Sarah Davidson has had a lot of titles in her life. If you’re one of her 84 thousand Instagram followers, you might know her as Spoonful of Sarah. Or perhaps you know her as the irreverent and charismatic founder of Matcha Maiden and its physical embodiment, Matcha Mylkbar, the plant-based St Kilda cafe that’s wildly Instagrammable. Before founding the company in 2014, she was Sarah Holloway, mergers and acquisitions lawyer. And more recently, since selling Matcha Maiden to a longtime investor and pulling off the second major pivot of her career, she’s become Sarah of Seize The Yay - podcast host, author, and founder of a movement that is all about chasing your dream life.

But don’t for a moment think that this is the story of yet another highly curated, privileged mirage of a charmed life. Sarah is a realist, and there’s a reason she’s been described as one of the hardest workers in the industry. “Your dream life isn’t a static, permanent destination you arrive at one day and live in forever”, she tells us, and the proof is in the (plant-based) pudding. “Successful people stay successful because they let go of needing to be good at everything straight away and always.” 

These days, Sarah’s self-selected moniker is funtrepreneur, a word that “if I’m honest”, she says, she initially chose because “the injection of humour took the seriousness out of calling myself an ‘entrepreneur’ – if I’m not seriously calling myself an entrepreneur, then it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work out.” Although, it seems to be working out. We’re talking about the woman who had her bachelorette party thrown by none other than Sir Richard Branson, on his own private island, after all.

If there was one thing we wanted to know from Sarah Davidson, it was how to know when - and how - to take a big risk and leave your ‘dream job’. For the next dream, of course. She’s done it twice, so her advice is sage: “if you have the chance to minimise the risk as much as you can first, then absolutely do that – the more capital you can save and time you can give your side hustle to prove itself as a concept, the better.” Ultimately, for her at least, it’s all about something she calls ‘future regret management’ (read on for the details - it’s a solid, simple, no-brainer to come back to for every big decision).

And in a world obsessed with the ‘personal brand’, we wanted to know how Sarah took a Matcha tea business and, in what she calls a happy accident, leveraged it into a booming personal brand that’s seen her turn just about everything she touches into gold. Once the Matcha-green residue rubs off, that is. “There is a place for polished, glossy professionalism”, she tells us, because “you don’t really want to buy from a business that looks like it hasn’t got two clues to rub together. But sometimes the best way to connect with other people is through the more relatable, messier nitty gritty.”

Somehow Sarah Davidson manages to be both glossy and relatable. So if you’ve ever questioned whether your life was living up to the dream, or wondered whether a leap was ripe for the taking, if you can change your mind twice, or invent a new profession (funtrepreneur, anyone?) then this interview is for you.

Purchase Sarah’s book Seize The Yay here. 

You first left your job as a lawyer to go full time ‘funtrepreneur’ with Matcha Maiden. It’s been about 6 years and you’ve just recently sold Matcha Maiden and gone with Seize the Yay. Is it fair to say that you’ve now quit your dream job twice?

I hadn’t actually thought of it that way until now, but yes! And that in itself epitomises one of the main tenets of my Seize the Yay philosophy – that your dream life isn’t a static, permanent destination you arrive at one day and live in forever. Rather, your dream life unravels in chapters that evolve and develop as you do along with the world around you. I definitely spent those first few years with Matcha Maiden patting myself on the back for leaving my comfort zone and taking a leap of faith, truly believing I’d found my purpose and would never have to experience that kind of uncomfortable learning curve again. But that’s the thing with comfort zones, inevitably they will catch up with you and you’ll eventually start to feel that agitation for new growth and change again. I hesitated for quite some time worrying that I was being an impatient millennial, always looking for the next best thing, but I realised I had given Matcha Maiden five great years and now the business had outgrown our skills and ability to take it to the next level, just as we had outgrown it. 

