How Two Women Bettered The Lives of Freelancers By Designing a Better Invoicing System - youramericanmoney
Author: Michelle
Description: Welcome to Michelle. Is Money Hungry. I’m your host, Michelle Jackson, and I focus on holding financial conversations that lean into social equity policy and access with a splash of pop culture. My goal is to lead these conversations with empathy and help both my listeners and myself learn more about money along the way. […]
Date: 2022-11-28T10:00:00+00:00

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# How Two Women Bettered The Lives of Freelancers By Designing a Better Invoicing System

posted on 28 November, 2022

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Welcome to Michelle. Is Money Hungry. I’m your host, Michelle Jackson, and I focus on holding financial conversations that lean into social equity policy and access with a splash of pop culture. My goal is to lead these conversations with empathy and help both my listeners and myself learn more about money along the way. For the next week, my guests and I will focus on when American women decide that they want more in their lives. Interestingly, many of the conversations centered around going into entrepreneurship.

With that in mind though, I do wanna say that my guests and I aren’t necessarily encouraging you to go into business. Instead, this conversation in my mind as a reflection of the policies that aren’t in place here in the United States. Policies such as paid parental leave, generous, paid sick leave, or just having a degree of flexibility and autonomy over your days so that you can run an errand to schedule a doctor’s appointment or take your kid to ballet. Or sometimes you just have to help your parents out when things come up. I often wonder how different American life would be for women if we had some of these policies in place. Would the choices we make be different?

In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog. Please read my disclosure here.*

## Listen to the Episode

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## Show Notes

#### Samantha Anderal

##### I’m Samantha Anderl. I’m a former marketing executive and former freelancer turned SaaS co-founder at Harlow. So Harlow is actually an all-in-one lance tool to help entrepreneurs manage their business more confidently. Andrea and I have actually been building and working on Harlow for about the past year and a half. And Andrea, I’ll turn that over to you.

#### Andrea Wilt

Andrea Wildt, also a former marketer. I’m turned freelancer multiple times in my career actually. And I’m Samantha’s co-founder.

#### Michelle

Dear listeners, you may not know this because you’ve just started listening to the episode, but I may have forgotten to hit record prior to this. So we had had a really great conversation for the past 10 minutes, but that’s okay because we’re about to get into it. This is gonna be a treat. The whole topic that we’re discussing, the heart of what we’re discussing is women wanting more in their lives. And I’m curious about how Harlow kind of fulfills that need for you both professionally or personally.

#### Samantha

Ooh, that’s a great question. I mean, I think Andrea and I specifically, we’ve been in the corporate world. We’ve been in the freelance world, now we are founding our own software startup, and you know, we’ve gone through, we’ve gone through this journey through all of that, right? You know, when we were in the corporate world, you know, we were learning and we were growing a ton, but we got to the point where, you know, we were feeling really burnt out. We were having meetings from, you know, 8:00 AM in the morning sometimes until 7:00 PM at night. We were, were just, we were kind of, you know, facing exhaustion and weren’t in an environment in which we were thriving anymore. And so that actually brought us to founding Interum, which was our boutique consulting company, which is really just a fancy way of saying that Andrea and I were freelancing, but together, right?

#### Samantha

It’s all about positioning and yeah. And why we were there. You know, I think our main goal was like freedom and flexibility and regaining control of our schedules, being able to prioritize the things that mattered to us in life, not just focusing on work as life. And during that time, you know, Andrea and I were working with all of these early stage startups. We were helping them grow and kind of get momentum, and at the same time we were experiencing all of these kind of ups and downs of freelancing firsthand. And so those two things kind of came together and, you know, kind of are married into Harlow, right? We’re like, okay, we’re really good at helping early stage companies grow, and we really understand, you know, freelancers pain points and what they go through because we are that audience. What if we brought these things to together and build something for ourselves, right? And I think that was really Andrea and I saying, you know, we want more. We can, we can do this. We believe in ourselves, we wanna kind of take these things to the next level. And Andrea, I’ll let you chime in there too.

