Kristi Andrus: Why entrepreneurship is the best-kept secret for moms

Kristi Andrus left a successful career as a media executive at HBO, managing affiliate accounts during The Sopranos to Game of Thrones. She and her husband spent two years traveling and raising their kids. Then, Kristi launched a coaching business to help women feeling stuck in their careers figure out how to maximize their potential and purpose. We talk about Kristi’s pivots in and out of the workforce, why entrepreneurship is the best-kept secret for moms, and how women can work less but be more.

Q&A

You built a successful career as a media executive at HBO. You managed a billion-dollar account and had a large team underneath you. Why ever change!?

It was a confluence of events. I thought about the stereotypical question: do I want my boss' job? The answer was no. And at home, I had three kids under three. I was traveling on business all the time, and I was missing a lot of moments at home. And the industry was in flux–there was technology disruption, HBO was in the process of being acquired, and senior leadership was turning over. So there were a lot of things going on. 

On the personal side, I didn’t want to miss out at home. And on the professional side, the industry was changing, and there were a lot of cool things happening outside the industry too. I wanted to see what else was out there. So it was all these different forces that came together. It created a ‘perfect storm’ kind of moment. 

What came next for you after leaving HBO?

I left HBO in the Fall of 2016. I had been thinking about it since early 2015, when I had my third. While I was on maternity leave, I remember saying to my husband, “I have maybe a year left in me.” I knew I wanted to be there for my family. I could see how big my twins were when I had a new baby–I wanted to be there for all of it.

It was kind of a panic moment for my husband. He had been the stay-at-home parent. But if I were leaving work, what did that mean? We had to start figuring out the implications. We started planning for about a year. We cut expenses—we prepaid stuff. We started aggressively saving, and we looked at options and started to figure it out.

And then what came next–was a hard reset. We said, what if we enjoy this safety net and stretch our savings? What would it look like if neither of us went back to work right away? We planned to do it for a year. During that time, we traveled a lot. We visited friends and family and took an epic trip to Australia. We rediscovered the world through our kids’ eyes. And it was the best time ever. 

That’s amazing! Courageous of you to both be out of the workforce and experience your family together. But you also did a lot of planning to prepare for that year off. When did you know “it’s time” and you had enough of a plan?

No matter the degree of planning you do, it's going to feel momentous and courageous. Because it's such a big thing. I'm a planner, so I couldn't not plan it. That said, you can't completely plan because you don't know everything. You have to be comfortable with constantly reassembling the pieces of your plan and learning as you go.

Your husband was a stay-at-home dad during your HBO career. How did that impact your career, even before you left? 

My husband and I had an idyllic vision of what it would be like to raise kids. We both grew up in houses with big yards–and we wanted that for our kids and our dog. Then, when we had twins, we realized that one of us would need to step back, at least temporarily. It was a hard call. It could have been either of us that left. 

It was incredibly generous of my husband to step back. And it did help my career. When I left for a business trip–which I jumped right back into after having our twins–I didn’t worry about anything else at home. I knew my husband and I were 100% interchangeable, other than breastfeeding. When you have twins, you both get thrown into it. It was amazing for our family and our relationship. We had to rise to the occasion together. And it absolutely helped me in my career because I didn’t worry about things back home. I trusted him completely. He’s a great dad.

I think we were naïve when it came to him getting back into work. We thought he would step out for five years and then jump back in. But everything about his industry had changed–it was hyper-competitive, it was five years later. It was not an easy transition for either of us. 

We decided not to force it. He figured out what he wanted, and I figured out what I wanted. And in the meantime, we were focused on having the time of our lives with our kids. We kept reminding ourselves we would be crazy to miss this. What if we’re all in on our kids? What if we don’t worry so much about the future? What if we trusted that it would work out? 

As a society, we are very career-oriented. We have our jobs and then build our life, childcare, where we live, almost everything around that job. I love that you prioritized it differently. Your role as parents was non-negotiable, then you trusted that you could build a career around that. 

You’re right. It was a prioritization exercise. And I had seen different ways of doing it in my network and industry. I saw the moms who opted out. I saw the moms who tried to do both. I saw the moms who hired a nanny. I saw every combination. I was witness to that. 

And across all those moms, one universal message was emphasizing the early years as foundational to your child's development and future happiness. That was something I couldn't let go of. I wanted that strong foundation for our kids. And most women who had regrets didn't regret not going bigger in their career; they regretted not spending more time with their kids. I knew what we were doing wasn't right for everybody. But I knew it was going to work out for our family. 

