Creating Space to Unplug Sarah Best on Creativity, Community, and Peace, Love & Pottery

Sometimes taking a new direction means recognizing when the life you have built no longer feels like the life you want. In this episode of Women in the Driver Seat, Mary Helen Darah visits Peace, Love & Pottery in Sylvania to sit down with owner Sarah Best and talk about entrepreneurship, family, creativity, and building a place where everyone can feel comfortable picking up a paintbrush and creating something of their own.

Sarah's journey to business ownership began in 2019 while she was working in corporate healthcare. Although she had built a career, she felt unfulfilled and found herself missing the everyday moments with her children. Around that same time, a family friend who had opened Peace, Love & Pottery in 2013 announced she was looking to sell the studio. Sarah saw an opportunity to combine her marketing and business experience with a career that could give her greater flexibility for her family.

Taking over the studio gave Sarah the chance to build something that reflected what she valued most. Her vision was to create a community space where creativity was accessible to everyone, regardless of experience or artistic ability.

A Place to Put the Phone Away

In a world where phones and technology make it difficult to disconnect, Sarah believes creative outlets have become more valuable than ever.

Walking into Peace, Love & Pottery gives people an opportunity to put everything else aside for a while. Instead of scrolling through a phone or worrying about information outside their control, guests can focus on painting, talking, laughing, and spending meaningful time with friends and family.

Sarah wants the experience to engage people from the moment they arrive. Music is playing, candles help create a welcoming atmosphere, conversations fill the room, and shelves of pottery provide seemingly endless possibilities.

Most importantly, there is no requirement to consider yourself an artist.

Whether someone has years of experience or is holding a paintbrush for the first time, Sarah hopes everyone eventually has the same reaction when they see their finished piece: "I made that." 

Creating Memories That Matter

For all the pottery that has passed through the studio, one family tradition has remained especially meaningful to Sarah.

A local foster family visits Peace, Love & Pottery whenever they welcome a new baby into their care. They select a heart ornament and place the baby's footprint on it along with the child's name and date, creating a keepsake to remember the child and the time they shared together.

Peace, Love & Pottery provides those ornaments at no charge as a way of supporting the family and recognizing what they are doing for children in their care.

It is a small gesture that captures something much bigger about Sarah's business. Creativity is not always about making the perfect piece. Sometimes it is about capturing a moment, celebrating a relationship, or creating something tangible that carries a memory long after the paint has dried.

Leading With Confidence and Warmth

As a woman business owner, Sarah says she has not allowed her gender to change how she approaches conversations with bankers, accountants, customers, or employees. Instead, she relies on the confidence she has in her business and the warmth she brings to the people around her.

Her philosophy is to put out the energy you wish to receive.

That means refusing to match negativity with negativity and instead trying to remain confident, welcoming, and even keeled through the many challenges that come with running a business.

It is an approach that also seems to describe Peace, Love & Pottery itself. Sarah calls the studio "organized chaos," a place filled with music, conversation, color, creativity, and people making something entirely their own.

At its heart, Peace, Love & Pottery is about more than what someone takes home from the studio. It is about what happens while they are there. It is time spent away from screens, conversations with people we care about, the confidence that comes from trying something new, and memories created along the way.

Sarah's story is also a reminder that sometimes changing your career can create room for something even more meaningful. By taking a chance on a local pottery studio, she found a way to bring together business, family, creativity, and community while giving others a welcoming place to create memories of their own.

👉 Watch now to hear how Sarah Best turned a career change into a creative community at Peace, Love & Pottery in Sylvania.