#### Andrea

I think we also, you know, when we went into freelancing, we really wanted to do it on our terms, so it wasn’t, um, Samantha and I had very flexible schedules. I had a child two years ago, and I required a more flexible schedule because we didn’t have childcare at the beginning because of Covid. And as we started to think about how we were building Harlow, we wanted to bring a lot of that into Harlow as well, and have a product company that was successful and profitable, but on our terms, and we wanna work really hard, but Sam and I also know that we are, are work better where, like better human beings professionally, personally, once we have balance in our lives and when we’re able to like, fill our cups outside of work. And so that was really important to us as we were building Harlow, is to bring in some of those tenants from freelancing into our product

#### Samantha

Business. Absolutely. And I will say, even before Andrea and I brought on like a single employee before we really built out this kind of team of freelancers that is helping us move Harlow forward, we focused on building our company policies and our values, right? We’re like, okay, we need to, it’s funny because you kind of have to define what a non-structured working environment looks like. <laugh>,

#### Michelle

Not just floating around hoping for things to happen. Well, yeah, exactly.

#### Samantha

Right? And so, you know, we had to say, okay, what do we love? What do we wanna hold onto? And we’re like, we want to have three days a week with no meetings, so let’s define that now. So as we move forward and we hire people, we stick to that, you know, you know, another big thing for Andrea and I is like, like thoughtful meeting scheduling. We don’t want people just throwing meetings on our calendars because that’s not the way we like to work, right? We like to be prepped, we like to know what’s going on. We like to be in the right head space. So all of these things were really important to us, you know, at the same time that we, you know, we’re obviously like building a company and doing this because we want to, you know, we wanna help freelancers, you know, Andrew and I want to make money, but at the same time, we don’t wanna do any of those things at the expense of our own wellbeing or our future employees’ wellbeing.

#### Michelle

I feel like a lot of women struggle, a lot of American women specifically struggle with this, this idea of balance and, and how to marry it with ambition. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, what are some of the things that you’re doing to stay true to yourselves as you go through this process? Because you have a little Andrea, you know, you’ve got other obligations, but, but I do think as Americans ambition does drive us. Like I, I, I don’t care who you are and who you, who you meet, I, I feel like it’s in our DNA to a certain extent in that it’s very easy to overwork and, and over plan. And, and how are you keeping track of those things? How, how are you being self-aware? Like what are, what are the things you’re doing to, to foster that in addition to what you just described? Which sounds awesome, by

#### Andrea

Well, I would say my child keeps me…

#### Andrea

Balance.

#### Michelle

Andrea’s like-I’ve got a toddler, Michelle

#### Andrea

Yeah. He requires that I not work nonstop. Um, and I just, you know, obviously like wanna be as present as I can, uh, with him. But, um, for me it’s just about being really conscious about what I’m doing. I am present at doing that. And so not trying to do two things at once. Like really, I’m trying to stop multitasking. You know? I can’t work and have my kid next to me. It’s not like that’s, that’s not good for him and it’s not good for my work. So I, if, if I’ve got mommy duty, then that’s what I’m doing. I’m not working at that time. Um, and honestly like that has really helped me and it’s helped me be, I think, better at work also, because when I am working, I am a hundred percent focused on it.

#### Samantha

I don’t have a kiddo running around, so I don’t necessarily have Carl. I, I do, I have, I have a, I have a small furry friend around.

#### Michelle

His name is Carl.

#### Samantha

Carl, he is, he is a character. So he’s, uh, currently in my basement. So we don’t, uh, hear him barking during this or else we would.

