#awinewith Sarah Spence
MEET Sarah
Sarah is the Founder and CEO of Content Copywriting, Find Sarah here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:07):
Sarah, cheers. You brought wine and you have made my day. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. Welcome to Spark tv.
Sarah Spence (00:17):
Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here and I'm excited to be drinking wine on a Wednesday afternoon,
Danielle Lewis (00:23):
So good. Look, I do it Monday through Sunday if I could. So thank you. Let's start out by telling our fabulous Spark community who you are and what you do.
Sarah Spence (00:36):
Sure. So, yep. I'm Sarah Spence and I am the CEO of Content Copywriting. We are a strategic content marketing agency, which is just basically a kind of fancy way I guess, of saying that we are really curious about our clients and what they're facing, the issues they have, who their audience is, all of that stuff. And that curiosity means that we can create some pretty awesome strategies for them and then the content behind those strategies to roll them all out.
Danielle Lewis (01:07):
I love that because so many people struggle with content.
(01:12):
It was really interesting. I had a conversation with somebody, so I live in the middle of nowhere. I live in a regional town in Australia, and I was having a conversation with someone the other day about social media because regional towns tend to be a little bit later on the social media bandwagon. Everyone's on Facebook, not so much on the Instagram and TikTok, and we're talking about what people businesses struggle with and a lot of them really do struggle to articulate who they are, what they stand for to talk about themselves. So I imagine having somebody like you that can actually sit down with them and be curious and seek to understand what they're all about would be amazingly helpful.
Sarah Spence (01:56):
Well, that's the aim, but even just, I mean, I'm pretty confident these days in saying what it is we do and who we do it for and stuff, but the who am I in that I only just recently promoted myself to CEO, which Oh,
Danielle Lewis (02:11):
I love that
Sarah Spence (02:12):
Still feels really weird, and I was very careful not to cringe as I said it just there
Danielle Lewis (02:20):
You sounded like a boss. I was impressed
Sarah Spence (02:24):
And
Danielle Lewis (02:24):
I still am, but you're so right though. It is interesting. I saw, so this is Spark obviously my other business is Scrunch and I call myself A CEO. There we're like a tech startup, so we've got investors and someone had to be the CEO and blah, blah, blah, and I'd never thought much about it until I saw somebody kind of bag out people that call themselves CEOs and I was like, oh, I have to, I'm the
Sarah Spence (02:51):
C, what the hell?
Danielle Lewis (02:53):
So I love that you call yourself the CEO because you bloody are.
Sarah Spence (02:56):
Well, yeah, and I never thought anything about it. My previous title I guess was founder is my business founder and strategic director. That's what I call myself. And then someone that I spoke to actually bagged me out for not representing what it is actually do in my titles like, well, founder just means you started it and you don't even really do the strategies that much anymore. You've got a team who do that, what do you actually do? And I'm like, well, I run the business. Well, that makes you a CEO then. But segue, sorry, but I segue a lot. We just got our team together last week for a team retreat, which is amazing. We're all fully remote, so we come together once or twice a year and we had three amazing days together, but it was near where I live and so I drove and my car, which is 13 years old now, like an old Mazda CX, seven bits of it are falling off. Love it. The number plate that I was randomly assigned 13 years ago when I got the car says CEO three eight Zed, and I'm 38.
Danielle Lewis (04:06):
Oh my God,
Sarah Spence (04:07):
I know
Danielle Lewis (04:09):
This is going to be a woo woo conversation, wasn't it? I had
Sarah Spence (04:13):
A few of the people in my team are really totally amazingly woo and they're like, your car has been manifesting for you for
Danielle Lewis (04:20):
13 years. Oh my God, I love that so much. Seriously now
Sarah Spence (04:26):
I'm just so embarrassed about it now. It's
Danielle Lewis (04:29):
Like a personalized number.