It’s also funny that you mention that first jump feeling like a dream, which it absolutely did, but at the time I wouldn’t actually characterise leaving as going off to ‘live my dreams’. In fact, I was so narrowly focused on the five-to-ten-year plan I had laid out for myself that I hadn’t even allowed myself to dream beyond that context. And that’s another part of my Seize the Yay philosophy that I’m now at pains to emphasise to others – unless you’re actively unhappy, you often won’t make a change but if you’re okay or fine, that comfort is usually enough to stop you dreaming of anything else. I often refer to the chain of events that sparked the beginning of Matcha Maiden as a ‘happy accident’ without which I would never have known that this was my dream life, because I’d never considered anything else. So, I’m not encouraging anyone to leave their job because that equals happiness, but simply to consider whether you’re on autopilot as you go through life and break that circuit to really enquire whether you’re seizing your yay. If you go back to your life exactly as it was before, at least you’ll know you chose it rather than ending up there by default.

Tell me about the term funtrepreneur and why it sums up what you do so well?

If I’m honest, I think I initially chose that word because the injection of humour took the seriousness out of calling myself an ‘entrepreneur’. Self-doubt is something I talk about ALL the time, and under the surface, that probably drove me to choose something so light-hearted – if I’m not seriously calling myself an entrepreneur, then it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work out. 

But on a less subconscious level, the transition from old corporate me to new business me involved learning not to take life SO incredibly seriously and embrace play, fun and lightness. I was so rigidly obsessed with certainty, structure and avoiding risk at all costs, but quickly learnt to embrace spontaneity, open mindedness and actually enjoying the process. I love puns and word play too (part of my creative side that got let out of box again after decades of being stifled), so I wanted to create a word that instantly conjured the idea of joy as well as just hard work and achievement. Hence, funtrepreneur was born! And now that my work has evolved into full-time seizing of the yay, it’s even more appropriate!

I know you’ve told the story of leaving your corporate lawyer life behind to found Matcha Maiden many times, but I’m really interested in the moment you decided to take the plunge...

I'd just received a recurring order from Urban Outfitters that I knew I could only fulfil if either myself or my husband and business partner went full time. Had I not received that order, I absolutely would have tried to keep doing both as long as I could, and I still recommend people do that if they’re working on a side hustle that they eventually want to jump to. I’m obviously an advocate of taking a risk and making the jump, but if you have the chance to minimise the risk as much as you can first, then absolutely do that – the more capital you can save and time you can give your side hustle to prove itself as a concept, the better. AND don’t forget that some people prefer to keep a side hustle on the side – you don’t have to go full time to enjoy having a creative project alongside your main gig.  

For me, at the time, I wasn’t even actively trying to leave my job because I had never even considered that leaving might be a possibility. BUT there inevitably comes a point for everyone where the two pathways become mutually exclusive meaning you can no longer do both – either because logistically it’s impossible or because you start doing both terribly and neither will do any better without you making a choice. For us, that Urban Outfitters contract was the former – it was logistically impossible to say yes without one of us going full time to pack the bags (which we were still doing manually at the time) on time to meet their deadline. Suddenly, a decision really was forced on me – say no and accept that Matcha Maiden could never grow any bigger than it was OR say yes and give it the chance to surprise us. 

I tend to make big decisions in my life based on ‘future regret management’ – what will future me regret more? And what’s the once in a lifetime opportunity vs something I could come back to any time? While I may have lost a bit of time or momentum compared to my colleagues, law as an industry was never going to go anywhere so I could always come back to that later on (even if it was scary and overwhelming). On the other hand, when would we ever get the chance again to continue on this path with a start-up that was basically first-to-market (at least in matcha’s more recent revival) with an already market leading position and no obvious competitors? Never. If I left law and even if it was hard to get back into assuming things didn’t work out, I’d never regret giving Matcha Maiden a go. If I stayed and cut off Matcha Maiden just when it was starting to boom, I’d always wonder. So it was hard and I agonised a lot at the time, but in hindsight it wasn’t actually a hard decision.  

