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

🟡 ​How To Be Human: SKP Newsletter​ — Join 10,781 readers!
🟠 ​The Startup Parent Podcast​ — Business stories, real talk.
🟣 ​The Wise Women’s Council​ — A leadership incubator for business women deep in the mess and joy of midlife, big work, and career callings.

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 feel like I’m constantly battling between the demands of my business and the never-ending needs of my family.

Even simple things like going to the gym, running errands, or meeting a friend for coffee feel impossible to ask for without feeling like I need permission. I know it sounds trivial, but there’s always a sense of disappointment or frustration from my family when I do.

How do you navigate this kind of mental and emotional tug-of-war? What’s worked for you in creating some balance without guilt or resentment? How do you make space for your own needs while still being present for your family?

Where do I start?”

When you’re a primary breadwinner AND a parent, it can feel impossible to gain traction in all areas of your life—let alone talk about finding any time for yourself! A lot of moms share the added frustration of gender norms, where they are expected to be the primary caregiver by default, where other people can come and go from the house at will, but they are always expected to run point on all things children. And dads, I want to hear about how you’ve struggled with this, or faced different gendered expectations that make this hard in more ways.

There are a lot of reasons why folks can feel like this is impossible:

• Business Demands can feel overwhelming and impossible to put down.

• Internal Self-Talk can be unrelenting and it’s hard to give yourself permission to do the things you know you need.

• Gender Norms or partnership disagreements can add complexity because you feel like a default parent, or that you have to organize and arrange with a spouse just to get any time to yourself.

I want you all to share your advice on this topic.

How have you found ways to take solo time, or carve out a tiny bit of space for yourself? Where are the biggest blockers or challenges for you (family, business, logistics, internal dialogue, or something else)?

If you’ve successfully navigated a conversation with a partner or a spouse to find ways to recharge and take space, please share what strategies you’ve used and how you’ve navigated this. People want to hear your stories!

Share your advice, stories, and perspectives in the comments below.

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“I just want to know how other parents are making it work,” a parent said to me. “I’m always trying to manage childcare, and every week there is some new school closure, event, or illness to deal with.”

I was talking to a small group of parents in Founders With Kids, and we were bemoaning yet another three-day weekend without sufficient childcare. We’re…

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Hey there!

It’s time for another Advice Thread where readers can write in to ask this community for advice. Today’s question comes from a parent whose four-year-old started hitting other kids on the playground.

If you’ve had a hitter, a biter, or a kid with intense emotions, help this parent out and share your experiences. What did you do? What worked? What didn’t work?

As always, the rules: be kind, speak from your experience, be supportive—don’t be judgmental—and allow for multiple points of view.

Here’s the question:

Help! My kid started hitting another kid. Not just one kid, but I’ve gotten two calls now from the camp counselor that he punched another kid on the playground. (One kid yesterday, one kid today.) From what I can tell, the other kids are being mean to him and excluding him from their games. “They don’t let me play,” is all I’ve been able to get him to tell me. The counselor said that the other kids told him they couldn’t play with him. My heart breaks for him! But also hitting is not okay!

He’s four and a half years old, and he’s big for his age, so I am generally worried about him being a bigger kid and having a size advantage over people that are smaller than him. But also, he’s younger than he looks, and since he was a baby, he has always had these really big feelings and intense emotions. He’s always been quick to get angry and to cry.

We have spent a lot of time working on feelings and being there with him, and we have feelings and emotions books that we read to him at night. We also got him a special pillow that has 16 different feeling faces and emotions on it, and he carries the pillow around with him to snuggle everywhere.

But hitting other people isn’t okay! How do I stop the hitting? What are my options as a parent? Part of me thinks I need to teach him how to make friends better? Or maybe he’s getting overstimulated? Have you dealt with this before? Help—I have no idea what I’m doing and I don’t want my kid to hit other kids! I would like any and all parenting help I can get—give me all of your ideas!

If you’ve successfully parented through this type of behavior, if you know how to deal with hitting, or if you’re going through it — leave your thoughts below.

Thanks for helping another parent,

— Sarah Peck
CEO & Founder
Startup Parent

PS: Need help with your own parenting or business challenge? Submit a question for a future thread.

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Over time, I’ve learned how to build friendship networks and community support, but it’s taken a lot of trial and error. This week, I interviewed Beth Berry all about finding friends and building community.

In this thread (leave a comment!) I’d love to know from you all: how did you build your village of support, if you have one? What support systems to you rely on—from food to babysitting to friends to in-laws to grandparents or co-living arrangements?

What are the best ideas you’ve seen around building a village? Share your ideas below (even your wish list!) so we can generate a thread of ideas for each other.

The question I hear all the time from parents is this: “How do I do it all? How do I juggle it? How do I balance it?” This question implies that you're trying to squeeze everything you can out of all the stuff in front of you.

