What on Earth are you doing?!
…is the question I get asked the most these days.
I used to run Bloom, an award-winning marketing agency for startups & scale-ups.
Since last summer, the people I meet now want to know two things;
1. Why did I do it?
2. What am I doing now?
Firstly, I regret to inform you that there is no juicy drama 🤣
Yes, external factors were at play here. VC funding dried up, marketing budgets shrank, employees were laid off - we even had a bank collapse! All fun and games among the wars breaking out and sea levels rising and gender equality gap widening 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
Some might say this is the true test of entrepreneurship! "If you can’t rise to the challenge then your business doesn’t deserve to stay around." "You must be resilient!" "Fall down seven times, get back up eight!"
(...I may have posted words to these effect on LinkedIn once or twice or maybe a coupla hundred times 😂🙈)
Of course every business needs a vision, a passionate leader, and the reserves (both emotional and financial, let's be honest) to get through the tough times, but when you’re careering towards the edge of your runway, the prospects of a worthwhile exit seem slim, and customers tighten their belts while more & more competition emerges from the cracks, this becomes A LOT easier said than done.
“You’re better off being a good company in a great market, than a great company in a bad market.”
Add into the mix that everyone else seems to be doing so much better than you; speaking on stage at a top industry conference, getting featured in TechCrunch, announcing their latest fundraise by Atomico and Balderton… You'd be forgiven for asking "what am I doing wrong?!
(Relatable, much?)
This segues into the main reason I stopped Bloom.
I was fed up.
Resilience is a buzzword that will get the likes and comments on LinkedIn. But around our fifth anniversary I experienced a bit of a turning point.
First, the tarot card reading.
Then, DOAC host and BBC's youngest ever dragon, Steven Bartlett, came into the picture
I also wanted more for my incredible team. My empathy for them just made me feel like I was dragging them along with me and I felt that they simply deserved better. (I’m so pleased to say that they've all gone on to do bigger & better things beyond Bloom now!)
The business post-mortem
Hindsight really is a wonderful thing. We’re all so much wiser in retrospect, aren’t we? Whilst after the matter is “too late,” it is of course still important to reflect on key lessons learnt, and here are mine for Bloom:
I made things hard for myself. A self-funded agency for startups? Self-funded? Agency? For startups? How many more hurdles do you want to add??
I was a terrible boss. A lovely boss, but a terrible one 😆 Lack of clear direction, lack of motivating around an exciting vision, I treated my team how I like to be treated: left alone 😅
I wasn’t risky enough. I didn’t take any external investment or make any big, bold bets. (The counterpoint to this is my frugal financial planning meant I could still pay the whole team during the low periods, and always had a buffer for “rainy days.” Getting this balance right is HARD).
There wasn’t a clear or compelling enough core value proposition. Bloom lacked that all-important product-market fit. Enough to sustain a good lifestyle business, but little more than that, to be honest.
Last but not least, we’d done such a great job at positioning ourselves as “the marketing agency for startups” that we REALLY struggled to nail a scale-up positioning. This likely ties into the above point re service offering, but I was still struggling to move in the right circles for some reason (despite my efforts!)
As morbid as it may sound, counteract it “getting too late” by carrying out a “pre-mortem” exercise on your own business. Not to give yourself depression (!) but to get on the front foot of your possible business killers.
Write out all the things that could possibly kill your company, and this awareness creates ideas for your business to survive… before it’s too late 😉
What DID work?
Let’s balance out the bad with the good:
Brand awareness, credibility, and reputation. The name Bloom was recognised in the startup ecosystem with positive associations. (Annoyingly a lot of feminine brand connotations too, but when you’re a prominent woman and you call your business “bloom” and decorate it with floral illustrations I guess you can’t get too mad about that… 😂)
SEO, networking, and personal brand were the top channels that worked best. For a year or two, Bloom was sustaining the BD function just with inbound leads, thanks to our great SEO. When I attend pretty much any industry event, I’ll recognise at least one person (or they’ll recognise me). And when Covid hit, I was very well-positioned on LinkedIn. The only problem? This was all, 100%, totally and completely: a c c i d e n t a l.
