Navigating from the Corporate to the Entrepreneurial Mindset & How Important Authenticity is.
My life as a functioning entrepreneur and my business is starting now to feel very real. We have an award winning whiskey on the market and I’m out there selling it. Blaise, our sales & marketing manager is opening key strategic and tactical states for us one-by-one in the USA and I’m doing deals with target export markets beyond the USA left and right. We are a fully immersed in the Walpole Luxury Brand of tomorrow program and have some exciting new projects in development. The memory of my corporate days are receding farther and farther behind me and I’m really growing into myself as an Entrepreneur. It’s the thing I should have been doing all of my life and its only now I’m realising that. My way of being and approach to life is perfectly suited to being an entrepreneur and I wish I had figured that out sooner.
In the whiskey world I’ve been called ‘Outspoken’ which I find to be a strange moniker, I’m not ‘Outspoken’ I’m ‘Authentic.’ I’m not going to go all new age on you folks but I think that Authenticity in the context of entrepreneurship and in corporations is worth a closer look.
One of the reasons I think my time at big corporations was often soul crushing was mostly because true Authenticity is not valued at all. For obvious and logical reasons company culture trumps individualism in corporations. Sparks of authenticity are stoked every now and then at Psycho- Babble away days led by consultants.. However, that fades once the away-day was over, the tears dry up and its back to shareholder value creation. I can’t count the amount of times I was told I would have to change the WAY I did things in order to really succeed in the business. In the end I left because I’d had that conversation one too many times. I just didn’t want to fake it, and I’ve never looked back.
Being authentic for me means a few key things
· Working Hard and Being Nice to People
· Not entertaining people who don’t do both of the above
· Telling it like it is whilst being fair
· Having Courage & Taking Risks
· Living confidently but staying humble
Corporations by their nature don’t allow for all of the above. Being ‘Nice’ is most certainly not rewarded. You are forced into working situations all the time with personalities that are not the greatest, and team members who don’t perform but you simply don’t choose who you work with in a corporation. Telling it like it is usually gets you in hot water as there are hierarchical and political structures in place which are not conducive to that. The legal department usually shuts down any Major risk taking and unless your boss agrees with your plan won’t be allowed to even consider the risk anyway. Being your true authentic self all the time won’t get you to the top of a corporation, it just won’t.
But it will allow you to have a very good crack at being a successful entrepreneur.
I learned a huge amount and worked with some wonderful inspirational people during my time as a corporate drone, but I can honestly say (and my husband often tells me) that I am a much better human being outside of a corporation than I was inside. I was a very political animal at one time, and politics can be a dirty business. I had a pretty steely outer shell and often put work or targets over people. I don’t do that anymore and I am much happier and more productive and driven as a result.
I live authentically every day these days. Every now and then I run into bad eggs around my business and I waste no time in removing them from my orbit. I’m not mean about it, I don’t burn bridges, but I keep my universe positive and manage the energies that enter into it. I’m totally straight up with vendors, suppliers, customers and consumers. I lay on the line what I’m doing and why and it seems to resonate with people. Most importantly it means I enjoy my work, I’m true to myself and without the distraction of having to try to be someone else, it allows me to focus better and drive the business even harder.
Every day in my entrepreneurial journey I use the incredible skill set I was lucky enough to pick up working for multinationals. But by living and working authentically I gain an edge I never had in the corporate environment. Taking the leap from corporate life to the start-up world is quite frankly terrifying, but the freedom you gain to be your best self is worth it.