Resilience, leadership, and personal growth

Hannah McQueen likes a big goal. The more audacious the better, and preferably several big hairy ones at once.

Right now, the personal finance expert and founder of enable.me is re-writing her best-selling book, training for the Berlin marathon, establishing a farm, and working on growing the business from helping tens of thousands of people to helping hundreds of thousands.

“I’m a ‘go big or go home’ kind of person” she laughs, “Because I believe if you’re going to try, you should make the payoff worth the effort!”

Phew. Hannah’s boundless energy is enough to make you wonder what you’re doing with your life. But we need to rewind a little.

The year is 2007 and, unknown to most people, the Global Financial Crisis is brewing – and so is Hannah McQueen’s big business idea.

She and her husband Billy have just bought their first home and they’re expecting their first child, son Cameron.

As a chartered accountant, Hannah decided to put her numbers-nous to work figuring out how to pay off the mortgage faster. But true to that ‘go big’ nature she didn’t just tinker with spreadsheets, she approached Dr Jamie Sneddon at the University of Auckland and, 8 pages of calculus later, they had determined the fastest way to repay a mortgage with the least interest cost and the most flexibility. She patented the formula.

“I thought I’d cracked it, but for the formula to work you need a cash surplus – and I didn’t have one. I was earning the most I’d ever earned; I could write a budget and colour code a budget – but I just wasn’t inclined to stick to it!”

She had a hunch she wasn’t the only one in that situation, so her next mission became to figure out why – which opened her eyes to the role psychology plays in financial success.
She set about cracking the code of why we do the things we do – or perhaps why we don’t do the things we know we should do – when it comes to money.

“I’m a shopper, and despite being financially literate and having the best of intentions, simply knowing what to do was not enough to actually make it me do it! So, I wanted to know what would shift the dial”.

The result was enable.me and its coaching-based approach to financial advice. They refer to themselves as ‘financial personal trainers’ – their coaches work with you to optimise every element of your financial life, ensure you achieve your goals and stretch you to achieve more. Their success lies in focussing not just on the numbers but on what motivates you, your financial tendencies, your mindset, and your money personality.

“What motivates me as a shopper who likes big goals would possibly frustrate someone who was a saver or a plodder and terrify someone who was very risk averse”.
What works for each individual is different, depending on how you’re wired. “Sometimes once you know what to do, and the sequence of actions required, you’re away laughing.”
But for many, it’s inherently emotional, and often confronting.

“You need to feel safe in the process,” Hannah says, “And beyond that, you need to believe that your effort can translate into results before you’re willing to bother trying. When your history suggests it’s not possible – that is, you’ve never managed to make progress before – that can make you hesitant to start”.

So erm, how do you change that mindset when you don’t have the best track record?

“I think the most powerful tool to change your mindset is seeing evidence that it is possible. So, we ask a client to adopt our proven methodology, and lean into it. To trust the process and their coach for the first three months and when they see how quickly their efforts make a difference, a more positive money mindset is much easier to adopt.”

Launching the business in the midst of the financial crisis, with her infant son quite literally on her hip, proved no impediment to its growth.

“I’d fly to Wellington to see clients with (son) Cameron in tow. We’d take the bus into the city because as a start-up we didn’t have the money for taxis. But you make it work”.

Levelling up

Hannah’s belief in the power of a coach is not a case of ‘do as I say, not as I do’. In fact, she has more than one.

Even as a financial coach, she uses one herself “because accountability is crucial when you want to make sure things get done!” she explains.

A running coach helped her knock off her first marathon (in New York, no less) – and is now helping her train for her second (Berlin this time).

Then, as the enable.me’s growth demanded more and more of her, and after 2020 and the pandemic’s upheaval left her feeling drained, she employed a business leadership coach.

“You can get lost in the intensity of business growth” she explains “You lose time for yourself, you lose time to reflect, to make intentional choices. So much of what is important to you isn’t done deliberately because you don’t have much time to be deliberate. So, I wanted to take it back to ‘why am I doing this, why am I here, what does success look like and what do I want to define me?’
“I knew I needed to invest in myself, and understand what I stood for, so I could hold on to that when times were challenging, and it could feed back into the behaviours required to get me there. I also needed to find that ‘6th gear’ to fuel me for the next step forward with enable.me”.

