Million Dollar Monday
Million Dollar Monday
Success through Remote Leadership & Building a Thriving Team
Show Notes & Resources
Sarah Hawley is a serial entrepreneur who has founded eight companies since 2009. Hawley’s most recent endeavor is Growmotely, the world’s first platform to connect conscious companies with skilled professionals into long term remote roles. Some of the topics covered during this episode are navigating entrepreneurship, knowing when to cut your losses, and trusting yourself. Tune in here.
Chapter Summaries:
0:41 - Introducing Sarah Hawley
1:44 - Stepping Up
4:30 - Building & Scaling Three Businesses
8:03 - Starting Growmotely
11:26 - What is Growmotely
14:21 - Recognizing Women Entrepreneurs
17:06 - Lessons Learned
21:18 - Big Wins & Successes
Key Takeaways:
- I've always been the kind of person who needs to know why something is the way it is, what's the entire picture.
- And most people were telling me, you can't do that, people won't take you seriously, financial planning has to be done in an office. And I just, I mean, that's part of my personality if anyone ever tells me I can't do something, I think, well, I'll just go and do it and show you.
- Sometimes it's best to just cut and run. There's no shame in that. I think some people just hang in there too long. They pour too much time and energy into it and they lose the opportunity even to be able to start another business.
- I put that in there as a bit of an homage to all of the women who have juggled and continue to juggle being a mom and being an entrepreneur or a professional, whatever it is that you do and that it is work, but we also get to be both.
- I trusted myself and we increased our revenue. That was the year that we doubled our revenue by putting that strategy in place. And our people were super happy.
Resource Links:
- Connect with Sarah
- Book
- About Growmotely
- League of Extraordinary Wo
Hello and welcome to Million Dollar Monday. I'm your host, Greg Muzzillo, bringing you real successful people with real useful advice for people with big dreams. I understand big dreams. I turned an investment of$200 and a lot of great advice from some really successful people into my big dream proforma. That today is a half billion dollar company. Well, hello and welcome. I am very excited and interested in talking to our guest today. She is a serial entrepreneur and an investor in startups. She has founded eight companies and three of which have had exits in the multimillion dollar range. She is now the CEO and founder of a company called Growmotely. Uh, that's the world's first platform to help companies engage remote professionals all around the world into long term remote roles. Welcome Sarah Hawley, Sarah, thanks for joining us.
Sarah Hawley:Thanks for having me, Greg. It's great to be here.
Greg Muzzillo:Yeah. Great to have you all right. Let's start at the beginning because I think everybody already knows by now you're from Australia. So let's start<laugh>, let's start at the beginning. Tell us about your growing up years just briefly. And what was it that led you to a love for business and also led you to the United States of America?
Sarah Hawley:It's a big question, but I will go as, as quick as I can on that. I think it's very interesting to look back, and observe one's childhood from, you know, the place where we are at, where we find ourselves right now. But I did actually always have like little businesses. I was always obsessed with creating stalls out the front of my house and we would either make things, or sometimes I would just steal the groceries outta the fridge and sell them on the street. Like I was doing all sorts of things. And what ended up happening was I started working with my dad in our family business, when I was 19 off and on for a bunch of years, um, I was studying it. I was traveling a lot and whenever I was in Australia, I would go do admin work or what have you in the business. And then I got really curious about the business and what do we actually do here? And I would, I'm a very innately, curious person. I've always been the kind of person who needs to know why something is the way it is. Um, what's the entire picture here? Why are we even doing these things? So, you know, I'd ask all these questions to my dad. And he was explaining to me financial planning, which is what the business was. And then he would explain to me business and how the whole business operated and how we made money and all of that kind of thing. And, you know, very quickly I fell in love with both aspects. I fell in love with financial planning and that was where my career started. I loved the ability to use kind of creativity and problem solving, which were two of my strengths. And I think that's really what you're doing, with financial planning and, and the fact that I was helping people to create the lives that they wanted. but at the same time, I was falling in love with business. And, um, at one point I was about 25. Um, my dad became really unwell with a thing called river fever, which is a mosquito born virus. And it sort of took him out for about 18 months. Um, and I just naturally stepped into running the business to paying the bills and doing the bookkeeping and, you know, the operations and these other elements of the business that I hadn't yet been been doing. And I remember when he came back after the year and a half off, he was like, wow, this is amazing. Like there's no mail here for me that the bills have been paid. Like everything's pretty much been taken care of. Um, and that was a big confidence booster, obviously for me to hear that from my dad. But that period of my life really showed me like, wow, I have what it takes to run a business. Like I could do this and I actually love it. Like, I love it more than financial planning. I love the business element and aspect. And once again, it also is creativity and problem solving.
