The Hand Up Project
Claire Jackson, Founder The Habit Lab
Some businesses are built from ambition. Others are built from necessity, from the moment a founder realises the tools everyone else is using simply weren’t designed for the life they’re actually living.
Claire Jackson built The Habit Lab from exactly that place.
She was navigating early motherhood, postpartum depression, burnout, and a health diagnosis … all while appearing, from the outside, to be completely fine. When she discovered a different approach to behaviour change, one that started with capacity rather than willpower, it didn’t just reshape how she worked. It became the foundation of a business.
What makes Claire’s story particularly compelling is that she hasn’t just theorised about sustainable business design, she’s been forced to live it. Running a consultancy as a single mum, managing lupus, and building through some of the quietest and hardest seasons a business can face, she has had to make the same decisions she coaches others through. Let go of the bespoke. Build the container.
Design for real life, not the ideal version of it.
Her answers won’t tell you to push harder. They’ll ask you to look more honestly at whether the system you’ve built actually works for the human inside it.
If you’re running on reserves you don’t have, this one’s worth reading slowly.
What originally inspired you to start your business, and how has that initial motivation evolved?
From personal reset to professional practice, The Habit Lab began during a period where my life appeared stable from the outside while feeling highly demanding internally. I was navigating early motherhood alongside postpartum depression, burnout, and a health diagnosis during COVID that required a significant shift in how I worked, recovered, and managed energy.
Like many women in similar seasons, I stayed outwardly capable while running a nervous system that rarely stood down. Most productivity tools assumed spare capacity and discipline, both of which were already being absorbed by care, decision-making, and constant regulation.
During that time, I discovered the Tiny Habits® method. It offered a fundamentally different explanation for behaviour change, one grounded in capacity, context, and nervous system state rather than motivation or ‘pushing through’. Effort became something to design carefully, not something to summon on demand, and that reframing changed how I related to work, rest, and self-trust.
Around the same time, I was invited to deliver a single presentation as part of Mental Health Month at a friend’s work. I spoke plainly about behaviour, energy, and what happens when expectations rise while systems remain vague.
People stayed afterwards. Conversations continued, and the same themes came up repeatedly: recognition, relief, and a sense of permission to work differently. What began as a personal reset quickly showed up as a repeatable need in other people’s lives, and that’s when it shifted from a personal solution to a full blown (unexpected!) business!
What problem does your business solve better today than when you first began?
When The Habit Lab began, the work focused on sharing ideas through presentations. People gained insight, reframing, and a sense of validation for what they were juggling, and that mattered.
Over time, it became clear that insight alone was not enough. Most organisations already know what their people should be doing differently. The real gap sits in how that change shows up in daily behaviour once the session ends.
Early-career professionals across education, public service, and leadership pathways are expected to perform in complex environments without being given practical tools to manage energy, attention, pressure, and time on a day-to-day basis.
Professional development often increases expectations without changing the systems people use to meet them. Habits form quickly in the early stages of a career, as do coping strategies. When those patterns are left to chance, they compound into burnout, inconsistency, and avoidable performance issues that surface later as individual problems rather than system design failures.
The Habit Lab now focuses on transformation rather than information. We design practical toolkits that translate behavioural science into daily operating systems people can actually use. Participants leave with clear structures for planning, pacing, and regulating under pressure, embedded into real working weeks rather than idealised routines.
For organisations, this means development that holds. Behaviour changes at the level of daily practice, not just awareness. Capability is built in a way that supports consistent performance, reduces rework and remediation, and protects wellbeing at the same time.
This shift from presentations to practical toolkits is why the work has become essential. Organisations do not need more information. They need systems that change how work is done, at scale, over time.
What operational change or system had the biggest impact on your ability to step out of the day-to-day?
The biggest shift came from getting clear on our core offers and resisting the urge to tailor everything for everyone.
In the early stages, I said yes to almost every variation. Different audiences, different formats, different timelines. Each piece of work was interesting, but the cost was invisible at first. Every new version lived in my head, relied on my availability, and required me to hold the whole system together manually. Over time, it became obvious that responsiveness was doing the job of design.
