Welcome to the Brave Women at Work podcast. This is your host, Jen Pestikas. I’m so glad you’re here.
Today’s episode is a little different — it’s just me, reflecting on 300 episodes of this show, and what I’ve actually taken from it. Not what I expected to learn. What I actually learned.
Honestly, when I started the podcast, I thought it was just that. A podcast. But it became so much more. The Brave Women at Work Podcast has been:
- A path to healing from burnout
- A doorway to amazing friendships, business colleagues, and partnerships
- A way to express myself creatively
- A platform to build community
- And a huge part of who I am and my purpose
As I reflected on my learnings, I have jotted down nine learnings. Some of them will sound familiar if you’ve been listening a while. Some might surprise you. Let’s get right into it!
It Was Never Just About the Podcast: 9 Lessons in 300 Episodes
Welcome to the Brave Women at Work podcast. This is your host, Jen Pestikas. I’m so glad you’re here.
Today’s episode is a little different — it’s just me, reflecting on 300 episodes of this show, and what I’ve actually taken from it. Not what I expected to learn. What I actually learned.
Honestly, when I started the podcast, I thought it was just that. A podcast. But it became so much more. The Brave Women at Work Podcast has been:
- A path to healing from burnout
- A doorway to amazing friendships, business colleagues, and partnerships
- A way to express myself creatively
- A platform to build community
- And a huge part of who I am and my purpose
As I reflected on my learnings, I have jotted down nine learnings. Some of them will sound familiar if you’ve been listening a while. Some might surprise you. Let’s get right into it!
Important Links
About Jen Pestikas
Jennifer Pestikas is a Chief Experience Officer, keynote speaker, bestselling author, and the founder of Brave Women at Work — a platform dedicated to helping women lead boldly, advocate fiercely, and build careers they’re proud of.
With over 25 years of leadership experience in financial services, Jen brings hard-won wisdom from the C-suite to every stage, coaching session, and page she writes. She knows what it takes to make a significant leap — because she’s done it, and because she’s helped hundreds of women do it too.
Jen speaks to female audiences on moving from imposter syndrome to self-advocacy, negotiating the pay and benefits they deserve, and finding the courage to speak up and lead. Her coaching clients leave with sharper clarity on their strengths, what’s been holding them back, and the tools to take bolder, braver action in their careers.
She is also the host of the Brave Women at Work podcast — 280+ episodes, 110,000+ downloads, and listeners in over 90 countries — and the author of the Brave Women at Work anthology series, five volumes spanning resilience, confidence, leadership, letting go, and authenticity. Her latest release, Brave Women at Work: Lessons in Authenticity, is available now in e-book with hardcover arriving June 2026.
Jen holds a Bachelor’s in French and Spanish from Indiana University and an M.B.A. from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. She is a Certified Professional Coach and an Energy Leadership Index (ELI) Master Practitioner through IPEC.
You can find Jen at jenniferpestikas.com and bravewomenatwork.com, on LinkedIn, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Outside of work, Jen loves spending time with her husband and two daughters, reading, going to the movies, and taking travel adventures with her family.
Welcome to the Brave Women at Work podcast. This is your host, Jen Pestikas. I’m so glad you’re here.
Well, today’s show is a little different. You get me, just me, reflecting on 300 episodes of this show. Wow! I cannot believe it. And what I’ve actually taken from it. Not what I expected to learn, but actually what I did learn across the way. And how I think these learnings can translate to you, dear listener, to your life, to your work, to what you’re doing out wherever you are.
So, honestly, when I started this podcast, I thought it was just that: a podcast. I had no idea when it would start, when it would end, what… I had no idea! I literally was just going on the road less traveled and had no path. It was literally one foot in front of the other. But this podcast became more than a podcast for me. So this Brave Women at Work experiment, this podcast, it’s been a path to healing from burnout multiple times, probably. Definitely once, but I think I had a slip in the last year or so. A doorway to amazing friendships, business colleagues, and partnerships. A way to express myself creatively. Who knew! I love words. I always knew I loved words, but I didn’t know how much until I started this show. A platform to build community. Again, hello, dear listener. Thank you so much for being here, whether it’s one week, two weeks, 300… gone back, started over… I appreciate you and I am so thankful for you. And a huge part… this show is a huge part of who I am and my purpose. My past purpose, my current purpose, and my future purpose.
And so, as I reflected on my learnings, I’ve just been jotting them down. And I have nine of them. I’m not going to have you on for three hours, I promise. Um, but I think they’re really important to share. So, some of them may sound familiar if you’ve been listening for a while, some might even surprise you, but I don’t want any preamble. We’re just going to jump right into it. So let’s get into it.