The business needed fuel, too. While it was undoubtedly successful with thousands of clients singing its praises, Hannah was eyeing even bigger and hairier goals.

“I knew we were only scratching the surface of the number of people who could benefit from our approach. But to reach more people and that ‘next level’ – that requires infrastructure and capital, as well as the space to be able to think creatively”.

Hannah decided that she, and enable.me, needed a partner.

Lockdown conversations

In the midst of yet another Auckland lockdown, Hannah was approached by Mark Ennis, the Managing Director of AdviceFirst, an investment and risk advice company based in Wellington, and owned by listed company AMP.

“Mark said, I hear you’re the best in the business at what you do – to which I replied, ‘you heard right!’ – because I truly do believe that”.

Over many conversations they discovered the two companies had similar values and they shared a desire to put many more people on the path to a better financial future.
In April last year, the two companies merged – a move that’s has helped set in motion that next phase of expansion.

Parent company AMP is trusted by many of New Zealand’s biggest employers to provide their staff with KiwiSaver and insurance and now plans to level up that support through a new workplace financial wellbeing platform which capitalises on the expertise of all three companies.

“Together enable.me, AdviceFirst and AMP are aiming to help hundreds of thousands of people with Moneyfit.me. It encompasses wraparound financial literacy support through digital coaching, online learning, an intuitive tracking app and masterclasses.”

“So many employers are finding that staff are financially stressed, which feeds into lots of negative outcomes like poorer health, lower productivity, and higher staff turnover. Most people assume earning more solves all that, but once you get past the point where you can make ends meet, more money is seldom the answer. You need to fix your financial foundations first, and that’s what we’re doing with Moneyfit.me’.

The programme is designed to be accessible, digestible, and relatable. “It democratises financial success” Hannah says. “I want us to be able to help all Kiwis get ahead faster, whereas to date that has been limited to those who have money already or who are on the property ladder. The goal with Moneyfit.me is that it will give hope to our young people who right now feel as though everything is out of reach and don’t know where to start. I think it has the potential to help bridge the widening gap between rich and poor.”

It also embraces the no-nonsense, plain-speaking approach that Hannah has become renowned for with her clients and in her many media appearances.

“If I can’t explain it to you in a way that you understand, well I’m not explaining it right – and that is the standard we hold all of our coaches and advisers to”.

Building Resilience

Building a company from the ground up and managing it through both a financial crisis and a pandemic (while raising two children) requires a significant amount of resilience.
So too does being a woman trying to do things differently in an industry that’s still dominated by men.

“You get used to hearing ‘no’ and for people to underestimate you or doubt you can do it”.

But Hannah has a secret weapon in avoiding making other people’s doubts her own – her Mum, Lor, who recently retired from enable.me having worked in the business since its inception.

“I think you can achieve your goals a lot faster when you have someone who can be really direct in their observations, but you’re not offended by the bluntness of those observations! Mum is that for me.”

She adds “My husband is a brilliant sounding board too – but he’s possibly too gentle with me!”

Resilience also has an important role in your finances and is a key pillar of the work enable.me’s coaches do with their clients.

“Most people don’t have the financial resilience required to be able to be able to weather the curveballs and financial sucker punches that life inevitably delivers.”

While people often associate financial resilience with having emergency savings as a safety net – and that is important – it goes beyond that.

“Financial resilience is also crucial when trying to grow wealth, it doesn’t just de-risk the impact of the different decisions people might make, it can also allow them to be more ambitious and still feel safe in the process.”

Looking to the future

Hannah’s entire career has revolved around helping others map out their futures and prepare for retirement, so what does she see in her future?

Well, it involves a few things she once would never have imagined!

“We’re getting some Kunekune pigs, I’m actually enjoying feeding the chickens and our little Fox Terrier, Chi Chi has helped me overcome a lifelong fear of dogs. It’s not something I saw coming, but it’s nice to be able to surprise yourself – and your partner – by being capable of 180-degree change!”

But don’t confuse that idyllic picture with Hannah putting herself out to pasture.

True to her ‘go big or go home’ nature, far from taking her foot off the gas, she’s putting the pedal to the metal.

“My goal is to create a global financial coaching business” she says, her energy infectious. “I want society to be better off for my contribution”.

Given enable.me’s partnership with AMP and AdviceFirst, and Hannah’s voracious appetite for audacious goals, you wouldn’t be wise to bet against it.

For more information head to www.enable.me