The WIN Member Spotlight is a knowledge-sharing initiative designed to capture the experiences, insights and lessons of women within the WIN community.

This spotlight features Adriana Kligman, Founder and Managing Director of Hyperdot. Born in Colombia and raised in the Amazon, Adriana built successful businesses across Australia before launching her own marketing agency and expanding it internationally.

Her story is about ownership. Of your work, your money, your decisions and your future. It's about the difference between helping create wealth and having control over it. It's about backing yourself before you feel ready, and understanding that financial independence rarely arrives all at once.

Along the way, Adriana learned lessons about risk, resilience and self-reliance that began long before business and money entered the picture. They began in the rivers of the Amazon, where her parents taught her two principles she still carries today: do it yourself, and never be afraid to cross the river.

Where I come from

I was born in Colombia, the middle child of three sisters. We grew up deep in the Amazon jungle, where my mother worked for an oil company.

I was an outdoors child. My weekends were spent swimming, running and jumping into murky, fast rivers. Between those rivers and my parents, I was given two sentences I have carried ever since.

"If you want something done the way you want it, do it yourself." —My father

"If you want to know what's on the other side of the river, jump in and cross it. Swim hard, and respect the undertow." —My mother

I didn't know then that those words would shape my whole life. I thought I was just a child playing in the river. My father was teaching me to rely on myself. My mother was teaching me to be brave without being reckless. Almost every big decision I have made since has been one of those two lessons at work.

I still carry that child with me. When someone tells me something is impossible, a quiet voice in my head says, watch me.

You spent years building someone else's business before you founded your own. What was the financial reality of finally backing yourself, and what took you so long?

For a long time I didn't have a financial reality of my own. My husband and I built two dental practices together, the first in Lane Cove and later a second in the city. I ran the marketing. A dentist spends the whole day inside a surgery, so the practice grows because someone outside that room is working just as hard, and that person was me. The practices grew from a small operation into a business turning over millions a year. I kept doing that work until April 2026.

The money I helped create was never mine to touch. It looked stable, but it wasn't. Growing up by the river, I learned that the calmest water can hide the strongest current. Depending on one source of money you don't control works the same way. The longer things feel calm, the more you trust them, and the risk grows quietly underneath.

After my second child was born, my marriage changed, and I could see where things were heading. In 2016 I started something of my own. It began small, with girlfriends asking me for help with their Facebook pages and social media. I studied every night and became a Google Partner and a Meta Business Partner. Slowly I built a client list, a small team and, little by little, my own independence.

As for what took me so long, I was busy building everyone else's life. When you've been the support act for long enough, you stop asking whether you're allowed to lead. In the end I decided that I was.

What I'd pass on: independence rarely begins with a leap. It begins with one small thing that is truly yours, and the courage to keep building it.

What had you seen happen to women who handed over control of their marketing spend without understanding it?

I've seen women hand over their marketing because it felt too technical, or because they were simply too tired to take on one more thing. I understand that completely, because I've been there.

The problem comes when the person spending your money carries none of the risk. The agency is paid every month whether the phone rings or not, while the owner carries every loss. Over the years I've learned to be careful of anyone who shares in your wins but never in your losses.

The good news is that taking control back is far easier than most women think. You don't need to become an expert in Google Ads or social media. You only need to understand three things: who owns your accounts, what you're paying for, and what a good result looks like for your business.

Once you know those three things, nobody can hide behind graphs and jargon. You start asking better questions, and you start making better decisions.

I learned marketing at night, after the children were asleep, one course and one campaign at a time. If I could do it with two small children and no one handing me the answers, any woman reading this can learn enough to protect her own money.

What I'd pass on: you don't have to do everything yourself, but you do need to understand where every dollar goes. Delegate the work, never the understanding

Running your own business is a masterclass in money management that no one warns you about. What's the financial lesson that hit you hardest in the first few years of Hyperdot?

I had to learn to charge for my work. For years I worked for free because I was afraid of rejection, and every time someone said no to my price, I took it to heart. When you're building a business, you treat it like a new baby. You protect it, and a no feels like an attack.

Looking back, I see those years differently. Small setbacks, taken one at a time, make you stronger, the same way muscles grow from lifting weights. Every no to my price was one of those small doses. Each one hurt at the time, but together they built a business that can name its price calmly.

Free work never protected me from rejection. All it did was stop me from growing.

What I'd pass on: your price is the first thing you teach people about your value. Set it with the confidence you want them to have in you.

