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Work like you’re not a parent.
Parent like you don’t work.
What if that whole system is wrong?
This is Full Stack Moms, and we are Mallory Lee and Shannon Curran, two working moms navigating tech careers, parenting, and everything in between. We talk about why the traditional rules of work don’t fit modern parents and how women in tech are doing things differently. Through honest conversations and behind-the-scenes stories, this show explores careers, caregiving, ambition, and the messy reality of having it all, just not all at once.
Connect with Mallory: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallorylee/
Connect with Shannon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-sweeny-curran/
Produced in partnership with Share Your Genius
www.shareyourgenius.com
Mallory Lee (00:00):
You are the full stack. You've got your family, your kid, your company, your two different things that you lead, you're involved in. You probably have your girls' night, your girlfriends. These are all the things that are in your stack that all of us are trying to just figure out at all times. And you are a full stack mom. And I just think that that's so cool. This is Full Stack Moms.
Sharron Curran (00:28):
This is not a parenting podcast nor a business podcast, but a place where we talk, building careers in tech, raising kids at home and making it work in public. So what's your job, Karen? I'm sorry I interrupted you.
Karen Kelly (00:40):
Yeah, no problem. I am the founder and CEO of Launch By Lunch. Launch by Lunch is a community and upskilling program for executives and teams that are looking to adopt AI and do so in a calm and confident manner.
Mallory Lee (00:56):
We love calm.
Karen Kelly (00:57):
Yeah. We stay calm. We won't fail.
Mallory Lee (01:01):
I love that. Love it. Okay. And how old is your son?
Karen Kelly (01:05):
My son is 10. So yeah, we are very heavy in the soccer, 360 degree year of sports, but it's a lot of fun. And I played soccer in college and so it's like, I'm in it with him.
Mallory Lee (01:20):
Oh, great. Do
Karen Kelly (01:21):
You coach?
Mallory Lee (01:21):
Great. Or are you just
Karen Kelly (01:22):
A parent? I did for a long time. Yeah. The town team. And then I just decided you know how parents get on the sideline. I was like, I'm not down for that. I'm sort of cut myself walk after third grade.
Mallory Lee (01:33):
Okay. Well, just for some background, Karen and I found each other on LinkedIn and I don't quite remember how, but I know that Karen, you just have this amazing story about an event that happened to you where you needed to mobilize people and make shit happen and it's going to become like a TED Talk. And so I'm just so curious to hear your story and see what we can impart wisdom wise to everybody out there.
Karen Kelly (02:02):
The wisdom is that moms are always the ones GS-ding.That's why the three of us are sitting here. And I think a lot of the reason for that is because the stuff falls downhill. And so that story is a story about, I'm a worker and I'm an entrepreneur and I don't think of work as work because do what I love to do. Great.
(02:26):
And in 2022, I was the president of a tech company and we were just coming out of COVID. I was working from home here. Everything was happening virtually. My son at the time was six. And for the second year in a row, our local school district, which we'll go unnamed, told me that they didn't pull his lottery number for afterschool care. And so I'm like, okay, no afterschool care for kindergarten, no afterschool care for first grade. When am I going to get it when he's in fifth and we don't need it anymore? What are we talking about here? So it's funny because I think a lot of moms and parents think, oh, preschool, nursery school, you get ... Once you're kind of done with paying for that, you're sort of in the clear for ...
Sharron Curran (03:07):
Nope.
Karen Kelly (03:08):
No, no, actually it's about to get a lot worse. Maybe not more expensive, but far worse in terms of coverage. And this is a crisis. The childcare crisis is a crisis across the country. Massachusetts has the number one most expensive childcare in the country. And so that first year we had a nanny, we kept her 40 hours a week because nobody wants 20 hours a week, but I'm paying 40 just so I can keep working at my startup. And then the next year is when I finally just said, and they said, sorry, we didn't pull his number. I just said, "I'm not doing this anymore." And what happens when your child comes through the door at two o'clock in the afternoon and you still have four more Zooms to do, right? We're looking at you. He's six, right? "Mom, please hang out with me. Mom, please pay attention.
(03:59):
"It is heartbreaking. It is heart wrenching. I feel like a lot of people went through this during COVID. A lot of people still go through it now, but it was awful. And I really felt like at the end of the day, I would stop working so I could hang out with him or put him in front of screen, which is awful. We can talk more about screens if you want. And I just would then go back to work at eight o'clock at night and I was like, " This is no way to live. I'm not doing it and I have to make a choice. Am I the mom he needs me to be or am I the leader my company needs? "And of course I chose my son. I quit my job, which was just a total ... I would never do something like this.
(04:36):
It's totally out of character, but I had to do it. So then I was just like, " But I'm fixing this. "So I went into my mom's Facebook group in my town and I just said," Hey, who else doesn't have afterschool care? Send me a note. "End of the night, I had 75 emails. Okay. No one has afterschool care. So started digging into this. And of course there was an aflaught of parents who were like, " We want to help. What do we do? "So we created something called Parents for After School Solutions, which we shortened to pass and created essentially this grassroots movement where we said," We're here to help. We're here to solve the problem. We're not going to get angry. We're just going to do what needs to get done for our community. "So it ended up mobilizing about 600 parents, started a parent.