But the harder question is, what is uniquely you? And what don't you give a crap about? When you can define your unique weirdness in work and in life and in parenting, then you can cut out a whole lot more of the stuff you just don’t care about. Caring about everything and trying to be everywhere at once won’t work. Doing it all is not a strategy. Hacks won’t make your life better. Focusing clearly on the few things that really matter to you—that’s the key.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• What I’ve learned from having 30+ jobs in my career so far.

• How motherhood and work still don’t fit together, and the absurd realities of working parents.

• Why “hustle culture” is actually a very old idea that doesn’t fit modern life.

• What most companies get wrong about “strategy” and “productivity”

• The way that you can apply strategic thinking to your life as a parent.

• How to use guiding principles to make your parenting life easier.

Want to submit a question for a future episode?

Got a question you want me to take a look at, or just want to know my opinion on something? Go to startupparent.com/question and submit a question so I can answer it on an upcoming episode. If you’ve got a situation in your life or business that you’d like some attention and feedback on, send me a detailed note using this form and tell me about your current situation. I pick challenges each month to unpack, discuss, and lend my brain to. I sift through the questions and answer as many as I can—and if I can’t answer them, I’ll share them with people I trust to get wise feedback and council.

“Ask Sarah” is a private monthly podcast for you to ask questions about business, life, parenting, or anything you’re curious about. This podcast is one of our perks for paid subscribers. When you upgrade your subscription to go paid, you’ll get access to the previous conversations on parenting sleep, how discipline and willpower change as a parent, how I keep up with habit building when exhausted, a detailed case study on content marketing as a solo entrepreneur, and all future episodes. Plus, you’ll get a private RSS feed, access to private viewings of some of my paid talks, exclusive chat forums and our book club conversations.

Subscribe now

ASK SARAH: IS IT POSSIBLE TO JUGGLE MOTHERHOOD & A FULL-TIME CAREER?

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For an hour and a half, we dig into how we build them, sell them, run them, and what’s worked. We talk specifically about the numbers: how many people we have in the programs, how the pricing breaks down for each tier, and what the value add is.

This episode is a very detailed, behind-the-scenes look at both of our online programs and how we've designed our mastermind communities.

Every month I record a private episode of the podcast that’s exclusively for paid subscribers. “Ask Sarah” is a podcast for you to ask me questions about business, life, parenting, or anything you’re curious about. To get access to all the monthly episodes, bonus episodes, and other perks, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber.

Got a question you want me to take a look at, or just want to know my opinion on something? Become a paid subscriber to get access to the podcast and ask me any questions you’d like.

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Plus, you’ll get a private RSS feed, access to private viewings of some of my paid talks, exclusive chat forums and our book club conversations. This is only just getting started, so if you’re thinking about going paid, make sure you lock it in during our January Sale which ends in nine days.

Designing online group programs: an inside look at The Wise Women’s Council’s design, structure, and methods

The specific question I got for this Ask Sarah podcast episode was regarding how I’ve designed and built the Wise Women’s Council. This is the sixth cohort running, and I’ve been running masterminds, retreats, and group programs for over ten years now. Running the Wise Women’s Council generates over $200k in annual revenue, and has become an incredible community and alumni network. A few years ago, I had someone ask me all about the program design and structure. Here’s the question I got that prompted me to record this episode:

“How did you design The Wise Women’s Council and why did you design it the way you did? How did you decide on the model for your membership? Have you been in other programs like this structured in the same way?”

In this episode of Ask Sarah—our bonus podcast for folks who upgrade to become paid subscribers—I’ll go over how I planned out the group’s structure, created goals, figured out what works for me (and what I hope works for you) and how to get better at creating other mastermind groups over time. Creating a group program is not easy. In this episode, I’ll share:

• What it takes to make a group program fit your community specifically

• The biggest mistakes people make when designing a program and why it makes your audience feel overwhelmed and drop out (This is not the goal!)

• What most people don’t remember to consider in both the design of the program as well as the sales page—and how to make your program stand out.

• Plus, you’ll get access to the key takeaways summary, quote highlights, and a written transcript of the conversation.

ASK SARAH EPISODE #04: BEHIND THE SCENES — DESIGNING OUTSTANDING ONLINE GROUP PROGRAMS

This episode was recorded in 2019. While I no longer use Teachable as the platform for my community today, the design thinking concepts, structure, and design principles are very relevant in today’s online-focused world.

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December doesn’t have four weeks in it, it has two (if we’re lucky). School is out for two weeks, the kids are most likely snotty, and we’re trying to wade through airports and holiday parties to get to the dessert.

