Your daughter asks if you love business more than her. You're standing in the kitchen and you have no idea what to say, because part of you knows she's not wrong to ask. That question is not a verdict on you as a mother. It's information about a business that needs all of you, all the time, and has no room left over for the people you built it for.

Take the call from your mum at 3pm, with a client coming in at 3:15. You step away for one week and the whole thing starts to wobble. Your daughter asks if you love work more than her and you stand there with no answer. None of that means you've built the wrong business. It means you've built one that can't yet hold what you're need it to hold.

What this episode is about

This one is about the thing nobody in the business advice world will say out loud: what it actually costs you to run a business. Because as a woman running a business while raising a family there is a pretty good chance everything you've built right now stops at the edge of you. Step back for a week and it gets shaky. Take a real holiday and it recalibrates down to a standard you would never find acceptable. That's not a business yet, that's a job you can't leave, and it's sending a signal to your kids and your team whether you meant it to or not. I tell you about my client Em, who realised her kids friend’s didn't even know her name at school, and the one small change she made for the version of her family that's ten years away. Then I answer a question from a woman whose daughter asked her the hard thing, and I show you why the answer is never less business. It's a differently built one.

Key takeaways

• You stop measuring your business by revenue or hours and start asking the question that actually matters: how far does what you've built travel when you're not the one carrying it.
• You see your full life (family, business, community, the woman you are underneath all of it) as the thing that gives your decisions leverage, not the thing slowing you down.
• You find your butterfly. One small, structural change held steady, instead of one more heroic push that depends on you showing up forever.
• You get language for the moment your child asks where she fits, and a way to answer that doesn't shrink your ambition or pretend the guilt isn't there.
• You name what you're demonstrating right now, today, in the business you actually have. Not the one you're hoping to have once things calm down.

What to listen to next

• Building a business that runs without you
• The cost of being the load-bearing wall in your own business

Subscribe

Hit follow so the next one lands in your feed the morning it drops. This episode is part one of two, and you'll want the second.

Got a question?

There's a question I answer every episode, sent in by a woman exactly like you. If something here hit a nerve, Drop it here and tell me what you're sitting with. It might be the one I answer next.

WORK WITH SARAH:

// The Done By Three Club: The only business model for Mum’s with an established business wanting to be Present Before 9, Done by 3 and Profitable in between. Learn more: https://go.themoxiemovement.com/the-done-by-3-model

// The Moxie Business Advantage: Application only program to provide complete business support and structure - 4 Spots available each month. Apply via a quick 15 min phone call to see if we are a fit and that we can help.

https://go.themoxiemovement.com/mba-fit-check

// VIP Thailand Retreats: If you’re after a complete done-with-you business experience with a side of tropical relaxation we’d love to host you at our island villa in Thailand - 6 spots left in 2026. Apply by sending RETREAT in a private message here

Someone asks you what you want and you give them a good answer. Coherent. Covers all the bases. Sounds like a woman who has thought hard about her business and her life. Deep down somewhere you’ve not explored for a long while, you know the answer isn't actually yours. You have been wanting for everyone else for so long that the question "what do I want, just for me" lands like a it’s being spoken in a language you used to speak and can't quite find the words in anymore.

This episode is about the want you have managed down for so long you have lost access to it. Because the want that names itself in the first person, the one that says I want this, for me, got coded as selfish somewhere a long way back, and you have been running on the acceptable version ever since which means shoving your ambition down to the bottom of every list you have. And you know you have a lot of lists. I unpack why that hollow feeling tends to arrive right when the business finally (from the outside) looks like it's working, where your real want goes when you shove it down for so long, and the one question that helps to pull it back up to the surface. This isn't about vision boarding (again!), this is the groundwork that sits under every plan worth building for the woman integrating her family and business without choosing between the two.

