Friends with Benefits

Starting Over at the Peak of Your Career: A Roadmap for the Next Step with Branca Ballot

• Sam and Jason Yarborough • Season 3 • Episode 4

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Growth is about stopping long enough to ask what you really want.

This week, we’re talking with Branca Ballot, former head of marketing turned founder, writer, and community voice redefining what success looks like. You’ve probably seen her on LinkedIn talking about ambition, motherhood, and the messy middle, but this conversation goes deeper into the in-between moments that changed everything.

Branca opens up about what it took to walk away from a thriving career without a plan, how she learned to choose herself after years of putting work first, and the fear and freedom that came with not knowing what’s next. She shares what it was like to lose and then rebuild her sense of identity outside of a job title, how a family crisis reshaped her perspective on purpose, and why health and focus have become her new non-negotiables.

We dig into what it means to pause in a culture obsessed with productivity, the hidden cost of doing it all, and how she’s channeling those lessons into building a company designed to help busy women live with more balance, not burnout.

What you’ll learn:

  • How to navigate the messy middle when your identity is tied to your career
  • What it really takes to rebuild purpose and confidence after walking away from stability
  • How to find clarity through stillness, reflection, and honest conversations


Jump into the conversation:

(00:00) Introduction

(00:43) Branca’s story of reinvention

(03:15) Leaving a high-growth startup and confronting the fear of the unknown

(07:04) The emotional and financial challenges of stepping away from security

(09:20) Redefining identity and self-worth beyond career titles

(14:17) The “messy middle” rediscovering purpose and clarity

(23:28) The inspiration behind building a company for busy women

(41:11) How AI empowers non-technical founders to create and learn

(47:52) What Branca refuses to sacrifice again: health and balance


Connect with Branca Ballot: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brancaballot/ 

Join the waitlist for Branca's New Application: https://kynn.app/

Winner of Loveable's SheBuilds Hackathon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khillcontag/


Check out Arcadia: https://www.BeArcadia.com  

Connect with Sam Yarborough: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-yarborough/ 

Connect with Jason Yarborough: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yarby/ 


Produced in partnership with Share Your Genius

https://www.shareyourgenius.com 

[00:00:00] Branca Ballot: I identify as someone who doesn't quit. I stick around, I make it work, and so quitting is very hard for me. What if this is not quitting? What if this is just like choosing you. You're choosing to figure out what you want to do, not putting the company first. And then I was like, can I?

[00:00:43] Sam Yarborough: Okay, so today's guest is one of those people who found herself at a crossroads, the messy middle as we talk about. Yep. And she took a moment to say, wait, what do I actually want? And I feel like a lot of us just blow right by those. 

[00:00:57] Jason Yarborough: I'm always inspired by those that like actually take a moment and stop and do that.

[00:01:02] Jason Yarborough: I mean, we're kind of at some extent doing that herself, but she just took a hard stop, took a hard turn, and was like, you know what? This is not what I want, so I'm gonna go do what I want. 

[00:01:11] Sam Yarborough: Yeah. But she just, she didn't know what she wanted, which I think is the most important part of this conversation. She had it all, a successful job, great title, and then she just left and she wasn't sure what was next.

[00:01:21] Jason Yarborough: Yeah. I think the cool part of that story is that she actually found what she wanted, like found her voice. Founder, community founder, people, you know, eventually found the next big thing and now she's launching her own thing, 

[00:01:31] Sam Yarborough: which is so awesome. Today's guest, if you've seen the thumbnail, is Branca Ballot.

[00:01:36] Sam Yarborough: She, is really an excellent follow on LinkedIn. She talks about ambition, motherhood, letting go of the need to do more, but redefining what success looks like on her terms. So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, friends, family, Branca Ballot.

[00:01:53] Sam Yarborough: friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Friends With Benefits Podcast. today's episode is gonna be such a fun conversation. I can already tell. we have somebody who is just on a wild trajectory, who has built what most of us would consider, the utmost successful career and decided to move on to something new.

[00:02:14] Sam Yarborough: so I'm really excited to dive into this conversation and talk about all of the unspoken about things that come along with that. As she has so generously shared on LinkedIn. So Bronco, welcome to the show. We're so grateful

[00:02:27] Branca Ballot: No thanks for having me.

[00:02:29] Jason Yarborough: Yeah, looking forward to the conversation. Got a chance to briefly before we started already some great, some great, uh, connections here. We both have six and four year olds, so

[00:02:39] Branca Ballot: Yeah,

[00:02:40] Jason Yarborough: a few parents who are just deep in the thick of it. Gonna have a great conversation about building today.

[00:02:44] Branca Ballot: yeah. Yeah. So excited.

[00:02:48] Sam Yarborough: you posted this post on LinkedIn, and I'm not kidding, no less than four people sent this post to me and I was not following you at the time, but they were like, who is this woman and how did she get into my brain? For people who don't follow you yet, they need to. But the premise of this post was four months ago, you left a big job, and you had nothing lined up. And this was the first time in your life that like the next point in your career wasn't super clear.

[00:03:15] Sam Yarborough: And you go on to say it's still isn't. and I feel like there's so many people in that moment right now, myself being one of them. But let's just start there. Give us kind of the history of what you left and. Why.

[00:03:28] Branca Ballot: I had a great job at a high. Growth startup. and I had worked really hard to build, a whole team. I love my team, I loved everything. but it was Christmas of, of this past year. I was just like, there's something that wasn't like clicking anymore. and I, I was head of marketing at that startup 

[00:03:47] Branca Ballot: but beyond the founder, the marketer needs to be the most excited person in the company.

[00:03:51] Branca Ballot: that's the order of excitement that it Sure goes. And I kind of like started finding myself, like not being the most excited person anymore. And I'm, I'm such an excited person that I usually talk the founder on the excitement and I started finding myself, like not being super excited about like some new product things or some new initiatives that we were doing.

[00:04:09] Branca Ballot: And I was like, that's so strange. 'cause that's not me. I, I am the excited person. maybe this has run its course for me. And it wasn't like any big deal, you know, like people are like, was it like a big drama? Was it like, I'm like, no. It was just like, I was feeling like it was the end of that term.