Sarah Spence (04:32):
And actually one of our new team members thought that I'd chosen that and I'm like, no, that is not the kind of person I am. But then I said, right, so when I get a new car, I really want to get an electric. When I get one, I'm not going to keep the number plate. And then Lee and our team was like, but if you get rid of it, that could jinx everything. And so now I'm like, oh, I dunno what to do.
Danielle Lewis (04:54):
Oh my God, that is hilarious. That is so cool. You've probably been walking to your car every morning and seeing CEO and it's just been happening
Sarah Spence (05:05):
It that is not generally where my brain operates, so it's weird, but I can't deny that it is a weird coincidence that this is when it's happened. This was never in the plan. I never set out to do this. I never set out to grow this business. That was not
Danielle Lewis (05:21):
What did you set out to do then?
Sarah Spence (05:24):
Good question. So what I primarily set out to do when I had my first child who's now eight and a half, was I set out to not have to go back to a senior corporate role. I didn't want to have to go back into that corporate environment. I found it really toxic. I mean I had a great career in that space, but I just didn't want to go back there as a mother. And so I sought to gain an income by freelancing. I've always done copywriting, always been the one who proofreads other people's stuff and whatever. And I had done a master's in linguistics, and so it's like, okay, I'll do freelance copywriting. I started to tack on strategy and SEO and other things to it, but it grew in between my two babes. It grew to the point where I landed some pretty big clients.
(06:18):
I started working with Sheridan, with Len, Lees, like some pretty big names and I totally just freaked out because it was too much and I didn't know how, I didn't want this. I didn't even know what I wanted. I was still had a toddler. We were about to have another baby. I didn't know what was going on, so I shut the whole thing down. I had a pretty tough physical pregnancy second time around, so I couldn't really work Anyway. Then coming back out of that second pregnancy and that second kind of parental leave, I got a part-time job at an agency and that was, I didn't really love that. And my husband was like, look, if you're going to do this, can you just bloody well give it a shot? And I was like, oh, but what if we don't not going to earn enough money. It's all going to be a problem. And he was like, just try it. So that was towards the end of 2019. Of course things went quiet for a few months there around March, 2020
Danielle Lewis (07:21):
Virus,
Sarah Spence (07:23):
But I hired my first person at the end of twenty-twenty by the end of twenty-twenty one. There were four of us I think it was, or six of us, and then by the end of last year, twenty-twenty two, there was 16 of us, and then another four joined in January, so we're now a team of 20, and it just kind of started growing and I was like, okay, I hired one person. I was like, right, I have an obligation to this person to keep the wheels turning and then hired some more and I want to keep the wheels turning for them along the way. I think also just really I've come to understand that what we do is quite different in a good way that there is a market for us and I've worked hard to feel confident enough in the future of it all to not want to just burn the whole thing down all the time.
Danielle Lewis (08:20):
Well, so that was a question that I wanted to ask was how does having 20 staff make you feel?
Sarah Spence (08:31):
Very good question. Up until about six months ago, it was incredibly stressful and we didn't even have 20 at that point. I think at the point at which I made a shift in my thinking around this, I had 13. I know that because I was at an incredible retreat run by my coach Amy at Craft Coaching Development, and she did this activity with us where we had to write down, what are you holding? What are you holding onto? What are you carrying? Why are you carrying it? It was all these very subtle variations on these questions. And I realized amongst other things, amongst mental load, amongst trying to be the perfect mom, all of that stuff. But one of the things I was really holding onto and was feeling a weight from was 13 people's lives and livelihoods, and she then invited us to this exercise where we wrote down whatever we wanted to let go of on a post-it, and we ceremoniously burnt it.
Danielle Lewis (09:36):
This should happen in business a lot more.
