Hey Hannah!
Hello!
So good to have you here on the Smashing PBs podcast.
Yeah, I’m so excited. Thank you.
Very cool. And you’ve been away recently?
Yes, I was away for two months. I started off in Queenstown, then came back for like four hours in Auckland to run an event, and then jetted off to Fiji and then to Europe. So it was busy, but a hustle, I bet.
Well, let’s get straight in. I want to hear about your businesses. So you’re the founder of multiple businesses—Dear the Series, Dear Community… I want to know first, a couple of sentences about those, but then take me back: how did it all begin?
Cool. Yeah, so Dare the Series was the first one. Dare the Series, as you mentioned, is a series of guided journals. The reason why I created it was because I realised that, for me, journaling helped me a lot with my mental health. And so I wanted other people to also experience that relief that writing can actually give you. And so Dare the Series is actually prompted journals with over 150 prompts, and it really helps you discover more about yourself, which is really cool. So we’ve got two different journals: Dare Future—it’s all about your future because I realised there’s actually a lot of people that don’t know about their five-year goals, or their ten-year goals; it even asks you your twenty-year goals. And so it’s really cool to get people to start thinking and not just thinking of, “Oh yeah, I want to have this and that,” but “How am I going to get there?” So that’s Dare Future. Then Dare Me is really looking at what’s made me the person that’s made me today. So that’s really cool and it’s really deep reflective. Like one of the questions is, “Who is someone I wish I never met?” and then what kind of effect did they have on me. So it’s really cool. I really like it. We’re releasing another book as well next year, which will be really cool. So that’s Dear the Series. And then Dare Brides is…
Wait, wait, before you go to Dare Brides, I feel like I have questions about journaling that I just want to ask. Do you personally fill out—like once you’ve filled out a journal, if it’s obviously got the same prompts, but maybe they mean different things to you each time you do it, do you just keep filling it out so you’ve completed a journal, do you start again?
So I don’t fill out the same prompted journal. So with Dear Future, you can fill it out every year, then every year you can repeat it. But I personally just journal every single day in a blank journal because I just talk about my day, and I’ve filled in over 20. And it’s incredible because I’ve written every single day for the past nine years. And so it means that I can go back and see what I did literally seven and a half years ago. I know exactly what I did on particular days, which is really nice. And it has really helped me because it’s my way of releasing what’s going on in my head, because your head can be a messy and a dangerous place sometimes. So it’s really nice to see it and then to also go, “Wow, look how far I’ve come,” which is really cool.
And also probably like a bit of manifesting. Like I’m sure there’s things that you wrote like, “Oh, it would be great if this happened,” and then later when it does happen, you can find out, you know, what point you started thinking about it.
Totally. I think we kind of forget how far we’ve come. And that’s why journaling is amazing because you go, “Oh wow, look, two years ago I wanted this and now I’m actually living the life that I dreamed of.”
That is so cool.
Which is really cool. So I think that’s journaling and that’s the power behind it.
Okay. All right, go on. Now I’ll let you speak about the rest of your businesses.
Um, so a few months after I launched Dare the Series was Dare Community, and I’m sure we’ll get into that. But Dare Community is a non-profit organization for women because I was like, “Hang on, how are people making friends?” Because seriously, it is really hard. Unless you are in a cool gym, or you’re in a club, or you have a church, or you have school friends that you’re still friends with—literally how are people making friends? And I was like, “Why has no one done anything?” So three and a half years ago I launched it within literally a few hours of having the idea. I’m that kind of person—my family say that I’m “shoot, fire, aim.” And so it’s all the wrong way around instead of going like “aim, fire…” Um, so yeah, I do definitely run with an idea and run with it very fast. And then within two weeks, we had our first sold-out event and we had about 8,000 people that were following the account as well.
That’s incredible. But you know what that means? It means that it was actually a problem that people needed to solve, like that you were solving, that people wanted solved.
Yeah, yeah. And it was so cool because I think people were like, “Hang on, this is… like why hasn’t this been around?” And I had just originally released it in Auckland, and then people were going, “Can you have it in Christchurch? Can you have it here and here?” We very quickly expanded; we actually had London, Amsterdam, Perth, all across Australia—massive within six months. And then I was like, “I’m dying! Pull it back.”
So how did you manage to look after all those different spots? Did you hire people or because it’s a not-for-profit, I guess there’s not a lot of, you know, there’s not a lot of cash to play with?
