Meet The Team
Helen Pugh
I’m Helen — founder of Ablepreneurs® Ltd and creator of National Ablepreneurs Day.
Before any of this existed, I spent 30 years building a career in the property and insurance sector. I knew the industry inside out. I was the person people trusted to get things done, solve problems, and keep the wheels turning. It was a solid, sensible, grown‑up career… until chronic illness arrived and decided it had other plans.
Five years ago, the traditional workplace stopped being somewhere I could function. Not because I lost my skills or ambition — those were still very much intact — but because my body simply couldn’t keep up with the pace, pressure, and rigidity anymore. I didn’t glide out of corporate life with a graceful exit speech. I was shoved out by circumstance, and it hurt.
But I wasn’t done.
I still wanted to contribute. I still wanted to build. I still wanted to lead. So I did what I’ve always done: I found another way.
Before Ablepreneurs® existed, I ran my own Online Business Manager business, helping people starting out in the property sector. I supported investors with their research, kept estate agents’ processes running smoothly, and looked after people’s businesses so they could actually take a holiday without everything falling apart. It was flexible, it was meaningful, and it allowed me to use decades of experience in a way that worked with my health.
And then came the neuro‑surgery.
It was the kind of life‑altering moment that forces you to stop — not gently, not temporarily, but completely. I had to set my OBM business aside, and it wasn’t a tidy, well‑planned transition. It was survival. It was grief. It was one of those “everything is changing whether I like it or not” chapters.
But sometimes the worst chapters crack open the best ones.
Because once I stepped back, I realised something: I wasn’t the only one being pushed out of traditional work. I wasn’t the only one trying to rebuild a career around fluctuating capacity. I wasn’t the only one who still had ambition, talent, and fire — but no place to put it.
Ablepreneurs® was born from that realisation.
I know first-hand what it feels like to be capable, ambitious, and skilled — yet excluded by systems that weren’t designed for people with chronic illness, disability, or neurodivergence. I know the heartbreak of losing a career you’ve built over decades. I know the stubborn determination of wanting to contribute even when your body is screaming for rest. I know the quiet fury of being underestimated.
So I built what I needed — and what thousands of others need too.
Today, I use my experience, my voice, and my unshakeable determination to create spaces where entrepreneurs with chronic health conditions can thrive on their own terms. My approach blends straight‑talking practicality with deep compassion — because both matter, and both are the point of why I do what I do.
Ablepreneurs® is community, co‑working, membership, advocacy, and a movement all rolled into one. It’s a place where people can show up foggy, flaring, fabulous, or somewhere in between — and still build something meaningful.
Because your health may fluctuate, but your value doesn’t. And I’m here to make sure the world finally understands that.
Kelly Ward
Howdy, I'm Kelly - One of the Directors of Ablepreneurs. I had been working in sales and business development roles since I was 18, but life threw me a curveball that meant I needed work that actually fit around my family and my health.
I’d always been a decent housekeeper — juggling a home, laundry, three kids, one baby, and a builder husband while still keeping my career afloat — so I figured, why not lean into what I was already good at.
So I did. I placed an ad in the local newspaper’s trade pages and started cleaning houses the very next week. Before long, I was collecting people’s laundry for evening pickup too. Turns out there was a gap in the market for someone who was reliable, thorough, and had a business brain behind the mop and bucket. The business grew fast.
Faster than I expected.
And then came the years of absolute hilarity, chaos, success, failure, growth, regression, and what‑in‑the‑actual‑f*ck moments — the kind that only small business owners truly understand. I loved my business and hated it in equal measure. Some days I wanted to scale it and take over the world; some days I wanted to just walk away dramatically.
But I’m forever grateful I did it. For the people I met, the clients I served, the team I built, and the lessons I learned. Running a cleaning business was a wild ride — and it taught me more about resilience, leadership, and human nature than any corporate job ever could.
I didn’t just clean. I trained. I studied. I completed courses and NVQs in speed cleaning, deep cleaning, infection control, surgical cleaning, COSHH, and more. But it was my background in sales and business development that helped me build a repeat‑client database and grow quickly. I met so many brilliant cleaners who were fantastic at the practical work but struggled with the business side — the marketing, the systems, the team leadership.
Then 2022 happened. An autoimmune crisis hit — hard — and it didn’t politely resolve itself. It dragged on, and as of 2026, it’s still ongoing. It’s a long, grim story (I talk about it on my personal blog if you fancy a nosy), but the short version is: I was forced to pause my cleaning business, and not in the most gracious of ways.
Losing the business was devastating. But it also cracked something open.
Because once I stepped back, people started coming to me for advice — not about cleaning techniques, but about business. About systems. About pricing. About boundaries. About how to grow without burning out. I realised I’d accidentally become a mentor, a strategist, a coach.
And I loved it.
So I leaned in. I began coaching and training other small business owners, helping them build sustainable, profitable businesses without losing themselves in the process. It felt like the perfect blend of everything I’d learned the hard way.
And then — I found Ablepreneurs®.
A community of people who understood fluctuating capacity, chronic illness, neurodivergence, disability, and the messy reality of trying to build a business when your body doesn’t always cooperate. A place where ambition and health could coexist. A place where my experience actually mattered.
I didn’t just join. I became part of the leadership.
Today, as a Director of Ablepreneurs®, I bring the whole messy, brilliant, painful, hilarious journey with me — the sales background, the cleaning business chaos, the autoimmune crash, the coaching experience, and the absolute refusal to be written off.
I help entrepreneurs build businesses that work with their health, not against it. Because I’ve lived both sides — the burnout and the breakthrough. And I know that with the right support, people can thrive even when life doesn’t go to plan.