Hi, I’m Helen.
I run businesses too.
Cult Magnolia is how I work with other business owners. I look at the whole thing with you, find what’s really going on, and help you fix it. Most of what I know about building, scaling and untangling I learned the long way.
The long way.
- More than ten years
My own businesses
Local and online, more than one. The longest is 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.
- Six years
Tech and software
Five of them at Atlassian during its scale-up era, mostly on cross-product platform, integrations, and the early shift to Cloud and SaaS.
- Alongside
Notion and AI
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.
All of it, in one person.
- Running real businesses
- Marketing
- Web and tech
- Customer experience
- Problem solving
- Teaching as I go
That mix is the point. The tangle rarely sits in one department, so someone has to see how it connects. I’m a generalist by nature, and this is where it’s useful.
What I’ve worked out about myself.
- 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 love the testing, optimising, growing loop - where ideas meet feedback meets data meets the next iteration.
I’m not the person who hands you a deck and walks away.
Growth, basically. Cultivated.
For years I had a backlog of problems I’d spotted but couldn’t solve fast enough on my own.
AI changed the shape of that.
In my own businesses first.
Now I show other owners where it can take real work off their plate, one step at a time. No hype, and no pretending it fixes a mess.
I write up what I learn.
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.
Latest writing
She asked for help with social media. It wasn't a social media problem.
9 October 2026|3 min read
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