Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at http://www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. If you are a high powered, growth minded, and ambitious, which I know you are because you're listening to this podcast, woman that has ever felt split in two from your responsibilities as a ladder climber and your responsibilities as a wife, mom, partner, or caregiver, this episode is for you. Today, we have a remarkable story to share. It is the story of a courageous woman who embraced change, stepped away from the only career she ever knew as a physician y'all, and forged a path that allowed her to set boundaries, cherish family, and rediscover her true purpose. Jen Wagner, physician turned entrepreneur, redefined success on her own terms.

Erica: Like many of us, she found herself caught in the unyielding grind of a high pressure and high powered career, which was great until it wasn't. Jen's story is one of embracing vulnerability, the fear of the unknown, and ambiguity to find passion and purpose. And I promise you, it's going to resonate with your soul. You're going to feel like you just sat down with one of your best girlfriends and hashed out all of the things you were ever stressed about.

Erica: Today, we have physician turned founder, Jen Wagner, with us. Jen has a unique background in athletics, fitness, exercise physiology, so y'all know I'm gonna be pumped about this, medicine, leadership, human performance, and business. Through years of scrubs, she has uncovered her true purpose, helping women succeed, lead, and flourish. How are you today?

Jen: I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor to be here, and I'm so excited to chat and talk and learn and share everything.

Erica: So I'm excited. Appreciate it. And so everyone on this podcast knows that I'm a huge fitness buff, and that is a core value of mine is health and wellness. So I've been looking forward to this conversation for weeks, but tell me, how does one go from anesthesiologist in scrubs doing the thing that she's been going to school for for decades to founder of your company Prosper?

Jen: Yeah. So it was a little bit of a circuitous course, as you can imagine. So I did my residency and fellowship at Stanford University and stayed on faculty there, an amazing place, amazing people, a great experience. My husband's also a physician, and at that time, I had two small children. And my professional job was just getting more and more demanding, not so much the care of patients in the operating room, but all the external challenges to that.

Jen: I had a lot of administrative responsibilities that were growing and growing. And I was having a really hard time, to be very honest with you, balancing all aspects of my life. I felt like I could be really on at work and doing a great job, or I could be really on at home doing a great job, but I wasn't doing well in both arenas at the same time. And so I had to sit down with my husband and my family and say, okay. What are we gonna prioritize right now?

Jen: Because I can't keep going at the pace and in the direction I'm going. So we took a big hard look and just decided that our family is really important, and we decided to try to move where I could have a little bit lighter schedule and be around a little bit more. And so about six years ago, we moved to the mountains and moved to Park City, Utah, and I switched careers. And, really, I will be honest, it kind of had the perfect fit professionally. I became the director of perioperative services at Steiner's Hospital for Children, and it had very nice boundaries established.

Jen: And so I didn't have to go in there and try to create my own boundaries. The system was really set up to complement the exact type of medicine I wanted to practice and lead the life I wanted to lead. And so that was awesome. And I'd always kind of had this little pull to go do something different, but to be honest, I don't think I would have necessarily left that situation. I had an awesome team around me, and it was a great fit.

Jen: And then at a corporate level, that health care organization decided to remodel how they were using their facilities and their teams, and they moved our surgical services back to a big for profit children's hospital and back into a system where I would have gone back to the same work environment, which I had purposely left. So I just sat down, and I said, okay. This is my chance. This is my opportunity. I am not a huge risk taker, and so I don't think I would have done what I'm doing now without that nudge to say, I either am gonna make the decision to go back into the environment I purposely left and give up all the ground I've made in all these other areas of my life, or I'm gonna take a leap of faith and try something new.

Jen: And I was super fortunate to be surrounded by people who knew me well, but also knew how to challenge me in a very supportive way and helped me identify parts of my personality, parts of my skill sets that I didn't really know I had to be able to move into different arenas. And so then I became a partner at a human performance group called the Liminal Collective, which was just an amazing experience. We got to do not only amazing work, but connected to an amazing collective of people. And in that collective, I met four or five women who just blew me away. From leaders in the CIA to spiritual advisers to world leading experts in both physical performance and mental performance and all of these areas.

