What does it mean for your business to truly support you? In this episode, Sara reflects on a difficult period in her own life and shares how it reshaped the way she approaches business. Rather than viewing a business as something that constantly demands more, she explores how it can become a source of financial stability, practical support, and resilience through every season of life.
In this episode, we explore:
- How personal hardship changed Sara’s understanding of what a sustainable business can provide.
- Why many women have been taught to seek security outside themselves, and how business can offer another path.
- What it means to build systems, recurring revenue, and structures that continue working when you need to step away.
- The difference between a business that continually demands your attention and one that actively supports your life.
- A reflective question to help evaluate your current relationship with your business.
Resources
Key takeaways
- A sustainable business can provide practical support during both expected and unexpected life events.
- Systems and recurring revenue create stability that extends beyond daily effort.
- Financial security does not need to depend entirely on another person.
- Building a supportive business happens gradually through intentional decisions and structures.
- The relationship you have with your business can evolve over time.
Episode FAQs
A supportive business continues serving clients and generating income through systems, recurring revenue, and thoughtful structures, allowing you to step away when life requires your attention.
The comparison illustrates the idea of creating a business that offers stability, reliability, and practical support rather than one that depends entirely on your constant presence.
The episode presents business as a living relationship that can be developed intentionally, integrating practical business structures with personal values, self-leadership, and meaningful work.
No. While the episode draws on experiences of grief and loss, the ideas also apply to everyday situations such as taking vacations, investing in your business, or creating greater financial flexibility.
She invites listeners to consider: “Is my business a generous partner or a demanding one?” as a way of examining the current relationship they have with their business.
Read the Full Transcript
There was a very challenging season of my life from 2016 to about 2019 or 2020. Some of you know this. I write about it in great candor in my third book, Handbook for the Heartbroken. I’ve also recorded various podcast episodes about it over the years.
During that very dark valley, literally everything in my life fell apart.
I don’t want to tell that whole story today, but I do want to talk about one part of that time. I was bone tired. I was grief-stricken. I remember waking up in the mornings and feeling like I had to pull myself out of bed. I had to will myself out of bed just to keep going.
I would look in the mirror while brushing my hair, putting on my makeup, and brushing my teeth, and all I wanted to do was crawl back into bed and hide from the world.
To be honest, I envied my friends who had husbands or partners who could support them financially. Everything in me needed to step back, to be held, to be provided for, to be supported, but I couldn’t do that.
There was no one to hand things to. There was no one who could cover the bills for that month, so I had to keep going on my own. I had to keep holding everything together.
I remember wishing very fervently during those years that I did have someone. In some of my previous relationships, I had been the person who made more money and was often paying for things.
But during that dark season, I really wanted a true partner. Someone who could catch me. Someone who could say, “Sara, you can step back and rest because I’ve got this, and I’ve got you.”
It’s important to say that I’ve always been independent. I’ve been self-employed for pretty much my whole adult life, aside from about a year or two. Making my own money was never a question for me. It’s always been important for me to have my own money.
Still, during that season, I understood why women have wished for someone to support them financially throughout history. For generations, that was the story we were given out of necessity. We couldn’t own property, have credit cards, or work in many circumstances. We were told to marry well, to find a husband—or today we would say a partner or spouse—someone who could provide security, stability, and freedom.
I know it isn’t that simple. Women have also carried invisible labor for generations. While that’s an important conversation, it isn’t the one we’re exploring today.
Here’s where I want to go instead.
I’ve been thinking: What if we’ve been asking the wrong person to support us? What if we’ve been looking in the wrong place? What if the structure that can hold you isn’t another person at all? What if it’s actually your business?
When I started rebuilding my business after that dark season—because one of the things I let go of during that time was my business—this question was at the forefront of my mind.
I never wanted to be in that position again where I couldn’t step back, where everything depended on me showing up every single day no matter what was happening in my life.
So I didn’t just rebuild a business. I rebuilt a true partner.
I’m married now. I have Chris. I didn’t marry Chris so he could rescue me financially. It’s important that we’re both financially solvent and sovereign and that we’ve met in that space.
I don’t want my business to demand everything from me either.
I want both of these relationships—my marriage and my business—to be reciprocal, where I give to them and they give to me.
What does it actually look like for a business to hold you the way you’d want a partner to?
It looks like income that arrives whether or not you showed up that day.
It looks like systems that continue serving your clients while you’re resting, sick, or sitting with your mother in a hospital room.
It looks like a structure that doesn’t collapse the moment you need to step away.
It looks like money that’s there when you need to pay an unexpected bill, take a vacation, or invest in your business.
I know some of you hear the word “structure” and something in you tightens. I understand. Parts of us hear “systems” and think rigid, corporate, or soulless.
But I want to offer another way of seeing this.
The structure is the holding.
Today, when Chris says, “I’ve got this,” what makes that real isn’t the sentiment. It’s that he actually can and actually means it. There’s something underneath the words.
If I were in a place where I couldn’t pay my bills or couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, I know Chris would have my back.
I also know my business would have my back.
In your business, the systems are what’s underneath the words. They’re what make it true when your business says, “You can rest. You can buy the thing. You can do the thing. I’ve got you.”
Every August I take the month off, and my business keeps paying me. It keeps serving the women in my programs. It keeps welcoming new people in.
When my father passed away this past spring, my business held me through that too.
That is what I was wishing for in those years when everything fell apart.
What moves me most is that I didn’t find it.
I built it.
I created it.
I made it happen in relationship with my business.
If I can do it, it’s available to you too, whether you have a partner or not.
This was never about replacing love or replacing people.
Even with Chris beside me, I want my business to hold me this way.
This is about no longer outsourcing your security to anyone and instead building it together with this living entity that is your business.
Recently, during a group mentoring call inside Her Self CEO, I was helping a woman map out the next steps for creating this in her own business.
I call this “business husbanding”—building systems that can hold you, creating recurring revenue and structures that continue providing whether or not you’re sitting at your desk.
I watched something shift in her as she realized the support she’d been wanting outside herself wasn’t something she had to wait for, find, or earn.
It was something she had agency to build, piece by piece, beginning right where she was.
This week, I want you to notice your relationship with your business.
Not the one you hope to have someday, but the one you’re living right now.
When you needed extra cash or needed to step back this past year, could your business support you?
When life asked something big of you, did your business show up to support you, or did it continue demanding that you keep showing up no matter what?
Notice the everyday moments too.
When you want to go on vacation, buy a new couch, get a massage, or enjoy a nice dinner, can your business support you financially?
Or do you find yourself looking outside yourself for those things?
Do you trust someone else to support you financially but not believe you can build something that can do that for you?
Here’s the question I’d like you to sit with this week. Maybe journal about it or bring it into your morning practice or afternoon walk.
Is my business a generous partner or a demanding one?
There is no shame in whatever answer comes.
For years, mine was demanding. That was simply the relationship.
Relationships can and do change.
You have the power to change this dynamic and build the kind of partnership that can one day say, “Rest,” or, “I’ve got this, and I’ve got you.”