But I didn't know all this about myself until I became a mom. You talked about the narratives of moms–and when I envisioned being a mom, I had a very specific image in my head. Literally, I pictured a mom I had seen on a business trip to San Francisco. She was walking her kids to school; the kids had little school uniforms on, the mom was impossibly put together with a briefcase for work and a cute outfit and heels. And I was like–I'm definitely going to have it all together, crushing it on the career front, having babies, I'm going to be like her.

I was so naive!! You won’t know how to balance work and motherhood or how you want to experience it until you’re doing it.

I think every woman in her mind has a snapshot of that San Francisco mom, at least some version of her! It feels disappointing when reality looks different. But our career identity can evolve over time. When did you know it was time to go back to work?

I launched my coaching practice in 2018. At that point, I had been out of corporate for almost two years exactly. I did not know I wanted to start a business. I didn't ever think of myself as entrepreneurial, but I've always been a leader and an independent thinker, innovative and creative–but I hadn’t thought of myself as an entrepreneur per se.

But what happened was that I was addicted to the lifestyle already. I loved being home with the kids and with my husband. I loved working from home (I was doing some writing at the time). I loved the flexibility–and I don't just mean location and time flexibility–I mean creative freedom. I was already into all the perks of entrepreneurship. So then I thought, okay, I might as well get the job. 

Coaching came into the picture pretty quickly. I was doing all these soul-searching exercises and I knew I wanted to be a writer, I knew I wanted to make a difference, I was listing out all these things. And universally, when I said "I want to coach," all my friends and family and everyone was like 100%. You should go in that direction. 

Initially, I thought I would coach women on how to climb the corporate ladder faster so that they could be in places of influence and so that when they have kids, they’ll be able to control their schedule and team. And also, they'll be setting the standard culturally and policy-wise, and they'll be influencing their organization to be more female-friendly and family-friendly. I thought that would satisfy my need to make a difference on the systemic level and help the women individually. 

I started taking coaching meetings in corporate environments and I realized I didn’t want to be in that setting anymore. I didn’t like being in the board rooms. I didn’t like even getting into the elevator. I use the example of college. Best time ever? Yes. But I would definitely not want to go back. That’s how I felt about my corporate life. It was so good, I got so much out of it, I learned so much, I met incredible people–but then I was ready for the next thing. 

So then it came to the impasse of, well, what would coaching look like if I don’t coach women on moving up the corporate ladder? I was exploring the idea of coaching to find your purpose and build a career that gives back to the world. And at the same time, I was meeting many moms in my community who were all badasses: a neurosurgeon, an attorney running her practice, one managing a department. 100% of them were struggling with work-life balance and reaching their full potential in their careers. It was this clear moment of, okay, this is what I need to support. The collective loss when women opt-out or don't reach their full potential is immense. And I wanted to help fix that. 

How did you get started launching your own business? So many of the women I interview like you are high-performing, accomplished executives–but entrepreneurship is a different skill set. What resources did you rely on? 

I didn't know that many people in the entrepreneurship world because I was really entrenched in the corporate world. My community was primarily corporate, so I didn't have an obvious place to go. So I got really curious and experimental. I was obsessed with consuming all the blogs, and books, and newsletters and signing up for every masterclass and webinar. I would stay up until midnight reading. I was so into it. It felt good. And the pace was incredibly inspiring.

I was hesitant to financially invest because I wasn’t bringing in any money from the business yet. But I got to a place where I understood there is a cost to doing everything DIY on my own. We’re in a time where you can learn anything, but the cost is time. When I felt I was ready to accelerate and level up, I started buying programs, investing in courses, joining masterminds, and hiring a coach. It accelerated my trajectory. All these things helped me build a  community of women who were actually doing it–and that was a big shift for me. I could start asking what was working, what missteps to avoid, and follow the success clues.

I was very non-judgmental of myself. I told myself, I don’t have to have the right answers or the right approach. I just have to keep following the nudges and see where things are leading and keep going. And if it’s going in a direction I like, that felt exciting, I kept going. If it was going in a direction that wasn’t for me, I pivoted.

I love the idea of being nonjudgmental. If you’re making a pivot, there is always a skills gap, which can be scary for women who are used to being high performers. 

