Twenty years ago, Neha Ruch and I were colleagues at an ad agency in Boston. Two twenty-somethings staying late, expensing cab rides home, measuring our worth by how hard we hustled. Today, between us, we have six kids, two platforms, and a completely different definition of what it means to be ambitious. Neha is the founder of The Power Pause and the author of the book by the same name. For a decade she's been building language for a question most high-achieving women won't say out loud: if I'm not working for pay, what is success? This isn't an interview. It's a reunion - two old friends comparing notes on what the journey actually cost, and what it gave back.In this episode, we talk about: Why the real turning point in Neha's life came in motherhood, not business school How to write your ideal day, and why it works like a contract with yourself The invisible emotional labor of parenthood, and how to start noticing it again Making decisions that no one else has to understand, and why that's the hardest muscle to build Growing up alongside your kids as they need less of you Redefining ambition as aligning your time with your values, not maximizing your output Why we punish women for slowing down, and what it costs all of us The best payback: loving your life when no one is watching _______________________________ The Four Agreements book mentioned by Neha Find Neha at thepowerpause.com and on Instagram at @neha_ruch Subscribe to The Breadwinners on Substack Follow on Instagram: @wearethebreadwinners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most working mothers have never been asked what they actually carry, and what they bring. At our Los Angeles dinner, we pulled women aside and asked. In Confidence is a five-part documentary series filmed at The Breadwinners' inaugural Los Angeles dinner. Eight women stepped away from the table and into something rarer: unfiltered truth. What came out wasn't curated. It was real. Over five episodes, Breadwinner mothers, primary earners, founders, executives, single mothers, confront the questions that don't typically get asked. What IS my job description as a mother, no one gave it to me? Am I feeling guilty about working, or just devastated that my kids are growing up? What do I actually bring home beyond the paycheck? Presented by The Breadwinners in partnership with birthFUND and Hearth. Episode 1: Reframing Motherhood — What We Bring The series opens with the question at the heart of everything: what do you carry, and what do you bring? Elaine Welteroth leads a conversation about the invisible weight of working motherhood - and the value we bring home that never makes it into the performance. The cuddle party. The fresh whipped cream in the fridge. The things our families need that only we provide. This episode is about remembering what that is. Episode 2: Who Am I Now? The Vulnerability of Motherhood Not every mother fits the traditional template - and for some women, figuring out what their version of motherhood actually looks like has been the hardest work of their lives. This conversation asks a question most of us have never been asked out loud: what is your job description as a mother? No one handed it to you. This episode sits with the women who had to write it themselves. Episode 3: That Unstoppable Feeling — When Motherhood Unlocks Ambition Shilpa Shah, co-founder of Cuyana, didn't slow down when she got pregnant. She felt unstoppable. This episode is for anyone who has ever been told they can't do it with kids - and responded, internally or out loud, with watch me. It's about what pregnancy unlocked, what ambition looks like when you stop caring what everyone else thinks, and why motherhood is, for some women, the moment everything accelerates. Episode 4: Raising Better Humans — The Legacy We Leave Shilpa Shah still makes her 17-year-old breakfast every morning. He wrote his college essay about wanting to live the way she has. This episode is about presence, ripple effects, and what it actually means to build something your kids will one day describe as the permission structure for their own lives. Having it all without doing it all — what that actually looks like in practice. Episode 5: Reclaiming "Breadwinner" for Today's Mother The word breadwinner used to mean one thing. These women are rewriting it. Three breadwinner mothers, three very different origin stories, one shared conviction: this is the revolution we asked for. This episode closes the series with the question of legacy - not just for our children, but for the definition of what it means to provide, lead, and build a life that is both financially powerful and emotionally rich. _______________________________________________ Join The Breadwinners community: Subscribe on Substack: wearethebreadwinners.substack.com Follow on Instagram: @wearethebreadwinners Rate & review wherever you listen — it helps more women find this show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a replay of an earlier episode with Libby Leffler of First. Libby Leffler built an entire company around the conversation most couples never have. As founder and CEO of First, a platform making prenuptial agreements accessible to modern couples, she's reframing the prenup not as a divorce document but as a partnership design tool - the first legal agreement a couple makes, not the last resort. In this episode, Alexis sits down with Libby to explore what it actually means to build a financial foundation before a marriage, why money is harder to talk about than sex, and what the $80 trillion great wealth transfer means for women right now. They also go deep on integration over balance, raising daughters who watch you work, focus as a superpower, and what it looks like to lead a startup while showing up as a parent. What you'll learn in this episode: Why nearly 50% of millennials now get a prenup — and why women are initiating that conversation at the same rate as men. How a prenup protects the future