The New School Of Motherhood Podcast

Mandy Cai
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Self-Improvement

Most conversations about motherhood are about managing it. This one isn't. The New School of Motherhood is for the woman who senses there is a deeper conversation to be had. One that begins with her. Who she is becoming. What she is carrying. What becomes possible when she moves through this initiation with intention rather than just endurance. Motherhood isn't where you lose yourself. It's where you find the truest, most powerful version of her. Continue the deeper conversation on https://thenewschoolofmotherhood.substack.com/

  1. 5 days ago

    #23 How do we build a business without recreating the patterns that led us to burnout?

    How do we build a business without recreating the patterns that led us to burnout? In this episode of The New School of Motherhood, I share what working 80-hour weeks in my agency taught me, and why changing careers didn't change how I worked. Motherhood made the old pace impossible. It also helped me separate my strengths from the patterns I no longer want to carry. I talk about: Keeping ambition without giving all of myself to work.How over-giving shapes offers and delivery.Why outsourcing isn't always the answer.Asking what to remove before adding more. If your business is weighing on family life, book a one-on-one business strategy session.

  2. 13 Oct

    #22 What Online Business Taught Me About Profit and Integrity

    Can you build a profitable business without compromising your integrity? In this episode of The New School of Motherhood, I explore ethical pricing, online sales tactics, and the fear that charging more means becoming someone you don't respect. I talk about: Why revenue isn't a qualification for the value of your knowledge.The difference between relevant offers and relentless upselling.How to separate ethical concerns from fear of rejection.Why profit can resource better work and support your family vision. Want personalised help pricing your offers with integrity? Book a one-on-one business strategy session.

  3. 5 Oct

    #21 Sex Education Is Relationship Education: Bodies, Boundaries, and Motherhood with Sanderijn van der Doef

    After birth, intimacy can feel unfamiliar. Your body has changed, but so can your relationship, your sense of yourself, and what sexuality means to you. In this conversation, I’m joined by sexologist and author Sanderijn van der Doef to talk honestly about sexuality and intimacy after birth. We explore what can change in a couple’s sexual relationship, why reconnecting with your body can take time, and how partners can find new ways of experiencing closeness and pleasure. We also question some of the assumptions built into the postpartum six-week checkup. Physical healing matters, but there are questions that a medical appointment can’t answer: Does this feel good to me? Do I want this? And how do I want to experience intimacy now? We talk about birth trauma, pornography and cultural expectations, communication between partners, and the pressure to return to a version of sexuality that may no longer feel right. For me, one of the most important ideas in this conversation is that the goal isn’t necessarily to get back to how things were before having a baby. It’s to understand what your body, your desire, and your relationship need now—and to give yourself permission to discover what intimacy can look like from here. If intimacy after birth has felt complicated, unfamiliar, or different from what you expected, I hope this conversation gives you space to slow down and ask what you actually want. In this episode, we explore: Why sexuality and intimacy can change after birthThe difference between physical healing and feeling ready for intimacyHow birth trauma can affect desire, connection, and sexHow communication and consent can help partners reconnectWhat it means to listen to your body instead of following a postpartum timeline About our Guest: Sanderijn van der Doef is psychologist and sexologist. She is the author of several ⁠best-seller books⁠ about sexuality education for young children, adolescents, parents and teachers. She is an international expert and leading authority in the field of sexual development and sexuality education of children and young people. About your host: Mandy Cai is the founder of The New School of Motherhood. She helps mothers build profitable businesses that honour their capacity, relationships, and ambition, bringing practical strategy together with the inner work that shapes their decisions. Want to build a profitable business that honours the realities of motherhood?  Explore Mandy’s 1:1 Business Strategy Session to help you conceptualise, strategise, or restructure a business around your life as a mother. ⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to her newsletter⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Connect on Instagram⁠⁠⁠

  4. 30 Sept

    #20 What Financial Dependence Taught Me About Becoming Well-Resourced

    Financial dependence changed how I experienced confidence, power and choice inside my marriage, even within a loving and supportive partnership. In this episode, I explore what it means to become well-resourced as a mother. Not to reject interdependence, but to have greater agency within it. I also look at why mothers in business need to build for more than “just enough” if we want our work to create meaningful options, freedom and care. What’s in this episode: How financial dependence affected my confidence and sense of equalityCreating personal agency within an interdependent familyWhat being well-resourced makes possible for mothersWhy “just enough” leaves businesses with no marginBuilding a profitable business around the realities of motherhoodThree questions to connect your financial vision to your business model Book a 1:1 business strategy session with me

