Champion Story 24 | Eva Wong
Recorded on December 20, 2018
Biography: Eva is Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Borrowell, a financial technology company dedicated to making financial stability possible for everyone. Borrowell offers free credit scores, report monitoring, and AI-driven financial product recommendations. With well over one million members, Borrowell is one of the largest consumer fintech companies in Canada.
Borrowell has won numerous awards, including being named one of the top 100 fintech companies in the world by KPMG, ranking 4th on the Deloitte Technology Fast 50™ list of fastest-growing companies in Canada, and making App Annie's list of Breakout Finance Apps for 2019.
Eva is an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® winner in Ontario and was named one of the Standout 35 on the global Women in FinTech Powerlist. She is a frequent speaker in the tech and business communities and is passionate about increasing diversity and inclusion in both arenas. Eva holds degrees from the Kennedy School at Harvard University and the Smith School of Business at Queen's University, where she serves on the Advisory Board.
Thank you for making the time. One of the things that people had said about you is, "Eva speaks at a lot of different events and she talks about self-care and balance." Those are the kinds of things that we may not necessarily talk about but are absolutely necessary to how we can operate.
A lot of people are in the tech founder startup community, it's their first startup, it's been 6 months or 12 months, and I remember what it was like back then. But looking back, the pace that we were going at was just not sustainable for four or five years. There are habits that form and culture that forms. My overall theme when I talk to earlier-stage founders is that this is a marathon, not a sprint if you want it to be successful.
It really came, not just from my self-care point of view, but also trying to frame it in the context of what more people care about, which is business success. You can't make your business successful if you're burning yourself out and you're burning your team out.
There’s a study that I've been telling people to look at. In Silicon Valley, there was this study done in May 2018 and the stat that came out for chronic burnout was 57% of that entire workforce. That's a lot of productivity that's lost.
The other thing that's really important, is that institutional knowledge. It's really painful to lose someone who's been with your company for a significant period of time. If you're losing to burnout, that's a real shame because as you bring new people on, they don't have some of that same history.
There are tons of studies that talk about the cost of turnover, and if you're able to recruit and retain great talent, then it definitely has a business impact.
Slowly, as an industry, we're starting to talk about self-care and burnout. You've been one of the people who early on, had already noticed entrepreneurship being a marathon, not a sprint.
I'm curious to learn more about you. You're doing all these incredible things with your company; how did you get here?
I would say, I don't have a background in financial services, I don't have a background in technology, I don't have a background in startups. I joined the co-founding team of Borrowell with our CEO, Andrew, after maternity leave with my second child. Definitely not the typical story. I just jumped right in.
There was a ton of work to be done, there was only the co-founding team. And at the very beginning, an MBA intern and then we had one employee. It really was, anything that needed to be done. We had to figure out whether it was building up our website or any of that stuff. There were definitely a lot of late nights, especially in those first six months. At the same time, I had two kids. I had a son who had just started junior kindergarten. I had a daughter who still wasn't sleeping great. She was just over a year old and I felt the pressure of meal planning and all this other stuff that was at home.
I burned myself out within that first six months. I got pretty sick. Just worn down kind of sick, like not sleeping enough. That moment was when I got pinkeye... but in two eyes, which I had never heard of before. Like, “pinkeye” is always singular. I had pink eyes.
You can imagine. It was a disaster. I wasn't able to work for a couple of weeks. I literally was just at home. I came in one day, people were like, "Can you please go home? You don't look good, please don't get me sick.” That was a bit of a wake-up call like this is not helpful. It's not helpful to work extra hard.
I would say two, was the work front and the homefront. I had set an expectation for myself at home that also was not sustainable. It was a realization that I couldn't work that many hours without a break, and there were things at home that I needed to learn to let go of. I had a hard time with that. There were things around like the proportion of things that were homemade. I made my own laundry detergent. There were crazy things I was doing that I was like, "I just need to let this go.”
I chuckle because that's such a founder thing to do. It's like, "I'm gonna go make my own laundry detergent. I'm gonna go figure it out.”
Well, I was doing it. Those things were, again, when I was on leave and I wasn't working. There were more things I could do at home, but I was holding myself to the same standard when not working. All the stuff I was doing at home and trying to keep up that same pace, which is not possible.
Thank you for sharing that as well. The last two months, people are saying that "Well, being a woman in tech running a company, there's this pressure to try to be everything,” as in you're Supermom and Superfounder, trying to navigate those waters.
One of the things that people are asking: "Okay. How do we navigate that?" or "How do we balance those different expectations in a way?"
Yeah. Something that can be very dangerous that people do, especially women, is they compare the time they spend at work to someone who has no family obligation and they compare themselves from a family home perspective to someone who has no outside work obligations. If you want to compare yourself to somebody, compare yourself to a human, not someone who mythically spends 100% of the time on family and 100% of the time on work, right?