#### Samantha

You know, one of the things that I have actually really leaned into over the years, and I probably started doing this maybe three or four years ago when we were building our consulting business, is what I call like proactive calendar blocking. So I know kind of like the balance of things that I need to kind of be my best self and remain happy and motivated and inspired. And so what I actually do is I block off my, my calendar in advance for things like self care and social time, you know, or exercise, whatever it may be, because I can definitely, if I’m really excited about work, I can sit down at my computer and just sit for eight or nine hours and just like bust things out when I’m feeling super motivated. But I know that that actually leads to burnout long term and that I should not be, you know, in front of my computer eight or nine hours a day. And so, yeah, what I actually do is I just block out time a few times a week. And if it’s already on my calendar, I just make myself go do it. You know, whether it’s a walk with a friend, whether it’s lunch, whether you know, it’s a massage or a facial, whatever it is, I block all of those things out in advance, and it is a forcing function for me to leave my desk and focus on other things.

#### Michelle

Random question, but I’ve been wondering this for a while. How did you come up with the name Harlow? I’m very intrigued by it. I love it. It gives me this like 1940s glam aesthetic. I could be crazy. I like that. Uh, but where, where does the name come

#### Samantha

From? When Andrea and I were first ideating on creating Harlow and, you know, what the brand was gonna be like, what the product was going to do, all of these things. We, we knew from the very beginning, we wanted to take a very empathetic approach to building Harlow, you know, freelancing. You know, Andrea and I experienced it. We’ve seen others experience it. It’s a very, it can be a very lonely venture. And so when we were establishing Harlow, we were like, God, we want to, we wanna build this company and this brand and this product into something that feels like a pal or a friend, right? Someone you can turn to for advice. And so we know that we wanted to have this human element to it. And when we were thinking about that, we kind of wanted to name that could be unisex, it could feel very human, it could feel really just like easy and comfortable. And we honestly, we went through man, you know, maybe 20 names, um, as we were, as we were trying to get to Harlow, and that’s the one that just stuck. And Andrea, I’ll let you add that.

#### Andrea

Yeah. Um, we had other names first, and we had major trademark issues and we were like, oh, we’re never gonna find a better name. And now I actually can’t imagine it being named anything other than Harlow.

#### Michelle

Were some of the problems that you were experiencing yourselves as freelancers? And what were the problems that your colleagues, like your other freelance colleagues were describing to you? Or just how did you know what problems to address and, and, and have Harlow be the solution to?

#### Andrea

So Samantha and I, we would often meet, be introduced to, to professionals who are like, I’m thinking about freelancing, but I have no idea where to start. And the, we would often get people say, can you send me a copy of your proposal? Can you send me a copy of your invoice? How do you do this? How do you do that? And the reality is, is that we had pieced it all together ourselves also, you know, our proposals were sitting in Google Docs. The majority of our financials, some were in QuickBooks, but a lot of it was in a Google spreadsheet. We ran a lot of our business in Google spreadsheet. Um, we had like time tracking software. We had a, a project management software. We just had, all of our stuff was everywhere and none of it talked to each other. And so it would be like downloading information from QuickBooks into my Excel spreadsheet.

#### Andrea

And then every time we did a proposal, it was recreating the wheel. Um, everything was just messy, honestly, and in different places. And so that’s, that’s honestly what we, one of the things that we struggled with, and I will say when we started going out and doing interviews with all of our freelance friends, every single person we talked to, like nobody could tell us how much money they had made that year. And we were like, all right, can you tell us like, how much of you invoice this year? Oh, well it’s in a spreadsheet. Or like, I have to, I’d have to call my accountant, or well, I have to go like first look in wave and then over here. And you know, it was just messy. And nobody had a really good complete view of their business. And the people that were using tools that were designed for freelancers weren’t in love with them. There wasn’t really a fan favorite out there. And so that’s what Samantha and I really wanted to do was build like a fan favorite tool that brought everything together in a single place. She have one place to go.

#### Michelle

How many tools do you think Harlow is combining? Or rather, how many tools do you think the average freelancer is eliminating by using Harlow?