No money. So I… yeah, it was two years of me just doing it for absolute for love, and there was no money behind it. People volunteered. And I remember thinking, “No one’s going to volunteer. Like no one’s going to volunteer for my mission,” and so many people did. Wow. So we’ve had probably over 200 leaders come and volunteer their time with Dare Community, which is so beautiful. So yeah, over in London we had a leader, Amsterdam we had leaders, and then I decided I was doing this full-time with a full-time job, with Dare the Series, and I was burnt out. So I was like, “I need to actually focus on New Zealand. New Zealand needs to be smashed, and then once we’ve got New Zealand, you know, covered, then I can go overseas.” And it’s actually really hard to also launch a charity overseas because there’s different rules. Oh yeah, it’s super expensive in Australia. So I actually launched it and then I was like, “Okay, I want to make it an official charity,” and then it’s like $50,000 please for lawyer fees. I was like, “No, thank you.” So I did it in New Zealand, which was a lot cheaper—it was about 10,000—and yeah, and then we became a charity about two and a half years ago.
Amazing. So I guess as a business owner, I… we often donate to charities, but I don’t actually know much about how a charity does work, except for the fact that it’s not for profit, you know? So yeah, maybe you could talk me through what that looks like, how you set that up.
It is hard. It is so hard. People say to me, “Why did you make it a non-profit?” Um, I probably shouldn’t be using the word “charity,” it’s more “non-profit.” So why did we make it a non-profit? And the reason is because I didn’t want to be seen making money from this mission. From friendship. I see. There is a lot of other incredible businesses that have arisen over the past few months, and they are businesses. And so that’s something that does make us stand out from the rest is that we are literally there to solve the mission; we’re not there to make money from you guys. Um, so you can’t obviously make a profit, but you can still cover your expenses. Because you need to. Of course. And for two years I wasn’t being paid and it was… it got to a point where I quit my full-time job and I needed to live. And I felt so guilty, and I remember the very first day—it was February last year—and I called my mom and I’m like, “I can’t do it. I can’t… I can’t pay myself.” Because and it was tiny. I think I worked 40 hours and I think I paid myself 10 hours, and it was at $20 an hour. This was last year.
That’s not even minimum wage!
I know! And she’s like, “You have to, because you need to look after yourself. You know, put on your own oxygen mask before you help others.” 100%. And so I did that, and I think yeah, it’s definitely helped, obviously, me being able to give more time. But it’s really hard because the government don’t see us as important. So unfortunately, we have been declined for every grant that we have gone for. So we’ve decided to step away from the grants and actually work more with brands. So we create PR-style events but for anyone and everyone to come in and to be able to work with brands and showcase their products for people. And we’ve worked with incredible brands: New Balance, Logitech, E-Wellness, Forty Thieves. We’ve worked with, yeah, incredible brands that have donated to us, donated lots of products. and it’s really helped us because I think people don’t get that opportunity. They see it online, they see what the influencers get to go to, and we want to create that. And I think a lot of brands are going, “You know what, I do want to put time and energy and money into community events as well.” Absolutely. But I think what they also do is they bring women together, which is really cool. So we bring like-minded women together. In a few weeks, we’ve got a financial event where I’m speaking on a panel with two others.
Cool!
And we’re just talking about all things money. Because like, actually, did you get taught, you know, financial literacy? Probably not.
No, absolutely not. No. No. Yeah, you’re right. It’s… it’s something that we were expected to live in this world and spend money and spend it well, and yet we don’t have… it’s not an expectation to know how to do it. It’s just… yeah.
There’s so many unknown things that we go into adulthood and we’re like, “So we’re meant to know everything about women’s health, we’re meant to know everything about living, like we’re meant to know everything about money.” We’re not being taught that; the schooling system is not teaching us that. And so we’re providing… we’ve got an event, I think it’s $25—it includes dinner and drinks.
That’s so cool.
And you get to come along and listen to this… this panel, and we speak for two hours on finances. So we’re bringing together like-minded people that are also hungry to learn, but also bringing people together that can go, “Oh cool, like we’re similar because we’re both on the same mission.” So yeah, it’s really cool. We want to provide educational pieces as well as bringing women together.
I think what I really like about that specific event is that some people might… they might not have gone to an event like that, but because they trust your brand—like because it is a brand, you know, Dare… they trust that it’s going to be like-minded people, that it’s going to be non-judgmental, then they’ll come along. Maybe they come along for the socializing, but then they leave with the… with the education as well.
Totally.
And then vice versa. People who might want… might come, you know, to learn something, but then they leave with friends. So yeah, that’s… that’s very cool.
And I know that you supported us for our Finlay Park camp.
Oh yeah!