[00:04:26] Branca Ballot: And it was funny because, I work with a coach, she's incredible for a really long time now, I think. 15 over 15 years and on and off, not all the time. And so she knows me really well. and I was talking to her when I was kind of like having those questions and she was like, okay, so let's just talk about that.

[00:04:44] Branca Ballot: So you're not going to get fired because you do a great job. and so you can either die or quit otherwise, this is not.

[00:04:53] Sam Yarborough: To put it bluntly.

[00:04:55] Branca Ballot: The situation is not gonna change. And I had a lot, a really hard time like quitting because I, I identify as a someone who doesn't quit I stick around, I make it work.

[00:05:07] Branca Ballot: and so quitting is very hard for me. And so she said she's a very wise woman. Okay. So she said, what if this is not quitting? What if this is just like choosing you. You're choosing to figure out what you want to do, not putting the company first. And then I was like, can I,

[00:05:29] Sam Yarborough: Do I have permission?

[00:05:30] Branca Ballot: I was like, how do you do that? Like, and she was like, yes, and I, but I don't know what I wanna do after. And she's like, that's okay. That's part of the process. and I'm a process person also. And I was like. What is the process? 

[00:05:47] Sam Yarborough: Where's the roadmap? 

[00:05:49] Branca Ballot: she's like, well, there is no process. And I'm like, well, that's very scary.

[00:05:56] Jason Yarborough: work for me.

[00:05:57] Branca Ballot: No. And I was like, okay. So that's the story of quitting and, and going into the abyss of not knowing what it is. 

[00:06:08] Jason Yarborough: at what point did you give yourself permission to choose you? Because it sounds like, like you weren't, you weren't sure if you could do that, so like, do you have permission to do this? Can I do this? Like, at what point were you like, yeah, it's time to choose me?

[00:06:23] Jason Yarborough: Like what was that impetus?

[00:06:24] Branca Ballot: because there wasn't like something really big. It was like I had to make the decision and just roll with it. And I spoke with my partner and he's more conservative, you know, and like safer than I am, which is great. You need to have one of those in the couple.

[00:06:41] Branca Ballot: And he was like, but don't you wanna like, stay in the company and figure it out? Like, you worked so hard and you've built like this amazing team now that runs really well, you know, and you can kind of like, maybe take it easy. I don't wanna take it easy. If anything, I wanna go harder, you know?

[00:06:57] Branca Ballot: I wasn't gonna be able to truly figure out as long as I stayed where I was.

[00:07:04] Branca Ballot: it was probably one of the scariest things that I've done in my life.

[00:07:06] Jason Yarborough: the fact that you realize that you wouldn't be able to figure it out if you stayed where you were. I think a lot of people would just kind of, you know, hunker down, try to figure out state why they were in that position.

[00:07:18] Branca Ballot: Yeah.

[00:07:19] Jason Yarborough: it's secure, whatnot. But figuring out while you step out, I think is contrary to what most people believe. Especially someone who's process oriented.

[00:07:28] Branca Ballot: it is. But I will say, I think a lot of people just cannot afford to do that. you know, I have two kids. it doesn't come without like a, a personal cost, right? Financial cost. And most people cannot do that.

[00:07:41] Branca Ballot: And so I think when I actually wrote that post, I got a lot of messages. Like it, honestly, it was during, for weeks, I got messages from people and they were saying, I so wish I could take time off. I'm having to power through like a tough job or like a bad situation because I cannot afford to just go on my own and not knowing when I'm gonna find a new job, which is like super scary.

[00:08:05] Branca Ballot: it's scary on the emotional side, but also on the financial side.

[00:08:09] Sam Yarborough: I'm relating to this so much, I just did a similar thing. in my own head, I was the one that was like, maybe I can just stay in this role while I figure out what's next. But I think there's something even further about that. It's like, I'm projecting here, but I think that you have a similar tenacity you're driven by action.

[00:08:28] Sam Yarborough: You're driven by doing and by staying in a role where I wasn't motivated by that and wasn't doing that, that wasn't being true to who I was. Therefore I couldn't honor what I wanted to do next because I was acting, if that makes sense. that's an interesting point to put out about that decision making process as well. One thing I wanna ask you, 

[00:08:50] Sam Yarborough: I feel like in today's society, what we do, what our jobs are, especially when we come from larger roles like that, is often so tied to our identity. how has that played out for you? Like for instance, over the last, I don't know, three months, it's been really interesting for me to walk in rooms and people say, what do you do? It's a lot harder for me to say I'm starting my own company than I'm the chief growth officer of this company. Like the identity in that is. Talk about that. Has that been a journey for you?

[00:09:20] Branca Ballot: I'm gonna tell you like the whole, all the phases of that for me. So I quit and then I had this one week of bliss that I, I would tell everyone I quit my job, I quit my job, I'm unemployed. I'm like, it was one week. Okay, it was one week. And then I remember the Sunday, at the end of that first week of Bliss, I freaked out because I was like, what?

[00:09:44] Branca Ballot: My partner is going to work tomorrow. My kids are going to school. What am I going to do?

[00:09:51] Branca Ballot: And then I, I freaked out and I was like, I don't know. And then I entered the phase where I call, like people would say, what are you doing? I, I was okay saying, I am not working. But then they would say, what do you wanna do next?

[00:10:06] Branca Ballot: And then my heart would like drop and I would just, like, everything would go blank. And I'm like, I don't know. And that was like, so scary. And I think that was like, probably like a month or two of like this, I don't know. And like my heart would like just stop. so it was very hard. And so to your point, the identity shift from you not having a big job.

[00:10:28] Branca Ballot: I started working when I was 13. I've had big jobs since I graduated, like really big, busy jobs and it was kind of like part of my identity. So not having that, I felt like less. I felt like I'm not worthy. I'm not enough. I'm not contributing to society, so it was very hard.

[00:10:48] Jason Yarborough: going back to figuring it all out. I want to get into that piece just a bit more. You've written a little bit about like the messy metal, right? That liminal space between who you were and, and who you were becoming. what was that season like for you?

[00:11:05] Branca Ballot: it was very hard. I think it was one to two months of like really, really hard not knowing what I was gonna do. and so I kept hearing people saying, it's a process. You'll just figure it out. I, I am a very bad person to just like, think on my own. Like, I like to talk to people like, you know, I think, but I like to talk to people.