Sarah Spence (09:39):
Actually. I just did this exact exercise with our team last week at the retreat and a few of us burned things and I actually decided, I think I actually need to do it monthly as just ask myself what am I holding? What am I holding onto? What's holding me back? What am I carrying? What's this weight I can feel and journal it down and then write a few of those big things on post-it notes and just burn them. Because it was a really instrumental moment in my life where I decided to let that go and instead I shifted, I'm never going to not care. I really love
Danielle Lewis (10:21):
People,
Sarah Spence (10:23):
But there is a distinction between caring and carrying. And so now it's this mantra that goes through my head. It's like, well, I'm going to care, but I'm not going to carry the weight of that because I know that I'm always doing absolutely everything I can to ensure that I can continue to employ these people. But if stuff happens, it's outside of my control and I do everything I can to try and still control it and it still doesn't work out. That's going to be hard for me and sad for me to let someone go, but I can't just hold onto the weight of that all the time. It's too detrimental.
Danielle Lewis (11:07):
It really is. And I love that you've said it because I reflect on my own team experience and you are so right. I'm just having a moment of clarity. I've often said on this podcast because we, at the peak of scrunch, we had 20 odd people and I just felt like I was working to keep people employed. It felt really, really heavy. And then obviously Covid happened all the things and we're fully remote now as well and a smaller team, but I've always said that, and we have a lot more freelancers and people in a lot, I guess less full-time employees now. And I've specifically done that because I really struggled with the weight of heaps of full-time employees. But really interesting then the connection with being the CEO, it's your job to care, but not to carry as I just reflected everything you've said, you are so right. It is. You will do everything in your power to make sure the business is the most successful that it can be, but it is not your job to walk around with 20 people standing on your shoulder.
Sarah Spence (12:22):
No, I can't. We just be completely honest about it. We just lost a really big client. They're in the tech space. There's lots of redundancies happening. Of course, we were on the chopping block and it's a big chunk of budget, and I think if I were potentially maybe a more seasoned business professional or I was of one of the other genders maybe is a bit more hard hitting about this stuff, I would probably be letting people go right now, but I'm not going to because I want to give myself a month to see if I can sort it out.
Danielle Lewis (13:01):
And you probably will because you've set yourself that goal. Instead of reacting to a situation, you've gone, how do I solve this situation?
Sarah Spence (13:10):
I reacted, I drank a lot of wine.
Danielle Lewis (13:12):
Well, obviously that is step number one.
Sarah Spence (13:15):
Yes, step number one. And then I took a breath and I took a few days and I worked with my amazing senior team and we've come up with some good solutions and good ideas, and we've got plenty of opportunities in the pipeline. But one of my jobs now as a CEO is to ensure business resilience. And what I'm hoping I can do is to ensure that we are resilient enough that we can just make it through this patch until all those opportunities kind of come to fruition. So we'll see. Stay tuned.
Danielle Lewis (13:50):
I love it. No, I love it. I think it is an honest and practical approach to business, and I think it's really, it's important to have these conversations because, well, on a few levels, but obviously we are seeing all of the redundancies play out on LinkedIn, and I think there's a different lens that happens as a business owner seeing that. And you look at that and you go, I know exactly why they had to do that, because that's business. When you lose money, you can't afford to keep paying people money. But I also feel like there's, looking at it from an employee's point of view, there's sometimes not quite an understanding of why things happen. So that's why I think it is really important to have these open, honest discussions about what do you do? How can you, do you react? Do you put a plan in place? I love that you used the words business resiliency because yes, as CEO or founder or whatever, we're calling ourselves on this podcast, that is your job.
Sarah Spence (14:54):
It's very, I mean, what's been such a, can I swear?
Danielle Lewis (14:58):
Oh, please.