Which was amazing. So this was an… I remember when we went to the organizers, we said, “We want to run a camp, but for adults,” and they were like, “We’ve never done this before.” We’re like, “We want a kids’ camp, but for adults.”
That’s funny. What does a kids’ camp for adults look like?
It was like the blob. You know the blob, where it’s like that… that cushion where you jump on one end?
Yes, yes, yes.
That was amazing. We had the… like a water slide, we had animal survival, we had like playing in the mud. It was fun! Like this is… you don’t get to do that as an adult. And you don’t get to go away on a camp and sleep in bunk beds. So this is something we do every year. So we’ve got tickets that have just been released. But it’s amazing. Yeah, I think it’s really cool to be able to go, “You know what, life’s more than just working 9 to 5, it’s also about living and meeting people,” because community is so important. So…
And I think, um, I guess on that as well, like if I look back to when I was young, if I look back, I guess, in my like early 20s, you would probably… you’d meet people at work, you’d meet people, like you literally named it, at the gym if you go to the gym, but then you’d also… like we went out a lot, and I feel like that… that scene has changed, and people still want to meet people without having to, you know, go and give away their money for alcohol.
Get sloshed, yeah.
So yeah, it’s… it’s like a whole different… it’s like filling in a space. If people aren’t going out anymore, then how are you supposed to meet people? And then everybody’s always online, and that’s not probably the best way… um, yeah, that’s a whole other thing.
I always say that we claim to be the most connected… you know, we live in the most connected era. We don’t. We live in the most disconnected era. I believe… I agree. And it’s so sad. It’s so sad because people are hiding behind their facade and they’re like, “Oh, like this is what I did…” No, people are so lonely. And I’ve done a lot of research into the… the impacts that loneliness has. And a lot of mental health issues stem from loneliness. And so we want to tackle that, and we want to go, “You know what, let’s put a lot of energy and effort into… into loneliness and how can we help people get community and get people beside them to… to live life with.”
That’s very cool. Um, amazing. So look, I want to talk a little bit more about the business… like how, yeah, I guess your entrepreneurial self. Um, you… I read somewhere, maybe on your blurb or on your… on your website, that um, you or someone once told you about creating a business that you’re marginally like better than what’s out there?
Yes.
How did that… how, yeah, what was that… what was that sentence?
That was a podcast! That was on a podcast.
Oh, there we go!
There you go. There you go. It was um… a podcast and I remember going, “I want to launch a business, but I don’t know what.” And it was the Girls That Invest podcast, and Sim said, you know, “Do… launch a business where you’re marginally better than someone else.” and I remember thinking, “There is nothing. There is literally nothing. I’m just like average.”
I highly doubt that, but continue.
And I realized, hang on, I have this crazy love for journaling. And I wish more people could journal because I wish more people could see the… the impacts that journaling can have. And so that’s when I went, “Well hang on, there’s actually no prompted journals, there’s no guided journals out there in New Zealand market.” So that’s when I… I launched it. and I’m the kind of person, as I mentioned before, I “shoot first.” and so within two weeks I had launched the business, I’d launched a website, I’d found a designer, I had found the factory, done due diligence as well, I had written the entire journal, and I’d sent it off to the… um, to my designer. Within two weeks.
Because I’m like, “I think…” How did you come up with all the prompts?
They just… I think they were just in my head. I’ve got… I’m quite a creative person, so I think I just had them there ready to go. I don’t know how, but like I worked with my family on it as well. My mom was my biggest supporter.
Oh, that’s nice. What um… what is your favorite prompt in the… is there a prompt that you remember?
I think one of them is actually looking at the now and what are 10 things you are most grateful for.
Okay.
Because I think with Dare Future, it’s great because you’re looking towards your future, but I think a lot of people forget, “What am I super grateful for now?” And I think gratitude is something that we really need to keep practicing every single day. So I think that one gets people to reflect. It’s quite cool. We do a partnership with Dare Community and Dare the Series where we’ll host guided journaling sessions and I’ll donate the books to Dare Community and the girls get to come away with a journal and we’ll sit down and go through them together. And so that’s one I always start with because I’m like, it’s really important we start with gratitude and we start with thinking, “Hang on, let’s just take a moment. What in my life am I super grateful?” Because actually, like…
There’s so much.
There’s so much.
Gratitude is… I… I’m so passionate about it as well. It’s so easy to focus on world events, to focus on everything that’s not working—the economy, whatever. How do you… how did you learn to practice gratitude? How did you know that it was so important and what drove you to this?
It happened because I was looking to buy a new car.
