! We have enough bus drivers this year for at least half of your children! The bus will pick up your child as long as you figure out how to log into the app. This can take up to ten minutes. Do remember what color bus your child is on. **This is important.** But please also be prepared to drive them to school if we don’t have enough bus drivers! If there are no more bus drivers available that morning, you will be driving your child to school! We recommend never scheduling any meetings before 10 a.m. for ease of the drop-off transition.

Please encourage your older children to walk to school! That way we can reduce the number of cars on the tennis courts, and save space on the buses! But please be careful, as there are no sidewalks, so please teach your children how to walk in the road safely. We recommend you walk them to school wearing brightly colored vests!

Oh also, there are a few more apps you’ll need to download for music, gym, library, technology, and the use of the printer! None of the apps work together, and they are all rated 2-stars or fewer and frequently crash because we have no budget, sorry about that! Please also note that your child is limited to one sheet of paper per day!  

As you get adjusted to back-to-school systems, do note that we operate on a week that is six days long, and doesn’t match any other calendar you use! You’ll need to log into the school website so you know what day of the week it is!

Your elementary children who are ages five to seven years old can arrive at school between 8:20 a.m. and 8:35 a.m. but cannot arrive earlier than 8:15 a.m. For those of you with siblings, please note that any elementary children who are eight years and older can only arrive at school between 8:35 a.m. and 8:50 a.m. Please have them walk to school on their own if they can! But do not form a crowd outside the school for too long. Also, the staggered start is good for children! You will now get to spend an hour each day getting two children to school, which should be great quality time.

On the days that school is dismissed early at 10:45 a.m., you will get to spend two hours driving for two hours of classroom time. Don’t worry, we will feed them a snack, but please remember there is no lunch on early dismissal days! Enjoy your coffee hour And speaking of lunches, your child will get a five-digit code to access the school lunch system. Please have them memorize this code and practice punching it in.

Don’t lose the piece of paper your child came home with! It is a very tiny slip of paper, because we used one piece of paper to print them all. On this slip of paper is your secret QR code for the app. Which app? That’s a mystery, because we didn't have enough space to put it on the paper! Check your email for the instructions! They are inside of a PDF attachment on the last page! It is not searchable, so good luck! Please note that if you lose it, we can’t print it, because we only use fax machines. 

One last thing, we also need you to bring in six boxes of Kleenex, four cartons of water, and the entire aisle of school supplies from Walgreens. We also need a framed photograph of your family for your child’s cubby. And please label everything that is not permanently attached to your child! You can also label your child! If you’d like to get tattoos made of your QR code, you can apply them to your child each week. They can use them in the lunch line if they forget their unique ID number.

Good luck everyone! We’re so excited to teach your child! And don’t forget that school gets out at 2:20 p.m. for the small children and 3:05 p.m. for the older children, except Wednesdays, when school gets out at 1:40 p.m. for everyone, and we will be sending out a new driving map for Wednesday’s special pickup routine when every parent arrives at school at the same time!

PS: The PTSA will be reaching out next week with our fundraisers and to get all of you onto a volunteer slot!

PPS: Don’t forget that Spirit Week is coming up!

— Sarah Peck

I hope you all are surviving the back-to-school era. It’s a crush of paperwork and forms and schedules and tiny details. I posted a shorter version of this on my LinkedIn page, and a teacher wrote back, “I'm a teacher and I'd like you to know that I have no idea where the piece of paper is either.” and I about died with laughter.

Please know this: I love teachers. And school. And childcare. The teachers work SO HARD. The budget is not enough. I am happy to bring the entire aisle of school supplies for you, and scavenge the free websites for new classroom bookshelves or containers. Thank you for all the work you do.

It’s the chaos of all of it that is mind-boggling. I know you get it.

You likely know this feeling. You feel it in your bones.

So what can we do about this exhaustion?

I’ll make a confession that feels strange to say, but I know is important: Once a week, I stay in bed for a late morning. Not on the weekends—those are typically filled with kids waking up too early and starting dance parties. But during the week, I give myself permission to rest. It’s hard to do, especially for someone like me, who was trained in the corporate world where productivity is the gold standard.

Hustle culture teaches us that if we’re resting, we’re ‘lazy’ or ‘underperforming.’ We’re told to maximize every hour of the day, become more efficient, and pack our mornings with multiple habits to ‘win.’

Maximize all hours of your day, productivity experts shout.