[00:11:25] Branca Ballot: And so what I did in that time is I one reconnected with a bunch of friends. I reconnected with a bunch of people I had worked with. and I started like testing different paths for myself. Like so, so some people were like, you should absolutely become like a fractional executive. Like, you are gonna make more money, you're gonna work less, it's gonna be amazing.

[00:11:45] Branca Ballot: Just go. And then I went and I spoke with like five fractional people and then some were like, it's amazing. Some were like, it's not all roses. Some were like, I love the flexibility. then I went and talked to other people. They were like advising people, and then I started talking to different CEOs that were looking for someone.

[00:12:03] Branca Ballot: and so my process was a lot by like talking to people. And what, what it felt really frustrating to me is like I would go down a little path, like testing a hypothesis and I'm like, yeah, I don't wanna do this. I don't wanna do this, I don't wanna do this. And by the time I was like, at the third thing, I don't wanna do this.

[00:12:18] Branca Ballot: I was like, what is wrong with me? Like, why don't I wanna do anything? why am I not getting excited about anything? And that was another scary point, you know, it was like the, I don't know what I wanna do and I keep seeing all these great options. and for some reason they don't, they don't excite me.

[00:12:37] Branca Ballot: So that was an another second tough point. I then started getting like, okay, I gotta gotta figure something out. I gotta figure something out. But I did say, I had committed actually to not working for three months. So when I quit, so my partner actually told me when I quit and he said, okay, you quit.

[00:12:53] Branca Ballot: But like, can you commit to like not working for a little bit? I said, I'm gonna do something better. I'm not gonna work until September. and he was like, I cannot believe. And I'm like, not paid work.

[00:13:08] Branca Ballot: I'm like, not paid work. Let's clarify. 

[00:13:10] Jason Yarborough: two month mark. I mean, that's, that's still pretty quick. I feel like a lot of people sit in that messy middle, which I love the way you, it does that, that middle gray area is kind of messy. It feels very messy mentally.

[00:13:21] Jason Yarborough: apart from talking to people, did you have any. Exercises like journaling or like spend some time on your own away and just kind of thinking through some things and trying to figure out like what is next for me?

[00:13:34] Jason Yarborough: Because a part of, I feel like a lot of times myself, if I'm talking to people, I'm looking for some sort of confirmation bias, right? But

[00:13:40] Branca Ballot: Yeah.

[00:13:41] Jason Yarborough: not truly going after that, like what is it that helps us get clarity? Helps you get clarity

[00:13:48] Branca Ballot: Yeah.

[00:13:48] Jason Yarborough: like something that you can actually do for yourself.

[00:13:51] Branca Ballot: Yeah. So in addition to talking to a lot of people, I read a lot. Uh, one of the things is like, you know, we all here in the call, we have young kids, so reading is much harder than, than it used to be. Right,

[00:14:05] Sam Yarborough: it's a picture book.

[00:14:06] Branca Ballot: Yeah. Look, picture, yeah, I, I read every day. I read a lot of bugs every day. 

[00:14:11] Jason Yarborough: dunno. Does Waldo account as a book.

[00:14:13] Branca Ballot: And so I, I was like, I am gonna read.

[00:14:17] Branca Ballot: So things that like, I honestly don't do a lot that I, I ended up, really taking the time to do in this messy middle, which were awesome. So one thing is, I live in San Diego and we live pretty close to the beach. and so I committed to like for this messy middle, walking by the beach, seeing the water every day.

[00:14:35] Branca Ballot: Incredible. Then the other thing that I don't do very often is like listening to podcasts. I love podcasts, but I'm like, I never have time to listen to podcasts because I'm always like running and there's always like a child screaming at me or I'm working. So then I started listening to podcasts and I had this like.

[00:14:52] Branca Ballot: A bunch of podcasts that I wanted to listen to and that was awesome 'cause I would walk and listen to podcasts. So it was like an amazing marriage. I had books that I wanted to read and I started reading books. I'm actually reading, like looking at a couple that I have here on my bookshelf. So I read one called The Five Types of Wealth That was.

[00:15:07] Branca Ballot: Pretty awesome book that talks about like wealth, not only being financial, but all these other, you know, emotional, physical, et cetera. So that was awesome. I read a book also called Reboot that was very good. I actually listened to a podcast, uh, on Lenny's podcast. And then I read the book, very good as well.

[00:15:24] Branca Ballot: So a lot of these books, they were like very much about this phase that I was. And some of them had like frameworks for you to do exercises and stuff, and I did some of the exercises, like I had a notebook that I would do some of the exercises and all that. what I hate about it is when people talk about the messy middle, they all look like glowy and happy and like, woo.

[00:15:42] Branca Ballot: But, it was like very tough and I'll, I'll be super transparent. My coach, the one that I, I talked about already, she gave me an exercise called Ikigai. It's like this exercise about finding like what matters to you, like what you're supposed to do in this next phase of your life, right? And there's a part of the exercise that starts with like, what are you good at?

[00:16:02] Branca Ballot: And it's like, if you don't know, ask people. And I was in such a bad place that I texted my friend, my family, my friends that people had worked with me and they would say good things about me and I would read what they said and I would cry and be like. They don't know what they're talking about. Like this is not true.

[00:16:21] Branca Ballot: And like all these like good, good things about me coming from these people that know me supposedly really well. And I would discount everything because I was in this bad place of like not knowing what I wanted to do. So I discarded everything that people said about me. So it's not all roses. So I wanna just make sure that people know that.

[00:16:41] Sam Yarborough: you think that not knowing what you wanted to do. Being in a blood place because of that was you didn't know how to fit into the world without that title and identity around yourself.

[00:16:51] Branca Ballot: I think a lot of it was that,

[00:16:53] Sam Yarborough: Has that changed?

[00:16:55] Branca Ballot: Yes.

[00:16:56] Sam Yarborough: I mean you, you're now building your own company, but you didn't like go, just replace that identity with a new title. Like talk about that journey. How did you come to that?

[00:17:05] Branca Ballot: it started happening before. so there was one personal thing I'll share here. one of my sisters had a very complicated pregnancy. While I was in the messy middle. I was able to fly to Brazil and to spend time with her she had to be hospitalized for like 30, 40 days 

[00:17:21] Branca Ballot: that was like one big turning point for me because it was me being able to like be there for someone. That had nothing to do with what I do for work. And that to me was like, oh, I do have a place in the world I can do good. You know, not only being a mom and, you know, uh, like a partner, but I can also be like a, a sister and like supportive to my mom who's going through this as well as a mom who's seeing her, her daughter, going through something tough.

