#awinewith Sara Howard
MEET Sara Howard, Founder of Beyond Solo
You can find them here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:00):
You are listening to Spark tv, where we bring you daily interviews with real women in business at all stages. I'm your host, Danielle Lewis, and I am so grateful to have you here. So good. Sarah, welcome to Spark tv.
Sara Howard (00:14):
Oh, thank you Danielle. It's so good to be here. Really, thank you for having me on the show.
Danielle Lewis (00:19):
Oh my God, no, I'm so excited because your book just arrived in the mail Beyond Solo. This is so cool. I'm so excited to get into it.
Sara Howard (00:31):
Oh, thank you so much. That means so much to me. Thanks, Danielle.
Danielle Lewis (00:35):
How fun. Well, before we get into the whole book writing, let's talk about you. So let's tell everyone who you are and what you do
Sara Howard (00:44):
Well. Okay, thank you. So my name's Sarah Howard and I'm the founder and director of Writers Australia, which is a copywriting and content agency that I started in Sydney about 18 years ago, quite a long time ago. And today we are the go-to copywriting and content agency for a lot of major corporates and not-for-profits around Australia and even around the world. We do a lot more strategic problem solving with our work. Anything that involves words really, but a lot of brand narratives and tone of voice, content planning, thought leadership articles. So I love writing, that's what I do, but it's really about having a lot of empathy for the audience and challenging our clients to actually focus on what matters most to their customers and the other people who are reading their marketing material. That's where we work.
Danielle Lewis (01:28):
I love that. It's really interesting. I just think words are so powerful. It doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, what you're selling, even if you're not in business, if you're just in whatever words are so powerful. And having somebody that can actually leverage words and use them to make an impact like yourself is so good because it's not all our fortes. No,
Sara Howard (01:59):
It's not. And look, for us, I think writing isn't just about getting words down on a page. I mean, let's be honest, chay PT can do that, right? But it's about getting ideas into the minds of others and actually making change happen or making ideas spark, or getting people to do something or think differently about something. That's what I find really powerful about writing.
Danielle Lewis (02:21):
My God, I love that you just said, getting ideas into other people's minds. That's actually such a beautiful way to even think about selling. A lot of people hate selling, and I always try and reframe it to building relationships and solving problems and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I absolutely love that idea of just we're just planting a seed,
Sara Howard (02:41):
Planting a seed. Absolutely. And if you do it really well, they think it's their idea. They don't even think they're being sold to. I mean, I always say, and this is true for writing, and it's true for selling as well, you're solving problems. You're not selling. You're looking for what's actually at stake for that person. What are they worried about, what's keeping them awake at night? And if you can help them with that, you're in. It's as easy as that. And also as hard as that, obviously you have to help them with it too.
Danielle Lewis (03:11):
Oh, that old chestnut. Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. No, so good. So how did you even get into this?
Sara Howard (03:18):
Into, yeah, it's actually an interesting story. My first career was not in writing. I was actually a retail buyer. And I know you worked in fashion as well, Danielle. Yes, I did. Yeah. So my first graduate job was a dream job. I worked for Top Shop in London. I was buyer. I know it doesn't get more glamor glamorous. You're the soft fire. This is so more glamor, fun glamor. I know I used to choose the stripes and I mean it was in the heady days of the S Spice Girls and we had all sorts of crazy patterns going on the, anyway, eventually I ended up in other parts of retail. I worked in home wear buying. I moved to America, worked for Urban Outfitters, had a great career there all through my twenties, traveled around the world. But when I had babies, I realized that traveling around the world on a very creative salary wasn't really going to cut it when it came to childcare.
(04:10):
And the reality of bringing up a family and we settled in Sydney and I needed a new job or something that would give me the flexibility to work around the kids. I wanted to obviously be able to chip away at our mortgage. So I had to actually earn some money, but I wanted a lot more freedom and flexibility, and I always loved writing. I have a marketing background, and so a friend encouraged me to do some online courses and really upskill in that area. And I found that this was my passion, actually. This is what I really was here to do. And I was very lucky in that actually at that time we were living back in the uk. We flipped flopped around a bit, and my tutor on the course I was doing over there runs a copywriting agency called Writers. And when I finished that course and did a little bit of freelance work for them, he said, we'd love to set up an office in Sydney.