Okay.
And I remember seeing this car online and I’d never really seen it before and I was like, “Oh, that’s a cool car.” And then I was driving that next day and I saw that car pop up like nine times. I was like, “What the heck? I’ve never seen that car before!” And I realized that that’s the thing with gratitude: is if you start to focus on it, you’re going to see it more and more in your life. You’re going to actually start seeing the positives in your life. If you focus on the positives, you’re going to see them.
Amazing. And is there anyone in your family that has like, I guess, practiced gratitude as well?
Two days ago I had my sister’s birthday and we went around the room and um… this is what we do every single year for everyone’s birthdays: we go around the room and say things we um… really love and appreciate about that person.
That’s so nice.
And usually it takes about an hour and I think we really try and pick out the positives and the good things. And mom and dad have always been like that with me; they’ve always been really my biggest cheerleaders. So I think it’s come from that family environment.
When you do come to them with a new idea, what happens? Like what does that look like?
Dad’s being levelheaded. He’s my biggest, biggest cheerleader. He is incredible. Everything with Dare Community, he is there for me. Um, they will be the first people to put their hands up and and help me with anything.
And you mentioned that a couple of your businesses you were able to execute within two days… sorry, two weeks. So how… are there some that you’ve tried and they haven’t worked?
Look, I um… I was homeschooled growing up.
Okay.
There it is! And I decided it would be a great idea to have a cockatiel breeding business.
Oh! Okay. Yeah, because everybody needed a cockatiel.
Exactly. So bought a whole heap of cockatiels, had an aviary that my um… poppa built. And I was just wondering why are these cockatiels not breeding? It’s taken years, taken years. And I was like, “These birds, like what’s going on? What’s wrong with you?” Turns out they were all boys. Oh, that’s hilarious! Um, so unfortunately, I think the biology lesson um… was kind of skipped. Um, so it’s not really my strongest point. So that was my very first failed business. Okay. I love though that your family like supported you—they your granddad built it, everyone was… you should ask them if they knew secretly that they were all boys. No, I was so excited for these little like baby cockatiels. No, unfortunately that one failed. But it… I think being homeschooled has attributed a lot because it’s meant that I had to self-teach myself basically for seven years. My mom was there—she was amazing—but I had to self-teach everything. So it’s meant that I’ve had this massive drive towards like, “If I want to do something I have to do it myself.” Wow. I’ve had other businesses: Hannah’s Pet Sitting business; I launched um… Eye Love Daisy, which was a second-hand clothing back in 2016. And this was selling clothes on Instagram before it became a thing… quite popular. Yeah. And so people weren’t comfortable sending your bank details and sending money over Instagram. So it failed. But I realized I was too early. because three years later it became massive. Absolutely. And so that was something I learned from and then shut that down. I moved to London, became a nanny for like billionaire families, which is crazy—that’s a whole other story. And I learned a lot through that and then came back. And that’s when I studied at Massey University, I studied a business degree, majoring in property, minoring in financial advice. Then I went into being a buyer at Mitre 10. Then I launched my three businesses in one year, which was Dare the Series, Dare Community, and Dare Brides. And Dare Brides is another thing…
Oh yes, we haven’t talked about that one.
Yeah, so that’s where um… my sister came to me on the 21st… the 31st of December.
Okay.
So my sister came to me on the 31st of December and she said to me—this is our New Year’s like party, a family party—she goes, “Hannah, there’s this new concept called wedding content creation. You’d be really good with your phone and you know you you love um… shooting content. You go to weddings and you shoot it on your phone.” And I was like, “Wait, this is a great idea!” Looked it up—there’s no one in New Zealand doing it. No one’s doing it. And so I stepped away from that party and I launched that business within two hours. That’s crazy! And so that was really fun because it meant that I was the first in New Zealand. Um, it wasn’t until maybe three four months later someone else joined. Wow. It gave them the confidence I guess. Exactly, exactly. But it was really fun and so now that is um… fortunately we’ve positioned as New Zealand’s top and only luxury wedding content creation service. So we do specialize in more of the upper end weddings, and it’s it’s so much fun. It’s so beautiful to be a part of people’s special days.
What kind of content are they looking for? Like what is it… stuff to watch later? Is it just to keep people that aren’t there engaged?
Well yeah, I think traditional wedding videography is horizontal. And so people are like, “Well, how can I share that with people?” They want short-form content. They also want content that feels like I was there. And so we create low-fi, raw content, candid moments.