[00:17:53] Branca Ballot: And then it was like, oh, me not knowing what I want to do for my career. That's such a detail.

 

[00:17:59] Branca Ballot: And that put a lot of things in perspective for me.

[00:18:03] Jason Yarborough: it's interesting the things that can actually become turning points if you are like, respect those, those points of those opportunities and times,

[00:18:10] Jason Yarborough: right? You're going through a phase where it's, you're trying to figure out like what do you wanna do, what you're good at, which also, I love the fact that, you know, you're, and I think it's a, something safe for listeners to hear is that you were a very high performing marketing leader. Great growth trajectory , great growth in your career, your team, company, product, et cetera. you're still asking like, what do you guys think I'm good at? 

[00:18:32] Jason Yarborough: I would like to hear what people see

[00:18:34] Jason Yarborough: even though like from the outside, from you know, our perspective. If we knew you then be like, oh yeah, she's got the world at her, at her hands right now.

[00:18:40] Jason Yarborough: She's

[00:18:40] Jason Yarborough: lassoed it, she's on that trajectory, she's following it. But at the same time you're like, you know, what am I good at? And then you're asking yourself that question. There comes an opportunity for you to kind of realize and respect at time and in your life. You're like, this is, where I see the path beginning to open up to me.

[00:18:55] Jason Yarborough: I think if more, more folks were, you know, a vulnerable enough to, ask themselves those types of questions, and B put themself like in a position where they can see where they're at, like, I think a lot of more folks would find themselves out of that messy middle. And I have to imagine there's a lot of us listening that find ourselves in that messy middle.

[00:19:15] Jason Yarborough: one of the things I, I recall that you, that you wrote was, uh. Doing more used to be your superpower, like just sheer, I guess, you know, from a part of doing more, just busy adding on, tacking on and seeing more growth, doing more work and just, you know, staying busy. But obviously that changed, you know, what happened in you that that made you see it differently.

[00:19:37] Branca Ballot: I think that like now that I'm starting to, I'm starting a business. I have my entire life I've been that person that I'm like, I can just push harder. I can just do more and like, I will just overcome anything by just doing more right and working harder. what I find very different now is.

[00:19:57] Branca Ballot: Defining like the things that I wanna focus on versus trying to do like 10 things at the same time. And what I found in my entire career and now in my life, is if I'm trying to like be the best friend for people to build a company and to help, uh, people build their own companies and to like be a good mom and, and do this, and do that.

[00:20:20] Branca Ballot: There's just like so much that you can be good at, at the same time and enjoy the process, right? Because it's not just about like being good, it's also about like enjoying the process and enjoying life. and I think that like one of the things that I, I really focused in this time that I was off work was like I felt like I was doing too much, too much at home, too much work stuff, even though it wasn't related to my, my one job or whatever.

[00:20:43] Branca Ballot: And I started saying like, I am gonna have to cut 

[00:20:45] Branca Ballot: whole categories of things. And I'll just say, that doesn't happen anymore. That doesn't happen anymore. I don't work less, I actually work a lot more now hours, but feel way more focused.

[00:20:59] Branca Ballot: And so I think that like before I was very much like, I can do more. I can do more. I can do this thing and that thing. And now I'm like, no, I'm gonna do fewer things. I might work harder on them, but I, I do fewer things. 

[00:21:11] Sam Yarborough: Can you give us an example of those categories and like how you've gone through that process?

[00:21:16] Branca Ballot: so for example, in, in this messy middle, I was talking to a lot of companies that wanted to hire me and for a month or twoI'm talking to you, but I'm also like, uh, exploring starting my own company on the side. I would tell them that, and then I gave myself September to like figure out if I was gonna go all in on this company or not.

[00:21:37] Branca Ballot: Then by the end of the month I was like, yes, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to do it. Who knows? I then said, I'm not talking to any company anymore. People can try to hire me. They can say great opportunity. I'm like not talking to people anymore. You know, the money might be good. I have no income right now, but that is not happening.

[00:21:56] Branca Ballot: That was like a big thing. And it was taking a lot of my time because I was talking to like a lot of people. The other thing is like, house and family stuff. Uh, there were some projects that we were doing as a family that they weren't urgent and stuff, and I said, we're pausing it.

[00:22:11] Branca Ballot: And then my partner was like, are you sure? I'm like, we have to. We are at a time where we need to like refocus and recenter. and then also in the day-to-day routine, a lot of things like we've changed as well in terms of like what I was gonna stop doing or we were gonna stop doing altogether as a family.

[00:22:27] Branca Ballot: We reviewed like kids activities because it was getting outta control. So totally outta control. So there are a lot of decisions like that, big and small. But just to do less, fewer things I highly recommend it.

[00:22:40] Sam Yarborough: this is an interesting parallel, but what, what do they call it? Life creep or scope. It's not

[00:22:45] Branca Ballot: go. Great. Yeah.

[00:22:46] Sam Yarborough: but when you like, make more money, you just all of a sudden start spending more money and your budget just gets

[00:22:51] Sam Yarborough: bigger and all that. I think the same is true for life in general.

[00:22:55] Sam Yarborough: Like you just have new friends, or your kids are now in 12 sports instead of one, and you need hobbies and you know, and then all of a sudden you just look up and you're like, what are we doing?

[00:23:07] Sam Yarborough: It's rare that you take the opportunity to pause and say, do I wanna do all this? Do

[00:23:12] Sam Yarborough: we have to do all this?

[00:23:14] Sam Yarborough: And again, give yourself permission to own your life in all aspects

[00:23:18] Sam Yarborough: and say, we don't have to do any of this.

[00:23:22] Sam Yarborough: you've kind of alluded it to it here, but let's talk about this business and who you're building it for.

[00:23:28] Branca Ballot: I haven't announced it yet, but I am gonna go ahead and give as much as I can here. 

[00:23:33] Sam Yarborough: Okay. 

[00:23:34] Jason Yarborough: here on the podcast,

[00:23:36] Branca Ballot: in the messy middle. a good friend of mine, I had had a few phone calls with him and at some point he was like, Branca, this whole self pity thing does not suit you.

