Founders' Forum

The Truth About Disrupting an Industry: Katrina Hutchinson O’Neill on Thriving as an Entrepreneur

• Marc Bernstein / Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill • Episode 90

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💡 What does it really mean to be a disruptor in business? It’s not just about breaking the rules—it’s about strategic innovation that transforms an industry. In this episode, we sit down with Katrina Hutchinson O’Neill, CEO and founder of Join Talent, to uncover how she’s revolutionizing talent acquisition and redefining what it means to lead with purpose.

From being named Startup Entrepreneur of the Year to scaling one of the UK’s fastest-growing companies, Katrina’s journey is a masterclass in resilience, leadership, and innovation. Along the way, we explore the power of mentorship, the role of financial risk in entrepreneurship, and why values-driven businesses thrive.

🔥 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ How to disrupt an industry without just rebelling for the sake of it
✔️ Lessons from launching a business at 40—without an entrepreneurial background
✔️ The financial sacrifices and challenges of self-funding a startup
✔️ Why mentorship and unexpected inspiration are game-changers for growth
✔️ The importance of gender diversity, leadership culture, and values-driven decisions

Katrina also shares how staying privately owned has given her the freedom to build a company that aligns with her values—plus, we geek out over our shared love for dystopian fiction.

🎧 Tune in now for an inspiring conversation on disrupting the status quo and thriving as an entrepreneur!

About Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:
I always say that I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I grew up until I was 40 – and that’s when I left the corporate rat race behind and started my business.

Today, I am guided by three core driving goals: to secure long term financial stability for my family, to empower my team to achieve their own success, and to build a respected and valued international brand.

Join Talent's success is a testament to the dedication of the exceptional team who surround me and those same goals and associated values we all share.

Connect:
Website jointalent.net
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/recruit2
linkedin.com/company/jointalentuk
Instagram instagram.com/jointalent_

This episode is brought to you by Join Talent; elevate your hiring capability. Go to jointalent.net to learn more.

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📲 Stay connected with Marc Bernstein:
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Announcer:

Entrepreneur, founder, author and financial advisor, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing business owners turn their visions into reality. Through his innovative work and the Forward Focus Forums, Marc connects entrepreneurs to resources that fuel their success. Founders Forum is a radio show and podcast where entrepreneurs share their journeys, revealing the lessons they've learned and the stories behind their success. Join Marc and his guests for a mix of inspiration, valuable insights and a little fun. Now let's dive in.

Marc Bernstein:

Good morning America, Good morning UK and good morning the world. I say UK because our guest is coming to us from the UK today and I'm seated in Florida right now, where it's a beautiful day and you look like you have a nice virtual background in your background, but where are you today?

Ang Onorato:

I'm actually at the beautiful Jersey Shore. So, you know we're bringing the coast to coast in yeah and across the pond.

Marc Bernstein:

Excellent. So, Ang, I know you have a thought to start the day. Let's talk about that and then we'll introduce our guest, and I think we're going to have a really fun show today.

Ang Onorato:

Yeah, absolutely so, reflecting, and I'm so excited for our guest full disclosure. She's a very good friend of mine and a very inspirational leader. But I'm thinking about the idea of being a disruptor and you know what that means when you're any kind of leader, particularly an entrepreneur that to really change hearts and minds and introduce new products and services in the market, you really have to be disruptive. And so I know you've got some thoughts about that too, Marc. We'll hear your thoughts and we'll get Kat to kind of give her thoughts and then we'll kind of go from there.

Marc Bernstein:

Love it, yeah. So yeah, I like to think of myself. You know I'm I have a little of both. In some ways I'm traditional and a little bit conservative, but in other ways, my vision for my business has always been one of disruption, which is in the financial services industry. Everybody says they're client centric, Everybody says they're doing the right thing for the clients. They're all fiduciaries If you listen to their ads and the fiduciary is a good thing to be. However, if you're a fiduciary and all your advice is to invest your money with them and they want to hold on to your money because that's how they make their money, I don't really see that as being in the client's best interest all the time.

Marc Bernstein:

So we have created a model where I think we have and I've been working on this for 40 years and I think we're very because we have compliance issues, we have different things we have to adhere to legally, but I think we're very close to that model right now. And, uh, you know a lot of progress maybe not yet perfection, but we're on that track. And, as you know by the title of my maybe not yet perfection, but we're on that track and as you know by the title of my book, Ang, that I just look at this whole business a whole different way by referring to it as fiscal therapy as opposed to just financial planning. So yeah, I love that and I love to talk to a lot.

