Jess Sato

Reader, "I should be able to figure this out on my own." I just spent the past two weeks at the Climbing Collegiate National Championships and the Para Climbing World Cup, and not once did the athletes make a statement like this. Every elite athlete on those walls, climbers who are genuinely among the best in the world at what they do, had access to coaching. Before they got on the wall - in between their attempts - and in the debrief after. I have an elite climber of my own, so I spend a lot...

Reader, I posted something on LinkedIn today, and I wasn't totally sure how it would land. It was about AI, and more specifically, about the costly mistake I watch founders make with it. Too often, women are using it to try and answer the big, hard, deeply personal questions about their business that it was never actually designed to answer. There were a ton of great comments, all who recognized, in some form, that we all do this, and how challenging it is to navigate these big questions for...

Reader, I have long been a massive advocate for menstrual equity, so when Dallas Travers invited me to be one of 40 experts coming together to give away their best resources while also actively donating to Period.org, I was a big full body yes! In case you're not familiar, Period.org is a teen-founded nonprofit actively fighting against period poverty in the US (yes, we have it here, too)! And for each sign up, $1 gets donated... that's a whole lot of $$ for an organization that is fighting...

Reader, A few years ago, I made a decision that scared me a little. I was doing a lot of work helping people get onto the TEDx stage. I loved parts of it, like helping someone find their big idea and the words to articulate clearly for the first time. I loved helping them shape it into something that could actually land well in a room full of people. All of that work lit me up... and it still does. But the application process is a tedious black box, and every time a client got a rejection, it...

Reader, I got back from Cairo last week, and I'm still processing all of it in the best possible way. As you know, I went to meet with the Egyptian women entrepreneurs who will be joining us for the Cairo Gathering portion of the Egypt Retreat in October, and I left with my heart completely full. These women are extraordinary. They're building serious businesses, navigating real complexity, and they're so genuinely excited about what we are creating together that it reminded me all over again...

Reader, It has been a whirlwind here in Cairo. I'm sitting in my hotel by the airport tonight, feeing immensely grateful for the last week. My time here has been full of beautiful conversations with women who are leading businesses that are truly making a difference. Many of them are engaged in women's empowerment activities, equipping other female led businesses with tools, support, and resources around financial literacy, business acumen, and strategy, while others are leading businesses in...

Reader, This week is one of those weeks where everything I care about is happening at once, and I wanted to bring you along for all of it. The blog + podcast this week There's a popular narrative circulating right now that if your business is stuck or you feel stuck, the problem is your identity or that you need to shift who you are before the results will follow. I've been pushing back on that for years in my own safe little circles, but this week I couldn't let it go without saying...

Reader, At a certain point in her career, almost every accomplished woman I have ever worked with hits a wall. It doesn't matter what industry she is in or how successful she has become. At some point, the business or career she's built starts to feel like it belongs to a different chapter of her life, and beneath the surface, something different is trying to emerge. It might be an idea, a deep conviction that something in her industry needs to fundamentally change, or the sense that the most...

Reader, I've been working on something for a little while now, and it's finally ready! You've built a successful business, and yet something keeps surfacing. It might be a deep conviction, an idea that won't leg go, or a sense that the work you were actually meant to do hasn't happened yet. You've tried to figure it out, to unpack what it means, and if you're honest, to push it aside to deal with another day. I call that something a Watershed Idea™️, and I built a quiz to help you figure out...