Podcast Interview: To Grow a Business Is to Learn Out Loud
This December, Statement Co. founder Sarah Cargill sat down with Intersectional Group founder Zhou Fang for a podcast interview on The Intersection where they covered everything from storytelling to the idea that rest is lucrative.
Listen to the full podcast on Spotify:
Below is a bonus Q&A:
Zhou: Please introduce yourself and take us back to the moment when you decided to start Statement Co.?
Sarah: Thanks so much for having me Zhou!
Hello listeners, I’m Sarah Cargill, founder of Statement Co., a woman-owned and 1% for the Planet company, that designs go-to-market solutions for impact with storytelling.
We help companies bring new ideas, products, or services to life internally and externally with a mix of strategy, product, design, operations, change, and marketing.
I’m excited for this conversation and the opportunity to be here today.
I have always had a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit—spinning up small businesses in school as a kid. Shortly after undergrad, prior to an MBA, or even before a ton of real-world experience I started a business that caught the attention of leaders at Nike. It jumpstarted a full, 15-year career in corporate. Yet, I always knew I wanted to return to entrepreneurship.
While I had explored the idea many times in the last few years, I was nervous to start something again. My jaw-dropping moment that it was time came while visiting with a friend over brunch in L.A. I asked how his business was going and he said, “It’s good. I’ve still been implementing what you taught me ten years ago.” It was then that I knew I had all the tools to figure it out—again.
Zhou: You shared with me earlier that after your health journey, you learned that "rest is lucrative." Can you tell us more about that?
Sarah: Yes, I joke with close friends that I’ve been on a long fall from “boss girl” to “moss girl” for many years now.
There are two key junctures that come to mind around the idea of learning to rest—one, a long health recovery and two, a significant career pivot.
I’ve always been ambitious, career focused, and entrepreneurial. Throughout my career, I’d often work long days—taking video calls from around the world from 7am to 7pm (or later). I’d juggle multiple clients, projects, and opportunities—often to the point of sheer exhaustion.
Then, one day about 10 years ago I was rear ended and knocked out on the highway. After my injury I really clung to a sense of normalcy, which for me was operating in a burnout zone.
Yet, my brain and body couldn’t handle that level of stress anymore. It was like the universe knocked me over the head and said, “Sarah just stop, pause, listen to your body.”
It was through my two years of physical therapy (PT) that I really started to learn the notion of energy management over time or project management. I started to track where I had the energy to do something rather than whether I had the time in the day.
Yet, honestly, I remained pretty bad at energy management for many years. Fast forward about eight or nine years, I hit another one of those life moments. Yet, this time I didn't need an injury to slow me down.
I called my longtime friend and personal coach Jenna Starkey to ask for help. I said, “I know I need to make a change but I am so burnt out that I can’t even imagine what that would be.”
I knew I needed to change my behavior and environment to live differently. I didn’t want to feel so exhausted and unfulfilled all the time.
With her coaching, I took incremental steps to radically transform my life. I switched jobs. I bought a camper van. I launched a business. I began to see that I could live with adventure, creativity, and rest while also making a more-than-sustainable living.
Jenna would say “rest is lucrative” often in our sessions. I wrote it down on a sticky note—like I do with many things I’m trying to incorporate and embody. It became this sort of mantra.
I’m still re-wiring some deep-seeded beliefs …
You may think pushing past a healthy threshold to complete one more thing makes you more productive, but it has a cost. It’s OK to leave work unfinished for another day.
You don’t need to finish something to be deserving of a break. You are deserving of a break because you need or want a break.
Sitting at your computer or on your phone may feel productive, but it’s not always the highest-value thinking. Your most creative ideas come when you’ve had time to move and just be in nature.
The irony is that the more “moss girl” I get, the more authentically “boss girl” I become—because I get to create my schedule, call the shots in my business, choose my clients, and shape my investments.
Zhou: I envy your van-life! Can you tell us about it and how has it shaped your perspective about life?
Sarah: Yes! “Hashtag van life” is becoming just short of my whole personality.
My partner Jared and I swooned over tiny homes and camper vans for about eight years or so before we finally went out and bought one.
I’m slightly embarrassed to admit we went to one too many trade shows to tour and learn about them.
I had to make some significant life changes to make working, living, and traveling in the van part time a reality. Yet, now we want all of our friends to get one.
We’ve had the van for about two and a half years. In that time we’ve spent about a quarter of each year in the van, seeing about 17 national parks, and countless little cities across the country.
Here’s what I’ve learned from those experiences:
We can enjoy life with a lot less than we think. More than everything I need to live very comfortably fits in about 50 square feet on the inside of our van. The longest stretch we’ve done without all of our things at home is seven weeks—and I started to wonder why I owned all of these things.
We can build a muscle for flexibility, adaptation, and spontaneity. It’s about building a toolkit of tools, resources, and best practices so that your office and business can be anywhere you are in the world.
Stability is not something we create with jobs, homes, and people. Rather it’s a mindset we generate each day through our habits and way of being. We try to go into each unknown remembering we’re resourceful, experienced, and can figure it out.
Some of my best, most lucrative business ideas, messaging pivots, or strategic unlocks have come on the tail end of a weeklong van adventure unplugged from devices and tuned into nature. So, arguably, those outdoor van adventures are part of strategic planning for my business.
There are kind, hospitable, generous people everywhere we go, in each state. At our core I think we all want similar things—safety, connection, care—albeit we have wildly different ways of getting there. When we engage with folks across the country, we center on the common ground.
Zhou: Do you have any advice for solopreneurs?
Sarah: You don’t have to have it all figured out, organized, and polished before you get started.
As a consultant, you can open your doors for business with nothing more than a registered LLC and a LinkedIn page talking about the problems you solve.
Even your business name can change later if you don’t like it. It’s all just time, paperwork, and dollars.
The important thing is to get started, put yourself out there, learn, adapt, and grow. Your business will grow faster with experiments and feedback happening in the real world.
Don’t let any one component keep you from taking a step forward.
Listen to the full podcast and subscribe to The Intersection by Intersectional Group on Spotify.