#### Samantha

That’s a great question. I mean, honestly, from what we heard when we were talking to early freelancers, they were using usually something to put together proposals and contracts, then something else to actually send things and get signatures, right? Yes. Then a different tool for invoicing and accepting payments. A different tool for task management or project management, a different tool for time tracking, maybe somewhere else to house all of their documents. So honestly, anywhere between like five and seven tools, I would say is what we were seeing people use, which is, and again, what we were using as well, right? Mm-hmm, we had all of these separate tools as well. And so we’re like, okay, if we can replace, let’s even call it five different systems that people are using and paying for with one system, how many headaches does that save a freelancer? Right? Instead of five tabs open, you have one tab open instead of seven tabs open, you have one place to do all of this.

#### Michelle

Right? And actually, I was thinking about that, but how much money are you saving someone too with that totally simplification of processes and tools. I definitely think whenever you get a chance, if there’s a way to like figure out just the savings Yeah. Across tools, that would be really interesting to see as

#### Andrea

Well. Absolutely. And freelancers, you know, they were using tools that were kind of all over the place. You know, freelancers that are using QuickBooks, you know, that’s more expensive. Sometimes people were using free tools, but they really didn’t like fit the use case or serve the purpose well. Right? So we kind of saw freelancers on both sides of that. People that were using expensive tools and using five of them and people that were using free tools and using, you know, seven or nine of them, you know? And neither, neither experience was really ideal, right? I know Andrea mentioned this, but everyone that we talked to were like, okay, tell us about your process. And they’d say, Ugh, well I have a process, but I’m gonna tell you right now. I don’t love it. It

#### Michelle

Embarrassed about their process.

#### Samantha

So embarrassed we’re like, okay, we’re like, this is a safe space. Tell us what you’re doing.

#### Michelle

They’d be like, well, this is how I envision doing it, but this is how I really do it.

#### Michelle

What is it like being women in the SAS space? Do you feel like there’s a difference? Do you feel like it’s important to even mention? What are your thoughts of about being women founders?

#### Samantha

I will say from, from my perspective, there are a couple of things that I think are different in our approach because we are women. The first is we’re just taking a much more empathetic and modern approach to building Harlow, you know, building the company. We really want to give space to our employees and our freelance team and really make sure that everyone knows that their wellbeing is the top priority, right? We don’t wanna overwork people, we don’t wanna push unrealistic deadlines. We want our employees and freelancers to have full autonomy over their schedules, you know, and we, we wanna do all those things because we know it works for us. And you know, Andrea has mentioned that she has a toddler at home, so it’s also really important to, you know, make space for that and make space for the things outside of work that are really important.

#### Samantha

And I would say the second thing I think that we’ve been thinking hard about is how and when we raise money. So I’m sure you’re aware, we’ve probably all read this, the statistics, but you know, really only about 2% of VC money is given to women founders. So when we were talking early on about how we were going to fund Harlow, we kind of decided that we were gonna go a different route. So we actually raised money through a friends and family round and leaned heavily on our community who already knew and believed in us. Um, and that kind of did two things. One, we didn’t have to really like over prove ourselves as women in this world because the people that we were talking to, whether they were, you know, former colleagues, former bosses, other people that worked with us already knew and believed in us, right? We didn’t have to, to oversell ourselves. And secondly, also gave us an opportunity to choose who we wanted to invest in the company. Something that kind of came out of that, that Andrea and I were really stoked about is we actually have a cap table that is over 50% female. So not only did we go this route because it was easier, easier for us to raise money as females, but also because we could bring more females in as investors and have full control over that. And Andrea, I’ll let you add to that.

#### Andrea

This is my second tech startup. To Samantha’s point, you know, we, we did this one differently. My very first company, tech company that I founded, we raised VC money and it was primarily, uh, women founded, uh, there were four founders and three of us were female. And it was really hard. I mean, we did Sand Hill Road, we pitched every single vc, and they would ask any sort of technical question to the man in the room. You know, they would always defer to the man in the room whether or not that was his, his area of, um, expertise or not. Uh, and it was just really, really discouraging. And every VC would be like, you know, you should just go check out these other funds over here, the like two funds that were female specific at that time. Um, and it was just really demoralizing. Um, and, and I definitely, I think things have changed a lot when it comes to raising money. I know they have, but, um, this time around we just didn’t wanna do that. We just wanted a different path.