What you'll walk away with:

• Why the polished, impressive answer to "what do you want" is so often the tell that you've stopped counting yourself among the people you're serving
• What actually happens to a want when you won't say it out loud (it doesn't leave, it goes underground, and from there it starts running your decisions in directions you can't see)
• How to tell the difference between a want that was never yours and one you've outgrown, and why both leave you standing in the same palce
• The single sentence to finish on paper today, before you talk yourself into the managed-down version
• Why nobody else was ever holding the permission you've been waiting on, and what shifts the day you stop waiting for it

What to listen to next:

• Redefining what success actually looks like for you
• Building a business that runs without you

Follow the show: Hit follow so the next one lands in your feed without you having to go looking for it. You've got enough to remember.

Got a question? If there's a version of this you're still sitting with, drop it in here. I read them, and the ones that keep me up at night tend to become episodes.

WORK WITH SARAH:

// The Done By Three Club: The only business model for Mum’s with an established business wanting to be Present Before 9, Done by 3 and Profitable in between. Learn more: https://go.themoxiemovement.com/the-done-by-3-model

// The Moxie Business Advantage: Application only program to provide complete business support and structure - 4 Spots available each month. Apply via a quick 15 min phone call to see if we are a fit and that we can help.

https://go.themoxiemovement.com/mba-fit-check

// VIP Thailand Retreats: If you’re after a complete done-with-you business experience with a side of tropical relaxation we’d love to host you at our island villa in Thailand - 6 spots left in 2026. Apply by sending RETREAT in a private message here

You think you're keeping it on the inside. The hard morning with the kids, the employee who isn't coping, the thing you're internally bracing against but you're not talking about it, so you've decided you're managing it.

In this episode we are talking about why you're not actually hiding it at all. You're broadcasting it. There's a difference between holding something inside and not transmitting it, and most of us have only ever done the first one.

Your business has a pace, a rhythm, that baseline frequency that everyone around you is reading before you've even said a single word. Your team feels it so do your kids. They don't know if it's business. They just know which version of you walked through the door today, and whether they need to brace or not.

This episode is about what your pace is actually saying. Not what you think you're projecting but what is actually landing for the people around you. Because if your business lurches between get-it-all-done sprints and the crash that follows, your people aren't recording a productive month. They're recording instability and they start making decisions based on what they think you need instead of what the business actually needs, because the signal coming from the top keeps changing shape.

The good news sits underneath all of it: the steady signal is learnable. And it's the thing that finally lets the business hold itself together when you're not in the room.

What you'll walk away with

• A way to tell the difference between containing your stress and transmitting it, and which one you've actually been doing
• Why the surge-and-crash cycle costs you more than it ever produces, and why the recovery from the crash quietly eats the momentum the sprint was supposed to build
• The reason "it's fine" from a team member is almost never information, and what it's actually telling you about the signal they're picking up from you
• Where to start when something feels off and you can't name it yet. (No not a team audit, or a culture survey)
• The one question to ask yourself this week that most women never think to ask, and won't love the answer to

What to listen to next

• Seasons in business and why steady is not the same as flat
• Building a business that runs without you

Subscribe

Hit follow so the next episode lands in your feed without you having to go looking for it at 10pm, which is when most of us are doing our actual thinking anyway.

Got a question?

Drop it here tell me the thing you're sitting with right now, the one that feels off and won't quite name itself. It might be the question I answer in a future Called It segment.

WORK WITH SARAH:

// The Done By Three Club: The only business model for Mum’s with an established business wanting to be Present Before 9, Done by 3 and Profitable in between. Learn more: https://go.themoxiemovement.com/the-done-by-3-model

// The Moxie Business Advantage: Application only program to provide complete business support and structure - 4 Spots available each month. Apply via a quick 15 min phone call to see if we are a fit and that we can help.

https://go.themoxiemovement.com/mba-fit-check

// VIP Thailand Retreats: If you’re after a complete done-with-you business experience with a side of tropical relaxation we’d love to host you at our island villa in Thailand - 6 spots left in 2026. Apply by sending RETREAT in a private message here