This Mother Means Business: Strategy, Advice, and Support for Mom Entrepreneurs · Laura Sinclair

The Fear Behind the Fear: A Psychologist's Take on Anxiety in Business with Dr. Amanda Tobe

·37 min·10 clips

Laura Sinclair starts by saying mental health belongs in the room when business growth is being discussed. She makes that point especially for mothers who are building while family life is already full. The episode stays focused on the human side of growth instead of polished certainty. Laura then turns to her own story out of corporate life. In her early thirties, during her second mat leave, she started asking whether she was actually happy. The answer was no. That honesty opened the door to a bigger rethink. A friend’s comment about finding a passion project gave the idea some shape. Laura says she did not know at first whether the project would stay a side interest or turn into a full career redesign. It became the latter. By then she had a toddler and a baby only two to three months old. Instead of pretending she had endless time, she set a five-hour weekly minimum. Those hours mostly lived in the evenings. She used that window to listen to podcasts, read books, and build her own list of questions. The process was small on purpose, and repeatable. Laura also leaves room for a less dramatic outcome. She says it would have been okay if she had chosen the same career again. What mattered was choosing it with consciousness and clarity. That takes some pressure off the idea that every reflective moment has to end in reinvention. The episode keeps coming back to sustainability, support, and the real limits of bandwidth. Laura closes that loop by treating business growth as something that has to fit a human life, not erase it.

As heard by us

A grounded look at capacity, choice, and building work around family life.

This Mother Means Business treats the strain of building a business while raising a family as part of the job, not a private failure. It stays close to the human side of ambition and the pressure that comes with trying to grow something real while keeping family life intact.

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Why you'd press play

When motherhood, business, and career questions start colliding, this helps you sort the next step without pretending the choice is simple.

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