And it’s really cool. I wish you were at my wedding! Honestly, I had… I just… I had the best… my husband and I, Brent, we had the best wedding. It was so much fun. You talk to anyone who went to our wedding, they were like, “Best wedding!” I love that. It was… it was so beautiful, it was so much fun, it was so unique. And then we I… being a my background’s graphic design, and I chose like the most amazing videographers and photographers. But then when I watched the video, it was like I was like a superstar and and it like had like music that wasn’t at our wedding on top of it, and it had… it just… it was like it made me look like a celebrity in the in my own wedding, but it wasn’t real. And I I got back in touch with the videographers and I was like, “Can I just have all the content? Like there’ll be moments, you know?” And they were like, “That’s going to cost you, you know, like a crazy amount of money.” Like crazy. And at the time we had just started Forty Thieves, there was no way that you know that we could do it. And yeah, and I just still to this day wish I had just asked a random, you know, a guest at my wedding just to go around and shoot. But you know, you see these videos all day long, so you think, “I’m going to capture it all,” but it was so glossy. No, it’s… and I think it’s like the fly on the wall, you know? And I think one thing I love whenever people get their content, they’re like, “I never knew that you captured that!” Wow. Because I’m very discreet and so they also the good thing is you get the content the next day. So unlike waiting six weeks, you actually get to post it literally the next day. Everything is delivered the next day. So that’s cool. It’s taken me um… abroad as well. I just shot a wedding in Fiji, shot a wedding in Queenstown, I’ve got another wedding in Fiji coming up. So that’s really cool to be able to um… have that position. Wow. Yeah, weddings are the most fun. People are just so happy at the wedding. It’s nice to be a part of it. But no, it’s amazing. So yeah, that’s one of my… I do really enjoy that. So we’ve got actually a team of creators as well, so it’s not just me. So yeah, I do enjoy that.
So, I do have an interesting one. So you talk a lot about candid moments and you talked about, you know, Dare Community being real connections. But you also have like quite a big following online. How do you feel about the kind of content that you put online and how does this work with what you’re trying to create?
I think I try across everything is to be very raw and real. Um, very um… transparent as well. I literally will… I’ve got my work phone and I will open up my banking app and show people on TikTok my banking app. No one does that because it’s like no… money is so taboo. It is. And so I’ve become known as the budgeting girl online or I do share, “This is how much money I get in, this is how I split it off,” because again, you’re not taught it. You’re not taught financial literacy. Should you… no one knows how much money you should be having in your account as a 25-year-old, a 26-year-old. Um, and people don’t know how much money they should be spending on groceries. That’s true. They don’t know… they haven’t maybe thought about it as a percentage or… exactly. Yes. So I I do encourage people to make their own budget as well. I don’t say to people, “Use my budget,” I say actually make sure that you work out how much you are spending and then make a budget that works for you. And so I’m very transparent online with my money and also daily vlogs as well. I won’t be glossy. I want to be very real and showcase… I post videos of me crying because it’s hard. I get, you know, someone will make a hateful comment and it will wreck my entire entire day. And so I’ll post a video of me crying going, “You know what, this is actually the reality.” I had this girl, she messaged me the other day and she goes, “Hi, how can I get PR like you do? Um, how can I become like what what you are?” And I said to her like, “That side’s great, but would I ever wish that upon you? Like the journey that I’ve had to go through and the heartache and lying in the fetal position of my bed going like ‘I don’t want this’ and hovering my finger over the delete button and going ‘I can’t… I can’t do this anymore’?” I wouldn’t wish that. That’s so interesting. So it’s really hard. Yes. But yeah, I… it’s um… I mean you you have a number of different businesses and I guess you’re the face of them. And so it is a marketing tool ultimately, you know? If people trust you, then they’ll trust your businesses. And that’s I guess the the kind of world we live in now where you can create that kind of trust on a low budget just by being authentic. Um, I yeah, I totally get that, but I also I totally get the other side that sometimes it might be all-encompassing. Um, I actually spoke to somebody else um… last week who said exactly what you just said about the delete button, and she she did it though. But I guess maybe she wasn’t she wasn’t being as authentic as you describe, um, you know? So I think maybe that’s the key is just to make sure that you and I guess you you publish stuff that that you feel actually reflects you. Yeah.