(05:00):
Do you want to help us do that? And so that's how writers Australia began. It was a lot of serendipity, that meeting I know, but it was really on me to build the business from scratch in Sydney and use my network to grow. And I had the team in the UK who could read what I was writing and give me feedback and mentor me, but culturally we are very different. And so they couldn't really do the actual writing. So very quickly, we got too busy. I still had kids at childcare and school and only so many hours in a day. And so I needed to bring some people on board to help share the load. And that's how the business started growing, just hiring one person at a time. So today we have about seven or eight people, the ones on maternity leave, so I'll say eight in a studio in Stanmore. And we also have a pool of freelancers that we work with for special projects as well. So we're not huge, but we're certainly a decent size and a mature business, and we work with really high caliber clients on really important work.
Danielle Lewis (06:02):
And that is huge. I mean, managing one person is hard enough, but eight people, seriously. You are doing well. You're doing very well. And I do love your nod to serendipity, but I do think it's interesting coming from a totally different career, deciding you needed to build a new career or work life around your family and the life that you want, it does take consideration and effort. And I love that you said, well, I have to acquire these new skills, and I got advice and I got mentoring and I took the phone call. So you still have to do the work, even though
Sara Howard (06:41):
You're absolutely
Danielle Lewis (06:42):
Right. Serendipity happens.
Sara Howard (06:43):
Yeah. It's not just luck. There's a lot of opportunity and it's knowing that it's worth grabbing that opportunity and showing up and doing the work. Absolutely. Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (06:53):
And so a team of eight, did that spark beyond solo?
Sara Howard (06:58):
Oh yes, it absolutely did. And look, I've loved growing a business with a team. I think there's such joy in working together and collaborating and coming up with ideas that I never could have done on my own. And I love that. But along the way, there's always been times where I've gone, oh my God, it can be overwhelming. And as you know, managing others is a whole nother level of emotional responsibility and adds to your day as well. And so I've often thought, I wonder if there's another way to grow. I've just followed this traditional agency path as a creative agency. What are the other options? And so I ended up talking to about 20 different business founders and freelancers and consultants around the world to see what worked for them. And I discovered that there are all these other models for growth, particularly now with technology and the way more of the way that people want to work to have variety and flexibility and autonomy.
(07:55):
You've got many more models that are a lot more hybrid in that they can kind of scale around different projects with a mix of contractors and in-house teams. I discovered this amazing models around collectives where you get exceptionally good people that form together around projects, and maybe they're more structured like cooperatives where you've got a shared profit pool. And so there's lots of different ways you can do that. And there were lots of really clever people who'd managed to find a way to turn services into products and created streams of evergreen income, which I just think is genius. And I wish I'd known about that before. Tell me about it.
(08:32):
So I collated all of this wisdom from all these people into the book and made it super practical. I broke it down into different frameworks you can use to make decisions around how you grow with those models to make sure that you're protecting, as you said before, the things that matter most to you to build a business that enables the life you want rather than the other way round. I mean, I've found quite often I'm working every waking hour for the business and I felt like the business wasn't working for me anymore. And those are the moments where I go, hang on a minute, it's my business. I'm in control. Let's just reset this. What should we be doing differently and taking it back to the purpose and what matters most to meet the people, things like that.
