I’ve found the process of thinking out loud with you really useful because it brings me to a different workbench. It’s not easy to write each week; it costs a lot of time and creative energy. The risk is that I spend so long on the craft that I fail to meaningfully invite people to be part of it. These Dispatches help to address that balance, so I can be of genuine service to others.

Anyway, in today’s Dispatch:

• Are you a creative tourist?

• Five questions to ask yourself.

• An invitation to practitioners.

Are You a Creative Tourist?

Look at your bookshelf. The evidence of the Founder’s Noose in your life is probably just a few feet from where you’re sitting: the graveyard of unfinished books and untested wisdom. The repeated decision to buy the next solution before you’ve even read past chapter three of the last one.

That’s a lift from Saviour / Servant, where I explored how I responded to a period of professional insecurity by frantically joining courses, downloading playbooks, and spending what little I had on training.

I became a creative tourist.

I was dipping in and out of ideas looking for a solution for how I was feeling, whilst simultaneously not committing to anything for long enough to find out if it actually worked.

Like someone looking for their lost keys, I kept expanding the search instead of digging deeper in the room I was already in.

It might not be fear that fuels your inner creative tourist. It might be the subtle, ambient backdrop of professional dissatisfaction, or simply creative boredom. But if you’re a practitioner, artist, or creator, I want to encourage you to start digging and stop browsing.

There’s a book on my shelf called Three Feet from Gold. Of course, I haven’t read it. But the central metaphor, as shared with me, is that many people toil and dig, only to turn back when they are three feet from the treasure they seek.

I’m not advocating for a blind, endless march toward a pre-determined outcome. Sometimes we discover we need to adjust our direction, and we all need to be discerning about when enough is enough. But I think many of us (me included) could be more disciplined about finishing the read, committing to the experiment, and paying attention to what we’ve learned, even if it isn’t what we wanted.

Five Questions to Ask Yourself

These questions are completely open to interpretation. Your tourist might want you to jump to immediate specifics and answers, but I encourage you to hold them as tensions until you need them.

Take question 3 as an example: ‘If the tourist wants shortcuts, what unremarkable step can you commit to even if it doesn’t offer immediate relief?’ Look for the spark of energy you feel when you spot a shortcut or an unmissable offer, and then challenge yourself to do something else instead.

• If the tourist wants to be seen, what un-celebrated grunt work will you serve today when absolutely no one is watching?

• If the tourist wants inspiration, what boring rhythm will you maintain this week to deepen your work?

• If the tourist wants shortcuts, what unremarkable step can you commit to even if it doesn’t offer immediate relief?

• If the tourist wants to expand the search, what piece of raw material right in front of you will you mine instead?

• If the tourist wants results, what unvarnished, messy first attempt will you make with the imperfect tools you already have?

In the age of infinite access, it’s all too easy to treat our creative pursuits like tourists on a bus tour: we hop off, take a quick photo of the summit (buy a course, try a new framework, launch a new handle), and the second it gets difficult or requires deep, unglamorous work, we hop right back on the bus and drive to the next shiny destination.

Trust me, the answers you seek aren’t around the next bend. They’re in you, waiting to be noticed.

Unpacking Your Bags

If you are ready to stop simply visiting your ideas and actually live them out, you might want to swap the blueprint for a practice ground.

It’s why I’ve started The Order of Unremarkable Creators: a small, quiet fellowship of makers and independent operators who are choosing to dig deeper in good company.

Take a look, because there’s a warm welcome waiting: https://join.unremarkable.co/ouc

That’s a wrap for today’s Dispatch. You won’t be hearing from me over the next week or two as Sonny, Laura, and I are taking our first vacation as a family.

I will check my messages from time to time, so if you need anything or you’ve got any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m always here if you need me, but I might just be a little slower for now. Your inner tourist is gonna hate it :)

Be well my friends, speak again soon.

Dan

Explore the Order

In today’s Dispatch:

• The social bait and switch

• What you can do about it

Bait and switch

In the last Dispatch, I told you I was breaking up with traditional marketing and social platforms.

Look, I’m not making a lifestyle choice here. I’m not slipping away into the mountains to lead a monastic lifestyle of peace and raw presence. I’ll still be online, but with the right amount of effort.