We’re going to start with lesson one: Sometimes you need to just go for it.
Just go for it. I did a video on this on my Instagram. Sometimes you just gotta jump in. So, when I started the podcast, I didn’t know how to run a podcast. Do you know how many people have asked me, “Hey, did you take a class? Did you have formal training? Did you know what equipment to buy?” No. No. No. I was so afraid, everyone, of sounding foolish, of nobody listening, of starting something I couldn’t sustain, I couldn’t finish. Remember, I am a perfectionist of the highest order. In fact, I was telling my group of ladies on the Brave Circle – shout out to them – that I have this book… Remember in Borders and Barnes and Noble they had this personality book, like a birthday personality book? I would always, like, if I had a new boyfriend in high school and college, I would run to the birthday personality book. Now I looked up myself. You know, you look up your family members, now I’ve looked up my kids, so I have it on my shelf. I’m not going to Barnes and Noble, or Borders doesn’t even exist anymore. But I have a local Barnes and Noble, and I don’t need to. I just bought it and put it on my shelf. So I looked up myself, and I am born… if you look up September 26th, which is my day, I would say that I was born on the Day of the Perfectionist, or at least that’s what the birthday book says. And so I’m like, “Darn it! I can never get away from it.” So this was really hard for me to start something that I didn’t know, that I could fail on. But there was just something in my heart saying, “Go for it. Go for it. Just do it. Just do it. It doesn’t matter.” So I did it anyway.
And so, this first lesson may be the most important on my list: Waiting until you feel ready means that you’re never going to start.
And so, I think that readiness is a myth that we tell ourselves, that I’ve told myself, to just stay safe and comfortable and just stuck, really. Sometimes the only way through that fear is straight through it.
So if this one hits you: What is that thing that you want to start? What is that thing that you want to do that you’ve been saying, “I could never do that thing,” or “I’m too old for that thing,” or “I’m going to fail, so I’m just not going to do that thing”? What is that thing? I would love to hear from you on any of these lessons to see if they have touched your heart, or been a kick in the pants. Someone said that I’m like a shot of espresso. So again, you can email me at hello@bravewomenatwork.com or you can send me a DM on Instagram or on LinkedIn, and I would love to hear from you if you start the thing. If you do the thing and just jump on in.
So, lesson number two: It takes discipline and it rewards more than just you.
So the thing about 300 episodes, what I have learned across my podcasting journey, and it’s been a little… I think it’s been five years, I don’t even know. Like podcasting years, dog years, I don’t know. I think it’s definitely been at least five years. So, I did not know starting a podcast is really hard, everyone. I’m not just saying that to be like, “Oh, feel sorry for me.” It is challenging. So you have to get equipment, you have to find guests if you’re going to be interviewing, you have to understand the format of your show, you have to get comfortable speaking on quote-unquote “air,” you’ve got to get a Zoom or recording platform, and then you’ve got to do all of the editing post-production and then put it together. So it’s a lot of work. And what I didn’t understand is that many shows, most shows actually, never make it past they say between 10 and 14 episodes. It’s because it is a real challenge. It takes discipline. And so, you can be inspired to start a podcast, but inspiration in this case is going to be a little unreliable. When inspiration shows up, it can feel like, “Yeah! Let’s go!” And then when you don’t feel it, it kind of is fleeting or it goes away. So discipline… discipline is that mindset. I was actually just helping my older daughter with a paper, and discipline is the mindset. Perseverance is the action through struggle. Right? So she’s actually writing a paper on these two things. So discipline is what showed up for me every week. The mindset to be like, “Yep, doing it. I’m doing it. I’m doing it afraid. I’m doing it poorly. I’m doing it half-baked. I’m doing it sick.” You may… if you hear some of the episodes, my voice is like ribbit, ribbit, ribbit, like froggy. So you know, whether I felt like it or not, whether the episode for me was easy or hard, whether I had a guest that was just… it was effortless conversation or I had to really dig to get a good conversation out of it. Whether I was excited, whether I was exhausted, I’ve already said, you know, whether I was sick, whether I had a bad day… so 300 episodes is not a monument to motivation, it’s really a monument to discipline.
And what I didn’t expect is that discipline wasn’t just a gift for me. I used to think of this as like a private commitment, and I have to be honest, there were times that I was like, “I just can’t. I’m so sick. They’ll understand.” And I… there’s something in me that was just nagging, going, “Nope, nope, nope. You all are relying on me.” And that mindset of discipline would kick in. And I thought at one point it was a private commitment, something that I owed to my own goals, to my own healing, but like I said, showing up consistently became a gift to you. That you were there, going like, “Keep going,” whether you were saying it or not, whether you were putting in a review, whether you were sending me an email… you, dear listener, expected the show to be there. And I was like, “Uh, I’m not letting you down! I’m not letting you down.” So consistency isn’t just a self-discipline, it’s a form of how I care for you, too. How I hope that this inspires, motivates you, shakes you out of comfort, builds your confidence, helps you get paid more… all of those things and more. All of those things too.