Danielle Lewis (09:11):
Yeah, and I do love that you said that because I feel like, so that happened to me as well. So I grew the scrunch agency business, so not spark my other business scrunch to a team of 20. And then I was so miserable and I was like, this sucks. I don't like being the manager of people. That's not what I like to do. And then I was like, okay, well you are the boss, so you are allowed to fix this. And so now I have a completely outsourced model, totally flexible, completely outsourced team, and very niched. So rather than one full-time person that you've got to a feed that you've got to almost find work for. I hire people for really specific projects and tasks and bits and pieces and I just love it. But 10 years ago when I was just starting out in business, I thought you just hired people like, I've got to grow. I've got to hire people. So I do love that you have written a whole book on finding a different solution and finding ways to grow that work for you, because I think there's a lot of people listening who think that hiring someone's the only way to go
(10:20):
And they're worried about that, which totally fair. Absolutely. Or they're in a position we were where it's like, oh, I'm not loving this. What do I do?
Sara Howard (10:28):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I think you're right. I think 20 people is a lot. And when I was in a period of rapid growth, I kept thinking, well, maybe we need to hire more people. And then I actually thought, how am I going to manage that? How am I actually going to be a good boss to that many people and actually develop them and coach them and make sure that they're doing their best work? That takes a lot of time, and it's a full time job for most people, but I'm also the person who's the strategist and in charge of the financial management and the marketing and the client business development. So I don't have all that time to nurture a team. And so I think you do find your sweet spot of how many people is about, and I think I'm probably at that point now.
Danielle Lewis (11:14):
Yeah, exactly. And it is interesting. Sometimes just hiring more people doesn't actually solve the problem.
Sara Howard (11:22):
It can add to the chaos and the overwhelm without really, especially if you haven't solved any of the underlying challenges, you may peek under the hood and suddenly go, actually the problem's not enough people, it's the processes or the systems. We haven't got those right yet, or we haven't worked out what the right profitability model is for our business. The nuts and bolts of what actually drives the revenue and drives the bottom line. We need to figure that out first and then we can work out the best way to add more people, whether that's outsourced contractors, freelancers, casual, whatever that might be.
Danielle Lewis (11:56):
I love that. So I mean, in saying that you do have a significant size team, so eight people, if somebody else listening in also has a team. Are there things that you have learned along the way as you have hired and grown that have helped you onboard people have helped you grow a team and have it be cohesive, have it work for the business? What are some of the key people lessons that you've learned over the
Sara Howard (12:25):
Years? There have been so many. I actually think the best thing we ever did as a team, which I didn't realize how valuable it would be at the time, was we really defined what our culture was as a business early on. And we wrote down some values that we all agreed on and what that meant to us. And we wrote and we described the kind of business that we all wanted to work for, and we found a way to make that work. And it meant things like it wasn't just about for me, culture's not. It's about the shared behaviors and the expectations and the experience you have at work. And so you can talk about flexibility, and we do have true flexibility. We have people who work nine day fortnight and school hours and all sorts of things like that. And I'm working from my holiday house this week.
(13:13):
So we have a lot of freedom to work from wherever suits us. But it's also things like the values of being, we care for each other. So if someone's really struggling with their load, someone else will step in and share that burden. Or if someone's having a difficult conversation, someone else will help them with that. And it shows in the way that we step up and care for our clients as well, and that we care about the quality of our work. And because we are so prescriptive in a way with knowing what our culture is and what we stand for as an organization, it made it incredibly easy for us to attract the right people. So when we put those job descriptions out there and said, this is what we expect and this is what it's like to work with us, I am always overwhelmed by the quality of the candidates we get. The people I think would probably quite frankly earn more money working for a big corporate, but they want to work in a company that respects their priorities outside of work, gets that they're a whole human being and gives them everything they need to do their best work together as a team. It's very collaborative and they love that. And really, that's probably the thing I'm most proud of with the business, but it's not on me. That's the whole team creating that culture, and it just seems to flourish in its own way.
Danielle Lewis (14:29):
I love that. I think that there is real value in bringing the team through the process and on that journey. It's interesting if you do it early enough with the sort of founding employees, I just think that that really, it's almost like it becomes their baby as well to uphold this is our culture and we don't want anyone ruining it. So they kind of become the warriors that protect it.