Marc Bernstein:

Many of my clients are disruptors and to me it's exciting when business people you know there's disruptors in every aspect of the world. We have a lot of disruptors in politics we won't get into that now, but that could be a good thing. Not always a good thing Same in business, but I do believe that disruption of businesses is ultimately really good for the world as we have new value propositions and new services. It benefits everybody. So I know you want to introduce Kat now, so why don't you do that? And let's hear what she has to say about it.

Ang Onorato:

Yeah, absolutely so. We're going to do a formal intro in a minute, but so our guest today is Katrina Hutchinson O'Neill, and affectionately known as Kat. So, kat, what are your thoughts?

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

I mean, you're one of the best disruptors I know out there, but how does this land for you? I think being a disruptor is something that people use as a term probably a little bit too fluidly. There's probably fewer real disruptors out there than I would like to see. I think for me, my definition of a disruptor is not someone that's being this kind of enfant terrible, and you know it's not. It's not that just because you're turning up at work wearing dirty jeans and a ripped t shirt, it's that you've had an intelligent and strategically thought, I view, on how you want to make a difference in a sector or an industry or to a problem, and that's what you're pursuing with vigor and tenacity. And I think, sadly, I do see sometimes a little bit more of the former rather than the latter.

Ang Onorato:

Yeah, it becomes a little bit more of a social meme. Right, I'm a disruptor and so with that, let me do an actual introduction to Katrina. And we always talk that sometimes we need a much longer show because we have guests like this, that even just the intros is so exciting and stellar. So the disruptor that Katrina is, she is the CEO and founder of Join Talent. So Join Talent is a company that specializes in finding top talent for some of the most innovative global companies in the world, and that's from startup through Fortune you know 100. Personally, she has over about 20 years' experience in management consulting. She's run large-scale operations, but she really saw a gap and a need in the market, aka disruption. Disruption that's needed and so she did what any good inspiring leader does she started her own company and let me tell you, did she ever? So just a couple quick points about joint talent.

Ang Onorato:

So she was awarded as Startup Entrepreneur of the Year for 2021 at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards for Scotland, northern Ireland, and I hope I have all of this, probably even more than I'm even counting here Number one times fastest growing company in the UK in 2023. I believe, number 12 on the FT1000 Europe company in 2023. She's an angel investor and, my favorite story, she was recently invited to meet His Majesty, yes, king Charles at Buckingham Palace for a reception where she was one of the awardees for the King's Awards of Enterprise I'm sorry, the Enterprise Award of 2023 for, in the international trade category, one of the highest honors for business excellence in the UK. Lastly, she is taking this and shepherding.

Ang Onorato:

This amazing new company has only been around for five years. She'll tell us more about that in a UK. Lastly, she is taking this and shepherding this amazing new company has only been around for five years. She'll tell us more about that in a minute. But into growth, into the US market. So all of that, my dear friend Kat, thanks for being here today and let's get into it. Let's have you tell us your story.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

You make me feel tired saying all of that. It's tired being in your presence, my friend you make me feel tired saying all of that, Ang.

Ang Onorato:

It's tired being in your presence, my friend.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

Yeah, do you know, it's been a really interesting journey over the last five years. This is our sixth year of trading. When I started the business, I didn't have any background as an entrepreneur and I had a lot of skills, a lot of skills that I developed over nearly 20 years in the corporate world and a huge amount of resilience and tenacity that came from working in really big, complex organizations at a senior level, and I'm full of admiration for anyone that starts a business. But I could not have done this in my 20s or my early 30s. So I was 40 years old whenever I started the business and I think it took me those nearly 20 years of assorted career experience to have all of the skills. To you know, year one, I was the CFO, the chief growth officer, the chief operations officer, head of risk and compliance. You know everything that you can imagine. You had to go out, find the business, you had to implement it, you had to run it, you had to do the invoices. So I think that that story people talk about you know the big success story. For me it was 20 years in the making to get to that point and Whenever I started the business, what was really disappointing was that I thought, because there's a lot of rhetoric about the amount of support out there for first-time founders, especially for female or diverse founders, and that wasn't true for me, sadly.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

So every door that I knocked on in the early days was closed to me. Either I was too old at 40, or because I was a first time founder and didn't have that experience, or it was the wrong type of business. I was told by one fund that my business didn't have scale potential and that they were only interested in supporting female run businesses in male dominated sectors. But I was the only female founder in my sector, but that didn't matter because it didn't meet their template, and so I spent the first three, four months whilst trying to get the business off the ground, also looking at like how could I get any funding or any support? Couldn't get any, and I don't think it's an unusual story. I got.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

I got really tired of wasting time trying to look at that and I got to Crossroads where I had to make a decision around okay, am I just doing this myself or am I going to potentially be unsuccessful because I'm spending so much of my time and effort trying to find investment and funding? So I ended up doing it myself, which meant I was really poor for two years. I had to sell my car. Take out personal credit cards, I always joke. Take out personal credit cards, I always joke. There's a payday loan company in the UK. I don't know if you call it payday loans in the US, is that?