So the third lesson is: You’re never going to know until you start. Right? We did that on one. But you’re never going to know what will become your art.
And so I didn’t set this podcast out to be like, “You know what, Brave Women at Work is going to become my art.” No. No. I don’t have that kind of crystal ball. I don’t have a magic 8-ball and shook it like old school and said, “Is podcasting going to become my art?” And then it was like, “It is decidedly so.” This started out as a project, an idea, an inkling from my intuition, and like I said, maybe even an experiment. Somewhere along the way, though, it became something else. Like I said, it became the thing that I think about, that I care about, that I pour myself into. It’s the thing where I would record an intro or an outro for you a few times, several times, because I wanted it to sound a little better. And I think the whole idea of “you never know what will become your art,” you don’t know, like this is a broad term, you don’t know in advance what’s going to be the thing that defines you or becomes part of your identity. You don’t know. Sometimes you just have to commit to something before you understand what it really is.
And I thought that, you know, when you say “an art,” I’m thinking, you know, a sculpture, or I’m thinking of the Art Institute of Chicago painting, or musicians I feel that there’s a real art there. I didn’t really think that podcasting was an art until people started telling me, “Whoa, what is this skill you have to interview people or pull great stories out of them, or just be a really good listener?” I took that for granted. So for this one, what is your art? Your art could be cooking. I have this dear friend, shout out to Suha, that is just… I’ll come to her driveway and she’s like, “I made bread. I made maple syrup. I made…” I mean, she’s just… she’s a cooking diva! Like, it is her art. Every time I taste any of her food, I’m like, “Wow, there’s like real art… artistry and emotion and love in there.” I am not that person. That’s not my art. I try, and then it goes in the trash. But what is your art? And don’t assume that it has to be more of the traditional forms of art. I didn’t know until much later in the game that, you know what, words can be art. Listening can be an art. Interviewing other people can be an art form. And of course, podcasting is mine.
So lesson four, listening – on that same vein – is a path to learning.
So every single guest on this show has taught me something that I couldn’t have learned by just talking at them. I am guilty, like so many people, of just thinking ahead. Thinking, “Well, what am I going to say to sound important? What am I going to say to sound smart? What am I going to say just because I’m trying to fill in the gap?” But that’s not the thing. The best moments in the 300 episodes weren’t that I had the perfect question or the sharpest insight. No, it wasn’t that. They were there when I got out of my own way and just was present, which, I gotta tell y’all, is really hard for me. It’s really hard for me not to be looking at my phone. It’s really hard for me not to be doing a mental to-do list. Do you feel me? I mean, we are busy women. We are ambitious women, we are hardworking women. We’re mamas, we’re caretakers of all shapes and sizes. We are friends, we are sisters… like, we have so many different roles and it’s hard to be present. And so I have had to work, just really diligently, on listening. But what I’ve also learned is that listening isn’t a passive thing. You just don’t sit there like a lump. It is actually the harder skill. It’s easy to talk. It’s hard to listen and really listen for the subtext and the emotion and the story underneath the story. And it’s one of the ones out of the nine that I’m sharing that’s taught me the most. Because someone would say something, and I knew in that moment the gift was not just for you, it was a lesson brought from God, from the universe, whatever you and your spiritual tradition is, it was something for me. It was something that I needed to hear in that interview so that I could be better, I could be more whole, I could be… I don’t know, more well-rounded in all of the roles that I play in my life.
The fifth lesson is: The road is long and it’s winding and my friends, there are going to be some potholes. And there are going to be some big ones, like you could fall into.
And so, there’s been no straight line from episode 1 to episode 300. And I thought there would be! A clean and upward path. I’ve mentioned this on the show, where it’s like up and to the right. Like life is supposed to be up and to the right! Spoiler alert: that’s just not what happened. That’s just not what happened. And if I told you some of the things that have happened between episode 1 and 300, first of all I won’t, because I’m protecting my loved ones and my personal life, my professional life. I have taken out the learnings from them for this show, but it’s unbelievable how my life and my work has zigged and zagged. And it’s curved in directions and gone into towns and cities and places that I didn’t plan for. There were topics that I never expected to cover, PR agencies that pitched me ideas that I was challenged by and then had to sit with and go, “Do I really want this on the show?” And then I was like, “You know what? Yes, I’m going to expand my own comfort zone.” Seasons where the show was like kind of going in different directions, whether it was spiritual, or it was more creative, or… you know, I’ve had a really wide gamut of topics on the show. And it’s because I didn’t want to make it too rigid. I didn’t want it to all be about how to optimize your LinkedIn profile. I didn’t want it to all be about how to just negotiate – although all of those are valid and valuable, and I may revisit them as we continue forward, just because it’s been so long since I’ve covered them. But I wanted it to be a wider breath of topics than that.