(05:17):
I think back and I'm like, " Wow, if I had a Claude Code or even a ChatGPT back then, it's so much easier.
Sharron Curran (05:25):
"Way less spreadsheets and way less emails is what it would've been.
Karen Kelly (05:28):
Right. Awesome pretend. Also, after the fact, could have built an app to find afterschool care programs for the parents and just do this two-sided marketplacing, which now exists in a couple of forms. But in any case, created our own parent database in a spreadsheet and really just we went out and talked to hundreds of vendors locally to be like, " Will you come plug into our actors? "We made a lot of friends really, really fast on the town boards, on the school board. We then essentially networked our way to the CEO of the YMCA. And I found this summer camp, and I'm pointing like this because it's about 500 yards into my backyard. It was just sitting vacant September to June, and the YMCA owned it and we just kind of said," Why aren't you making money in an afterschool care program here? You guys do afterschool care.
(06:16):
"And they were like, " Really? It's a problem? "And it was one of these weird problems where it wasn't a financial problem, right? People were ready to write a check. So seven months later, so essentially I had to quit my job and started this thing, which didn't pay me money, but solved a problem. And we had 12 vendors plugged into our recreation department who agreed to create an umbrella program, handed them off there. And we had a new afterschool care program at the summer camp behind my house, conveniently located for my son to attend. That
Mallory Lee (06:48):
Is so cool.
Karen Kelly (06:50):
It was a wild experience.
Mallory Lee (06:52):
And it's still going strong now?
Karen Kelly (06:54):
Yeah. All the programs are still running. Yeah. And it's ... Here's one of the cool things about doing something like that too, because that whole experience of me kind of having my support system fall out from underneath me really made me realize, well, wow, I think I've really been focusing my time in the wrong places. I go to work, I come home, I do what I need to do for my family, I go to work. And I think a lot of people are like that, especially people, quite frankly, who live in the suburbs. And we don't have sidewalks in my town. It's semi-rural. So there's a lot
Sharron Curran (07:30):
Of just- We don't
Karen Kelly (07:31):
Either. I can't stand it, right? Number one, I can't just go for a walk. I just want to go walk around the block a few times. Can't. And there's so much to
Mallory Lee (07:40):
Cool. I think I see what your next project is, Carrie.
Sharron Curran (07:43):
Urban planning. Parents for the only Claude Code could mix cement if only Claude Code could mix cement.
Karen Kelly (07:56):
It might. It might one day. It might control the machine.
Sharron Curran (07:59):
I'm not writing it off. I'm not writing it off.
Karen Kelly (08:02):
I did end up joining our economic development committee as a result of this, by the way. Of course you did. Because I realized all these things, I'm not paying attention to what's going on around me. I can't impact what's happening at the national level, but I can impact what's happening here in my small little suburban town. And so making all these friends through the process and building all these relationships, it completely changed how I view where I live. And despite the fact that we have these horrible winters and I'm not a skier and I have dreamed of South Carolina and sun on my face five days a year, it's like I won't go because now I've built this community and I love these people. And it's really the whole experience of that problem transformed my priorities about how I spend my time, but also how I experience the world around me right here.
Sharron Curran (08:50):
Oh, wow. That's so awesome. I'm in this in between of ... So I have two kids that are under three. So I have a two and a half year old and a nine month old. So I'm in a different echelon of children right now. Oh yeah, no. So my son's in full-time daycare and my daughter, I've been waiting for ... This comes up on every episode because it's so present for me right now. She's not in full-time daycare yet because he needs to move out of the daycare room for her to move in. He's saving her spot. So when he moves up, she will ... So you get for having two kids really close in age. And we love our daycare and it's full-time only and most of the kids are on voucher. We pay private. I also live in Massachusetts for the listeners out there.
(09:28):
And so yes, I live in the state with the most expensive childcare in the country. And so I am going into going to have two kids in full-time childcare. But the situation right now is I'm playing this game. I actually posted ... I made a LinkedIn post about this yesterday that went extremely viral, which is weird because I don't go viral. I don't go viral.
Karen Kelly (09:51):
Is it extremely viral or two likes?
Sharron Curran (09:53):
Is that it? Yeah, exactly. Well, so no, I've only got extremely viral twice in my whole career, but getting over a hundred thousand views on a LinkedIn post. What's going on right now is I have a nanny kind of. She's a stay-at-home mom that now her kids are in school. So she watches my daughter for two days a week, but she has to leave at three to get her kids off the bus. Which wasn't really a problem until I had a PST client. So now I have a client that's in PST, so I can't really tell them I can't meet after 2:00 PM. That means they get an hour of me a day. So I'm trying to figure this out and I had a call with them until 3:15, ET. And I was like, what? So this is 15 minutes. You're thinking, Shannon, it's 15 minutes, right?