Ang Onorato:

the same we do yeah.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

You get the concept. It's something you want to turn to normally as your first port of call. But I always joke that this particular payday loan company they were my primary financier in the first two years. So if somebody didn't pay an invoice, if a client wasn't on time paying an invoice and I still had to make payroll, I would have to take out a couple of times a personal payday loan to do that.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

I think my worst story was about six months in. I was supposed to be taking my children to. All of my children were under 10 years of age when I started the business. They were all small and I was taking them to Florida, to Disneyland, and two days before I was already in Florida. I booked all of this before I started. Days before I realized that one of my clients were just not going to pay their final invoice, not because we hadn't done a great job, we'd done an amazing job, they just were going to stiff us for the invoice. So I had to cancel and sell my Disney tickets to get the money to make payroll and we ended up going to I think it was like Busch Gardens or something for one day instead of going to Disneyland for five days. I think my kids have forgiven. They've never been to Disneyland since. So I was of going to Disneyland for five days.

Ang Onorato:

I think my kids have forgiven, but they've never been to Disneyland since, so I was just going to say you may have to get that back on the docket in the next couple of months.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

They might be too old now. My oldest daughter is going to be 15 this Friday, so I think there may be past that, but she makes up for it in other ways. Don't worry the amount of money those children cost me in concert tickets these days. I think they're getting a good deal. Taylor Swift is very expensive. I was going to say yeah.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

Yeah. So it was really tough during those first two years. But something that stuck in my head a really wise mentor I guess, a peer, somebody that I respected, who'd started and scaled a business to about a million or $2 million of revenue he said to me at the beginning remember, it's like a roller coaster and he said at the beginning those highs and lows will feel really high and really low, but as you get bigger, things that would have had you in the depth of despair won't be that big a deal anymore, or things that would have had you in the depth of despair won't be that big a deal anymore, or things that would have had you in the heights of ecstasy. You'll be like, oh, that's good news, but it's just another day. And that actually was something that stuck with me and really saw me through. And so we got we were just starting to to really get some traction in the market. I'd won some great, great clients, some really well household known names as well.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

And then COVID hit in 2020. So we got to year one. We did about $300,000 of revenue from a standing start. Year two, in 2020, with COVID, we still managed to grow, so we did about $1.2 million of revenue and then from there, from the end of that year, it really took off. So we went from that to about I think it was about $12 million in 2021. And then 2022, we did about $23 million. So it was quite a journey. But 2023, if you then look at it has been a tougher year for the market. So we've had some contraction on our top line and on our bottom line. But as we go back into understand that it's a marathon, not a sprint, and not overreact to those curves in the road, that's what makes it really successful.

Marc Bernstein:

Kat, I just we only have about a minute before our break, but I'd just like to go back because I know in our pre-interview we talked about prior and you mentioned it briefly prior to your company you almost had not that you had to. You made an intelligent decision, but you were almost somewhat forced into being an entrepreneur. You want to just talk about that a little bit before the break and then we'll come back to it.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

Yeah, I think summary being I was the first kid in my family to go to college. My dad was a policeman and I was the first kid to drop out of college. I left after one year because I was having to work three jobs to pay my way through um and I found that number one I wasn't enjoying my my degree, I couldn't see how it would be useful. And number two, um, I was making more money and having more fun doing doing my three jobs. So the issue with that?

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

I started working at the bottom of the ladder. I was getting paid £10,000, $12,000 a year. That was my beginning job and I worked my way up to a really great six-figure salary with great bonuses and all the rest of it as CEO minus two in a global bank. But I'd reached a glass ceiling because I didn't have a degree and my accent was wrong and I didn't fit the mold of what a corporate C-suite executive for a global multinational based in the UK looked like, and that was a reality. I could spend 15 more years there trying to prove that I had that capability or I could bet on myself and I bet on myself.

Marc Bernstein:

Well, thank you for sharing that. We are going to take a one minute break and we'll be right back with Founders Forum.