And so along the way, if you go all the way back, there are bad episodes. And I’m sorry. There are technical failures. Like even recently I’ve been working through mic issues, so again if you’ve had some audio problems, I’m so sorry. Weeks that I told you I wanted to quit entirely. But that discipline, showing up for you, persevering… I was like, “Oh no, I’m showing up for these folks.” And I used to think that these potholes meant that I was doing something wrong, and now I know that they’re just part of the road. I just have to steer around them, or if I get into one, I have to get myself out. Because I am strong, and because I am brave. It’s not a detour from my journey, it’s part of the journey, and that’s been really, really hard for me to grapple with. And so if you’ve been doing anything long enough, you’re going to hit some potholes. And the lesson here isn’t to avoid them… yeah, okay, if you want to steer around them a little bit, sure… but there are sometimes where you are going to land the car of your life and your work into a monstrous pothole. And it’s to be like, “Okay, how do I get out of this? How do I tap into my body and my wisdom in my body? How do I tap into the experience that I have in my mind and in my work and what I’ve done in life? How do I get out of the pothole? And how do I keep driving? How do I keep moving forward?”
So right now, I will say I’m in a pothole. I’m in a personal pothole, maybe even a professional pothole too. A big one. A big season of challenge for me and my family. And I will say that I know that I can get out of it, it’s just going to take time. So for you, if you are in a season of potholes or in winding roads, I am sharing this because I don’t want you to feel like you’re alone. I want you to feel like there are other women that are listening that are right there with you. And my question for you is: Sit with where you are, and then tap into your body’s wisdom, tap into your experience, tap into your heart, and then just start holding space for those answers to come of how you’re going to get out of that hole. How you’re going to keep navigating and get to the other side, on terra firma, on firmer ground.
The lesson… next is, for six, is: Motivation shows up in the oddest places.
It didn’t show up where I always expected it to. Sometimes I would read a comment from a listener that I’d never met and I’d get an idea or an inspiration for another show. Or a guest’s remark that struck me that stayed with me for weeks, and I was like, “Whoa, that is crazy, I didn’t even think about that.” Or now, as I’m pushing myself out of my comfort zone, if you go onto LinkedIn or Instagram you’ll see I’m doing more video on screen. Holy moly, that is really scary for me! Like, I’d much rather just do some audio for you all. But I’m pushing myself out of my comfort zone. And so there also may have been a message from someone, I’ve gotten letters from people, like from my colleagues – thank yous, thank you gifts for being on other people’s podcasts… that just really touched my heart and they arrived on the day that I needed them. And so I stopped looking for motivation in like the big, obvious places. So, I, as a marketing person in my day job, on the sales side of my day job, there’s something called elephant hunting. And when you’re a salesperson and an elephant hunter is someone that they’re shooting… they’re aiming, they’re hunting for the big game, right? They’re not looking for the small wins, the ground balls if you’re thinking of like a baseball analogy. They’re literally swinging so hard for the fence. They’re swinging for the grand slam. They’re elephant hunting. So what I’ve learned is that’s not where the secret sauce lies. Some of the smallest and strangest, most unexpected moments – those bunts, right, if you’re thinking baseball, or again, the grounders, or the small game… that’s the big win. It doesn’t have to be these monstrous… like the birds are singing around you, the heavens have parted moments… for you to find motivation. Again, going back to presence: You have to be present though, to see the small little messages. For me, one other thing on motivation is that I’ll see random things. Like I’ll see ladybugs. Those are like my little spirit animals. And I’m like, “Oh! Like, oh, it’s going to be really exciting today,” or “there’s going to be a little good luck today if I see little ladybugs.” And so, look for the little signs of motivation, look for the little signs of joy. Look for those little things, because those are the things that are going to really juice you up, motivate you, inspire you to keep moving forward.