(10:34):
But I thought about this 15 minutes for four days of like, so do I have to get a fully different childcare plan for this day for those 15 minutes? Can I hold her for this call? She's super mobile now. She'll probably try and type on my computer. This is a new client. I really want to be focused. Or can I hold her on my lap? Should I ask if my husband can come home early? And I think this is the definition of the mental load that happens. 15 minutes is never 15 minutes. Those two hours your son was home that you didn't have childcare is never two hours. It is this persistent thought and feeling you have about how to solve for this stuff. And I now know I'll be paying a gazillion dollars to have two kids in full-time childcare in a month, but I won't think about those 15 minutes at all.
(11:23):
I'm freeing up my mental load. So when people say things are free, it's like, are they free emotionally? Are they free mentally or are they just free fiscally? They are really different. And I just think it's also a thing that you can't explain to anyone that's never had to navigate that kind of ... It's so niche, right? So I thought this was so niche. My nanny snapped a picture of me holding my daughter on her way out, was like, "You're such a badass. She'll know that her mom's a badass." As I'm on this call and I posted on LinkedIn with my daughter's face covered, and literally 200 people commented on it being like, "I have had this exact experience of this 15 minutes."
Karen Kelly (12:03):
And we don't talk about it.
Sharron Curran (12:05):
No. And didn't realize that. I was like, maybe a few people will comment being like, "Oh, slay." I don't know. I was like, I don't think ... Whatever. Girl, you're sure. I don't know.
Mallory Lee (12:16):
Girl.
Sharron Curran (12:17):
Get a girl. Also, your office is a mess. I was like, I'm waiting for someone to comment about how messy my office is. But I was like, wow, this struck a chord. In not just moms, because there were a lot of dads in the comments too saying, yeah, this is one of those things that everything is a constant shuffle and renegotiation. And I do think, Mallory, you've talked about this too of your kid, you have a nanny for the summer because what do you do during the summer? Nevermind, just after school. Your job doesn't stop. No. It's a lot of mental load.
Mallory Lee (12:53):
It is. Yeah. And the summer is easier because you can utilize someone full-time and you can pay through the nose and have the full-time be worth it. But like you said, Karen, in the school year, it's very difficult to find someone that wants to work four hours a day, three hours a day at your specific time.
Karen Kelly (13:14):
Everybody want to.
Mallory Lee (13:15):
And the woman who's watching Willa, she has her own kids coming home from school. She's not an afterschool kind of option. And so those are the same things that exist for parents that have school aged kids. It's like, okay, if you're lucky, you can find a high schooler whose day ends a little early, who can be around at that time, or you can find a parent or a grandma or someone who just happens to be free. But the afterschool stuff is so extremely limited. And for a few years, I had them coming home on the bus and they would just walk right past me behind me. This door is like the front door outside and they're like, "We're here." And they bust into my office and I work with everybody in California. It's like 11:00 AM. It's literally 11:00 AM there. And I'm in a one-on-one with my CEO and my kids are busting in.
(14:15):
And luckily I've worked with so many people and companies that were so open to like, "Hey, whatever you have to do. " They love seeing the kids and they like to say hi. And it's never been a huge problem, but it's a problem in my nervous system, like my body. I'm like, "Oh my God, what are they doing?" And of course they're boys, they're fighting. And this was the first year that we got into the afterschool care at the elementary school. So-
Karen Kelly (14:49):
Congrats.
Mallory Lee (14:50):
I feel you, Karen. It has been insane, but this year is life changing because I can truly ... I'm not distracted until they get home and my husband brings them home around 5:00 or 5:30. And it's night and day, night and day.
Karen Kelly (15:08):
And those last couple hours of the day too, whether you're on calls or you're trying to catch up from all the calls you are already on, those are hours. You need those hours. They don't just disappear. And so I love that you've been able to work at companies that they've been really accepting of that. And I think actually COVID did a lot to kind of ed people in that direction. We got used to seeing the kid camera and the cats and everything else we saw in the background.
Mallory Lee (15:37):
Do you guys remember that first viral video where the dad's wearing a shirt tie and he's presenting and his kid comes in and he's trying to pretend it's not happening. And then the dog or the mom comes in and tries to get him and they're like crawling on the floor behind him. I just thought, but that was the moment where it was like, we can be lighthearted about this. Humans exist and people have children. And whether it's like afterschool babysitter or something, you just do your best and we're all just doing our best, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
Sharron Curran (16:16):
And I think it is really hard to, depending on the economic climate of where you live, because I also, there's like a nanny Facebook group in our area and I never joined any of the mom ones. I feel like I missed that, which is maybe probably better. I don't know what's going on in there. But the nanny one, someone was asking, and there's so many comments in there of people being like, "I can't believe you'd pay all that money to have someone else raise your kids." And it's like, this is like a real thing that people still, probably not our audience because I think all of our audience are working moms and working parents, but even if you're not, you made that choice, you quit your job when you needed to, but then still worked kind of like Mallory, right? She tried to quit her job and then worked still.