Jen: Medicine's a very linear course, and you kind of have these blinders on, and most of your network is within other physicians. And I didn't even realize that these other opportunities and careers even existed. And so we spent the last year and a half really just talking, like, how do we harness this energy and this expertise and this amazing power and deliver to the world, especially for women who need it and organizations that need it. So after about a year and a half of trying to figure this out, the stars aligned and the people who I would have handpicked to be on this team had some availability. So this spring, we launched a company called Prosper, which is dedicated to holistic women's performance and is really, as we're in the process of redefining it, a boutique intelligence firm around women's issues and how to help women prosper in the workplace and at home and how to help organizations really push boundaries by identifying the value of having diverse teams, especially more women on their teams, and how that really elevates the ability for organizations to execute and perform well.

Erica: I love it. You're speaking my love language here. It's like the sixth love language. But I think your story speaks exactly to why the world needs a company like Prosper because you and your husband are both physicians. Did your husband ever come to you and say, I'm feeling split in two, I'm feeling like I'm a great physician, but not a great father, or a great father, but not a great physician?

Jen: No. He didn't. And I think he had a much stronger ability to say no. So instead of continuing to take things on, I think as women, or at least for myself, when I would say no, it didn't come from a place of strength.

Jen: It usually came from a place of feeling overwhelmed and inadequate. Or if I was going to say no, it was a sign of inadequacy that I couldn't handle the next thing instead of looking at it as, I know my boundaries and my limits, and I know what is helpful for me, and I know what is not. And so I'm gonna say no to what's not helpful for me. It took a long time, and I'm still working on developing that skill. And I think men have that a little more naturally.

Jen: They have that ability to say, no, that actually doesn't benefit me, so I'm not gonna do that. And for me, I think when I said no, I felt it was really an overwhelming sign of inadequacy in my mind. And instead of what it really should have been, which was me making intelligent decisions about how to spend my time and where to dedicate the time I had. So yeah.

Jen: No. He didn't. But it's funny that you said that because I was talking to one of my business partners the other day, and her husband, who is super supportive of what we're doing, says, I don't get it. I said, okay. I had my first baby in residency in the hospital where my husband and I worked, so we knew everyone. We're sitting at a table in the cafeteria because she was early and was still in the intensive care unit.

Jen: Everyone walked by us and congratulated him and said to me, when are you coming back to work, and who's gonna watch the kid? And I was like, so right there, it just showed the difference in how society and many women asked me those same questions and gave those same comments. It really kind of set the stage for, we're really viewed differently. Even though we do the same job, we have the same profession, our responsibilities around that are considered very differently. No one asked him who was gonna take care of the baby.

Jen: No one asked him if he was taking time off. All those questions came to me. And so I think that just shows how many times a day we are pinged with things that really add up over time and make us feel overwhelmed and burned out. And it's years in the making. You know?

Jen: It's not suddenly we fall off the cliff.

Erica: No. And I saw a meme on Facebook or Instagram somewhere that talked about women our age who were taught that we could have it all by going to work and doing all the things and climbing the corporate ladder, but also really, our home values were like, you're the ones who are supposed to take care of the kids. So we're chasing these corporate dreams while also trying to be the Betty Crocker homemaker mom, and it's impossible because those are two full time jobs right there. But men have not had to experience that because their path has always been this one of going to work and doing the things.

Jen: Mhmm. So yeah. It's a challenge for sure. And I think we're making progress there, but it's not equal.

Jen: And it's hard. And it's a hard thing. The day before I graduated medical school, I was in the gym working out, and a senior mentor to me pulled me aside, and he said, I just wanna tell you this. You can't do it all. And I was kind of insulted.

Jen: I was like, I'm graduating the top of my class tomorrow. What do you mean I can't do it all? And it took years to realize I can do it all, just not at the same time. And having to prioritize different things at different times is a lesson I wish someone would have told me when I was 25 that I didn't have to figure out on my own at 45.

Erica: Right. Well, and what's also interesting too is you talked a lot about feeling inadequate if you had to say no or if you couldn't do something. And I think I felt that exact same way. The way you described it, I was like, oh, yeah. I'm right there with you.

Erica: And I just had this almost ridiculous expectation that I put on myself to be able to be the mom going to all the school functions, be the primary parent, but also climb the corporate ladder and have this successful career. And, again, you're just stacking things on top of another. Nobody around me said, Erica, you have to do all these things, and you have to do them all well. Right? Part of it was me, who I am is like a growth oriented person always driving for excellence.