Sara Howard (14:56):
Absolutely. Absolutely. They're the custodians of the culture, and that makes it easier when you're onboarding people because that new person can sit down with anyone else in the team and they'll very quickly learn how we operate and what we do every day and how we communicate and all those things. The rhythm becomes second nature very quickly because everyone already gets it. And I think that makes my job a lot easier as well.
Danielle Lewis (15:23):
And
Sara Howard (15:25):
One thing I would say to anyone who's listening, even if they're a company of one or a consultant or a freelancer, is you can do this still. You can define the culture of the business that you want to work for. You are the most valuable employee in that business. It all depends on you. So make yourself happy. If you want to give yourself birthday leave, do it. Oh my God,
Danielle Lewis (15:44):
That's such a good idea. Good idea. Oh my God, it's so funny that you say that I have this practice that I do when I imagine my dream life, and it's so funny sometimes I'm like, I'd work three to four days a week. I'd walk every day, I'd do yoga every day, I'd read every day. And I was like, you can do that now. Why don't you do it now? And so I love that idea of no, this is the culture. And instilling some of those things in your own work practice, even if you are solo or a small team.
Sara Howard (16:18):
I mean, I think one of the reasons I first started bringing people on board into the team was I kind of went, oh, I really want to travel and have a holiday with my kids, but I don't want to take work with me, but I don't want to turn the cashflow tap off while I'm having a three week break. So I needed someone who could steer the ship and keep things humming along while I took a proper holiday. And so unintentionally I set that culture and expectation. The team is you don't take work with you. And too often that does happen in a small business, particularly for the founder, right? You're always checking emails, I'll just do this, I'll just do that. But I very much walk the talk on, Nope, I trust the team. I'm turning emails off. I'm going to focus on my family or wherever we are in the world. And that's been a really nice thing for me personally, obviously, because a business I want to work in, but it's good for the team too.
Danielle Lewis (17:08):
That is so good. Have there been any mistakes you've made when it comes to people?
Sara Howard (17:17):
Oh my goodness. I mean, I think this is the funny thing. When I interviewed so many people to write the book and I asked them what the biggest mistakes they'd made along the way, all of them said, well, they're all to do with people, but I can't really talk about that on the record. So I think we all learn those mistakes the hard way. And I think there's been a few times where we've interviewed candidates for an in-house role and they've been super charismatic and feel like the right fit and the values align and everything seems hunky dory. And then when they start, you kind of realize, oh, working in a fast-paced agency isn't right for them. They're not used to that, and they're not used to clients completely changing their minds every five minutes or whatever else is going on in the day. And it's not making them happy.
(18:07):
And it's not any reflection on them necessarily. It's just not the right fit in terms of the work that needs to be done. And in a small agency, everyone has to be able to step up and do what needs to be done. There's no real room to tread water, particularly when you're busy. And so pulling the pin early on is really important. And so I did realize we needed to have proper contracts with a proper probation period of let's say three months, so that both sides had time to kind of see if it worked for them. And there's been a few cases where we've sat down and said, and both sides have known it's really not working. And it's been a relief, I think to just go, that's okay,
Danielle Lewis (18:48):
Let's
Sara Howard (18:48):
Move on. So I think my husband calls it hire slow fire fast, which sounds a bit brutal, but it is. You need to really think about the people you're bringing into the business and spend a bit of time and not react to the fact that you're super busy and I need someone as quickly as possible, because those decisions are rarely the right decisions. The high are slow, but if you then recognize that they're not the right people for the role, and it's not about them, it's about the role and the skills or the attributes that you need in the business, then it's time to make sure that they've got a place to move on.
Danielle Lewis (19:23):
Yeah, I find it really interesting. It's always the highest low one was always a mistake I made. I was always hiring from a place of desperation. Exactly. Always knew in my gut that it was wrong. And every time I ignored my gut, I was like, oh, yes, here we are again.
Sara Howard (19:43):
You are a hundred percent right every time. There's been a little warning bell going off in my head, but it's been inconvenient to pay attention to that instinct. I've always regretted not heeding what my instinct is telling me. Absolutely.
Danielle Lewis (19:59):
Oh my God, I love it. So what was the process like writing a book for you?
