From Anxiety to Empowerment: Lilly’s Story Behind Thirty Seven Co & Thirty Seven Spaces

In her Legacy Bench conversation, Lilly-Mae Roberts opens up with honesty, humour, and a refreshing realness about what it truly feels like to build a business outside the typical mould. At only 22, she’s already walked a journey many founders encounter much later in life: leaving a path that didn’t fit, battling internal doubts, redefining identity, and rebuilding from the ground up — this time on her own terms.

Lilly shares how growing up severely dyslexic shaped her in ways most people never saw. She spent years being told to “get a normal job,” and when she tried the traditional 9-to-5 route, it broke her — mentally, emotionally, and creatively. She speaks about reaching some of her lowest points, navigating social anxiety that made even everyday moments feel overwhelming, and feeling out of place both in corporate spaces and sometimes even in neurodivergent communities.

And yet, that struggle became her turning point.

Through Thirty Seven Co, Lilly found her footing as a marketing and mindset coach who helps founders build strategies they actually feel good doing — not strategies they copy from the internet or feel pressured into. For her, marketing isn’t about shouting louder; it’s about being more you, more intentional, and more confident in your voice.

But the conversation goes deeper when she talks about Thirty Seven Spaces — the creative coworking studio she’s building from scratch. It started from a simple truth: most content studios and coworking spaces are designed for neurotypical, corporate-coded people… not for creatives with sensory needs, dyslexia, ADHD, autism, mobility limitations, or simply those who feel they don’t “fit” the standard entrepreneur aesthetic.

Lilly explains how her mother’s mobility challenges opened her eyes to how inaccessible creative spaces really are. She wants to change that — not with token gestures but with real, structural inclusion. She paints a vivid picture of the type of environment she’s creating: colourful, warm, intentional, supportive, and accessible for all bodies and all brains.

She also shares the emotional weight of being young in business — not being taken seriously, feeling underestimated, being told she’s “too young” to build something meaningful… and how she uses that doubt as fuel to build something that proves otherwise.

Her conversation is full of depth, self-awareness, and a passion that is instantly contagious. Lilly doesn’t just want to build a business — she wants to build a movement of creative belonging.

Her episode is one of those conversations where you walk away feeling inspired, seen, and reminded that purpose doesn’t care about age. And that sometimes the people building the most important spaces are the ones who spent years feeling like they didn’t have one.