What Maternity Leave Taught Me About Delegation

Shachar Orren (00:00)
one of the reasons that we are still here today is our ability to change and shift and recognize when we’re becoming irrelevant and pivot, whether it’s a major pivot or just a slight shift and change.

when we started selling our video platform, it was the first time that every call, maybe not every call, but would say 80, 90 % of our calls with clients ended with a yes.

that felt different and that helped us identify that we’re on the right track.

Kevin Rice (00:32)
Welcome back to CEOs and ABCs. My guest today is Shachar Orren co-founder and chief revenue officer of EX.CO a really interesting startup in the media and technology space. She was also recently recognized as working mother of the year by She Runs It. Shachar started her career as a journalist in Israel, then moved to New York to build something bigger where she co-founded EX.CO. In this episode, we get into what it really takes from you personally and emotionally to build a company from the ground up.

the sacrifices and trade-offs, and then how life changes when you start a family. This is a conversation about pivots and reinventions and making life decisions on your own time.

Shachar Orren (01:10)
a great manager,

is one that their team can really work well without them.

you don’t want to be that manager that once they’re gone, everything falls apart. It’s maybe a great ego boost, but it’s not a healthy situation for anyone.

I’m becoming irrelevant in my own company. I have no idea what’s going on. I am not part of all these conversations with new types of customers and how can I ever catch up?

Kevin Rice (01:48)
thank you so much for joining me today.

Shachar Orren (01:50)
Thank you, Kevin, for inviting me.

Kevin Rice (01:52)
I’m excited to have this conversation. I wanted to start with something very recent that I just wanted to celebrate and recognize you for, which was that you recently were recognized by, She Runs It as Working Mother of the Year, which is just amazing. So congratulations.

Shachar Orren (02:08)
Thank you. My son is 18 months old, so I kept saying I felt like an intern getting some recognition for their work while I’m just getting started. But I was incredibly humbled and excited to get the award.

Kevin Rice (02:24)
Well, your path to having a family wasn’t necessarily traditional or linear. You were largely focused on your startup and your career for much of your adult life. And then later you chose to have a family. So before we dive into your career, tell us about this award and kind of what this recognition brought up for you emotionally.

Shachar Orren (02:42)
was actually at a very interesting time that this came through. So as I mentioned, you know, my initial reaction was…

Whoa, I, you it’s too soon. I have no idea what I’m doing. Honestly, I feel like I’m going to feel that in 10 years also, but you know, only being like a little over a year into motherhood, I felt, incredibly humbled as I said, but really that I wish I could feel that I can be an inspiration to others and I hope to be that. But what was also interesting is that to

to the recognition, had to travel to New York and it was during a pretty difficult time. So I’m kind of splitting my time between New York and Tel Aviv, mostly in Tel Aviv over the last few years. it was the time that I had to travel to receive this honor was a very kind of turbulent time in Israel, a war with Iran

about to break and I knew traveling that I might not be able to return on the dates, I tried to make my business travel as short as possible since I became a mother, to spend as much time at home and I knew that that could be compromised by, what’s going on.

⁓ and so I was traveling to receive this award. I was all dressed up. Everyone else had their children there and their partners there. And I was alone and my son and my husband and my husband’s daughter were all, far away. And I knew that there’s a chance that I’m not going to be able to return to them as I planned. And so it really, I think embodied all of that.

dilemma of you know work versus personal life. Luckily I made it back and the attack started the day after I landed so it was like right at the very last minute.

Kevin Rice (04:45)
Wow.

Yeah, that’s a lot of uncertainty to have to navigate, which is, yeah, like you said, very apropos for the analogy of, of career and family life. You never know what you’re going to get. It’s every age kind of has its own things to celebrate and its own challenges. Your son being 18 months, he’s probably running around, starting to babble and he wants to communicate. And at least my son is, so have a two year old and he can understand everything we say.

but he has a really hard time, he can’t communicate back. And so it gets very frustrating. And so he’s kind of at that age where he wants to be able to talk back, but he can’t. you know, every age is different and it all has its own challenges and ups and downs.

Shachar Orren (05:31)
I think frustration is a big theme though in these ages.