It's helpful for people to think through what their own priorities are. Take that step back to what would make them happy, and then try to model their life around that and live that out for a little bit. If not, then change it around, whether that's the balance of nights out or the time spent with family.
I've set some rules for myself around limiting the number of nights out a week I'm away, and then if I'm out, I've chosen to be out. That's a choice I've made. I shouldn't feel guilty by not being home because I've decided there's a certain number of nights I'm willing to be out. I don't feel guilty. I know that can be harder for other people, but I think it's a way of trying.
What was really helpful for me as I spent a week just tracking all my time, and so I had myself a spreadsheet and I tracked it in half-hour increments. I tracked how many hours I spent with family, how many hours I spent at work. And the family time actually adds up quite a bit. If there's an hour in the morning and two hours at night, two or three nights for the week, plus most of the time on the weekend, you end up spending almost 40 hours of time with your family.
No one who spends almost 40 hours a week at work would say, "Oh, I hardly work.” You would say, "I work a full-time job.”
That was helpful for me. I sort of felt guilty because I wasn't spending a ton of time with them, where they're at school anyways for all of that time. It was really helpful for me to be like, "No. Over the course of the week, I spent 35 to 40 hours with my kids.” I see them a ton and they're fine, and I'm happy with that balance. It's like if you're not happy with what you're doing, try to restructure your life around it and be really efficient. When I’m at work, I try to be really efficient and present, and when I’m not working I also try to be present with family and friends.
You have such a clear sense around priorities and boundaries, of knowing what's important, but then knowing when to say no. What's helped you build that capacity? How do you build that capacity in yourself?
It's hard to say no to things, for sure. It is a really important thing to do and it's a really important thing to model to the team. It's one of the biggest pitfalls of an early-stage company is to say yes to everything and not be focused on what it is you want to do. What are the three really great things that we're actually gonna execute on in a really amazing way, as opposed to doing a hundred good things in a way that's subpar?
The other thing that was helpful, is that of the founding team we all have kids. It is still important to us that we spend time with our families, so we all left the office, went home, and had dinner with our families. We get back online if we needed to, but we had a break for a couple of hours and we were all doing it.
I didn't feel like I was the only one leaving the office at a certain time and was leaving everyone behind. It's helpful for anyone that's a parent or just wants to have a life outside of work. Have those conversations and be really clear about when they're available and when they're not available.
You know, it's something we don't talk about in the industry. Many people already have a family or they want to start a family. I feel like that's something that other people can also learn from your company, the fact that your team has conversations about this.
We've had feedback as well from other members of the team to be like, "I'm so glad that you leave at 5:30.” It helps other people to be like, "Okay. This gives me permission to have a life outside of work.”
The other thing I'm curious to ask about your journey as well… When you reflect back on the different stepping stones that led you to become an entrepreneur, what's been the most surprising part?
One of the things that have surprised me is how much the role changes over time. Not even just from four and a half years ago, but even now at the end of the year, December through January, all the things I was doing that I no longer do.
There's a constant re-evaluation of what should I be doing? What can someone else do? What's the best use of my time? And reorganizing or reprioritizing my time, which I do on a monthly basis. II sort of felt like, "Oh, you're a founder.” The title is the same but it has changed so much, even over the course of 12 months.
Before that transition, when you look at the founder journey, is it what you expected? How's your experience of it?
One thing I would say is that it’s very emotional. Compared to a corporate job, where whether I show up or don't show up, the wheels keep turning. At a startup, I was surprised at how every day something dramatic seems to happen, whether it's on the team or what a competitor does, there's so much up and down.
I remember my husband at the end of the day, he’d ask, "Okay, so what happened today?" because it seemed like every day, there was something that happened. The highs are very high and the lows are very low. It's definitely much more of an emotional rollercoaster than I had anticipated or realized.
What's been the hardest part of the journey?
That's a good question. This is a misquote, but I like to say. “There are only two emotions: euphoria and despair.”
I'd say there are so many things that are so positive, and the upside of the emotional roller-coaster is you feel it because you care about it. I would much prefer to be feeling the highs and feeling the lows than just to be plodding along in some corporate job I don't care about.
I do think it's important to manage it and to be able to sit back and be like, "Yes, the highs are high and the lows are low, but this isn't really the end of the world.” You deserve to step back and look at the overall picture. Hard things are often people-related; it's hiring someone who doesn't work out or having someone on the team where there's no longer a role for them. Those are always tough.
We celebrate company anniversaries at our weekly team meetings. On the month that someone either has been with us for a year, two years, or whatever it is, three different people will stand up and say something about they appreciate or what they like about the person. I think it's so great, as you see the relationships form between different team members and realize how much people are appreciated, how much they're growing, and how much they're contributing to the team and the culture.
You seem very grounded. How do you do that? What anchors you, especially when the lows are low?