The change came when I committed to containers. Clear programs with defined outcomes. Set delivery windows. Fewer offers, designed with depth and intention, supported by repeatable frameworks.
Instead of building from scratch each time, I started refining what already worked and letting the work travel further without needing me to stretch thinner.
Practically, this meant saying no to bespoke work that sat outside the core, even when it was tempting. It meant trusting that the right organisations would find their way to the right program, rather than reshaping the business every time a new request arrived.
Once the work lived inside systems rather than inside my calendar, the business stopped requiring constant vigilance to run well.
"My role shifted from being the engine keeping everything moving to being the architect improving the structure, which changed how the business could grow and how sustainable that growth could be."
What internal shift or mindset change has most transformed the way you lead?
Decoupling leadership from endurance required unlearning a lot of what I had absorbed over a twenty-year career in the public sector. I was trained, implicitly and explicitly, to equate competence with capacity. Leaders stayed late, absorbed pressure, responded quickly, and kept things moving regardless of personal cost. Being reliable often meant being permanently available, and composure under strain was treated as a leadership skill rather than a warning sign. That model shaped how I worked when I started my business. I overextended, took on too much, and measured effectiveness by how much I could carry without dropping anything. It worked for a while, until it didn’t.
The shift came when I began to see leadership as environmental design rather than personal endurance.
"The shift came when I began to see leadership as environmental design rather than personal endurance."
My focus moved from pushing harder to shaping conditions that allowed good work to happen without depletion. That meant setting clearer boundaries, designing work in defined containers, building in recovery, and leading in a way that suited my neurotype rather than fighting it.
I now lead more deliberately. Fewer decisions, made with more clarity. Less reactivity, more structure. Less emphasis on looking capable under pressure, and more attention on whether the system itself is doing its job. Once that belief changed, leadership became lighter, more effective, and far more sustainable.
What was a turning point or decision that significantly accelerated your business’s growth?
Leaving my university management role after seven years was the moment the business properly moved forward. By then, the evidence was already there. Demand was consistent. The work was landing. I was effectively running a consultancy alongside a senior role, which meant everything required more effort than it should have. Attention was split. Decisions were deferred. Growth was constrained by caution rather than capability. The numbers helped clarify things. Seventeen per cent super has a way of forcing a serious look at opportunity cost. Staying felt safe, but it was also expensive in ways that were becoming harder to justify.
Once the decision was made, everything tightened. Focus improved. Delivery sharpened. External confidence increased because internal commitment was no longer diluted. The consultancy stopped hovering between potential and execution and became a business with clear intent. Growth followed, not because I worked harder, but because the decision removed friction that had been slowing everything down.
What challenge did you not see coming, and how did you navigate it?
Becoming a single mum six months into running the business full-time, during the quietest quarter of the year, tested my resolve more than any strategic decision had. January to March 2024 brought low pipeline and high responsibility, with very little room to absorb uncertainty. Parenting solo stripped away any illusion of spare capacity. Around that time, well-meaning friends started suggesting I “have a look at SEEK,” just to keep options open. It was practical advice, and there were moments where it landed harder than I expected.
There is no question that being employed is easier in many ways. The pay is predictable. The structure is given. The responsibility ends somewhere.
Running a business asks you to sit with uncertainty longer, make decisions without full information, and keep showing up when the outcome is still unclear.
That period forced a reckoning. Not in a dramatic, do-or-die way, but in a way more honest one. I had to decide whether I wanted to build this business enough to redesign it for the life I was actually living, rather than the one I’d planned for. I chose the redesign.
"What that season taught me is that resilience in business is less about pushing through and more about staying willing to adapt without abandoning the work. The business held because it was shaped to do so, and because I was clear about why I wanted to keep going."
What role, hire, or support made the biggest difference in how your business operates?
I am still very much in the process of building the right team for the business I am creating, and I am intentional about taking that slowly.
What has made the biggest difference so far has been strategic support focused on architecture rather than output. Finding the right business coach was the single biggest game-changer. It gave me clarity on what I was building, visibility on where the business could go, and the encouragement to apply for my first award, something I would not have considered on my own. That decision led to a second and then a third, and shifted how I saw the business and my role within it.