Announcer:

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Marc Bernstein:

We are back on Founders Tour with our guest today, katrina Hutchinson O'Neill, who is affectionately known as Kat and Kat, I have a quick question for you. Maybe it's not a quick question, but it's a question. So you've brought us up to the current, where you are in your business somewhat, where you are in your life, I'd like to ask you a question about the future. Somewhat, where you are in your life, I'd like to ask you a question about the future. So, if this were, it's now march of 2024, if we were talking in march of 2027 and we were looking back at the last three years, what would have to happen in your life, professionally, in your business, your personal life, if you'd like, financially, if you'd like what would that look like? Um, for that period, that three-year period, to have been a successful period in your life?

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

Sure, really good question, and this is something that I, from day one, have really thought about what am I doing this for?

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

And I think that's something that a lot of founders miss at the beginning, and knowing where you're going really helps you plan the journey.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

Redundant, I know that I have done an amazing job as a founder of this company. The day that I sit down at my desk and there's no meetings in my diary, nobody wants to talk to me and, apart from spam, I'm not getting any emails because I'm not important in my company anymore. That's when I've been successful, because that means I've got an amazing leadership team who are who are autonomously able to continue to grow and develop the company and ultimately, for me, that then frees me up to look at other opportunities that that we have within the joint talent family to spin up sister businesses to to this core business, and we're putting down some of the track for that today. So I think, if I look at two years from now, I think that's where we'll be. I have an amazing leadership team. They're coming on in leaps and bounds. Our growth trajectory is looking really positive. We've got a lot of work to still do in a very competitive market, but I think we're building the right team to do that.

Marc Bernstein:

That's a great vision to make yourself redundant. I love that. Anything on the personal side that you see happening over that two or three year period.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

Yeah. So I think that's where I started a lot of this, Marc. So I, you know, didn't come from a background of financial stability and certainly never got handed anything to start my adult life with stability for my family. I had a bit of a bit of a dream at the very beginning that success to me personally would be being able to buy the family home of my dreams and not have a mortgage to own that outright. It's a very working class dream, right? I think that's a and that's a positive, solid thing to hold on to.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

So for me, that was the big thing, you know not having debts, not having a mortgage hanging around your neck, having a home that you love, that your kids could grow up in and run around in and have adventures that they remembered as their childhood home. And so I made the call in 20 at the end of 2020 to buy that house, so the house that I'm talking to you from today and where my office is. We bought that at the end of 2020, but we did have to take out a bit of a mortgage on the property because we didn't have the cash at that point. I still wasn't taking money from the business, but I actually paid off the mortgage last year.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

So for me that was a big thing, you know, and that's to achieve that. I think that's it. And to know that you did it yourself in the nicest of way, with my amazing team, obviously, but to know that that's something that you generated, that that was even more um special for our family. So for me personally, um, I, I want to create that kind of future stability for the family. That's important. I think the greatest privilege that any human can have today, beyond health and an amazing family, is having the power of choice, to be able to choose what you spend your time on. That's such an enormous privilege that probably 99% of the human race don't have. And what allows you to have that is a sufficient amount of capital, and I think this is a big difference, not the it's never enough type of thinking that I think sometimes happens in business, it's the you know what, being realistic is enough. That just allows you to be in that privileged position of you can choose what you spend your time on. And I do think there's a really important bit for founders on this.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

When I'm looking to invest in a company, for example as an angel investor today, I'm always wary and concerned if a founder's personal financial core stability is intrinsically tied to the performance of the business, and listen, I get it because mine was. I've already explained for the first couple of years 100%. If the business hadn't been successful, I'd have been personally bankrupt. That's how closely tied in it was. But when you're that closely tied in on your personal financial stability to the business, that has to color your decision making. So you're making decisions for your business that are based on your personal health, financial health, risk appetite, not what's the best decision for the business, and so that that's for me. What I'm working towards is just laying down that, that modest nest egg that allows me to to be in that that greatly privileged position I like to refer to that as financial independence.

Marc Bernstein:

that's your definition of financial independence, which means you're doing it what you're doing because you love it and because what you want to do, not because you have to, and that's a great bit itself. It sounds like you're doing it what you're doing because you love it and what you want to do not because you have to, and that's a great bit itself. It sounds like you're well on your way to doing that. I'm sorry, no it's okay.

