You came back from the school holidays with the same tired face as every other woman in the room. You kept things ticking over. You answered emails from a chair by the pool while the kids did bombs, and you used the slow weeks to get ahead. Then term started and you were already behind, running on a tank you never got round to refilling.

Serious athletes don't train flat out all year. They plan hard blocks, maintenance blocks and deliberate recovery blocks, because the muscle rebuilds stronger in the rest. Skip the rest and you get injured. Your summer is the recovery block for your business, and most of us keep raiding it for the jobs we didn't finish.

"Rest more" is useless advice when a sick kid woke you at 2am. So this episode is a build, in three steps, and the order matters.

What you'll walk away with:

- Why you come back from the holidays more depleted than you left

- What serious athletes plan into their year that business owners skip

- Why "I'll catch up on holiday" damages the next term before it starts

- Step one: block the break first, like a flight you've already paid for

- Step two: build the last weeks of the year backwards from the break

- Step three: whatever only you can hold over the break becomes this term's project

- Called It: "Sarah, my business really can't run for two weeks without me."

- The difference between "only I can do this" and "I never set it up so someone else could"

Your task this week: open the calendar and block the summer holidays, or the next school holidays, before a single piece of work goes in. Then build backwards from the break.

If you want a business strong enough to run while you're at the beach, start with my book, Built For You.

What to listen to next:

- Building a business that holds while you're away

- Planning your year around the seasons you actually live

If this helped you plan a real break, hit follow, so the next episode turns up right when you need it.

Got a question about stepping away from your business over the holidays? Drop it here and I might answer it on a future episode.

Watch on YouTube: Sarah Greener | Business Without Choosing

Read on the Blog: The Moxie Movement Blog | Business Growth for Women

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://themoxiemovement.com/the-done-by-3-club

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://themoxiemovement.com/the-moxie-business-advantage

Season 27 Retreat: If you’re ready to stop juggling and build a business that actually works for your life, we’d love to welcome you to our Season 27 Retreat in Russell, New Zealand. Over three powerful days, you’ll create your 2027 strategic plan, install practical systems you can actually use, and leave with the clarity, confidence, and momentum to lead differently. Find all the details and save your spot here: https://themoxiemovement.com/season27

Your kids are learning how to run a business by watching you run yours. Most of the lesson lands on days you had no idea they were listening.

Scarlett was meant to be doing her homework. She was eavesdropping on a hard money conversation instead. Afterwards she didn't say a word about the money. She said, "You sounded really sure."

She was learning what a woman sounds like when she values her own work. Nobody taught it to her. She absorbed it, the way you absorbed the song your mum hummed at the sink.

In this episode:

- Why your kids pick up the texture of your business and miss the strategy

- Scarlett can explain profit at 14 and still trips on seven times eight

- What they notice: whether the business ate you, whether you take a fair return or the scraps and call it humble, whether you're the calmest person in the room or the most frayed

- Who else is watching: younger women in your industry, the friend who hasn't started yet, the team member who'll run her own business one day

- What Built For Generations means underneath the strategy

- Called It: "I worry my kids only ever see me stressed and working. Am I teaching them the wrong thing about business?"

What to listen to next:

Stepping away without the whole business wobbling

Taking your fair share instead of being paid last

Got a question about what your kids are learning from your business? Drop it here and I might answer it on a future episode.

Watch on YouTube: Sarah Greener | Business Without Choosing

Read on the Blog: The Moxie Movement Blog | Business Growth for Women

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://themoxiemovement.com/the-done-by-3-club

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://themoxiemovement.com/the-moxie-business-advantage

Season 27 Retreat: If you’re ready to stop juggling and build a business that actually works for your life, we’d love to welcome you to our Season 27 Retreat in Russell, New Zealand. Over three powerful days, you’ll create your 2027 strategic plan, install practical systems you can actually use, and leave with the clarity, confidence, and momentum to lead differently. Find all the details and save your spot here: https://themoxiemovement.com/season27

You knew the answer in four seconds. Then you spent the rest of the afternoon on the reply: the paragraph underneath, the alternative you made up on the spot, the warmer second draft, the delete, and the third draft that said almost exactly what the first one did.

