The reality is, every business is so different – even businesses in the same category are vastly different when it comes to their teams and processes. You can take a few leaves from everyone’s book, but at the end of the day, you have to figure out what works best for your team and the end result you’re optimising for and what I write next is what worked for the teams I have led.

Some background on me and my work in a variety of teams, I trained as a chef in Michelin-starred restaurants where I saw great culture and some kitchens that resembled hell. I competed as a swimmer, rugby player, and rower. In 2013 I co-founded Fresh Fitness Food then went on to build a wellness portfolio that included Detox Kitchen. After scaling the group to over £10 million in revenue and 100+ employees, the brands were acquired by Calo Inc. Now I’m the GM of Calo UK. Calo is one of the world's fastest-growing food tech companies, backed by over £50 million in funding and operating in six countries. Outside of work, I mentor former inmates transitioning to employment and serve as an ambassador for London Soup Kitchen. My mission is to make my community healthy, primarily through food.

So here’s a simple, tangible guide on how to cultivate wellbeing and success in a fast-growing startup (to be honest, I wish my first startup had been faster-growing, so let’s just make this for really any growth-type startup).

Step 1: Start a company that is doing something good for the world – easy, right?

Skip this step if you’ve already started and gone with shark fin fishing or you’re looking to make great margins in single use plastics.

I’ve consistently found that good humans are attracted to good companies. People that want to have an impact on the world, as opposed to only focusing on what they can get out of it.

Step 2: Hire great people

Also easy, right? Hiring and onboarding the right people in the right way accounts for a huge amount of the success you will have and the wellbeing of your team. Here’s our interview process:

• Short intro video call (15–20 min) – A quick conversation to assess fit and alignment before everyone invests a lot of time and travel
• Experience + performance interview (60 min)
• Case study (paid at fair market rate for the time it takes)
• Culture fit interview (90 min) – We assess if they are mission-driven and they meet the broader team they will be working with
• Call with a former team member (15 min) – Candidate gains honest insights from someone who has left the company

Onboarding is critical to employee success. Expectations managed are expectations met. And if the candidate does not work out for your business, take the extra 90 seconds to write a proper let-down email, explaining what they were missing and some advice for the future. We gift anyone shortlisted a day of our product as a thank you for their time

Step 3: Make your mission incredibly clear

Then give each staffer a set of KPIs that correlate to the company’s mission that they know with every action they take, they help the company achieve its mission. When people work on siloed KPIs that haven’t been well-articulated as to how they support the mission – or that simply don’t – they feel like they are working really hard at spinning their wheels. Yes, people care about what’s in it for them, but I’ve come to learn that people genuinely want to see their company win.

Step 4: Have a clear set of easy-to-remember values

These values aren’t just virtue-signalling with fancy words, they exist to guide real decisions and shape how your team treats one another.

Values are there to keep us on track. To remind us of the commitments we made when we had clarity, before the pressure, the shortcuts, and the hard choices appeared. They anchor us in why we’re doing this and what we should do when it’s tough. Our VP of People and Culture, the brilliant Mahmood Zeyad, consistently ensures these are communicated at onboarding and throughout the employee journey, including an awards day each year for people who embody these values. At Calo, our values are: Growth, Obsession, Winning, Kindness, Integrity, and Impact. Easy to remember – we call them GOWKII.

Step 5: Take the team with you

If the company wins, everyone should win. Yes, if you’re a director or founder, you’re taking the most risk and probably think about the brand more than anyone else. But you aren’t always working the hardest. You aren’t in every room. And you definitely couldn’t do this on your own. Our staff receive equity in the business.

Step 6: Lead with transparency and encourage it across the business

Full-context staff are better decision-makers. This often means taking the time to explain the acronym or how your forecasting models actually work. But the upfront effort is worth it. Balancing transparency and vulnerability alongside conviction can be an incredibly motivating force.

Step 7: Set up traditions within your team

Traditions that make sense within the context of your product offering and company mission. At Calo, we work out together as a team every Wednesday at lunchtime, and we pay staff a bonus if they complete 50 workouts in a quarter. When we wrap up a meeting we end it with One Clap closing off with energy. In the winter months, we regularly cook together as a team for the homeless. Each year we hold a retreat in November, celebrating the company's wins and we look ahead at what’s next as a group.

Step 8: Offer perks that benefit both the employee and the company

Flexibility on daily morning start times means we get parents at their best hours after school drop. Our Whoop/Apple Watch subsidies and gym memberships mean we get healthier staff who bring more energy to work. And of course, a healthy staff lunch is on our list.

Step 9: Clear progression frameworks

Humans are built to move forward, to gain, to progress. Having a clear framework for reviews and progression helps channel this. We use Leapsome to manage the process. Never breadcrumb employees – “Oh yeah, you’ll get paid loads more in a year.” Tell them what they have to do to win, and what winning looks like, to manage expectations.

Step 10: Lead from the front

If you want people to grind through hell with you, you should walk in first. As our CEO and the Founder of Calo Ahmed Alrawi says “Business is a sport and the best teams win” if you cultivate the right culture and take care of your team, your odds of success dramatically improve, plus you get the added bonus of the whole thing being way funnier.

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