Reese Witherspoon may be a talented actress we’ll watch in anything, but she’s also a powerhouse businesswoman. In 2016, the highly-paid actress founded her own production company, Hello Sunshine, to produce content that empowers and celebrates women. In the beginning, though, Witherspoon dealt with a lot of early struggles as a first-time entrepreneur until a big “aha moment” turned things around for her.
Hello Sunshine has made great strides over the years with box office successes like Where the Crawdads Sing, as well as TV shows like Big Little Lies and The Morning Show. Reese Witherspoon was inspired to make movies for women about women after reading one script that offended her with “boob jokes” in it centered on two women fighting for a goofball-type guy. Compared to waiting throughout her career for a female-led script, she decided to produce her own. However, The Man in the Moon actress said at Hello Sunshine's second Shine Away event (via People) that her company didn’t exactly start off on the right foot:
There's a moment in all of our lives when you realize, ‘No, wait, no one's coming to help, no one's coming to make that decision. For me, I have to make that decision.’ I've had a lot of those. Being a single mom when I was in my late 20s, I had to make a lot of decisions for my two kids and a lot of financial decisions too.
Back when Reese Witherspoon’s first production company, Pacific Standard, which later absorbed Hello Sunshine, had hits like Wild and Gone Girl, she thought Hello Sunshine would have the same success. But, the female-led production company was initially broke, and the actress felt she could barely keep it open. This was before the time of streaming services where you could get audience demographics of what people were watching.
Even though Reese Witherspoon hit a few early snags with Hello Sunshine, it didn’t mean she failed. It just meant that she needed a push in the right direction that she didn’t have on her own. The Legally Blonde actress got real on the “aha moment” that ultimately turned everything around for the better of her production company:
I remember I had a moment when I was right after Big Little Lies and I had self-funded my first company. Okay, well, Big Little Lies won all these Emmys and Wild and Gone Girl got all these Oscar nominations and we made 600 million in the box office. … [I] had four employees and I couldn't keep the lights on. I remember the accountant calling me going, ‘You didn't make enough money producing those three things to keep four employees.’ I was like, ‘I'm doing something wrong.’ And that's when I had this aha moment. I was like, I need to have help. I don't have a business plan.
It must have been incredibly frustrating and scary that Reese Witherspoon originally “couldn’t keep the lights on” for her business. Fortunately, she hired Sarah Harden as CEO who helped with important business decisions like hiring executives and lawyers, creating infrastructure, and handling business affairs. With the Sweet Home Alabama actress having the courage to ask for help, she created a successful partnership with Harden that made their business just as successful.
The “aha moment” of aspiring entrepreneur Reese Witherspoon hiring a CEO helped Hello Sunshine continue to grow with ongoing TV shows, a book club, three podcast series and upcoming movies like You’re Cordially Invited , which comes to your Amazon Prime subscription on January 30th. The American actress and producer can serve as an inspiration to any aspiring entrepreneur in the importance of collaborating with others and not allowing your struggles to define your business.