Ang Onorato:

No, I was just going to say freedom is a great thing when it comes with, you know, fulfillment, and financial stability equals freedom is the way I see that. Right, so, as we're kind of nearing the end of the show, but, kat, I would love to take this one step further and we talk about this amazing leadership team that you have and I know that it's not exclusively, but very largely run by an amazing group of female leaders and so tell us a little bit about that culture. But maybe that story that you shared with us as well, which I think other leaders can learn from this which is when, times in trouble, you opted to hold on to your people when other companies were downsizing and fearing. And so tell us a little bit about that from your culture, and I think that's a really powerful lesson.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

Yeah, sure, and I think probably a couple of things on that to kick off with. You mentioned earlier about the Sunday Times 100, the 100 fastest growing companies in the UK. That's been going for like 20 years and I didn't know until the Times wrote an article on me about two months after that. I had no clue that that had never been topped by a female founded and led company before and I think that is pretty depressing that in 20 years the fastest growing company in the UK had never been built and led by a female leader before. That's that doesn't makes me really sad and I've seen firsthand how much harder it is as a female leader. And listen, that's my only perspective. I can only imagine on other areas of diversity and difference that I'm sure that it might even be even harder. I don't know because it's not my lived experience, but certainly my lived experience as a female founder is it's tough and especially in the business market I find that other leaders, male leaders, do tend to want to cut you down and belittle your achievements quite a lot, and I'm not sure that happens male on male in the same way. So it's an interesting view. But yeah, we've built a by accident rather than by design a largely female leadership team. Per Lee, who's our one gentleman in the team, copes with it very well, but it's the most amazing environment to work in. We've built that team because they were the best people for the job and they are phenomenal and talented and they get stuff done and we don't have politics or drama or intrigue or any of those things. You've got a group of people who just get stuff done and that's amazing. You know, I think the reflection that you made, which is very well aligned to our culture, that we were talking about, you know, before the show was last year.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

As I mentioned, before the break, 2023 was universally a tough year and we had some contraction in our top line. We could have still had an immensely profitable year last year because we still did really well. But in our business, because it's a professional services model, a lot of our team are what we call billable. So the whole point of their role is that they're doing work that we're then billing clients for what a lot of our competitors did is we, in fact, all of our competitors did is we hit the tough times at the end of 2022 was they immediately did hardcore layoffs for their teams? We could have done that, but we made a decision to not do that. We wanted to protect our amazing team. Our people are our IP, they're our assets. They're phenomenal. So the result of that was we spent nearly $2 million last year supporting keeping people in jobs and not doing layoffs. That means that we'll post a loss probably of $700,000, $800,000 for last year, when we would have made a really decent profit otherwise, and I think do.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

I think that's because we're female led that we can make those decisions. I don't know, I'm not sure. All I know is that none of the other companies made that call. What definitely helped, however, is that we have no investors. So, being 100% privately owned, we can make those decisions that if we had taken private equity or venture capital investment we just wouldn't be allowed to make. They wouldn't let us drain the bottom line like that. So it's tough. You know that's a lot of money that could have been, you know, in your back pocket, but you've instead spent it on your team. Time will tell if that was the right decision, but it definitely felt like, from a values perspective, the right call.

Ang Onorato:

I think it's always the right call.

Marc Bernstein:

We're almost out of time. I just want to tell you that, first of all, your mastery of language and your thoughtfulness behind the words you use are amazing, so I'm like kind of hanging on to every word. You're really phenomenal in terms of the way you communicate. A last quick question because we don't have a lot of time, but I know you're a reader. What books are you currently reading, or what are your favorite books to read?

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

I don't know what this says about me, Marc, but I'm a huge fan of dystopian fiction and end of world crisis pandemic stuff. I think in another world I should have been an international crisis relief manager, so probably my first introduction to that. My favorite book is Brave New World, which I think is increasingly relevant these days quite scarily so it's nice when it was fiction, maybe not so much, not fiction now Exactly but Station Eleven 11.

Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill:

I'm reading at the minute, but anything to do with, yeah, pandemics, disasters, end of world, and thinking about my zombie apocalypse plan. Uh, which I think any person I'm friends with has to have a zombie apocalypse plan. That's a requirement of entry by the.

Marc Bernstein:

The book I keep thinking of lately, because there's so much double speak around, is 1984, the George Orwell book. I think about that constantly, every time I watch the news now. It's unbelievable to me. Well, I had a feeling we'd hear some of your humor come out when we asked you about books. I had no idea what you were going to say, but that's a great answer. It's been lovely to have you here today. It's really been a pleasure, and thank you, ann, for bringing Cat on.

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