It has to be the sales leader for a company I joined after closing down my first businesses. I’d had just spent 7 years being self employed and never had a proper job until I was 27. He recognised that I was not like most of the sales people who he had hired, yet he hired me on the spot at the first interview.
This gave me a huge confidence boost, and then when I joined he allowed me the flexibility and creativity to carve my own path, and make it feel like I was building a business inside a business.
He knew I wanted autonomy but he also coached me to succeed in sales – something which up until then I had very little experience in.
This kind of leadership and guidance was exactly what I needed at the time. I became obsessed with being the best I possibly could, and started to see the benefits of working within a high growth business, instead of trying to build my own.
Looking back this was a stepping stone for the next decade of my career where I decided to press pause on my own entrepreneurial dreams and help founders deliver upon theirs.