SINGAPORE – The meaning of money for Ms Hannah Moreno changed when she went from juggling different jobs to starting her own company.
To Ms Moreno, money used to be a way to cover daily expenses, but she realised later in life that it was a means to effect change in the world.
“My husband and I both strongly believe that many of the world’s problems can be solved through ethical entrepreneurship,” the 41-year-old said.
The Australian started out as a gymnastics instructor at the age of 14. When she turned 21, she worked as a bartender and a nightclub promoter until she was 26, earning a substantial income but finding little fulfilment in the work.
After graduating from university, Ms Moreno got a job as a translator at French retailer Auchan, where she worked as the English liaison between the company’s Italian, Taiwanese, Ukrainian and Russian subsidiaries. This role exposed her to cross-cultural communication.
While she enjoyed the job, the pay was not enough for her day-to-day expenses, and she had to supplement her income by teaching English to schoolchildren and company executives.
“A little soul-searching uncovered the fact that the common thread across all roles where I truly excelled was compelling communication,” said Ms Moreno, who then went on to pursue a master’s degree in strategic public relations at the University of Sydney.
Then came a stroke of luck: the owner of a self-managed super fund auditing company hired Ms Moreno as a writer after coming across a post she wrote about feminism.
The same business owner later became an investor when Ms Moreno started Third Hemisphere, a public relations, marketing and public affairs agency, in 2015. In Singapore, Third Hemisphere has worked with Tyme Group, ViewTrade, Interactive Brokers, Fintech Nation and 129Knots.
Today, Ms Moreno runs Third Hemisphere with her husband, Mr Jeremy Liddle. Third Hemisphere has a network that covers every South-east Asian country through operations in Singapore and the Philippines, as well as Britain, the European Union, the Middle East, India, Australia and New Zealand.
She lives in New South Wales, Australia, with her husband and their two sons, a four-year-old and an eight-month-old.
As a partnership, our portfolio contains Australian Securities Exchange-listed stocks, investment properties and angel investments. My husband has a keen interest in investing in high-growth companies, and we often invest in companies we represent.
Our largest money-making potential comes from Third Hemisphere and some of the businesses we are seeking to build as offshoots of our current offering.
It was my first investment, which was an off-the-plan apartment in an inner west neighbourhood in Sydney. Off-the-plan means buying a property before it has been built or is completed. This means buying based on plans, designs or a display unit, rather than an existing, finished property. I had no idea what I was doing and just wanted to get into the property market before it spiralled completely out of reach.
I ended up losing money in the long run because it was too overpriced. I sold the property and put the funds into a better set of properties.
I currently have stock in the portfolio that has grown by more than 20 times and is still rising.
I am quite unusual in that I have built a company but I did not grow up in an entrepreneurial environment at all, and there was actually quite a scarcity mindset when it came to money in our household. We certainly did not go without, but there was no extravagant spending and certainly no business-building or financial growth mentality. Money was almost never spoken of.
We live in a very spacious 5½-bedroom apartment on the water in New South Wales that feels more like a house. We are renting but have discussed with the owners the possibility of staying here for at least five or six years, which is a pretty lengthy term for renting in Australia. We drive a Tesla Model Y.
I wake up and give my beautiful children and husband a hug before heading out onto the ocean on a paddleboard to another beach, a run and some push-ups and sit-ups, then back on the paddleboard home to have breakfast with the family.
After a morning with the children, Jeremy and I go out for a healthy seafood lunch together, sharing a bottle of wine and lots of conversation – yes, including talking about the business. We then spend the afternoon with friends and family at the beach and have a quiet dinner at home and head to bed early.
Okay, maybe I am a bit boring at this stage of life, but sleep is pretty sacred when you have a baby.
I would resist the urge to make any immediate major decisions and instead take time to really think through what would create the most lasting value – both for myself and others. For our family’s security, part of the money would go towards investing and another part towards paying off any debt with the greatest interest repayments.
For the wider world, I am an advocate against domestic and sexual violence and recognise how underfunded support services are. So I would also put a portion towards funding a women’s refuge that I needed to attend during my own experience of domestic abuse, as well as other services in these areas.
I have had many moments over the years when I had far less than $100 to my name for a stretch of time. If it happens now, I would focus on preserving what we already have and how we could make it stretch. I would then look at what my family needs most and whether we could lean on our support network for help.