And I think that also is really important when you are a content creator that gets brand deals to choosing the brand deals that align. I’ve just turned down three which were really big. Wow. And um… I just couldn’t because one of them was a similar banking app and and I’m like, “I don’t use it, and I know people trust me, and so I don’t want to.” So it’s hard because you’re seeing it there, you’re like, “Oh, that’s good money,” but I you know, you need to be honest because people can sniff out… people know you, people been following you for many years and they go, “That’s not a brand you’d use.” So you have to be really authentic. That’s yeah, that’s amazing. That’s really great to hear. Um, yeah, I think I think being able to say no to things, that is a really hard one. I I struggle with that, but it’s yeah, when things come at you and they seem so good. But if you’re if you’ve got the long game in mind, then you know that it might be a short-term gain, but it doesn’t actually go with your overall vision of what your life looks like and who you want to be. Yeah, well done. That’s that’s hard stuff. It’s hard though, because you’re like, “It’s right there!”
So back to the journaling quickly. If you are authentic online, what about to your journal? Is it like a… because my my experience with journaling is I actually journaled a lot as a teenager. I filled up like at least at least 15 journals, but they are cringe. I like put them in a box and I put them in my parents’ house and my parents recently were like, “Here you go, like can you can you have these?” and I opened them and I, “Ooh!” I was like, “This is this is not good stuff! Like I don’t want to…” Yeah, I was like I can’t read this. So I like I literally they are just that is my teenagehood all written down. How does that work as an adult when you… is it completely private? Is it stuff that you would share? Is it like… how deep do you go?
I go very deep. Very deep. Yeah. Because I think that for me is I struggled in the last year of school. I didn’t go and speak to anyone… um, I did struggle and for me that was my way of expressing what was going on in my head. So I read it um… and it breaks me. Like I will sit there and read it and ball my eyes out because I’m like, “I wish someone could just help that girl because she needed help.” Um, but I think that was my saving grace was journaling. But I have written them to give to my daughter.
Wow!
So I’m really hoping for a girl. Um, but yeah, I I want to I’m writing them so that my daughter… the dream is is that she will be able to read one day like ideally the same day, so the 1st of June, the 1st of June at the same at the same age. So when I’m 14 she reads it at 14 and we just we journey through life together. Wow. Wow. because I sometimes think you kind of forget that your mom was also your same age. 100%. She went through the same things. And so I want to be like… and I sometimes write to her as well like, “I know you’re reading this, I know that you think that I probably don’t understand, but I do. Like I do understand.” So I think yeah, they are deep and there’ll be some things I start… that one’s a good one, that’s a good piece. Um, I don’t know, we’ll see.
I wonder whether you think you’re writing to a daughter, but I wonder if you’re just writing to your like child self, you know? Like the the 14-year-old that you were talking about before.
Step deep, yeah.
Maybe. Like maybe she’ll never read them, I don’t know. But I think just for me writing it, whether I ever go back and read them, it’s it’s helped me so much. So maybe they might like turn into a a movie of something? I don’t know! I don’t know. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah, no, I like it. I’m going to have to… I’ve been thinking about journaling for a while, I keep hearing from people how good it is for you. And I just I feel like I I don’t know what to write. Um, so maybe I need some prompts.
It’s part of the yeah, it’s part of the mindfulness as well. Like find something that works for you. Maybe journaling isn’t for you. But I think find something within the mindfulness space, whether it’s yoga, whether it’s, you know, breath work—find something that works for you that you do every day.
And what time… what time of day would you do it? Does it matter? You sound like… how I was speaking to you before about the person that runs every day. You’re like a journal every day.
Oh yeah, I love it. I love it. Oh yeah, yeah, it doesn’t matter if it’s raining, it doesn’t matter—I journal! I sit in my bed and I just get so happy I did this morning and I was like, “Ah, I love my life!” And you sit there and you just journal, the sun pours in and it’s just like my happy place. Some people have coffee—I’m not a coffee gal—some people have coffee and that’s their happy place, and for me it’s just journaling.
What um… what else are you doing when you’re journaling if you’re not drinking coffee?
I’m just like… just journaling! Is it in the morning, is it in the evening? Every morning. Every morning. How how long do you allocate? Honestly, sometimes it’s like an hour. Wow. Yeah, so I yeah, I used to have a very strict 4:30 wake-up, then gym for an hour, blah blah blah all this. Um, at the moment after getting back from overseas, it has it has um… kind of fallen off. But yeah, I’ll get back into it soon.
But to… okay, so tell me about the 4:30 starts. What are what was good about it?