#### Michelle

Was it uncomfortable asking your friends and family for help? Because I feel like the ask is sometimes very challenging for people. I’ve got a theory mm-hmm. That once every five years you can do an ask, like a big ask from people. Do you, do you know what I mean? Where it’s like, okay, I’ve been doing this business thing for a minute and um, I need help with a thing. So in my case, I did that five years ago with my, I had an in-person event, but I didn’t want to charge an ex, you know, exorbitant amount of money for people to attend, but it was gonna be a very expensive to hold, you know, it was expensive venue and I wanted to feed people. It was like a whole thing. And so I was like, okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna crowd fund. I’m gonna ask these people that I know, because to your point, they knew who I was.

#### Michelle

I didn’t have to over prove myself, right? Mm-hmm. And I was very fortunate in that I, I was able to raise quite a bit of money, uh, to cover the cost of the event. It was in the black. And actually the venue was so nice. There was a point where they were like, we don’t need any more of your money because you know, you, you sign a contract and then you’re like, this is how many people are gonna come. And I’d overestimate it. And they were like, you’re fine, you’re good. We don’t need it. I cannot believe that they said this to me. This is a very Colorado story, <laugh>. Um, so, so that was amazing to me. Now it’s 2022 and I’m about to do my, my big ask again. And, and so when you’re deciding to do a big ask, what were some of the things that you had to work through before starting this type of

#### Samantha

Fundraising? Yeah, so I think, I think there’s two things here. One is friends and family to us as a loose term. Yeah. Um, while, while we did take money from people that we would consider friends and family, um, we also like, took a lot of money from colleagues and like I said, like kind of like former bosses or, you know, a colleague of our, a colleague, like just like our, our overall network was really helpful in raising money. And secondly, you know, rather than an ask, I really view this as an opportunity. I have full confidence in Andrea and I I did when we were raising money. I have full confidence in us now. And so rather than positioning it as an ask here, give me some money to build this business where like, Hey, we’ve got a great idea in a market that is growing like crazy, we are going to kill it. Do you want in on this? Right? And so I think it was all about our mindset going into it. It was, it was, I, I mean honestly it was scary at first, right? Andrea and I were like, ah, are people gonna fight? Are they gonna see this opportunity the way that we see it? But we put together a killer pitch deck, we had a killer story and we just went into it with confidence.

#### Andrea

Yeah. I will say a few things to add. Like, I personally had to also just like remind myself like a, it’s totally okay if people say no, because this is a business opportunity and this isn’t about me as a human being. If they didn’t want to invest in Harlow, that doesn’t mean that they don’t wanna invest in my friendship or that they don’t believe in me. Um, it’s not, it’s not about me personally. Um, cuz I tend to take things a little personal. So, uh, so that was something definitely like I had to adjust my mindset a little bit as we were raising.

#### Samantha

Yes. And I had to remind Andrea <laugh> yes. That this is, we are running, you know, this is, this is a business. Yes. And we can push and we can follow up and we can sell.

#### Andrea

Yes, that’s another thing is that one of the things that we learned when raising money is, um, Samantha was like, I have no shame. I will, if somebody doesn’t reply to my email, I’m gonna send them five more emails, you know, over the course of like three months, whatever. Until they reply, until they say no, she’s like, I’m just looking for a, no, my priority isn’t their priority. And it was so true because at the end, I mean, there were a couple of people that I think we sent like four or five emails to just to get the first meeting. And then they ended up investing it just like our emails were during the summertime. They were on vacation. It was covid time’s, like a loose construct, you know, <laugh>.