Kevin Rice (05:34)
Yeah. Well, before you became a mother, you did spend a lot of time, ⁓ like a decade kind of growing something else, very significant. you joined EX.CO when it was just six people and you spent years putting, your personal life on hold, trying to find the business model, pivoting the company, rebuilding the product, and just kind of carrying that emotional weight of a startup. did EX.CO in some ways kind of feel like your first child?

Shachar Orren (06:00)
It does, in a way, even still today, feel like my first born in many ways because you…

grow something from nothing. You put all your thought and effort and intention into it. And it really takes up so much of my attention and my caring. I think for many years it did feel like if I’m doing that and building my career, then maybe I don’t have room for many other things like having children. And it’s definitely a trade-off.

there would have been benefits to having children earlier, but I think it wasn’t a mistake, it was something that allowed me to build my career and to really give

the company and my team and my career growth, the time that it needed to grow and reach a stage, our company is almost 13 years old. It’s now at an age where it still, needs a lot of attention, but it’s not like a newborn. And so I felt that it got to an age where it was able to, be self-sustaining that I can allow myself to have

a child of my own that needs a lot more of my attention since, he’s much younger.

And obviously it’s still hard. People always say, work life balance. I’m terrible at balancing. I have no boundaries. I always tell my team, don’t learn anything from me. Don’t copy what I do. But I feel that it did allow me to reach motherhood at a point in time where I was more confident in my career, in what I can bring to the table, in what I know to do.

didn’t feel what a lot of women feel that I could lose my job going into maternity leave and back. And I believe it allowed me to enjoy, and still allows me to enjoy motherhood a lot more because there’s less fear that it could hurt other areas of my life.

Kevin Rice (08:11)
Yeah, you’re little bit more established and with that comes the confidence. did you consciously recognize the sacrifices you were making personally while you were building the business or was this something that was kind of an afterthought that you realized later when you were kind of midway through?

Shachar Orren (08:26)
I feel like the sacrifices were…

reminded to me by a lot of people around me, I feel like in my late twenties, early thirties, I was working nights and weekends and spending a lot of time and building the company, building my career while a lot of the people around me were also, building careers, but maybe not as, obsessed in it as I was and

I felt like I was different. I couldn’t party late or, stay out doing a lot of things that people my age were doing. And there was some criticism around that, that obviously they wanted what’s best for me.

But it was like, why are you doing this? should be focusing more on yourself. I do think that that’s very good advice, but I also feel that those were years where, I shaped my career that I’m never gonna get to do again. And I think today

Spending a lot of time in your career when you’re young gets a bad rep, I feel. And it definitely has its downsides, but it also gave me the career I have today. And again, the opportunity to be a mother when I was ready for it and to have a family when I felt like I’m not missing out on anything else.

Kevin Rice (09:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think the narrative kind of commentary on hustle culture, then anti-hustle culture has kind of flip-flopped. And for me, I put 110 % of my energy into building my company. I don’t think that had me and my co-founder, Jesse, who also did the same, I mean, he poured a lot of himself into the company. I don’t think it would have been successful without that kind of commitment and dedication.

And so, when you’re an executive or you’re a founder in a company, it takes so much. Nine to five isn’t going to cut it. So, I look back and I don’t have regrets. mean, I certainly think I would have done some things differently because I did have a younger kid and then eventually had my second son while I was still, kind of growing Hathway before it was acquired. And yeah, I think, I.

wouldn’t have not worked as hard, but I probably would have tried to be more intentional and present in the moments that I did have with my family. Because yeah, I wouldn’t be in the place I am today career-wise or financially had I not put in all of that effort into building the business.

Shachar Orren (11:09)
Yeah, I think having a family also forces you to think about being intentional and what really matters and what isn’t worth your time. And when you don’t have children…

you don’t have a good enough excuse to do that. you know, relationship and friends are great excuses, but it’s not the same as having a child that’s fully dependent on you. And all of a sudden you’re like, why am I taking this 9 p.m. call? I should be doing something else. So

That I think is a trade-off that, had I had a family earlier, I may have been more intentional with my time. However, getting to that now, I feel more confident. I’m also faster at doing a lot of things. And so I’m able to free up that time to be, more intentional, as you said.

Kevin Rice (11:59)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I love startup stories. So tell us about some of the early days. what was actually outside of the office? what was your personal life like in those early years? How were you developing your leadership skills? back when it was six people.