Which brings me on to my next lesson learnt:
Be open enough to chance. I learnt through my own venture about strategy. Marketing strategy, content strategy, brand strategy, and of course business strategy. I never knew much about it before - heck, I didn’t even really know what the word meant - but I learnt by doing and by surrounding myself with the experts, and I developed a deep appreciation for this area. BUT. The insanely wonderful things that happened in the business were completely down to chance. I mentioned some of them above, but others included things like ultimately winning a top 3 highly-paying client because I went to a party I almost said no to. We randomly unlocked client opportunities for Bloom in New Zealand. (New Zealand?! That was never part of Bloom’s growth strategy!! 😂 But here we are, taking calls at 7am and answering emails on a Sunday night because of it).
Chance encounters, testing marketing channels with no clear strategy, working instinctively, and saying 'yes' to opportunities can all open the most unexpected doors.
(Take this with a pinch of salt though; I literally exhausted myself running around town saying yes to anything & everything at the start. Like healthy marketing budgets, leave 10% tolerance to experimentation. In business, be 10% open to possibility - focus on the strategy the other 90%!)
And finally:
Relationships. New business and quality talent that didn’t come via the website came via referrals. Without our fans, the supporters of Bloom, the agency would have wilted long ago. (Thank you so much to the people who supported us! 🫶🥹)
Moving on: public speaker, podcaster and more - what am I up to these days?
I’m embracing a portfolio career, and I’m honestly loving it. (Surprise surprise, my energy isn’t totally depleted by the end of the week and I can do meetings on Thursdays now!) (Thursday used to be the day of the week I could barely get out of bed I was so drained). I haven’t received a sh*tty client email for months and months and I’d quite like to keep it that way 😅
Ok, so what are you actually doing Steph??
Sorry, I’ll get to the point:
Public speaking (I'm excited to deliver the opening keynote on resilience for FUSE at NOI TechPark in Italy next month, immediately followed by speaking at Collision in Toronto, then many more later this year! My focus is on entrepreneurship - see talk topics here or watch my showreel here).
Podcasting with my show, Strategy & Tragedy This is the best podcast for curious & ambitious entrepreneurs, looking to make the leap into business and therefore want to learn from others, or for those who are at the start of their journey and keen to hear the lessons from those a few steps ahead. My star-studded guest line-up is a real pinch-me moment; including the likes of Nick Telson-Sillett, Maya Raichoora, Daniel Hegarty, Andy Ayim MBE, Tom Adeyoola... and many, many more incredible business leaders! Tune in here.
Advising MBA students in Entrepreneurship with edtech scale-up, Oneday. (I also facilitate online squad sessions, deliver masterclasses, and host community events)
1:1 consulting (this is SO much easier to sell than to build an agency!!) Drop me a message if you want to hire my brain for your business.
Branding with BOMBA. Steven Mzar and Ben Parish are the best at what they do - and that's all things BRANDING. Just some work highlights include the Y Combinator Buildt to Cosine rebrand, the visual identity for healthtech GripAble, and the HRtech scale-up where we all first met, Tempo - to name but a few of their incredible projects.
Lastly, I'm proud to continue to serve as a VC scout for Ada Ventures. If you're an underrepresented founder - particularly a woman - who fits their thesis, then send me your pitch deck.
So, it’s been a ride, as it has for all of us this past year or so, but at least we’re not stagnating - that’s the main thing 😉
Not only am I optimistic about the future - whatever it holds - but I’m happy with the present. Less of the “what are you going to do next?!” And more of that “are you happy right now?”
And yes, yes I am 😊
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I’d love to hear back from you!! What resonated with you in my story here? What do you agree / disagree with? What learnings are you applying to your current situation? And are you happy right now? 💕
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Named Top 20 Female Founder, Stephanie Melodia is a public speaker on the fields of entrepreneurship, marketing, and gender equality.
As ex-CEO of the award-winning marketing consultancy, Bloom, Stephanie now hosts the Strategy & Tragedy podcast, advises MBA students in Entrepreneurship with Oneday, builds brands with BOMBA, and continues to serve as VC scout for early-stage venture capital firm, Ada Ventures.
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