RETURN & RELAUNCH:

A Group Coaching Program For Working Moms

Return & Relaunch is Something Major’s newest group cohort program: supporting career-focused moms as they return from parental leave.

There are a million things people tell you about becoming a new mom…

About breastmilk vs. formula

About strollers

About baby-led weaning

… but why has nobody told us about how we can thrive when we return to work?

going back to work is not just a “return” to the office.

It is truly a “relaunch” of your work life, your family life, and your personal life.

Certified executive coach and Wall Street Journal best-selling author, Randi Braun, has coached career-focused women for years, as they navigated their first year back from maternity leave and relaunched the next phase of their career. In coaching women across diverse sectors — from the Fortune 500 to non-profit, law, government relations, healthcare, financial services, media, and more — Randi observed three key themes with her coaching clients as they returned from maternity leave:

1. Clients were trapped in “survival” mode: Too many working moms were trying to juggle the demands of daycare closures, work deliverables, to-do lists, nanny schedules, meetings and travel to make a strategic game plan for thriving at work.

2. Clients in completely different jobs were asking the same questions like: How can I feasibly get it all done? And get it all done without feeling guilty?

3. Clients felt like they had to figure it all out alone: Often feeling like everybody else around them (whether in the office or on Instagram) seemed to magically “have it all figured out” while they were struggling. Or feeling frustrated that the advice thrown around in their moms- group-text-thread just didn’t speak to them—and not knowing where else they could turn.

who this program is for

• Participant Audience: This program is for anybody who identifies as a career-focused working mom — whether a birthing or non-birthing person, adoptive parent, or step-parent — returning to work after parental leave. This program will be most relevant to moms participating within their first 12-18 months back at work from parental leave.

• Employer Audience: This program is for any company invested in retaining caregivers at this vulnerable inflection point in their lives and careers.

for randi, growing your career while growing your family is personal

Having her two kids in two years (and six days!), Randi Braun defied everything social science tells us should happen to women in their childbearing years: that their income and career advancement should stagnate.

By pulling forward a promotion in her first pregnancy, and leaving for a bigger-and-better opportunity on her second maternity leave, Braun climbed the career ladder, doubling her compensation along the way. She then launched her coaching firm, Something Major, when she was just six weeks back from her second maternity leave. While this cohort isn’t about negotiation or building a side hustle per se, seeing working moms thrive during their peak family-expansion years is a true passion of Randi’s and part of the DNA of her work at Something Major.

tools that work for working moms

Over the course of six sessions, in Return & Relaunch we’ll dive deep into the tools working moms need to thrive when returning to work. Randi will begin each session by sharing tools and frameworks on the day’s dedicated theme before facilitating a group conversation. Each session will include educational insights from Randi, interactive discussion, and practical tools. You can learn more about each of our six sessions below:

1. Rewriting Your Story. Returning to work truly is a relaunch, and we’ll spend this kick-off session exploring how we can rewrite our story accordingly. We’ll begin Session #1 with participant introductions before exploring how we can reimagine our priorities and identities — and own our message with renewed confidence in the process.

2. Releasing from Mom Guilt and FOPO. One of the biggest things that holds working moms back is the tyranny of mom guilt. In Session #2 we’ll learn tools to unleash your potential and aspirations but unleashing from mom guilt and FOPO: fear of other people’s opinions.

3. Reimagining Time & Productivity. Have you heard the expression “Want something done? Give it to a working mom.” As working moms we carry more load than ever. That’s why, in this session, we’ll dive into tactical tools about how you can reimagine your relationship with time management and “productivity” — focusing on maximizing impact, not just maxing out our to-do list.

4. Saying “Yes” to Saying “No.” With more on our plates than ever, learning how to say “no” is a critical skill all successful working moms must learn to master. In Session #4, we’ll explore how working moms can set better boundaries to prioritize what really matters with less distraction.

5. Self Care for Busy Working Moms. There is a lot to juggle as we return to work, from feeding and drop-off schedules to the urge to “prove” our dedication at work. It’s no wonder moms feel exhausted all the time and carry a disproportionate amount of the mental load. In Session #5, we’ll discuss tools for cultivating wellbeing and self care as a busy working mom.

6. The Relaunch: In our final Return & Relaunch session, we’ll have a structured way to put together group learnings, reflect on our experiences, answer outstanding questions and — most importantly — chart our next steps forward from the program. You’ll leave Session #6 armed with the tools, confidence, and practical experience to truly relaunch yourself in the next phase of your working-mom-journey.