Shachar Orren (12:16)
So I feel like my journey into founding a company was not a traditional journey, maybe similar to my journey into being a parent. I was a journalist for…

almost a decade, so fully on the editorial side covering entertainment, culture, music, books, movies, having a lot of fun, realized I am too ambitious to stay in an industry that was shrinking and wasn’t really offering me much in terms of growth, and met with two founders who…

started a company that was building technologies for publishers, so helping the companies that I used to work for, and I joined as part of a founding team of six people, as you mentioned, and we did that for six years.

Then the founder CEO decided to leave the company and his co-founder, now my co-founder Tom and I basically rebuilt the company on the base of that original team and idea, but took it to a very different place. Today we are a video platform helping still publishers and CTV companies to grow their business, but from the advertising side and the revenue

side of things, while earlier it was more focused on editorial solutions and so on.

And so my journey into it was a little bit different and it really forced me to think about these things differently. So first of all, entering a tech company with no experience in tech, people were telling me things and asking me things and I had to Google everything because I had no idea what anyone was saying to me. But really sacrificing a lot of my plan.

my personal time to build something that we all were incredibly excited about and it really felt this is a biggest cliche but a roller coaster of emotions you know one day you’re it honestly it still feels that way even 12 13 years in There is a week where everything goes great all the clients say yes everything you know revenue is up We’re meeting our goals and then the next week. I already know now that something is gonna Go crazy

mess up and so I think that roller coaster really you know you get addicted to it it’s it’s exciting and and that’s what I fell in love with and it really especially in the early days it meant

giving up a lot of other things and being ready to get a phone call from anyone from the team, staying late even if I’m not needed because the rest of the team is working late on something, they’re releasing a new feature and I’m not the technical person, I can’t help, but morally I wanna be there with them.

Kevin Rice (15:19)
Yeah.

Shachar Orren (15:20)
It really built the foundations of our company today. we have 115, I think, now employees. We really are not the classic startup anymore, but we really try to keep and maintain that culture because it really kept a strong energy going.

Kevin Rice (15:43)
Yeah. Yeah. I like the anecdote you shared about just being on the calls, even though you can’t participate in a release or something. I used to do that. If we’d have a big client launch happening, we typically do them late at night. And so I’d be on it like midnight and there was nothing I could do to help, right. Other than be there and provide emotional support and show the team that like, if you guys are going to be up at midnight, pushing a release, I’m going to be here with you, even though I can have nothing to contribute other than

maybe I’ll order you a pizza or something.

Shachar Orren (16:13)
Exactly, the pizza or cutting a salad if know, trying to healthy.

Kevin Rice (16:15)
Yeah.

So when you joined the company, you were almost like a resident customer in house, right? Cause you came from the industry that the company was serving.

what was it that allowed you to make that transition? was it difficult for you? Was there something that you did differently once you made the move from being a journalist to moving into a company that provided

products for journalists.

Shachar Orren (16:44)
was very difficult and I think what was hardest for me was not being the smartest person in most rooms for a lot of the time. Being on the editorial side, I always wanted to be writing. I was writing about things that I was passionate about since I was a very young child. I felt really in my comfort zone.

and then coming into tech

I knew nothing. the people who build the products are obviously more knowledgeable about everything versus me who was coming to, as you said, represent our potential customer. And my role then was to create content on that platform so that our potential

potential customers will see what that could be like. And so it really felt like the adults were doing important things and I was just writing quizzes and fun.

But eventually that’s a lot of what helped us grow and get attention and get our first round of investment. Because our content became very, very popular. But it was a very difficult transition. throughout my first few years in the tech industry, I felt almost like it was my

mission to help more people who want to leave the media industry and enter the tech industry. And I saw that for many of them, that transition was almost impossible because it’s like learning a new language.

Kevin Rice (18:17)
Yeah, well, it sounds like that kind of mission to help other journalists probably was a big part of what gave you fuel for your ambition. Because it’s one thing to be driven to hit revenue targets and growth targets, but it’s another if you feel like you are changing the lives of other people. That gets you out of bed in the morning. That allows you to really push yourself.

Shachar Orren (18:40)
It’s so true. It has to be about the people and more than that, it has to be about something that matters and money can’t be just that one thing.

And I think today, with content becoming something that machines produce and machines read, no human is involved anymore.