That paragraph under your no has a name. A sociologist called it emotional labour decades ago, watching flight attendants who were paid to manage how their passengers felt. You do that same job after every no you give your employees, your clients, your suppliers and your kids, and nobody ever wrote it into your job description. In this episode I get into why other people’s feelings about your boundary were never yours to fix, what’s really going on when you worry your team thinks it’s “your way or the highway,” and why your business is meant to run your way. Then I leave you with one small, slightly terrifying challenge for this week.

What you’ll walk away with:

• Why the decision was never the expensive part, and where the real hours go once you’ve said no
• How to tell the kindness in your follow-up paragraph apart from the tax you were taught to pay as the girl who got praised for being easy
• Why leading a business means some people will be uncomfortable with your standards, and why that discomfort is theirs to carry
• What to do with the cold, harsh feeling that shows up when you hold the line: act first, and let the feeling settle afterwards
• The one-no challenge: send the sentence, delete the paragraph, and sit in the silence without filling it

What to listen to next:

• Handing back weight that was never yours to carry
• Leaving the Good Girl script behind as a leader

Hit follow so next week’s episode, on the one season of the year you keep handing away, lands in your feed without you going hunting for it.

Got a question? What’s the no you’ve been rewriting in your head all week? Drop it here and I might answer it on a future episode.

Watch on YouTube: Sarah Greener | Business Without Choosing

Read on the Blog: The Moxie Movement Blog | Business Growth for Women

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://themoxiemovement.com/the-done-by-3-club

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://themoxiemovement.com/the-moxie-business-advantage

Season 27 Retreat: If you’re ready to stop juggling and build a business that actually works for your life, we’d love to welcome you to our Season 27 Retreat in Russell, New Zealand. Over three powerful days, you’ll create your 2027 strategic plan, install practical systems you can actually use, and leave with the clarity, confidence, and momentum to lead differently. Find all the details and save your spot here: https://themoxiemovement.com/season27

You had the big fortnight. Everywhere at once, lit up, running on adrenaline and not a lot of sleep. Then came the week after, where you could barely face the inbox and the work stacked up like the clean laundry you still haven't put away. And somewhere in there you wondered, privately, whether you're actually any good at this business game.

Every business has a heartbeat. There's a rate at which the money comes in, a rate at which the work goes out, a rate at which your clients hear from you and your team gets your attention. That rhythm exists whether you set it on purpose or not. If you don't set it deliberately, it gets set by how your energy is feeling today, by whatever is loudest in your inbox, by whatever fire everybody is standing around pointing at. In this episode I'm making the case that the tempo of your business is a decision you get to make, and that the only pace worth building is the one you will still be running in five years without hating it.

What you'll walk away with:

Why "I work best under pressure" is usually a business with no set tempo, and not a working style you were born with

How to get your sleep, your caffeine and your nervous system out of the job of holding the rhythm

What your team is actually doing while they brace for the next crash, and what that bracing costs your momentum

How to run a genuinely seasonal business on a plan instead of being ambushed by your own calendar every single year

The one exercise to do this week: draw your real year, then mark which spikes you chose and which just happened to you

What to listen to next:

Working week that survives school holidays

Pricing and paying yourself properly from a seasonal business

Follow the show: Give us a quick follow so the next episode turns up without you having to go looking for it.

Got a question? Drop it here, I pull listener questions apart on the show all the time, and yours might be next.