you, not just the assets you have today — including your business equity, IP, real estate, and even your social media handles. Why money is the last great taboo and what it will take to normalize financial conversations the way we've normalized talking about sex. - What "partnership design" actually looks like when couples approach a prenup as a joining point. How Libby integrates running a high-growth startup with raising young children — and why she's replaced "balance" with seasons. The Breadwinners Website ⁠- Join The Breadwinners on Substack - wearethebreadwinners.substack.com Breadwinner's Instagram⁠ - @wearethebreadwinners ⁠First Official Website ⁠ First's Instagram⁠ ⁠Libby’s Instagram⁠ Business Insider Article _______________ Promo for The Breadwinners Community: $100 off your prenup with First by using code BREAD100 at checkout. Discount codes must be applied at checkout. No retroactive coupon codes or refunds applied. ________________ Rate and review The Breadwinners Podcast wherever you listen — it helps more women find this show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeni Britton built Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams from a $30,000 SBA loan into a $175 million company. She is doing it again with Floura, her next-generation fiber company turning produce trimmings like watermelon rinds and apple cores into nutrient-dense bars. This episode is not a business case study. Alexis Contos sits down with Jeni for an interior conversation about the person underneath both companies. The near-death experience at age seven that made her feel invincible for the rest of her life. The family that broke apart violently when she was fourteen. Why she does not believe in free will anymore. The ninety-eight-year-old version of herself she talks to most days. What she has refused to give up for any company, in any season. This is a conversation about belief. About vision. About what it costs to be a woman who is ambitious, and what it costs to keep pretending you are not. What you will hear: The near-death experience at age seven that shaped every decision after it Why Jeni had to "pretend to be less ambitious" to build something big How she thinks about intuition, vision, and listening to her future self What her definition of 'financial freedom' actually buys a woman Raising her daughter Greta, and what it taught her about herself Leaving the company that carries her name, and the time it took to recover Why she does not want a legacy. She wants to be wrecked at ninety-eight. Jeni Britton is the founder of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, which she built from a single farmer's market stall in Columbus, Ohio into a national brand with more than 80 scoop shops and 12,500 retail placements. She is now the co-founder and CEO of Floura, a Certified B Corporation tackling America's fiber deficiency and food waste through upcycled produce trimmings. Join The Breadwinners community: Subscribe on Substack: wearethebreadwinners.substack.com Follow on Instagram: @wearethebreadwinners Rate & review wherever you listen. It helps more women find this show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most women have been sold self-care as a product. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin is here to tell you it's infrastructure. Pooja is a board-certified psychiatrist, New York Times contributor, and author of the national bestseller Real Self-Care: Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble Baths Not Included. In this episode, she breaks down the four principles of real self-care (boundaries, compassion, values, power), the difference between performative wellness and the internal work that actually moves the needle, and why high-achieving women keep landing in the same burnout loop. She also shares the moment she landed in the hospital after her own bestseller launch, what she had to unlearn about pacing and ambition, and the framework she now uses to make every yes, no, and negotiate. What we discussed: The story of how Pooja landed at the very first Breadwinners dinner seven months pregnant with twins, and why she calls that night the room where strangers became people speaking the same language. Her origin story: growing up the eldest daughter in a South Asian immigrant family where becoming a doctor was decided before she was born, choosing psychiatry against expectations, and the moment at 27 when she blew up her marriage and moved into a San Francisco wellness commune that turned out to be a cult. The difference between faux self-care and real self-care, broken down through the yoga class most women have lived: walking in stressed, comparing yourself to the woman in the better leggings, leaving more depleted than you came in. Why the four principles (boundaries, compassion, values, power) are not affirmations but infrastructure, and how Pooja walks her own patients through schedule audits to surface what's actually optional. The line that landed hardest: "If you're a good mom, you can productivity your way out of this." We unpacked the meal kits, the apps, the planners, and the question almost no one is asking: to what end. Why hobbies are not a luxury. Why the activity has to be uniquely yours, not performative, not productive, not posted. Tennis as a happy place. The Substack prompt that hit: what would you do to truly enjoy something that no one else needs to see. The Real Self-Care Thermometer: how to know when you're in the green (spontaneously generous, easy yes, real energy) versus the red (resentful, zombie scrolling, every ask feels like a chore). Modeling this for our kids. Pooja telling her four-year-old she was going to a Florence and the Machine concert instead of saying "work meeting," and why that distinction matters. Family logistics. The decision to make childcare a permanent line item in the family budget. Night nurses through every pregnancy. Why getting support is not a luxury and the case for