Any content that doesn’t flow naturally from The Unremarkable Entrepreneur (my artistic expression) or invite people to join the Order of Unremarkable Creators (how I serve others), simply doesn’t get made.

Here’s why:

• Platforms are now pay-to-play

• They demand absolute clarity

• Or they demand ‘attention slop’

Social platforms hooked us on the promise of connection and opportunity. Anyone with an internet connection could be economically mobile, because anyone could be seen, heard, and known.

The trade was clear. We build their platform, they help us find our people. So we gave our creative labour willingly, only to be rewarded with a massive bait and switch. Today, the choice is stark: pay to boost your posts (something every platform is begging me to do) or work for them for free, creating attention slop that keeps people locked in so the platform can sell more ad space.

Someone up there is flying first class because they conditioned us to care about scratching out a handful of likes.

Make no mistake, the platforms know your fiscal value to them, and in order to squeeze it from you, they’ve built a toll booth between you and your audience. Refuse to pay with money or creative energy, and you’ll just have to take a 60% drop in organic reach on the chin.

By the way, the slop works on me too! I frequently find myself absent-mindedly scrolling for no reason other than habit. Can these 20 people really fit into a tiny smart car for $10,000? I better stick around to find out.

Another challenge is that the modern algorithm doesn’t understand human discovery; it only understands categorisation. To post outside the narrow bucket of how the platform has categorised you is like throwing a brick in a washing machine. The algorithm breaks. It doesn’t know who to show your work to, so your distribution flatlines.

There’s a bizarre split personality in play here. The system demands absolute clarity from you (which most of us don’t have because we’re evolving humans), but then demands you create cheap slop that keeps people on the platform.

Which is it, guys: clarity or crap? I can’t do both!

The Honest Tension

I am left with one realistic option: pay-to-play.

I want to say I’ll refuse that too. But here’s the honest tension: how do I reach the person who actually needs my work, knowing that my organic posts will never reach them?

One day I might accept that my work doesn’t need to travel. But right now, I know there’s someone sitting on the other side of the world waiting for permission to be unremarkable. So I’ll dance with the devil on my own terms, even if that means working with imperfect systems that are actively working against me and then putting a price tag on the solution.

And if I have to pay-to-play, I’ll suck it up to reach the other 1%.

My promise to you is this: I’ll be mindful of the compromises I’m willing to make, if any. And I’ll always be honest about it.

So what can you do about it?

I’m in it with you, so I can’t give you answers, but I’ve started the Order of Unremarkable Creators for those who are frustrated by building in the shadows and pressing against a rigged system.

It is a space to practise and shape your craft in good company. We meet virtually on a Monday, amplify each other’s work on Wednesday, and share observations on Friday (Wednesday and Friday are entirely chat-based, by the way).

We are a small group for now, but it’s a place to truly be seen, heard, and known. If you know anyone who would benefit from joining us, please introduce us or share this link with them: https://join.unremarkable.co/ouc

That’s a wrap for today’s Dispatch. If you need anything or you’ve got any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

I’m always here if you need me.

Dan

Explore the Order

Short updates on decisions, things I’m trying, and invitations I’m sharing that I hope will be useful to you and inform how the work evolves.

In today’s Dispatch:

• I’m breaking up with marketing and what I’m doing instead

• Introducing the Order of Unremarkable Creators

Marketing is so over

I’m done with traditional marketing and social platforms.

In the next Dispatch we’ll talk about why, but for now I’m pulling back the curtain on my commitments and the rules I’m setting for myself to ensure I never treat people as targets.

Marketing has been abused. Some people do it really well, with heart and purpose. But for most of us, it implies a target, a funnel, and a transaction. Feasting on scarcity, hijacking emotions, and deliberately propagating the fear of missing out.

People are sick of it. It doesn’t help. I’m out.

In the final chapter of Movement 1, I reckoned with the idea of abundance. It challenged me to entirely reconsider how I talk about my work publicly. So as of now, I’m switching my focus from marketing to inviting.

There are many thousands of people out there who already need my work. The same is true for you, too. But I’m not going to attempt to reach the masses. Even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Instead I’m going to focus on the abundance of one.

