Can I be really honest with you for a second?
I find it so hard to let anything go. Once I've started something, I want to see it through, keep it moving, keep growing it. Stopping feels like failing, even when some part of me knows that isn't true.
I know I'm not alone in that. I meet so many incredible women at our networking events who are quietly exhausted, holding onto every single thing in their business because they're scared of what it means if they let go.
So when I sat down with Sarah Dew, The Unapologetic Mompreneur, for this week's podcast, this was exactly what I wanted to talk to her about. Sarah's had the kind of year where life throws everything at you at once, and she's navigating it with more honesty than almost anyone I've spoken to.
Meet Sarah: from cancer diagnosis to business alignment coach
Sarah's business started almost by accident. In 2016 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and on her breast cancer nurse's advice she started journaling what she was going through. That journal became a blog, the blog turned into coaching, and over the next ten years it's grown into a business alignment and momentum coaching practice working with mums building businesses in the margins of the school day.
Along the way, Sarah's built:
Ten years in business — her ten-year cancer anniversary fell this year
A three-part coaching framework: alignment, strategy and momentum
A 12-week one-to-one Biz-Mentum programme (I actually went through this myself, and it's the reason I managed to get an entire summer off while still running four businesses)
A podcast, Unapologetic Mompreneur, now at 140 episodes
Years of digital resources — worksheets, workbooks, and a membership vault she's rebuilding right now
What had to give
This is the bit that really got me. Sarah's family has been navigating an enormous amount this year, all at once: her ten-year cancer anniversary; caring for parents two hours away who are seriously unwell; supporting her husband through redundancy and into starting his own consultancy (who she now coaches — "I get to tell my husband what to do each week, and he pays me for it"); and watching her teenage son train for the RAF, knowing he'll be leaving home in two years. On top of all of it, her own health — surgically induced menopause, joint pain, and brain fog — became severe enough that she couldn't keep recording her podcast.
What really struck me was how she decided what to pause. It wasn't about what she loved least — she loves her podcast, her clients, her events, all of it. It came down to one question: what needs me to be fully present, with zero flexibility, all the time? That's what had to go.
Why letting go feels so scary
Listening to Sarah talk about pausing her podcast was like listening to my own brain. She was honest that her first reaction was feeling like a failure — after four years of working up the courage to even start the podcast, and 140 episodes in, stopping felt like admitting defeat. The "monkey mind," as she called it, kept telling her she was giving up, throwing away ten years of work.
So if you've got something you know you need to pause, and you're scared of what it means, that's not a sign you're doing it wrong. It's normal. Here's what Sarah had to say about moving forward anyway.
Sarah's advice for knowing what to let go of
Ask what needs your full presence, not what you love least. Sarah didn't decide what to pause based on what she cared about least. She asked what demanded she be fully "on," all the time, with zero flexibility. For her, that was her podcast and her in-person networking events she was running — her one-to-one client work stayed, because that's where her real income and impact live.
Remember a pause isn't a quit. "What feels right for me right now and embracing the season that I'm in, rather than keep pushing and keep forcing," as Sarah put it. A pause has an end date built into the word. Treat it as one.
Take your own advice. Sarah coaches other women through exactly this kind of decision for a living, and still needed her husband to remind her to take her own medicine. If you wouldn't tell a friend they were failing for scaling back, don't tell yourself that either.
Use what you've already built instead of creating something new. Sarah has ten years of content sitting in her archives — 140 podcast episodes, years of emails, worksheets, workbooks — and instead of creating something new every week, she's turning that existing material into a resource people can access anytime. As she put it: "An email that we sent three years ago makes a great blog post. It makes a great podcast episode. It makes a great social post — because nobody's seen it for the last three years."
Let progress be progress, even when it's small. "Progress is progress. It doesn't have to be huge," Sarah told me. Some weeks you'll get loads done. Some weeks you'll do one small thing. Both count.
Would we change it?
At the end of the conversation, we landed in the same place. The fear, the guilt, the late nights figuring out what to prioritise — all of it is real. But neither of us would go back to doing things any other way. Sarah loves what she's built, even in a quieter season. I feel exactly the same.
So if there's something in your business you've been white-knuckling, holding onto because stopping feels like failure, maybe this is your sign to actually look at it properly. You don't have to decide forever. Just decide for now.
As Sarah said, progress is progress. It doesn't have to be huge.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode Spotify
💛 Find Sarah at The Unapologetic Mumpreneur
🌐 Website: https://theunapologeticmompreneur.com/
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theunapologeticmompreneur
👤 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ladysarahdew
🎙️ Unapologetic Mompreneur Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6CJHN43mRqEB2g7UGIUUvX?si=cb9c9a1450f141d3
✨ Come and network with us at Women Inspired Network If this episode has you thinking about what you're holding onto that you don't need to, come and find your people at one of our relaxed, pay-as-you-go networking events across Suffolk, Essex, Norfolk and Cambridge.
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