Publishers matter, companies that create content matter. It’s that last shred of what truth, if truth still exists, it’s there and it’s about that excellence in storytelling. we partner with a lot of local media, local journalism in the US and globally.

Kevin Rice (19:14)
Yeah.

Shachar Orren (19:27)
That type of journalism is not award-winning New York Times cover stories, but it’s what changes the lives of many people when they wake up in the morning and the first thing they read, and that matters. And to be able to help businesses like that grow and stay independent and stay alive in a reality that’s really making media companies’ lives difficult.

Kevin Rice (19:41)
Yeah.

Shachar Orren (19:53)
That’s really what drives us.

Kevin Rice (19:55)
Yeah.

today you guys are attached to clients revenue. And I know that’s a big part of how you’ve been able to grow the company But there was a time where you were a product in search of a problem, right? You didn’t have market validation. when you hadn’t found the business model

to actually grow the business. How did you keep moving forward?

Shachar Orren (20:17)
we just did so many things. To be fair, I think

one of the reasons that we are still here today is our ability to change and shift and recognize when we’re becoming irrelevant and pivot, whether it’s a major pivot or just a slight shift and change.

And even in the last six years where we’ve already found our identity and video being the focus and revenue being the focus,

There still are little shifts that happen constantly. But until we got to that point, product market fit wasn’t there. And initially, we had launched this interactive content platform. This was when I just joined,

It’s interesting because it was a free platform and it was used by thousands of different creators. So definitely there was something there that was relevant and was interesting to the client base that we were after, but it was free. as our attempts to find a business model that made sense is where we were struggling. And we tried a lot of different things.

And what’s interesting is none of them failed. They just weren’t

the true product market fit and scale that we were looking for. We had to be very, very honest with ourselves to say that’s still not it.

Kevin Rice (21:40)
Yeah, we had a period in our company where I think we were, we did about 8 million in revenue. So we had a solid, still small business, but it was foundational that we could build on. But it was at a time where SaaS was everything and SaaS was getting 25 times revenue valuations and everybody in our organization wanted to stop doing client work and pivot into a SaaS business. And.

It was like, we have something that we can build on here. And it felt like there was just so much chatter and kind of like momentum around the organization to completely change our business model. And it was like, this would be a fundamental change for us to build a product. It would require a different business model, it require funding. ⁓ thankfully we had a kind of board of advisors, right? And in an advisory meeting, the board was like,

guys, why are you even considering this? You’re at 8 million in revenue, stay the course, you’ll be at, twice that in two years, and you’ll have something that is marketable and you can sell for, you know, a really substantial amount. So thankfully they talk some sense into us. But when you were looking at some of those periods of, okay, do we completely transform? Do we make a small adjustment?

Like what was your criteria or what were some of the examples where you said, okay, we’re just going to make a small adjustment here, or in this case, we’re going to make a big transformation.

Shachar Orren (23:11)
You know, I think there was a lot of small adjustments, but sometimes you make three small adjustments and then you realize you’re already at a big transformation because, you you took a few turns and that feels very different than where you were before. so the first six years, we were very focused on those interactive experiences and, interactive platform for publishers and the big change

was then where, Tom, my co-founder and I, we renamed the company. The company had a new identity, new brand and

we started going into the video and the revenue side. And it’s funny, I’m telling it now, it’s like 2020 hindsight. We didn’t know and knowingly do, and make all of these steps. But eventually looking back, that there was a realization there that,

that was the biggest change and shift.

And then

when we started selling our video platform, it was the first time that every call, maybe not every call, but would say 80, 90 % of our calls with clients ended with a yes. And then there’s competitors and there’s other priorities and there’s challenges, but that didn’t happen to us before.

And that felt different and that helped us identify that we’re on the right track.

And then we need to let go of other tracks that we were exploring, which also was difficult, is focusing and giving up things that we also believed in, that we had spent a lot of time and effort into, and making a decision, choosing one path.

Kevin Rice (24:57)
we had that moment

when we were turning down new clients in say like financial services, because we wanted to only focus on the restaurant industry. so it’s just, it’s a matter of like, there are times where you make small pivots. There are times where you make big changes. And then there are some times where you just got to stay the course because

It’s easy to get caught up in startup pivot culture, right? If something isn’t working, we’re just going to pivot. We didn’t fail. just learned and pivoted, fail fast, you know, all of that kind of jargon. so sometimes you got to actually just stay the course.