(16:59):
But I think there's still this overlaying of like, "I can't believe you would spend all this money and have someone else raise your kids." And it's like, whoa, this is so ... And that's not gone. I think people think we're past that, and I just don't think that we are in a lot of places. And for a lot of people, economically, it doesn't make sense. They can't just throw money at the problem, which is like you were saying, in your town, it wasn't a money problem, it was an access issue. And I think other places, that's not necessarily the case. And so it's just so ... I'm so grateful for the daycare we have that all of these kids can be on voucher. They can be on state funded voucher, right? So they can go to daycare so their parents can work. And it's a really complex systemic problem that is like ... I know that you're also working on other things now that we want to hear about of how we can continue to make change in our local communities, even if it's not something we feel like we can change the entire system of, right?
Karen Kelly (18:00):
Yes, a hundred percent. And it's interesting to think about
(18:05):
How this whole thing works with our government, like local, national, and then we look at Europe. They have figured how to weed childcare into the entire system, right? And so everything, maternity leave for a year, paternity leave and for multiple years and all of these things that are really built to support families that just don't exist here. And in many cases, I feel like some employers have come around and kudos to them. It's just not built that way. So if it's going to cost you like $50,000 a year to keep help, but you're only making 60 or less, it just, like you were saying, it doesn't really make any economical sense. And then also, by the way, to still hobble that stress and strain and not have the time with your child. We all want time out.
Sharron Curran (18:48):
Right. Stressed. Right. It's not good for anybody. Well, no one's happy. No. No. And on
Karen Kelly (18:53):
The other hand too, it's like, and this is a privilege, but thinking about, I like working, right? And I think there's other moms who are just like, they would much rather be home raising their children. And I know and friends with some of those moms, that's just not how I'm wired. So it becomes, I almost feel like more pressing for people likely you two and me where we're like, no, no, no. We have purpose in the world that's kind of just beyond just ... We translate that out to our work and that's how I operate. And so I feel like if I'm not ... I don't have the freedom and the ability to move and make change in whatever direction I'm moving in at that time, I wouldn't be myself. And so I think that's really how I felt a lot of that time too, where then for those seven months or nine months until I went back to work, I was just like, I actually didn't know how to identify myself.
(19:44):
I would go to parties or neighborhood things and it's like I didn't have a title anymore. So who was I? Yeah. So that was a whole other kind of crisis in and of itself. You're going to
Sharron Curran (19:54):
Make me cry again. I cry in every episode now.
Mallory Lee (19:58):
Where are we? It's so real though. We've talked about it a couple times. How do you define your identity and how many different identities we all have? Just so many different layers to that.
Karen Kelly (20:14):
I
Mallory Lee (20:14):
Have a question, Karen.
Karen Kelly (20:15):
Yeah. Can
Mallory Lee (20:16):
I ask you a question? Okay. So when this all went down, you were the president of your company. Obviously you've had plenty of authority to make some changes that you wanted, and still it felt like your best option was to go ahead and resign. I'm curious, were you one of the only people at your startup that had a kid? What was the lay of the land there?
Karen Kelly (20:40):
Great question,
Mallory Lee (20:42):
I feel like
Karen Kelly (20:43):
No one's asked me that question and I love that you did. Yes.
Sharron Curran (20:47):
Come on the mom podcast and we'll ask it. They're so good.
Karen Kelly (20:52):
I was the only person with a child under the age of 18 or they didn't have children. It was like one or the other. Mostly men, as you might imagine. And the bottom line is this too. If you're in a venture-backed startup, it's just there's a culture there that goes far beyond a typical corporate, middle management culture. I mean, the expectation is that you're working 10 to 12 hours a day
Sharron Curran (21:27):
Growing up- 3X every year, baby. 3X every year.
Karen Kelly (21:32):
It just created an even bigger clash, culture clash for me and more pressure of like, those people really aren't going to understand about the kid in the background. And those people might be telling me, "Well, just go let them watch TV." It was a very different environment perhaps than what other people experience. And I think 996, have you guys heard of 996 in this idea that we should all be working nine hours a day, six days a week, forget what the other six is, but basically just bust your ass all the time if you're in a startup. And so there was just a massive culture clash and I knew nothing I could have done. A policy for me would have only helped me and policy for my problem would have really only helped me. And it was probably also time for me to move on from that environment.
Sharron Curran (22:22):
Got it. And it's probably really hard too because that environment probably felt great to you at some point. For sure. There's a reason you became the president, right? Because you thrived in that environment at some point in your life or career, right? Did you feel a change or was it kind of a slow erosion like theirs?
Karen Kelly (22:42):
Okay. That's also such a good question. You guys are amazing. I'm not kidding. I've talked about this a lot and no one has asked me these two questions, which I think- Oh my God, this is so cool.