Greg Muzzillo:Tell us just briefly, what did some of those businesses do, especially the successful ones that you exited for multimillions each and then what led you to founding Growmotely?
Sarah Hawley:Yeah, they were all financial planning businesses. Oh. So I built and scaled three financial planning businesses. One was a kind of traditional private wealth management firm for retirees pre-retirees, high net worth, mainly focused around managing their investment portfolios and things. The other was an insurance, brokerage, life insurance and such. And then the third one was Australia's first millennial focused financial advisory firms. That one, I was very passionate about figuring out how to give really good quality advice to high performing high achieving millennials. So all of those businesses are kind of built and scaled and sold, and then there's other businesses that are still running like the league of extraordinary women, which is a community for female entrepreneurs. I'm no longer active in that business, but I'm still a shareholder. Um, I had some, I wrote a book actually back in 2013 called Get Rich Slow. I created an online program, um, for, that was kind of to do with the, I created, turned the book into a course, essentially. So that was a little business that ended up merging into wealth, enhances the millennial financial planning business. We had a, an online accounting company called we love numbers that we started. Um, when there's a software out there called zero people might be familiar with it. Um, it's a bookkeeping accounting software and we created a business around that to deliver online, bookkeeping solutions to businesses, that company we actually decided to fail. Um, so we grew really quickly didn't have the strategy, right. We were suffering, found a burnout myself and my ex-husband who was a partner with me in that business. So that was one of our kind of, we decided to close that business down. We didn't have the energy to stick with it and get it right. Um, and then, so just to kind of wrap up and come to where we are now in 2014, after being in business for five ish years, at that point, I was feeling like I'm not living the life that I thought I would live as an entrepreneur. I'm not as free as I wanted to be. I was finding myself, going into my office really early in the morning, staying till really late at night, working really long days, really, really busy, and also dealing with a lot of stuff that wasn't really to do with my business. It was to do with like people in the office and manage, making sure the office is running smoothly. And I, I was missing travel, at the velocity that I would have liked to travel. I also wanted to move to the U.S. And so I decided at that point to turn all of my companies remote, which in 2014 in service businesses like professional services, like financial planning, that was very unusual. And most people obviously were telling me, you can't do that. Like people won't take you seriously. Um, financial planning has to be done in an office. And I just, I mean, that's part of my personality is if anyone ever tells me I can't do something, I think, well, I'll just go and do it and show you
Greg Muzzillo:<laugh> well, watch me go.
Sarah Hawley:Yeah. So that, that was just the fuel I needed. I think.