Shachar Orren (25:29)
That’s the hardest thing. always say it’s the first few years of a startup are very sexy. know, it’s like, it’s the legend, the origin story. Everybody talks about that. But then you grow up and it’s like being a teenager. Like it doesn’t look good to anyone, but it’s to your point, like staying the course. It’s not letting trends, you know, whether it be SaaS or well now AI, probably not a trend and something we do all need to know.

Kevin Rice (25:40)
Yeah.

agentic everything.

Shachar Orren (25:58)
Exactly, we’re 100 % on it. But not letting every trend distract you and…

you know, building a strong company culture, investing in the things that in the early years you don’t have time for. nobody asks about that on a podcast interview, right? It’s like, it’s not the great stories, but it’s very, very important. And I think it’s where a lot of companies fail. It’s there’s less adrenaline there and you need to really be present and stay the course, as you said.

Kevin Rice (26:23)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, the things I like to ask on this podcast are more behind the scenes. So I’d love to hear about what was life like behind the scenes. Cause I know you got married, eventually you were divorced. you met your new husband, moved back to Tel Aviv, became a bonus mom and then had Max So as you were building this company to what it is today, what was life like behind the scenes?

Shachar Orren (26:52)
chaos in one word.

Kevin Rice (26:53)
I appreciate

the honesty.

Shachar Orren (26:58)
I was never one of those people that had a five-year plan. It’s similar to what I said, it’s easy to tell EX.CO’s story in hindsight and make it seem like everything was planned. I think in my personal life, it’s the same. I made every decision to what was right for me at that time. And honestly, looking back, I regret nothing. And there, were…

Definitely difficult moments and moments of sacrifice of my personal life and as I said chaos and not knowing what’s next But I think one thing that kept leading me was What do I actually want to do? What’s something that I’m passionate about?

both professionally and personally, where do I feel like I want to be and following that. And it led me to living in New York and then it led me back to Tel Aviv and it led me to my amazing modern family that I’m part of now. I’m really excited that I was able to do that, even though a lot of these choices were hard.

giving up life in New York, which was, it was a lot of fun and it was a lot of distractions. Distractions from having to deal with, the big questions of life and moving back home means dealing with a lot of these questions and I know my therapist says it’s a good idea for me, so hopefully she’s right.

Kevin Rice (28:14)
Sorry.

Yeah, I New York professionals are a different breed. I used to go out to work with clients in New York and they would stay out till two in the morning and they’d be back at work at 9 a.m. And I just could never I could never hang I was always back at the hotel by 10 o’clock ready for bed

Shachar Orren (28:49)
Well, some of my colleagues and I, have a saying that no good business happen after 10 p.m. So, go to all these conferences. We have a big conference in Cannes, in France next month. There’s a lot of parties that are happening until very late. I’m in bed at 10, no business happens after 10, or maybe to other people, not to me.

Kevin Rice (28:56)
Sure.

nice.

Yeah.

Sure. Yeah. For me, that way I can get up in the morning, go to the gym and I ended up like connecting with interesting people at the gym who are also attending the conference. so during the course of my career, I also, I was married. I had my first son and I eventually, had my second son and then I went through a divorce and that was a really difficult period because it was a, I guess what you would call like a high conflict divorce. ⁓

And I tried to really keep that private during that time. And I’d show up to work with energy and enthusiasm, even though inside in reality, I was really running on fumes and I was struggling. How did you navigate showing up and putting a face on at work when you were going through your own, changes in your personal life and family?

Shachar Orren (30:01)
You’re reminding me of a specific moment that I remember from that point in time where I was invited to speak to a group of professional women in New York City, that it was, a…

mentorship type of situation where they invite executives to speak about their success and their journey and their life and how they got to where they are. And I spoke to them for probably over an hour, but I was going through my divorce separation at that point. And so I did not speak about my personal life at all

because some of these people knew me personally and it was too early and I just preferred to put that aside and after that ended, I heard that some of the people who were there asked, why does she not talk about her personal life? It almost felt like a betrayal as a woman to talk about your career but not talk about anything related to the price that you pay in your personal life when you have such a career.

