What Sarah Wilson did next
Having walked away from the I Quit Sugar empire, Sarah Wilson has revealed her new business venture — and why she has given up on the prospect of having a baby.
Poor health powered the launch and seven-year-long success of her I Quit Sugar empire.
The need to make peace with her frenetic mind prompted her to write a raw and revealing book about anxiety and depression.
Little surprise, then, that Sarah Wilson’s newest project comes from an equally personal place.
After yearning for a child, the one-woman entrepreneurial juggernaut has made the quiet yet wrenching decision not to have a baby, and is instead channelling her sense of sorrow into helping other women who are struggling.
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“It’s the hardest decision I’ve made in my life,” says Wilson. “I went deep down examining my sense of purpose and felt I’m better put to use on this planet helping humanity rather than bringing one more life into the world.”
For years you couldn’t walk into a bookshop without seeing a tanned and lithe Wilson, now 45, smiling from the cover of one of her bestselling books.
But as she sits down with Stellar in a floaty dress and a thick grey hug of a cardigan, it’s clear the ever-moving, ever-creating model-turned-journalist-turned-businesswoman has pivoted yet again.
She shut down I Quit Sugar in May last year and has since channelled the profits into a philanthropic trust.
One of her first endeavours: a collaboration with the charity Two Good to donate woollen throws to women’s shelters during the winter months.
The project, operating in Sydney and Melbourne, supports women fleeing domestic violence through a “buy one, donate one” system: for every throw sold another is gifted to a women’s shelter.
As well as spearheading the initiative, Wilson matches each purchase dollar for dollar, funding another two throws.
As fits her pattern, Wilson has once again taken her personal pain and repurposed it into something bigger.
After three unsuccessful pregnancies with donor sperm from friends, and one from a donor overseas, she made the decision not to become a parent, nor try IVF.
“There’s a lot of grief and I have to sit with that but if I’m going to turn down motherhood to do other things, then I better do them well,” she says emphatically.
“I have to meditate daily to cope with the sense of loss, but it’s a fork-in-the-road moment and it’s fired me up to become even more vigilant and committed to my philosophy of ‘giving first’.”
Wilson became something of an evangelist to her followers, particularly the global I Quit Sugar community.
But she has long said her motivation was neither money nor status. She could have sold the multimillion-dollar entity rather than close it last year — a decision she made because it had stopped being enjoyable — but she feared a new owner’s vision may not align with hers.
Besides, as she points out, “My noggin was all over the brand.”
With proceeds from a sale, Wilson also could have bought a mansion overlooking the ocean and retired a rich woman.
Instead she packed her favourite green shorts into a bag and wandered the world for a few months imagining what she’d do next.
Yet even on that sort-of sabbatical her way of living drew attention, with readers fascinated by how she travelled for five months with only eight kilos of luggage.
Her partnership with Two Good founder Rob Caslick began several years ago, when she became one of several high-profile contributors to supply recipes for the charity’s “buy one, donate one” meal system, where companies such as American Express and NAB buy meals for events and conferences.
For every meal they purchase, another is provided to a domestic violence shelter. The program has expanded into toiletries and clothing.
Caslick explains he was motivated by a comment from a domestic violence survivor who told him she was most affected by the bow around the bag of soap, shampoo and conditioner given to her.
He points out gestures such as that can help rehabilitate a woman’s self-esteem and make her feel worthwhile.
Adds Wilson, “The principle is that these women deserve the same quality products as the rest of us. They need to feel they’re not just getting the sloppy seconds, or the half-finished tube of something.”
That ethos underpins Two Good Throws, a collaboration between Wilson, the charity and Tasmanian-based Waverley Mills that creates $200 woollen throws — sold through stores like David Jones — made from high-quality merino offcuts and recycled wool.
As Caslick says: “With an estimated garbage truck full of textiles being landfilled or burnt every second, these are proof you can create a beautiful, functional item using existing materials.”
This motive dovetails with Wilson’s way of living and her latest project, a cookbook called Simplicious Flow, which encourages a nutritious, zero-waste philosophy in the kitchen.
It’s also a working model of her belief that people want to have a greater emotional engagement with charities.
“We’ve got to give, we’ve got to engage,” she says. “It brings out the best in humanity and when we see instances of it around us, whether in business or a nice gesture on the street, we rise to our better selves.”
She was drawn to Two Good not simply because it dispenses with a “them and us” style of giving but because, like her, Caslick has created a flourishing business which uses celebrities and influencers to gain exposure.
She also likes the storytelling element of the project, explaining that someone sitting on their couch watching Netflix under one of the throws will know that a woman in a shelter down the road has been gifted the same.
Because every blanket is numbered, those who purchase will be told which shelter their gift goes to.
As Wilson observes, many of us may have had no experience of domestic violence, but as one of the most entrenched problems in our society, none of us can know when we might be in need of such services.
In any case, she believes giving provides an important return on investment. “We are incredibly caught up in our ‘take, take, take’ culture, but giving makes us feel better about ourselves,” she says.
For Wilson, stepping away from the prospect of having a child has freed up not just her time, but also her resources.
“I love the renegade spirit of not having to care about my money,” she says, before she hops on her bike to ride home in the dusk. “I’ll take freedom over money any day.”
Two Good Throws are available now at twogood.com.au.
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