A Businesswoman’s Mentorship Advice for Entrepreneurs

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/03/04

Leah Notarianni is a transformational speaker, business mentor, and Co-Founder and CEO of Legacy & Leverage. She empowers leaders to align business strategies with personal values, driving sustainable success. Leah’s clients include Global organizations, c-suite executives, industry leading CEO’s and wellness experts. Her programs blend cutting-edge strategy with mindset work, redefining leadership to prioritize impact and alignment. Specializing in scaling purposefully and building lasting legacies, Leah inspires transformative leadership and innovation across industries. She advises against burnout, instead advocating sustainable success through daily habits that balance work, health, and relationships. She highlights the importance of aligning business goals with personal values, understanding the seasons of growth, and pursuing intentional, meaningful actions. She helps clients scale businesses by addressing challenges holistically and aligning with their desired lifestyles and priorities. Her insights inspire reflection on balancing ambition with personal fulfillment.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Leah Notarianni. She is a speaker, business mentor, co-founder and CEO of Legacy and Leverage. She specializes in guiding entrepreneurs to align their values with business strategies. She offers mentorship programs, live events, and retreats through Legacy and Leverage. These programs are designed for industry leaders, coaches, and speakers to help them effectively scale their businesses. Regarding how you approach the development of programs for industry leaders, coaches, and speakers, there is a highly specialized group of business and entrepreneurial individuals. How do you approach conveying your lessons to them?

Notarianni: We work with a variety of entrepreneurs, including people who are also speakers and coaches like ourselves. However, we also work across various industries. The lane we truly focus on is transformation.

I operate at the intersection of mindset, strategy, and healing. When building a business and examining the mindset of its leaders, it becomes clear that internal transformation is essential for external success. Of course, there are specific strategies for building a speaking business, consultancy agency, or company.

We also encounter CEOs in different sectors who often feel stuck. Their mindset and what they bring significantly influence how they lead, show up, grow their business, and choose to grow it. This dynamic creates both challenges and opportunities.

Our role is to design transformational experiences that help individuals see themselves clearly, enabling them to reach their next potential level.

Jacobsen: What challenges do high achievers face when scaling their companies? For instance, I was listening to a business leader. They pointed out that as businesses scale up, the skill sets needed at each stage expand, evolve, and change.

Notarianni: Absolutely. The person who builds a million-dollar business is very different from the person you need to become to run a ten-million- or hundred-million-dollar business. How you operate changes and approach challenges changes, and your mindset and personal growth evolve along the way.

Everything changes, both externally and internally. While there are fundamental principles in how businesses operate, growth strategies must evolve. Your skill sets, emotional intelligence, and capacity to manage greater responsibilities must also increase because the challenges are different at each level.

Jacobsen: How do you define sustainable success?

Notarianni: Sustainable success is when someone is truly living in alignment with the value they want to provide to the world. It’s about living in alignment with their integrity, who they are, and how they appear. Sustained success is different because it comes from a more integrative space. It’s not about running at full speed, doing everything you can until the point of burnout, and then crashing.

Instead, it’s about caring for your mind, body, and mental health. You must address these things along the way because sustainable success isn’t just about getting somewhere; it’s about staying there. To sustain success, you must have reverence for creating space that’s just for you, both within and outside your business.

It is crucial to ensure that your values are aligned, spend time with family, and prevent one difficult season from turning into years of hardship. Growth can be demanding, but you must take space for yourself and build practices and systems to support you in the short and long term.

Jacobsen: Different people have different values. Clients can bring very diverse personal values to their businesses. How do you help people align their values, as varied as they may be, with their business strategies?

Notarianni: We design and support someone in their business by looking at it holistically. Many people focus solely on the growth and scaling of a company, which is great, and plenty of people, including us, do that well. However, we go beyond that by looking at the person’s life.

Business is just one part of life. If someone’s home life is out of alignment or filled with challenges, they might think it’s unrelated to their business, but that’s not true—it impacts their work. So, when we work with someone, we take a comprehensive approach. We don’t just look at them as businesspersons but as whole individuals.

We examine their health, spirituality, relationships, finances, connections, family, and life overall. For us, success comes from addressing a person’s wholeness so that they can thrive at work and in every aspect of life.

Jacobsen: Terms like “resilience,” “self-actualization,” and “growth’ are often used in business. These ideas can mean different things depending on the type of business—for instance, restaurants in my resort town experience seasonal ebbs and flows. There’s a rush during late spring to early fall, followed by a slow period where businesses either shut down completely or operate at a reduced capacity, often laying off staff to manage overhead.

