Check Out Leah Lynch’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Leah Lynch.

Hi Leah, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
It started when I was seventeen. I’d recently gotten out of raising Jersey Woolly rabbits, the breed I’d done for years, and I was missing the hobby. Then one day, scrolling Craigslist of all things, I found two bucks (male rabbits) for sale of a breed called the French Lop. I had no idea what they were or what their temperaments were like, but I asked if we could go meet the woman selling them. I could drive by then, but we didn’t know her, and I always tried to bring someone along when I was meeting someone new.

The woman was so informative and helpful, and the breed was beyond anything I’d ever seen, massive, beautiful, and friendly. That was the start of my own small backyard rabbitry, and over the next five years it grew into something that paid my way through school. I graduated debt-free.

I’m thirty-three now, and that same rabbitry is still going. It’s carried me through some emotionally hard seasons, times I thought I might have to let it go, but it stayed the one thing that made me feel like I was contributing, like I had purpose beyond the day-to-day of being a wife and mom.

That’s what opened my eyes. A lot of women are content handling what their household needs, but we live in a world that tells us to choose: be the stay-at-home mom doing crafts and DIYs with no desire to generate income, or be the career chaser. The truth is a lot of us are wired to want both. We want to be there for our families, but we don’t want to put it all on our spouse’s shoulders. As wives, we were not created to do that.

That realization is what reshaped my personal brand into something bigger, helping driven moms find purpose beyond life and laundry, and build a side hustle that generates real income in the in-between moments, even in the busy seasons when it would be easy to give up.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Of course there have been struggles, and it seems to ebb and flow. Often it’s every three to five years, there’s a massive struggle that makes you want to give everything up and not continue.

The biggest one I can remember right now was in early 2023. I was pregnant with my son at the time, so I was a little preoccupied but still working and building, but not paying as much attention to the numbers. That was also when Google rolled out its helpful content update.

Google search was my main lead source, and while I had other platforms, that was the one I was really relying on. It was also the year I’d decided to focus heavily on the blog and not put as much gas on the fire for the other platforms. And it was the year we moved. So I just wasn’t watching the numbers as closely as I otherwise would have. My website was basically obliterated when it came to rankings.

Now I see why, looking back, but at the time I had no idea what the issue was. In short, I had too many topics on one website. So there I was, watching my leads dry up, thinking, if I want to stay in business, I have to figure out how to fix this. If I’d known then what would have fixed it, I’d have just started fresh on a new site. But I couldn’t see that at the time. So I decided to push harder on YouTube and the Facebook page, and it took about six months to get my lead sources back up to where they’d been.

We’re almost 2.5 years out of that now, and we’re better than ever. But there are going to be seasons when you have no idea what isn’t working, and you just have to take your best guess and try it, and not let it paralyze you. You’re always going to find issues. The question to ask yourself is why you’re continuing to do this, and what you’d do otherwise if you gave it up. That usually tells you your answer, whether to keep going or to find a solution to the problem. Because that’s what a business is. You are a problem solver

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
It might seem a little delusional, but I’m a stay-at-home mom who now runs two businesses from home.

The rabbitry has a few different arms to it. The first income stream is the obvious one, livestock sales: raising and selling French Lop rabbits. They’re show quality, so they can be someone’s amazing pet or they can be shown through ARBA rabbit shows. Either way, whatever someone wants them for, they’re getting a quality animal.

There’s also a teaching arm. I help people learn how to raise rabbits intentionally and practically, and how to make the hobby pay for itself so it isn’t something that drains their personal finances.

Then there’s my personal brand. I help driven moms, whether they stay at home or not, figure out how to generate income in a way that supports their family. I also teach them how to manage the overwhelm in the chaos, so they can do what’s been laid on their heart to do without feeling like they’re going to lose it in the day-to-day. So they can have purpose beyond life and laundry. All of that is done through online education and digital resources.

What I’m most proud of, for both businesses combined, is sticking it out on the days I wanted to give up, the days letting go would have been easier. Sometimes it’s not the grandiose awards or the interviews with people you admire. It’s the days you stuck it out when it was hard. Being featured on the Side Hustle School podcast and in Chris Guillebeau’s book 100 Side Hustles are amazing, and they feed you for a little while, but they come and go. It’s the days you can find your reason for continuing that feed you through the hard ones, the days that keep you on your own two feet when the storms come to knock you down.

There are two things that make me different when it comes to my personal brand. The first is that I don’t believe moms have to choose between stay-at-home life and the career-driven nine-to-five. There’s a middle lane. You can build your own career right down the center, and I hope every woman gets to see that lane is there and choose it if she wants to.

The second is that I have my first business as proof of concept. A lot of people run a business about running a business, and they’ve never done it outside of growing the very thing they use to teach other people how to make money. They’ve learned from people who sold the easiest thing there is to sell, which is how to make more money. I’d rather show you something I’ve actually built in a real niche, not just talk about building.

The other thing I’m proud of, in both businesses, is figuring it out when I had nothing. That becomes your ability to keep going when you have no idea what to do, because you will have days when you don’t know the answer and you just have to try things. I was a teenager before the internet was anywhere close to what it is today, and I can only imagine where I’d be now if I’d had these resources back then.

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
For me, success looks like supporting my family in a way that doesn’t take away from us as a family unit.

There have been times I wished I could show at livestock shows more often, or travel to events. But when I look at who’s there often, it’s two groups. One where the whole family is involved in the show, and one where the people are often single, or their relationships aren’t in a great place.

And that’s where I had to come to a conclusion. Do I want to sacrifice connection time with my family, and skip out on church often enough to go to these shows? Or do I want to stay connected to the things that matter most to me, and still do my very best with the time I’ve got left outside of those things?

That’s what I’ve chosen. Could I be a lot further ahead if I’d sacrificed those things, if I’d been willing to push through the night or give up time with my husband to build the business faster? Sure. But life is nothing when you’re not emotionally supported and at peace. Money can bring security, but emotions are what you live with, day by day, hour by hour.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://leah-lynch.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/theleahlynch
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/theleahlynch
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/theleahlynch/