Jen: Mhmm.

Erica: But nobody also stopped and said, you should slow down and pull back and let me help you. And I think that's also a little bit of what Prosper's doing is, let me help you, show you how you can do these things and how you can have it all, but you've gotta redefine what that looks like.

Jen: Right. Right. And I think that is what is maybe misunderstood from a lot of people. I had that same internal drive, and I actually spent a long time talking to my mom about that. I was like, why didn't you just say, pump the brakes, slow down?

Jen: I remember growing up, people used to go to my parents and say, do you push her? And they're like, no. She just pushes herself. And my mom says, you wouldn't have listened.

Jen: And I'm like, I kinda wish she would've tried. And she's probably right. And, you know, I'm sure as I have two teenage daughters now, that's a good problem to have. But at the same time, it can lead to some maladaptive behavior if it's not checked over time for sure.

Erica: Absolutely. I talk about that a lot just with my own mom as well. She has approached me many times being like, but aren't you happy enough? Isn't that good enough? And it goes against my core value of growth because, no, it's never good enough because I always wanna keep growing.

Jen: Mhmm.

Erica: But sometimes you really have to remember to slow down, check your pace. And like you said, you don't have to do it all right now. It can be put off. And those boundaries, that's a big one. Right?

Erica: If it's not raising your vibe, your paycheck, fit into your life, it's a no. And so how have you learned to really put those boundaries into place?

Jen: I think it's an ongoing process, to be honest. I tended to learn the hard way a lot. And I've had a really fortunate life. I haven't had a lot of tragedy or these big resets, but my oldest daughter did get really, really sick when she was three. She was diagnosed with a really rare autoimmune disease, and that was kind of a gut check for me.

Jen: We weren't sure she was gonna be able to go to preschool. We were gonna have to shift our whole life. She was put on a ton of medication. We weren't sure what was gonna happen.

Jen: And I looked around, and I was like, we need to reevaluate. This is a really good wake up call of maybe getting off the fast train for a little while. And my husband's like, well, if she can't go to day care and preschool, we'll just get a nanny. And I was working about 85% time at that point. And he's like, you'll just go full time so we can make up that financial difference of having paid a nanny.

Jen: And I was like, if my three year old toddler is too immunosuppressed and sick to go to school, hiring someone else to take care of her is not exactly what I envisioned when I had a family. And so that was kind of the first time I really sat down and said, wow. Okay. I actually need to establish boundaries right now. Before, I'd already kind of gotten away with not having to really explain and articulate them, and that experience was like, nope.

Jen: Stop. Time out. This is not how this is gonna go. And so I think that experience, and everything worked out. She's a happy, healthy 15 year old varsity runner now.

Jen: So everything is great. But I think that experience was really one to say, okay, you can set some boundaries. And then I think the first time you do it and nothing catastrophic happens, it reinforces that, okay, I can do this again.

Jen: And so I've set little boundaries, and they've worked okay. And then I set bigger boundaries. And, again, I've seen benefits from doing that. And I think as a leader too, sometimes adding a little bit of insulation around you so that you're not always available to your team or the people that report to you makes your team so much better. They have to problem solve.

Jen: They have to figure things out. And it teaches them to prioritize and delegate a little bit, that, okay, this is what I need to go to her with. The rest of the stuff I can handle, and it really does improve their confidence and their ability to execute. So I think that as a leader, it becomes even more important to create some boundaries because it just accelerates the pace at which your team will function better.

Erica: I agree with that. And even just like a small example, I work fully remote. We communicate a lot over Slack back and forth, and I can't tell you the number of times people will ping me and ask me for an answer. And I don't use Slack a ton, so I'm not fast responsive. And then the next text message when I do go on and check is, never mind, I found it, or never mind, I figured it out.

Erica: And it's like, oh, there you go. Problem solved.

Jen: Right. Yep. And I think that's just such an important skill to develop, and I know it's hard for me. I'm pretty type a. I like control over things, and it's also helped me become a better delegator, I think, that, you know, at six, seven, eight o'clock at night, guess what?

Jen: If it waits till six the next morning, the world's gonna still be spinning. The sun's still gonna come up, but it's gonna be alright. So.