Sarah Spence (14:59):
Such a head. Okay, good. Such a head fuck for me is that two and a bit years ago, I was a freelance copywriter and I was in a senior marketing management role at my last corporate job, but I had one direct report wasn't, I've never been a leader at this scale, so I've had to learn how to do that and I've made so many mistakes, but I've learned from them all, and I'm just endlessly curious anyway, so I'm always like, oh, okay, that situation didn't go well, wait, okay, let's do a little dissection and figure out what happened there and learn from it and try and not repeat that mistake. But I don't know what I'm, I just used to write the copy and now I'm doing all this stuff, and every time I say that to my team, they're like, can you stop? You do know what you're doing, stop talking yourself down and all the rest. But yeah,
Danielle Lewis (15:57):
I feel like we do that as women a little bit too much. We downplay our, call it our little business or our little this a little lad. And as much as we are the ones who are working night and day to make this a reality impossible, we still do that. I don't know. I'm just winging it. And it's like now you are literally upskilling managing these people, working your ass off, but we don't give ourselves enough credit. I don't think
Sarah Spence (16:31):
It's a really big issue, especially women who become mothers and then are doing either career or a business that they feel passionately, passionately about, but they themselves don't treat it. I was one of them. Don't treat it with the respect that it deserves and therefore nobody else in their lives do either. I used to still think that because I was working from home, I should have the house tidy and clean and do a load of washing and whatever else. It's like just my office was my home. Doesn't mean I should be attending to home duties while I'm, and my mom would pop in for a cup of tea and there was no, were no boundaries. And this
Danielle Lewis (17:20):
Is me off. I work from home as well. I've got everyone's remote grunge and spark. And I often think that even to the point where, so we're in a rental property for my partner's business, leases it, and it's like all of these people just think that they can come in and do maintenance and do bits and pieces, and I'm like, I'm in a meeting or I'm on a podcast recording. You can't just knock at my door and come in and expect to do things. There is no respect for businesses that operate from home. It drives me
Sarah Spence (17:54):
Crazy. Do you think that's changed as a result of Covid though? I'm hoping it kind of has, but I don't know.
Danielle Lewis (18:02):
I don't think people who don't run a business understand it. I think we get it and I think we value, it doesn't matter where you work. Someone asked me that the other day, has your business changed since you went remote? And I was like, no, I still do things from a laptop. But I think people who don't operate businesses don't quite get it. They think that you're, and I also don't have kids, and I think that everyone thinks I stay home and manage the household and the children. I'm like, no, I'm working.
Sarah Spence (18:37):
Which is very valid. I think it's so hard when you have your own business, no matter what size it is, but to be both the employer and the employee. I think I didn't really realize that distinction for so long that what I was doing was valuable and I was doing work that was effectively billable work, if you want to look at it from that angle. And then there was non-billable work, which was when I was working on the business. So on the business versus in the business, but being your own boss, it's all lauded as being, oh, whatever. Yeah, it's
Danielle Lewis (19:16):
Drinking champagne in midday.
Sarah Spence (19:18):
I mean, maybe we have made it Danielle, maybe we've nailed it. We've nailed it. I won't tell you about the six other meetings I've already had today and the, yeah, exactly. Five seconds. I had to scoff some lunch and all of that other stuff. But yeah, I don't know. It's an interesting conundrum. I think for so many, so especially so many women have got some fantastic ideas and really great ways of approaching things and great ideas for businesses, but then they get into it and then they really struggle with the working on the business versus in the business and just having yourself as a boss is really, it's actually not, I don't think it's a particularly healthy way to be. No, I'm not
Danielle Lewis (20:04):
Seriously, the things I say to myself sometimes I would be fired if anyone did.
Sarah Spence (20:09):
You'd be taken to fair work. I
Danielle Lewis (20:11):
Would be taken into fair work. That's
Sarah Spence (20:13):
A really good way to look at it. If you said that to someone else in your team, what you're saying to yourself right now, would that pass the muster for being appropriate, that negative self?
Danielle Lewis (20:28):
No, totally. How have you actually come to figure that out? The difference between working on your business and in your business? Obviously it's been a process, but have there been things that have helped you get to a point where you can recognise the difference? Because I actually still struggle with, so some things that I do, I almost feel like if I'm not the worker bee and not doing productive things, I go, well, that's wasting time, or it's not whatever. But I'm like, no, you have to do the CEO hat stuff, otherwise you an employee and that's not what you want. You don't want to just work for a wage. You want to build a profitable, sustainable, scalable business. You have to do that stuff. But I do struggle sometimes seeing value in the CEO hat stuff.
