Know thyself

The latest Corporate Escapology podcast is out today (here and here) with Luke Flunder. He’s known on TikTok and Instagram as The Wine Guy where he has hundreds of thousands of followers.

Let me repeat that. Hundreds of thousands of followers. Listening to him talk about wine.

In his own words, he decided to “dedicate the rest of his life to wine”.

But only after he’d spent five years at Majestic Wine on its management training scheme, learning the trade and sharpening his commercial skills, supplying the bankers at Canary Wharf, Hampton Court Flow Shower and other London events.

Majestic was great while he had the autonomy and freedom to run the store as he wanted, but not once they introduced scripts and sent in mystery shoppers to check for compliance.

By then however, Luke knew he wanted to set up on his own. You’ll have to listen to the podcast to hear how he coped with COVID, built his following on TikTok and the many revenue streams he’s spinning up to commercialise his brand.

But it got me thinking what made Luke different from the other thousands of people who’ve worked on Majestic’s management programme who stayed employed or who moved to other retailers?

Is he in some way different from the rest of us?

Yes he is.

But what he’s done is not out of reach for any of us.

Of course.

Entrepreneurs aren’t born, they build themselves.

I didn’t always believe this. When I was struggling with my first business Familiarize, fresh out of corporate, I constantly wrestled with an identity crisis as an entrepreneur. All my life I’d felt entrepreneurial, but suddenly living life as an entrepreneur I often felt like an imposter, inadequate, a failure.

It took some serious coaching for me to realise that I was my own kind of entrepreneur, one with skills, experiences and know-how that the entrepreneurs I put on a pedestal (Steve, Elon, Mark) didn’t have.

From my research for my new book Corporate Escapology, I saw that those who successfully left corporate life, took a much broader and deeper audit of their Skills, Experiences, Know-how, Strengths and Energisers.

These people invested time to really understand themselves, where they add differentiated value from others, where their flywheels run frictionless, where they blind others by their brilliance.

Luke knew he was great at building rapport with his customers, he knew he could grow a business, he could excite people about wine. And crucially he knew he saw the world of wine differently from other people – and it could give him a competitive point of difference. It’s that which forms the bedrock of his business today.

Luke is different, I’m different and so will you be, whatever you decide to do. But the important thing is to understand how you’re different and how that difference can create value for others – as well as for yourself.

I honestly couldn’t describe what I was good at when I sat in my corporate job. “Marketing” would probably be my one word answer. And, even then, I would have heavily caveated it, because I didn’t have experience of many aspects of marketing.

The work I’ve done to understand myself is the best investment I’ve made since I broke free and started out on my own.

It’s been the key to building my confidence, feeling more connected to the work I do and a forming a healthier perspective on life.

Because when we deeply understand ourselves, we stand a much better chance of finding what makes us happy - and then being able to go after it.

If you need help properly understanding yourself and your offer beyond corporate, book some coaching time with me by replying here - or DM on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Watch and listen to Luke on the Corporate Escapology podcast here and here - and don’t forget to subscribe!