Sunday nights at our house are dinner with me, the kids, the Farmer and the Ex. They are always fun dinners, and I always feel very lucky for that.

My six-year-old talked about his new baby cousin, Eva (who is pictured, in utero, above). "She has a terrible name," he said, "for Pig Latin. Its Vaeay. It doesn't work."

We all do the vowel arranging in our heads and agree, Eva is not a good Pig Latin name.

"Mom has a great name! It's Enelopepay."

The Farmer says, "It sounds like it could be the name of her next company."

The Ex says, "Yeah, emphasis on the pay."

The three adults laugh.

And then I get nervous. About what I'm going to do next. If you have had three companies, people assume you will have a fourth. So I assume that, too. Which makes me nervous.

When I was in the doctor's office with my son, he was playing his DS and I was looking for something to read to distract myself from the urge to rein in his video game time (I decided that parents who limit video games are delusional.) And I saw this pamphlet that looked like a food pyramid so I grabbed it to get some insight into how to use the food pyramid to make myself not want to eat and lose weight overnight.

What I thought was a food pyramid pamphlet was actually a mental health pamphlet. It was a pyramid that had taking care of life goals and meaning of life stuff on the bottom, and the middle part was daily routine mental health stuff like exercise and talking to friends—the stuff you already know you should do every day. And the top was the immediate stuff. Ways to calm yourself down in the moment. For the most part, the top part was positive self-talk.

I am good at the first two, but the immediate stuff I'm not good at. In fact, I eat when I am anxious. I found, actually, that drinking is more calming when I'm anxious, but eating is more socially acceptable. Xanax is always good, but only if I can sleep the rest of the day. And really, if I have a day where I can sleep then I'm probably not anxious. Not that I would ever know. Because I haven't had a day where I can sleep the whole day since I became a mother.

Anyway, I am trying to find good ways to calm myself down when I'm nervous. And I took the pamphlet home to make myself more conscious of what I do in the moment when anxiety arises. Mostly this means that I've started to tell myself, "Oh, look. I must be upset becacause I'm eating." But in this moment, at the dining room table, while the kids talked to the dads, I went into the kitchen to calm myself down. And I didn't eat. I practiced positive self-talk.

I had rehearsed it before, which is how to prepare for the moment of huge self-doubt. Here are the five points I've come up with:

1. Stay confident that I am making good choices based on good data.
When I started having kids I dropped out of the software industry and the startup world.

The moment was similar to me deciding that homeschooling is a non-negotiable. Everyone told me not to drop out and that I was crazy.

But I had read a lot about attachment theory—that kids need one, single primary caregiver for the first two years. I realized that it's common knowledge among child development experts that kids need a single caregiver for the first two years, but no one wants to be the bearer of this bad news. Because daycare means there are two primary caregivers, at least, which jeopardizes a baby's ability to attach. So sending a kid to daycare was out of the question for me.

And that's how I feel now, about homeschooling. Even though it's wreaking havoc on my career.

2. Remember the times I felt like a failure when it was not true at all.
This research made me intensely committed to finding work I could do from home to support the family. Which lead to temporary financial ruin. And I felt like a failure.

All my friends in the software industry disappeared because we had nothing to talk about. The writers I met earned so little money that I worried hanging out with them was bad for my career.

After a few years, I launched this blog. It got big enough that people who make a lot of money started paying attention to me again. And I didn’t feel like a failure anymore.

If I could go back to that time, I'd tell myself to stop worrying about failure.  The worry just makes the change harder, and no one is a failure in the middle of a big change. You can't fail if you're moving toward something. You fail only if you stop.

3. During big transitions, be clear on priorities.
I have a startup right now. I started pitching some top-tier VCs I'd like to work with and  they said the business idea would not grow big enough. So I showed how I can win at the whole online food business because the barrier to entry for selling meat and cheese online is huge and I have a way to get around that.

Everyone loved my marketing plan. Except that the business was too small to be funded. There would not be a big enough exit and I can’t get great business partners if I don’t have huge exit potential.

That's a problem because I want to work only with hotshots. I don’t want to work with moms who want jobs on the side. Please God do not strike me down for saying this, but as a mom who is trying to have a really exciting career, I don’t want to work with other moms. I want to work with twenty-something men who have no kids and have endless time to address their endless curiosity.

So I worked with an angel investor to craft a business plan that moves quickly from online food to online everything. I talk about the future of shopping . It used to be that shopping was exciting because you could find different stuff in different cities. Discovery and exploration are part of shopping. But online, everything is a commodity. People want discovery and they want to feel that what they are buying is special.

I say all this to show how my online food business will transform the consumer experience. You need to say that kind of stuff to get A-list partners and A-list funding.

4. Getting what you want means deciding what you'll give up.
So last month I got a great developer to agree to move forward with me. Last week there was no barrier to me launching my goat cheese business as step one to transforming the American consumer experience.

Except that I don’t think I can handle talking like this every day for five years. Which is what a startup is: talking like a manic dreamer with crazy ambitions that no one thinks you can really pull off, but some people will take a wild bet on. That’s what it would be.

It’s so fun. But not with kids. It’s so great to have an amazing business partner, but not if they have to chase you down in between playdates. They start to hate you.

So I have this business I’m not doing. And I'm banking on the advice I tell other people, that admitting what won't work to do right now is a step toward figure out what will work to do right now.

5. Keep moving forward and believe you'll go somewhere good.
I am at an in-between stage, and I’ve been here before, so I am going to have faith that I’ll come out okay. I am going to have faith that I am not going to wither away and lose my ability to earn a lot of money. I am going to have faith that when I am done with my current identity crisis there will be top-performers all around me.

I coach so many people in their 20s who are lost, and they are worried that their feeling lost will never end. And I tell them to just keep trying jobs until one sticks. Have patience and believe that you'll figure things out. This is true for me, too. Right now. The more times you live through that feeling of being lost, the more faith you have that you'll keep moving forward and come out fine.

You know what makes me happy right now? My sister-in-law had a baby after losing her first one. I'm really happy for her. And my small, odd family has fun dinners together. And focusing on the stuff that definitely feels good gives me faith to trust that eventually I can put the pay in Enelopepay.