(22:54):
Yes. I also, I'll be honest, I thrive in chaos, right? So I'm still a startup girl. Let's make method out of the madness. Let's go. So it did feel good and it felt good to be working on something new. That was also like when I joined that company, I was CMO. I eventually moved over into the presidency, but that was my first foray into tech. So wow. Before that, I owned my own company. It was a B2C company. I mean, I worked a lot, but it was totally under my control. My son was much younger then. I had way more control about when I was working, how hard I was working and all that kind of stuff. So that's the thing is like at the beginning, and it was good, I had a nanny who wasn't in school yet. It was like a very different phase of life.
(23:40):
I had very full coverage. And then when all of those things just started falling away and when this company went through COVID, we were a MarTech platform for companies to gather real world data from live events. Well, what happened during COVID?
Sharron Curran (24:00):
Well, yeah. Were you a webinar platform then? Did you become a webinar
Karen Kelly (24:04):
Platform? No, no. But we did think about partnering with webinar platforms technology that way. But no, actually what we did was we pivoted to be a COVID health screener because what type of data did people need from the real world at that time?
Sharron Curran (24:18):
Who they've been with. Yeah, that's for you.
Karen Kelly (24:20):
Yes. And as they're entering school and all this other things and symptoms and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it was crazy. I mean, it was amazing. I'm so grateful for that experience to just go ... And we made a bunch of money. That's great. But you can ... We all had our extreme burnout in COVID for one reason or five or another.
Sharron Curran (24:38):
Yeah.
Karen Kelly (24:40):
Coming out and now I've got no child after school care and now it was just like, it was a cacophony of stress.
Sharron Curran (24:48):
Totally.
Mallory Lee (24:48):
That's a nice term. Cacophony of stress. I mean,
Sharron Curran (24:51):
Cacophony and stress. Put that on your headstone. It was a cacophony of stress.
Karen Kelly (24:56):
Let's hope that doesn't travel with me to my headstone.
Mallory Lee (25:01):
We already told us your job is ... Shannon's having her own cacophony today.
Sharron Curran (25:07):
All right, Sham. Not just today. Yeah. We're going through a sleep regression, so I'm just in a weird ... I'm feeling weird. I am in some
Karen Kelly (25:13):
Progression. Okay.
Sharron Curran (25:15):
Oh no. You want to come over? Want to go over and hang out with my daughter? Yeah. No, I'm not.
Karen Kelly (25:19):
Do it.
(25:23):
But Shannon, you had mentioned earlier about getting involved at the local level, and I think that this is something that's really important and that the more I've talked about it to people, the more I'm watching my friends start to do the same and- Love. Sanging to move because we really can create change right where we live and it gives you an opportunity to take kind of whatever feelings you're having inside about what's going on in the world or a government or this and put them somewhere else. And I do think ... So do you guys know who Robert Putnam is?
Sharron Curran (26:01):
No.
Karen Kelly (26:01):
I don't think so. On Bowling Alone.
Sharron Curran (26:04):
Oh, yes. I don't recognize his name, but I recognize that.
Karen Kelly (26:07):
Joiner Dye was then the movie that was made out of his book in 2020. He was one of the very, very first sort of ... He was a social researcher, social scientist, researcher. I'm not getting his title exactly right, but started in the '70s at Harvard, ended up publishing this book in the early 2000s. I got to see him speak recently, and it's all about human connection and how it impacts all of us. And so join or dies about joining clubs, joining in your neighbors, just finding ways to join community and how important it is. And this was the other really big thing that came out of this experience for me, which was like, I've been so self-isolated and I'm a social person, but I was choosing, and again, starting 996, to just operate in a way that was not conducive for my health or for the health of my family.
(27:00):
And so he has the most amazing data showing how our social relationships are actually a leading indicator of the economics of the United States and how likely we are to go to war. It's wild.
Sharron Curran (27:17):
Well, it makes sense. The more human beings you have empathy for and you spend time with, the more you're able to humanize people. That makes sense to me completely.
Karen Kelly (27:26):
Yes, yes. And this idea of like, do people think of themselves generally speaking as a we or an I in the country at that time? How big is the differential between the people who have the most money in our country and the least money in our country? Those gaps are huge indicators for the economic and structural health of our country. And so when he showed the data of these, essentially there's like four different metrics by which it's plotted on a chart. Back when the Civil War happened in the 1880s, it was like down here, right? And then you see it go up, up, up, all four in concert to the 1950s where we were generally like a happy country, and then it all takes up. And now it's lower than where we were in the 1880s. And it's like this idea that like, yeah, what we're feeling is real, but we can turn it around.
(28:21):
And the way he talks about turning it around is he had three recommendations. He said, Go local, meaning get involved locally, do what you can do and become an agent and change, go young, which I thought was interesting because he's like, it's the big revolutions of the world have always started with young people and we need them to grow into the next set of leaders. And then the third one was go moral. And what he meant by that was like golden rule moral, like treat people like you would like to be treated, respect, honesty, all of these things. And so all this stuff, yeah, it really matters. And I will say for me professionally, as a person who's rethought her professional career around family life and all of it, having sort of like this, it's like a salad bowl of a career in a way.