What was that first pivot like? When you decided to go all in with Matcha Maiden, were you terrified, or were you confident that you would make it work?

Absolutely terrified and constantly worried it would all topple over leaving me to crawl back to the law firm with my tail between my legs! However, although I think we too readily assign all success to ‘luck’; we were DEFINITELY lucky with the timing of our launch hitting the market just when everyone had heard of matcha, but no-one was selling it. That put us in the incredibly fortunate position of having such rapid growth in those first few years that we didn’t have much time to think about failing because it kept growing before our eyes – the bigger problems in the early days were just keeping up with demand and working out how to actually run a business. The self-doubt was more that we would ruin everything rather than that the idea would fail. It wasn’t until that exponential ‘boom' curve started to stabilise that the fear of not being able to maintain growth or survive past the`fad’ phase of matcha started to creep in. Worrying that we couldn’t continue to pivot and hold our place in the market hit later at that three-to-four-year mark.

It must have been a different kind of challenge to sell Matcha Maiden. Having pivoted once before you knew what that involved, but was it a wrench to sell a brand that was so linked with your identity?

Such an interesting question and I was absolutely expecting to feel the bittersweet pang of letting go of our ‘first baby’. But, interestingly, the fact that neither Nic or I really did experience that heartbreak was solid proof that we were ready to move on, and had been for a while. If we’d sold a year earlier, I think we would have really struggled to let go of control and trust that someone else could maintain her brand voice, integrity and community. By the time the deal actually went through, it had become clearer and clearer that we were no longer the best guardians for the next chapter of growth and that our lack of experience was holding the business back just as its new demands were holding us back from the parts of business that we’re really good at. I did worry initially that sales would suffer for us no longer being owners, but actually my proudest moment was realising that it wasn’t as linked to our identity as I thought, and we had grown something with longevity. We’ve also stayed very close to the new owners (who were investors for a year first anyway) and had a very extended handover so things would be seamless for customers which has really helped.

You started with product, built a profile from that, and then let the product go to focus on your personal brand. Talk me through that process?

Again, another very happy accident from this story! Coming from a corporate background where social media isn’t really used as a business tool (especially six years ago now), I was very anonymous and behind the scenes when we started Matcha Maiden and let the product speak for itself. It wasn’t until a few years in that I started to get asked to speak at local business events or networking groups that I even realised I needed a separate place for my personal thoughts and reflections. I realised very quickly that there was a place to talk about the behind the scenes of running the business and a very different place to talk about the behind the scenes of being a business owner. 

More and more I’d be asked about impostor syndrome, self-doubt, burn out and things that don’t really belong on your business page – imagine, ‘sorry you didn’t get your order today because I’m in the foetal position with my period’. There is a place for polished, glossy professionalism (you don’t really want to buy from a business that looks like it hasn’t got two clues to rub together), but sometimes the best way to connect with other people is through the more relatable, messier nitty gritty. So, my personal profile started to grow as a place for me to share the less glamorous parts of transitioning into business, which people really resonated with, and I became really passionate about. And that was the VERY early beginnings of Seize the Yay! 

As a professional job-quitter, what’s your advice to someone who might be considering taking a leap of faith? How do you know when it’s time, and what do you think you need to do to make the transition as smooth as possible?

Hahaha that’s even better than funtrepreneur! I’m definitely a proponent of shedding the fear and self-doubt to take a leap of faith, but that doesn’t mean you can’t minimise the risk of that jump as much as possible first. I started out very gung-ho about leaving corporate to run your own show, but I’ve also realised that above all, ‘seizing the yay’ looks different for everyone and some people would HATE the life structure of working for yourself. So, also consider very carefully whether you’d actually enjoy running your own show full-time or whether you’re just doing it because everyone thinks it’s the answer to happiness. I’ve had people leave their jobs and be so distracted from their actual talent by having to wear all the hats suddenly that they go back to their jobs OR people turn their talents into a hustle but adding a budget, brief and deadline kills the joy of that talent altogether. So leaving your job is not ALWAYS the answer – the answer is what makes you most joyful as a unique individual.

