There is one thing that drives me as a person: growth. As such, I recently dove into high-performance psychology, and remain dewy-eyed at any opportunity for me to optimize my personal growth, be it in the areas of fitness, mental health, and emotional development.
About Bloom
As such, when I began my internship at Bloom, I could not be more happy to learn that this sort of “growth discourse” is the exact foundation of the company. Founded in 2007, Bloom is a performance-based, digital marketing agency based in Montreal, Canada that began as a start-up endeavour by two ex Luxury Retreats employees, Martin Perron and Xurxo Vidal. To say it has witnessed immense growth since then is an understatement. With over 50 employees and a new office in Toronto, Bloom has offered new services to clients, started an internship program, and set the foundations for a work culture that makes everyone feel at home.
Background of My Role at the Digital Agency Bloom
My role as an intern fell under the Business Development portfolio, and as such, I was responsible for outreaching prospective clients. This involves anything from client calls and meetings to LinkedIn messaging, email marketing, and cold calls. With these tasks laid before me, and my first summer living in Montreal on my own, here are three things I learned while working @ Bloom Digital Marketing, and how they pertained to my personal life:
1. Working in sales helped me take “failure” less personally, and realize it’s all a numbers game.
During the course of the school year, I applied for hundreds of internships. I interviewed only at a couple. Each time, I would hear, “We love you, but we can’t take you.” I think I speak for everyone when I say the job search can oftentimes feel like a long and draining process. Amidst your personal life, it can be quite discouraging to keep putting yourself out there, only to be met with rejection. I started to flip the script and wonder, “What am I doing wrong?” Finally, after six months of actively applying and reaching out to firms, I (finally!) landed an opportunity with Bloom in May.
Throughout my term as an intern in the Business Development department, here is what I learned: Businesses never cry over a lost lead. Instead, they learn and grow, and come back better. They understand that not everything is in their control, and the reason for lost leads is mostly internal reasons of the clients, and not because we didn’t pitch well. I also learned that prospecting clients is a numbers game. The more you do it, the higher the chance you will find a client looking for exactly your services at that specific time.
As a person, I’ve extended this knowledge to enhance my perseverance and depersonalization of “failure”. I can grow and come back better, just like businesses do with their cold call and email strategies. Also, I need to keep in mind that it’s a numbers game. I’m learning that “failure” and “rejection” are self-constructed concepts used to perpetuate insecurity and blockade people from realizing their potential. Sales taught me that as long as you have a growth mindset, you can never really lose.
2. We need to intentionally and analytically track our personal growth
Personal growth can be difficult to pinpoint. Like most things, it is realized in retrospect. While you are in the midst of it, it doesn’t really feel that way. It’s only when you come out of a learning curve that you realize, “Wow, I have become someone who is more aligned with my core values.”
Working at Bloom, I’ve learned that, when it comes to growth, the most important thing is tracking with analytics – something that businesses are always in the process of optimizing. They track every variable. Spreadsheets galore, CRM platforms for days. They are intentional with their growth and have numbers to back their progress. On a smaller scale, we need to transfer this optimization to personal growth. The same methods that work for businesses to track their success, can also be used for individual progress and goal setting. After all, a business is a group of people who act as one. When they achieve their goals, they make a profit. They maintain relationships with other businesses, who are also comprised of people.
For individuals, profit, as it refers to achieving one’s goals, includes financial gain just as it does for businesses. However, it also encompasses physical, emotional, spiritual, and social development. While some may argue that there is no way to quantify emotional and spiritual growth, I counter that these can be tracked, just in a different way.
Sales taught me that, while acquiring new clients is important, making connections or nurturing an online relationship, is the perfect en route to signing a service agreement. In life, I can transfer this knowledge by tracking small milestones in order to help me be aware of my progress and keep me motivated in achieving more.
3. We need to better optimize our time and resources.
While I’m extremely goal-oriented, I’m guilty of wasting a lot of time on things that do not serve me or make me happy, as well as spending copious amounts of money on things I cannot afford.
The reason why businesses are so successful is that they optimize every aspect of time and space, and budget their money to a tee. Google calendar is wave. To-do’s, reminders, platforms, apps, tools – all to help businesses organize themselves. While this may be self-explanatory, I learned I need to better utilize technological tools to better allocate my time, and budget my money. Having reminders and deadlines that notify me at different hours of the day, has helped me to optimize my personal and professional time. Admittedly, I’m still working on my money management.
Conclusion: My Internship in a Digital Marketing Agency
I look back on the first note I took on Day 1 of my internship. The idea was:
We put so much effort into businesses to drive profit. Why don’t we do the same for personal development? We’re great business professionals. We drive growth for our companies, and yet, we have trouble driving growth for ourselves.
Like it or not, businesses are strategic and we have a lot to learn from them in terms of actualizing our goals, tracking our progress, and depersonalizing “failure”.
Thank you to the Bloom team and all the friends I’ve made along the way.
Discover Bloom’s career page and apply for a position here.