Sarah Spence (21:14):
Yeah, I don't really know, to be honest. There's probably been a couple of big milestones that have helped me. Probably the first being not having any safety net and actually just going, okay, if this is, and I've always been the higher earner in my partnership with my husband. We've been together for 14 years. He has a career that he loves, but it's not a particularly high earning career. So that's always been me anyway. And when I went, okay, I am letting go of the safety net of a part-time role, and I'm going to give this my all, it forced me to really step up in a lot of those spaces.
(21:57):
Another would've been ending up with quite a good senior team around me who can enact the ideas that I have as the CEOI really aligned to Mia Freeman's Monica that she has around the office, which is glitter bomb fairy because she has ADHD. I also, she received a late in life diagnosis. I also received a late in life diagnosis, and it's that kind of whole thing where you walk into a meeting and you just go this idea and it's like you've just spread glitter everywhere, and then you bugger off a fairy and you just fly away and your team is left to literally try. And you know what? Glitters like to try and clean up just so my senior team are amazing at helping me go, okay, great, great, great glitter bomb idea. Let's just, this is the jar for the purple glitter and this is the jar for the red glitter, and give us what we need to get it into here.
(22:57):
Okay, and how would you like us to sprinkle it? Or here's our idea for how to sprinkle that glitter to make a nice calm picture. And that stops me as well from needing to fly away because I'm not scared of the detail anymore. I've never been great at the real detail, detail, detail, which is what you need to grow a business. So it's been that. And then also working with an amazing accounting and advisory firm who helped me understand literally the actual financial nuts and bolts of the difference between employee versus employer time, the CEO time versus the doing time, and the impact that actually in my role now, if I spend too much time doing the do, then there is actually this whole range of things that need to happen in the business that don't get done. And there is value in doing those, in improving the presence, like spending time sitting here, drinking wine with you. Previously, I would've felt so guilty about that because I'm like, well, I wouldn't have even said yes to the opportunity because I would've thought, no, I need to be like my team are doing I need to do. And now I realize actually that this is incredibly valuable. This is a valuable use of my time. And so I'm able to, well, and the
Danielle Lewis (24:19):
Interesting thing is, you actually the only one in the business that can do this as well. You are the figurehead, you are the brand. As much as there's a brand separate to your personal brand as the CEO or as the founder not doing these things is doing the business a disservice.
Sarah Spence (24:37):
Well, that's it. And even though I'm as an individual, I'm deeply uncomfortable about being that role and that figurehead. I've also just, again, I guess I've just kind of been lovingly forced into this is what the business requires, and this is if you do care about these people and care about the vision that we've created together and all the rest, then this is what's necessary now. So here I am.
Danielle Lewis (25:05):
I love it. So you mentioned getting a late in life ADHD diagnosis. What has that been like as a business owner?
Sarah Spence (25:18):
Well, so I received it at the end of 2021, and it made a lot of things make sense for me. So I've had quite a long history of mental illness and periods of quite debilitating panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. Yeah, I mean, at one point I couldn't really even get out of bed. I've had really, really severe fears of flying. I had a severe fear of tunnels at one point. I've had all of these, not weird, they're not weird, but these different triggers that had, I look back now a really substantial impact on my life and the life of my friends and my family.