4:30’s amazing! It’s the day, honestly! So you wake up at 4:30 and then you go straight to the gym, you get back by 5:30, you shower, sometimes I’ll jump back into bed even with my nice like clean clothes, and then sometimes I’ll cook my toast and I have my toast and my peanut butter, and peanut butter and honey—I’m a peanut butter and honey gal. Okay. And then I’ll sit down with that and then I’ll journal, and then usually by 7:00 I’m done, sometimes 7:30, and then I’ll go and work. That’s awesome. So you that’s your time to yourself is in the mornings. You wake up before it’s light and you amazing. I love it. I love going to the gym and you come out and it’s still dark and you’re like, “Oh, beautiful!” Yeah, yeah. You haven’t even started the day yet, I’ve still got the whole day. I know! What are what is the gym… what do you do at the gym? Tell me about movement for you and how that how that adds into your I guess living your best your personal best life.
Yeah, so gymming is something I never really got into until relatively recently. So I started creating a series online—it was called Hannah’s Health—because like, actually I need to look after myself because I neglected it. Especially when I went through this hustle time where I had all my different businesses, plus worked full-time, plus had clients that I did social media management for—I was very burnt out and I realized I completely neglected my physical health. And so now it’s something that is a focus for me. So it’s weights, weightlifting. So I did do um… a lot of HIIT, and because I live a very stressed life, it wasn’t the best for me; I didn’t really see much of a change. And so weights for me is a lot better for me. Pilates, weights. That’s… but I’ve also picked up tennis quite a bit, so I’ll go off and play tennis tonight. So that’s also really good, does get my heart rate up but it’s also a really good skill. And then golf, you’re walking around. So I think it is really important to me that I am closing my rings on my Apple watch. Oh yeah! Yeah, I love that. and yeah, so it is it is something really important to me.
I don’t have an Apple watch, I’ve got a Garmin. So what is it… tell me about closing your rings. What does that mean?
Oh, I’m obsessed with it. I used to be like so obsessed with it even at like 10:00 I would just lap up and down my hallway just to close them. So basically you’ve got different goals and then you just watch your rings close if you’ve hit your target. So how many kilocalories have have you burnt and how many steps have you um… put in for the day, your stand goal, your sleep goals—all those kind of stuff. So yeah.
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I guess my next question is: do you ever slow down?
I don’t really like to slow down. Um, because for me, I’m very much an active rester. Okay. So even on a Sunday where it is my day of rest, um, I will be doing something. I’ll be cleaning and all of that. Because that for me is, yeah, I don’t think it’s you shouldn’t just go, “No, you need to sit on the couch,” but that’s that’s not me. I don’t watch TV. um, I I’m the kind of person I have to be doing something. So yeah, I think I need to be better at looking after myself and resting, but that’s where I find golf is really good because it’s two three hours of active rest. That’s very cool. Journaling, that’s my rest for the morning. Oh yes, yes of course. Yeah. Your start. Except that it’s so early that I’m like, “Is that resting?” But I love the idea that you’ve got all your you’ve ticked everything off first thing in the morning and you you enter like the day clearheaded… yeah, clearheaded, that’s it. That’s exactly it. Yeah, yeah. Because you didn’t wake up to chaos. Yeah, and you’ve emptied your head of what happened yesterday. Like it’s done. It’s done and I can move on. Ah, that’s very cool.
Um, so, as you know, obviously Smashing PBs, it’s all about personal bests. Is there like a moment that you can think of in your life that was that’s like a highlight, like a personal best moment?
It’s really hard because like, I feel like this is… in New Zealand, you don’t really talk up about yourself because it’s like you just get kind of squashed. I know. So it’s really hard. I know when I read this question, I was like, “Oh, I don’t know,” but like one in particular is when I had a girl come to me and said for Dare Community, “Hannah, what you’ve created is my entire social life.” And I think that for me I was like, “I’ve done it! Like I’ve done it, tick!” Like that’s so cool. Yeah, you’ve done it. Your mission was um… mission was complete! Like it’s so cool and seeing these connections. And another one was when a girl told me that her three bridesmaids were girls she met at Dare Community. Wow! And I was like, “That’s so cool! That’s really sweet.” So yeah, those are something for Dare Community and I think something that I’m proud of myself for, because I was really trying to think about this. I was like, “What is there?” I am not someone naturally smart. I had one of my friends say to me… she was like, “Hannah, the difference between you and I is that we both get the same grades. I’m naturally smart and you’re not.” But I was like, “Thanks! I’m a very hard trier.” Thanks. Um, but I graduated as a Massey Scholar, yes, from university, which means top 3%. And so there was three of us that were awarded and at our graduation. I think that was something that I was like, “Oh, like I’ve always told myself that I’m dumb, like I’ve always told myself I’m not…” Maybe that was, you know, maybe sometimes like when you don’t have high expectations of yourself, then you can achieve more because you’re like, “Well, if I don’t then that’s okay.” But yeah, I feel like you definitely are very intelligent and very smart, so you can’t don’t talk down to yourself again! But I feel like it helped you, um, and I mean that is such an achievement. What did standing up there feel like? I didn’t realize. I was like they said “Massey Scholar” and I was like, “What’s that?” What’s that? and then it wasn’t until after the graduation I went and tapped someone. I was like, “Excuse me, what does that mean?” Because I didn’t know. Oh, that’s incredible! But yeah, it was that was cool. It was kind of like, “Oh hang on, I need to step back and and look,” and I think sometimes I step back and look at Dare Community, I look at a room full of people, and it’s not just me. There’s no way I’m taking claim of all of that, but I look at that and go, “Wow, like this is this is my dream.” Seeing these connections, seeing friends come together, seeing girls walk away and get each other’s Instagram. I’m like, “That’s so cool.” That’s what I feel like I’m that’s my purpose in life. That’s amazing. Wow. It’s it’s so inspiring to hear. Um, yeah, it’s so nice. I think so many people walk around and they don’t know what they want to do. And yeah, you’re very driven and you’ve very, yeah, dedicated.