At the same time, employees and bosses (even internally, if it’s us!) can spring a massive amount of work on people by trying to finish projects, do year-end reports, finalize budgeting or taxes, reply to everyone, and… send holiday cards?

Surprise Bonus Episode!

In this episode, I want to chat about stress responses and feelings. Whenever we go through periods of stress—whether it’s acute or prolonged—our body will have distinct physiological responses, and our emotional response will likely be heightened. Stress hormones create a physiological cascade in the body, and our emotions and feelings can dance around in response to heightened stress.

For me, I have to work backwards from identifying both my behaviors and my emotions (am I running around trying to do ten things at once? Do I have a massive amount of extra chaos energy? Do I feel lethargic and sad? Am I craving sugar and crackers?). Once I start to name these specific feelings and behaviors, I can start to understand what’s going on beneath it.

For example, when I have a surge of extra energy, I’ll sometimes begin massively cleaning the house. This means my anxiety has increased, and having a tidy home can soothe me. (It’s totally fine to want to clean to feel better!) What I do alongside this, however, is ask, “What might I be feeling extra anxiety about?” This question lets me get closer to the root.

Naming and then exploring what greater context is creating these emotional reactions. I can start to hone in on my stress level and see what’s going on, and find ways to address it (and cope with it).

As we approach the holidays, I thought I’d drop this episode, because I know have more people around can add to our stress levels, and ALL the feelings can come out with (and at) our various family members.

Every month I record a private episode of the podcast that’s exclusively for paid subscribers. “Ask Sarah” is a podcast for you to ask me questions about business, life, parenting, or anything you’re curious about. To get access to all the monthly episodes, bonus episodes, and other perks, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber.

Got a question you want me to take a look at, or just want to know my opinion on something? Become a paid subscriber to get access to the podcast and ask me any questions you’d like.

IN THIS EPISODE:

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Marketing is so broad and so challenging, and in today’s world, you can throw the kitchen sink at trying to get customers, and still feel like nothing is working.

In this episode of Ask Sarah—our bonus podcast for folks who upgrade to become paid subscribers—we’re going to dig deep into a topic I love, and that is content marketing.

• Today’s question comes from Meghan, a small business owner, who is creating a strategic content marketing plan and is looking for help to attract more high-quality leads to her service offerings.

• She helps business owners plan for maternity leave and has a deep dive planner and a coaching offering, but is overwhelmed by the amount of work and time content marketing will take, and isn't sure which avenue to start with first (LinkedIn? Pinterest boards? Blogging? Instagram? Stories?). 

• Our analysis will look at what she should focus on when using content marketing as a lead generation tool for your business, and I’ll break down exactly how I think about starting with content marketing, and why we need to go back up the chain of marketing questions to get a clear answer.

“Ask Sarah” is a private monthly podcast for you to ask questions about business, life, parenting, or anything you’re curious about. This podcast is available fotor paid subscribers. Upgrade your subscription to get access to all episodes, plus more bonus content exclusively for paid subscribers.

ASK SARAH EPISODE #03

A deep dive case study into Meghan's business as she figures out what how to tackle content marketing.

If you’d like to listen to how I simplified this content marketing challenge, and where I’d start (and why content marketing is so overwhelming), take a listen to this episode.

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“I have a limited amount of discipline and willpower and I’m spending it all on my family and business. How do I keep some for myself in order to make healthier choices and feel better physically? (No time to exercise because if I’m not working I should be with the kids, and by the time I’m with the kids I’m exhausted).”

ASK SARAH EPISODE #02

How on earth do you sustain healthy habits after you become a parent? For those of you that want to continue to do things that you used to do—whether that’s exercise, eating in a way that fulfills you, spending time recovering, or getting enough sleep—this episode is all about how much our lives can be upended when we have children.

This is not an episode about willpower or discipline. That science is faulty at best, and if you’re a parent, your willpower bucket is used up by the fifth diaper change of the morning or the two hundred cheerios you’re pulling out of the carpet from your school kid’s lackadaisical style.

Every month I record a private episode of the podcast that’s exclusively for paid subscribers. “Ask Sarah” is a podcast for you to ask me questions about business, life, parenting, or anything you’re curious about. To get access to all the monthly episodes, plus our community threads and advice columns, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber.

Got a question you want me to take a look at, or just want to know my opinion on something? Become a paid subscriber to get access to the podcast and ask me any questions you’d like.

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“Ask Sarah” is a private monthly podcast for you to ask questions about business, life, parenting, or anything you’re curious about. This podcast is available in full for paid subscribers and for paid members of my leadership program. Upgrade your subscription to get access to all episodes of Ask Sarah, edited transcripts of every episode, as well more bonus content exclusively for paid subscribers.

If you’d like to listen to how I approached sleep with two littles, and why I think that the fight around sleep training is problematic, take a listen to this episode.

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