And it hurt because I wasn’t talking about my personal life because it was a very tough moment in which I paid the price of, partly having a career wasn’t obviously just that. So it was definitely a time where…

I’m a person that likes to be very open. I prefer that everyone know everything about me. I don’t like to hide anything. But obviously this was a time where I couldn’t fully practice what I preach and be so open. And that I think was very, very hard for me. As you said, experiencing something so major in my life and not being able to talk about it with everyone that…

is around me. Yeah.

Kevin Rice (31:57)
Yeah. I kind

of fell into kind of like a coping mechanism where I describe it as being in robot mode. It’s kind of how you disconnect from your feelings. You disconnect from yourself and your emotions, and then you just power forward, focus on being productive, showing up, putting a happy face on. And that ended up serving me well during that period because our company was doubling in size. We were getting ready for exit.

And I just felt like if I actually try to feel into these emotions right now, I’m going to collapse and there’s no way I’m going to be able to take care of my responsibilities, raising two young kids, growing this business. But that costs me a lot because when you disconnect from yourself, you miss a lot. You, you miss a lot of experiences. And for me, I was missing the relationship with my kids because I just wasn’t present for them. And so like you,

Now I’m much more open, but at the time I wasn’t really sharing what was happening in my personal life. ⁓ but that’s how I dealt with it and I wouldn’t recommend it for other people. I’d recommend a healthier approach today.

Shachar Orren (33:08)
Yeah, I’m a big believer

in vulnerability, in leadership and in many areas of life. And I think being vulnerable is also being able to say, I am going through something really difficult. I’m not my best self right now. Obviously, you still, for my team, for the people who count on me every day, I’m not going to break down and give them the feeling that they don’t have someone that has their back.

So not, you know, going to that extreme, but I find that sharing with them, this is a really difficult few months. ⁓

actually makes us closer, gives them context as to why I’m behaving a certain way. And I’m a big believer in that. And I hope that I practice that all the time, specifically in that period of my life. It was more challenging and that was hard for me.

Kevin Rice (34:24)
So when you first had your son, I think you mentioned to me you were able to take about four months of maternity leave. What was taking time off to focus on being a new mother like for you?

Shachar Orren (34:36)
It was very challenging for me because the last thing I knew how to do was take time off. It’s, as I said, I’m terrible with balance and boundaries. And I think we spoke about this for me when I take vacation, it means an hour or two in the morning where I catch up on emails and Slack because only then can I relax. And all of a sudden.

I have to take time away because I now have a newborn that’s fully dependent on me and my husband was with me for the first few weeks but then he had to return to work and now it’s 10, sometimes more hours alone with a newborn who doesn’t love to sleep, by the way.

And it forced me to do something that I was never really forced to do before. And this all happened at a time where we were launching kind of this new expansion of our business And I felt like I was missing out on something that was pivotal for the company.

there were moments where, it’s also the hormones of, postpartum and so on. I’m like,

I’m becoming irrelevant in my own company. I have no idea what’s going on. I am not part of all these conversations with new types of customers and how can I ever catch up?

sometimes I would take…

like three or four days vacation and when I come back it feels like a different company. and obviously I stayed in touch and I found myself working I would say between an hour to three hours a day depending on the day and that was good for me because it kept me, in the loop as much as I could and it kept my brain active and not just, you know, with diapers and bottles all day.

But it’s not the same. It’s not like being in the office. It’s not like being in front of the clients like I’m used to. And it was difficult to return from that and to catch up on so much that I missed while I’m still not sleeping, recovering still physically and mentally.

had a lot of employees take maternity leave, through my career and I felt like I finally, I could understand what they were going through, but now I really could understand what they were going through. It also can really hurt your confidence and your belief in yourself and what you bring to the table. And it takes a couple of months to recover that.

Kevin Rice (37:11)
Yeah. I think after becoming a father, I was much more compassionate because I remember times in the early days where I was still pretty immature as a leader. It’d be like, okay, another person’s out on paternity leave. another person’s out on paternity leave and be like, gosh, this is so frustrating because now we got to find somebody to fill a role for three months. We can’t hire a full-time person because then we couldn’t keep them on. But how do we find somebody it’s going to take a month to spin up? And, know, I would just get frustrated. Now I have so much more compassion

Shachar Orren (37:38)
Yeah.

