A young entrepreneur has revealed how he went from a rough sleep to building an award-winning tech company worth millions.
At the age of 17, Harry Sanders was left homeless after his parents split and sometimes lived with heroin addicts on the streets of Melbourne, but eight years later, the company he founded as a teenager is now Australia’s largest SEO agency.
Mr. Sanders’ first night after the family unrest was spent under a bridge in Preston, but he kept his focus on his unlikely dream of building a business, even working outside on his laptop in the dark.
“It’s intimidating when it gets dark. You hear sounds and it feels like you’re constantly on edge,” he told The Project.
“You wake up tired and groggy every morning. I don’t really feel like getting up and doing anything.”
Mr. Sanders’ now runs his own award-winning SEO firm, Australia’s largest
Mr. Sanders had started his own small technology company as a teenager and he never gave up on his unlikely dream
During the day, he charged his phone and laptop, used Wi-Fi, and called work from St. Vincent de Paul.
Yet Mr. Sanders found himself struggling to get benefits from Centrelink and when he did he ended up in a squalid living environment.
When he was given housing by the government, he ended up with people who were fighting drug addiction.
Mr Sanders said it was ‘insanely difficult’ to get into Centrelink, even as a homeless 17-year-old, and found himself jumping through ‘many hoops’.
However, his experiences of living on the streets and relying on Centrelink taught him valuable lessons that he still applies today.
No matter how much embarrassment and exhaustion he endured during his “very grim situation,” Mr. Sanders persisted.
His day-to-day grind paid off when he finally earned enough from a handful of clients to afford a room in a shared house.
“I remember going in, just coming in and just sobbing, like oh my god I got a room, I can close the door and this is my room.
“That was a life-changing moment.”
One of the strategies he used and still swears by is getting eight hours of sleep a night, researching his industry, and putting on clothes every day that reflect the “real” him.
Today, Mr. Sanders’ agency, StudioHawk, has three offices: in Prahran in Melbourne, in Surry Hills in Sydney and in Hackney in London.
He owns property in London and is building his own dream home in Melbourne.
StudioHawk is worth more than $4 million and has won awards such as SEMRush’s Agency of the Year and Optus Media Marketing & Advertising Business of the Year.
But Mr. Sanders, still the youngest on his team, is far from done.
“My vision is to lead StudioHawk and grow it into the largest dedicated SEO agency in the world, and have a ton of fun doing it,” he says.
That doesn’t mean he plans to join the superstar tech billionaire club.
Harry Sanders’ first night after his family split dramatically at age 17 was spent under this bridge (pictured above) in Melbourne’s Preston. He is now a multimillionaire
He now owns properties in London and Melbourne and has offices in both cities and in Sydney
“Unlike Elon, my mission is not to go to Mars,” he said.
“I just want to leave a better place in the world, by providing opportunities and education to at-risk youth, or other such people who are going through difficult hardships in their lives.”
Aside from StudioHawk, Mr. Sanders works with youth homelessness organization, the Lighthouse Foundation.
If you are homeless you can call Link2home 1800 152 152, the Domestic Violence Hotline 1800 656 463, Link2Home Veterans and Ex-Service 1800 326 989 or the Child Protection Helpline 13 21 11.