It boils down to this statement:

My only job is to extend an invitation to the people who are already looking for me. I don’t sell, pitch, or provoke because they are not targets. They are peers and collaborators. All content I create helps clarify who I’m looking for, so they can extend the invitation too, if they choose.

To help me remain true to this commitment, I’ve listed what I’m against, what I refuse, what I actually do, and the things I talk about below.

You’re welcome to read it and take what you need.

The Order of Unremarkable Creators

Today I make this real, and this is where you come in. If you choose to.

I’m starting a small private community of practice for 20 makers, artists, and practitioners who are tired of building alone and would benefit from the wisdom, feedback, and challenge of others.

It’s not a $10k mastermind. There’s no curriculum, no 90-day sprints, no leaderboards, and no hacks. There are no guarantees, no pre-determined outcomes, no goals to measure yourself by, and no one telling you what to do.

It’s fellowship. Where we serve the work, not the outcome.

But this is not your invitation. I am not pitching this to you. You are my peer, a potential collaborator, and I’d like your help to find someone.

Have You Seen This Person?

Do you know someone working harder than ever, but feeling completely defeated because they are stretched thin? Maybe they’re really good at showing up, but they are exhausted by the performance of it all.

I can’t promise them an answer. But I can offer creative energy, people to bounce ideas off, a safe space for the real questions, and an end to the isolation.

If you know who they are, extend the invitation in any way that feels right. Some suggestions:

• Forward this Dispatch to them

• Send me a DM, or introduce us over email (I’m at dan@unremarkable.co)

• Or simply send them this link: https://join.unremarkable.co/ouc

And that’s a wrap for today. Thanks for spending a little time with me. I’ll send the next Dispatch as soon as it’s ready.

Dan

Explore the Order

My commitments

What I’m against

• Attention scalping: the media culture that puts a price tag on your insecurities and demands constant, loud performance just to be seen.

• Being sold to: the fear-of-failure ecosystem that treats human beings as targets, and emotions as something to exploit.

• The tech oligarchy: the platforms that rely on your creative labour to serve their ad-based business models. You work for them for free.

• The tyranny of measurement: The soul-crushing chase for impressions, likes, and reach. As of today, vanity metrics can officially do one.

What I refuse to do

• Zero effort for the feed: I refuse to give platforms my creative energy. No clickbait, no pressure, no force.

• Zero effort for the algorithm: I won’t try to appease a self-serving multi-billion-parameter AI that refuses to promote my work.

• No pitching: I refuse to try and sell people another thing. No broadcasts, no product breakdowns, or sales copy.

• No convincing: I will not try to persuade the masses. If someone doesn’t get it, we let them scroll. I am leaving the 99 to find the other 1%.

What I actually do

• I post what exists: I clip shorts from my podcast and post native Substack assets. Anything unique is always an invitation, not a declaration.

• I leave the light on: I use social media for ‘signs of life’. A simple noticeboard with trail markers for anyone actively searching.

• I ask for help: I don’t create invitation posts for the reader. I create them so they know who to look out for. Followers are collaborators, not targets.

What I talk about

• The Unremarkable Entrepreneur: my book that helps makers, creators, and artists take action and build a sustainable practice around their calling.

• Dispatches from the workbench: balancing my workload, creating space to talk about other things, and welcoming you behind the scenes.

• The Order of Unremarkable Creators: the private community of practice I’ve launched for those ready to deepen their practice in good company.

The world of the entrepreneur or creator can feel like barren void, especially when facing redundancy or a global crisis. This scarcity mindset drives us to scramble for attention and validation, believing success is a finite resource, but it’s not the reality of our creative landscape.

This episode challenges the notion that we must constantly hustle and compete for limited opportunities. Instead, it invites us to recognise our inherent worth and the abundance that exists when we start there, rather than external validation.

The true path to a fulfilling practice isn’t about achieving more, but about noticing and leaning into the plentiful resources already available. It’s about understanding that our unique gifts are not diminished by sharing, but amplified when we operate from a place of generous presence.