(29:08):
It's like I have my company over here, which is purposely not VC back, but I can manage the way I want to and that also drives community, makes me happy. I have my economic development committee role, so I get to start to understand more about like, "Hey, how do we increase connectivity around retailers and these types of things and bring new opportunities to the town?" And then I have the nonprofit, which is really about how do we get these humans back together again. It feels good because number one, it serves more than just work, but also if something is crashing somewhere, like if my work is crashing out, I have these other things and these other people and it's not the end of the world and it gives you instant perspective. Your purpose isn't one thing. And that has been really helpful for me.
Mallory Lee (29:57):
Okay. I have goosebumps, which is so fun. So how do I say this? All those things that you just said, I think of those as that's your stack, right? Oh my gosh. And you are the full stack. You've got your family, your kid, your company, your two different things that you lead, you're involved in. You probably have your girls' night, your girlfriends. These are all the things that are in your stack that all of us are trying to just figure out at all times. And you are a full stack mom. And I just think that that's so cool. So
Sharron Curran (30:34):
Cool. I know.
Mallory Lee (30:35):
Chefs
Sharron Curran (30:36):
And hats.
Mallory Lee (30:37):
And the thing that I also resonate with that you just said is that if one thing in the stack is going a little haywire, the rest of the stack can sort of keep you grounded and all the rest of the things. And that's been this podcast for me a little because there have been days, like a couple weeks ago I had some crazy, just very, very hectic weeks in a row. And recording this on Fridays completely turned my day around. And it was like this brought me back to normal. And I like what you're saying about how it helps balance you.
Karen Kelly (31:13):
The perfect way to put it. I love that this podcast is that for you. Because it isn't it. I was going to say, when you're doing it, you probably get in a bit of a zone, right? You're not thinking about anything else. Everything else goes away when you're doing this. What were you going to say, Shannon?
Sharron Curran (31:28):
No, I was going to say that I was just joking that I don't usually calm people down. So I'm glad Mallory, you feel that way. Hang out with me for an hour.
Mallory Lee (31:37):
It's like a cheer up. These conversations are so cool. And I don't know if we'll even leave this in the episode, but I just think that being intentional about finding people to talk to, that you feel like maybe there's a potential connection. I want to learn from you. I want to know what you're about. And then every conversation we've had, the women that we talk to are just so amazing. Amazing. And so then the rest of my day is just on this high because I'm like, well, that was awesome. And I feel inspired and somehow also grounded. There's just a lot of benefit we get from talking with each other and sharing. Connection. Connection. Exactly. And it's the same thing as when you post it on Facebook and you're like, "Dude, what's up with afterschool care? I don't know what to do. " And then everyone's like, "Hold on.
(32:26):
I want to commiserate with you. " But then you took it to the actionable place of being able to do something about it. And so I just think that's super, super amazing.
Karen Kelly (32:39):
Thank you.
Sharron Curran (32:39):
Love it.
Karen Kelly (32:40):
I want to say one other thing about connection and the grounding and the cheer up and the energy we get from it. It's something called FuckUp Nights Nights, which I just posted about on LinkedIn. Two amazing humans who I have come to know and work with a bit founded the local Boston chapter. And what it is, it's all about bringing people together under the guise of I screwed something up. Here's what I did and there's no pot of gold at the end of the story. There's no way I was the hero. It's like, no, I fucked something up and here's the story and I'm going to tell it to everyone in like 10 slides and seven minutes. Wait,
Sharron Curran (33:18):
That's
Karen Kelly (33:18):
So
Sharron Curran (33:18):
Funny. Wow.
Karen Kelly (33:19):
It's awesome. Shannon, since we live kind of beautiful- I know, I was going to say.
Sharron Curran (33:23):
I'm
Karen Kelly (33:23):
Definitely going to drag you to this.
Sharron Curran (33:25):
Yeah. Send me a thing. Absolutely.
Karen Kelly (33:27):
The whole room, because it is under this kind of banner of vulnerability, everyone's just like, "Hey, how are you? " Everyone's introducing themselves. It's just a totally different energy in the room. And I went a few nights ago and I just was like, again, sleep regression, so tired. I was like, "But I'm going to get there." When I left, I felt so happy and energized. And I was like, "I am so glad I did this and met these people and I feel like I still got the glow." So anyway, there's something to it. There's a science there whether we can actually put our finger on it or not. And FuckUp Nights is, by the way, in 300 cities across the US, so find yours. It's
Sharron Curran (34:05):
Amazing. That's so fun. I have a lot of content I could share, which is ... I do have one question about your current business that we want to make sure we ask, and then also then we have one segment at the end. So I actually am very interested about this too, because you are a person that is very AI optimist, right? You are super in on the value that AI can bring to working parents and to people running businesses. And you also believe so strongly in connection. And I think a lot of the conversation right now is that those two things cannot coexist. And I would love to hear you talk about, number one, would love to hear what you're doing in terms of your utilization of AI and the change that Opus and CloudCode has created for your life, but also how that can live in concert with our need to be connected to one another.