[00:23:46] Sam Yarborough: That's a good friend.

[00:23:49] Branca Ballot: Yeah. He's like, you gotta snap out of it.

[00:23:53] Branca Ballot: And I was like, okay, that sounds like a good thing. And he said like, you know what? Why don't you do this? Go think about like a business that you wanna start. Don't think about constraints, anything. Just go think about a business you wanna start. If you wanna start something and just like think about it.

[00:24:11] Branca Ballot: And I was like, okay, you can do that. It's like, that sounds like a. Very easy exercise. And then I went to take a shower. Uh, it's a true story. And then in this shower, I had this whole idea of like, this, this business and something. And I was like, and I was like, I don't know if it exists in this way, but like, I was like, it sounds like something that I, I would really like, enjoy building and like enjoy doing.

[00:24:33] Branca Ballot: It's for busy women. the idea is targeting busy women, working women, busy moms. You know, when I envision it, it was for women in mind, right?

[00:24:44] Branca Ballot: the next week I actually had a call with A CMO who I worked for.

[00:24:48] Branca Ballot: And she is incredible. She is so creative. She is kind, she is smart. Uh, she has three kids. I don't know how she does it. And so I was talking to her and, you know, I was crying 'cause I was in the messy middle. So there was a lot of crying and I was talking to her and she's like, Branca, you can do anything you want.

[00:25:06] Branca Ballot: You just have to choose. She's like, but it sounds like you, you have a lot going on in your personal life. And she told me about, you know, when her kids were young, the age of my kids, that, how they organize with her husband and having help and all that kind of stuff. And, and I was like, she's right. You know, like I, I probably need more help.

[00:25:27] Branca Ballot: But I hung up the phone and I got, I got really pissed. Because it was one of these things that is like, money is gonna solve this. I don't come from money at all. Um, I was born and raised in Brazil, like we didn't have a lot of money like we always rented, you know, I got scholarships for college.

[00:25:48] Branca Ballot: So like, I don't identify as someone who has money. It's not in my DNA.

[00:25:54] Branca Ballot: And so what pissed me off about that conversation was, I'm going through all this as a working woman who has young children, and the solution is just like, let's put more money to solve this.

[00:26:09] Branca Ballot: And I was like, what happens to all the women that don't have the money to put towards this?

[00:26:12] Branca Ballot: Do they just keep suffering? I was like, that does not sound like a good future.

[00:26:18] Branca Ballot: And so that's the problem that I'm trying to solve.

[00:26:21] Branca Ballot: what I'm building is like a technology thing first. it's not supposed to be just that. and I don't think that just technology can solve this. I don't think it is. the other thing that kind of like motivated me to do this is, uh, in the summer when I was talking to a lot of companies, um, a lot of legal AI startups, uh, came talk to me.

[00:26:39] Branca Ballot: I don't know why I don't have any, any background in legal, but in doing research before I spoke with the first one, I learned that there was 270, startups focusing on legal ai, different aspects of legal ai. Making, um, you know, attorneys more efficient, whether they're in-house, in firms, family law, et cetera.

[00:26:58] Branca Ballot: when I had this idea, I was like, who is focusing on this other really big job that we have as parents and as humans, which is like our personal life, our life as parents. There are not 270 startups trying to do that. Now there's so much technology going into making people more efficient at work.

[00:27:16] Branca Ballot: and what about like all of this other stuff that we do that is as real as work? Like all of this like mental load that we're carrying, all of the things that we are just like constantly thinking about and then the answer is suck it up.

[00:27:31] Branca Ballot: you will always be a mom. You will always be a partner, and your job will change.

[00:27:36] Branca Ballot: Yes.

[00:27:37] Sam Yarborough: 20 times throughout your career. Yet

[00:27:39] Branca Ballot: Yeah.

[00:27:39] Sam Yarborough: all of it to that.

[00:27:41] Branca Ballot: And then I'll tell you one more thing that got me really pissed. This whole thing comes from a lot of emotion. So then I, talked to some guys who are kind of like, more like builders and like in the, into like more AI and stuff. and then I said what I wanted to build. And then they looked at me and they said, that is too hard.

[00:28:02] Branca Ballot: And then I said, that's what women do every day

[00:28:07] Sam Yarborough: Without technology,

[00:28:08] Branca Ballot: without technology.

[00:28:10] Branca Ballot: So at its core are you're trying to bring a product about that helps, you know, at its central, like women lead more balanced lives love that. And I feel like that stemmed from like, where you came from in your work and where you're at. trying to ask the question. Doesn't give away too much of what you're building, right?

[00:28:27] Branca Ballot: It's okay. People know very soon.

[00:28:30] Jason Yarborough: what do you see it takes to kind of live more of that balanced life and how do you believe technology can be a part that helps solve that?

[00:28:39] Branca Ballot: so what I believe, a lot from my experience and, and by now I have interviewed like 70 women already on this topic as like part of this building, this product, what I hear time and time again, it's like it's all in our brain. we feel like we don't have a place to put these things.

[00:28:57] Branca Ballot: And sometimes we put it in different places. We put it in a notes app, we put it somewhere in a reminder, we put it in the calendar, we write it on a post-it note, we write it on somewhere. And all we're trying to do is like take the thing from the brain somewhere so we can kind of like rest the brain.

[00:29:14] Branca Ballot: Right? Because the brain never stops. I was talking to one of the, the many women that I interviewed, and she's like, the way I feel she was saying, it's like, I don't have a choice. She's like, I feel like everyone else in my family has a choice to let something drop.

[00:29:31] Branca Ballot: But she's like, I feel like I am the last thing. And if someone forgets to buy milk organic or not, like she's like. I'm gonna have to be the one buying milk because then people are not gonna have milk to drink. And she's like, if we don't have toilet paper or if we don't pay for insurance. And she's like, it's this feeling that you're like, you are the last thing.

[00:29:51] Branca Ballot: and you have no support in that. Right. a lot of the women that I spoke with, a lot of them have very supportive partners. Some have partners that work a lot and cannot be as supportive. Some of them are like single moms, some of them have no children. So like I spoke with like a really, a lot of women, but what was very clear to me is like there's so much going in their brain and they feel like they don't have a partner for their brain.