00:00 - Welcome to The World Is Abundant
01:58 - Finding Opportunity Amidst Devastation
03:05 - The Foundation of Your Life: Rock or Sand?
06:04 - Embracing the Artist Within
07:21 - The Illusion of Scarcity vs. True Abundance
09:14 - Voyeurs of other people’s success
11:47 - Abundance is a Reality, Not a Mindset
13.04 - The world spins at 1,000 miles per hour

What we cover in this episode:

• The Void of Scarcity: How redundancy and crises can create a feeling of emptiness, making us believe opportunities are scarce.

• The Masterpiece in the Wings: Recognising that success is often built on decades of quiet, compounding work, not just visible triumphs.

• Building on Solid Ground: Understanding that true resilience comes from intrinsic worth and self-knowledge, not just relentless effort.

• The Artist’s Invitation: How creating from who you are, rather than what you’ve achieved, unlocks authentic connection and opportunity.

• The Ocean of Abundance: Shifting from a scarcity mindset to recognising that money, attention, and opportunity are not rationed.

Notable Quotes:

• “The rain will fall. It always does. And whilst you can’t stop it or plan your way out of getting wet, you can face the storm from solid ground.”

• “The rock is not a metaphor for grueling effort. It is the return to your worth, your unearned, unshakable, intrinsic majesty.”

• “Abundance isn’t a mindset shift; it’s just a reality. And just like Your Majesty, it isn’t diminished just because you don’t happen to feel it in any given moment.”

Questions for the Campfire:

• What would you ask for if you weren’t afraid of the answer?

• Who would you reach out to if rejection didn’t sting?

• What conversation would you start if you didn’t need to control where it went?

Join the conversation: Read the full written version and gather around the campfire on Substack: https://www.unremarkable.co

Start from the beginning:

#Abundance #ScarcityMindset #CreativePractice #InnerWorth #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

Where We Are:

This is Week 13 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant ← You are here

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

In between government updates and clapping for the NHS, you’d find us in our Brixton flat dominating MarioKart tracks, predicting the imminent end of lockdown, or coming to terms with its endlessness.

I had been made redundant just days before the furlough scheme was announced. I couldn’t find work, and the void swallowed me whole. The silence of my inbox was deafening, the same old story repeating again: left behind. My notebook full of half-baked business ideas? Completely useless in a world that was suddenly fighting for toilet paper.

The tide had gone out for me, and I had no idea if it was coming back.

Locked up alongside me, you’d find my wife working from the bedroom and my self-employed housemate trying to figure out Plan B with the art world brought to its knees.

Fast forward four years.

I’ve started my own business. My wife (who has been nothing short of a bloody rock, keeping bread on the table and giving me the security to build) has a dedicated study to work from.

And my housemate? Well, she just directed her first Broadway show, and it got nominated for nine Tony awards.

Before the pandemic, her career had been blooming. But all that momentum seemed bitterly short-lived as the pandemic tore through the country a year later.

One day, in between races down Rainbow Road, I offered a reflection that amongst the devastating loss, there was also opportunity. Everyone in the art world was facing the same seemingly endless void without work, and suddenly they all had the space to focus on the projects they’d been dreaming of.

People were ready to talk and share their ideas.

The next few months were filled with Zoom calls, dream collaborations, and planning groundbreaking projects. When the lockdown lifted, a return to the West End was waiting, and Broadway just beyond.

Let’s be absolutely clear: she didn’t make it to Broadway because I offered a fresh perspective. It was the uncountable hours she’d spent serving her craft and building the right foundations that carried her there.

The world saw a masterpiece on stage. But they didn’t see what it cost: decades of work quietly compounding in the wings.

But that’s not the lesson, because hard work is not enough.

Wise and foolish

There’s a famous parable about two builders.

One builds their house on rock, the other builds on sand. The point of the story isn’t about moral superiority or righteousness; it is the invitation to ask a vital, foundational question: What is my life built on?

What is going to keep the walls of your life upright when the tide retreats? When your days get so full you just can’t cope? When a redundancy or a pandemic suddenly slams the gates shut?

The rain will fall. It always does. And whilst you can’t stop it or plan your way out of getting wet, you can face the storm from solid ground.

But again, this isn’t a lesson about working hard or digging deeper.