Increase your efficiency and output, systems experts tell us.

If you’re not doing 5 things in your morning routine, are you even winning?

I learned, painfully, that if you push all the time, your body will demand rest. Constantly pushing ourselves leads to burnout, illness, exhaustion, and apathy. At some point, more coffee, cold plunges, habits, or routines won’t repair the 100+ hour work weeks that people do trying to balance parenting, care taking, life, and work.

The solution is to carve out rest in more unusual ways.

Good rest is the unlock to real productivity.

Our culture doesn’t prioritize rest. It asks people to push harder, and then replaces people when they burn out. In today’s world, prioritizing rest is a radical act.

The biggest fallacy of rest is the idea that it will happen later. Only after you finish this big project will you take a vacation. The problem with this thinking is that most of the time it doesn’t work. There’s always another project or deadline. When you finally get that big break or vacation, often people get sick — it’s shown that when people push themselves too hard for too long, their bodies collapse afterwards.

Rest needs to happen every day. It’s like earning money: sure, it’s nice to think about winning the lottery, but it’s almost always a better strategy to set up an automatic savings that happens in small, regular amounts.

This is where micro-rest comes in.

Micro-rest is the small, daily practices that help us recover and sustain ourselves over the long term. These practices don’t require big chunks of time, but they add up to better long-term wellness and productivity. What does micro-rest look like?

• Stretching after back-to-back meetings

• Taking a slow morning once a week

• Doing deep exhales and stretching your eyes every couple of hours

• Setting a timer to roll your shoulders back twice a day

• Doing a quick gratitude journal in the morning

• Pausing in your car for a few minutes of silence before or after meetings

• Taking a social media or news break for the day

• Enjoying a leisurely lunch

• No-meeting Mondays

The key to micro-rest is that it’s small enough to start today. It’s the kind of rest you can stack with other habits—like stretching while waiting for your coffee to brew. Over time, these practices help you feel better immediately and leave you less exhausted at the end of the day.

The mindset shift that need to happen

The hardest part of building this practice is breaking the cycle of constant productivity. When you're in "hustle mode," the brain tells you to keep going—"Just one more thing!" But the art of micro-rest is learning to stop, even for a moment. It’s about developing the muscle of pausing and checking in with your body before pushing forward.

Constant productivity is like an invisible “Dopamine Stairmaster” that gets a reward for checking things off the list. This monster tells you not to stop. It’s this moment, when you’re in the middle of the push, that you learn to pause and say, right now, let’s take two deep breathes. Let me check in with my body. This is the key practice. For many, this “rest muscle” is atrophied and out of practice.

This isn’t easy. The first 30 days are the hardest, but micro-rest becomes more natural over time. You’ll begin to notice that these small shifts add energy back into your life, instead of draining it.

Every time you push harder, you also need to rest.

• It means unpacking the scripts that we’ve been sold about hustle culture, working overtime, and pushing harder at all costs.

• It means testing and iterating to find the ways that we can rest effectively so that our capacity actually improves.

• It also means understanding the long game, and being honest about the real consequences are when you force yourself into overdrive for too long.

Tiny micro-shifts that add up

We are humans, not machines. Rest is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. And it’s not just for founders, entrepreneurs, or high-powered execs—it’s for everyone. Parents, caregivers, and those juggling multiple roles need to build rest into their lives as a non-negotiable practice.

For me, it’s about taking one midweek morning to rest and reset. After getting the kids off to school, I jump back into bed, sip tea, and relax. It’s a simple act, but it’s my way of resisting the pressure to constantly push. Rest doesn’t have to be a luxury reserved for vacations. Through tiny—sometimes rebellious—acts, we can make it part of our daily lives.

How do you carve out moments of rest in your own schedule? What are your favorite downtime practices, especially if they go against conventional wisdom? I'd love to hear how you incorporate rest and recovery into your daily life.

— Sarah K Peck
CEO & Founder

To read more about the seven types of rest we need, and why social time, creative time, and community activities matter, check out The Seven Types of Rest We Need →

👋 I’m Sarah K Peck and I’m the founder of Startup Parent, where we think about building businesses, lives, and families differently than the norm. My motto? We don’t have to do things the way they’ve always been done. Join me if you want to imagine (and build!) better futures for work, life, and parenting — I'm on LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads, and BlueSky.