Erica: Absolutely. One of the things that when I've been working on putting boundaries into place in my life is looking at it in taking on challenges and risks. Because so often, we're like, oh, I don't know if I should do that. What if they say no?

Erica: Or what if I don't get the dollars that I'm asking for? Whatever it is. It's the same with boundaries as thinking through this best case scenario and worst case scenario.

Erica: It is the exact same thing, but just in the opposite direction of putting that boundary up. It's like, okay. Best case scenario when I put this boundary up is I'm relaxed more. I get to spend more time with my family, or I get to make it home for dinner or whatever.

Erica: And then worst case scenario is, you know what? Usually, it's not that bad.

Erica: Right. Right. And that's always worked for me, but that, and then also the understanding that if I say yes to something, I am inevitably saying no to something else, whether that is peace or time or whatever. Remembering that you can't just always add things onto your plate because you are putting something off your plate.

Jen: Right. No. I think that's a really, really good point. And I think the other thing that boundaries really help us do is they help us really learn to take care of ourselves, and they've helped me establish my nonnegotiables. I exercise in the morning, and I know I am better and more efficient when I show up at eight having gotten up at 5:30 or six and gotten my workout in and taking that time for myself versus showing up at seven not doing that.

Jen: I'm not nearly as focused. I'm usually angry because I hadn't exercised and tried to figure out how to fit it in later in the day. And so I think even establishing some boundaries around work has then also created this list of nonnegotiables, and this is time that I now know. And people just know.

Jen: We don't talk. We don't call her then. We know when she's available, and we also know that especially my family really knows this. I don't need to talk to mom before she goes because she's a much better person when she gets home and will be much more open to new ideas, and she's more balanced and centered from having taken that time for myself. And I think that's another hard thing, is I've had to put, we have to put boundaries around our teams at work and our workplace, but I've also had to build boundaries at home where this is my hour.

Jen: And there is nothing that you can't figure out for that hour. You don't need to call me five times when I'm on a 45 minute run. It's gonna be okay. And so making a vow like that at home too has been really helpful for me. Because then, when I'm home or when I get to work, I'm on, and I'm ready, and I'm focused, and we can move efficiently, and everybody's in a good mindset, and we're ready to go.

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Erica: I think it is so imperative that you set boundaries at home too, like what you just said. And I've got smaller kids than you. Mine are five and eight. So they're in the, shall we say, thick of it of learning about patience and also understanding that dad is just as capable of a parent as mom.

Erica: Because there are so many instances when it's like bedtime and they want me to take them to bed, and I'm like, you know what? Mom gets to rest tonight. This is mom's rest time. Dad can do that too. So, tomorrow, I will take you, but we alternate here so that mom gets some time to fill out too.

Erica: And it's hard for them to understand, but I know that by that constant reinforcement, they will start to understand that dad is a capable parent because that was something I would very early on, is that when I stepped in and did everything as mom, as primary parent, they viewed their dad as incapable.

Jen: Yeah. It is interesting because my husband was the primary parent for years. He was around there more than I was. He had way more control over his schedule. And yet, whether it's a biologic need of our kids or what it is, I counted one day when my kids were about your age.

Jen: It was 87 to one in an hour, the time they said mom versus the time they said dad. And we are co parented, and he was home more than probably any other family that had this traditional family structure that we knew. And I was like, it doesn't matter. And we've had a lot of those similar conversations in our household.

Erica: Guess what?

Jen: I have another parent sitting right there.

Erica: Yeah. I'm gonna count one day this weekend because I'm super interested now that you said you just did that. But

Jen: Yep.

Erica: I will literally, it is like the second my butt hits the couch, their own father will be in the fridge, and they're like, mom, can I have a glass of milk?

Jen: And I'm like, in what world?

Erica: Do you not see your own father inside the fridge as we speak?

Jen: They're just looking at me like, dumbfounded. Like, I know. It's hilarious. A lot of milk.

Erica: What the, oh my gosh. So you have two teenage daughters. Right? She's 15.

Jen: Yes. 15 and 13. Mhmm.

Erica: So raising teenage girls in the world today as a woman who's done all of the things under the sun, medical school, now you're starting your own company, what is it that you want them to know about growing up as a woman today, being a mom, being corporate, whatever they wanna do, whatever they wanna be? What is that that you want them to know?

