We were lucky to catch up with Sarah Hill recently and have shared our conversation below.
Sarah, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.
“My resignation is effective immediately – to protect my physiological safety.”
As you can imagine that sentence was the hardest thing I ever hit “send” on in my life. I was a successful Creative Director for an international beauty company, but my working conditions where toxic and I was being gaslit without room to respond.
I am a strong believer in mental health and wellbeing. I am a mother to 3 young girls, so how I portray and carry myself is of the utmost importance. It was a very challenging situation to be in, as my business (MoonstoneSeven) was still young and my Creative Director salary helped provide a nice life for my children, a life that they were accustom to. I had been toying with the idea to “go all in” on myself and MoonstoneSeven for a while, but the time never seemed right, I always had an excuse on how and why I could continue to do both. I was the definition of a workaholic. I worked my day job 9-5, wore my hat as Mom/Wife 5-10 and once the kids where asleep I was Business Owner until I couldn’t stay up any longer. This went on for 13 months…
The day prior to hitting send on that e-mail, I had had a “conversation” with my CEO that sealed the deal that I was not on the path God wanted me on. There was no room to speak, no room to be heard, no room to grow. I felt like a caged bird with clipped wings. My husband hated seeing me so defeated, especially when I put my heart and soul into that company. I knew without a doubt, when I got off that call, that I needed to take ALL of my energy and bet on myself! I could paint a detailed picture for you with the belittlement, discredit, and disparage that went on that day – but I won’t revisit the details for my own sanity.
I was worried about going all in, and taking on the risks that come with being solely self-employed, but nothing was worth my mental stability. When I say I will never forget the weight that was released from my shoulders when I hit send, on that resignation email, I truly mean it. It was a new chapter for me – and the risk didn’t seem so scary anymore and I was excited.
I am 10 months into being solely self employed and couldn’t be happier. Creating my own work life balance, and loving the life I am creating!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
My name is Sarah. I have been active in the curly world for the past six years, creating content on my children’s Instagram page : @NaturallyCurlyKids. This page was created to help other parents with their kids curls. The goal when we started was to help just one curly kid walk into school more confident in their God given curls. Taking care of my kids curls was always very important to me. I knew with them being mixed, half black half white, they would have a completely different hair texture than my own. From the day they were born, I learned it, I tried everything – failed at some things and found success in others. I practiced, a lot… I was not ignorant to the fact their hair wasn’t like mine and needed a different kind of love other than that I’d give my own…
However that said – I have NOT loved my hair, not even close. 😞 My whole life, I have straighten my hair like it was my job. I used a real iron, and laid my head on the ironing board. I damaged my hair with heat and bleach to no end, and didn’t care. The straighter it was, the better. My kids would ask me to straighten their hair, and I would… on occasion, but the last time my daughter had asked really got me thinking… why do I tell them to love themselves how God made them, yet I continued to try to alter myself?…
August 2019 I decided I was going to stop straightening my hair, no matter what. No more heat. Three months into this decision, I got a curly cut, so there really was NO turning back – straightening those layers would have looked CRAZY!! When I started this natural journey I tried a technique called “plopping” and my hair LOVED it. With plopping, I loved the way my waves looked but I was not in love with the tools, or should I say the lack of tools available to do the job. Every influencer I found teaching the technique of plopping used “an old tee shirt.” Wrapping my hair up in an “old tee shirt” frankly was not comfortable, was very cumbersome and inconvenient. I found myself trying to balance a shirt on my head and it was annoying.
With a background in marketing and design I was on a mission to create my own tool for the job. At this point I was creating something to make my life, and the lives of my children, easier… but after many sketches, patterns and trials, I realized there was a need for this product in the curly world, and I couldn’t keep it to strictly personal use. I made a better mouse trap, and I NEEDED to share it with all the Curlfriends!
That is when MoonstoneSeven was born!
The brand acts as a reminder to cleanse the mind of negative emotions holding you back and eliminate self-doubt. Unleashing your natural beauty and being proud of who you were created to be! I always tell my girls “Never compromise yourself to please someone else.” and MoonstoneSeven is that reminder.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
This is by far one of my favorite questions to answer!
My biggest advice is to stop consuming social media – stop looking at what others are doing and trying to do that. You need to stand out from the crowd, give people a reason to follow YOU, not decide you are a clone of what’s already being done. You need to give people a reason to follow you. Ask yourself, what do you offer to benefit their life? What value are you adding? Why are you creating your page? Money is NOT the correct answer, especially when you are starting with zero followers.
I knew when we started @NaturallyCurlyKids that we were doing it to TRULY help one child walk into school more confidently. We wanted to help people. I gave away free content and advice and help to every person that came to our page. I spent hours in deep conversations with people about their daughter’s hair and helping them to love it.
We grew because our hearts where in the right place. We provided free content, honest reviews and didn’t take a sponsorship from ANY brand we did not fully incorporate into our lives.
We BUILT TRUST with our following, we were real, and we cared.
Every follower, every like, and every share was an opportunity to touch another life. Watching the page grow quickly, and being of the entrepreneur mind set, I knew we would turn it into something more substantial one day. I did not know what it would be at this point, but I knew giving free help to as many people as possible, would provide an open door.
We had a pretty substantial following on NaturallyCurlyKids – so when we started the brand page MoonstoneSeven, people were interested. That was a catapult to our brand following on Instagram. I knew I would need to expand my presence to more than just Instagram as a brand though, and found my way over to TikTok. But this time, I was going to be the face of the page, not my children. As my girls get bigger, it is a lot harder to find time for them to film, and their page, though it’s still there, is not as active as it once was.
TikTok loves small business – but keeping true to my values, I still am providing education, entertainment, and product suggestions to our following. The main focus IS MoonstoneSevens offerings, however keeping an audience’s attention without shoving your product down their throat is a delicate dance. As a business WHY do people want to follow you, especially if they already own your products? What value are you adding to their lives, and how are you enriching their lives? Not every post is a hard sell – people don’t want to follow a page that just inundates them with ads. You have to really remember, if you wouldn’t want to consume your own content from another brand, why would someone want to follow you?
Any advice for managing a team?
I am a firm believer in letting my team live their lives and having a healthy work life balance. If I hire you to do a job, and you tell me what that job is worth, and provide an amazing end result, I do not care if it took you 10 minutes, or 10 hours. I don’t care if you worked on it at 2am, or 2pm. The job I needed done, was done and the objective was meet. My role as a CEO is not to micro manage, it is to enrich my team’s lives so they want to put forth the work for MY vision! It should be fun to work on projects, work shouldn’t feel daunting every time you open your computer. Sure, there are tough tasks at times, but providing an uplifting environment that TRUSTS its employees and SHOWS appreciation is KEY!
@GaryVee said it best when he said “Bosses piss me off, bosses get employees as if they are there to serve them. It’s f’ing crazy. The entitlement by small business owners and managers is obnoxious. These are fellow human beings!”
Staying on task and providing quality work is easy when you have a boss that lets its employees do the job they were hired to do. Empower your team and trust them, they were hired for a reason!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://moonstoneseven.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonstoneseven/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/moonstoneseven
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MoonstoneSeven
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgPUyAKNEnUYI03kC4TYlzQ
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@moonstoneseven Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/moonstoneseven/
Image Credits
Bridgette Marie