This post is cross-posted at TechCrunch.

We need to get more guys who are running tech startups to decide instead to be stay-at-home dads.

What do you think of that? Stupid, right? That’s what it sounds like when anyone suggests that we need to get more women doing startups.

If you are worried that women don’t feel capable of doing whatever they want, you can stop worrying. Women outperform men in school at such a huge rate that it’s easier to get into college as a male than a female. And women take that to the bank by earning more than men in their 20s. Women would probably continue out-earning men except that when men and women have kids, women choose to downshift way more often than men do.

Clearly, women have a choice. There are plenty of opportunities out there for women if the women would just continue working in their 30s the same way they did in their 20s. So clearly, women don’t want to. Women are choosing children over startups.

So it seems that women are making decisions for themselves just fine. It’s just that they are not the decisions that men make. This should not surprise anyone. Men and women are different. So what?

On top of that there is evidence that the members of the VC community go out of their way to attract women. Of course, this makes sense. VCs look for underserved markets. Women are likely to address different markets than men, and since there are so few women founders compared to men founders, it’s likely that women are addressing an underserved market. So VCs want to talk to women.

So VCs are definitely giving women a fair shake, it’s just that women don’t pitch. And women are definitely feeling that they can do whatever they want, it’s just that women aren’t choosing to create tech startups.

So what?

Let’s look at all the women writing articles saying that we need women to do startups. Here’s an article by Jean Bittingham. She says the world needs women entrepreneurs now more than ever. But what has she done? She’s an author and an academic. Of course. She has no idea what life is like running a startup, so she thinks it’s a good idea to tell other women to do that while she writes books. I’ve done both startups and book writing, and book writing is like a vacation compared to a startup.

Here’s a post by Tara Brown wondering why women don’t comment on VC blogs. Here’s the answer: Because women don’t care. Is that okay? I actually wonder why Tara cares, because she’s a web site producer. I don’t think she has ever raised money for a startup. But I can tell that all three times I’ve done it, raising money for a startup has been hell, so I think we should really be asking why anyone would want to try to convince someone to do it.

TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis has taken on the cause of women in tech. She writes about it a lot:  here’s a piece where she rips on how mainstream America identifies with women in tech. But the problem is Tsotsis has never said why women are personally suffering from not being involved in the tech startup life. Really, how is it making any woman’s life better to say that women should be doing startups? And hey, if startup life is so great then how about trading in the writer’s life for a founder’s life? It’s really different. Try that for a few years, and then tell all the other women you know, who are outearning the men they know, or taking care of kids, to trade their life for startup life.

The people trying to give solutions are as lame as the people pointing to a problem.

Whoever started the TED Women’s conference is pathetic. Which would you rather say you spoke at? TED? Or the TED Ghetto?

Fred Wilson says there aren’t enough women running startups. What does this mean, exactly? He acknowledges that women don’t want to do startups in their 30s. And he himself points out that by the time women are 40 and they want to go back to work full-time, these women are not going to relocate to Silicon Valley.  But the truth is that if there were really a problem with there not being enough women running startups, then people like Fred would fund startups in suburbia. He’d fund startups that run at half-speed to accommodate carpools. He’d fund startups that have part-time ambitions. He’s not doing that, though. So clearly there is not THAT big a problem that women are not running startups: The market for funding has spoken, and it is still funding mostly men.

Peter Thiel recommends that women start companies from age 20-25 so they have one under their belt before they have kids.  But why? Is he noticing that women who are 20- 25 are sad about where their life is going? Peter, here’s some news for you: Women are most happy, in their whole lives, at age 28. So I don’t think you are identifying a problem here. I don’t think women are lamenting at age 28 that they did not found a startup at age 20-25. (Something to think about: Men are most unhappy at age 28. Maybe it is because they are so obsessed with launching a startup.)

Sheryl Sandberg says that women need to “lean into their careers.” Sandberg runs Facebook. She’s doing a great job. She also has two young kids, and a husband who works at a startup. I think you’d be really hard-pressed to find a mom with two young kids who wants Sandberg’s life. Which is why women are not “leaning into their careers” like Sandberg says they need to in order to get to the top.

Pew Research shows that most women who have kids would rather have a part-time job than either work full time or stay at home with kids full time. This sheds a lot of light on why there are so few female founders, doesn’t it?

But now I have an idea: How about giving some respect to women who grew up in the 1970s, with feminist revolution baby boomer moms, and are still brave enough to say “I don’t want to work full time. I can work full time. But I don’t want to. “

Here is a Blueprint for a Woman’s Life which I published. It is full of recommendations for how to make choices based on what we know women really want for themselves. It does not involve getting VC funding.

Because women are earning more money than men in their 20s and underrepresented in the startup world in their 30s and 40s.  And I don’t hear a clamoring of women in the US who are saying “I want to do a startup and no one is letting me!” In fact, women are starting small businesses without VC help, at a very high rate.

For the most part, women are not complaining about the lack of VC funding in the world. They are complaining about the lack of jobs with flexible hours. And I don’t see anyone on TechCrunch addressing that when they address women.

Men could change the world by staying home with their kids and parenting them. Men would provide a totally different perspective as the lunchroom parent. They would ask for totally different after-school programming. Men would hire different babysitters and different SAT tutors. Because men are different than women.

This is the same argument people use for why more women should do startups: They will have a different perspective, think of different models, lend a different sensibility to the industry.

The problem is that people do not need to be told what they should choose. People are pretty good at making choices for themselves. Men can stay home. Women can do startups. The thing is, most don’t want to. And that’s okay.

(This post was originally published on Venture Beat. This photo is by Melissa.)

Brazen Careerist is my third startup. People ask me all the time why I gave up my position as CEO. If you knew what startup life was really like, you would ask me why I was CEO for as long as I was.

When I started building the brand of Brazen Careerist around the year 2000, I talked about ideas like job hopping as a way to build a solid career, and I warned that generation Y’s entry into the workforce would be a total shock to employers. I was labeled a heretic and a moron.

But pretty quickly, people started thinking I was right. And I started making $15,000 a speech to discuss these ideas.

The intoxication of being on a trend, and knowing how to monetize it and being excited about being right, that’s what makes someone do a startup. So I picked up two partners, I launched Brazen Careerist, and quickly, Mashable called us the number-one social networking site for Gen Y. We were on a roll.

We raised money. We launched products, we pivoted 20 times. We were due to raise more money right after the markets crashed. So of course we couldn’t raise money. And of course I did what all startup founders do when they run out of money: I had a shit fit. And then I had a nervous breakdown.

But the thing is, in a startup, everything moves at warp speed, even a nervous breakdown. So I recovered fast, convinced investors to put in more money. And we kept going.

That cycle happened twice. Which is normal. Because startups are hell, and a startup is the perfect convergence of a brilliant idea and a founder just crazy enough to stick with it through anything.

At that point, I was exhausted. And I had to figure out: When is it time for a founder to step down? So I went through a time of personal assessment, which taught me a lot about when you know it’s time for a founder to leave:

Financial exhaustion
I had funded the idea with my own money for a few years before I launched Brazen Careerist as a social recruiting platform. I ruined my credit, I cashed out my 401K (don’t ever do this!) and I lost a baby sitter because she was appalled that we didn’t have any food in the refrigerator.

Emotional exhaustion
I had traveled every week for a year giving those speeches. You’d think I’d have saved a lot of money, but you’d be surprised how much it costs to run a household if you have two kids and are never home to see them. Then I spent a year traveling every week to raise money and being on television and missing my kids.

Marital exhaustion
The dirty secret about startup founders is they can’t keep marriages together. Part of the reason for this is they are crazy to begin with. And part of the reason is that you have to be married to your company to do a startup. So divorce rates are high, especially among women, because they are much less likely to have a spouse who is willing to stay home and keep the family intact.

So I got a divorce. It was on the cover of the New York Times. And all PR is good PR, of course, but I realized, while I was going through the process, that I wanted a successful marriage more than I wanted a successful career. And then I thought, “No. I want both.” And I became exhausted wondering how women get both. (Until I realized, oh, this is why women don’t do startups.)

Intellectual exhaustion
And it was time to pivot. It was time to turn Brazen Careerist into an event-based social recruiting service. And I knew a lot about recruiting, but I was going to have to learn more. And really, you have to live and breathe the industry you are in if you’re going to rewrite the rules to that industry.

And I was already contemplating my next topic: Generation Z. I think that Generation Z will revolutionize school like Gen Y revolutionized work. I think homeschooling is going to be a huge trend that impacts startups, and corporate life, and I was really curious about that. My brain was refocusing whether I wanted it to or not.

Relationship exhaustion
While I was appearing on shows like 20/20 to tell the world how to manage Generation Y, I was having knock-down drag-out fights with my Gen-Y co-founder, Ryan Healy. Founder bickering is a common startup problem. Because if you have co-founders with different skill sets, which you should, then you are going to have different points of view, and inevitably, arguments about that.

Vision for where to go next
Fortunately, though, Ryan had not ruined his personal finances and he didn’t have kids. So he still had lots of energy to get the company to the next level. And after seeing all these issues listed on paper, I realized that even though I loved Brazen Careerist, I wanted to step down from the CEO position.

So I started a relentless campaign to get one of the investors, Ed Barrientos, to become CEO. He had already had big exits from two of his own companies. As part of my campaign I told him it could be an interim position (it wasn’t) and part of the campaign was to convince him that it was the right time for me to step down.

It was hard to step down, but I needed a vacation. I wanted to have a life. I married a farmer and moved myself and the kids (and sort-of even my ex) to a farm in rural Wisconsin.

And after I’d had a break, I found myself calling Ryan and Ed more and more. I took a keen interest at the board meetings (I’m still a major shareholder) and I asked to be more and more involved, albeit in a different role, which they eagerly accommodated.

For me, stepping down was the right thing to do. It feels right that I took a break when I needed one, and that I did it at a time when the company was in good hands. Also, it feels good that I can still contribute while I figure out how to get my next business off the ground. Because after all that trouble – the physical, financial, emotional exhaustion – I can’t stop doing startups. It’s just who I am.

I'm at an amusement park with my kids, in the middle of the week, and I'm on a conference call while I watch my son try to get on a ride.

Being self-employed looks so nice at an amusement park. The self-employed are always free to go on a vacation. They pick up their friends at the airport in the middle of the day, they show up for poker night because they can stay out late, and they can plan their wedding without having to pretend they are working.

Close up, though, most self-employed people are completely stressed about money.

That money part is what I hate about being self-employed. Anyone who says they don’t love a steady paycheck is lying. A paycheck is so nice. It’s reliable like a friend, it makes you safe, it gives you a way to organize your life.

Here's how I deal with the worrying:

1. Pretend you have an out.
Sometimes I have to calm myself down by telling myself I'll solve my money problems by taking a regular job. One fantasy I have is getting a job at Microsoft. Once I was giving a speech at a human resource convention in Seattle. And a top HR guy from Microsoft was there. And he wanted to talk to me.

I thought, “Great, I’ll sell him something from Brazen Careerist.”

Then I thought, "No. I just want a job." I thought I'd do anything—even read resumes all day—if he’d just give me a steady paycheck and access to the amazing health care they give autistic kids of employees.

I hear Microsoft is ending that insurance plan. I wonder if this will help me stay more focused on running my own company instead of looking for escape routes. Probably not.

2. Forget living in the moment. Instead, live five months in the future.
Your clients will take too long to make a decision, no matter how long they take, and they will never pay immediately. So instead of fighting the lag-time, you should always be earning money for five months out. If you are spending your days trying to drum up business to get revenue five months from now, you feel safe, knowing that it’s not an emergency. Any closer than that and you feel like if you don’t close you’re gonna die.

3. The only way to feel rich is to be able to dump an awful client.
Thinking five months out frees you to dump a client, and it's so so fun to dump a client who misbehaves. It’s a way to assert your power as a freelancer even though you have no power because if you don’t get money you’ll starve and have to get a staff job somewhere (and you probably can’t – because most self-employed people are largely unmanageable in a corporate hierarchy).

I had a client that signed a contract to pay half up front, and then didn’t. And the company was so late it was almost time to give the speech. And I said, if you don’t pay this week, I’m not doing the speech. I loved that. I loved that because I don’t need the money from the speech. I’m okay for right now. Well, I mean, I’d really like the money this week. But I’m okay for next week, so I liked telling her to fuck off.

4. Have one great client.
You need a lot of schemes. You have to always be pitching different people different stuff because you don’t know what’ll stick. But you really need one client that is great, and pays on time, and makes you love doing your job. That client gives you sanity.

For me that is Federated Media. Really, I could write a whole post about how much I love them. They are so easy to work with and they sell ads that I’d never sell on my own, because I’d get impatient and tell the advertiser to fuck off before I collected any money. So Federated makes my life great, because I can blog about anything and say yes or no to anything and they just roll with it, and keep selling ads. Well, they did tell me to remove the word fuck from a post. But that’s how you know that Federated didn’t pay me to write this post. Because they allow pretty much anything except obscenities, which they say fuck qualifies as.

5. Self-employment stability requires doing stuff you hate.
Be a grown-up. Self-employed doesn’t mean you love everything you do. I have done stuff to appease editors that drove me crazy. I have given speeches to groups of people that were all at the conference with the sole purpose of cheating on their wives. I do lots of stuff I don’t like. I remind myself that I do it so that I can have a job that I pretty much love.

To cope with the bad stuff, you have to find a way to trick yourself. Like, I don’t love the pressure, but I love writing about the pressure.

1. Hide your feelings if they are going to be trouble for someone.
I am still a major shareholder in my company, but I do not work at the company day to day. I would like to say that my neediness issues and fear of abandonment do not follow me to my workplace, but in fact, they are huge there. And I spend a lot of time worrying whether people listen to my opinions because they care or because it’s easier to listen than to try to get me to shut up.

When the board meeting rolls around, I get nervous. I don’t know if I should go or not.

I like to go because I like knowing what’s going on. Well, and of course, I like giving my opinion. I also like hanging out with the board. I really like Ryan Healy now that I don’t have to work with him. And everyone on my board is someone who did a huge amount for me at one of the (many) very tough times in my life. (Like this time.) So I just really like everyone.

So, while I am deciding if I should go to the meeting or not, Ed Barrientos, the CEO tells me that the company would pay for me to go. Ed is incredibly cheap when it comes to any company expense, so I take this to mean they really care about me being at the meeting.

2. Focus on clothing because it’s easier to control than personality.
I wear my dark J Brand jeans and a purple shirt from Banana Republic. The clothes I choose are really important because I don’t want people to think I’ve lost my edge on the farm. I can’t look too farm-y. I have worn jeans and a black top to every board meeting ever. That’s fine for men, because the only criteria men have for clothes is that you look hot. But now that there are women at the company, and I will have to stop in and say hi, and the women will think I don’t know black is out.

So it is out of my comfort zone, but I wear purple.  I work really really hard at looking like I fit in. Which you have to do if it’s impossible to fit in. If you fit in, you can think about being a little bit special. I try just to not be special.

3. Act nonchalant about things like a private jet. Making any scene is bad.
The board member who has a plane, Erik, has had, for a very long time, the job of keeping me in line. When I had a screaming fit at the attorney’s office about the investors lowering my salary, they brought Erik in to talk to me. And he never stopped.

I love his patience for me, but I also love his plane. Did you know that companies do not put their logos on their corporate jets because it’s bad PR? So I fly in and out of airports that look like all the planes are full of CIA operatives.

4. Acknowledge that you make people uncomfortable.
On the plane, Erik reminds me that I should try to behave well at the meeting.

I tell him that I know he didn’t like the time that I made paper airplanes to keep myself occupied.

I tell him that to assure him that I know what bugs him. But the mention of paper airplanes seems only to remind him of bad things, so I assure him that I brought new pens to keep myself busy.

“Jelly Rolls,” I say. “Do your daughters use them? They’re really fun. They sparkle. Or there are some that are dull. And the ink is like squishy liquid.”

Board members do not like hearing about Jelly Rolls. I did not know this is a rule, but I infer it from the look on his face. Just not immediately. I wish I had noticed sooner.

5. Suffer in silence. If you talk about pain, people will think you’re a pain.
Then my abscess tooth starts to hurt. It was already hurting that morning. So I put a few Vicodin in my purse, which I have from the dentist who said I might need some in the few days I’m waiting for the oral surgeon.

The thing is that was two years ago. Two years ago when I was supposed to get my tooth pulled. It is dead. Or whatever an abscess is. The dentist said I’m very young to have a dead tooth.

I cried. I didn’t tell him that it’s not fair that I’m losing teeth because for my whole bulimic life I was really careful to brush my teeth after every vomiting episode.

I also didn’t tell him I wasn’t going to have the tooth removed. I mean, I will. Just not now. It’s too upsetting.

6. No mind-altering drugs on short notice.
Erik and I land and I thank the pilots. I have noticed that Erik, the King of Being Normal, is always gracious to everyone. And I am oblivious to everyone. So it stands to reason that for him to think I’m normal, I need to be gracious.

I thank the driver for being there to meet us and then I thank him for waiting for me to go to the bathroom.

The tooth is hurting a lot, and I am worried I’m going to pass out. It would actually be good to pass out with Erik. He would figure out what to do and he’s a get-things-done kind of guy. But he would not like it. He wants to feel secure in the idea that I’m stable and he won’t have to rescue me again.

So I think of popping a Vicodin, but what if it makes me loopy? Then maybe they wouldn’t invite me back to a board meeting. Then they’d tell me to dial-in, and I’m a notoriously bad listener on the phone, so they’d assume I was checked out, and then it’d be like I wasn’t there at all.

So instead of a Vicodin, I take ten Advil.

7. Try to do what is expected in each situation.
In the car, on the way to the meeting, Erik looks at his email, so I do that too because if you want someone to like you, you should mirror what they do.

Then Erik stops to pick up lunch. He asks if I want lunch. Everyone at the company knows that I hate eating with a group. So he only asks because it’s the normal thing to do. He knows I will say no. But it’s good to be normal. I get it. So instead of saying, “No, of course not,” I say, “No, thanks.”

He nods.

I see the line for sandwiches is really long. So long that I’d have thrown a fit and demanded to go somewhere else. But Erik is not a fit thrower. So I see that I’m going to have some extra time.

8. Fend off all possible emergencies.
I go to the bathroom to investigate the tooth situation. On the way to the bathroom, I pass a dentist’s office. That gives me confidence. Because something really bad would not be really bad too long because I could just slip right into that office and ask for some help.

In the bathroom I take out my earring and use the pointy part of the earring to work on my tooth.

The puss was more like popping a big yellow zit. It sprayed onto the mirror. I popped it a few more times, a few more sprays onto the mirror.

Then I clean everything up. The mirror, my mouth (now there's blood dripping, which is how I know I got all the puss) and I redo my makeup, which takes a while, because I pretty much have to wash my face and start over.

When I get to the car, Erik is there. Waiting. I say, “Oh. Sorry. Were you waiting long?”

He says, “Yeah. Did you take a tour of the building?”

9. Explain yourself so people don’t assume the worst.
That is Erik’s way of asking if I did something bad. He knows me well. He sees possibilities. He is worried I did something not appropriate.

So I need to tell him something because it is not normal to walk around a strange building for twenty minutes. Which, it turns out, is how long I’ve been gone. I want to let him know that I was doing something okay.

So I tell him that I have an abscess tooth and I had to pop the puss part.

“It was interfering with my speech,” I tell him. I try to convey that I was just worried about being normal for the board meeting. Which is true.

He is not going for it. He thinks I take insane risks. Which, to be fair, is the only reason there was even a company for him to invest in: because I took insane risks. But whatever, risk takers always look exciting from far away but never up close. So I try to tell him that I definitely made a choice on the side of caution because I made sure there was a dentist’s office nearby and also, I did not take the Vicodin.

He says I didn’t need to tell him that.

I’m not sure what I needed to tell him.

10. Get a list of expected behaviors and then execute on that list.
I am well behaved for the meeting. I do not tell everyone that I think I know more about Brazen Careerist’s traffic than everyone else even though I don’t work there. People do not want to hear that from me. And someone with good social skills would say it differently. So I keep quiet while Ed talks.

And I keep quiet when people talk about the weather and sports. Well, not really. I say no, please, don’t do smalltalk. It’s so awkward. And then they talk about it anyway. Which is a sign they think I am on good behavior.

At dinner, everyone compliments me on my good behavior at the meeting. I paid attention, I had no outbursts, and I did not do anything completely inappropriate.

I breathe a sigh of relief and then spend five minutes ordering because I’m terrified of not having complete control over the contents of my plate.

11. Recognize the crazy people and don’t follow their lead.
Then the guys reminisce about farm times in their childhood and it turns out that they have been cow-tipping.

“That is not nice,” I tell them.

I tell them we would never do that on the farm, and that one of the signs of a child turning into a sociopath is treating animals poorly.

They laugh.

If you want to make yourself stand out as a top candidate for almost any job, try this approach: start a company and then sell it for nothing. This is a lot easier to do than you may realize, especially if you think of entrepreneurship as a career-building tool– instead of a bank-account building tool.

Are you thinking this sell-for-a-dollar thing is a waste of time and effort?

It's not. Here are five reasons why it’s a smart career move:

1. Entrepreneurial types are in very high demand in the workplace.

The most sought-after employees in the recruiting field are self-starters, people with tons of ideas and lots of confidence and people who get a rush from working all the time.

Unfortunately, these are also the people who start their own companies. They don’t really want to work for someone else, and they almost never pick up the phone to listen to a recruiter pitch a job. So the entrepreneurial type who is willing to work for someone else is a rare find, and in high demand.

2. Doing wacky things makes you more attractive.

Sometimes start-a-business types are crazy and impossible to get along with. No one can work with them ,and they end up being mad scientists in their basements. Or, they are so nuts that they can’t even manage to get anything done. These are not the kind of people you want to be like. Obviously.

But here’s a great article in the New York Times that explains why the best entrepreneurs are just a little bit off kilter. They are just on the manageable side of crazy. And, the New York Times describes why these are the people in very high demand.

They are fun to work with but impossible to find.

3. Most entrepreneurs want to quit their companies.

My favorite VC-slash-blogger is James Altucher, and he explainsthat everyone is always trying to sell their company. Which I think is true.  Often the entrepreneur has given it his all and he is, simply put, sick of the company. It’s not that the company is a failure, per se, but it’s that the entrepreneur doesn’t want to work on the company anymore. The company is worth something, but not a lot, and there are not really any buyers. This situation happens a lot. So no one will be surprised if it happens to you.

Even if it happens after only six or eight months.

4. Selling your company, even for nothing, will impress people.

To be honest, you still look pretty good, compared to the rest of the world, if you say you started a company and it failed. Because the gumption and intelligence to start a company is flattering to anyone.

But you will look really good if you say you sold the company. Even if you get someone you know to buy it for a very small amount of money.

I have a friend who sold his company to Microsoft for millions. And you know what Microsoft did? Closed down 90% of the company. My friend still walks around bragging about how he sold a company to Microsoft. No one asks him if it was a real sale. What is a real sale, anyway? It’s when someone gives money to someone else.

So your sale is when you get money. It can be a very small amount. Maybe a $100.

Google this phrase “sold for an undisclosed amount”.  That’s BS Silicon Valley speak for “the sale price sucked.” When it’s a sale price worth bragging about, someone does. Otherwise, it’s simply “undisclosed.” That’s what yours will be. You can tell people it’s a contractual obligation to not reveal the price. Which is almost always is, anyway.

And there you go: You are an entrepreneurial type who sold a company. Say that to a recruiter and they’ll pay attention.

Read the rest at BNET.

My son woke up every morning and fed his pigs, for six months. And after three months, he walked with the pigs, around in a circle, twice a day, to train the pig for the show.

There is huge variety in the amount of help parents give their kids in these projects. Some kids' parents buy show pigs from out of state and the kids take very little care of them until the fair. Some kids do everything themselves.

I think it's a lot like an allowance for a city kid. Each family manages the potential pitfalls of an allowance themselves. (My brother is a banker and he uses allowances to teach the concept of compound interest.) We decided it would be best if our son did most of the work. Doing the work is more important to us than getting a ribbon.

While my son trained the pig, the Farmer trained my son. So much of going to the county fair with a pig is showmanship. There are rules you could never know being an outsider: Always make eye contact with the judge, never show frustration with the pig, keep the pig between you and the judge.

That first rule is huge for my son. He has Asperger’s and his eye contact is naturally limited. For someone with Asperger’s, eye contact is awkward, overwhelming, and extremely tiring.

The Farmer understands this problem very well,  because when the Farmer is having a difficult discussion with me, I cover my eyes. So he focused especially on teaching our son to make eye contact with the judge.

The day of the fair, my son was dressed up. Well, for a farmer. He had on a collared shirt and clean jeans. He had all the accoutrements of a great pig showman, including the brush you use in case the pig gets dirty in the ring. (You brush off the dirt when the judge is not looking – another tricky rule that no city person could glean.) He stood by the pen, watching his pigs, all cleaned up and ready to go for nearly an hour.

We had been preparing for so long. We had done preparation to help my son deal emotionally with the pigs getting slaughtered. We had prepared him for the chaos of lots of pigs, and utter boredom of waiting for his pigs' weight class to be called. We had not prepared him for the huge tension that permeated the ring.

My son showed four different times. The first time he showed his pig by weight. His pig weighed 287 pounds. As he waited by the show ring for his turn, we realized  he would be showing his pig in a weight class with all older kids.

The ring was hot and crowded and chaotic. But guess what? He did a great job.

It turns out that the Farmer was not quite up to date on showing pigs. For one thing, people shave their pigs now and we didn't know that. So we had the only hairy pig. Another thing: The pig show does not reward pigs who are healthy and trouble-free and can be raised in a profitable family business. So, the pig show rewards a certain kind of shape and heft and it's a type the Farmer doesn't raise, so I can't tell you that our pigs placed very high in the competition.

All those unexpected obstacles did not faze my son. He stuck to what we practiced and did well at that. We showed his pigs three more times. Each time he got a little more confident. And I felt like my son was growing up, right in front of me. There is so much you can do to prepare for the world, but really, you grow only as you succeed or fail. You learn so much about yourself in that moment.

I watched the Farmer watch our son.

And we were both nervous. It's good to have the feeling that at some point, there is nothing more you can do. At some point, it's time to fail or not fail. Those moments have been so important for me, and for the Farmer, and I was glad we could give that moment to my son.

And, he still got a ribbon. Third place.

I found myself hugging and kissing the Farmer a gazillion times – one for every hour they spent together practicing. And when there was a special category for kids from farm families (technically: for pigs that were raised on the same farm as the mother pig) where there were only eight qualifying kids (out of about 200 kids showing pigs) and I was so happy to have my son in that bunch. I'm so happy I'm raising my kids on a farm.

Sunday was the auction. The Farmer helped my son wash the pigs to get them ready. This was two days after my son showed his pigs, so by now, he felt like a pro around the stalls at the fair.

I know that the lesson here is that running a business and earning money is really hard work. But the sweetness of my son and the Farmer working together made me choke up again and again. I think there is also a lesson here that if you work with people you love working with, it doesn't really feel like work.

I was actually worried sick that my son's pig wouldn't sell. Most county fairs have a 4H show, but they don't auction the animals because there wouldn't be enough bidders. Our county, Lafayette, has an auction that is renowned, even in Wisconsin, for having huge community support. The local businesses bid way above market and neighbors bid on each others' animals for the sole purpose of creating a good community that teaches kids how to raise an animal and sell it.

To give you an idea of how special this community is when it comes to the 4H auction, San Diego County has 3 million people and it raises $400,000 at their 4H auction at the county fair. Lafayette County raises $100,000 from a population of 15,000.

This is the first sale of the auction.

I was so nervous that Melissa told me, "No more talking!" But I ended up making her register as a bidder because I was so scared that no one would bid.

The auctioneer announces the parents of the kid. I think this is why three bunnies sold for $600. When the auctioneer said "Penelope Trunk," I felt ill. But then it all happened so fast. He came into the ring, and he looked so in tune with his pig, and so self-confident in his ability to manage the pig.

Bidding started. Market price for a pig like this is sixty cents a pound. The Farmer said anything over ninety-nine cents is a good sale. I told Melissa she should bid if it doesn't go to a dollar a pound. But right away, the bidding got to a dollar. And the pig sold for $2.50 a pound.

I get choked up writing this. The guy who bought the pig is a guy who buys a lot of cattle from the Farmer. The guy who bought the pig is a farmer himself. He'll eat the pork, for sure, but I'm sure he bought the pig because he believes in 4H and the county fair and what it teaches kids. And he believes we are part of the community, too: me and my sons and the Farmer.

I have to start this story when I was getting a divorce. People told me the cleanest, easiest divorces are when there are two good lawyers. So I asked around for the two best lawyers in Madison. They knew each other, of course. And negotiations went smoothly, except for my lawyer quitting first when I started blogging about the divorce and then when I agreed to talk about the divorce with the New York Times.

The police are not actually chasing us. But we feel like we’re on the run. I told my lawyer – not my divorce lawyer but my  new lawyer, who deals with about-to-be-arrested types – that the police have been to my house three times to arrest me. The Farmer is so stressed he’s not even coming back from the hayfield for lunch. The lawyer says, “You’ll have to stay away from the house til I can get the papers signed by a judge.”

I was thinking of staying at Jeanenne’s house for a few days but I feel bad asking her to harbor a fugitive. So Melissa and I are on our way to Madison.

As we pass the turnoff for our house I worry that we don’t have our computers.

“Hold it,” I say. “I have an idea. Pull over to the side and drop me off in one of those corn fields and I’ll wait for you while you go get our computers.”

“No. This is not The Bourne Identity. We have two iPhones and a charger. That’s enough.

"You remembered the charger?" I say.

"Yeah."

I look up at Melissa from my overly reclined seat and say, “You are such a good friend.”

We get onto the highway which is pretty safe. I sit up and call Ryan Paugh to see if we can stay with him that night.

He says yes.

I tell Melissa that Ryan was not phased by the warrant.

She says, “I don’t think anyone who has agreed to be around you would ever be fazed. Except the Farmer."

“You call him the Farmer? Are you insane? You live with him.”

“Yeah, when I feel like we’re living a movie I need to use his character name.”

We drive for an hour and a half.

It turned out – I’m back to our divorce settlement now – it turned out that my ex did not want money from me or custody of the kids. He wanted to make sure I paid our IRS debt. So I accepted responsibility for all our debt – IRS, credit cards, doctors – and I signed that I’d pay the IRS before anyone else.

Ever since then, his lawyer has gone after me for the $4000 in lawyer fees. It’s my responsibility to pay them, per our settlement, but not until after the IRS. So I keep having to file papers showing that I am still paying the IRS, and that I am not secretly a millionaire.

The problem is that it’s easy for the lawyers to demand tons of court documents and it’s very hard for me to comply. Remember, I am the on who can’t get a driver’s license because of the paperwork. I miss most airplanes because I can’t keep track of all the numbers. I don’t know my left and right.

So I missed a bunch of court stuff. And then I got indignant that the amount of filings they were demanding was harassment. This is, by the way, not an unfounded thought. It’s a problem with debt collection in PA and WI and if I end up in prison you can bet I’m going to become some sort of legal activist.

We get to Janesville and I realize I will be happy having a day off. Successful people reframe bad situations. I can do that.

But I don’t want to ruin my family life. I call the Farmer to apologize. I tell him there is fun cheese in the fridge for dinner. I apologize ten times and ask him to pay the $1000 retainer to the lawyer.

He asks where my money is.

I tell him that building up my diverse and exciting inventory of goat cheese is an expensive endeavor.

He says he would never invest in a startup.

I don’t tell him that marrying a serial entrepreneur is like investing in a startup: You part with your sanity in exchange for a huge lottery ticket and a guarantee that life will be interesting.

The local police have empathy for the Farmer. One off-duty cop stopped by to tell us that there is a warrant out for my arrest. That was a nice heads up. The officer told the Farmer and the Farmer told me and I told Jeanenne and Jeanenne told about fifteen people until she got to the person at my ex-husband’s law firm that could withdraw the warrant. Or whatever it’s called that she was going to do. But the thing she did triggered something in the system that forced the police to arrest me immediately.

I have had two narrow escapes when they have come to my house. But now I’m on the run.

Melissa is excited to go to Chipotle. I’m excited to go to Starbucks. These are luxuries to girls who eat off a farm.

We are mid-burrito, when Melissa gets text message. It’s the investor we are supposed to be meeting in Chicago. James Altucher. We are huge fans of his blog and he does not know he’s an investor but we want him to be an investor. He is confirming that we’ll be there in three hours for dinner.

"What!?" I say. "You told me it was next week, not this week."

"He said next week but it should have been the week after. This week is always a hard thing to understand because this week and next week are regional. You know, like if it’s Tuesday and you say this Tuesday is it next Tuesday or this Tuesday?"

"You didn't check the date? Are you kidding me? You are so lame! That is so lame!"

"We have enough time to get there.

"Yeah. If we had a private jet."

"No. Really. We do. Let’s just go right now."

We go.  I drive. Melissa looks around my car for a shirt she might like better than the one she has on. She finds nothing. She asks if there is a Forever 21 near the place we’re having dinner.

I tell her we can go there after dinner if it’s an all-night store.

Then she puts on my makeup.

She's very serious. Then she smiles.

I say, “You look so good in my makeup.”

She says, “I think that’s because you never see me in lip gloss.”

"What? I don’t have lip gloss."

"Look," she says. "I found this in your glove compartment."

"Oh yeah. I got that free from Booty Parlor. It’s a porn shop for women. They want me to write about them. That lip gloss is an aphrodisiac… that’s so great for our investor meeting… Here, give me some, too.”

For those of you who have not been to a board meeting since I had a miscarriage in the board meeting, let me tell you, this one will not be so interesting. At least at a biological level.

What’s interesting, maybe, is that there is always tension in the board meeting because who knows what I’ll do next?

But I am trying to be on good behavior. I am trying to be a more reliable person. Not so much of a wild card. I just read this study that the five most career-limiting habits of smart people are:

1. Unreliable

2. "It's not my job"

3. Procrastination

4. Resistance to change

5. Negative attitude

I think we each must know what ours is, because I knew right away that mine is unreliability. I have been sort of telling myself that I am so clever, bright, and witty that unreliable doesn’t matter. But it does. I feel bad that so many people are reliably there for me and I’m a wild card. So I decide I’m starting to be reliable today. I am going to be dependable and well behaved in the meeting.

I can’t sit still. Some people have to rock back and forth or use a squeeze thing. I have to think about something else and write it.

We review how our ideas at Brazen Careerist were too early and now the world is catching up. I think about how I am too far ahead about goats. Goat will be the new beef. Forget cheese. The melting pot of America will be filled with goat meat.

Ed says some very interesting things. I want to tell him, “I am listening! I think you’re interesting!” But I know he sees that my notes cannot be anything related to what’s going on in the room. Which is true.

I am writing a history of my life. I discover that I can chart the last ten years in interesting ways. For example, a bar chart of how many times I have moved each year shows two times every year for almost each of the last 20 years.

I write a note to myself to thank the Farmer for giving me and the kids a stable home. I love when the kids ask me if we have to move again and I say no.

Then I try writing the big thing that happened every year for the last 20 years. I see a pattern. Things get quiet and then I shake things up. I do startups that go great in LA, then I move to NYC where I have no life. I get a life then I have kids and have a nervous breakdown trying to be a stay-at-home mom. I pull things together in Madison and then I get a startup and a divorce. I get calmness at the farm and now . ..

And now what? I am trying to shake things up again, but I think I waver. I’m not sure how much I want to shake. I know I will end up shaking a lot, though, because I already did something that is definitely a sign of a crazy entrepreneur: I spent camp money for my son on cheese inventory.

Ed says that startups are not small companies, they are experiments. You ask questions and try to find answers and as you know more you pivot more until you are asking and answering such sharp questions that you do begin to have a little company. That is the time when you grow so fast, or sell, and then you’re no longer a startup.

So I think I need a new experiment. I get antsy when I am not asking questions. And the only question I’m asking now is, “How is Ryan Healy so good at startup life that he is running my company?” Really, he is such a hard worker and so reliable and smart that all I can think of is that someone better give me a lot of credit for knowing to pluck him out of IBM when he was 23.

Now Ed is talking about chairmanship. He wants someone to be chairman. Right now, Ed is everything: CEO, key investor, Chairman of the Board, career counselor to Penelope. He has a lot going on. But really he just doesn’t want to be sued. I think that is what the problem is here. It’s unclear, because Ed and Ryan and Erik are talking in some sort of nuanced, corporate speak, and I don’t follow. I need things to be more direct.

Sometimes when the board meeting gets to this point, I get very distracted. Last time this happened, I made a chain of 50 paper airplanes. It was actually really lovely. I left it in Erik’s conference room. He threw it away.

I don’t do that anymore. I’m on good behavior since I’m not the CEO anymore. I think they can just get rid of me if I’m not useful.

Wait. This is a moment when I can be useful. They want me around to get you guys to use Brazen Careerist. But I think, right now, I have readers who are waiting to hear if Cullen and Melissa had sex yet—I’m not sure you care about Network Roulette.

But maybe I don’t give you guys enough credit, so here’s my pitch. Click here. To Brazen Careerist. And read  about the New Lost Generation. And for every click from this page, Ed, Erik and Ryan will put up with one more paper airplane on the string. Also, here’s a quote from Melissa, “Wow. There’s a new site at Brazen Careerist, and it finally looks like a place people would want to go.”

Since Melissa is living on the farm full time, she has farm jobs. Her job is to get my younger son to take care of his lambs. Technically raising and selling two lambs is his business. He wanted to earn money like his brother, and his eggs selling is no longer high enough stakes for him.

But if the lambs are a small business, Melissa is a co-founder.

Imagine my five-year-old with his two front teeth missing and his blond curls still flat from the last night's bath.

Imagine Melissa sitting next to him. Each with dark black lamb in their lap, each lamb the size of a kitten and each is drinking out of a bottle.

Cute, right?

But here's what it is, really. My son is swinging a bat, threatening every living thing with accidental decapitation as he walks sort of to the lamb house and sort of not, as I shout, "Get your butt to those lambs!"

I go into Melissa's room where she is curled up under the covers worrying that she will never get married.

I say, "Can you go feed the lambs now?"

She says, "Can't he do it himself? I'm being sad."

"No. You can't be sad when there are kids. He needs help."

"You have to stop doing phone interviews where you say all women should be married by the time they are 28. I can't take it."

"Baaaaa."

"Okay. I'm going."

Melissa is at the lamb barn and my son is gone. He is jumping on the hay bales. I yell out the back door, "You're going to be late for school if you don't finish chores now!"

He pretends he doesn't hear me.

"Feed those lambs right now or you can't play video games for the rest of your life!"

Melissa has been so diligent about feeding the lambs three times a day—and twice a day with my son in tow—that the Farmer has capitulated in the long-going discussion about whether I can get horses.

Melissa is a horse expert and she will take care of the horses and also teach us how to ride so I don't get a concussion like last summer.

I spend mornings in the garden, thinking while I weed. The best part of starting my new company is that the beginning of a startup is a lot of thinking in between doing. Because it's hard to know what to do next. So I think of the garden as integral to launching my  company.

Last year I wrote about how excited I was to plant a garden on the farm, and a commenter wrote: "Sticking plants two feet away from each other in brown dirt isn't a garden." At first I thought She's a bitch. Then: I think she's right. I thought about her comment all winter and now I think that buying a bunch of annuals and planting them is like painting. Gardening should be more like sculpture. So I'm moving dirt and rocks all over the place right now.

I am making gifts out of rocks. I made paths to walk on with the farmer, I made treacherous climbing spots for the boys, I made secret hiding places for rocks that have my favorite poems on them.

Melissa talks to me while I garden. But she brings a New Yorker.

"You carry the New Yorker like it's a security blanket," I tell her.

She says, "I need it in case I get bored."

"You get bored taking with me in the garden?"

"Sometimes. Yeah."

So I made her a little rock perch in the middle of the garden. I made the perch close to the fence so that the lambs can't get in, but they can be near her so they don't baa for her.

Melissa decides she doesn't want to work at our new startup. She can't get her head around something that is nothing. She says, "When we have a warehouse full of cheese, or a web site that sells stuff, then I can get excited about working at this company. I can't work in a company that is air."

I tell her, "It's not air. It's ideas."

"Ideas in the air."

Melissa decides that since we are already getting horses, she will turn the horse barn into a business. She will buy four-year-old Welsh ponies and train them to be jumpers. She will qualify for Pony Finals from Wisconsin, where, apparently, there is scant competition in the area of rich pipsqueaks riding overpriced ponies. Then she'll go to Pony Finals and sell the horse to a parent who thinks their kid is going to the Olympics for horse jumping, or is going to marry a horse breeder. Or something.

It is lunch. I make lunch for me and the farmer. I pick at my food because I like eating alone but the Farmer likes us to eat together. So I eat beforehand and then pretend during lunch. Melissa does not eat anything. When she first started living with us she would pretend. But now she only does that when the kids are at the table.

The Farmer says grace. He says, 'Thank you, God, for  taking care of us and for the food we are about to eat."

He asks us how the business is going.

We tell him Melissa is now just an investor. She has her own horse business to run.

The Farmer laughs.

I say, "Are you surprised?"

He says, "No. I'd be surprised if you guys stuck to a single plan for longer than a week."