Jen: Oh, that's a very good question. I think I had a huge fear of failure, and it probably drove a lot of my decisions early in life. And they are both way more relaxed kids than I ever was, and I'm really grateful for that. And I think I want them to realize it's okay not to have it figured out. Right?

Jen: And I think them seeing me do a giant pivot, after having a very successful and defined career path and choosing to leave that, it was pretty funny. One of their first questions to me a couple years ago was, well, what do we call you now that you're not a doctor? I'm like, well, I'm still a doctor. But my even my identity in their eyes was very much tied to a title or a label.

Jen: And so just to realize that there is a really big world out there, and there are so many things that they can do that just because I had a plan at 12 or 13 doesn't mean they need to. And so I think really exploring all of their options and interests is really important to me. I also do think that we've talked a lot about it, that it is challenging to have it all at once, and that they are gonna be confronted with really challenging decisions, and they are gonna have to really work on developing those skills to look at the bigger picture and to not feel like it has to be right all the time. And so I always lived with this fear of, if I said I was gonna do something and didn't do it, I was disappointing those around me even if I didn't wanna do it anymore. And so I'm hoping that they are gonna have a different level of confidence around those feelings, that if they start down one path and realize it's not for them, it's okay to switch, and it's okay to take a detour and explore something else.

Jen: I also think it's been interesting. I think the biggest thing that I tell them is, you also have to be independent. You can't count on other people to support you financially, even emotionally and socially. You have to have a really good sense of self, and it's a privilege to have people around you who do support you and to be able to rely on others in that way. But even as relationships are changing, and marriage rates are plummeting and all these things, I said, you just have to make sure that you can take care of yourself.

Jen: And so I think that that's a big lesson, for them to start realizing that, hopefully everyone has a great support system around them. At the end of the day, you have to be able to take care of yourself. So learning how to do that from a financial perspective, learning how to do that emotionally and socially, that you are good enough, you have it in you, and you're gonna get through the hard times. And the people around you will kind of come in and out of your life a lot of the time, and that's okay. So, yeah, that was kind of a roundabout answer to your question, but it's been an interesting couple years with a lot of those conversations.

Erica: I imagine that it has, but you said something that was a major light bulb moment for me. So I'll send you a bill like I would my therapist and pay you over Venmo or something like that. But you said that you have to be able to take care of yourself financially and emotionally and all of that. And so I come from a family of divorce. My mom had to go back to school when my parents got divorced to become a nurse so that she could support her own lifestyle.

Erica: She was a stay at home mom at the time, and I was like two years old. So very young kid. And so her whole message was always, never rely on a man to take care of you. You have to be able to pay your own bills. You have to be able to leave a relationship if it's not good and not have this fear of, I can't buy food or whatever.

Erica: So I always had that of, I will always have a job. I will always work, but I never connected it to the emotional piece of it and loving myself first. And so that, coupled with the child of a divorce, I looked for love in all the wrong places and made plenty of bad boyfriend decisions, we'll say, because I didn't look at it as, you have to take care of yourself emotionally first. So that is like ding, ding, ding, light bulb moment. People should be jotting that one down for a note because I think it's so often overlooked.

Jen: Well, I think, we're taught to, and it's good, and I don't want anyone to think that this is bad, to have people around you that you can rely on for emotional and social support. We all need that. I see your cute dog in the background. We need our pets.

Jen: We need our friends. We all need that scaffolding around us. But sometimes when I'm at two in the morning staring at the ceiling going, is this next adventure gonna work? I have to dig deep and believe in myself because I have to get up in the morning and continue to lead a team that is looking at me to make this work. And I'm lucky, I have an incredibly supportive partner, who is like, you can do this.

Jen: And he's like, if you don't believe in yourself, it's never gonna work. And anytime I have a moment of self doubt, he's like, you will head down the track of failure if you don't pull your head up and own this. Because he's like, I know you can do this. And so I think that has really taught me, definitely getting better on an accelerated crash course of this, of, okay, I'm gonna practice more self talk than I ever have in my life, and I'm gonna become my own friend.