What You Can Expect to Gain if you Join  

Across the 12 weeks of the program, participants in the Return & Relaunch cohort can expect to: 

• Feel more empowered to make the decisions that serve you

• Quiet the voice of “mom guilt” and feeling freer from all the “shoulds” of your working mom life

• Gain tools to feel more productive and confident

• Reduce exhaustion and burnout (we can’t stop your teething baby from waking you up, but we can reduce the emotional stress that “juggling it all” creates)

Employers can expect to gain:

• Increased retention and engagement for a critical labor demographic

• Increased “stickiness” and loyalty to the company

• Empowered moms who empower their business

The Zoom Where It Happens

Here’s how we roll: over the course of three months, we do important work, we have fun, we make meaningful connections, and we support each other. This is the one work Zoom you will be a part of where nobody cares about your title or what projects, people, or P+L you manage. It’s a place to gather with like-minded women across your company and discuss the stuff that matters most in building a fulfilling and fun work life: allowing companies to structure cohorts with women across diverse divisions.

Women simply love Braun’s group programs: so much so that we’ve even had cohort participants join us from their hotel rooms on vacations to Mexico because they didn’t want to miss a session! Read on for more details about the upcoming cohort sessions.

How RETURN & RELAUNCH is Built:

Developed by scaling the same coaching techniques Randi uses with her 1:1 clients, here’s more about how the program is built:

• Built for convenience: Cohort meetings take place twice a month midday (12:00 - 1:00pm ET), for just a single hour, so you have one more reason to commit to your lunch break.

• Built for connection: Capping our cohort at just ten women, we leverage the best of the magic that happens when women come together, while keeping the group intimate enough to foster meaningful connections (we use facilitated conversations, not slide decks). We keep the conversation going between sessions through our private LinkedIn group to support each other as we experiment and develop. Because cohort connection and confidentiality are a top priority, sessions are not recorded.

• Built for inclusivity: We appreciate that no two families are the same and this program welcomes those who self-identify as “moms” —whether birthing or non-birthing people, adoptive parents, or step-parents — from all backgrounds and family structures.

• Built for impact: The Return & Relaunch program was built based on the most common areas Randi saw high-performing women struggle with when they returned to work after the birth of their children, as both established and emerging leaders. Put simply, she built Return & Relaunch because (a) nobody tells working moms what they actually need to thrive at work after they return and (b) this stuff works. To make sessions impactful, cohort participants will have an brief pre-read (emphasis on brief, because we know you’re busy) from Braun’s book, Something Major: The New Playbook for Women at Work, a dedicated worksheet for each session, and actionable fieldwork (that’s what we call homework) that you can take into the field with you at work in between our sessions. 

about the facilitator

Randi Braun is the Wall Street Journal Best-Selling Author of Something Major: The New Playbook for Women at Work, a speaker, and CEO of the leadership coaching and advisory firm, Something Major.

Expertise & Impact:

Specializing with women and working moms, Randi is a certified executive coach, consultant, and speaker. An expert at helping women leaders thrive in demanding, unpredictable, high-performance, and high-volume environments, she has worked with a diverse slate of institutional and individual clients; coaching leaders--and their teams--across the Fortune 500, Capitol Hill, professional services (big law, PR, consulting), tech, entrepreneurship, government relations and advocacy, medicine, financial services and real estate investment firms, start-ups, non-profits, the arts, and trade associations.

Thought Leadership:

A thought leader who has been featured by Forbes (where she writes her own by-line), CNBC, The Washington Post, Parents Magazine, Thrive Global, and The Chicago Tribune Randi speaks frequently on the topics of women's professional development and leadership, and thriving in working parenthood. She has worked with 60+ organizations including The U.S. Congress, Microsoft, Uber, The Embassy of Canada, Virgin, PwC, UCLA's Anderson School of Management, The National Association of Manufacturers, start-ups, social justice non-profits, and multiple global law firms.

Background & Training:

Prior to founding Something Major, Randi was a fundraiser-turned-business-development leader. As a sales leader, Randi generated tens of millions of dollars for a diverse portfolio of organizations including non-profits, publicly traded and privately held companies, and tech start-ups. She has trained teams in the US and the EU.  Randi completed her coach training at the internationally-renowned Co-Active Training Institute (CTI) and is a Certified Member (ACC) of the International Coach Federation.

about bRAUN’S BOOK

Braun’s book, Something Major: The New Playbook for Women at Work, is one of the few leadership books written by a woman, for women, to ever grace The Wall Street Journal Best-Seller List.

• About The New Playbook: In Braun’s book women will discover how to play the leadership game on their own terms and win when it comes to achieving their goals.

• Book Talks: Braun has done interactive book talks for some of the country’s premier companies: from small energy start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Attendees rave about how energizing—and practical—Braun’s fireside chat book talks are.

• Impact: Braun’s book provides a fresh take on one of the most tremendous challenges of our time: empowering women at work to chart their own course to the top — dialing up confidence and fulfillment, and dialing down burnout in the process.

You’re on the precipice of Something Major. Let’s get there.