being transparent about it. Pooja's own burnout. The four nights in the hospital after Real Self-Care became a bestseller. The coach who told her the thing that will stop her career is not her skill, it's burnout. The Glennon Doyle invitation she pushed to January, and what happened when she did. The boundary framework that changed how she works: the boundary is the pause, not the no. Every request has three answers: yes, no, or negotiate. And if you can't absorb the cost of no today, the question is what you need to do over the next six months to get there. Quantum Shifts, her next book. The in-between space after a divorce, a launch, a diagnosis, a birth. Why high-achieving women try to rush through it, and what they miss when they do. What she would tell her 27-year-old self. The slow-down advice she rejected for decades and now claims as a superpower. Join The Breadwinners community: Subscribe on Substack: wearethebreadwinners.substack.com Follow on Instagram: @wearethebreadwinners Rate and review wherever you listen. It helps more women find this show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

School is out 46% of the year. After you subtract PTO and federal holidays, working parents are left covering 99 days with no formal childcare — and no amount of workplace flexibility closes that gap. Molly Morse isn't just naming the problem. She built the solution. Molly Morse is the co-founder of Recess, a marketplace that connects parents to afterschool programs, camps, and kids' classes - with real-time availability, actual filters, and no glorified Craigslist energy. She spent a decade building consumer marketplaces before becoming a mother and experiencing firsthand how broken the search-and-booking experience was. That rage-plus-inspiration moment became a company. In this episode, Molly breaks down the data most people feel but haven't quantified, why ethical appeals to corporations will never move the needle on childcare, what AI is doing to marketplaces (and why it's actually a tailwind for Recess), and how she and her husband structured their household so she could build without burning everything down. What you'll take from this conversation: - Why 1.3 million people miss work every month because of childcare breakdowns — and 90% of them are women - How to make a business case for childcare benefits that corporations will actually act on (hint: it's ROI, not ethics) - The marketplace dynamics that explain why parents feel like everything is full while providers can't fill seats - How Recess is building the real-time inventory layer that makes AI search actually useful for families - The "systems are temporary" framework Molly uses at work and at home — and why fixing things at the wrong time is its own kind of problem Find Recess at hello-recess.com and on Instagram @hello_recess. Molly is active on LinkedIn. Join The Breadwinners community: Subscribe on Substack: wearethebreadwinners.substack.com Follow on Instagram: @wearethebreadwinners Rate & review wherever you listen — it helps more women find this show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Iskra Lawrence built one of the fastest-growing body care brands in America,  ⁨Saltair , without paying herself a salary. That's not the beginning of the story. It's barely the middle. This episode traces one of the most honest founder journeys in beauty: a girl from Kidderminster UK told that she was too curvy for straight-size modeling and too small for plus-size. A model who cold-called brands directly, walked into a New York agency at 22 with a pitch deck, and made a veteran agent cry — because no model had ever done that before. A woman who challenged the retouching culture at Aerie, built one of the earliest honest communities on Instagram, and then found herself in COVID isolation with a newborn, not showering, barely holding on. SaltAir was born out of the pain she lived, and the hope she needed for herself, and millions of other women. Alexis and Iskra go deep on what it actually costs to build something real while mothering two young children — the guilt of clocking off at 2:30 to do school pickup, why Iskra reinvests every dollar back into the brand, how postpartum broke her open and gave her a company, and what empathy looks like as a breadwinner in a marriage where financial power isn't split evenly. In this episode: How Iskra went from eating disorder to building a body care brand doing nine figures in retail The cold-calling strategy that bypassed modeling's gatekeepers — and what it actually means to outwork a broken system Why she launched Saltaire without venture capital and has never taken a paycheck What postpartum depression in 2020 isolation looked like — and the habit that started her recovery Her honest take on the "3-hour bombing" discourse and how she leads a flexible, family-first team at Saltair Why empathy — not hustle — is her superpower as a breadwinner About Iskra Lawrence: Iskra Lawrence is a model, body image advocate, and founder of Saltair — currently a top-three body care brand at Ulta and one of the fastest-growing at Target. Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 and the BBC's 100 Most Influential Women, she spent six years challenging beauty industry norms as an Aerie model before building her own brand from the ground up. She lives in Austin with her husband Philip and their two children. Follow Iskra:@iskra on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok @saltair on all social channels Join The Breadwinners community: Subscribe on Substack Follow on Instagram: @wearethebreadwinners Rate & review wherever you listen — it helps more women find this show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The aesthetics industry is largely run by marketing. Adriana Culling built her practice to be the exception. Adriana is the founder of Maeva Aesthetics in Austin - a nurse injector with a background in clinical research and a near-complete second degree in chemistry who chose building her own aesthetics business specifically so she would never feel pressure to upsell a patient or inject something that wasn't in their best interest. This episode cuts through the noise: what Botox and filler actually do, how to spot a bad injector before they touch your face, which treatments are worth it and which ones aren't, and why wanting to look refreshed doesn't make you vain or less yourself. What you'll learn: - How to vet an injector before you sit in the chair — and the red flags that should send you walking out - What "natural results" actually means and why most practices aren't delivering it - The difference between what you think you need and what your face actually needs - Which trending treatments are overhyped, which are worth it, and why it almost always depends on the individual - What it means to build a medical practice as a working mom — and why Adriana walked away from med school to do it ___________________________ Follow Adriana: TikTok Instagram: The_Austin_Injector Maeva Aesthetics _______________________________________ Episode references: Yardsticks Book for Childhood Development SkinBetter skincare products Join The Breadwinners community: Subscribe on Substack: wearethebreadwinners.substack.com Follow on Instagram: @wearethebreadwinners Rate & review wherever you listen — it helps more women find this show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The tests exist. The science has been here for decades. The only thing that's ever been missing is access. Pranitha Patil co-founded Function Health because she lived the gap herself. Diagnosed with PCOS at 16, pre-diabetes and high cholesterol in her 20s, she spent years running experiments on her own body, tracking her biomarkers in a spreadsheet before she had the language for what she was actually doing. She was her own baseline because no research existed for South Asian women like her. Function Health now has nearly 500 employees, has delivered over 50 million health results, and 65% of its members are women - which tells you everything about who shows up when you actually give them the information about their own bodies. The membership is $365 a year. One dollar a day. And Pranitha became a first-time mother in the middle of all of it - while the company was scaling, while funding rounds were closing, while everything was happening at once. She's here to talk about what that actually looked like. In this episode: Why health data is a power issue, not just a wellness trend—and what changes when women have access to their own biomarkers How Function Health works: 100+ biomarkers per test, early cancer detection (50 cancer types), and what it means to build a longitudinal health picture over time The women's health gap - the research that doesn't exist and what Pranitha did when told she couldn't be put on statins because no one had studied her yet Building and founding in seasons: how Pranitha and her husband structured their household so one could sprint while the other held the ground On becoming a mother inside a hyper-growth company: what she expected, what blindsided her, and why she thinks founder and mother are more complementary than the world wants you to believe Perimenopause, women's health literacy, and the conversation our mothers never got to have Resilience as a learned skill - what the "soft" 20-year-old version of Pranitha built that the founder version depends on today Use the code: BREADWINNERS50 for $50 off when you sign up for Function Health Join The Breadwinners community: Subscribe on Substack Follow on Instagram: @wearethebreadwinners Rate & review wherever you listen — it helps more women find this show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your body isn't broken. You just haven't had the right person in your corner. Dr. Alexis Griffin is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, a board-certified sports clinical specialist, and the woman who has kept NFL players, NBA athletes, and Olympic competitors performing at the top of their game. She has also navigated four pregnancies, four unmedicated deliveries, and four postpartum recoveries — each time rebuilding herself with the same rigor she brings to elite athletes. Now she's opening a gym in Austin and entering one of the most expansive seasons of her career. In this episode, Alexis Contos sits down with her friend and PT, Dr. Alexis Griffin, to talk about what women's bodies actually need — and what the fitness industry keeps getting wrong. In this episode: Why your pelvic floor needs to yield, not just strengthen — and what that actually means The difference between stability and strength, and why stability wins every time How moving well in daily life (picking up a baby, bending over the crib) is more powerful than 45 minutes at the gym Four unmedicated births: what they taught her about trusting her body — and herself The season she stepped away from her PT practice for a tech sales job at 39 — and why it was the right call How she and her husband manage a dual-income household with four kids, a new gym build, and a nanny who makes it all possible Why she believes effort is the most important thing to model for children in the age of AI The gym she's building in Austin and the philosophy behind it: member experience first, always Dr. Alexis Griffin is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and board-certified sports clinical specialist based in Austin, Texas. With over a decade working with professional and Olympic athletes, she has spent her career translating elite performance principles into tools that help real people — especially mothers — move better, recover smarter, and build forward. Learn more at dralexisgriffin.com. Join The Breadwinners community: Subscribe on Substack Follow on Instagram: @wearethebreadwinners Please rate & review wherever you listen — it helps more women find our show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices