Pausing My Business: Why I Paused Everything

I paused the selling, not the building.

This year I paused my entire business.

No launches. No new coaching clients. No group programs, no parent challenges, no "doors are open" posts. After nine years of Raising A Mogul, pausing my business meant one thing: I stopped selling.

When I realized I was giving more than I was getting

It started at the end of 2025. I looked up and realized I was giving more than I was getting. More time, more energy, more of myself, poured into work and into people, and very little was coming back to fill me up.

My exhaustion had changed, too. For years it was the kind that says I need rest. Take a weekend, catch up on sleep, push through. By the end of 2025 it had become the kind that says I should be done. I want to be done. That is a different kind of tired, and I knew it.

What pausing my business actually looked like

Pausing the selling didn't pause the work. I didn't walk away from every client, either. I kept some of my private clients, and I leaned into my agency model: bigger brand builds, brand development, website projects, and copywriting. That work is quieter. It happens behind the scenes. And it let me stay in my safe place, my sacred place, at home.

It let me work while I was fighting my way through the heaviest season of my life. It let me work while I was managing my grief. It let me work in my pajamas. It gave me room to process what I was walking through and still bring in a steady stream of income.

My income went down. Significantly. And I was okay with that, because I finally understood that my health, my mindset, and the chance to step away from the hustle for months so I could recover mattered more.

I kept building, too. I helped build the curriculum for a sixteen-week accelerator that has now graduated thirty-two businesses across four cohorts. I became the engine behind the relaunch of a youth entrepreneurship program heading into two cities. My agency took first-time authors from manuscript to a book in their hands. I spoke in rooms. I wrote through my grief in public.

I was waiting and working. What I stopped was the part that was keeping me the same.

Rebuilding a business after loss

In March I wrote, "Something is shifting. And I'm paying attention." That was the beginning of it.

When I lost my little brother in January, I realized I wasn't only grieving him. I was grieving my older brother, who died five years ago. My cousin, three years ago. My foster son, two years ago. My dog, a year ago. I had ended a 27-year relationship and never skipped a beat. Who does that?

I did. Every time. I just kept going. I never gave myself permission to pause, to feel it, to sit in it long enough to actually move through it.

So I had to become for myself what I have been for countless families, kidpreneurs, parent managers, young moguls, organizations, small businesses, and entrepreneurs across the globe: the guide, the coach, the support system.

And I had to ask a question I'd been avoiding for years: if I were starting from zero today, would I build this exact thing again?

The answer was no. Not all of it.

How to pause your business without losing it

So here's how I paused, and what I'd tell any founder standing where I stood.

1. Separate tired from done. Tired means you need rest. Done means you need to stop. They feel identical at 2 AM. Mine had quietly moved from one to the other, and I almost missed it. Give yourself enough distance to tell them apart before you burn anything down.

2. Stop selling before you stop building. A pause doesn't mean the work ends. It means the pitch does. Keep the work that lets you heal, even if it pays less. You keep sharpening, delivering, and collecting proof. When you come back, you come back with receipts instead of a promise.

3. Retire what you've outgrown, out loud. I stopped selling one-on-one coaching and parent-facing programs. I loved that work and it built my name. I still serve a few private clients, but I stopped building my business around that model. Saying it publicly kept me from sliding back into it because it was comfortable.

4. Decide what comes back by who it serves. Everything that returns has to serve more people at once and outlast my hours. That's the filter. If it only works when I'm in the room, it doesn't come back.

5. Let people watch. You don't owe anyone a press release about your pause. But letting people see the season, the grief, the rebuilding, the decisions, is what turns followers into people who trust you when you're ready.

What comes back: work for organizations

So what comes back? The work I do for organizations: programs that turn the people they serve into founders, brands for whole cohorts at once, and books for many authors through one partner. More on each of those soon.

If you're in a pause right now and it feels like failure, I want to offer you a different word. You're not stuck. You're waiting and working. Those are two different things, and only one of them shows up in the results later.