How do you coach people to build resilience appropriate to their specific business and the seasonality of their operations?

Notarianni: I love what you shared there, Scott because certain business structures have an ebb and flow. How can you innovate within the current industry model? How do you cross-pollinate strategies from other industries to create new revenue streams and provide value in ways that others haven’t thought of?

Too often, people stay in a self-limiting box, doing only what they think they need to do. There’s a significant opportunity to think outside the box and add value in different industries or places. We can innovate and find creative approaches to solve problems and stand out.

That’s one part of it. The second part is that every business has its seasons. Whether you’re in a build phase, a growth phase, or a scaling phase, each stage requires something different from you. Having a clear start and endpoint for each season is crucial—not just for the business but for you as a person. Whether you’re a parent, spouse, or someone with responsibilities outside of work, it’s easier to manage the process when you know you’re working toward a specific goal within a set timeframe.

Understanding that you’re in a particular season and the next season will bring its rewards helps you stay focused and balanced.

Jacobsen: Do you find that people’s choice of business or entrepreneurship tends to align with their personality style?

Notarianni: Absolutely. It’s critical to understand your lifestyle goals. Earlier, you asked how I coach entrepreneurs. I always start with the person as a whole. You can have an incredible leader—someone who loves working 50, 60, 70, or even 80 hours a week—and they thrive in that environment.

On the other hand, you might have someone very different. They might say, “I’m great owning this business at this level of profitability, but I have clear constraints: I need to finish work by 4 PM, I don’t work weekends, and I’m unwilling to travel.”

People can and should design their businesses to fit their lifestyles, values, and how they want to present themselves in the world. It’s entirely possible to build a business that aligns with the life you want rather than chasing an outcome that doesn’t suit your needs or values.

Jacobsen: People often lose stamina as they age. This could be due to normal aging or lifestyle habits like diet and exercise.

For individuals who want to keep working 60- or 80-hour weeks but find themselves losing energy—falling asleep during the day or hitting a slump around 1 PM—how do you guide them? How do you nudge them to consider other factors affecting their capacity to perform at their best throughout the day?

They can have their values, goals, and a business structure that aligns with their personality and boundaries. But what about the intrinsic factors that could be modified, even as stamina naturally declines with age?

Notarianni: That’s such an important question. First, it’s about helping people understand the connection between their energy levels and daily habits. Sleep, nutrition, exercise, and even hydration can significantly affect how someone sustains energy throughout the day.

I often encourage those who want to maintain high productivity to optimize their physical and mental health. Simple adjustments—such as incorporating movement breaks, prioritizing high-quality sleep, or shifting to nutrient-dense meals—can make a big difference.

It’s also about self-awareness. Helping people recognize when they’re overexerting themselves or ignoring their body’s signals can prevent burnout. Suppose they’re falling asleep in the middle of the day or losing focus. In that case, it’s worth exploring whether they need to delegate more, adjust their schedule, or take better care of themselves physically.

Lastly, reminding people that sustainable success involves pacing themselves is crucial. Even with age-related changes, it’s possible to remain highly effective by aligning one’s work style with one’s capacity and making proactive choices to enhance one’s stamina and overall well-being.

I wouldn’t connect those two ideas directly. But I often work with people who are overworked and exhausted yet don’t know how to step off the hamster wheel. That’s when I step into the lane of healing and ask deeper questions like: What are you running from?

Sometimes, people run so fast toward something they aren’t even happy with. They’re overworked, their health is suffering, their family relationships are strained—perhaps even on the verge of separation. They need to take a step back and examine all the pieces. Why are they taking action the way they are? What’s driving them?

What’s available to them beyond this constant striving? People can work as long and hard as they want, but if they aren’t taking care of themselves, there’s likely an underlying issue. I always ask my clients to reflect on their intrinsic motivation: Does it come from needing to prove or achieve something?

This work is deep and meaningful because it allows people to shift from working 80 hours a week to a more sustainable and intentional pace. By doing this, they often create far more leverage and results. They stop working just for the sake of working and instead allow themselves the space to breathe, gain insights, and make meaningful changes in their business and life.

Jacobsen: What is the most significant challenge in your business and entrepreneurial development?

Notarianni: There have been many challenges throughout my journey. As an entrepreneur, a mother of three, and someone who started as a single parent with two kids, I’ve had to play every role—whether at home, in my company, with my team, or with my clients. I’ve had to wear many hats and fill many roles, which has always been challenging.

Looking back over the past decade, that challenge has not completely disappeared. However, I’ve found new ways to innovate and manage my energy, connecting it to my priorities while staying mindful of the seasons in my life, my children’s lives, and my business.