#### Michelle

Totally. Wow. You’re developing Harlow. And I do wanna mention that there are other tools out there that might be similar in some respects. Mm-hmm. What are some of the things that you are doing to really help Harlow stand out from the crowd?

#### Samantha

Harlow overall is built for a very specific audience and an audience that Andrea and I had talked to a lot upfront, right? We, you know, we were kind of mentioning this upfront research that we did and all these conversations that we were having, you know, we talked to friends, but we also went out and did, you know, like 30 plus interviews with its audience to ask them about what they were using, what they liked, what they didn’t like. And honestly, at the time we did not think that there was a fan favorite tool or tool that worked super well for this audience that we were targeting. And we kind of call it this, like, this kinda like white collar solopreneur, this B2B freelancer. You know, it’s somebody who actually sells into an organization. So think about, you know, writers and designers and social media consultants, you know, this, this kind of group was not really being catered to well.

#### Samantha

So that is one thing is that we’re going after a specific audience who we think that we deeply understand their pain points and understand their pain points better than even I think some other competitors who have entered into that market. And two, you know, Andrea and I at the core of Harlow are really passionate about helping this community and not just through the product that we’re building. We’re passionate about building the community, advocating for this audience, you know, sharing their voices, helping them get opportunities, helping them just really understand how to manage their business, how to do it more confidently. You know, we’re really, really focused on helping at our very core. And I think, and really feel like that comes out in the brand when think, when people think about Harlow and why they would use Harlow over some other tools.

#### Andrea

Yeah. I think we also just really wanted to make a tool that’s easy, easy to use, you know? Yes. Running your business, it can feel so overwhelming, especially all of the language, you know, p and ls and balance sheets. And I think it’s so overwhelming that oftentimes people don’t even wanna start, they don’t even want to like, figure out how to run that part of their business because it’s too intimidating. And so we really wanted to just make it easy. Don’t we all wanna make our lives more easy, <laugh>,

#### Samantha

Yes. Every decision that Andrea and I make, everything that we build, we’re like, is this easy enough? Is it in English?

#### Andrea

English? Like, is it a plain English?

#### Samantha

Yes. Is it intuitive? Can somebody log in and just figure out how to do, do this? Right? And we, we log into the product on a daily basis, a weekly basis, click around, we’re like, oh, ooh, okay, maybe we kind of missed there. Let’s go back and stamp that and think about how we can make it even easier, right? So yeah, ease and simplicity. That’s huge. How

#### Michelle

Long has Harlow been live?

#### Andrea

Just like three months, four months maybe.

#### Michelle

Oh, wow. Yeah. And what’s the response been?

#### Andrea

It’s been really positive, which has been awesome, especially from our, from our community. The feedback has been, thankfully people find it really, really easy to use and, and soothing and it gets the job done for them. And so they don’t have to worry about, about kind of all of these different tools or systems.

#### Samantha

Yes. Honestly, I’ve been, I’ve been overwhelmed. It’s so cool to see, you know, on a daily and weekly basis, we are seeing, you know, users in our community just post about how much they love Harlow. And we, Andrea and I actually have a little, um, gratitude and good vibes Slack channel in our harless Slack.

#### Michelle

Oh, nice.

#### Samantha

Um, where we just, we pull all of this feedback from users and we plan it there so that when we are having maybe off days in our entrepreneurial journey or we’re feeling a little bit down, we can go back to that room and say, okay, this is so cool. Everybody is loving what we’re creating and we’re just in the infancy stage of what we’re building. Right. We have so much further to go and so many more things to offer. And it’s, it’s so motivating and I’m so appreciative of this community too, for like fully embracing us and just sharing the word without us even asking to it iss so cool to see.

#### Andrea

Yeah. And sharing the feedback. I mean, the only way that we can get better and improve the product is with feedback. And that takes somebody’s time, that takes them caring, caring enough to send an email or, you know, submit a support ticket. Um, all of that stuff is meaningful for us as founders.