  5. 23 Sept

    #19 What I Learned From Pivoting My Business

    In this episode, Mandy shares why she pivoted The New School of Motherhood to focus more explicitly on motherhood and business. She explores the difference between staying committed to your mission and staying loyal to a business model, offer or direction that no longer works. What’s inside this episode Why persistence is not always the right business strategyHow to identify the real bottleneck in your businessThe fears that make pivoting feel so difficultWhy a pivot does not mean starting overHow to test a new direction before making a major changeBuilding a more sustainable business around motherhood and family life Book your 1:1 business strategy session with Mandy

  6. 15 Sept

    #18 Discernment: The Most Underrated Skill for Motherhood, Mental Load, and Business

    We often think the mental load is determined by what needs to be done or how supportive our partners are. But it is also shaped by what we automatically take responsibility for. In this episode, Mandy explores discernment as a motherhood and business skill. She looks at how fear, habit, control and expectation influence what we carry, and how seeing these patterns gives us the freedom to choose differently. In this episode, Mandy explores: How old patterns shape the mental loadThe difference between responsibility and expectationWhy asking for help can feel difficultHow discernment changes the way we leadA three-day practice to pause, separate and choose If you’re building a business centred around motherhood, you can follow how Mandy applies these ideas inside her private Substack community.⁠⁠​ About your host Mandy Cai is the founder of The New School of Motherhood, a business philosophy platform for mothers who are ready to stop trading family life with work. Subscribe to her newsletter

    #18 Discernment: The Most Underrated Skill for Motherhood, Mental Load, and Business

  7. 1 Sept

    #17 Why We Need to Stop Devaluing Ourselves in Motherhood and Business

    Many women are waiting for the world to recognise their value while quietly discounting it themselves. We minimise what it took to become mothers. We overlook the intelligence inside the mental load. We overgive, undercharge and assume someone else’s experience, audience or success makes our contribution less meaningful. In this episode, Mandy explores how these patterns often begin long before motherhood. When we learn that love, attention or safety must be earned, we can carry that conditioning into our homes, relationships and businesses. This conversation is not about denying the structural ways women are undervalued. It is about recognising the internal patterns we have the power to change now. Mandy shares: Why external recognition cannot replace believing in your own valueWhat birth and the mental load reveal about women’s strength and intelligenceHow women and men often approach pricing, support and capacity differentlyWhy you are not separate from your offer or the reason people choose itHow comparison can become an invitation to recognise what only you can bring The problem was never that we lacked value. It is that we have been taught not to recognise it within ourselves. If you are building a business centred around motherhood, or creating work that respects your life as a present mother, you are invited to join Mandy inside Building a Mother-Centric Business, her private Substack community. Join as a paid member.

  8. 27 Aug

    #16 Building a Business That Honours Motherhood

    Many of us want a business that can hold our ambition and our motherhood. And yet we keep building as if those two parts of us have to stay separate. In this episode, I talk about what a mother-centric business actually is. Not a smaller business. Not a child-centric one. A way of building where who we are as mothers sits at the centre of our decisions. I share what happened when I didn’t build this way. In my agency years, and in the early days of this platform. The health cost. The holiday I couldn’t enjoy. The friction of jumping between work and my kids. And what changed when I started using motherhood as the anchor, instead of treating it as a conflict. We talk about: what mother-centric actually means, and what it doesn’twhy separating work and motherhood always bleeds outhow everyday desires, like being done by school pickup, become real boundarieswhy hustle advice often fails motherswhy we minimise what we’re buildingand what happens when we stop If you’re navigating this too, you’re invited into my private community, Building a Mother-Centric Business, on Substack. Each week I share what I’m actually working on, the decisions I’m making, and the realities of building The New School of Motherhood in real time, as a mother. Join here: https://thenewschoolofmotherhood.substack.com/subscribe About your host: Mandy Cai is the founder of The New School of Motherhood. She helps women build mother-centric businesses, and expands what’s possible for mothers who want to prioritise nurture.She spent a decade in branding and marketing. Now she brings that work together with what she’s learned in her own transformation as a mother. Join the community Subscribe to her newsletter Work with her

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Most conversations about motherhood are about managing it. This one isn't. The New School of Motherhood is for the woman who senses there is a deeper conversation to be had. One that begins with her. Who she is becoming. What she is carrying. What becomes possible when she moves through this initiation with intention rather than just endurance. Motherhood isn't where you lose yourself. It's where you find the truest, most powerful version of her. Continue the deeper conversation on https://thenewschoolofmotherhood.substack.com/

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