Um, so starting out, what advice do you have for someone who is full of ideas? How do you just get going like you have?
I would say just do it. Like literally just do it. Um, but then I would also say get someone that you can bounce ideas off and make sure that they find someone that’s very levelheaded because if you’re like me, I’m like, “Oh yeah, it’s a great idea, let’s do it, let’s do it, implement!” Have someone that goes, “Oh hang on, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? Have you done your research? Do you know like who’s already solving…?” Exactly, exactly. And that’s your dad? Yes, my dad, yeah. What what would a conversation with him look like? Um, I’ll probably call him up and he’ll listen. He goes, “Oh yeah, yeah. Have you have you ever thought about this or have you thought about that?” But yeah, he’s amazing. So he definitely is very kind in the way he says it, so you also have to make sure… I’m a sensitive gal, you know? And so if someone says to me, “Nah, terrible idea,” and I’m like, “Well stuff you, I’m going to do it now because I want to prove you wrong.” Um, so yeah, I think he’s very good at, “Oh, have you would you consider this maybe?” So yeah, I think having a team around you, um, whether it is a mentor, whether it is just someone that can you can bounce ideas off is because sometimes you do need that second brain. Okay. Okay. So yeah, I guess what I’m hearing is: first of all, you know, just do it, don’t just faff around and think about it. But, you know, have someone who you trust who will give it to you, but in a nice way so that you don’t just do it anyway. I love that.
And I think another tip is to social media is your best friend. Yes. Okay. Like TikTok is how Dare Community grew. Wow. So we had one video that hit half a mil, and it was within the first few weeks of us launching. And it was natural, organic. I did because I knew about social media, it was seven seconds and it was a paragraph on that video that took longer to read than the video looped. I see. And so it meant that it gained a lot of traction. We picked up a pain point for that person as well. And so that’s how we grew. So I think don’t shy away from social media, make sure that you’re also people follow people don’t follow a brand, they follow a face. So make sure that you have your face shown. because people want to be like, “Oh no way, um, I’m I’m buying this product because of you.” Like they yeah. They… yeah. Okay. So yeah, okay, so one, you know, get on with it, don’t just faff around and think about it, but you know, have someone who you trust who will give you some be a sounding board. But then interesting one which I’ve never heard before: use social media actually as your route to market. Make sure that it’s actually, you know, you use that as your proof of concept really. I love that.
And then healthy habits by the sound of it?
Yes. 100%. Look after yourself.
Healthy habits. Okay. Yeah. Because it’s it’s hard being a business owner you’re and you’ll know—it’s hard.
It’s hard. You pour a lot into it. You do. And I think people need to realize it will be hard and you do have to hustle. It’s not going to be amazing. What you see online isn’t really realistic. It’s going to be a lot of late nights, a lot of tears. Um, but it’s so worth it.
And by the time you I guess once you do have that product that people know, they can’t see the years behind it. absolute the you know, the thinking and the and the hustling and the rejections and everything that came along with it.
People see your like a brand and they go, “Oh wow, it’s this massive company.” Same thing with Dare Community. They don’t realize it’s just like one person behind it. That was it all started by one idea, one person. So…
So just do it! Just do it. All right, awesome. And last and are you a smooth or a crunchy girl?
I’m a crunchy girl!
Oh, of course you are! There you go. Well yeah, I’ll see you I guess out there, smashing PBs.
Yeah, thank you!
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