Hawthorne Strategies LLC

Michael Hawthorne Jr. didn't set out to be an entrepreneur. After working on several high-profile political campaigns including Obama for America, Repower America, and Greenpeace, he was working at KSTB Enterprises, a nonprofit development resource agency. When a client came through needing a national PR campaign—something the agency couldn't deliver—his boss Kim Sellars-Bates approached him with a simple question: "Have you ever considered starting your own business?" Despite his immediate fears of failure, her belief in him sparked something. "She risked losing me as an employee to see me fly," Michael recalls. That moment of faith launched Hawthorne Strategies LLC in Atlanta, Georgia.

Michael's early days were fueled by coffee-stained desks and midnight reading sessions. He devoured books on accounting, corporate management, and marketing, often borrowing his wife's business books to fill the gaps in his knowledge. He hired an attorney to file his LLC and draft consulting agreements, then won his first client through weeks of free work and detailed campaign planning using Gantt charts and sticky notes. From that initial revenue, he built a website on Wix and hired a marketing consultant for branding. His wife managed payroll while he brought on an accountant for taxes. Within months, he had a functioning consulting business.

Michael's growth strategy was pure grassroots—what he calls "the bible of marketing approaches" from his political campaign days. He didn't invest heavily in marketing; instead, he networked relentlessly and delivered exceptional work. His first client led to introductions at the Super Bowl, where he met two other NFL players interested in his services. By early 2014, he had contracts worth $3,500-$6,000 monthly in his pipeline. It seemed like success was just beginning.

The turning point came swiftly and painfully. His primary client demanded enormous amounts of his time—he was traveling constantly, working as cameraman, PR manager, website manager, and even administrative assistant. He went home in the wee hours asking himself: "How can I possibly scale if I have clients that require so much of my time?" He had no bandwidth to serve new clients and couldn't respond quickly enough to the prospects he did have. Both incoming contracts fell through when potential clients found his responsiveness lacking. He realized too late that he'd never set service boundaries in his original contract. Meanwhile, with only $300 in monthly overhead, his $3,500 in revenue sounded better on paper than it felt in reality—it had to cover his salary and his wife's unpaid labor managing operations.

The deeper problem was systemic: no business plan, no financial projections, no lead generation strategy, and complete dependency on a single demanding client. Without a compass in the swamp, Michael made the painful decision to shut down Hawthorne Strategies and end his client contracts using a termination clause he'd wisely included.

Shutting down the business left Michael with depression and a sense of failure, but not for long. After a few weeks to process the emotional toll, he took a corporate sales role with a Fortune 500 company. The experience taught him invaluable lessons about business that he now applies to his second venture, Haloloop, a spiritual wellness platform based in Santa Monica that was accepted into The Preccelerator accelerator and is currently raising capital.