(26:00):
So what it did for me was it gave me a why. Because for me, I really struggled with the fact that even though I saw her yesterday, I've been seeing the same psychologist since I was 21. I know how to manage my brain and do all the things that keep me mentally healthy. And even through periods of crisis, I can surface out of them and all that stuff. But even at the age, I think it was 36, the end of 2020, a big thing happened in my personal life and I was like, how have I not learned what is going on, where this is? I do all the work and I still do the thing. And I just was like, this is
Danielle Lewis (26:44):
Frustrating,
Sarah Spence (26:45):
Frustrating. And it surely can't, it can't be the norm because sure, people go through periods of mental illness, but I just have this cyclic flow of it basically. So I saw the diagnosis, and then by the point at which I actually got to speak to someone, it was more like, okay, yes, I was pretty certain I had it by that point. And I've since come to learn that actually self-diagnosis is very valid in this space because the access to psychiatrists who at the moment in Australia are the only ones who can diagnose neurodivergent conditions is incredibly hard. So lots of people do self-diagnose. But anyway, got the diagnosis and then went through quite a significant period of a lot of like, oh gosh, life could have been so much easier. Just thinking back through everything through this lens of going, oh, that makes sense now it makes sense to me now why? My friends in year eight sat me down at the end of term two and presented me with a letter that literally was titled, why You Can't Sit With Us From Next Term?
Danielle Lewis (27:58):
No Way.
Sarah Spence (27:59):
And the first bullet point was because You're too much.
Danielle Lewis (28:03):
Oh my God.
Sarah Spence (28:05):
And now I'm like, oh, I get that now. I actually wasn't too much. I just didn't know how to regulate in a neurotypical society.
Danielle Lewis (28:14):
Holy shit.
Sarah Spence (28:16):
That was one example. We don't need to go into my childhood belief. No,
Danielle Lewis (28:21):
But I'm painting the picture. I'm painting the picture that's full on that is.
Sarah Spence (28:27):
But a lot of that, the big thing that happened at the end of twenty-twenty ended up being a massive bust up between our best friends and us, of which I instigated and take full responsibility for. But I was like, why? I don't understand what happened. And it was because of impulsivity. It was because of alcohol, just, and I said some things and I don't know. Anyway, it triggered for me, this must be something more than just just generalised anxiety disorder and panic disorder. Anyway, so I went through definitely a period of grief looking back through everything, and now I'm in, I guess a stage of just still very much enjoying all the reels on the Instagram of Oh, and sending them repetitively to my husband. Like, oh yeah,
Danielle Lewis (29:20):
Love that. Yes,
Sarah Spence (29:22):
Thank God
Danielle Lewis (29:22):
For Instagram reels, educating us all
Sarah Spence (29:25):
For Instagram reels and slowly unmasking as well, and trying not to hate myself too much for trying. We had a big meeting yesterday with a bunch of people in the team and things, and I heard myself, I was, in order to not have the chaos that can come with me, Sophie's going to do this thing for you. And then I was like, shouldn't. Why? I need to look at that. Why do I still feel negatively about myself about sometimes the chaos? Because I think I'm allowing the chaos more now because I'm not trying to mask as much. But also I clearly haven't really loved on myself and gone, do you know what? That chaos has value and reclaimed that word a bit for myself. I should do that.
Danielle Lewis (30:19):
Yes. So I just had some interesting thoughts happen for me then. Is there a language problem? And look, let me just caveat everything I'm about to say by the fact that I'm not experiencing this. I'm an observer, and so I hope I don't say anything that is disrespectful.
Sarah Spence (30:37):
That's okay.
Danielle Lewis (30:38):
But I just was listening to you and I was like, is there a bit of a language problem around people who have these traits say the words chaos, because that's what everyone else has experienced might be like, or how they've described it in the past versus is are there ways of articulating a language that can be used that is a little bit more empowering and positive to help people? Because the thing I thought of as you were saying that I was like, yeah, you are probably the one that has the best fucking ideas because maybe it is a little chaotic and you throw out everything. Versus some people who are like, maybe they have a couple of good ideas, but they don't say anything because they do hold back and have a bit more of a
Sarah Spence (31:25):
Impulse control
Danielle Lewis (31:26):
Or whatever it is. But I don't necessarily think that's a good thing.
