The story started
About Federica's Experience!
Hello,
Here I am writing about my overall experience at Pearl Lemon Group so far.
It’s the beginning of November 2020 and I’ve just marked my 4th month at Pearl Lemon Group. Yes, it’s only been four months, but I can’t believe how much has happened in this short time.
Pearl Lemon Group in 2018
For those who don’t know me, this is not the first time I’ve worked for Pearl Lemon Group. I first joined Pearl Lemon Group in the summer of 2018 when the company and things were completely different. Pearl Lemon Group had existed for two years, there was no partnership programme in sight but despite this, I had the opportunity to learn and help here and there.
At the time, I had no experience that could prepare me for what working for Deepak would entail. I came from a totally different reality. The few previous working experiences I had reflected a quite old and traditional organisation and environment. I spent my childhood in a small town where things were quite static and career opportunities weren’t many. I used my laptop almost only for university and had no idea I could do way more things with it. Entering Deepak’s world resulted in discovering something new, fast, inspiring, and innovative. It reminded me of the international and dynamic environment I loved finding whenever I was abroad for study or work.
As there was no process in place, I started by learning how Deepak worked every day with the numerous apps, plugins, and Chrome extensions that he had me install on my laptop. That was life changing and soon I became more efficient and productive with tools I had no idea existed.
That summer I went to London for a month and used to meet Deepak at Costa Coffee at 8.06am – I dared to arrive 6 minutes late a few times, causing Deepak to tell me off and joke about it for the whole month! LOL Here you can see the difference in time management between Italians and the English!
At first, I used to shadow Deepak while he was working. I would sit in front of him and watch videos he uploaded on YouTube or observe him during client meetings and other work. Little by little, he gave me tasks to work on.
My main focus was on growing Deepak’s personal brand. He gave speeches about entrepreneurship, how to bootstrap any B2B business to 25k a month, how he quit his job, changed his life and built a £10k-per-month company, and more. I organised things such as booking the venue, ordering branded banners and objects to decorate the place, creating slide presentations, inviting people, interviewing attendees, sending out feedback forms and so on.
Here are some pictures of the events when Deepak gave the speech and I interviewed attendees.
The event on Saturday 21st July 2018
At the pub after the event
During that period, my help wasn’t required consistently, so Deepak involved me when he needed me.
Besides event management, I also did:
- Administrative tasks
- Data collection and research
- Email outreach
- Social media management
- Translations from English to Italian
After that month in London, I continued to work for Pearl Lemon Group from my home back in Italy. In October 2018, I started my third and last year at university, which was expected to be the hardest. Deepak and I had agreed on a set amount of working hours per week, but soon I realised I couldn’t focus on both work and all other things happening in my life at the moment. That’s why I decided to put Pearl Lemon on hold for a while.
Pearl Lemon Group and I went our separate ways. Little did I know it would only be for two years.
Pearl Lemon Group in 2020
It was June 2020. I had been at home with my family in Italy for almost a year. In March, I finished my previous work contract as I was supposed to move abroad immediately after. However, that didn’t happen because Italy went into lockdown due to Covid-19 causing me to reinvent my whole life. During lockdown, I took a few online classes on several topics. As soon as things started to get slightly better, I applied for jobs again. I wasn’t having any luck until I decided to ask Deepak if he had any job opportunities for me. I wanted to gain experience working in Human Resources to see if it could be a potential long term career for me. It turned out Pearl Lemon Group needed help in exactly that area.
On 22nd June, I joined Pearl Lemon Group again and was introduced to the Partnership Programme, which was huge news for me. This time things were way more structured and developed. There was a flexible system that defined workers’ time and commitment and partners had specific roles with lots of tasks. For instance, there were two designers regularly working on optimising and building content for our websites, two lead generation specialists looking for potential clients and two marketing executives working on expanding Pearl Lemon’s brand and services. The company had also expanded significantly and now had many branches I barely knew about.
I immediately met Lydia, Head of Internal Growth, who shared her work with me since she had been working on HR tasks until then. I was also added to the main WhatsApp group chat with other partners where we updated each other on a daily basis. It was so cool being part of a real team! Two years before, it was only me reporting to Deepak separately and every now and then I communicated with other people if necessary for specific tasks.