Greg Muzzillo:So, by the way, you shared really a very important lesson for all entrepreneurs, and that is sometimes it's best to just cut and run. There's no shame in that. I think some people just hang in there too long thinking there's shame in it or thinking they don't have another idea or thinking they gotta make a go of this one and they pour too much money into it. They pour too much time and energy into it. And sometimes they lose the opportunity even be able to start another business. So that was a great lesson that you share, uh, sorry for interrupting, but so get us to, uh, you got to the United States, get us to how you founded and where the idea for Growmotely came from
Sarah Hawley:2014. Um, turned all the companies remote. And I moved to Sydney, which is I'm from Melbourne in Australia. And I was like, well, instead of moving to the U.S, I'll move an hour flight away and just see how it goes, like starting to be remote, but like not being too far away exactly where my core team was. Um, and at the same time, I started opening up to hiring people in different parts of the world, not just in Australia, I hired my financial controller. She happened to be in the Philippines. She was unbelievable. And I was like, well, this is really fun and exciting. Like, I can hire people anywhere. They don't have to just be in my same city now, but I didn't know how to do that. I was, I mean, I knew how to, but it was hard. It was complicated. I didn't have a lot of time. How do I find all these people? So, as I said earlier starting a business out of a problem that you have, I founded a company called Grow My Team, which was a remote recruitment company. And it was a side project. I founded it with four, three other founders. There was four of us and we all used it to do the recruitment for our own businesses, the global recruitment. And we never really grew the company. We kind of just let it sit there doing its thing. And we had some clients, but we weren't massively pushing it. We had a general manager in there. Um, but that was really what opened me up to the world of remote work. So fast forward a couple of years later, 2016, I finally moved to the U.S. Everything's amazing. Life's just getting better and better for me and for my team, because we all have this freedom now to live and create our days. However we want them. The company actually grew a lot in that time. So all the people that said you wouldn't be able to do it. We, we really, um, doubled our revenue in 2016, for example, I remember so we were having some really great growth moments there as well. Um, and then by 2018, I, I had separated from my husband who I ran a lot of my businesses with, um, in 2017 and I was starting to get a bit burnt out of financial planning. It became a very heavily regulated compliance, focused industry. And I was finding, it felt like we were spending 80% of the energy of our business doing compliance and 20% doing what we loved, which was helping people. And that was just starting to kind of be a bit of a buzz kill for me. And I felt like maybe it was time for something else. So I sold out of all of the financial planning companies. I think I'd already sold one at that time sold the second one in 2016, and then the final one in 2018 and did a bit of soul searching from that point of like, what do I wanna be next to what I wanna do next? And to be totally transparent, I had a breakdown at that time because it was very intense to let go of, you know, my identity 17 years in finance, the success that I'd had was wonderful, but I had stories and doubt coming up at that time of like, maybe it was just a fluke or maybe I can only be successful in financial planning. Like if I wanna try, try and do something different, what if I'm not able to do it. So it was a really challenging time and it was about three, three or four months, I think. So it wasn't really that long in the end, but I think for those of us who are entrepreneurs, it, it's hard to sit still and it's hard to just do nothing for sure. Um, and so January, 2019, I decided to buy out all of the partners in the in Grow My Team, the remote staffing company, and go into that because the remote work had given me so much, I felt so passionate about it. And I thought there's a huge opportunity. And the next 10 years or so people are gonna open up to remote work a lot more. Obviously I had no idea COVID was coming, but I intuitively just felt as though, you know, the world's gotta be moving in this direction.
Greg Muzzillo:What great timing to be empowering, uh, remote workers in remote roles. Tell us a little bit more about how Growmotely does that. What, what is the functionality of Growmotely?
Sarah Hawley:well, Growmotely is a community and a platform that allows any company anywhere in the world to hire any individual anywhere in the world. So it's really just opening up the world of work, um, truly into a global marketplace, a global place. Um, but unlike a freelancer marketplace, which has existed for the last 10 years, this is for permanent ongoing roles where you're joining a team and being part of a company. And as a company where you're hiring and building, your team, your core team that are gonna be with you on the journey. So, and we handle contracts and payroll and all of that.
Greg Muzzillo:Got it, got it, got it. So for an organization that wants to have employees in another country, primarily with all of the complications that might come with it and all the compliance issues, tax issues, and more at the end of the day, you help find those people, bring them on board to the organization, that contracts you, but you handle all those headaches that the company wants to avoid. Is that a fair way to say it? Yeah,
Sarah Hawley:Exactly. Yeah. And then on top of that, we have kind of a community behind the scenes where everybody gets to network and socialize together. And we do a lot of ongoing training and development and, opportunities for people's team members to grow and evolve as people and as professionals. Um, we're really focused on helping the small to medium business clients. So the customers that wouldn't necessarily have enough scope to have a whole entire HR people development department. So we really through technology and some services, we deliver all of that for a small to medium business. That's remote and global.
Greg Muzzillo:One of the things I really loved when I was doing some research on LinkedIn and there's, there's a lot of entries for, from this date to this date, you did this. And from this date to this date, you did that. One of the things I loved the most was on March the 20, 2021. Um, you became co-creator<laugh> of baby Luca<laugh>.
Sarah Hawley:Yeah, my boy
Greg Muzzillo:<laugh>. I love that. I love it because it's all, it's all a part of who we are, um, especially for women to be moms and CEOs, and entrepreneurs. Alright.