Sara Howard (20:06):
I actually loved it, Danielle. I love to hear that. Yeah, I'm not saying it was easy. It was actually really hard because I naively thought I write all day every day and I write, I love telling stories about businesses, so interviewing people about their businesses, that's all second nature to me. I naively thought writing a book would be maybe writing 10 eBooks and stitching them together, but it's not, I see 50, yeah, 55,000 words needs a pretty strong narrative arc to carry it through. So the best thing I did was at the very beginning, I knew I'd need someone to keep me accountable to the commitment I'd made to myself to write the book. And so I engaged a book mentor, sorry, author advocate and book mentor and a featherstone who is really prolific in the publishing industry. And she just basically coaches writers to get through this process of writing a book.
Danielle Lewis (21:05):
So
Sara Howard (21:06):
She was the one that would nudge me, how are you going? And she was my early reader and she could help me structure the book and make sure that it would blow properly as a book rather than as 10 e books stitched together. So thanks Anna for that. No, it was really good having that. And I think that's the thing is writing a book, you often think it's a very solitary thing, but just as I've found running a writer's agency is great when you've got a team around you, it's been the same writing a book, I've needed Anna to kind of coax me along the way. I've needed the publisher's help. I've needed the book design. I've needed people to help with the marketing. It's a really collaborative effort, and I've actually really enjoyed that. And it's the thing that I think keeps me going because otherwise that inner critic would talk you down every minute.
(21:54):
But the other thing I found with the process of writing a book, which really helped me, if anyone's listening and thinks, oh my God, I'd love to write a book, but I don't have time. I didn't have time either. I'm running a business that's very busy all the time. So what I did was I got the Atomic Habits app, which you can get on your phone, it's free. The James Clear Atomic Habits is really good. Yeah, I didn't know you had an app. Cool. And so you can set it to give you a nudge for one habit that you want to form, and it will nudge you at whatever time you choose. So I had it nudging me at eight o'clock every morning to sit down and write two paragraphs. That was it. If I could just write two paragraphs every day, I could keep the momentum going weekdays, weekends.
(22:35):
And so I just chipped away at it. And there were some days where I could spend longer than that, and that was great, but I just knew that if I could get two paragraphs done before I started my day job running the business, I wouldn't lose track of where I was and I'd keep the flow going, otherwise you lose the thread. And so that really helped me because for a long time I was like, oh, I don't have time. I don't have time. I don't have a two hour block, let alone a day to sit down and think about this book, but I could chip away at it.
Danielle Lewis (23:08):
Oh, that is so good. You've just inspired me because I literally, this morning on my to-do list, I wrote down the sentence break down things into bite size because there you go. I've just had these big things on my list that I really want to ship, and I just can't find the day or the hours or the things. And I just love that idea of the two paragraphs, the
Sara Howard (23:29):
What's
Danielle Lewis (23:30):
One thing we can do to push it forward and build that momentum.
Sara Howard (23:34):
And you can use that in any part of your business. I do that with marketing as well, because I mean, God, you can write down on your to-do list, I need to do some social media. And it's like, where do you start, right? That you can
Danielle Lewis (23:46):
Spend all bloody day
Sara Howard (23:47):
On. You can absolutely. So what's the one thing I can do today? I can write one LinkedIn post or I can send one follow up email or invite one person on the podcast or whatever it might be. And it's those little micro steps that get you that little bit closer to where you want to be.
Danielle Lewis (24:04):
Yeah. Oh, I love that. So let me ask you a question. Did you write the book for a reason? Was it to drive marketing for the business? Was it just something that you wanted to do? Was there a purpose behind it?
Sara Howard (24:20):
That's a really good question. No one's asked me that. Look, I've always wanted to write a book, honestly, ever since I was a little girl. I remember reading my first book to myself and just thinking, Ooh, I'd like to write a book one day. So it was always one of those dreams in my head and played around with fiction and fiction's actually really hard, but I will get there in the end. But I knew that I could write a business book, so I decided to start there. The other reason I wrote this book particularly was I was at an event, a conference a year and a half ago called The Content by Summit in Sydney. And I was with all these amazing freelance writers. It's a beautiful event, great community. And so many of them came up to me in the coffee queues when they realized I ran an agency.
