CEO School

Welcome Back To CEO School. Here’s What’s Next.

November 3, 2025

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  • Female founders are often the last to bet on themselves despite building highly impactful products and services, leading to only 2% scaling beyond $1 million in revenue. 
  • The initial focus of the CEO School podcast was to shift the narrative from venture capital access to empowering women to build bigger businesses beyond the $1 million scaling barrier. 
  • The new season of the CEO School podcast will focus on redefining success to include freedom, impact, and authenticity, rejecting the narrative that women must choose between having it all and avoiding burnout. 

Segments

Female Founders Under-Betting
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(00:00:00)
  • Key Takeaway: Women are the last demographic to invest in themselves, despite creating impactful products and services.
  • Summary: Women are the last to take a bet on themselves, delaying commitment to their ventures. Fifty percent of businesses are started by women, yet less than 2% scale beyond $1 million in revenue. The products and services women build are highly impactful and necessitate their success.
CEO School Anniversary & Focus
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(00:00:40)
  • Key Takeaway: The CEO School podcast is celebrating five years, refocusing this season on deeper conversations about scaling life as a CEO.
  • Summary: The host welcomes listeners back after the longest hiatus in the podcast’s five-year history. The show’s core mission remains scaling business like a CEO, but the focus will deepen into scaling life as a CEO. This space promises authentic and vulnerable conversations about the realities of being a female founder.
Podcast Origin Story & Mission
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(00:02:25)
  • Key Takeaway: The podcast launched in 2020, spurred by the realization that existing business content lacked female scaling narratives and VC conversations ignored the pre-million-dollar revenue hurdle.
  • Summary: The podcast originated from ‘Wind Down Wednesday’ Instagram Lives that saw massive attendance spikes during the 2020 pandemic shutdown. The host was appalled by the statistic that less than 2% of female founders break $1 million, contrasting with the focus on venture capital access. The conversation needed to flip to empower women to build ‘big businesses’ beyond that critical million-dollar mark.
Navigating VC and The Boys Club
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(00:07:02)
  • Key Takeaway: Conversations in the venture capital ‘boys club’ differed significantly from those in female founder circles, highlighting a gap in shared playbook knowledge.
  • Summary: The host has long been part of the ‘boys club’ through entrepreneurial family and venture capital involvement, noting that conversations there were distinct from those in female founder groups. The lack of female stories in business media meant missing playbooks from founders just a few steps ahead. The podcast was created to bridge this gap by sharing actionable playbooks.
Motherhood, Mindset, and CEO Title
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(00:09:03)
  • Key Takeaway: Scaling a company while being a new mother during the pandemic required finding a tribe for honest conversations about balancing life and business, leading to claiming the CEO title.
  • Summary: The host struggled to find peers discussing the realities of being a new mother (with a three-year-old and newborn) while scaling a company of 100 employees. She initially resisted calling herself a CEO because she did not fit the traditional mold (‘pale, male, or stale’). The goal became building a unicorn company and achieving a billion-dollar exit on her own terms.
Embracing Femininity and Legacy
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(00:11:12)
  • Key Takeaway: Success must be built on one’s own terms, embracing femininity and rejecting the narrative that women must choose between career and personal life to achieve their legacy.
  • Summary: The movement is focused on conversations beyond the 2% success rate, emphasizing that founders start businesses to solve real pain points. The host learned that freedom of time is as valuable as freedom of dollar, requiring alignment over external expectations from the ‘boys club.’ Women deserve to have it all—freedom of time, freedom of dollar, and impact—without burnout.