When Life is Really Hard: How to Keep Building a Business Anyway
I want to start this blog by telling you about Leah.
Leah Scott is the founder of Bravely Together, a health coach, supporting medical mums — mums who have children with complex care needs. She is warm, wise, and one of the most quietly resilient people I’ve had the pleasure of chatting to on the podcast.
Her story starts with her daughter, who was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition while Leah was pregnant with her twin brothers. Leah lost her daughter. Her twin boys were also diagnosed with the same condition and underwent bone marrow transplants and chemotherapy before their first birthday. Leah flew to Italy for their treatment. She spent months confined to a hospital room with two babies whose immune systems were so compromised that they couldn’t have people coming in and out.
And through all of that — the grief, the fear, the uncertainty, the exhaustion — she kept going. She came out the other side, had her fourth child, trained as a health coach, and built a business.
I share Leah’s story not to make you feel like your own struggles are small but because her advice for mums building businesses through hard times carries a weight that only comes from truly lived experience. When Leah says “be kind to yourself,” she has earned every word of it.
Here is what she taught me.
1. Be kind to yourself — genuinely, not just as a phrase
We throw this around a lot, don’t we? Be kind to yourself. But Leah said something that made me really stop and think about what that actually means.
Every day as a mum is a new day. Your children are growing and changing constantly and you have never navigated life with a child at that exact age before. It’s the same in business. Everything is going to be new. There will be parts of running a business that you never even anticipated — the admin, the tech, the marketing, the self-doubt, the plate spinning — and all of it is a learning curve.
Being kind to yourself means giving yourself permission to not know everything yet. It means not measuring your chapter one against someone else’s chapter ten. It means recognising that you are doing something genuinely hard — building a business while raising children — and that the fact you’re still here, still trying, still showing up, is enough.
2. Ditch the mum guilt — it’s not serving you
Leah has strong feelings about mum guilt and honestly, after this conversation, so do I.
“You don’t hear the words dad guilt, do you?” she said. “But mum guilt is something we throw around really carelessly and just accept that it’s a thing we’re supposed to feel.”
She’s right. We have been so conditioned to believe that putting ourselves first — even for an hour, even for a massage, even for a business call during nap time — is something to feel bad about. And Leah made the most interesting point about why: when we’re so used to being needed and being in control of everything, handing even the smallest portion of that over to someone else makes us feel genuinely unsafe. Our nervous systems actually react as if it’s a threat.
But here’s the reframe. You cannot pour from an empty cup. You cannot be the best mum, the best business owner, the best version of yourself if you are running on empty all the time. Looking after yourself is not selfish. It is the most responsible thing you can do for the people who need you.
3. Asking for help is not cheating
This one hit me hard because I recognise it so much in myself.
Leah said something brilliant: “I think we picked this up from school. It’s almost like if you get help, you’ve cheated.”
And that belief follows so many of us into motherhood and into business. I have to do it all myself. If I ask for help, I’ve failed. If I delegate something, I’ve lost control. If someone else does it, it won’t be done properly.
But the truth is the opposite of failure. You go so much further when you work alongside other people. You grow faster when you collaborate. You build something more sustainable when you’re not carrying every single thing alone.
Whether that’s asking your partner to take the kids for a morning, bringing in a VA, handing an event over to a trusted leader, or simply asking someone at a networking event how they handle something you’re struggling with — asking for help is not a weakness. It is one of the smartest things you can do.
4. Give yourself time — building something takes longer than you think
One of the most common reasons women give up on their businesses is that they don’t see results quickly enough. Three months in, the clients haven’t flooded in, the social media isn’t exploding, and the self-doubt starts to creep in. Maybe this isn’t working. Maybe it’s not for me.
Leah’s business, Bravely Together, officially launched last summer. But the foundation for it — her life experience, her training, her early client work, her workshops — took years to build. Most businesses that look overnight are anything but.
There is a warming up period. There is a foundation laying period. There is a period where you feel like nothing is happening and then suddenly everything starts to move. Give yourself the grace to be in that phase without deciding it means you’ve failed.
5. Look for the small moments of joy
This was perhaps Leah’s most powerful piece of advice — and the one that only someone who has truly been through the fire can give.
“Really try to find even just one small moment of gratitude or joy in those moments,” she said. “Because there are so many of them when you actually start opening your eyes up and looking for them.”
At one point in Leah’s life, all three of her children were classed as terminal. And she still found joy. She still found gratitude. She still kept going.
I’m not saying your hard days aren’t hard. They are. The chaos of juggling business and babies and everything in between is real and it is relentless. But there is something in training yourself to notice the small good things — a funny moment with your toddler mid-Zoom call, a message from a client that made your day, a connection at a networking event that left you buzzing — that keeps you going when everything else feels like too much.
Gratitude isn’t toxic positivity. It’s a grounding tool. And when you’ve got a lot going on, you need something to anchor you.
6. Try to enjoy the journey — even the messy parts
In ten years’ time, Leah said, “you will look back with — hopefully — a really successful business and think: I did that. With little ones running around my feet. With everything else going on. I did that”.
The chaos is part of the story. The kid interrupting the Zoom call, the podcast recorded during nap time, the event planned around the school run — all of it is part of what you’re building. And one day it will be the most brilliant thing to look back on.
You are not failing at business because life keeps getting in the way. You are building a business in the middle of real life. And that is something to be genuinely proud of.
A final thought
Leah said something near the end of our conversation that I keep coming back to.
“If people can see that I was able to find moments of joy and gratitude when essentially at one point all three of my children were classed as terminal — life can’t get much more awful than that — and to see that I’ve come through that and I can still experience joy and laughter and build a business, I think that’s really helpful for people to see.”
It gives people hope. It shows that there is light at the end of even the darkest tunnels.
Whatever you are carrying right now — the sleepless nights, the juggle, the self-doubt, the fear that it’s not working — you are not alone in it. And you are so much closer to the other side than you think. 💛
About Leah
Leah Scott is the founder of Bravely Together, a health coaching business supporting medical mums — mums of children with complex care needs — to look after themselves in a way that actually works for their unpredictable, beautiful, relentless lives. Leah is also our brilliant new WIN leader in Diss, Norfolk, with events running every third Wednesday of the month at the Park Hotel.
Find Leah here:
🌐 Website: https://bravelytogether.co.uk/
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bravely_together/
👤 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61573927418665
To find out about her Networking events for Women in Business in Diss:
https://www.womeninspirednetwork.com/book-events/diss
Want to hear the full conversation?
Listen to my full chat with Leah on the Women Inspired Networking Conversations podcast, available now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0DM7Ooc5nLezg4u91OklYo
Or watch the video on YouTube
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDVCZqf8LiBs92aTeEHZsWrtoNRJEVCXn&si=ewPpv5qn96SmYkAD
Come and find your people:
🌐 www.womeninspirednetwork.com/events
👤 Facebook: Women Inspired Network: Networking For Women In Business
📸 Instagram: @women_inspired_network