(25:04):
They were really interested to know how I grew, how did I know when was the right time to grow? Who was the first person I hired? How did I know I had enough money to keep it going or enough business to keep them busy? And it was around that time that I was thinking, oh, I could write a book now. I actually have more time now that my kids have grown up and gone off to uni. I actually have a bit more time in my day. And I thought, oh, this could be the book. And so that's why I then called Anna and said, could you help me with this? I think I've got an idea, but I don't dunno what the next step is. And so getting her to help me with that next step was the crucial pit. But yes, it was very much inspired by those conversations. So I really wrote it for all the freelancers and all the consultants I know in my network who I just thought, I think there's some useful things that might help you here. And that's really what it is about.
Danielle Lewis (25:52):
I love that. I feel like the dream of writing a book, the dream of being an author is probably on a few of our bucket lists, but it is that moment of inspiration, figuring out what your story is or what story you want to tell or what experience you want to bring to the pages is sometimes just really difficult to nail down.
Sara Howard (26:17):
Oh, and my first ideas were terrible, Danielle, honestly, I'm so glad Anna kind of pulled them apart. It's a much better book because of her. And I think having the community, I met so many great people there who were really enthusiastic about the book. So having that community to test with as well, test ideas and see what was useful, what landed, what didn't, was also really helpful. It's like any product in a way, right? You're experimenting, you're iterating. And so for me, writing a book was a bit like that. There was a whole community around it.
Danielle Lewis (26:51):
Oh, I love that. And I do love that you nod to Anna as well, because just the power of, I think sometimes we as business owners think we're supposed to know how to do everything. It doesn't matter. Give us any part of the business. And apparently we're supposed to have it all figured out. So why would a book be any different? Like finding a coach, a mentor, someone who has walked the path is actually just genius for your mental health and actually getting something out the door.
Sara Howard (27:17):
Absolutely. And it makes it a better product. You dunno what you don't know. And it also gives you more confidence because someone else believes in you enough to give you that time. I think there's a lot of benefits to it.
Danielle Lewis (27:30):
Amazing. Well, Sarah, you are absolutely incredible. I always love to wrap up these podcasts with one last piece of advice. So reflecting on your time in business, what would be one piece of advice that you would give to another woman on her business journey?
Sara Howard (27:52):
I think this might not be true for all women, but I would say stop apologizing. I think a lot of women in business want to please others. And I'll reflect on my own journey and say that when I first started hiring people to join my tiny team of one or two or three, I was almost apologetic. It's like, please like me. Please come and help me. I really need help. And I would bend over backwards to make things as easy as possible for them, which isn't really the best way to kind of empower people to feel like they can do their best work. You start to rescue them more than you trust them. So I think stop apologizing. Stop apologizing about what you're worth, charge what you're worth. Set your prices so that some people will say, no, that's okay. And it's a bit like you can't expect everyone to like you, and you don't want to be everything to everyone because you won't have time. So just knowing, being true to yourself and knowing who you are for and what you're worth will go a long way. That's what I'd suggest.
Danielle Lewis (28:58):
Oh my gosh, you are absolutely incredible. Sarah. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your journey and your wisdom and your book, which we will link to as well. So many good nuggets of wisdom in there. So grateful for your time.
Sara Howard (29:14):
Thank you so much, Danielle. It's been such a pleasure talking to you, and I hope to hear your story one day soon as well. Watch this space. Absolutely. Thanks everyone for joining us.
Danielle Lewis (29:26):
That wraps another episode of Spark tv. Shout out to Spark TV sponsor IP Australia for their amazing support of the Spark Podcast and women in business. And if no one tells you today, you've got this.
✨ Thank you to IP Australia for supporting the SPARK podcast and women in business ✨