[00:30:15] Sam Yarborough: I was having this conversation with a girlfriend the other day while we were at ballet practice for our daughters.

[00:30:21] Branca Ballot: Yeah.

[00:30:22] Sam Yarborough: and we both do have very supportive partners. I'll just say

[00:30:26] Branca Ballot: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:27] Sam Yarborough: It was really interesting to hear her talk. She asked, she said, 

[00:30:30] Sam Yarborough: do you divide up the skills in the house? or the tasks in the house, not the skills. And I said, Jason is amazing. A lot of times, this is my story that I'm telling myself it's easier for me to do it than to hand it off. It's easier for me. And so do you think that, this is getting off topic a little bit, but I am truly curious. Is it a delegation? Do women have a hard time delegating first and foremost, or is there just too much going on that we can't stop to ask for help?

[00:31:01] Branca Ballot: I think it's a little bit of both, but I think it's more like the second, uh, I would just say from my experience, and then I can speak about like what I've witnessed with women. my experience is like my entire career I've been like doing, doing, doing, doing, doing. Then when I had kids, I was like doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, and like.

[00:31:19] Branca Ballot: My life got so busy with like, it was already busy pre-kids, then got busier with one kid and then with two kids it was like mayhem. And because I, like, I never took time off to like, think about any of this. I just kept like pushing and like doing and piling it on. It's like, and it's going and it's going to, and, and I think that it's like, it's so hard because we're not, we're not seeing all this stuff that we're doing.

[00:31:45] Branca Ballot: We're just doing. We don't even realize sometimes that we can delegate.

[00:31:52] Branca Ballot: And so I think yes, then some of us have time to delegate, right? Like I do have friends who are like, I don't tell my husband to do this because he, he's not good at cleaning, or he's not good at doing this. Like, some of it exists, but I think that the biggest issue is like, we don't even know all that we're doing because we're just doing,

[00:32:11] Sam Yarborough: So question, because I think that this translates to the way that we lead our teams as well, like in corporate settings. do you notice a difference in yourself or have you noticed a difference in yourself being like the leader of the home and the leader of a team? Are you able to delegate better in a corporate setting 

[00:32:31] Branca Ballot: I feel like, uh, my evolution as a leader in, my jobs, and then as you know, in my house, they, they were all very intertwined. there was another book that I often, uh, tell people, so I actually didn't have any direct reports until I was 30. So I just for context for people, I started my career in consulting, so you don't really have teams.

[00:32:51] Branca Ballot: And then I worked in private equity, so you don't really have teams. And then I got a job at a startup as a very senior, but like an individual contributor. And then my boss was like, you need to have. A team to scale yourself. And I was like, I don't see why I can just do more. I was like, I, I work so hard and why, why would I need a team?

[00:33:09] Branca Ballot: And he's like, because you have all of these things, but now you need to scale yourself. And I was like, I do not understand this. And so there's a book that I read in business school. I'm also looking at it, it's called What Got You Here Won't Get You There. And one of the things is, I, I clearly was not born this natural leader delegating for people clearly, right.

[00:33:28] Branca Ballot: but I learned, he then gave me a team, three people, more people, more people. And, and then I started like enjoying, then I actually flipped a switch. My switch was like, how can I actually do great work through people?

[00:33:43] Branca Ballot: Then I started like really loving the delegation at work. Right. and I always tell people on my team, they're like, when I'm hiring people, they're like, oh, how are you as a manager? Are you a micromanager? I'm like, yes. If you're underperforming, like if you're doing well, I am not gonna be a micromanager.

[00:34:00] Branca Ballot: I'm only a micromanager, if we're having trouble, which is, is rare. there was a lot of evolution for me in terms of like learning how to delegate, and it's a pretty new thing, right? If you're until 30, until you have direct reports, like it's relatively new. but yes, it was an acquired, uh, skill.

[00:34:18] Sam Yarborough: I feel like it's an acquired skill for moms, for women in there. Personal lives as well that we don't get the tools, the time or the training on.

[00:34:29] Jason Yarborough: for those that may be listening and they're thinking, oh shoot, I've never thought about it in that sense of how all that, my wife, my kids', moms, whoever it might be, how much they're actually. and having to do, and all they think about having to do, like, I, I would say like from the two of you perspective, like what can we say to those partners to, better position themself as a helper to, to take on some of that load when the wife, mom, whoever might think they have to carry it on themself like. From our perspective on this side, like how can we come alongside and, and be that help to, to take on some of that load that you don't know how to offload.

[00:35:08] Branca Ballot: I think a lot of it is like observing, I think I show. That I'm overwhelmed and I have a lot going on, and it might be like I snap more frequently or I'm just like, not sleeping enough or, you know, there are signs, right? That you can kind of like observe and see what's happening.

[00:35:28] Branca Ballot: and then the other thing that you can do is I find, I really subscribe to, like, I don't think that like two people necessarily should do everything together all the time when it comes to like the house stuff. I think that like. If you see, for example, your partner Rita likes to do like cooking.

[00:35:46] Branca Ballot: Then you're like, okay, maybe she does the cooking and you do the cleaning, or she likes to do the garden stuff and you do something else. I think it's a lot about like finding the, she will want to do some stuff, right? There's some stuff about our, our life. It's not all bad, right? Like raising our kids and taking care of our family and our house.

[00:36:06] Branca Ballot: It's not all bad. There are things that some people enjoy, right? And there are things that some people do not enjoy. So See the things that like first you would like to do. Some people like to do, do the dishes. I'd like to do the dishes, right? Because it's, it clears my brain and I'm like there.

[00:36:21] Branca Ballot: So like, I like that. So like find the things that you like and try to be like, I'll take all of those, that's gonna be all of my stuff. And then there's gonna be some stuff she likes and then let her do that stuff. And then there's gonna be some stuff in the middle that no one wants to do. 

[00:36:35] Branca Ballot: find the balance in that. Figure out if it's like, are you guys gonna like fully you do this, you do that? Is it gonna be three days a week? Two days a week? Like find that balance and talk about it. And so I think it's like a lot of like observing. is your partner feeling stressed? Is your partner feeling like snappy if that any of these is true, something is off.