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✍️ Essays, stories and insights on parenting and life on Substack​

👾 Founders with Kids — We help tired parents make friends. Apply here​

💜 The Wise Women’s Council, our leadership incubator​

🎧 The Startup Parent Podcast, listen everywhere.​
​

If you’re staring at your lead funnel wondering where everyone went, or if you’re questioning if your business is still viable in today’s world—you are not alone. The landscape has shifted dramatically. And a lot of what worked five years ago just isn’t landing anymore. After fifteen years of building businesses and working with leaders, I’ve seen a few patterns and practices that can help.

I want to break this down, not just from a tactical standpoint, but from a mindset perspective, too—because what’s required of us as entrepreneurs is changing. And if we don’t specifically address what’s changing, a lot of business owners may think that they are doing something wrong and throw in the towel too early, when it’s really the entire system that has shifted, and it’s up to us to respond strategically.

Here’s what I’m seeing, what we’re talking about, and what I’m doing.

Should You Pivot, Persevere, or Quit?

Strategies & mindsets for small business owners in 2025

IF WE HAVEN’T MET BEFORE

I'm Sarah K Peck and I'm a business strategist, leadership coach, and entrepreneur. Over the last twenty years, I've studied psychology, received a masters from Penn Design, and an MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology, and I've been a small business owner for 15 years. That means I've lived through multiple economic shifts, navigated entrepreneurship as a new parent, then through Covid, and again through a medical emergency. Over the last decade, I’ve coached and worked with hundreds of founders, leaders, and entrepreneurial operators.

In addition, I am part of a strong community of business strategists, marketers, sales geniuses, and peer business owners that I talk to on a regular basis about what we're seeing. A huge thank-you to Michelle Warner, a business wizard who I partnered with to host “Business As Usual? Or Throw In The Towel?” for my entrepreneurship group. Shout-outs to Alexis Grant, Margo Aaron, Sean O'Connor, Kaleb Leíja, Allison Davis and more! Talking to other business owners is essential for navigating pivots, downturns, and market volatility.

The Game Has Changed. Here’s Why.

BEFORE you throw in the towel, before you conclude that your business isn't working anymore, and before you shift to trying a half dozen new things, it’s important to get clear on why the business landscape is dramatically different than it was a decade ago.

While business owners are rightfully concerned about the economic tumult and the wild political swings, things actually got harder before 2025. Yes, this current season is making things even worse. But it’s important to remember that many folks across the board were tired, burned out, and frustrated for much of the last five years. There’s a pervasive sense (and objective data) that it is harder to generate leads, convert customers, and sell.1

Here's why ↓

AN ERA OF ‘FREE MONEY’ AND ‘EASY LEADS’

The era of free money and low-cost leads isn’t here anymore. (I explain what this means in more depth in the video above.)

If you look at the last ten to twenty years, especially in the United States, we’ve had huge periods of startup growth, with both venture capital flowing and relatively easy business borrowing. When interest rates are super low, it effectively means borrowing money is ‘free.’ With easy access to capital, the cost of starting a business is low. But today, interest rates are higher, loans are harder to get, and things are more expensive. This means both the costs of starting and sustaining a business are much higher.

In addition, leads were also pretty cheap and easy to get. With the rise of social media, email marketing, digital marketing, and online business, you could find potential customers quickly and at lower costs. Coupled with first-mover advantages of the social-tech space, early business owners could gain massive upsides.

Today, however, consumers are more discerning (aka consumer maturation). People are more cautious, more burned out, and more discerning. Acquisition costs are higher, advertising costs are higher, customers are spread across dozens of social media apps, and the tech platforms with the best leads can charge premium prices. Layer in the complexity of consumer privacy regulations and this means it’s harder to reach customers. It's not harder than ever, it's just harder than during the ‘gold rush era’ of the 2000s and 2010s.2

YES, BUSINESS IS HARDER. NO, IT’S NOT WHAT YOU DID.

The important takeaway: If you feel like business is harder in general, it is, for a whole lot of people. The mindset mistake a lot of people are making is the "grass is greener" assumption — that it’s only *their* business that is uniquely doing badly, and they'll have more luck if they pivot to an entirely new business model, or shut down entirely. This might not be the best strategy, even though it feels awfully tempting.

I want this to be reassuring, in a way. If it feels like things are taking twice as long, and they’re twice as hard—say, you have half as many customers than 10 years ago— that doesn’t necessarily mean your product is broken. It means the rules have changed.

