Oxfordshire Business named Family Business of the Year even after its MD steps back for nearly a year

An Oxfordshire business whose Managing Director stepped back for nearly a year to support her son has been named Family Business of the Year at the Business Awards UK 2026. Mastermind9, which helps small business owners grow through peer support, kept running throughout, thanks to the systems Sarah Mols had put in place long before she needed them.

Sarah co-founded Mastermind9 with her husband, Pete Mols, and leads its operations, systems and team. The business supports small business owners through monthly mastermind groups, quarterly planning and weekly accountability.

Over several years, Sarah built the systems and processes that run Mastermind9 and handed ownership of them to the team. When she stepped back, she kept working late evenings and weekends to hold everything together, while the team ran the business day to day.

Sarah Mols said:

People assume that if the MD steps away, the business falls over. Ours didn’t, because we’d built it so it didn’t depend on any one person, me included. That work was done while things were calm, long before I knew I’d need it

The same thinking applies to the whole team. Under the company’s “Family first, always” policy, anyone can step away when their family needs them, without it coming out of their holiday allowance. When one team member travelled to India for a family medical emergency, colleagues covered her work for three weeks and she was paid in full.

Pete Mols, co-founder of Mastermind9, said:

Sarah is the reason this works. We decided what we wanted family life to look like and built the business to give us that, and she built the systems that made it real. This award belongs to her and the whole team

Five decisions that let a business run without its owner

Sarah Mols points to five decisions any small business owner can make, without a big budget or a large team:

1. Decide what the business is for. Set the family goal first, such as finishing in time for the school run or taking every August off, put a date on it and test big decisions against it.
2. Build systems before they are needed. Write down how the work gets done, then take time off to find out what breaks.
3. Hand over real ownership. Give the team the authority to fix problems without checking with the owner first.
4. Protect family time in the diary. Block out the school run or family dinner and treat it like a meeting with the biggest client.
5. Get some accountability. A peer group of other owners will notice when goals start to drift.

Business owners in Oxfordshire and across the Thames Valley can meet the Mastermind9 team and other owners at its next free online networking event on Wednesday 18 November here. The full guide, Building a family first business, is on the Mastermind9 blog – https://mastermind9.com/business-growth/building-a-family-first-business/