Our first 6 months of blooming at BloomHQ

We recently took some time out to reflect on the first six months of business at BloomHQ and have come up with our top 11 lessons from that time. We’re grateful for all the lessons that growing a startup entails and can’t wait to see what the next 6 months bring!

1. Gratitude for our partners

We are constantly impressed and inspired by those who want to work with us.

By investing in us, our clients have given us the responsibility and opportunity to provide an excellent service to help them grow, solve their organisational challenges and create a thriving workplace for their people. Helping people is the main reason why we are in business, so it’s a joy to have a community of clients who are also passionate about their people too.

Our gratitude for the people who trusted BloomHQ over these first 6 months can never be extinguished.

2: The Value of Values

Some people think organisational values are just that poster on the office wall.

It’s evident from our first 6 months in business that organisational values provide direction, purpose and belonging. The soul of your company is the values you live by, and all work prioritisation should follow this.

Sometimes an organisation has out-of-date values, no one is connected to them, they aren’t embedded or they are non-existent. Values should be relevant and a part of every conversation – a way to keep you on track and moving forward towards your organisational goals.

 We put our values together within the first month of starting BloomHQ and we’ve been using them in many ways since then. 

• Implemented weekly goals via a Slack survey to align with these goals,

• They have helped us write our contracts and proposals, and

• used them to help us guide the direction of the company. 

We’ll regularly review how we’re living our values as we grow the company too - it’s important that we continually check in on how they’re being embedded and what value they’re adding to the team. 

3. Invest in thinking and slow time.

We need to bust the myth of hustle culture. This idea that starting a new business needs to be hustling all day every day and working 24/7. There is an importance in purposely doing nothing, rest, and time for pondering that makes space for creativity and innovation along the way.

 As co-founders of a new startup, we’ve made sure that we have space in our day for deeper thinking, which can help us more readily solve some of the complex problems we face internally and with our clients. We also encourage things like taking time between meetings to reset, building in meditation in our workday and aiming to only work a 4 day week (we’re not always succeeding at that one, but we try!). 

4. Power of good people.

Over the past 6 months, we have realised the power of surrounding ourselves with good people. As a small team, many would say we invested in people earlier than we should have, especially noting our conservative approach to finance.

However, we have learnt that if you can afford someone great, bring them on as early as possible – the benefit far exceeds the cost, especially in regards to diverse perspectives, new skill sets and a sense of team.

As a start-up, all jobs are generally done by the founders, but many hands make light work. You might not need your people long-term, so sometimes it’s worth considering what is the minimum, rather than maximum hours, what can an awesome person do part-time or on a short contract to lighten the load.  

We are incredibly proud of the small but powerful team we have. Thank you, Em, Kayleigh and Sheridan for joining us on our journey! 

5. Practice Self Compassion

The co-founder hat is different from any role we have had before. And actually, most of the time our best is good enough.

Anyone who has started a business knows the constant struggle of constantly learning new skills, it’s hard! Learning new skills is great, but takes time and can be exhausting, especially if it is not in your niche or wheelhouse. Sometimes it’s not what lights your fire but has to be done. So, practising self-compassion is important to ensure we get up and have the strength to do it all again tomorrow. If you’re in the same boat as us right now, please hear us when we say “You’re doing amazing, keep it up!”

6. Feedback – pros and cons

Know the purpose of your feedback and your organisational feedback culture.

We are huge fans of building a feedback culture and we’ve been working with most of our clients on this, as well as internally at BloomHQ. What we’ve learned is that without the right sense of purpose it can be abused, miscommunicated, or misunderstood. Feedback expectations should be on both sides and it’s important to have a clear process for consistent, clear and timely communication, to ensure psychological safety and constructiveness.

So when you’re thinking about building feedback processes and growing a feedback culture, it pays to invest upfront about your ‘why’ and create shared expectations so that everyone can participate in a healthy, inclusive and supportive way. 

7. Applying feedback = great listening skills AND action.

Listening skills are critical to receiving feedback but we’ve learned that it’s the bit after the listening that really matters. We’ve found that when we don’t reflect on what we’ve heard and take the action we need or adjust the behaviour based on the feedback, we can easily lose trust, which can in turn damage relationships. Essentially it’s like shining a light into a dark corner, seeing something that needs to change and then turning around and ignoring it - that can feel pretty hard when you’re on the receiving end! Ensuring that those brave conversations are followed up by adjusted behaviour, processes and accountability ensures that people feel not only heard but valued too. 

And yes, sometimes making the change is out of your control, sometimes all you can say is ‘yes I hear you, that is broken’. If you are empowered to do something, build up that courage muscle and go and do something about it - your team will thank you for it!

8. Diverse Leadership Teams.

We have learnt over the last 6 months that leadership teams should be the most diverse and have the most distinctive leadership styles.

Naturally, leadership teams represent different viewpoints, divergent goals and are often competing for resources. But those who have healthy tension create more courageous conversations. Tension doesn’t mean conflict. Diverse leadership teams fight their corner, are passionate, understand the business strategy and value each other’s voices at the table.

Internally, it’s incredibly important that we value diversity too, even though we’re a small team. This means valuing our different strengths and we’re fortunate that our wonderful team member Kayleigh, has been able to use her special powers in Clifton Strengths to help us on a journey of understanding how our strengths work together. As we grow, we will be actively seeking out people who bring different opinions, perspectives, backgrounds and will be encouraging healthy tension and debate into the mix too - we love to be challenged and be shown a new way of doing things by the people around us. 

9. Experiment

It’s a common conversation in start-ups, you can’t be afraid to fail. It’s easier said than done sometimes, especially when your own money is on the line. So, the thing we have learned in the last 6 months is a real appreciation for an agile approach and experimenting outside of our comfort zone.  The faster you try something, the faster you learn from it. Experiments are an opportunity to permit yourself to try new things. By asking the question, “what is the definition of done?” or as Brené Brown says “paint done”,  it will help give perspective and boundaries to keep things on track.

10. Keep it simple 

It is easy to over-complicate things and try to grow things too quickly. New businesses tend to think by adding to your product or service offering will mean you can reach more people. But it can often lead to confusion for you and your customer. Overextension may cannibalise your customer, rather than add new ones. If that new item, product or service has the same customer base, it's bound to attract the same audience and just split your sales for twice as much energy.

Use market research and speak with your customer before you add anything. Just because you think it's a good idea, doesn’t mean that the customer needs or wants it.

Simplify your model, offerings and thinking to focus on looking after the basics. 

11. Finance is your friend

Your finances, numbers and accounting don’t need to be scary. 

It’s pretty common for finances to seem pretty intimidating if you try to cram managing it all at the end of the year, scrambling to hit the deadline for submitting all the things. We’ve found that if you dedicate a small, regular amount of time to it, it can take it from a big scary yearly event to a manageable ongoing task which can give you great insights into how you’re tracking. It can even be kinda fun once you get into it!

Keep things in the cloud, save your receipts, know what you can claim, chase your invoices and find your rhythm with it and it’ll be smooth running into the end of the financial year.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support of our BloomHQ journey - we see and appreciate each one of you! Here’s to the next 6 months of business!