Watch on YouTube: Sarah Greener | Business Without Choosing

Read on the Blog: The Moxie Movement Blog | Business Growth for Women

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/mbt-podcast

//Season 27 Retreat: If you're ready to stop juggling and build a business that actually works for your life, we'd love to welcome you to our Season 27 Retreat in Russell, New Zealand. Over three powerful days, you'll create your 2027 strategic plan, install practical systems you can actually use, and leave with the clarity, confidence, and momentum to lead differently. Find all the details and save your spot here: https://themoxiemovement.com/season27

You used to be the woman who held all of it. Every number, every name, every next move for the next three months, all of it in your head, no notes needed. Then across a stretch of months you couldn't date if you tried, the words started going missing, and you decided the problem was you.

This episode is for the woman running a real business right as her body decides to rewrite the rules on her. Perimenopause. Brain fog rolling in at 2pm. Sleep worse than the newborn years. Names of people you've worked with for years, gone mid-sentence. Sarah names the season most business advice acts like doesn't exist, and she pulls apart the two things you've been treating as one thing: your competence, which has not moved an inch, and your confidence, which walked clean out the door. You'll finish this one knowing that leading through this season is not a smaller version of you. It's a set of operating conditions, and a real leader builds for the conditions she's actually in.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

- Why your competence has not dropped, even on the days you are certain it has, and how to stop rebuilding your whole business off a feeling that no longer matches the evidence

- The shift that changes this whole decade: letting your systems hold what your memory used to hold, and why that is the most experienced move you'll ever make, not a retreat

- How to lead through this season instead of hiding through it, when everyone needs you at once and there is no grace left for falling apart

- Why building for the capacity you have now, not the capacity you had at 25, is the exact skill you'd praise in any other operator

- What to do with the shame that you're not coping, which turns out to be the most expensive symptom of the lot

WHAT TO LISTEN TO NEXT:

Building systems that hold when your head can't

Load at home and making it visible

SUBSCRIBE: Hit subscribe so the next one lands without you having to remember it's coming. Your memory has enough to carry right now.

GOT A QUESTION? Comment below or drop your question here and I might answer it on a future episode.

Watch on YouTube: Sarah Greener | Business Without Choosing

Read on the Blog: The Moxie Movement Blog | Business Growth for Women

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/mbt-podcast

//Season 27 Retreat: If you're ready to stop juggling and build a business that actually works for your life, we'd love to welcome you to our Season 27 Retreat in Russell, New Zealand. Over three powerful days, you'll create your 2027 strategic plan, install practical systems you can actually use, and leave with the clarity, confidence, and momentum to lead differently. Find all the details and save your spot here: The Moxie Movement // Home

Your sales were up on last year. And you still sat there feeling like you were losing a game you did not remember signing up to play. If you have ever heard someone mention their exit multiple the way other people mention the weather, and felt it land in your throat, this episode is for you.

There is a specific kind of business most of us are actually building. Built on relationships, trust, reputation, repeat clients, the slow good work that compounds over years and sends three more people back to your door. It is an ancient and honourable way to build something. Then we hold it up against a scorecard built for a completely different kind of business, the one designed to scale fast and be sold. In this episode Sarah names the difference between a commerce business and a capitalist one, why measuring the first against the second will always leave you feeling behind, and how to give yourself permission to want the business you actually chose.

WHAT YOU WILL WALK AWAY WITH

- Why sales up can still feel like losing, and what that feeling is actually pointing at

- The difference between a commerce business and a capitalist one, and which one you are really running

- How to spot the borrowed scorecard you picked up because it was lying around and everyone else was holding it

- What really good and really mine looks like when nobody else is watching or measuring

- The exact line to use next time someone asks about your exit strategy

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Sarah's book, Built For You. It holds the questions she uses to map out what right size actually looks like for your business. DM Sarah on Instagram @sarahgreenercoach with the keyword "BUILT" and she will send it over.

WHAT TO LISTEN TO NEXT

- Giving yourself permission to want a different size business

- Building something to keep instead of building to sell

SUBSCRIBE: Give the show a follow so the next episode is right there waiting for you the moment it drops.

GOT A QUESTION? Drop it in HERE, and it might become a future episode.