[00:36:56] Branca Ballot: And then, uh, consciously think about this. all that it takes to get a family going. And it's okay for someone to like own like an entire category, but then they shouldn't own all of the categories, 

[00:37:10] Sam Yarborough: everything you just said, like Either are or have been, or still moving into being really highly professional people. and I think in our daily lives, people just exist. They just, whereas in work, it's like you communicate, you have awareness, and you have expectations, and that, that shouldn't be different. In the other areas of your life, otherwise you're setting yourself up for failure and your partner up for failure. Like if I have expectations that like Jason should do the dishes, but I don't communicate that to him and I just get mad when he doesn't help, of course that's gonna be a

[00:37:46] Branca Ballot: Yeah.

[00:37:47] Sam Yarborough: for everybody.

[00:37:48] Sam Yarborough: So like, why do we think it's any different than, you know, a work setting of like, okay, our goal is X, here's what we're gonna do and this is the timeline in which we need to do it. 

[00:37:58] Branca Ballot: And somehow most of us are not doing this in our personal life, and we go to work and we have all these tools to make us extremely efficient at work. And then when it comes to our house, we're like, do we have a grocery list?

[00:38:14] Sam Yarborough: Yeah. Who,

[00:38:15] Sam Yarborough: who's in charge here?

[00:38:17] Branca Ballot: when my partner, he goes to the grocery list like, what do we need again? And I'm like texting him like, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries. Like,

[00:38:24] Jason Yarborough: in the store?

[00:38:25] Branca Ballot: imagine if I would ever do this at work.

[00:38:28] Branca Ballot: never. I would've put a process on that five days ago it would've been AI optimized and the whole thing is like snaps at you. And it's kind of like, somehow we accept this chaos in life and we're just like, oh, why do we suffer so much?

[00:38:45] Jason Yarborough: I think if we begin to like rephrase or look at it, something like that, we're more accustomed to or is more the norm from the work world. It's like, you know, burnout at work is something people talk about a lot. It happens all the time, and it's normal to say, man, I just feel burnt out. But never have I ever heard like I'm burnt out at home.

[00:39:05] Sam Yarborough: there's no choice.

[00:39:07] Jason Yarborough: Right.

[00:39:08] Sam Yarborough: But you're right. You're right. 

[00:39:10] Jason Yarborough: guess how we eliminate burnout at home? And I think

[00:39:11] Branca Ballot: Yeah.

[00:39:12] Jason Yarborough: burnout at home, you can eliminate a lot of the, the problems that marriages have, divorces and everything. And burnout at home starts at, you know, realizing that maybe my partner is, is burnt out and hate to say it, but I think most men are just clueless to the fact that had taken, you know, stock of that or being aware of the fact. But if we can get them to the point to where they can acknowledge that and see that like we have real conversations, manage expectations like we would at work, put process around it, I think you're eliminating a tremendous amount of burnout at home.

[00:39:47] Branca Ballot: and I'll say, from my observation, my house is pretty. On average what I hear from other people, like I tend to be that person doing more of like the daily maintenance. But my partner, he does a lot of it, he does a lot of like the project stuff. You know, if we ever have like a home improvement thing or like taxes or something that is like bigger, he's the one usually taking stock.

[00:40:10] Branca Ballot: And the one thing that I will say is we often discount what the other person is doing by a lot, Both ways. And, and I think that like, if you don't communicate and if you don't take stock, and if you don't understand what the other person does, it's very easy to say, oh, my partner doesn't do all the stuff that I do.

[00:40:29] Branca Ballot: But then when you look, you're like, well, but they actually do a lot of stuff that,

[00:40:33] Sam Yarborough: do all the stuff that they do. 

[00:40:34] Branca Ballot: it goes both ways. And, uh, you know, and my, our relationship, we've learned that it wasn't just me doing a lot, he was doing a lot too. He was discounting me and I was discounting him, and we were just like, well, that has to end because clearly we're both doing a lot, we're just not communicating well.

[00:40:51] Branca Ballot: And so, it goes both ways.

[00:40:53] Sam Yarborough: I wanna shift gears a little bit here because I think it's so awesome what you're doing, and I think in the age of ai, you're really pushing the boundaries of what's possible for a single human in building a business. so you just finished, the lovable She hackathon,

[00:41:11] Branca Ballot: Yes.

[00:41:12] Sam Yarborough: you shared your journey with us on LinkedIn, so thank you for doing it.

[00:41:15] Sam Yarborough: I was so jealous. I didn't know about it, but, you quoted yourself, I quoted you on LinkedIn saying, I can learn, and with AI I can learn really fast. And I think that that's such an amazing thing. So talk about this, because you are not traditionally a technical founder, but you are now building a product and you have gotten it to the point of a prototype, which 10 years ago, like wasn't a possibility.

[00:41:37] Sam Yarborough: So talk us about that. Like what's this journey been like? What are you learning?

[00:41:42] Branca Ballot: Honestly, it's incredible. Incredible. I am beyond anything. I found that I was ever gonna be able to do. and I've been marketing technical products for a really long time. Okay. So this is not like new to me. but I think that like what AI is doing and in the form of lovable or, or many other tools that exist out there, I just happen to join the Loveable Hackathon, and I think it's one of the great products out there.

[00:42:08] Branca Ballot: It's just like, it gives you a power of like developing something that Most of us didn't have, like, only 1% of the population can code. And so this power is just, not possible for many of us. And when I joined the hackathon, I, I wrote about it on LinkedIn. saw the hackathon, I send my application right away and I was like, I'm never gonna get in, but I'm gonna send it anyway.

[00:42:31] Branca Ballot: And I just like filled the application, sent it, and said. Who knows. Then when I got, so I actually had committed to doing my, business idea until September 30th to like figure it out in October 1st, I got the confirmation that I was doing the hackathon, and I was like, this is a sign. 

[00:42:49] Branca Ballot: And so then I did the hackathon and, and I was like, okay, I'm gonna build my product in, in this thing. And I did not think I was gonna do it. I was like, I'm gonna get stuck. I'm gonna, I don't know how to do the backend. I don't know how to do this thing.

[00:43:02] Branca Ballot: I don't know how to do edge functions. I don't know how to do CR jobs. Like I, I didn't even know the name of these things. Okay. Like, I didn't even know the name of these things. Then I was like, you know what, it's 48 hours. Who cares? This is me, me against me. It's me against no one. And then I was like, I'm just gonna do it.