Jen: And I'm gonna actually really let some of my true core guide me a little bit, where I haven't really done that in my life. I have said, yeah, I really wanna be a doctor, and then just kind of followed that wave of external support towards that goal and then never really said, is this still really what I wanna do? And so now I really do let those core feelings and thoughts help guide me, and it is a source of support. But it's hard.

Jen: When I left my clinical medicine career, and before I became a partner at Liminal, I had about three months where I was just exploring options, I wouldn't go to the grocery store. My husband's like, why aren't you going to the grocery store? I'm like, I'm not bringing home a paycheck. I don't feel comfortable. I feel like I'm spending your money now, not my money.

Jen: And he's like, you were being ridiculous. But I'd always been self sufficient, and so it was strange to sit in that, I felt really vulnerable, in that more dependent role. So it's been an interesting kind of rocky ride in some of those, just for me personally, to deal with some of those feelings of having to rely on others in ways I never had, because I had always been like, I can take care of myself.

Erica: What I think is interesting about your story is, when you become a doctor, it's a very, like you said, it is a very linear path. You know exactly what you need to do, apply to this school, take this training, do this fellowship, all these things.

Erica: And then you go out there and you open this business, which is a squiggly line right down. How did you go? Because that is like a game of mental gymnastics, from navigating a career where you knew everything you needed to do, it was laid out in front of you, to this path of, holy shit, what do I do next?

Jen: Yeah. I think one was noticing the need, and so I think that was a driver. Whether it was through my athletic career or my career in medicine or even the last few years in performance, I saw something that I wanted to fill. So I think there was a directional purpose.

Jen: That was helpful. But I do think that that's still a hard question to answer because when people ask, like, what do you do? And even our team, we've spent hours and weeks and months trying to answer that exact question. I think you have to be comfortable in this nebulous zone that doesn't have these defined parameters, especially when you're trying to do something that hasn't been done before. So we were just talking about this this week.

Jen: My team, most of my team, was in town, and we had a little off-site. And they were asking for parameters and guardrails. And I said, we have to sit and look. We are doing something that there's not a model for. So that is our responsibility, is to create the model going forward.

Jen: And I really do trust what we're trying to do. And that has been helpful because it is a gray space. And it's even funny, we had a call with a potential client yesterday, and they're like, we know we need your help, but we don't know how, we don't even know what questions to ask. And we got off the phone, and my team's like, because I take most of our introductory calls, they all come through me.

Jen: And they're like, is this what every call is like? I'm like, it is. So these organizations are reaching out and saying, we wanna help the women in our organization. I don't know what questions to ask, and I don't know where to start. And so it's an interesting thing, because it's not only gray on what we're building.

Jen: It's gray on what our clients actually need and want. And so some of it will be trial and error, that we will present some things and learn as we go. And so I think we all are really cognizant of keeping a growth mindset going forward. And I think all of us have left fields that were relatively well defined to come into this nebulous space. And so I think we take what we learn from these defined careers and say, how can we apply this and create some structure in a space where it doesn't exist?

Jen: And I think that's just another shining example of why having diversified teams is really important, because we can see benefits and disadvantages to different kinds of structures that we're trying to build, based on the lenses that we're viewing them through. And so that's been really, really helpful in trying to create what hasn't been created before.

Erica: So you have now created a space where you are sitting in all of the things that you used to run away from. You're sitting in the vulnerability. You're sitting in the fear of the unknown. You're living in the land of ambiguity. So you have completely done an about face.

Erica: And I think, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, what keeps you in that space, because all of those things sound like, oh my gosh, like, anxiety ridden for me. Right? Vulnerability, fear of the unknown. Am I doing the right thing? Is just this true connection to a purpose. Would that be accurate?

Jen: Yes. For sure. And I think people are afraid to have this conversation.

Jen: They're afraid to talk about what we just talked about. And it's not, I have the most supportive partner, co parent, at every level, but there are still things that affect me that he doesn't understand. And so it's how do I even personally get better at having those conversations, explaining those, and opening his eyes to the differences. So when he goes to work and he's frustrated by something, he can take a step back and say, I wonder if something else is going on, and if I actually need to ask a question instead of just being pissed off about something or complaining about something, whether it's to a male colleague or a female colleague or whatever. But I think that it's just become such a purpose for myself, for our team, to say, we're here to help.

Jen: We know these problems exist. We know they're hard to talk about. It's messy. It's not clear. It's not well defined, and let's figure this out together.