There's a couple of things. First is a bit of perspective, and whether that's more of a global perspective. For me, my faith is pretty important to me and I also spent a bunch of time living outside Canada and understanding the real challenges that people have.
The second thing is it's important to have a life outside of work because if all you have is your company, then, of course, all of your eggs are in that basket and that's your life. It becomes that if the company fails, it means I'm a failure and I have nothing outside. It's important for people that have family and friends and things they care about outside of work because it gives you that perspective on life.
Here's one thing I wonder about you as a person. What are your values? How does it show up in your life or in your work?
Yeah, that's a great question. First of all, my marriage and my family and friend relationships are really important. That's what makes life what it is, are relationships.
I put work relationships in there as well because you spend a ton of time with people at work and there's a lot of gratification that comes from doing things together. Relationships are, first and foremost, really important. The second thing that really drives me is one of the mottos that I live by, “To those who much is given, much is expected.” I do think I've been given a ton in terms of being born in Canada, the education that I've gotten, the relative stability of my life. But I do feel the need to give back and don't want to waste potential.
Those are things that drive me, wanting to have the most impact that I can have with what's been given to me.
Thank you for sharing that. I spoke about this when we first met, but I respect you not only as a founder but as a woman in FinTech. Setting that ground for so many of us as well.
That's one of the big reasons why I accept speaking in panels. I do want to share the story, but I didn't have any background in it [tech]. You can be a woman without a tech background and can be a successful founder because I didn't see that much of that in the early days. People ask why they aren’t more women in fintech or in tech in general. I don't think that most people are looking at it and then saying, "Oh no, this isn't for me.”
For most people, it never crosses their mind if you're a 35-year old with two kids and you just come in and join a startup. Having more people out there who have that background would say, "Joining a startup or a scaleup is the best experience of my life and the best career move that I could've made," will hopefully encourage more diversity within the space.
Thank you because we need more stories of that out there. When we go into the founder journey, there's the highs and the lows and the unpredictableness of it. You are a founder who models well-being at Borrowell, not just at the executive level, but at the employee level too.
What do you think we can do as a community, to move mental health forward?
I think Jodi at #movethedial is doing great things. Ben Baldwin with founder forums [The Founder City Project], is also doing terrific things. I've really appreciated being part of the founder’s forum, where we have seven people. We get together on a regular basis and it's very confidential and very real, so you can be authentic. There's a hype machine out there around that you have to be killing it all the time.
It's nice to have that group of founders who know what you're going through and you can be completely honest with and hear how they're doing as well. You realize that it's not all sunshine or roses all the time, and there are some really hard times. That's definitely been helpful to have a community of other people who can be real and authentic and I really appreciate and give kudos to Ben and to Jodi for creating those communities, those groups.
There are people who also may be reading this and thinking, “I'm in the starting stages of getting mentors or advisors.” Based on your journey and what you've seen, how do you go about building those deep relationships that become your support system?
One of the things that I found helpful is not to focus on trying to have a single mentor who's going to meet with you on a weekly basis. Build a collection of different people that you have a good enough relationship with, that you can go to and ask about specific things.
That is less of a burden on that person and much less of an ask, and you get more specialized advice. You put a lot of pressure on yourself to find the perfect mentor that knows all of the things that you want to learn and has great chemistry. It's easier to have a collection of different people that you go to for different things.
It also means you got a broader network of people invested in your life. That is easier than finding a single person that I meet with.
That's such an interesting approach, this idea of having the specializations, different people with different things.
If someone's reaching out to me and they come to me with a specific ask, where I feel I can actually help them, I'm much more willing to say yes than just a general coffee. If someone said, "Look, I'm a COO of a company. We're gonna be scaling up really quickly in the next year. I'd love to get your thoughts on that.”
I would think, "Okay. Well, that's something I've done before. That's something I can help you with.”
For any founders or investors who are in that journey right now, what would be a parting message?
Everyone talks about how talent is the most important thing for their business. You have the best team, the best founding team. People are very proud of their people and their talent. If that's true and people really believe that it's the talent that will get them to where they need to get to, then it is really important to invest and focus on the difficult side of it.
We hired someone to head up talent for us relatively early when we were just over 20 people. It's crucial that the person is part of the management team and that we're thinking really strategically about our people. We've also been super fortunate to find someone, and she’s now our Chief People Officer.
Regardless of where you're at, if the talent is really what's gonna get you there, then you have to think about how you're investing in the talent. Make sure that they're in a space that they can be productive, that there's a workplace that's free of harassment, that’s safe, that's respectful. Where people really feel they can raise their voice, contribute in a way that makes sense.
They are gonna be there for as long as they want to be there.
Thank you so much for your time, and for your support as well.
It's a pleasure. What you're doing is so important and I'm happy to support you however I can. Thanks for leading the charge.