Jacqui Bloom: Showing Up

Most of us think reinvention happens in a single, dramatic moment. Jacqui Bloom's story proves otherwise. Hers happened in the kitchen, in hospital corridors, in a car stuck in traffic when she finally admitted she couldn't keep doing what she was doing. Across thirty years and multiple businesses, one question kept finding her: how can I help? This conversation is about what happens when you stop waiting to be ready and start answering it. Jacqui Bloom started selling shoes at a Melbourne market at eight years old and was running her family's multi-million dollar fabric business by twenty-four. She has since built and lost businesses, walked through profound personal loss, and rebuilt herself into one of the most connected investors in the Australian startup ecosystem. Today she is Head of Investment at Backable and a Non-Executive Director at NASDAQ-listed Mobilicom. Key Highlights From the market stall to the boardroom. Jacqui's entrepreneurial instincts started at eight years old, selling shoes at her local market with her cousin. By twenty, she'd turned down a graduate role at a major bank to join her parents' fabric business instead. By twenty-four, she was running it. The cost of carrying it all. At twenty-four, Bloom Fabrics went into administration. Jacqui talks candidly about what that meant for her father, the responsibility she carried as a young leader, and the perfectionism it left behind, the belief that there was no room to get things wrong. When grief became the turning point. In the space of a few years, Jacqui lost her brother-in-law to cancer and watched her mother go through the same illness while she was having her own children. She talks openly about what it cost her to keep showing up, and how that experience became the seed of The Helping Hub. Rebuilding an identity from scratch. Jacqui speaks with rare honesty about her divorce, what it meant to lose a twenty-year relationship and the version of family life she'd planned for her children, and the piece of advice from a school psychologist that changed how she carried herself through it. Backing the next generation. From founding Shepreneur to building a fund inside Startupbootcamp to her current role at Backable, Jacqui has spent the back half of her career helping founders, particularly women, get access to capital. She shares an unflinching, sometimes provocative view on what is actually holding female founders back. Two Anchor Quotes "They decided that showing up was the credential." "I couldn't ask people, can you come and wash my underwear? And that's where the idea for The Helping Hub was born." What stays with me from this conversation is how many times Jacqui's life asked her to start again, and how many times she did. Not because it was easy, but because, as she told her own son during her divorce, we always have a choice in how we meet what happens to us. That's the thread running through every chapter of her story. I hope it gives you permission to find yours. Connect with Jacqui Bloom: LinkedIn  Connect with Backable: LinkedIn | Website  Connect with Kirsty Ghahramani (Gee):  LinkedIn |  Instagram | Website