(34:55):
I would love to hear your perspective there.
Karen Kelly (34:57):
Again, such a spot on question. I
Mallory Lee (35:00):
Know. I'm impressed.
Sharron Curran (35:03):
I've had a lot of cold bird
Karen Kelly (35:07):
Today.That is actually like a cornerstone now of my brand and the brand of this
Sharron Curran (35:12):
Company
Karen Kelly (35:12):
And my belief system because people do think that AI is going to drive us apart. Some ways it may and does. However, the way I view it is that in order to adopt, in order to learn, in order for everyone to grow together, because it's not going away, so let's not leave anybody behind. Let's bring everybody with us. And the way that we do that is by getting in a room together and figuring it out. And that's what Launch By Launch is all about. It's building community around AI, teaching, learning, peer support, so no one is left behind. And the way actually we started working with Claude Code and offering Claude Code chief of staff workshops was by ... I was in a room, you guys remember that weekend, beginning of February, it was like negative 26 degrees. Oh yes. Yes. I was out in the Berkshires in a VRBO with a burst pipe and seven other women.
(36:11):
And you don't ski. Don't ski. Don't ski. What are you doing there?
(36:17):
We went there to zip hot chocolate and just get away. We had all met at a founder investor conference. And well, we wanted to build something. And so when we got there, one of the women said, you know what? She's a VC, her coVC partner had put together a video on how to do a claude co-chief of staff on Claude Code. And so we're like, let's do it. So we sat there for three hours, the seven of us, no developers in the room, and went through the process and helped each other out. And it's actually, if you know what you're doing, it's simple, but the first time you do it,
(36:52):
You're in a terminal, man. We're going back to the 90s here with coding, right? So it was wild. But it was that us coming together as a community, helping each other, figuring it out. We all got through it. And by the end, now we're all emailing each other from Claude. We're all sending calendar invites. We've connected our Fathom AI note-taker. It's reporting every morning. Here are the meetings you had yesterday. Here's the cool shit you said. Here's the stuff you have to do. So the way that I have been learning AI has been almost entirely in community. So I do believe absolutely it can be a unifying force.
Sharron Curran (37:27):
Love.
Karen Kelly (37:27):
That's
Mallory Lee (37:28):
Awesome.
Karen Kelly (37:28):
Yes. Yeah. Did I answer that all the way?
Sharron Curran (37:32):
Yes, I think you absolutely did. And I think now we can port it into this segment, which may, you probably will. We'll see. You can answer it however you want. So we do what we call our save of the week every week. So people, process, product, something that this week made your life significantly easier and is something that kind of saved you. So examples we've had is like, my mom was buying one time and Mallory loved her chair one time in her AirPods. And we go on all ... Or Henry's mom. There's been a bunch of different examples. So we can go first if you want while you're thinking.
Karen Kelly (38:09):
So I did something maybe a little controversial, but I like Claude Code into my text messages.
Mallory Lee (38:15):
What?
Karen Kelly (38:17):
Because I'm like, you can't possibly really know me if you don't know what's going on in my text messages. Whether it's works that leads into there or personal stuff, that is 360 degrees. Now you got my email, my calendar, all this. Right now you got- Wow. So as I mentioned, I've been working hard and sleeping a lot. And so I had texted a few friends last week. Again, that's where the real me comes out. The real me is not in my corporate email. The real me isn't even totally on LinkedIn. I mean, I'm pretty candid, but the real me is my text messages.
Mallory Lee (38:52):
It's in the group chat.
Sharron Curran (38:54):
Yes. Oh, the group chat.
Karen Kelly (38:56):
So it's pulling it in. And as I get on Saturday morning and I open up and my Keifa staff reports to me on Claude, it's like, "Karen, we need to talk about your schedule." You told you Fred Watts week that you were feeling burnt out. We need to make some change.
Mallory Lee (39:15):
Wow.
Karen Kelly (39:16):
And I was like-
Mallory Lee (39:17):
That's cool.
Karen Kelly (39:18):
Whoever thought. Even now, I'm like, whoever thought AI would like ... I don't use AI as a confessional. I had never used it for therapy. I was never one of those people. I'm like, "It's going to optimize my life." But the fact that it pulled that in and then was like, "Hang on, it's Saturday. What are you doing? And let's fix it. " So it created a new schedule for me for the week and we blocked things and it put it all on my calendar. And now it's texting me 15 minutes beforehand to be like, "You're supposed to be leaving for the gym right now." What are you doing?
Mallory Lee (39:48):
Wow.
Sharron Curran (39:48):
Whoa.
Karen Kelly (39:51):
Yeah.
Mallory Lee (39:51):
So it's texting you. It's not necessarily texting others.
Karen Kelly (39:55):
No, I could set it up that way, but right now I just have it as a buddy system.
Mallory Lee (40:00):
Wow. That is
Karen Kelly (40:02):
Neat.
Sharron Curran (40:03):
That's very neat. It's crazy. Wow.That's a big save for the
Karen Kelly (40:07):
Week. Nothing else is going to stack up to that right now.