All seemed great and this time I knew what to expect working for Pearl Lemon Group and Deepak- a fast-paced environment where you are pushed to do more, even if it’s your first time doing it because nothing is impossible. I knew I was going to learn fast and a lot: that’s what I wanted! After months spent on online courses, I needed to get my hands dirty again, and there’s no better place than Pearl Lemon Group for this.
Working remotely didn’t scare me since I was already used to that approach. From a professional perspective, I worked remotely the first time with Pearl Lemon Group, as well as with other companies as a freelance translator. From a personal perspective, I lived abroad in 3 different countries and I am always in touch with my family and international friends. I was grateful to be given the opportunity to stay at home with my family and still work with a British company whose workers are based everywhere in the world. This allows us to have flexibility both in terms of place and time: we are free to decide where and when to work. At any time, you’ll find someone in the team awake and working like you!
We love recording screens with loom.com
Despite the nice premise I have just detailed, I can’t hide the fact that during the first month back with Pearl Lemon Group, I had a hard time sleeping at night. I couldn’t stop thinking about work, which was possibly caused by the fact that:
- I cared too much about work and was impatient to put ideas in place in the morning.
- I was too stressed about the huge workload I had to deal with and didn’t know how to do many of the tasks.
It took me a while before I found the right work-life balance. Having the freedom to decide when to work is:
- Great because no day is the same and you can adapt your schedule to your needs.
- Awful because it may feel like you’re never properly resting when you’re not working.
I’ve found out I was not the only person struggling with this and the solution that worked for me was forcing myself to be so busy during my free time that I couldn’t think about work too. This slowly became a natural habit: I found a way to become more productive because I also took the time to recharge and then go back to work with a fresh mind.
Besides this, among the typical challenges of working in a startup is that you have to
- Understand a task
- Learn how to reproduce it
- Put things in place
- Improve the process
- Implement changes
…all at the same time!
It feels overwhelming, especially at the beginning of an experience when everything is new and you have no idea of where to find help.
How did I get out of this? By trying, trying again, making mistakes, and learning in the field. Deepak is the perfect representation of this concept. He’s always willing to get involved and learn from stressful times – you can tell he loves challenges!
Luckily Pearl Lemon grows so fast and so do its people. When I started in June we were less than 10 partners while in October we nearly reached 30 people. Now, you can be sure there will always be someone to help you, whether it is explaining a new task or teaching you a shortcut for a complex process. We have also developed tons of training videos and courses for each of the different positions.
I am proud to say I am part of a team of enthusiastic, collaborative, friendly, and inspiring people. We could really see the growth over time, especially during our Friday weekly meetings when we spend one hour all together. We use that time to get to know each other, learn what everyone has worked on during the week, and discover what has happened overall in the company.
Even if we’re all based in different parts of the world and timezones, we make sure we’re always in contact with each other. That happens mostly via Whatsapp messages and emails but also with short screen recordings while explaining and showing a task or a problem. If needed, we also organise video calls. Working remotely doesn’t mean you feel lonely or abandoned!
One of our Friday Weekly Meetings on Whereby
My role
At Pearl Lemon Group, things evolve quickly and frequently, so you need to be ready and adaptable to change as there is a constant push to improve and aim at the best!
The same happened with my role as well as other people’s. You may apply to a job position and then end up getting involved with something completely different!
I joined Pearl Lemon Group as the HR Success Manager. My everyday goal was to ensure that the overall team, as well as each member, progressed. The tasks I have been carrying out regularly are:
- Managing people
- Redistributing tasks
- Giving instructions
- Building company processes
- Putting resources together for training purposes
- Managing challenges or problems raised
- Sharing constructive feedback during individual performance reviews
- And more.
Performance Review Call
In addition, I’ve been working in recruitment, and I was happy to discover an innovative way of hiring new partners. Many applicants were impressed by the unique application process that we have. At Pearl Lemon Group, we value the work approach, someone’s spirit of initiative and willingness to learn more than the work experiences on their resume.
After a few weeks in the programme, Deepak introduced me to lead generation, giving more variety to my tasks. I had absolutely no idea what that entailed, but I was ready to find out more about it. In a nutshell, we use LinkedIn to find potential clients for our services before trying to get them on a call with our Sales team. I was working for Kemistri, our partner company providing traders with software technology to manage their investments.
