Over these 4 years, we’ve enjoyed plenty of wins and celebrated big milestones, but we’ve also made our fair share of mistakes along the way. Instead of focusing on how great things are now, we’ve decided to be brave, reflect, and embrace one of our core values – radical transparency.
So, we’re sharing where we’ve failed and what we’ve learnt from those failures… so, here goes… 😬
- Not following our own advice
We regularly advise clients on reducing stress, communicating effectively, and avoiding burnout. Yet by the end of our second year at HHQ, we became like cleaners with dirty houses – burnt out ourselves. Instead of listening to our own advice, we joked about our exhaustion and pushed through: delivering projects, finishing all episodes of our podcast, staying loyal to clients, and juggling family life – all whilst completely neglecting our wellbeing.
It wasn’t until a Christmas break and an honest, (very frank/emotional) conversation that we realised the toll it had taken. From then on, with the help of a revised value, ‘Heath before Wealth’, we promised each other never to let work come before our health again. ‘Health before Wealth’ has become a guiding principle in how we approach our work-life balance. For example, we now make wellbeing check-ins a priority – not just for our clients – but for ourselves.
- Selecting the wrong clients
We’re fortunate to work with amazing clients who genuinely care about building a people-first culture. However, in the early days, this wasn’t always the case. Our due diligence was poor, and we ended up working with clients who didn’t share our vision of what being people-first truly means, often using our services as a marketing tool.
These leaders were resistant to change, operated top-down, and didn’t give employees a voice. While these projects were tough, they taught us valuable lessons and helped us refine our client selection process. Now, with experience and clear guiding principles, we only partner with companies that share our values and are committed to real change.
- Sustainability over practicality
Our decision to partner with a sustainable, paperless bank was driven by the best intentions. B Corp has always been on our radar and banking ethically is something that the movement promotes, however, we took this a little far. We decided to go with one of the newest ethical banks when we launched but soon realised that their business account didn’t come with a debit card, there was no app and to log on to online banking you needed to carry a physical digipass keypad around with you! Not ideal and very frustrating when you’re hunting for the 90s digipass to make a transfer. This solution taught us the importance of balancing sustainability with functionality. We’ve since found a banking solution that meets both criteria and things are much more efficient and manageable (and we don’t miss searching for that digipass every time we want to log on!)
- Undercharging/Not Knowing Our Worth
Pricing when you first launch is a tricky task for any service-based business – we wanted to be affordable but also knew the value of the work we could offer. We found out quite early on that the price for one of our workshops was a quarter of what other companies had quoted. It was a tough but crucial lesson when we realised, we were massively undercharging. We look back on the early days and realise that we were quick to take on projects without fully appreciating how much our clients were gaining from our insights, value, and efficiencies. With the more positive feedback and case studies we gained, the more confidence we had to put our prices up. Not once has anyone pushed back on price – for us our pricing now feels fair.
😊 We hope you’ve enjoyed our failures – we are huge advocates of failing happy but sadly, in many workplaces, failure is still feared and avoided, stifling creativity and innovation.
We’re sharing four ways we encourage a healthy workplaces to fail better.
🌱 Build a Learning Culture: Encourage open discussions about failures and what can be learnt from them, turning setbacks into productive conversations.
👥 Lead by Example: Share personal stories of failure to foster psychological safety and encourage ownership of mistakes.
🚫 Create a No-Blame Culture: Focus on understanding what happened rather than assigning blame, promoting accountability and a supportive team dynamic.
🔄 Keep the Conversation Going: Introduce ‘weekly failings’ in regular team meetings to normalise discussions about failure and reduce stigma.
We look forward to the next four years, filled with more wins, more challenges, and more happy fails
If you’re seeking a partner in culture and people, let’s connect. We would love to learn more about your company and discuss how we can support you in achieving your goals.