Sharron Curran (40:10):
Top that. No, absolutely not. All right, Mel, do you have one?
Mallory Lee (40:14):
Yeah. I think this week, one thing that saved me was my gym, my workout class, which is called Shred 415. And I don't know where they all are, but we've got one here. They're in Chicago, some other places. And it's a fitness class and there's four segments. It's weights and it's treadmill and a lot of different things. But I'm getting into that time of the year where every once in a while I'm less excited to go. And you know how once you go, you just feel so, so amazing. And this week I just kind of really leaned into that. And there was one class in particular at the end where I was running really fast and I got that little hint of a runner's high. And I think that I've been milking that for a few days. I just felt so, so good from that.
(41:08):
So I think that kind of saved me.
Karen Kelly (41:12):
That's awesome. Everyone had runners. Yeah, I
Sharron Curran (41:14):
Think I've experienced a runners high potentially once and it was a few weeks ago too. I was like, I feel like- Say here, I'm
Mallory Lee (41:19):
Not a runner. I'm not a runner.
Sharron Curran (41:21):
I know. That really epic 5K that I ran a few weeks ago. It shouldn't have been so hard, but it was. Yeah. So I actually, this is like perfect timing because this is how this podcast works. It's like a Kismet experience every week. So I have a tradition that we call Girls Night that we have been running since 2020. My best friend Alex and I started this when, so he and I have been best friends since I was 14 and he was 16. And during COVID, his husband is a police officer. My husband is a union electrician, so both were working out of the house, constantly being exposed to COVID literally all the time. So the two of us kind of decided after six months or four months of not seeing anyone that we'd like pod up together because we didn't have kids yet. And so we were like, "Oh, we want to spend one night together every single week." And at the time it was Wednesday, Friendsday is what we called it.
(42:12):
And we watched the challenge on MTV every week and we got takeout and we just spent time together. That's it. It was not that deep and we never skipped. You never skip and there's no sorrys. It doesn't start at a specific time. It doesn't end at a specific time. It just happens. And this has now been running for six years. It has gone from Wednesday, Friendsday to Thursday Girls Day because of Alex's CrossFit schedule. If he's listening right now, he'll know that the classes were late on Wednesday. And it now encapsulates our best friend, Crystal, who lives in Boston, but at the time she was a school teacher, so it was super hard for her to get to us. But now she's back to being a school teacher, but she's in a better area, so sometimes she can make it. Her partner, Brad. And so we commit to seeing each other once a week every till we die, pretty much.
(43:00):
We said once a week every week. Love that. We have canceled it a few times over the last few years, but almost never. And we always replace it with another day in the week if we do cancel it or with a live FaceTime call. So we're still catching up, we're still connecting, right? And Crystal came over last night at 8:15, so the kids were melting down to go to bed. It was kind of a nightmare. She came in and we sat down, we played a board game. So tactile, looked each other in the eyes, played a life. Real life, talked about what was going on in our lives and just sat and were with each other for two hours. And I'm so grateful. I've also known Crystal since I was 15. So we've known each other through so many versions of ourselves. And it's like this thing where she walked into my house with my two little kids now.
(43:43):
When we first used to sit, we were those little kids when we met. And I think I've been feeling a lot of digital fatigue of my entire life exists in a 13-inch box or a set. How big are our phones? Six inches probably across phone and because that's where my work is. I work fully remote. It just is what it is and so much of my life is there. And it just felt so healing. And my nervous system, like you were saying, Mallory, was just so regulated by just getting to be with her and lose Azul to her like I always do. I almost beat her, but I always lose. What a healing experience that was. We make that commitment to one another as friends. Worth it. Yeah, exactly. And prioritize each other still. So yeah, Wednesday or Thursday Girls Day is my save this week.
Karen Kelly (44:33):
It's real. It's real healing power of connection. I love that you do it on a weekly basis. That's the key, right? It's like just keep-
Sharron Curran (44:40):
Commit.
Karen Kelly (44:41):
Yeah. Kit goals. I love it.
Sharron Curran (44:43):
No. Yeah. Very cool.
Mallory Lee (44:45):
Well, this has been so cool. Best story. Can't wait to hear more later. I'll probably be checking out your AI chief of staff for sure and comparing notes because got to do it. But this has been wonderful. Thank you for being here with us and we'll talk to you soon.
Karen Kelly (45:05):
Sounds great. Thanks so much for having me.
Sharron Curran (45:07):
Thanks for listening to Full Stack Moms.
Mallory Lee (45:09):
We'll be back with more episodes that help you see you're not crazy and you're not alone. If we might be your people, please make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Karen Kelly (45:19):
And so anyway-
Sharron Curran (45:20):
Can I bring my consistently needing to be breastfed child? Yeah. Talk about fucking something up.
Karen Kelly (45:27):
But
Sharron Curran (45:28):
It didn't work.
Karen Kelly (45:29):
For sure. For sure. It is that kind of place.