That’s the ‘easy’ part of corporate life, if you will. The path is prescribed to some degree. Do X, Y, Z to get a promotion, or another project, and you continue on the path. But in entrepreneurship, no one will tell you the right answer. And oh, by the way, if you don’t do anything at all, if you wait until you have all the skills, then your business doesn’t move forward until you do. It can feel uncertain or very open-ended, so you’ve got to write your own playbook. 

You have to say these are the three to five things I’m going to do and focus on those things. Then when you have enough evidence that they are working or not working, you can switch it up or layer in new things, but you can’t try to be everything all at once. You have to develop mastery and create a process that drives results, but be open to change.

I feel that tension all the time! Coming from a consulting background, I’m all about the playbook. But I also know the playbook is not going to play out how I think. You have to plan–but you also know your plan is wrong. It’s strange!

One thing that can help is that you can build your own constraints. Now, my constraints were wildly different from traditional corporate constraints. I asked, what kind of business would I build if I were only working 25 hours a week? What kind of business would I build if I only took on clients I wanted to be friends with? If you start putting these constraints into place, it becomes less about "strategy" and more about loving your lifestyle and work. You know how to be successful. You know how to work hard. It's easy to commit to something when you love it.

Today you work with women who “want to work less, but be more.” I LOVE that quote and it resonates with the women I research for my book. But for many of us, it might sound too good to be true. So tell us–how can women work less, but be more? 

It’s multifaceted, but part of it is figuring out your own path. Analyze the working world as it’s prescribed in your industry or company–is that the right place for you? Or is it not working for you? I think a lot of people believe it has to get terrible for you to deserve to make a change. You have to reach the point where it’s not survivable before you make a change. I don’t think we have to go to that place. I think you can write your own rules at any time. It can be that it has taken too long to get a promotion, or that you just don’t want a nine to five, or that you want a new challenge, or that you have more to contribute to the world than your organization asks of you.

When it comes to “be more,” so much has changed in the last five years. Yesterday I saw someone talking about a TikTok influencer who made $17.5 million last year. They were talking about how she is very successful–but they kept calling her a TikTok “girl.” No, she is a business person. Running a $17.5 million TikTok account is as complex and strategic as running a business. And I think that kind of work, which used to be seen as happening on the sides and in the periphery, as side hustles or passion projects, is more mainstream. 

Today, women see more pathways to success, happiness, and fulfillment. Women are creating ways to be the mom they always dreamed of, have a family experience they love, while building an empire or a lifestyle business. 

If I were working around the clock 80 hours a week and had a full team under me, would my current business be bigger and more profitable? Yes. 1,000%. But that's not what this stage of my life is about. Right now, it is about my kids. It's about surviving a pandemic and being available to them when the school is closed. I can run a business that works really well for our family right now, and I also know that it will be really lucrative for our family in the future. I like where it's heading.

I feel like entrepreneurship is the best-kept secret for working moms. Women aren’t signing up for entrepreneurship because they want to work more or hustle their faces off or sleep when they're dead–or all those things that people say. Women are signing up for entrepreneurship because they want to be really present, intentional, and engaged with their real life. They also want to explore all of their ambitions, passions, and talents. The conundrum of corporate life is the better you get at your job, the more narrow your job becomes. You specialize, and that’s what you become known for. You have tp stay in your lane. 

I loved my job as a media executive. But I also wanted to be a writer. How could I be a writer if I give all my time and energy to my job? I think that's one of the things that entrepreneurship allows for you: you get to create your dream job. You get to create your business and your lifestyle. I can say I'm a mom of three and a coach, and a writer. And I can keep stacking roles that I love.

What advice do you have for women in corporate who are feeling stuck? Those women who want to be more? 

Look at your boss’ job. Do you want it? When you look more broadly up the corporate ladder, are there women like you in the organization? Are they successful? Are they happy? Are they fulfilled? Do they have what you want? That can be really telling directionally.

Then I would say this: Statistically, I know I’m wrong, but I would say that 100% of the women who want more–are made for more. If you have that inclination, you have what it takes to follow it up and back it up. 

Lastly, I recommend starting a five-minute daily journaling process or a five-minute meditation process. The better you know yourself, the better opportunities will show up in your life. Start asking yourself questions like: What else do I want to be doing? Where do I see myself when I'm an old lady? What things have I loved my whole life that I love no matter what? 

Kristi, thank you so much for sharing your story! You can connect with Kristi on LinkedIn and learn more about her coaching at KristiAndrus.com.