And there are key things you can do from here.

PLEASE NOTE: The context and strategies below are particularly useful for small business owners, bootstrapped businesses, and folks who still have access to their key vendors and core resources. If you’re affected by supply chains, if you are a larger business or you are a more mature business with the capacity to scale new product offers, then these strategies are likely too simple for you—let me know in the comments what still lands.

Here’s How to Adapt Accordingly.

1. FOCUS ON WHAT YOU ARE UNIQUELY GOOD AT

Start by asking: What do I do really well? What is working in my business right now?

So many of us have a handful of offers on the table—five, six, ten different things—and only one or two are actually generating significant revenue. That’s the workhorse. That’s where you start. Review your products or services, and drill down to the core offer that brings in revenue. Zone in on your specific genius. List out where you already have systems, suppliers, leads, and contacts in place.

Evaluate your existing assets: How many leads do you have, what market are you in, what do you already have built, and what are your key strengths and skills?

When pivoting or trying new things: Seek confirmation that your current business is truly dead in the water, or no longer viable. Too many people throw in the towel on businesses that need to be tightened up. If you do want to pivot, consider how you can double down on an existing asset or strength.

Mindset Trap: When the Grass Feels Greener…

It can be extremely tempting to want to throw in the towel and give up when things are tougher than before. But before you leap to a grass that seems greener, consider: What will you have to build, acquire, purchase, or do from scratch to make this work?

If you need to build a new product, and talk to an entirely new market, and generate an entirely new lead list, is that going to be cost-effective? Make sure the profit margins are worth it, and the costs are reasonable. It’s not wrong to pivot, but thinking that a new business landscape will be easier may be a mindset fallacy.

The mindset trap that people fall into? Believing that by switching to a new product or market, they’ll be able to return to the era of easy leads and quick returns they experienced a decade ago.

It’s okay to look over at all the pretty land around you, but you might be better off sticking to your own garden and adding some new fertilizer and mulch, and investing in the garden you currently have.

2. DOUBLE DOWN. MAKE IT EVEN BETTER

Double down on your key offers.

Once you’ve identified what’s working best, focus your energy there. As tempting as it is to throw spaghetti at the wall when things get tough and to let tantalizing new ideas steal your focus, that’s usually a fast track to burnout. So instead of adding a ton of things to your plate:

Go all in on your core offers. Consider what it would look like to go all in. “Every week, make your service or offer a little bit better,” Michelle Warner told me. That’s how you play the long game and stand out.

Review your numbers. Make sure you still have the margins you need to make this business work. If rising costs have outpaced your offer, then the model may no longer be viable—and it’s smart to acknowledge that early. Make sure your core products are profitable in the face of inflation and longer lead times. If they are, double down and keep going.

Reposition as needed. A key strategy during downturns is to continue to do what you do best, but reposition it within the context of a recession. Remind your customers why this investment matters now. Connect it back to what they are currently challenged by, and re-assert the value of your business.3

Keep showing up consistently. Get clearer and louder about who you help and how. This is not the season to hide out or wait for things to stabilize. Claim your space, sharpen your message, and reintroduce yourself to your people.

Mindset Trap: Over-Stuffing Your Offers

Eliminate distractions and busy work. Cut what isn’t working, unless it’s essential to your core strategy. Fight the urge to launch 10 new things or burn everything down. That’s stress talking, but it will lead you to overwork (and burnout).

Don’t over-stuff your offers. In a panic, it’s easy to assume your offers need more. But your customers are stressed too. If you overload your offers, you risk confusing or losing them. Keep your offer clear, deliberate, and intentionally scoped.

People often prefer a deliciously cooked steak with the perfect pairings (or a single bowl of scrumptious pasta), over the all-you-can-eat buffets of randomness.

3. DON’T SPREAD YOURSELF TOO THIN.

Your biggest strategic move is not burning out.

When things feel uncertain—when leads dry up or clients hesitate—it’s easy to panic. More offers! More bells and whistles! Pack your offer with extras! Try every new marketing strategy! The temptation is to throw spaghetti at the wall, launch new programs, and try to be everywhere at once.

That urge comes from fear. I’ve felt it, too.

Don’t spread yourself too thin. I’ve done this the hard way—offering too much, too fast. When you pare down, you get clarity. You preserve your energy (and your team’s!) And you give yourself space to respond to the real-time needs of clients and customers (who are also stressed and stretched right now).