#### Andrea

Yes. Like, there, there are people that truly care about letting us know and helping us make the product better. And I think, I think what’s really cool too is that we’re, we are embracing that, right? So we have these early users and they’re like, Hey, this is how I work. And we’re like, great, okay. That’s a great feature request. We can actually fit that in and create it and build it. And that makes them feel really good. And it makes us feel really good that we’re confident that we can meet their needs. You know,

#### Michelle

I wanna pivot the conversation slightly, um, because this whole season I’m talking to women about their lives. And I wanna ask you, for a woman who is listening to our conversation, who’s at a turning point in their lives where they’re making like a bold decision, what would you give as guidance or recommend to someone who’s, who’s stepping out there a little bit on faith, whether it is, you know, in themselves or the process and, and they’re not sure what the outcome will be, because I feel like that’s very much what you guys are doing. So what would you, what would you advise someone who’s nervous about the next step when they’re putting themselves out there for something they’re dreaming, dreaming about, or designing or creating with their lives?

#### Andrea

I think we’re gonna have a very similar answer, but I would say, you know, be sure to find your people and your community to support you as you’re doing it. Like you need a cheerleader and you should absolutely be your number one cheerleader. But you also, if there’s gonna be hard days and you need to have a support system to help you, to help you through it, and it makes it so much better and so much easier when you have people to lean

#### Samantha

On. I fully agree with that. You know, when Andrea and I were first starting to build Harlow, we talked to a lot of other women founders, a lot of other women who owned small businesses, other women who had raised money, other women who helped other women raise money, right? We had, we had so many early conversations to really learn and try to understand what we didn’t know, right? And also like building those connections so that we could lean on them, they could lean on us. And that was so helpful in the beginning of our journey and it’s still so helpful.

#### Andrea

Yeah. It’s really inspiring, I think. And sometimes you just need that inspiration to keep going because it is obviously going to be hard. And I don’t, I don’t know if this is useful advice or not, but this is something that I definitely think about as like, what is the worst thing that could happen, you know? Mm-hmm, for me, the worst thing that could happen is that we don’t put ourselves out there and we don’t try and we don’t grow. You know, I think that’s one of the things that keeps me going.

#### Samantha

Yes. And I’ll even add one more thing to that, that I tell all women that own small businesses that are entrepreneurs that are doing their own thing, that are out there creating. And that is just do not be afraid to put yourself out there. You like, even if you have an amazing network of other women and other people to support you, you should be your own biggest advocate. You should want to talk about what you’re doing and what you’re creating and what you’re building, right? You should wanna shout about it from the rooftop. So like, you have to get really confident and comfortable in doing that for other people to do that for you.

#### Michelle

I’m struck by how you are really intentional about your business design, like the behind the scenes, and I’m intrigued by it. I do wanna touch on this a little more. I’m intrigued by your businesses design, because it’s so not how a lot of American businesses are run, right? Like, I, I feel like priority of self is a very new thing. I think c with work from home and flexible schedules and things like that has really pushed the conversation into the, to the forefront. As you design your, your company in this way and build out your team, what’s the one thing you’re afraid might happen if you don’t stay focused on this intentional business design?

#### Samantha

Yeah, I mean, I think the, I think the main fear is that we turn into, you know, any other SaaS company that overworks their employees and can’t retain people and sees, you know, people burning out and leaving and transitioning roles. And we really, I mean, and even for Andrea and I, I think, you know, another worst thing that could happen is that we could burn out as leaders, right? Of the company and not want to build this thing anymore. And I don’t want Andrea to burn out, right? She doesn’t want me to burn out. We’re, we are in this together. And so for me specifically, that is the scariest thing that could happen is that we could develop a culture of burnout. And I think that would stunt our growth overall if we’re not happy and our employees aren’t happy.

