Hi, I’m Helen.

Cult Magnolia is where I share what I’m building and learning about growing modern businesses - the messy cross-functional tangles in strategy, marketing, AI and operations that quietly stop them.

Most of what I know about building, scaling and untangling I learned the long way.

Five years at Atlassian during its scale-up era, mostly on cross-product platform, integrations, and the early shift to Cloud and SaaS.

A decade running Lime Tree Bower Florist - a wedding and events florist that grew into a small e-commerce business and has quietly been my longest, most useful classroom.

I’m also a Notion Ambassador, and work alongside the team at Smooth Ops Consulting on Notion-led operations and AI. You can read more on LinkedIn.

What I’ve worked out about myself across all of that: I need real problems, real customers, the freedom to be both creative and technical, and enough variety that nothing feels mundane.

I learn by doing - always have - which means I’m constantly running into the next problem, the next thing I want to figure out, the next “wait, why isn’t this working better?”

I’m not the person who hands you a deck and walks away.

I love the testing, optimising, growing loop - where ideas meet feedback meets data meets the next iteration.

Growth, basically. Cultivated.

For years that meant a constant backlog of problems I’d spotted but couldn’t solve fast enough on my own.

AI is changing the shape of that.

There’s a label being used more and more for this shape of work now - “AI Operator”. For me the operator part has always been the work. AI is the leverage that’s making me sharper at it.

Sharing this work - and writing about it - has been on my list for more than five years.

I just never quite found the time, the confidence, or (honestly) a clear sense of what to write about.

I think I’m finally getting there - starting with the manifesto.

If you’d like to chat about how I might be able to help, send me a message at helen@cultmagnolia.com.