Sweeten Founder Shares How She Rises to Meet Every New Learning Curve With Confidence
Sweeten Founder and trained architect Jean Brownhill finds that as CEO of her own company, she can forget growing comfortable in her job and breathing that sigh of relief.
Effectively leading her business means understanding that every day will bring on a new challenge. But it is the thrill of accomplishing those new goals, and the positive feedback and success stories from her users that allows her to keep going during tough moments.
“It is a job that really requires you to enjoy a vertical learning curve. And once you accept that, it becomes a lot easier. But, literally, the second you feel like you understand how to do the job and think, ‘Oh cool, I got it.’ It’s like boom. New job.”
Brownhill says, “If you accept that being a CEO will have a vertical learning curve, and you have to also accept that you’re the type of person that likes that and likes the challenge. Then when you make that switch, it’s game on.”
Her journey to lead her own company began when Brownhill started renovating her house in 2007. She thought that given her 10-plus years’ experience as an architect and working in the construction industry, the renovation would just fall into place. This was not the case. Brownhill had hired the wrong general contractor, but her mistake wasn’t a complete loss. If the renovation process was difficult for her, she figured it would be way more stressful for someone who didn’t have the benefit of her education and expertise.
In 2011, she decided to launch Sweeten, a platform that connects homeowners with general contractors who share a similar vision so everyone can be at ease. Seven years later, the free service has nearly $900 million in construction projects in the pipeline.
Sweeten is Brownhill’s first business. While she has taken the lead on many design projects over the course of her career, she says that being a CEO has demanded a whole new set of skills, chief among them being the ability to adapt at a moment’s notice.
Accepting her role as CEO as always changing has also helped her with her challenge in fundraising. Brownhill has achieved a major milestone in her career. She is one of only 26 African-American female founders in the country to raise more than $1 million in venture capital, and that is only the beginning. She has her eye on growing Sweeten into a unicorn — with all the hard work that entails.
“I am constantly facing the challenge of fundraising. Wanting to grow a billion-dollar company, you need external capital to do that. The way I motivate myself is I read our blog,” Brownhill tells Entrepreneur. “We always try to feature the family we’ve done the renovation for. We’ve got all different types of renovations and lots of diversity, and it just makes me so happy. Then I can remember why I’m doing this, and who we are in service to, and I can keep going.”