The seventh lesson is: Healing comes in interesting ways. So, like I said before, I did not start this podcast to heal from burnout. I didn’t even know and couldn’t admit for a long time that I actually did burnout. Burnout, and that was… this podcast was never like, “Yep! I’m going to start a podcast so that I can heal from burnout.” My friends, my family, and rightfully so, they were really afraid for me to start the show. They were wondering, “Okay, Jen. You’ve just burned out, you’re having panic attacks, you were going to an outpatient mental health program for stress, for anxiety, for depression, and now you want to add on a podcast?” And I think that’s fair. I’m so thankful… I love you all. I’m so thankful I didn’t listen to you. But I get why you guys were all concerned. But here after 300 episodes, I can see how much healing and growth and depth. It’s almost like I’m aging like a fine wine! How much depth and growth and just juiciness of healing has happened along the way. It’s happened quietly, it’s happened sideways. It’s happened when I wasn’t looking for it. Sometimes the thing that you’re building is in what we call like that fallow ground. It’s in darkness. And it may… whatever you’re building may serve people in ways that you never intended. It may serve you in ways, others in ways that you never ever intended. So a question for you as we’re again in Fall in the US, so we’re getting there… what are you building in fallow ground? What is in the dark right now for you? And in the winter, there’s just so much depth of growth that can happen there as we get colder and colder in the months ahead. So look for the healing in the interesting ways. Look for it in the quiet, look for it in that darkness, because I promise you, if you just sit with it, even though it’s scary, it will come and find you and it will be a salve on your heart, on your mind, on your body, on your spirit that you just never knew it was possible. But it’s there. Go look for it. Wait for it. It’s there.
Lesson eight: My confidence and my voice changed. So, the person who recorded episode one… if you go back, it would be fun if you do go back. That person is different than the person recording for you right now. Not just in tone, but in clarity, in certainty, in confidence. So somewhere along those 300 conversations, I did, I found my voice. So while I was telling you to find your voice, I was just a few steps ahead of you, finding mine but in bigger stages, bigger platforms, bigger ways. And more importantly than finding my voice, I stopped questioning it. And this shift didn’t happen overnight. It happened one episode at a time. And then until I just told someone recently in my team, I have found new reservoirs of power. New “taps,” like I tapped into new levels of strength just recently, and now it’s just there. So if you are a self-proclaimed introvert – you can still have a voice as an introvert by the way – an introvert is someone who just needs to charge their batteries on their own, extroverts like love those people. But let’s say you say you’re shy. I’ve had people on talking about shyness, shy leadership. I’m going to tell you, I am a shy person. I am an ambivert, but I’m more of an introverted person. I really need time away from people to process. And here I am, doing a podcast. That’s so funny! When I was in seventh grade… I probably have shared this on the show… I was the biggest wallflower. Remember middle school, terrible. And there were these high school and middle school dances. I’m going through that season with my daughter who’s in high school now, and it’s just so hard to live through if you aren’t the popular kid. If you aren’t the confident kid, if you aren’t the one that was picked. But guess what, everybody? I have found my voice, and I have decided to pick myself. I have decided to believe in myself, and I welcome and I challenge you to do the same.
The last lesson here is community isn’t a byproduct, it’s the whole point. So, I didn’t set out to build a community with Brave Women at Work. I really didn’t. I set out to make a podcast. That’s what I did. But then 300 episodes later, I can see it clearly because I’m at a different place in the journey now. So the relationships that formed around the show with the guests, with the listeners, with all of you, it became so much more of the outcome than any single episode. Now I have favorite episodes, oh my word, there were some that I was like jazzed for days after. Or I was so excited to interview like this person or that person. But it became more about you. It became more about what was being built every week, every brick that was put into the wall every week of what was being built. And the content was the vehicle to get there. The community was always, rather, the destination. And I am so thankful that you’re here. I hope you hear that. I hope you feel that. That I am so thankful that you are here and you’re listening.
So before I wrap up today’s show, I also want to say thank you to every woman that has been a guest on Brave Women at Work. I can’t even name, there’s been so many. I want to thank my team. So, Tash, who is the podcast editor of this show, you are a podcast editing maven. Viv out in New Zealand – how cool is that? Come on! We’ll put their links in the show notes so if you have interest or need any support, whether it’s podcast editing… if Tash is taking on people, I know Viv is. So we’ll definitely put a link in the show notes for virtual assistant services. These ladies have been a huge part of how I got here. And so I would be remiss if I didn’t say the biggest hug and thank you to these women for making this possible. So thank you. Thank you, thank you.
So, nine lessons, 300 episodes. And honestly, I’m still learning. I am. I’m still learning. So if you’ve been here since episode 1, or if this is your very first one that you’re listening to, I thank you. This show and everything that it’s taught me exists because you kept showing up too.
As a reminder, please rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast in Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The show is also available on any other podcast platform you enjoy. Until next time, show up, go for it, and be brave.