If that IS leaving your job, however, I’d say make sure you’re surrounded by the right people because it’s bloody scary and you’ll have many moments of double guessing your decision, so you need people who believe in you to push you back onto the right path. Also come back to those questions about what future you might regret and what you might never have the chance to do again. The best question I ask myself when I’m about to take a big leap nowadays is, ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ And usually, it’s nowhere near as bad as you actually think. I think we’re much more scared to look like a failure than we are to actually fail – if you knew you could fail without anyone knowing, I think we’d all try EVERYTHING without a worry. So if you can let go of worrying about looking silly or being a beginner, you’ll be so much better off!

I’m interested in how you plan for the future and set goals. You’re obviously not risk-averse but do you believe it’s important to have goals and know where you’re heading, or do you think that can block you off from possibilities?

I think goals are really important to give you some direction and structure, because when you work for yourself without any forced performance reviews or markers that a year is passing, it can all turn into a blur pretty quickly. Just as I was pretty busy but in no particular direction in the law firm, the same thing can happen in business where you’re furiously working away but not getting very far. 

BUT I also think those goals have to be very flexible – sometimes you hold onto a goal so tightly that you miss out on all the other, better goals that might appear unexpectedly because the world is a fascinating fast-moving place at the moment. Like you said, goals sometimes can block you off from other possibilities and countless times amazing things have popped up that I didn’t even know I was aiming for because I didn’t know they existed! Especially with how much uncertainty we’ve been thrown into since the beginning of COVID19, it’s even harder to make solid plans or clear goals, and being too rigid can also lead to a lot of disappointment or feelings of failure if you don’t achieve those things. So, I tend to have very broadly framed goals for the year or month or week, rather than super specific things that depend on certain circumstances. In normal times, I have very clear goals that I write out and review regularly. But this year, I’d say just go easy on yourself – I’m really trying to surrender to the idea that it’s okay not to have too much of a plan this year and to take it more day by day as we navigate these weird times. 

Through your podcast Seize The Yay you’ve interviewed some incredible people. Is there an attribute or an attitude that stands out to you as something common amongst successful people?

The willingness to try new things and not worry about failing. And similarly, a very healthy relationship to self-doubt. Nobody feels no self-doubt, which was a fascinating learning in itself, but successful people learn not to let that dictate their decisions. Rather, they see it as a healthy sign that they’re not complacent and are doing something outside their comfort zone, then move on and do the thing anyway. When it comes to trying new things, self-doubt could keep you in a comfortable, familiar realm forever meaning you’d never grow or learn anything new again. Successful people stay successful because they let go of needing to be good at everything straight away and always – they are willing to keep stepping a toe into new waters to continue learning and evolving and it’s been so fascinating to see that really no-one has a clue what they’re doing but that’s what’s exciting. 

While law might seem to have nothing to do with Matcha, what did being a lawyer teach you about running a business? Are there any skills that really applied to both roles?

EVERYTHING! I truly believe nothing is ever a waste if you learn something and you ALWAYS learn something if you look hard enough. But law in particular gives you so many skills that are transferable to anything you do in life – critical thinking, organisation and time management, persuasion, negotiating, writing articulately, the list is endless. It also gives you an incredible network of people to draw on (as does every experience if you bother to invest in new relationships and conversations). And being able to read our contracts has saved as a BUTTLOAD of money!

Finally, I’d love to know what’s your current dream job?

Honestly, what I do right now. Building the Seize the Yay community or ‘yayborhood’ around storytelling on the podcast, writing in my book, and physical cues for joy like the jewellery and quote of the day flip books, feels like the reason I was put on this Earth. I’m totally aware that might change and evolve again and again as time passes, but for now, this feels pretty damned perfect. ALTHOUGH, if I could get paid to read crime novels (but not review them or write them, just enjoy them) and travel widely at the same time, I mean I wouldn’t say no to that either.