And it’s still hard. mean, in a startup, there’s no extra people. know, if you’re doing your job and you’re gone, there’s no other people that can just easily cover for you. So it’s still hard, but it’s also very necessary. And I always try to keep us at a situation where people can leave and we’ll still be fine.

Kevin Rice (38:03)
Yeah. Well, but by taking time off, it probably forced you to think a little bit differently about your role and how you delegate. Cause the company continued without you. Maybe you were checking emails, responding to some Slack messages, but largely the company continued. And did that kind of help you rethink how you were leading and delegating when you did come back?

Shachar Orren (38:27)
It definitely…

led me to think of all the things that I was spending time on that are unnecessary and clean my calendar a little bit. A lot of the kind of long-standing meetings and weeklies and things that I asked myself, are they really necessary? Everything happened without them. So do we really need them? Someone at some point in my career gave me the advice or, kind of the understanding that,

a great manager,

is one that their team can really work well without them. And I believe in that. I feel like the fact that my team and in general, the operations and the company were able to move forward even if I was away is a testament that we’re doing something right.

because you don’t want to be that manager that once they’re gone, everything falls apart. It’s maybe a great ego boost, but it’s not a healthy situation for anyone.

Kevin Rice (39:30)
Sure, sure. think any parental leave is a really nice kind of audit of your role as an executive. you can kind of see, okay, what are the things that really only I can do? And what are the things that everybody else can do? And what probably never needed to be done in the first place? So it’s kind of a nice, time to reflect and you come back and you’re like, okay, I see how things.

work without me. I see what I need to be focused on. And obviously everybody should be taking it because you never get that time back with your kids. fully hope everybody’s able to take enough time off as they’re starting their families.

after becoming a mother, did you notice that you carried yourself differently, whether it’s outside of the home or in the workplace? how did that change who you are or who you have become as a woman?

Shachar Orren (40:20)
It definitely changed the topics of conversation. It’s a, there’s a little joke here at the company that at lunch, there’s like the, the mom’s table. And it’s funny, we call it the placenta club. It’s just, it’s a name that someone here gave, gave this group. And

We talk about the things that we’re very passionate about and one of them obviously being our children.

So I think it definitely changed me in many ways, but also I was really relieved that it didn’t change me in other ways because I heard from a lot of women that becoming a mother, and men too obviously, becoming a parent changes you and a lot of the things you cared about you no longer do it. I think that scared me a little bit.

because I had my first son at 40. I had spent many years building who I am and I didn’t want to say goodbye to, a big part of that. And so I was happy that I still love reading books and I still find time for that and I still love working and I still, care about my career and these fundamental aspects of me didn’t change.

I think something very special was added to them is that, I created this incredible, to use the tech terms, but it’s a product that has new features every single day. It’s incredible, it’s exciting, and every day I’m at awe with…

this creation that I somehow contributed to his existence in this world. So I think that new things were added versus maybe changed to things that existed before.

Kevin Rice (42:18)
Yeah, biologically, I wouldn’t be able to join your placenta club, but I think from a topic of conversation, I’d fit right in.

Shachar Orren (42:21)
Thank you.

Everyone, men

and women are welcome.

Kevin Rice (42:29)
so you met your husband and he already had a daughter and so you became a bonus mom, which I celebrate. and then you had your son. what was life like as you were kind of creating this modern family?

Shachar Orren (42:44)
No, it’s interesting. always say it’s really hard to define what it is. stepmom sounds like a Disney villain. Definitely not a good term. Bonus mom I love. But then also I’m like, she has a mom. She has a dad and she has a mom and I’m neither, you know? So I feel like even the terminology is challenging me kind of around that. But I think that for me was…

kind of my first step into being someone’s, not parent, because I’m not her parent, but having a family maybe is the best way to describe it, is to really be part of a family that I was lucky that they chose me to be accepted into it and I chose them and moved across the ocean to be with them.

