What a horse taught me about letting go in business
Sapphire & Me, at Steeple Hill Farm, November 2026
A horse named Sapphire has changed my life.
I know that sounds dramatic, but it is true. When I tell people that, they usually assume I am talking about exercise, fresh air, or finding a hobby. It is partly that, but it is so much more.
A little over a year ago, I was working 60-hour weeks, running two successful businesses, coaching hundreds of business owners, and raising four children as a widowed mother. I was well known in my industry, proud of what I had built, and proud of how much I could handle. Somewhere along the way, though, productivity had become how I measured my worth.
I had gotten very good at reacting to other people's needs. There was always another email to answer, another problem to solve, another person who needed something from me, and I was really good at it.
My coach encouraged me to get back into horseback riding, something I had loved when I was younger. I thought the idea was crazy. I barely had enough time to do everything I needed to do, so how in the world was I supposed to find time for a horse? But eventually, I gave it a try, and something happened that I had not expected.
When you are riding, you have to be fully present. You are thinking about your hands, your seat, the horse's rhythm, counting steps, and looking ahead. My ADHD brain could not wander off in a hundred different directions. For those moments, I was not thinking about work, worrying about my children, or running through everything I needed to accomplish. I was just there, and I did not realize how desperately I had needed that.
Today, I lease Sapphire and ride at least twice a week.
I cannot tell this story without mentioning Renee, my riding instructor, who has become so much more than that to me. She is an extraordinary woman, a fellow sister in Christ, with a heart of gold and the patience of Job. She is older than my mother and somehow in better shape than my 18-year-old son! What I appreciate most about Renee is how genuinely she cares. Her patience, encouragement, and the way she approaches life have had such a meaningful impact on me. I started riding again because I needed something for myself, but I never expected to find someone like Renee along the way.
The Question I Had Not Thought to Ask
Around that same time, one of my placement coordinators came to me and shared that she was burning out. She was waking up in the middle of the night, checking messages, worrying about what might happen, and struggling to disconnect from work. I knew exactly what she was talking about because I had done the same thing for years.
Preferred ChildCare had offered on-call babysitting services for a very long time. Families could reach us anytime when they needed care, which meant someone on our team was always responsible for answering calls, responding to requests, and coordinating caregivers. It was something we had built into our business, something clients relied on, and something that generated consistent revenue.
My immediate reaction could have been to figure out how to make it work better. Maybe we needed another employee, a different schedule, or another process. That is what I have spent most of my career doing: finding solutions, improving systems, and figuring things out.
But I remember going to the barn and thinking about that conversation. Instead of trying to fix the problem, I started questioning why we were doing it at all. Was this really the kind of business I wanted to operate? Did I want to hire another person and put them through the same thing? Was the money worth it? I kept coming back to the same answer: no.
It does not matter how much money you make if you do not have a life to live.
So we made the decision to discontinue our on-call babysitting service. I am not going to pretend that decision was easy. Walking away from reliable income is scary, especially when you have spent decades building a business.
My recruiters were thrilled. The quality of caregivers available for on-call positions had declined significantly over the previous year, and finding dependable, qualified professionals had become increasingly difficult. My placement coordinators were more hesitant at first. They were understandably concerned about the change and what it would mean for the business. Now they love it.
We are still growing, but we are being much more intentional about how we grow. We are looking more closely at the positions we accept and asking whether they are truly good opportunities for the professional nannies we represent.
For example, we recently considered a position that offered just two hours of work a day, three consecutive days a week. In the past, we might have taken on the search and figured out how to fill it. This time, we passed. Not because the family's needs were not important, but because we knew the schedule would be difficult to fill with the caliber of professional we want to represent.
Instead, we are focusing on positions that offer meaningful opportunities for our nannies, attract qualified professionals, and allow us to provide the level of care and service our families deserve. We are still helping families, creating opportunities for caregivers, and building our business. We are simply being more thoughtful about what we say yes to.
I am realizing that being more selective is not necessarily limiting our potential. It may actually be creating opportunities we would not have considered before.
The Things We Hold On To
I have owned Preferred ChildCare for 25 years. That is a long time to build systems, establish processes, develop services, and create expectations about how things should operate. Over the years, I have added a lot: new services, new positions, new technology, and new processes. Some of those decisions were wonderful. Others made sense at the time but probably should have been reconsidered years ago.
I think that is one of the challenges of being an established business owner. We get so busy running what we have built that we do not always stop to question it. We see something that is not working and immediately start looking for ways to improve it. But what if it does not need to be improved? What if we just need to stop doing it?
I think about how often I have encouraged the agency owners I coach to look at their numbers, evaluate their systems, and make thoughtful decisions about their businesses. Yet here I was, holding on to something in my own business because it was what we had always done.
The truth is, I do not think this applies only to services. It applies to how we manage our teams, the clients we work with, the hours we keep, and even the responsibilities we place on ourselves.
Sometimes we need to ask why we are doing something in the first place. Is it still necessary? Does it make financial sense? Is it helping us build the business we actually want? What might become possible if we stopped?
Maybe we would have more time to focus on the services we are really good at, develop our employees, or take better care of our clients. Or maybe we would simply have more time to go home at a reasonable hour, have dinner with our children, and enjoy the lives we have worked so hard to build. I think sometimes, especially as entrepreneurs, we forget that is an option.
Making Room for the Life We Have Built
After that conversation, I gave my team an assignment: find a hobby. Not because a hobby is going to solve every problem or eliminate stress, but because I wanted them to have something they enjoyed and looked forward to that had absolutely nothing to do with Preferred ChildCare. I did not want my employees spending their evenings and weekends worrying about work. I wanted them to have full, meaningful lives outside of it.
I realized I needed to want the same thing for myself.
These days, I am working fewer hours. I am at the barn with Sapphire two or three days a week, often for hours at a time. I am sleeping better and I am more present with my children. Perhaps most importantly, I am starting to feel like myself again.
That does not mean everything is perfect. I still have stressful days, difficult decisions to make, and more things on my to-do list than I would like. I still love being an entrepreneur. I love the businesses I have built, the people I work with, and the opportunity to help other business owners. I am not any less ambitious than I was before, but I am beginning to look at success a little differently.
For so many years, I took pride in how much I could handle: more responsibility, more clients, more employees, more challenges. I thought being able to manage it all was a sign of success. Now I am starting to realize that just because I am capable of doing something does not mean I need to keep doing it.
The business I wanted to build in my twenties is not necessarily the business I want to own today. My life looks different and my priorities are different. I have learned a lot, made plenty of mistakes, and had experiences I never could have anticipated. Why would I not occasionally stop and reconsider what I have built?
If you are a business owner, I would encourage you to think about what you are holding on to. Maybe there is a service that is not as profitable as it once was. Maybe there is a process everyone follows even though nobody can remember why it was created. Maybe you are personally handling responsibilities that someone else could manage just as well. Or maybe you have built a business that requires so much of you that there is very little left for anything else.
I do not think the answer is always to stop. Sometimes the answer is to improve something, delegate it, or approach it differently. But I do think we need to give ourselves permission to ask the questions.
Why are we doing this? Can we do it better? Should we still be doing it at all? And what might we make room for if we let it go?
I do not need to spend every waking hour working to prove that I have built something successful. I want to actually enjoy the life I have worked so hard to create, and I want the same for the people who work with me and the business owners I have the privilege of coaching.
A year ago, I never imagined that getting back on a horse would lead me to rethink a service we had offered for years, change the way I spend my time, or question some of the expectations I had created for myself as a business owner.
I thought I was just finding a hobby.
Instead, I am finding myself again.
XO,
Megan