So instead, ask yourself: What can be cut? What’s draining energy without delivering results? Not forever—but for now.4

Right now, business owners need capacity. During downturns, business owners actually need to reserve some capacity in order to be responsive and resilient. Your clients might want more hand-holding. Marketing is taking longer. You might have less energy than you used to have. So it’s even more strategic to stay focused on your core offers. You’ll also want to reserve some capacity so you can stick it out for the long-term.

If you fill all of your time creating new work for yourself, you’ll run out of gas. Your biggest strategic move is keeping space on your calendar so you have time and energy to respond to clients, to think strategically, and to weather long sales cycles.

Mindset Trap: More is Not More

Instead of panicking and offering everything in the kitchen sink, resist the urge to do everything. Your clients are craving clarity, consistency, and steadiness. Remind them, “Hey, here’s what I do. Here’s who I help. Here’s how I can support you.”

If you try to sell everything, people will remember nothing. Cut the frills.

4. THE BIGGER QUESTION: DO YOU HAVE BANDWIDTH?

This is the real question that I’m seeing across the board. Folks are tired from the yearly pivots, adaptations, and changes. They are exhausted from the volatility. So the deeper question to ask yourself is:

Can you sustain the version of your business that exists now? Do you have the energy to keep going, knowing it might take longer and be less lucrative for a little while? If you can dig in and stick this out for the long haul, that’s what it’s going to take.

Because if you can say yes—if you’re willing to adjust expectations and keep refining your core offer—there is still a path forward. You don’t have to quit. But you do have to acknowledge the shift.

If the answer is no? That’s not failure. That’s strategy. Stepping back, pausing, or even closing a chapter is sometimes the smartest move.

Mindset Trap: I’m The Same Person As Before

Just like the business landscape has changed, the psychological landscape has changed. So many business owners are burned out—from online business, constantly pivoting, and the intensity of entrepreneurship.

When evaluating your business strategy, it’s also wise to evaluate your capacity and drive, too. For me, after having children, my capacity went down significantly. (I’m not the same bouncy sprite I was in my 20s, not by far!) My time is more limited, my energy lower. It’s wise to factor this in when business planning—which is why I plan around 25-hour weeks instead of 40-hour weeks.

[Want to work smarter, not harder? Click here to download my free mini-book with three core worksheets to help you focus, do less, and cut down your work hours]

What do you legitimately have bandwidth for? The math I’m seeing is folks are twice as tired, have half as much time, and things are costing twice as much. Make sure you can sustain your business with these resource shifts (including your own capacity).

THE BOTTOM LINE

We’re in a season of contraction. That doesn’t mean the end—it just means we need to lead differently. Be sharper. Be calmer. Be focused.

So, should you pivot, persevere, or quit?

Only you can answer that. But here’s the recap:

1. Understand the context. Things are more expensive. Leads cost more.

2. Focus on your core offers. What are your workhorses, your revenue generators?

3. Double down on what’s working. Focus on your core offers, clear up your core message, and make that offer even better where you can.

4. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Simplify what you can. Eliminate clutter, and fight the urge to do everything and be everywhere.

5. Check your energy. If you have reduced capacity or energy from burnout or long-term business work, keep simplifying and focusing your business plan so you can sustain it for the long haul.

And if the numbers still work? Congratulations! Keep going. You’ve got this. If you choose to keep going, we’re going to do it with clarity and intention—not hustle and panic.

We’re playing a longer game now.

— Sarah K Peck

Leadership ☀︎ Business ☀︎ Parenting ☀︎ Mindset ☀︎ Humor ​
Startup Parent​ (Podcast) ​
Founders With Kids​ (Community) ​
Wise Women’s Council​ (Leadership Incubator)

You can also find me on ​LinkedIn​, ​Substack Notes​, and ​Threads​.

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DO YOU PREFER VIDEO OR WRITTEN POSTS?

This post is both video and written. Above is an 11-minute video distilling these massive conversations into a four-part framework to evaluate and adjust in your business. Do you have a preference for video, audio, or written? Let me know by voting in the poll below.

The other day, my kid was having an epic meltdown. Wouldn't leave the house. Started hitting. I pulled him aside, "Buddy, if we can't do this without screaming and hitting, that means we're not ready to do this yet." He looked at me with huge eyes.

"Mama, can I have paper so I can draw you my feelings?"

He sat down with a pen and paper. Out came the sadne…

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