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/mbt-podcast

//Season 27 Retreat: If you're ready to stop juggling and build a business that actually works for your life, we'd love to welcome you to our Season 27 Retreat in Russell, New Zealand. Over three powerful days, you'll create your 2027 strategic plan, install practical systems you can actually use, and leave with the clarity, confidence, and momentum to lead differently. Find all the details and save your spot here: https://themoxiemovement.com/season27

You finally did the brave thing. You started paying yourself a real wage, the market rate for the job you actually do, leaving your account on a set day like everyone else on the payroll. And in the pride of that, you decided you were done. This episode is the reason you are not.

WHAT THIS EPISODE IS ABOUT

There are two of you inside your business. The woman who does the work, and the woman who owns it. You have started paying the first one, and good, most people never get that far. But the second one has funded this business with her capital, her risk, her sleep and her name for years, and she has never once been paid a cent for owning it.

In this episode I unpack why the wage was only ever half your pay, what the owner's return actually builds that a salary never can, and why the gap between what men and women own runs deeper than the gap in what they earn. You will leave with two numbers to find this week, not one.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

- You stop mistaking a well-paid job you happen to own for the finish line.

- You start treating the owner's return as owed, not optional, and a long way from greedy.

- You see why a wage funds this year while the return is the part that compounds into something you can pass on.

- You name the gender wealth gap sitting underneath the pay gap, and where your own business fits in closing it.

- You walk away with the exact two numbers to write down before Sunday.

WHAT TO LISTEN TO NEXT

Paying yourself a proper market wage

Pricing so the profit is built in from day one

SUBSCRIBE

Hit follow so the next honest conversation about building a business worth owning lands in your feed without you going looking for it.

Got a question about paying yourself as the owner and not just the worker? drop it here. It might become a whole episode.

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/mbt-podcast

//Season 27 Retreat: If you're ready to stop juggling and build a business that actually works for your life, we'd love to welcome you to our Season 27 Retreat in Russell, New Zealand. Over three powerful days, you'll create your 2027 strategic plan, install practical systems you can actually use, and leave with the clarity, confidence, and momentum to lead differently. Find all the details and save your spot here: The Moxie Movement // Home

Two years ago the numbers were the best they'd ever been and you took the win. This year they're down and it's the economy, the cost of living, the market gone tight. Same business owner. Two completely different stories about who is actually driving the thing.

WHAT THIS EPISODE IS ABOUT

For about three years there was money pouring into businesses like yours that was never really yours, and almost none of us said so out loud at the time. In this episode Sarah pulls apart the story we tell in a downturn, the one where the bad year belongs to the economy and the good year belonged to us. When you only keep score in the years the score flatters you, you never learn to read your own business. You end up seeing half the story, and in the good years it is always the flattering half. This is about looking at any year, brilliant or brutal, and knowing exactly what you built and what the conditions handed you. That is the difference between a business running on borrowed confidence and one you are building to outlast you.

What you'll walk away with

- Why crediting yourself for the good years and the economy for the bad ones leaves you reading half your own numbers, and making decisions off the wrong half

- The one question to ask after a great year, in the same voice you would use after a hard one

- How to hold two true things at once: the conditions are real, and the decisions were still yours

- Why Decade Decisions is an ownership process, not a planning exercise, and what it asks of you in the good years

- Where the money is sitting while your competitors contract, and how to reach it before they notice

What to listen to next

- Taking real money out of your business / being Paid Twice

- Decade Decisions when the next 48 hours are screaming

Subscribe: Hit follow so the next one lands in your feed without you going hunting for it.

Got a question? Wrestling with your own version of this? DM me with the question here. It might be the next episode.

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

//Season 27 Retreat: If you're ready to stop juggling and build a business that actually works for your life, we'd love to welcome you to our Season 27 Retreat in Russell, New Zealand. Over three powerful days, you'll create your 2027 strategic plan, install practical systems you can actually use, and leave with the clarity, confidence, and momentum to lead differently. Find all the details and save your spot here: https://themoxiemovement.com/season27