At the time, only two people were working on lead generation, and the process and training that we had were a bit scattered and incomplete. Moreover, I was the first person assigned to the Italian market, which meant there were no track records I could use as a reference. It was one of the tough moments when things were so confusing I had no clue what was working and what wasn’t.
A lead generation specialist needs communication and sales skills to easily manage conversations with potential customers. Then, more details about the offer are given by our Sales team during a call. However, at times I found it a bit frustrating as I kept dealing with experienced traders who were often quite direct and rude.
The whole situation led to some communication problems with Deepak, and I didn’t feel suited for the kind of experience Pearl Lemon Group could give me. I had second thoughts about continuing after such a stressful first month.
It goes without saying that something happened to make me stay in the company. That was a call I had with Deepak where he suggested a compromise, and therefore a solution, to better communicate with each other. In addition, he took the time to optimise together the strategy I was using for lead generation. As a result, I became more comfortable in that position and enjoyed the task more.
Since then, things started to improve as I embraced the startup world more positively. When you are at the beginning of a business journey, you won’t know what works and what doesn’t. You may not always have the answer to everything, but at Pearl Lemon Group that’s okay as long as you can get to a solution. Problem solving is fun when you have tools at hands to simplify your life and experience in dealing with challenges. All of this comes with time, and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see what else I could do.
Clearout.io is one of the tools that saved my life when I started building cold email campaigns. All email addresses are filtered and you will end up with a list of only the verified accounts that are safe to reach out to.
The outcome and a look into the future
It took me some time, but at last, I became more efficient, more productive, more relaxed and eager to try, see what happens and learn from there.
My knowledge and experience in LinkedIn Lead Generation learnt at Pearl Lemon Group allowed me to find a part-time job as a Lead Generation Consultant in another startup. I couldn’t be more excited to present my first offer to a client and work independently. So in October, I started a new journey to help the startup launch in Italy while still working for Pearl Lemon.
During these few months at Pearl Lemon Group, I got to see many things happening and starting from scratch. Like Plant Sumo, a plant-based food delivery service in London that Deepak and his business partner Wadah founded and launched in barely a month.
As the HR Manager, I got involved in different internal activities for the many branches related to the Pearl Lemon Group. In addition, I overviewed some client work which gave me insight on different challenges.
I have learned every single day, and even if things weren’t always perfect,
I made it through and I grew professionally.
Recently, Deepak had the idea of building a brand new project: Pearl Lemon Academy. By giving voice to Pearl Lemon Group’s ‘Learn By Doing’ approach, we would like to provide students with the opportunity to learn with us, maybe work with us and, if interested, even build their own business. It’s something that we’re trying to create from scratch, and Deepak wants me to lead it all. I am very enthusiastic to give this a try and to see what I can do by myself with Sam (the other founder) and Deepak’s guidance.
Conclusions
To conclude, I can say that despite everything, these were four fruitful months. The best parts were the variety of areas I have worked, the different strategies I have got to explore, and the opportunity to work both autonomously and with people.
Not only have I learnt about processes and tools, but I also changed the way I looked at things. Deepak has always been a great point of reference and inspiration when it comes to challenges and things that don’t go as planned. Moreover, he gave me continuous feedback and useful suggestions for improvement.
Pearl Lemon Group gives you the opportunity to do something and be someone even just for a day.
From casually working from Costa Coffee with Deepak to actively contributing to the creation of a new Pearl Lemon Group branch, I can’t wait to discover what’s next!
Hey everyone,
I’m Federica, the Head of Growth at Pearl Lemon Group.
You may know me as “Federica, the HR Success Manager at Pearl Lemon Group”. Well, that’s still me – just with a new role and profile picture!
I’m writing about my overall experience at Pearl Lemon Group again to help you understand that many things have changed since the first time I have described my journey here.
Let’s go back to where I left my story…
Pearl Lemon Academy
It was November 2020 when I got introduced to Pearl Lemon Academy, a new branch that we were starting to build.
The idea was to create something that was going to become independent even if it had its roots in Pearl Lemon Group. For months, Pearl Lemon Group worked on repurposing content to turn it into training material for the internal team. All team members know how valuable, practical, and insightful our videos, blog posts, and courses are. That’s why we decided it was about time to make this content available to a wider audience. We wanted to build our own online academy and a community of professionals specialised in different fields.
