Sierra Builds Independent HR Support for Workers (Full Transcript)

[00:00:02] Speaker 1: One specific impact that I'm proud of is donating 48,000 books to children in need. When we see a problem, we create a solution.

[00:00:10] Speaker 2: I built this brand to create pride in public schools and also give back, and I think right now is the perfect time. People want to support brands that stand for something.

[00:00:17] Speaker 1: I started Rebellious Pins to celebrate black culture through accessories that spark nostalgia and connect people through shared experiences. If you know, you know.

[00:00:26] Speaker 3: This moment couldn't be more urgent. With the instability around student loans, families are desperate for real solutions.

[00:00:36] Speaker 1: Me sharing my story has really helped me to bring people into our ecosystem because my story is a story that so many people across the country can relate to.

[00:00:46] Speaker 4: Hi, Sierra.

[00:00:48] Speaker 1: How are you? I am doing well. There's so much going on, but I'm doing good.

[00:00:54] Speaker 4: Thank you for taking the time. I know everything is so busy, but we just want to spend a few minutes with you.

[00:01:10] Speaker 1: In the summer of 2020, I was actually out protesting. It was right there outside of Barclays. We march all the way across the Brooklyn Bridge down into Soho. I go home. This is on a Sunday. Monday morning comes around. I log into my team meeting, and they go around in a circle, and they say, let's talk about what everybody did this weekend. And I immediately freeze because I have a decision to make. Do I want to be honest about what I was doing this weekend, or do I want to lie for the sake of the comfort of the group? When it got to me, I decided I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. And so I told them. I went to the protest this weekend in Brooklyn, and you could hear a pin drop. After about 30 seconds of silence, they were like, okay, great, let's move on. And it was that moment for me that I knew I have got to figure something else out. My dad is an entrepreneur, and so that's the only perspective that I had growing up. We were not sitting around the dinner table talking about the company Christmas party because there was no company Christmas party. We were talking about the importance of working hard and hustling, as my dad would say. Nobody owes you anything in this world. If you want something, you better go out and work hard for it. After I graduated undergrad, I went back to school to get a master's degree in human resources, and I was recruited by ExxonMobil, and I moved to Texas, and my career was off to the races. So I was at Exxon for three and a half years, and corporate life was what I think I expected it to be. It was pretty much run of the mill. You know, you get up, you go to work, you shake hands, and you smile, and you do your work, and you're just kind of solving problems and answering emails. Google actually reached out to me, and that was the first time I had been kind of headhunted, and so I was excited. You know, Google calls, you answer. It's a lot of money on the other side of the Google phone. I think when I started at the company, there's a lot of excitement. You go to Google, and you're in this VIP, creme de la creme crop of talent, but coming from where I come from, I always knew that there was an alternative, that this is just one way to live life, but I didn't necessarily know how it could manifest for me. I think that the slowing down that happened during the pandemic really gave me an opportunity to reflect. Is this the life that I want to live? When I left Google, it wasn't like an immediate, ah, I'm free moment. It was almost like an exhale, and I just really started to imagine, what would a life that I wanted to live look like? And I went back to the life that I saw my dad live, which was this life of choices, and this life of trying to create the world as I wanted it to be. And the delusion of entrepreneurship is that you don't know if anybody else will want to join in your little slice of the world, but you hope that they do. And in my case, when I left and started my own business, I was right. A lot of people wanted to join my world. My company is called Workolution Inc. I'm really trying to answer the question, if nobody trusts human resources, where are they going for support? And the answer to that question, we found, was nowhere. Hi. Hi, how are you? I'm great, how are you?

[00:05:14] Speaker 5: Good, thank you for jumping on with me.

[00:05:16] Speaker 1: You're very welcome. There are people who have experiences at work that they do not feel comfortable talking to HR about for fear of retaliation. And so you don't have anywhere else to go for support because there's no independent HR person that you can talk to that doesn't have a vested interest in whatever is best for your company. And that is the problem that Workolution was designed to solve.

[00:05:42] Speaker 6: Yeah, you should probably write down all of your accomplishments.

[00:05:46] Speaker 1: So that way when you go into your meeting, you can demonstrate the value that you've added to the company and therefore your ask will seem a little bit more reasonable. When I first started it, I didn't even think it was going to be this big business. I thought that I was going to start this, do it for a little bit as a side hustle, and then go back to work. But I launched it and an hour later, somebody had booked an appointment. And fast forward now, we support thousands of employees all across the country. Zoom has helped my business in a lot of ways. I think first and foremost, just using it as the software to connect and meet. Because we're a remote business, we don't have a physical office location. And so we depend on technology to keep us connected. And with technology, we're able to use things like automation, artificial intelligence to scale the business.

[00:06:36] Speaker 7: So today we want to let you know that you are not only among the top 50, but you are one of the top five.

[00:06:51] Speaker 4: So you are going to receive a $30,000 grant for your business.

[00:07:01] Speaker 8: We'll give you a minute to take all that in. Yeah, that's a lot.

[00:07:06] Speaker 1: Entrepreneurship can be a thankless, thankless, thankless job. You know, it's just a grind every single day. And you don't really get a lot of opportunities to be thanked or rewarded. And so it was just really wonderful to be acknowledged in that way.

[00:07:22] Speaker 6: I feel like I worked so hard. And it comes from a really pure place of just wanting to help other people. And I think this is just, this is just a confirmation that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. This is just a confirmation that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

[00:07:39] Speaker 1: Being a solo entrepreneur means that I have the ability to create my own reality. And for me, that's everything. Because I don't have to subscribe to what society says I should or should not be doing. The work that we do is real. Every day that we help somebody, we are successful. We've been successful since day one. We're talking to people every single day, and it's a feeling like no other.