This month marks nine years since Jules joined Seed, and nine years of the two of us working alongside each other — across client meetings, kitchen tables, airport lounges, Teams calls, strategy days, award nights, school drop-offs, late-night proposal edits and the occasional “are we actually doing this?” moment.
It felt like the right moment to sit down together and reflect on what nine years in business has actually taught us. Some lessons landed gently. Others arrived wearing steel-capped boots. A few involved a broken bone, a deep breath, or a very strong cup of coffee. Here’s what nine years, one steady partnership, and a whole lot of shared experience have shown us so far.
2017: Ask for help
Early on, we learned the value of admitting what we didn’t know. Not in a dramatic “please send help” way — although there may have been moments — but in the honest, practical way that builds trust. Recognising early that good work gets better when the right people are involved helped us create the kind of relationships that could handle real conversations, not just polished ones. That lesson still shapes how we work with clients today: no pretending, no jargon, just clear thinking and the right people around the table.
2018: Teaching takes effort
Bringing new consultants up to speed properly takes real time and energy. We already knew that good development takes care and intention, but small business taught us just how personal and hands-on that work becomes. Teaching well asks you to slow down, explain your thinking, make the invisible parts of good consulting visible, and be patient while people find their feet. When the values line up, that investment pays off many times over — for the consultant, the business and, importantly, the client experience.
2019: Roll with the punches
Pregnancy, travel, illness, a growing team — life has a funny habit of not checking your business plan before making other arrangements. We learned to roll with the punches, then eventually to stop being surprised that there were more punches rolling in. More importantly, we learned to build plans around people first. That has become a big part of how we support each other, and how we partner with clients: strategy matters, structure matters, but humans are the ones who have to live inside the plan.
2020: Adapt or die
COVID tested every business we know, and ours was no exception. We learned to move quickly, rethink how we worked, and become very familiar with the phrase “you’re on mute.” More than anything, 2020 taught us that adaptability is not a corporate buzzword — it is a survival skill. Having great people in your corner makes the hard years survivable, and sometimes even strangely clarifying. It is one of the reasons we care so much about helping leaders and teams build the trust and flexibility they need before the next curveball arrives.
2021: Find your people
We got clearer about our lane, and confident enough to send work elsewhere when it wasn’t the right fit. That sounds simple, but saying “we’re not the best people for this” can feel counterintuitive when you’re in a small business. In practice, it became one of the best trust-builders we had. Trusted referral partners became some of our strongest relationships, and clients learned that when we say yes, we mean it. We bring that same clarity into our work now: helping organisations know who they are, what they do best, and where they should stop trying to be everything to everyone.
2022: Culture takes time
Building a good culture takes years of consistent effort. Undermining it can take one rushed decision, one awkward silence, or one “we’ll deal with that later” that never quite gets dealt with. We’ve always known culture is shaped by everyday choices, but small business taught us how much discipline it takes to keep making those choices when you are busy, stretched, and just trying to get the thing done. That lesson sits at the heart of Seed’s work with leaders and teams: meaningful culture change is built in the small moments, not just the big announcements.
2023: Know your worth
This was the year we backed ourselves, and it paid off with our biggest Regional NSW contract to date. Knowing your worth is not about ego; it is about understanding the value of your experience, your thinking and the outcomes you help create. It helped us bring a steadier kind of confidence to the work — the kind that comes from knowing what you do well, and where you create real value. For our clients, this means we bring both humility and backbone: we listen deeply, but we are also willing to say the challenging thing, even when it is not the easiest thing.
2024: Watch your step
Jules broke her ankle after the Hunter Business Awards, which felt like an unnecessarily literal lesson in watching your step. It was also a year where strategy and innovation became central to how we planned, giving us clearer footing for what came next — even if one of us temporarily had less footing than ideal. The bigger lesson was about momentum with care. Progress is important, but so is noticing the terrain. That is something we now bring more deliberately into client work: helping organisations move forward without sprinting past the things that need attention.
2025: Fail fast(er)
Small business is hard, and this year proved it. We made the difficult call to bring our team back to a smaller, tighter group. Decisions that affect people you care about are never easy, and there is no neat, upbeat caption that makes them feel lighter. But we learned again that failing faster — or at least learning faster — can be kinder than asking people, and the business, to keep stretching around a structure that no longer fits. It added another layer of lived experience to the work we already do with leaders: holding the commercial reality, the human impact and the values of the business together, even when the decision is hard.
Nine years on, the thing we keep coming back to is this: none of it would mean much without the right people around the table. Our shared experience has given us more than stories — although clearly we have a few — it has given us perspective, pragmatism, resilience, sharper judgement and a deep respect for the messy, funny, human reality of work. That is what we bring to our current and future clients: not textbook answers, but lived experience, thoughtful partnership and the confidence to sit in the complexity with you until the next right step becomes clear.
Stace and Jules
If any of these lessons resonate with something you’re navigating — a team stretching around a structure that no longer fits, a culture that needs the small, everyday choices, or a decision that’s harder than the caption makes it look — we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch. In our work with organisations across Newcastle, Sydney and the Hunter Region, we bring these nine years of lived experience to every conversation — on leadership, team development and culture and change. Nine years in, we still believe the best work happens when the right people are around the table together.
Stacey Kelly is Director and Julia Fiore is Senior Consultant at Seed People Consulting, a boutique organisational development consultancy based in Newcastle, Australia. Seed People Consulting works with leaders and organisations on leadership, team effectiveness, and culture.
