For Women Who Refuse to Be Underestimated, Underpaid and Undervalued

I made more money after I became a mother than I ever did before. Not despite my children. Because of them. Before I had kids, my time felt endless. I spent it that way. I took meetings that went nowhere, said yes when I wanted to say no, and treated my availability like proof of my ambition. Then I decided to have my children on my own, and every hour acquired an actual cost. I have never been particularly good at waiting for the “right time.” I am even worse at being told there is only one acceptable way to build a life. Having children on my own did not feel brave to me. It felt obvious. I knew what I wanted, and I was tired of waiting for conditions that were never going to line up perfectly. What surprised me came later. I assumed there would be more of us. When my children started school, I looked around for the other women who had made the same choice, and there were almost none. This week’s guest on Takin’ Care of Lady Business, Austin Fremont, made that choice too. We talked honestly about fertility, money, business, and what happens when your time stops feeling infinite.

For both of us, motherhood did not lower our ambition. It raised our price.

With Love & Lady Business,
JJ 

New here from LinkedIn?
Welcome. Every week, I go deeper on the money, power, and fine print shaping women’s careers and what we can do about it.

In today’s edition:
1. What Does an Hour Actually Cost? With Austin Fremont
2. Motherhood Raised My Price
3. TJD Power List
4. Lady Bits

1. What Does an Hour Actually Cost? With Austin Fremont

Austin Fremont is the President of Fremont Blue Events, a boutique New York firm producing galas and benefits for the arts and nonprofit world. She spent years building her company and then made another decision she had stopped waiting for permission to make: she became a solo mom by choice just like me. And with a little advice from me. 

Motherhood did not slow Austin’s business down. It changed the way she valued it. Every event now carried the cost of childcare. Every unnecessary meeting meant time away from her children. Every yes had a consequence she could finally see. So she started charging accordingly.

Austin and I talk honestly about:
— What egg freezing, IVF and choosing a donor actually looked like for two women who went through it
— The financial and emotional realities of becoming a solo parent
— How motherhood changed Austin’s pricing, boundaries and ambitions

🎧 Listen here: Spotify | Apple | YouTube
Explore Fremont Blue Events: fremontblueevents.com

2. Motherhood Raised My Price

Before I had children, my time felt infinite, so I spent it like it was free. That was the mistake. I took meetings without agendas. I said yes because I felt guilty saying no. I accepted urgency created by people who had failed to plan. I let access to me become part of the service, even when nobody was paying for that access.

Then I became a mother. Suddenly, an unnecessary meeting was not merely annoying. It cost childcare. A client who wanted unlimited access was not simply demanding. That person was taking time I could not replace. Every hour away from my children had a visible price, and every yes had to justify it. My children did not make me more talented overnight. They made me less willing to subsidize everyone else’s indecision.

That changed how I worked. I negotiated harder. I made decisions faster. I stopped confusing availability with value. I became much more selective about who received my time and what they had to pay for it. And I made more money.

We are constantly warned that motherhood will make women less committed, less available, and therefore less valuable. That assumes value is measured by how many hours a woman is willing to surrender. I experienced the opposite. The constraint created focus. Focus created boundaries. Boundaries created margin.

You do not need to have children to understand this. You need something in your life that matters enough to make giving your time away feel expensive. Maybe it is your health. Your freedom. Your family. The company you are building. The book you want to write. The life you keep saying you will start when work calms down.

Purpose is not the soft part of your career. It is the thing that forces you to decide what deserves your time—and what no longer does. For the next week, notice every hour you give away because of guilt, habit, or someone else’s poor planning. Then calculate what that time would be worth at your actual rate. Your time was never free. You just needed a reason to stop treating it that way.

REAL TALK
Motherhood did not lower my ambition. It raised my price.
If you know you are underpricing your time, your work, or your leverage, we help women fix the terms. Let’s talk. Know a woman who is still charging as though her time is free? Forward this to her.

3. TJD Power List: Reshma Saujani

She put a dollar sign on the work everyone calls priceless.

Reshma Saujani did not ask anyone to be nicer to mothers. She sent them the invoice. Reshma founded Girls Who Code, wrote the bestseller Brave, Not Perfect, and then created Moms First to confront the economic system built on women’s unpaid and underpaid labor. While other people gave speeches about how hard mothers work, Reshma assigned that work a number. She helped turn the conversation about caregiving into a fight for $16 billion in federal childcare investment.

This summer, she releases a documentary about American motherhood built around one powerful truth: calling caregiving “priceless” is often how society gets away with paying nothing for it. Reshma is doing nationally what women are still discouraged from doing personally: assigning a number to labor everyone depends on.

That is why Reshma Saujani lands on this week’s TJD Power List.
Find Reshma at momsfirst.us

💋💋 Lady Bits

💰 Sara Blakely bootstrapped Spanx without outside investors for 21 years before selling a majority stake at a $1.2 billion valuation—and retaining significant equity. Jessica Alba now owns 5.5% of The Honest Company. The size of the company matters. The size of your piece matters more. Read about the Spanx deal and see The Honest Company ownership filing.

📈 Women represented 46.7% of active U.S. angel investors in 2023—a 39% increase in two years. When more women write the checks, more women get funded. Read the story.

🚗 Mary Anderson patented the first effective windshield wiper in 1903. The automobile industry dismissed it as having no commercial value. It later became standard equipment—and she never made money from it. Read her story.

📉 Women-founded companies generate roughly twice as much revenue per dollar raised, yet all-female founding teams received only 2.1% of venture capital in 2024. The performance problem was never the women. Read the research.

Hi, I’m JJ

Since starting the Justice Dept, we have increased women's wealth by over $100MM in just over 5 years. Want to know what inspires me to do this work, other than making women money? My clients' surprised reaction when we manage to get them much better terms for themselves and their companies, whether via talent agreements, employment, severance, partnerships, asset sales or investments. They often admit that they never thought they could get that result. Not even hoped. This blows my mind. As we know at The Justice Dept. you are all worth everything you ask for and more. Reach out and we’ll show you how!
x TJD