Sarah Spence (31:32):
Well, in the position I'm in now, yeah. I mean, it is a good thing. And you're right, I do struggle with, I get stuck in language ruts where I use particular words and over and over again, and I now know that's just part of how my brain works. But yeah, I probably have cottoned onto chaos a bit too much recently, and I need to relook at that. But yeah, I mean, I caused positive ideas zone or something. I don't know. I have to think about that. But today, when I happened to comment on one of my friend's posts who was on LinkedIn, who was looking for someone to help them with chat GPT and AI and figure out how they should implement it in their agency, and we've just done that whole process, we've managed to reduce efforts on some of the content that we create by 50%. Wow, that's cool. When you're selling time and people's brain power, that's pretty awesome. Yes, and we literally, we are about to, I say about to, we'd kind of scheduled it for maybe June to kind of do a rent my brain for a couple of hours. I'll come take a look at what your setup is, either in brand or in brands or in agencies and help you figure it out. That's cool.
Danielle Lewis (32:55):
That's super cool.
Sarah Spence (32:57):
So I replied to her thing though going, oh, hi, that's me. I can do that. And then my whole LinkedIn just blew up, and I had all these DMs, and then I went and went rogue, and I created a graphic on Canva, and I put that up on LinkedIn, and I was like, so everyone's now talking about this thing, so I'm just going to launch it early, and now if you want to hire my brain for a few hours, here's how you do it. And the team are just like, okay. But they do go
Danielle Lewis (33:23):
About that strategy. I think it's fucking cool though, because people fuck around with ideas and making it perfect and doing this and doing that, and I am so on board with the launch before you're ready, launch early if you are seeing a signal, get it out there because otherwise someone else is going to do it, or B, you're going to sit there perfecting it, or C, you're going to sit there crafting to what you think it should be, and then no one wants it. So I think that that's brilliant. I am on your team.
Sarah Spence (33:59):
Well, that's good.
Danielle Lewis (34:01):
Yeah, I approve. I approve. But interesting thinking of just talking about your team. You mentioned a couple of times that they are all remote, which I totally dig. What's that? Was it a conscious decision? How do you find managing a remote team? What do you think the optics are to clients? Talk to me about your remote team
Sarah Spence (34:25):
About that. Yeah, so look, I think it's great. I don't think that I could be in an office five days a week anymore, although in saying that I work at a coworking place five days a week, but the best part of that is that none of them are actually my colleagues and I don't really have that much time to chat anyway, but it's just nice to be around people but not be needed by 'em. So that works well for me. But yes, it was a conscious decision because when I first started hiring people, I guess actually I did hire someone near to me to begin with, and we worked together for a while, and then she left, and I think I just decided, look, I just don't want someone to be right next to me all the time. I now think that it's probably got quite a bit to do with my neurodivergence and just how much people kind of take it out of me. But yeah, so it was a conscious decision. Now it's fantastic because when we hire, we don't have to hire based on a geographical area. I also live, I'm on the central coast and north of Sydney, so there's physically less people here to be able to choose from anyway, so we've been able to just hire the best talent for the job, and we've been able to create a culture and environment that actually works for women.
(35:54):
We don't do presenteeism by the clock. We all have to time track. That's agency. That's just what you have to do. But presenteeism matters for us in terms of task completion, in terms of quality, and in terms of a psychologically safe workplace. We've got the opportunity to provide something to people who are otherwise, let's say, freelancing who are feeling pretty lonely and who want to feel a sense of connection. And so that's why we're like, we'll be in this team and be part of this environment and we can offer that to them. But the optics for clients, I mean, I guess pre covid would've been very different to now because
Danielle Lewis (36:39):
I agree.