I didn’t have a child of my own then.

but I was already part of a family and it really helped me realize the great moments, the hard moments, when I had Max, I feel like it was less of a shock for me because I had already been, my life was already revolving around family and around having someone who was the biggest priority in the room. And so I feel like it

really taught me a lot and it’s it’s it’s really it’s it’s interesting because I feel like with Max I have a lot of things that I do operating from my instincts you know I’m his mom and I know what’s the right thing to do in many moments many moments I also don’t but there are moments where I feel like I know the right thing for him and with Nessa my husband’s daughter it’s more logical I need to think

about how to operate or how to react and it really forces me to think about what do I believe in? What do I think is right?

That challenges me every day and I am incredibly grateful for that because again, it’s like you don’t get a lot of moments as a parent that you stop and think, wait, what do I actually think is the right move? it’s really interesting because again, it’s not about biology. It’s not because he’s my biological son. It’s because I’m not a parent in this situation. I am…

I say like she has a mom and she has a dad and she has Shachar. That’s what I am. I don’t know what that is. We need to find exactly.

Kevin Rice (45:23)
We need a better terminology for this.

I can relate though, because parenting doesn’t and didn’t come naturally for me. It wasn’t something that intuitively I knew how to handle situations. And I look at my now partner and the way she cares for our two-year-old and it’s very intuitive for her. It just comes naturally and it’s beautiful to watch. For me, I’m very logical.

And I spend a lot of time, I mean, I’ve written an entire book on how I think about translating career into family life, because for me, it takes a lot more conscious forethought. It’s not thought in the moment, it’s preparation. It’s like, okay, I know this morning getting ready for school is gonna be difficult.

So what am I going to do to make this a little bit smoother today? And I’ve got like my, checklist that I’ve written from different journals because I’m like consciously trying to figure out how can I be a better parent? Cause it doesn’t come very naturally for me. Um, but for some people it does. And that’s amazing. It didn’t for me.

Shachar Orren (46:29)
think it’s a combination. Honestly, some parts come naturally and some really don’t. And it’s navigating those. But I think now, every time I open Instagram, I’m targeted with like 95 videos about being a toddler mom and, you know, and what to feed them and when to put them to bed and so on. there’s a lot of learning that happens passively somehow.

Kevin Rice (46:56)
That’s funny, my Instagram feed right now is nothing but gardening, raised flower planter beds and bees because we got ⁓ some beehives. And it’s interesting how much you can tell about a person based on their Instagram feed. Cause right now, clearly I’m a gardener and a bee farmer.

Shachar Orren (47:00)
Yes.

Thank you.

Mine is children and matcha. That’s my Instagram feed. So what does that say about me? I don’t know.

Kevin Rice (47:17)
Yeah.

that you need a lot of caffeine because you have kids.

Shachar Orren (47:23)
Exactly.

Kevin Rice (47:27)
So for any man or woman, any professional who’s listening and is kind of deep into their career, building something they’re really passionate about and kind of wondering, is there room for family at this stage of my life? What would you tell them?

Shachar Orren (47:41)
I would tell them to wait for a moment where they feel like that room exists not in their schedule but in their heart, in their soul, in the openness to really wanting this and not doing it because of a ticking biological clock or because you’re married for a certain period of time or, you know, society says is the right moment to do something.

I will say one sentence that I would want to share. A very smart friend of mine shared it with me and I want to share it with anyone who is a parent or thinking about being a parent is obviously as a parent, especially a working parent, you need to make a lot of decisions that could come at somewhat the expense of your children, whether it be working late or traveling.

But if you’re confident that it’s worth your time and that it’s really…

something that you need to be doing, you can handle your children’s reaction to it, whether it be a tantrum or they miss you or not just your children’s reaction, by the way, but also society’s reaction to it. Family, friends, people around you who say, even to me, like, you only took four months of maternity leave. It’s a lot, but some people still said that to me.

But I was confident that I did the right thing and so I could handle hearing that criticism. And I thought that that was a really, really smart way to look at it.

Kevin Rice (49:20)
Yeah. Well, I also love what you said about, it’s not necessarily about availability in your schedule, but the capacity of your heart that’s ready to expand. Cause it really does expand as your family grows.

Kevin Rice (49:31)
Shachar, thank you so much for being with me today. I really appreciate the conversation and just your willingness to kind of speak honestly about all the uncertainty and everything that happens behind the scenes as you’re building a business, both professionally, but also personally. And again, congratulations on being recognized as Mother of the Year. That’s amazing award and very well-deserved.

Shachar Orren (49:54)
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It was a lovely conversation.