AI has completely disrupted the industry you built your business in, and you rebuilt the whole firm around it. What does it take financially and psychologically to make a call like that, when the safer option is to hold on to what's working?

Around 2023 I could see the ground moving. People were starting to ask AI tools the questions they used to type into Google. An agency built only for the old way of searching would not last. I've always believed that disruption can make you stronger if you let it teach you, and I decided Hyperdot would grow from this change rather than be broken by it.

I never make a big decision because I heard it from someone else, however confident they sound. I make it because I have done the work myself. When something big is in front of me, I go quiet. I read, I research, I test the idea from every angle, and I give myself time to process what I find.

Other people's opinions are a starting point for my research, never a substitute for it. By the time I move, it no longer feels like a gamble. It is a considered decision grounded in work I have done myself.

Financially, the switch meant paying for my team's training and my own while we rebuilt. For more than two years I made almost no profit. The learning hasn't stopped, and it never will, because this industry moves too fast to ever stand still.

Nobody warns you about this part. Letting go of what works feels like losing money. Standing still costs you money too, only more slowly, and you don't see the bill until it's too late.

When people told me it was too early, I heard the same quiet voice I've had since I was a child in the Amazon: watch me.

What I'd pass on: sometimes the move that feels risky today is the one that best protects your future. Protect your future, not your comfort.

You now operate across Sydney and Panama City, with Miami next. What has building internationally taught you about money, and about your own relationship with financial risk, that you couldn't have learned staying local?

A business that depends on one market is like a family that depends on one income. It feels efficient until something breaks. I've learned that having more than one source of strength isn't waste. It's the insurance you can't buy once you need it.

Building across Sydney, Panama City and, soon, Miami means no single economy decides our future.

It also changed how I see risk. I used to think uncertainty was something to avoid. Now I see it as something to prepare for. I would rather take small, informed steps I can learn from than one big bet I can't recover from.

I learned about risk in the rivers of the Amazon long before I learned about money. It took me years to realise my mother was teaching me both. Her words still guide how I think about every new market: respect the current, but don't stay on the bank.

What I'd pass on: spread your roots wide. The more places you draw strength from, the less any single storm can take from you.

If you could go back and have one financial conversation with yourself before you founded Hyperdot, not business advice but the personal money conversation, what would it be?

I would sit beside her late at night, once the children were asleep and she was quietly building something no one knew about yet, and I would start with the truth.

She had two degrees, one of them with a major in accounting, and she still couldn't see her own money. It was never a lack of intelligence. Somewhere along the way she had learned that looking after money was someone else's job, and that her job was to look after everyone else.

Then I would tell her what took me years to learn.

Money you can't see is money you don't control, and money you don't control can disappear the day you need it most. So pay yourself first, before the bills, before the team, before the next good idea, because a business that can't pay its founder is still only half built.

Put your name on everything you create: your accounts, your savings, your super. Love and trust are precious, but they are not a financial plan.

Look after the woman you will be at seventy, because when you work for yourself, nobody else is required to pay your super. And build your reserves while the water is calm, so that when the current turns, fear never gets to make your decisions for you.

Most of all, I would tell her she is allowed to want money. Wanting it doesn't make her greedy, and it doesn't make her less of a mother.

Money is time with the people she loves. It is choice. It is the freedom to walk away from what no longer serves her and to say yes to what does.

She would probably listen politely and then do it her own way anyway. She always did. But I hope she would remember one thing.

The river never gets easier to cross. You simply become a stronger swimmer.

What I'd pass on: success isn't only what you earn. It's what you keep, what you own, and who you become while building it.

Key Takeaway

"Money is time with the people you love. It is choice. It is the freedom to walk away from what no longer serves you and to say yes to what does."

Quick Fire

• Best financial advice you've received, and who gave it to you? From my mother: swim hard, and respect the undertow. I thought she was talking about rivers. She was preparing me for life, money and business.

• Biggest misconception women have about the cost of running their own business? That the price is paid in money. The real price is paid in years, in midnights and 4am starts, long before the first dollar comes back. And it is worth every one of them.

• The financial decision you'd make faster if you had your time again? Paying myself. I trusted someone else to manage it all for me, and for years I made sure everyone else was looked after while I was the last name on my own list.

• Finish the sentence: financial independence means... never needing anyone's permission to cross the river.

The WIN Member Spotlight is a knowledge-sharing initiative. Where the Masterclass Series provides structured education, the Member Spotlight provides lived experience. Together, they help WIN become a platform for learning.