Sarah Spence (36:40):
Yeah, I don't think there's ever been anyone who said, oh, we're not keen on you guys because you're all remote, because it's pretty clear we can do a good job, even probably because we are remote, to be fair, because we're not making people commute. We're not adding to their life stress by making them have to put their kids into long hours or before and after school care or school holiday activities. If you are, I mean, obviously age appropriate, if they're really small, it's not really going to work. But if they're teenagers and they're just in and around the house, you don't need to put them somewhere you can be and still do a great job. So yeah,
Danielle Lewis (37:25):
I think that's one of the interesting benefits of Covid is that it really forced quite an accelerated mindset change. I remember, so we had the big fancy office and I was on a plane twice a week because I was in Brisbane, so Sydney, Melbourne people wanted in-person meetings, which was very exhausting, but hilarious how no one wants a meeting. Now I'm on Zoom all the time, but no one gives a shit about an in-person meeting now. It just like, it's really interesting because I feel like as a Brisbane based business, that was a city that's a major city, and still I struggled because I had to spend money getting to other cities trying to put up this front of being from anywhere, and no one knows. No knows the difference because we just keep delivering the results that they're paying for. So I just feel like I love it because it's just equalized, the opportunity for smaller brands, smaller businesses, freelancers. I just feel like it's opened up opportunity for people, which is really cool.
Sarah Spence (38:51):
Absolutely, because it definitely has leveled the playing field a lot. Ultimately, you can even, what's the word, blur your background. So if you are sitting there with a pile of washing behind you, whatever, it doesn't even matter. I think, well, I'd say it matters for your mindset and your confidence, but it doesn't actually matter from the client's perspective.
Danielle Lewis (39:15):
Yeah, I love that. Okay, last one for you, because otherwise I'm going to open a bottle of wine and we're going to talk all night.
Sarah Spence (39:25):
Wouldn't mind that to be fair. But yeah, I'm
Danielle Lewis (39:27):
Getting very comfortable here. So would love you to reflect on your experience as starting a business. We have a lot of people dialing in listening into the podcast who are new women in business, and some of them are probably sitting there going, what the hell did I do? Any advice for women who are early in business, or maybe they've even got the idea and haven't taken the leap yet? Any advice that you reflect on and think that's something that maybe you wish you knew or a piece of advice you'd dole out?
Sarah Spence (40:07):
Yeah, for sure. I think the biggest thread, I think through my journey from just not wanting to go back to corporate, to doing freelance copywriting, to kind of building that up and then freaking out and clothing it down, and then doing where we're at now. The biggest thing I've struggled with, but also my biggest asset has been confidence. And for me, I feel like anytime that I'm really struggling with that, I just have to find that little pilot light in my gut that's just generally, it's always on. It's what a pilot light is. It just stays on no matter what,
(40:52):
But it's often just so teeny and you've got to do what you need to do in that moment on that day to start to fan it a little so that it can kind of grow into that bigger flame and that you just got to hold onto that confidence because that's what's going to carry you through and doing. For the mums out there, they'll know this reference doing Anna from Frozen two, where she sings this beautiful song when she thinks that Elsa and Olaf have died, and she sings this song about doing the next right thing. And it's all about just taking a step and then a step again, and not knowing where you're going to go or end up or how you're even going to move through it, but just do the next thing, just the next thing. I feel like when stuff gets really tough for me now and always, I kind of just go back to, okay, I do have confidence that I'm worthy of this and that this is an idea worth exploring and that this is something worth doing, and so just try whatever that needs to be. Maybe sometimes it's drinking a lot of wine, sometimes it's going for a walk. Sometimes it's just reaching out to someone on LinkedIn and just totally putting myself out there. I don't know. But just, yeah, find a way to fan that little pilot light of confidence and hold onto that as much as you can.
Danielle Lewis (42:16):
Oh my God, Sarah, you are absolutely incredible. Cheers to you. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us. That was absolutely incredible. I know everyone who has tuned into this episode will have just been glued to their AirPods, so I appreciate you. You're amazing.
Sarah Spence (42:38):
Thank you. I will. I'm just going to try hard to take that compliment and not talk myself down. So yes, thank you very much. I've loved meeting to you, Danielle. Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it.
✨ Thank you to IP Australia for supporting the SPARK podcast and women in business ✨