Sarah Hawley:And I put that in there as a bit of an knowledge to all of the women who have juggled and continued to juggle being a mom, and being an entrepreneur or a professional, whatever it is that you do and, and that it is work, but we also get to be both, you know, and I think that's amazing. Like I don't wanna give up being a founder and a CEO and hats off if somebody does, but all of it should be recognized. And same thing goes for, for dads as well. But yeah, I just really wanted to, um, bit of a shout out to all the women out there who are doing it all.
Greg Muzzillo:I think so, especially because I talked to a lady entrepreneur, woman, entrepreneur, not that long ago, who actually had written a book to, and she said, you know, for fathers that start their own business for dads, who were raised in a more traditional kind of home dads sometimes feel like they're twice the dad, that their father was because they run their own business, they can be available for the children, et cetera. whereas she said, mom sometimes feel like half the mom, because they're not home or present all the time for the kids, for the children. And that's too bad because, uh, a mom should also feel like, I think twice the mom, because they're giving great, uh, experience, um, an example to their children.
Sarah Hawley:Yeah. I read a really amazing article about a month or so after Luca was born. And I was definitely in that phase. And I think it's, it's part of our physiology and our biology, where all I cared about was him. And I was like, who even cares about this company doesn't even matter. Like, here's my life. He's so amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and that's the hormones and everything that kicks in to make sure we keep them alive when they're so, so dependent on us. Absolutely. Um, but I read this beautiful article that talked about the way many parents, as soon as they have a child, they give up on their own dreams and they say, okay, I'm gonna put everything into my kid. I wanna help my kid or my kids be the best and everything they can be. But really the example we're showing them is sacrificing self for others and giving up on things and not realizing that in all of that sacrifice, that's coming from this amazing place. We're actually modeling something that we don't want them to become. Right, right. For us to, for us to actually step into our fullest potential. And our most expanded state is actually the model we want to create for our children. And that really resonated with me because I am an entrepreneur, a CEO, and a founder through and through. I love it. It fills me up. It gives me so much. And I wanna show my son an example of me being everything I can be doesn't mean he needs to be an entrepreneur. He'll be whatever he wants to be, but I want him to watch his mom and dad reach their fullest potential as an example for him.
Greg Muzzillo:Of course. All right. So you have founded and invested in many businesses. Um, you're currently running a well funded, almost$2 million already in seed rounds of investment, in a business that's getting ready and is already scaling, share with us one or two of the biggest mistakes you made and what lessons you learned from them. And then we'll ask you the same thing about a couple of the really great things that you did and the lessons you learned from them.
Sarah Hawley:yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting to try and distill it down to two mistakes. I feel like being an entrepreneur sort of like constant,
Greg Muzzillo:Oh, we don't have all
Sarah Hawley:Day you every day. Yeah,
Greg Muzzillo:I agree.
Sarah Hawley:<laugh> I mean, I think I just wrote a book Conscious Leadership and it tracks my journey as a leader. And I think if I could sum that up the mistakes or the challenge that I've found and experience in being a leader in my first five years was rather than getting to know myself and who I really was and how I could show up for my team in my most authentic integral self. I was reading all these books and doing what everybody else told me to do. Um, and that was a mistake, you know, not trusting myself and who I am and the way that I interact and relate and make connections. I was, you know, I'd read one book that said, don't ever hire a friend don't ever be friends with anyone you work with. So I'd be like, oh my God, okay. I gotta do that. Next thing you know, I read something the total opposite and I'm trying to do the opposite thing. And I was, I was very much like getting this information from the outside. And I had a really rough time, like the first five years trying to be a leader was very hard. I found it very, um, I took things very personally. Uh, so, you know, whenever somebody would quit or something would not work out with someone on my team, I would take that very personally. Um, and I found it really difficult. It would always be confronting. I'd be emotional. And I think the more that I did my own work on myself as an individual and started to get to know myself and trust myself and my style, things just really opened up and became, you know, in such a more expansive way. It's kind of a bigger summary, but like, that was a big, big learning for me.
Greg Muzzillo:I love it. And it's a valuable lesson, trust your gut.
Sarah Hawley:And just learn to filter that advice. Like you can go and receive advice. It's amazing, but it might not be right for you. So just that's, that's it as well, trusting your gut on the things that come in and things that people might give you. That's brilliant advice for somebody else, but it may not be brilliant for you and that's okay.