More broadly, it reinforced the importance of having good people around you who can stretch your thinking without overwhelming it.
Support that asks better questions, challenges assumptions, and holds a wider view creates growth that feels grounded rather than performative. Operational support is being added carefully, in service of that structure rather than ahead of it. The aim is a business that runs well on ordinary days, without relying on my personal bandwidth as the main driver. I am still refining that balance, but the foundation is now far stronger because of the people involved.
When scaling meets reality
In 2024, scaling collided with my health in a very practical way. I live with lupus, an autoimmune condition that can flare under stress, illness, or prolonged load. A flare means fatigue that does not resolve with rest, brain fog, joint pain, and a nervous system that struggles to regulate. For me, that showed up most clearly through winter, when energy drops and recovery takes longer.
That reality forced a change in how I plan the business year. Instead of assuming consistent output across twelve months, I started designing the business around seasons. Summer is now reserved for re-energising, thinking, and lighter work. Winter is deliberately quieter, with fewer delivery demands and more recovery built in. Spring and autumn carry the bulk of program delivery, when energy, focus, and capacity are naturally higher.
Once I stopped working against my body and started planning with it, everything became easier to hold. The business no longer depends on pushing through low-capacity periods. It meets me where I am, and that has made the work far more sustainable.
That single shift changed how I think about scaling. Growth is no longer about doing more all year round. It is about designing a system that performs well across different seasons, without requiring the human inside it to override their limits.
What advice would you give to other female founders working to move from doing the work to leading the business more effectively?
Before questioning yourself, audit your working system. Leadership work doesn’t just happen in the gaps between ‘doing’.
If there is no time ring-fenced in the week for thinking, design, and decision-making, the business will keep pulling you back into doing.
If a business only runs smoothly during calm weeks with high energy, the issue is structural rather than personal.
Systems that rely on you absorbing pressure or constantly adapting will eventually limit growth. Leading requires a different container. Protected time for architecture, not just output. When that space is built in, the business can hold across varied seasons without demanding more from the person inside it.
What shift do you believe female founders are uniquely positioned to benefit from right now?
Many women already understand capacity, care, and constraint through lived experience. Parenting, caregiving, health, and competing demands teach you early that energy is finite and trade-offs are real.
For me, that showed up in how I stopped planning the business around ideal weeks and started designing it around the ones I actually live. I plan delivery in spring and autumn when focus and stamina are strongest. Summer creates space for recovery and thinking. Winter carries lighter loads and more margin.
This new approach came from paying attention to my own patterns rather than pushing past them. Applying this kind of awareness to business design, instead of self-sacrifice, creates a genuine advantage.
"The next phase of leadership belongs to founders who build environments that support consistent progress without burning people out, starting with themselves."
What’s one thing you wish more founders understood about building a sustainable, long-term business?
Sustainability comes from building a business that matches how you actually work, rather than how the internet says you should. I built The Habit Lab by design, which often meant moving at my own pace, following my own rhythm, and making decisions that looked quiet from the outside.
That included blocking out a lot of noise: the pressure to scale faster, the obsession with visibility, the constant drip of advice from TikTok, Instagram, and founder threads that reward urgency over longevity.
Urgency can help you start. Structure is what lets you stay.
The longer I’ve been in business, the clearer it’s become that clarity, boundaries, and repeatable systems matter far more than intensity. A business that respects human limits has a much better chance of lasting than one fuelled by comparison and constant ‘doing’.
If you design the business around real life, rather than performative success, sustainability stops being something you chase and becomes something you live inside.
Bonus: What's one piece of advice you wish you had received as a female leader?
Build something that can carry you when life gets complicated. There will be seasons where energy dips, health shifts, family needs more, or focus narrows whether you planned for it or not. I wish I’d understood earlier that a good business does not demand you rise above those moments. It adjusts with you. When the business is designed for real life, it starts working alongside you rather than pulling from you.
That difference changes how decisions are made, how pressure is handled, and how long you are able to stay in the work that you love.
Get in touch with Claire on LinkedIn or find out more about her business here.