Jen: We are definitely not coming in with all the answers. We're hoping to come in with effective strategies to improve the communication so that groups and organizations can find the answers together that are best for them. And in the meantime, teach people some skills so they don't get so discouraged along the way that they give up.

Erica: Well, and it's gonna be ever evolving too, because the world is always evolving. Right? I mean, how we treat women and what we talk about now is also completely different from, like, the pre COVID times. Right?

Erica: So it's always reexamining, where we are at as a society, where we're at in the world, and then kind of moving in and attacking as we go.

Jen: Mhmm. I love it. Yeah. And a lot of it is just bringing awareness to the issues in a, what we hope is a nonthreatening way, to say, let's sit down and talk about this.

Jen: And so we hope to be partners and coaches and consultants in those spaces, not necessarily fixers, because I think it's up to each person and organization to really do the work themselves, just like we're doing the work. But I'm hoping that we can help facilitate a lot of those difficult conversations, because they are difficult. They're awkward. They're uncomfortable at first for a lot of people, both men and women.

Jen: And so I think that's really kind of one of our goals, is we know this is a big gray space. We know that there are a lot of landmines in it that people are afraid that they're gonna hit if they even venture into it, but let us help you navigate that course, so we come out the other side better.

Erica: Yep. You hit the nail on the head, especially with that. People don't wanna go into it because they are afraid of insulting somebody or saying the wrong thing, and we have to, there's that b word again, vulnerability.

Erica: We have to be vulnerable on both sides of, hey, I might not be going about this the right way, but I'm really trying to, so here it is. I'm laying it all out there.

Jen: Yeah.

Erica: Oh my gosh.

Jen: For sure.

Erica: You got some work ahead of you, girl. Well, Jen, if you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice, the Jen who's in full on in her career, she's got two kids, and she's just in the thick of it, being split in two, failing at one, succeeding at the other, and flip flopping back and forth, what would that piece of advice be?

Jen: I really wish I hadn't been so concerned with failing. And I had never heard of the idea of fail fast and move on. And to me, failure was considered catastrophic. And that wasn't just because if I failed at work, someone had a bad outcome. It wasn't that dramatic.

Jen: I just wish I would have known, it's like, failing is part of growing. And the adage that you only fail if you don't grow from that experience, I never really took that to heart. And I think when you accept that idea that failure is part of growth, it gives you a level of confidence to take risks that you otherwise don't have. And so I think that fear of failure was really connected to a decreased level of confidence taking risks.

Jen: And so maybe missing out on opportunities because of those two components, because I was so scared of failing, I wasn't gonna take the risk to try. And that's probably the biggest thing I'm trying to teach my kids, is don't miss an opportunity to try something because you're so worried it's not gonna work. You don't know. And even if it doesn't work the way you expected it to, it could lead to something amazing that you hadn't anticipated. And so I really wish I would have embraced that mindset much earlier.

Jen: And, again, I have no one to blame for that except myself. I was not pressured by my family to be a straight a student or to go to medical school, any of that. That was all internal. And so it really was on me to change that perception. And I am cognizant of it now, and I try to communicate that to others as much as possible.

Erica: Try and fail, but never fail to try.

Jen: Yep. I love it. Perfect.

Erica: Well, this is an amazing conversation. I personally am going to count the number of times that mom is said one of the days this weekend, and I'm going to challenge all the listeners to do the same thing. And let me know, because I am interested. This is a study. This is like a scientific experiment here, guys.

Erica: Fascinating. It's fascinating.

Jen: You know, that's why we're so distracted all the time.

Erica: I know. Well, thank you so much for being here. It was amazing to have you. Where can people find you?

Jen: So you can find us at weprosper.co, as our website, and you can find me on LinkedIn at Jen Wagner. You can find Prosper on LinkedIn and Instagram, and then my email is jen@weprosper.co.

Erica: Perfect. And I will link all of that in the show notes.

Jen: Thank you. It's wonderful. Thanks so much.

Erica: Alright. Did that story not completely just resonate with your soul? I told you it would. So I am so thrilled that you tune in and you listen today. Make sure that you follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and all of the socials for more content just like this.

Erica: And one last thing before you go is your reminder to stop putting a ceiling on what's possible and to start breaking through it.