As you could see from my previous blog post, at first it was just Deepak, Sam and I working on the foundations of this branch. Then, two girls joined the team: Pearl, our current Head of Content, and Giulia, at the time our digital marketing specialist. Together, we’ve worked on the business strategies to put in place and we’ve focused mostly on building our sales funnels through content creation and lead generation activities.
We changed direction and approach a few times and after three months, we decided to put things on hold since it wasn’t the best time to start something new. Even though it was a bit sad, we were all happy with the experience because it taught us a lot. We were able to implement and experiment with different techniques that we learned from other digital marketing experts. As we keep saying, learning by doing is the best way to challenge ourselves and grow.
How I became the Head of Growth
As soon as we decided to pause Pearl Lemon Academy, we all had to re-think our role in the team. I wanted to focus on the digital marketing space and I started by helping my teammates across all brands. A few colleagues left the programme and soon I became familiar with my new tasks and was able to replace them in a completely new position.
That’s how I became the Head of Growth at Plant Sumo and SERPWizz.
I was in charge of:
- Identifying business opportunities for the two brands
- Coordinating activities to implement
- Managing the team composed of people working in different fields such as marketing, research, design, content writing, social media, lead generation
More specifically, I was the person that facilitated clear communication and collaboration among the different teams. This included checking if tasks were completed in a timely manner, giving feedback, carrying out digital marketing activities, and researching ideas that our competitors were implementing.
All of this could be summarised by the term “project management”.
Plant Sumo
To be honest, it wasn’t the first time I’d worked on Plant Sumo, our food delivery service based in London. I had helped my colleagues in its early stages (in September and October, when Plant Sumo was just starting to grow). Going back to its operations after a few months was amazing. I was impressed by how fast things started to work out.
Some of the things I have helped with were related to rebuilding the main website as well as our directory listing website.
With Amy, our content writer at Plant Sumo, we came up with ideas for new content and new web pages that were going to take our food-delivery service to the next level.
With the designers, we worked on ways to make our website more complete and user-friendly and our product pages more informative and precise.
I worked with designers for a lot of other projects, including helping the social media manager strategise our communication plan.
One idea that I came up with and was excited to put in place was related to offline marketing. I created a Plant Sumo branded QR code that could take users to our menu page. I ordered a few small stickers with it so that we could add one QR code on each order to deliver and encourage our customers to order from us again!
SERPWizz
SERPWizz is our SEO audit tool: in the team, I’ve always heard about it but never really got involved with anything. It was a crucial moment when I joined the SERPWizz team: we were just about to launch our tool for the first time on Pitchground!
When you present a tool, product, or service for the first time to the public, you get busy quite easily as new activities start running and you want to offer the best possible experience to your new users.
We were really excited about our first sales but we also had to deal with the first critics.
These times were very important for us as they helped us identify bugs to fix, functions to improve in the tool, and text to optimise or build from scratch. We made the most of all sorts of feedback to keep improving our tool and offer.
In a matter of days, I became comfortable with SERPWizz and started taking care of customer service.
The rest of my time was spent on identifying more and more things that our developers could work on from the back-end of the tool.
With Deepak, we came up with a system to manage the internal communication with the aim to streamline things as much as possible and work on updates regularly.
I won’t hide that we had to deal with a few challenges until we found the right balance that made us effective and efficient and this was reflected in our sales that kept growing by the day.
My last months at Pearl Lemon Group
It’s the end of May and while I’m writing this, I feel grateful to have had the opportunity to explore so many different spaces and learn a lot in all of them.
I’ve just concluded my collaboration with Pearl Lemon Group as I am moving to a new chapter in my life.
After almost a full year with the company, I have gained more confidence in my skills, knowing that this is just a small part of my learning path. Pearl Lemon Group and Deepak taught me the technical side of things as well as how to approach new challenges and overwhelming times. I am happy I managed them all during this year.
Despite always being remote, I got to know a lot of people from different backgrounds and with different views that inspired me even in the smallest things. I got closer to some of my colleagues and I know it will be sad not to see them again so regularly and especially during our weekly calls on Friday afternoons.
It’s the end (for now!) and I wish everybody else interested in becoming part or already in the Pearl Lemon Group team to enjoy the journey as much as I did!
That’s a wrap!
A special thank you to Deepak and everyone who crossed my path during this time at Pearl Lemon Group.
All the best,
Federica