Hybrid

I can’t say I’ve ever really been one thing and not another. I’m too millennial-at-heart to not want my cake and eat it.  I want everything really – or at least the option of everything.  So I find the whole debate about hybrid working interesting. Fridays were my day from home, when I often got more work done, and also got to be a dad, involved with school drop offs, a husband having lunch with the wife, beer at 5pm…bleeding more of Friday into the weekend.

Now I’m working from home, I can’t help but glance sideways to people returning to their offices - maybe a bit jealously?

But I wouldn’t trade it for the life I’ve got now – especially now I can go out and meet people, even in offices. Maybe my life long quest for the greener grass has finally faded?

Last week I had my regular coaching session with Miffa, who as readers will know is pretty tough on me: “If that’s how you feel you should pack up your business now and get a job back at bp” (January 2021).  I was all prepared to talk about overcoming sales inertia and suddenly found myself – or rather Miffa – questioning my identity as an “entrepreneur”.

In my last few roles at bp, the Founder was on a pedestal; everything we knew came from the School (singular) of Musk, Bezos, Ma or Jobs.  I left a pretty secure, decent job at bp to become one of them, an entrepreneur.  As distinct from the corporate pick-a-noun I’d spent 20 years becoming.

I’ve got a few friends who are genuine entrepreneurs. The type who had garage businesses as kids, learnt at the university of life selling door to door, collecting cash on something before they’d even made or bought it.

This is a stereotype, obviously; a caricature. But in my head, it’s been where I’ve been heading.  Foolishly it appears.

Because I’m unlikely ever to be that kind of entrepreneur.

And, as it transpired through the coaching, I’m not even sure I want to be.

And while I don’t want to go back to corporate life, I know those 20 years have given me a load of advantages that all too often I don’t appreciate.

Back to hybrids

The whole identity as entrepreneur has been a bit of a blocker for me these past few months. I’ve judged myself harshly when I’ve not been out hustling for business, or not taken a risk on a product that’s not ready, or spent money on something that a bootstrapper would not.

I’ve equated success with becoming an identity that I’m not – and maybe could never be.

This was how the conversation (paraphrased) went

Miffa: “Do you want to work in a corporate and generate a stable income for low risk or do you want Familiarize to be one of a string of businesses you startup and exit, making you lots of money”?

Me: “Neither.  And both.”

Miffa: “Do you want Familiarize to be your sole business focus, something you stick with, that provides an income for your family so you can have the lifestyle you want”.

Me: “I do”.

I basically want a hybrid: to own my own business, to use my knowledge and skills to provide products and services other people pay for, to make a stable income so I can afford the lifestyle my wife and I want for our family.

But I am also leery of the term “lifestyle business“ which sounds half-hearted and side-hustle-ish.

I want to pick the best bits of being an entrepreneur and of working in a corporate and create a new kind of hybrid business around that.

Hybrids are often the fun places, free from pigeon-holes. They’re often less rule-bound and fluid, where people have given up trying to place you and just leave you alone.  This was the last ten years for me in bp and I suspect it’s the only reason I survived.

This was not me, but it’s a dazzling quote by the poet and philosopher Paul Valéry:

“A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.”

Here’s a few tips if you’re not feeling inclined to fit a mould:

1. Hybrids can have more than one parent.  Consider a couple of extreme models and crash a few different elements from each together – how do you like it?

2. We can get a bit fixated on hybrids as intermediates, taking equal shares of each parent.  It’s fine to be more like one parent than another. More like David Brent than Gary Vaynerchuk.

3. One of my post-coaching actions is to find a role model who lives this hybrid and step into their shoes.  I’ve picked one of those great Victorian magnates (Fry, Cadbury etc) who entrepreneurially built a (corporate) empire that created wealth for others.  Find your role model.

4. One major disadvantage of corporate life is the fear of experiments going wrong.  But we’re all corporateescapologists now, so try out your hybrids without fear and tune-up where you don’t like how it feels.

5. I feel like this new hybrid model for my business and my identity needs some kind of manifesto to codify it and bring it to life.  Take a stab at defining your hybrid manifesto as the pick and mix you’ve selected.

I’m going to take some time over the summer holidays to really think what this kind of business look like and and what it means for my identity. How I can be happy building one business really well.

It’s liberating jettisoning things – especially if they cause you angst, inefficiency or if they’re just not really you.  It’s also liberating breaking out of a mould, even if you kind of made it yourself.

One thing we’re all learning fast in this post-COVID world is how we each, individually, have the right – and maybe even responsibility – to pursue our chosen paths to happiness, health and wealth.

What about you? Happy to fit a mould or trying to create you own?