Greg Muzzillo:And probably in the early phase, you can relate to this. I know Sarah and I can do, we always look for affirmation. Yeah. That's a great idea. Right? We all want somebody and cuz we have an idea. We think it's probably right. But we ask people, what do you think? What do you think? What do you think? And first of all, we're asking the wrong people who have don't necessarily even have a clue what we're talking about. So they don't even understand the problem or the opportunity. Number two, there are some people I think that are intimidated by successful people and don't necessarily wanna see their neighbor, their friend, or their family member be wildly successful and pull in the driveway someday in a rolls royce. Right. um, I just think sometimes people unwittingly, right unconsciously kind of maybe give the wrong advice because they themselves are challenged and we could talk all day about the things we did did wrong, or could have done better or the challenges that we faced because that's what our world is full of as entrepreneurs is overcoming those, no matter what, having the grit and the tenacity to overcome those things, we all have, I say a very expensive MBA, um, in business, through all of the mistakes that we made. In fact, I know you have a master's degree in entrepreneurial, master's from MIT, which is impressive in and of itself. Um, so anyhow, all right, let's talk about a few of the big wins, a few of the big successes and what lessons as we start wrapping up our time together. Do you wanna share with our listeners?
Sarah Hawley:Well, interestingly, you know, my big wins are almost the flip of the big losses it's been when I've really listened and trusted my intuition and my gut knowing even when it hasn't always made sense. Um, so one of them has been Growmotely, you know, I just told the story very quickly about how it all came about, but you know, part of that story was I bought out three founders from that, um, original company, the company was in debt. It wasn't growing, it made zero sense for me to buy that company and take it. They just, you know, we did the deal we did and I took it on and it made no sense at the time, but there was something in me just saying, this is it, this is the thing. There's something here. And I don't know what it is and I don't need to know. Um, and it's led me to where I am now, which is working on a multi-billion dollar opportunity. And I'm gonna list this company on the stock exchange and reach my fullest potential as a entrepreneur. If I hadn't trusted myself to make that weird decision, I did back at the start of 2019. I wouldn't be where I am right now. So, you know, and I had another situation like that in about 2016 or 17, it was with the financial planning company. We'd been stuck for a while. We weren't really growing. And all of a sudden I thought, what do young financial planners want? They want something similar to what I want. They want freedom. They want flexibility. And they wanna feel a little bit entrepreneurial, but at the same time feel supported. And it just dawned on me one day and I came up with a new way of paying them. That was very different to the way financial planners were paid in the Australian market at the time, which is where my company was based. You know, in the Australian market at the time they were paid pretty hefty based salaries, 150 ish thousand with these bonuses based on what they did. Um, but I thought, I wonder if people would work for a revenue share like a fee share model instead. So zero base, we completely split the fees. Um, we provide all of the backend support and they can literally do whatever they want. They can build as big or a smaller client book as they want. And that was the decision and it went against everything and everybody was like, that's so dumb. You can't do that. No one will work for you for that. And I trusted myself and we increased our revenue. That was the year that we doubled our revenue, um, by putting that strategy in place. And our people were super happy. They loved it because I was intuitively, right. So for me, it's been, when I feel that strong conviction, even if I don't have all of the, you know, puzzle pieces in place in my mind, but intuitively in my heart and soul, I feel like, oh, this is, there's something here I've learned to really trust that. And don't worry about what anybody else says and how much it doesn't make sense. It doesn't need to make sense to them.
Greg Muzzillo:Although you've shown the ability to also cut your losses and stop the mistakes. Right? So I, I have loved our time together and I have no doubt you're gonna be wildly successful. And I'm gonna tell you what you said that convinced me. You said, I am going to be on the stock exchange. You didn't say, I'm gonna try you. Didn't say, I hope to, you said with conviction, I didn't hear a shred of doubt in your voice. I am going to, and I think many times that's what really separates wildly successful people from people who use words like, well, I'm gonna try, well, try has failure built right into it. And uh, I hope I can, has failure built right into it, but I am going to, I love it. I have no doubt you're going to. And Sarah Hawley, it's been a wonderful time being with you.