For example, I’ve taken a different approach to growing and scaling my company. I’ve intentionally chosen not to pursue certain things as aggressively during specific periods, like when my daughter was in her first 18 months or during her early childhood. I’ve designed a business model that allowed me to spend far more time with my children, especially when they were young.

This has always been a challenge, but it’s also been my greatest opportunity. It has inspired me to create innovative business models I haven’t seen elsewhere. I’m grateful for how this experience has allowed me to grow as a human being overall.

Jacobsen: When people want to scale—say they’ve built a business that generates half a million or a million dollars and is looking to grow it to $10 million—it’s an uncommon leap. Many fail, and I’m sure quite a few declare bankruptcy. What do you notice, not as a hard and fast rule but as a heuristic, to guide people during such business expansions? What should they avoid, and what should they focus on?

Notarianni: When looking at a business, it’s not always about growing the top line. You can have a $10 million company making a million dollars a month but only keeping $100K. On the other hand, you can have a company making $120K a month but keeping $100K.

Many people get stuck here, focused solely on top-line revenue, building a massive team, and scaling a big business. Sometimes, I step in and ask, “But for what? What are you trying to create? Do you know what the outcome is?”

What kind of lifestyle do you want? What do you want to keep? What are you going to net versus gross? Many people don’t consider these questions when scaling their businesses. It’s important to check whether their need for significance or validation drives their growth.

That said, there are incredible benefits to growing a $10 million company—supporting a team, building a healthy and efficient operation, and making a meaningful impact globally. There’s value and health in that.

I’ve seen both sides of it. I’ve coached $100 million, $1 million, and $100K companies and witnessed their growth over time. Ultimately, it depends on where someone is, where they want to go, and how they want to get there. There are many ways to reach a goal, but ensuring that the path aligns with the person’s wants is key.

Jacobsen: Do you see many cases where people want a big business to have a big business?

Notarianni: Absolutely—a thousand percent. Many of the people who come to us are at a breaking point. They’ll say, “Everything’s broken. I don’t know what to do.”

Usually, two types of people come to us: one who has done everything but isn’t happy and genuinely wants to grow, and the other who wants to grow to build a massive company.

Once, I was in a room with a mentor who had eight or ten eight-figure companies. I asked him about his strategies—how he scaled and grew different verticals across his businesses. He said, “Leah, I make more money in this room than maybe you do, but people would trade to have your life.”

That moment hit me. I looked at my husband and said, “Maybe we need to evaluate what we’re doing well, why we want to grow, and what that growth could look like. Should we stretch our timeline, scale back, or focus on consistency in different areas? Or is this just a different season of life?”

That conversation was meaningful, and I often shared it with others. It’s critical to take inventory and ask yourself if you’re enjoying the life you’ve built.

I’ve worked with people making $100 million who struggle to carve out time for a simple walk, take their family on vacation, or even spend meaningful time with loved ones. I hope everyone reading this takes a moment to evaluate their life. Ensure you’re truly enjoying the life you’ve built, and prioritize what matters most to you.

Jacobsen: Despite the value of persistence and grit, what are some dangerous myths that pervade the mentorship, speaker series, business classes, and entrepreneurial landscape that people should avoid? What are things that sound good but don’t work in the long term?

Notarianni: You should not burn yourself out for long periods. Learning to live an intentionally healthy life is crucial. There’s a lot of noise out there—different advice from different people—and much of it can be misleading.

For example, some encourage you to work a million hours a week, pushing the “hustle at all costs” mentality. Then, some people believe in manifesting everything without taking meaningful action.

The truth is, there’s a middle ground. Having a clear vision of who you are, what you value, and your purpose. Deep inner work is essential, but equally important is taking action.

If you start from scratch, the energy and focus required to move forward will be intense for some time. Growth takes time, deliberate effort, and significant change. Unfortunately, many don’t paint an honest picture of the entrepreneurial journey.

As a mother and someone who’s gone from nothing to where I am now, I can tell you—it’s not glamorous. People often see the “after”—the beautiful office, the beach houses, the ideal family—but they don’t see the losses, challenges, and sacrifices along the way. Even when people share their struggles, others don’t realize how significant those losses can be.

It’s also important to remember that not everything happens in a year, as you might see on Instagram. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It just means you’re growing, and things will come in the right time and season they’re meant to.

Jacobsen: Leah, thank you for today’s time and this opportunity. I appreciate it.

Notarianni: Awesome. Thank you so much, Scott.

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