Just me

I have recently gone through some transitions from entrepreneur, to failed entrepreneur, to consultant, to capital raising, to job hunting, to general manager with freedom, to demoted manager without freedom - and it has inspired me to do some internal thinking and reflection about who I am, what I want, what I am good at AND not. Although beggars can't be choosers, I think it is really important to go into your next project or job with clarity on those things that work for you and don't.

Here are the things I know I am really good at:

I can take external learnings and completely customise them to what is needed based off feeling without remembering where it came from so that is completely original.

I can construct futures that don’t exist anywhere else and deconstruct them to a tee

I can help people, they listen, they trust me.

I can learn and build a future strategy for any business in any field within 3 months.

I can design before it existed elsewhere - digital community app, a way to bridge the gap between business school and accelerator, a blockchain enables system to pay mentors for support, a personal general financial management advisor and support system, a full flywheel for a media company and accelerated research to media, a supercluster design for fintech in London and I designed multiple trend based sets in fashion before larger houses brought out those same designs.

I can build highly complex future strategies and reverse engineer them to hourly tasks.

I can see how multiple key stakeholders and their technologies can work together.

I follow them through to prove them, put the right people in their place, empower them to execute and then I get bored and move on.

Here are the things that I would want in any job or business I start:

1. What is my perfect business, the one that serves ME the most.

What is my perfect business consist of:

* Variety

* Complex challenges

* Future scenarios/ Big tailwinds

* A core/ happy customer base

* Some scalability

* Driven people who learn quickly

* A big vision

What serves me:

* Creativity

* ‘World firsts’

* Working with people I love and respect

* Fixing problems

* Flexibility

* To be paid what I deserve

* The ability to have a laugh and or a break without guilt

2. What is my perfect role in that business.

* Strategy - opportunities, threats, positioning, key stakeholders

* People - hiring, inspiring, guiding

* Structures - setting up best practices and thought guides and allowing staff to own and evolve them

I believe it's worth understanding yourself and what you want before you start looking elsewhere. Sometimes you are interviewing the manager us much as they are interviewing you.

J