Wildly popular Australian health blog and business, I Quit Sugar, is closing down.
The company’s founder, Sarah Wilson, published a length post explaining the difficult decision today.
“I have some big news and it’s important to me that I share it with you first. After a lot of careful thought and much heartache, I’ve decided to close IQuitSugar.com,” she writes on her personal website.
I Quit Sugar gained a cult-like following a few years back, after Wilson (a journo by trade) tested a sugar-free diet for a column she was writing. She gave it a crack and felt inexplicably better.
By 2014, the book she wrote with the same title had become New York Times bestseller and her sugar-quitting biz had over a dozen employees and turned over almost $2M a year.
Sure, she has her critics – particularly those who believe she’s not qualified to give dietary advice – but she undoubtably created an empire.
She explains on her blog that over the past seven years, what started off as a “gentle and kind experiment” to build an “authentic” community became a business motivated by money.
“Success is a funny thing. It requires feeding. It requires growth,” she explains.
“Once we arrived at the point where “scale” – growing the existing structure exponentially – was required, I realised the motivator now was money. My motivator had not been money previously, a freedom that enabled me to make bold decisions that at times startled peers and the industry, but ultimately, and ironically, saw my message and product spread further.
“So I decided a little over 12 months ago that it was time for me to go. I’m an educator, a communicator. Not a money-spinner. It was best for everyone and for the message.”
She goes on to pip any potential naysayers to the post, explaining that her decision to wrap the business was not due to her being “mentally unfit”:
“I’m going to be really honest here because I hope this decision I’ve made might invite a different conversation around the traps.
“One that goes beyond lazily and unkindly speculating that the business was failing (it certainly wasn’t and out of full respect for IQS’s general manager and the talented and loyal-to-a-fault staff I will defend this suggestion forcibly), or that the founder was mentally unfit (oh, yes, the suggestion has been made before, to which I say, surely we know the statistics and history of high-functioning anxious types running the bulk of the most successful businesses in the world by now?).”
Her decision to close a fully-functional, profitable business instead of on-selling, is a huge. She explains that this was the only viable option “for a business that has the founder’s name and noggin all over it”:
“I set out, initially, to sell the business to a respectful soul to whom I could hand over the baton … This seemed the most responsible thing to do.
“But here was the rub: Normally with such a sale, the owner is kept on for about three years to continue the brand and image messaging for consumers. Golden handcuffs you might say. I, however, stipulated I could not and would not do this. And put up a reduced sale price to compensate. Indeed, at one point I floated the idea that I’d give it away, but the psychology and logistics of this proved impossible, too.”
“Instead, I now hand the baton to you, the community,” she finishes.
“The information is out there. Use it. Please spread the word. My books will still be available in bookshops and libraries. The work of everyone who’s been part of this won’t die.”