#### Andrea

Yeah. I mean, we’re in this for the long haul. So I think all, all of us, we need to like, I need to make sure that we’re mentally in it for the long haul also. And I don’t, I think that we just wanna be really careful about building a culture that’s like growth at all costs. Um, because we see that around us a lot in early stage tech, and that’s just not, that’s not something that I think we wanna really contribute to.

#### Michelle

We’re wrapping up. If I’m a person who’s like, holy crap, I so wanna be a part of Harlow, I would love to save myself some time and energy and I don’t wanna use like 8,000 different products. How do we find you and, and what’s the process to sign up? Walk us through how we can discover Harlow.

#### Samantha

Yeah, absolutely. So you can sign up for the product and also go through our entire resources section, which has like a freelance 1 0 1 guide, kind of talks you through how to start your own business. You know, we have a lot of freelance interviews, just really good resources there from A to Z. You can find all of that@meetharlow.com. It’s very, very easy to sign up for the product. It’s honestly one click, you sign in with Google and you just drop into the free trial. So really, really easy to get up and get started. Um, and if you’re interested in just, you know, joining our community, checking us out, seeing what we’re all about, you know, outside of this conversation, you can also find us on social. So we are at Meet Harlow on almost kind of every social platform you can think of. We’re very active on Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram and you know, every day we talk about freelancing, we kind of talk about the future of work, we talk about balance and autonomy and making more money, all of these things that are really important to entrepreneurs and solopreneurs.

#### Michelle

What are your thoughts on the future of work? I’m

#### Samantha

Intrigued. Yeah, I mean, I think overall, you know, it’s a lot of what we’ve been talking about today. It’s, you know, down with this kind of culture of burnout, it’s, you know, in my eyes, employees and even people that work for themselves having more autonomy and balance in their lives and focusing on things that matter outside of work. And, you know, I think within all of that, that actually leads to more inspiration, more motivation, more, you know, more innovation. Honestly,

#### Andrea

My hypothesis is that it will actually contribute to higher profits also, if we respect the fact that not everybody works nine to five. I don’t, you know, I work, I’m much better early in the morning and by three o’clock in the afternoon not so great anymore. Um, if, if I think employers start to respect the fact that employees need to work in a different way and have a different rhythm to get into their flow and, um, nurture that they’re gonna actually see it impact productivity in the bottom line.

#### Samantha

We’re all better when we’re not stressed, right? Like stress is a major, you know, leader and indicator for a lot of issues in our lives, right? Whether it’s mental health, whether it’s physical health, you know, whether it’s, you know, relationships going poorly, like stress is at the core of a lot of those things. And so if we and employers and everyone as individuals can figure out how to alleviate some of that stress, you know, we’re all happier and healthier.

#### Michelle

So in five years, describe to me what, like, where Harlow will be, like what’s your dream?

#### Andrea

I think our dream is that we have a huge robust community of freelancers and where deeply connected with them understanding what their needs are, their pains are, and we’re still building. Samantha and I love to build. So I think we wanna just keep solving problems.

#### Samantha

We have, we have so many things right now that we want to build and you know, things that we know we’re gonna add to the product, but in reality we wanna listen to our community and our users and build what works for them. And this, you know, freelancing in general, this market shifts so rapidly and so it’s hard to say, you know, we don’t know what we’re gonna be building in five years cuz we’re not gonna know what’s most important to this audience, but we are gonna continue listening and pulling in that information and making decisions based

#### Michelle

Thank you ladies so much for this conversation. I wish you only good things. I’m so excited to watch Harlow Grow. I don’t know why I keep thinking of this art deco aesthetic when I think of the the name, but I love it. I will definitely also include a link to Harlow as well for folks who would like to check it out via the show notes. So thank you so much.

#### Andrea

Thank you.

Samantha

You are a joy. I’ve had a smile on my face this entire time.

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#### Michelle

I am an obsessive foodie, but not self-righteous with it, love travel, meeting new people, helping you look good, and am freaked out by people who don't enjoying reading...something! Grab a Perrier, read my blog, feel free to drop me a line! Hope to hear from you soon.

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