[00:43:20] Branca Ballot: Yeah. It was the, honestly, the most transformational 48 hours of my life. I felt so powerful at the end. And on top of all that, my partner was out of town, okay. During all of this. And he came back Tuesday at the very end of the hackathon, and he, he's an engineer. So he comes back, he looks at me and I'm like, at my computer, working like a crazy, crazy person.

[00:43:43] Branca Ballot: He looks at me, he's like, do you need any help? I'm like, no, I'm just fixing my CR job. And he was like, what?

[00:43:49] Jason Yarborough: Who are you?

[00:43:50] Branca Ballot: I. What happened to you? And so I, I will just say I've always been excited about technology and I think that like now more than ever, AI and all the tools people are building, they're making it a lot more accessible.

[00:44:02] Branca Ballot: And one of the posts that I wrote this week about is. I think women are not taking enough advantage of that, and I think we should because, it's taken so long for people to, for, to have more women in stem, women in like high and leadership positions, women in the workplace. And now we are seeing the gap widened again.

[00:44:22] Branca Ballot: There's men building AI companies playing with these tools all the time, and we don't see as many women. And so my pledge, my hope for all of us is just like, please use this technology because it's here for us to help us do whatever we wanna do. Whether you wanna build a business, improve how you run your house, be more creative.

[00:44:43] Branca Ballot: It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, but it's here right now and I think we should pay more attention to it.

[00:44:50] Sam Yarborough: I was telling Jason, at lunch the other day, I'm, I should have this ready. We'll put, we'll put this in the, the show notes, but the woman who won the hackathon, her project about learning AI and like, I think it's called recess,

[00:45:07] Branca Ballot: AI recess. Yes.

[00:45:08] Sam Yarborough: Yeah, I downloaded it and it's very cool because it's like a three minute exercise, a four minute exercise, and it like, just gives you like a snippet of, you know, I like to think of myself as a Chet GPT wizard, but that's as far as I've gotten, which like in the age of AI is nothing.

[00:45:23] Sam Yarborough: And so I. I think people don't even know how to go to that next step.

[00:45:28] Sam Yarborough: And so, a, I think the hackathon's amazing because it gives people the confidence to even just like, stick their foot in the water and

[00:45:35] Sam Yarborough: try it. But B, there's so many tools out there, to your point, that can make our lives easier and we just gotta give ourselves the time to do it.

[00:45:44] Sam Yarborough: So,

[00:45:45] Jason Yarborough: I'm curious, like talking about like that AI, recess and what you're currently using, right? You're now talking about being more focused, like talk to us about how you're, you know, apart from building a business, like personally using AI do all this. Because like, you know, Sam mentioned like. Most of ours kind of stops and starts and stops

[00:46:05] Jason Yarborough: with GPT and that kind of stuff, but like, how are you personally using this to accomplish all that you're doing, to now build this life that you want to live,

[00:46:13] Branca Ballot: it's gonna sound promotional, but uh, basically the product that I'm building is to help people run their life, right? and it's an AI product, so the way I'm using it is everything I wanna do with ai. Instead of going and doing it with Chad g pt, I'm basically baking that into my product, and then I use that every day.

[00:46:33] Branca Ballot: So it's like, I'm like, oh, I wanna put stuff on my calendar, or I got this from the kid's school, or I have this thing to plan, or I have this other thing to do. I'm basically like going and building straight into the thing. 'cause it, it gives me like, one is me learning how to use ai not only for me, but like at scale and for other people to have access to that as well.

[00:46:52] Branca Ballot: it's a lot of like really cool things that you can do. There's one of the people, uh, that I brought to my attention, I think she has a, a newsletter called AI for Moms. She has some amazing, amazing things on like how you can use tragedy, g, bt, and AI in your personal life. there are a ton of like really cool ideas.

[00:47:10] Jason Yarborough: love it. as we're looking for the product, what are we gonna be looking for? From your launch,

[00:47:19] Branca Ballot: I don't know yet when I'm gonna launch. I'm, I'm really trying to validate to see if like people like it. but you'll see it's, uh, it's gonna take the form of an app, but it's way more than an app. But the main shape that you're gonna see and experience it is gonna be like an app form

[00:47:36] Jason Yarborough: Outstanding. This has been super fun. I, I appreciate you, uh, opening up and sharing a few things about your experience. Our one final question that we want to, uh, leave our listeners with is, uh, what's, what's one thing that you refuse to sacrifice again in this next chapter?

[00:47:52] Branca Ballot: health.

[00:47:53] Jason Yarborough: that's a good answer. Do you feel like you had to sacrifice that, back in your do more superpower days?

[00:48:01] Branca Ballot: it was by luck because I abused my system by. How many hours I worked, how much stress I put in my body, how many hours I did not sleep. And so like the reason why I am focused on this now is because I am actually seeing a lot of my friends who are having a lot of health issues right now, same age, same kids, and, and some of them are somewhat permanent 

[00:48:29] Branca Ballot: You know, sometimes you're like, you go so close to something and you're like, whew. And I feel like lucky that it didn't happen to me. And I think the reason why I wanna focus on health is because it hasn't happened, thank God. but I'm seeing my friends and a lot of things happening to them, and I don't want that to happen to me.

[00:48:47] Sam Yarborough: The rest of this doesn't matter if we don't have health.

[00:48:49] Branca Ballot: Yes.

[00:48:49] Jason Yarborough: Exactly.

[00:48:51] Sam Yarborough: this has been absolutely phenomenal. Thank you for sharing your time with us. thank you for being a voice in the world, for and growing and taking a chance on yourself and all the brave things you're doing. It's certainly been impactful for me. everybody go follow you on LinkedIn. Is that the best place to stay in contact and kind of learn more about? The product and

[00:49:15] Branca Ballot: That's the only place I'm in these days.

[00:49:17] Sam Yarborough: Alright. Okay. So go follow her on LinkedIn. Thank you for being here, friends, I hope you took some time, or I hope you do take some time to take inventory in your life, and awareness for those around you.

[00:49:28] Sam Yarborough: and go for a walk.

[00:49:31] Branca Ballot: 

[00:49:31] Jason Yarborough: your health.

[00:49:32] Branca Ballot: We'll see you next time everybody. Thank you for joining us Branca. Pleasure.

[00:49:36] Branca Ballot: Thank you for having me.