The rock is not a metaphor for gruelling effort; it’s the return to your worth. Your unearned, unshakeable, intrinsic Majesty. A posture that allows you to notice the bounty when everyone else sees a barren void.

Like my friend, if you feel a sense of uncertainty or emptiness ahead, you’re facing opportunity too. You might just be in the midst of a slow reveal.

It’s not an oasis, it’s an ocean

Endless books will tell you a story where someone worked hard and got their prize. There’s some truth to that. Decades of discipline, effort, and serving the work made my friend a trusted creative partner.

But her gift in those moments wasn’t having certainty in the storm; it was the confidence to respond to the abundance at hand.

Yes, decades of building her capacity meant she had the skills to meaningfully do so, but she had also developed the ability to notice what was emerging. Crucially, she didn’t operate from anxiety and say yes to everything; she had the clarity and confidence to choose.

She was the moon. With deep foundations and creative awareness, she could direct the tide.

My career had taught me to notice something else: insecurity. Every company-wide redundancy warning, a final judgment. And for a long time, stepping into entrepreneurship didn’t set me free; it amplified that fear.

I carried those insecurities with me and started building on sand. I saw success, attention, and credibility as finite: an oasis in an otherwise arid landscape.

I believed opportunity was scarce, so I scrambled to be seen.

Even now, I am a terrible entrepreneur by any measure the world could think to apply. But as an artist, I’ve found where to draw the line. I create content that’s an extension of who I am. I spend time with my son. I sit on calls with battling creators who are ready to build differently because they are built differently.

I’m not writing to you right now with riches that prove anything, or any audience that says I’ve made it. That void endures. But just yesterday I sat with an artist. We have no prior relationship; she just happened upon one of the chapters of this book on Substack and saw herself in the words.

After a few messages back and forth, I invited her to join my private community for practitioners. For us both, it’s the opportunity to develop our craft in good company. And for me, it’s a reminder that I am standing on the edge of something significant. A practitioner with a specific gift, for a specific group of people, at a specific moment.

I’ve built lots of things. But The Unremarkable Entrepreneur is the first that is intentionally built from who I am versus what I’ve achieved. Incomplete, imperfect, and exactly what the work requires.

And it confirms what I’ve always felt: the oasis is an illusion.

The world is abundant. Money, attention, and opportunity are not in short supply. Success is not rationed. And the people who need your specific work are already looking for it.

The tide sometimes rolls in, sometimes it rolls out. But the ocean is always there. Abundant. Endless.

Once you notice this abundance, your entire posture changes. You stop worrying about competition. You become irrationally generous with introductions and ideas because no one is depleting your share of ocean by dropping their bucket into it.

In my case, I stopped gatekeeping. There is nothing new here that hasn’t been thought and expressed before. I’m simply wrapping new language around ancient thinking. I don’t need to protect, defend, or justify what I’m building.

Look, I face my fair share of silence.

For every practitioner who honours me with a call, or shares my work, there are hundreds of others who don’t because they are stuck in the void, dealing with the fear of their own barren landscape. But I am no longer judged or drained by it. And where one person responds, I discover enough to help others follow.

For this chapter, and maybe yours too, the abundance of one is enough.

When did we decide otherwise?

When you realise that, you can choose to be irrationally committed to the everyday work, rooted in the quiet reality that there is plenty to go around.

The Moon

When most people start building a business or a creative practice, the tide happens to be out. It is distant. They see others playing in the surf on the horizon: voyeurs of other people’s success, wondering why the water won’t come to them.

They don’t realise they have power over the tides. They can bring the ocean near.

I was once stranded on the dry sand, not because I lacked ambition, but because I was stuck planning what impressive thing to say, instead of actually using my voice. The tyranny of the gap was too great; there was no way my voice would be heard against the roar of the waves.

But like you, I am the moon.

Every chapter I write, every person I invite influences the waves. Challenging the ocean to respond. This is not manifestation. The moon doesn’t pull the tide by wishing for it or believing in it; it directs the waves by simply being what it is.

It would be easy for me to wrap this movement by declaring: Your mess is a story worth telling and your Majesty reveals you have a voice worth hearing. Use it. But to the exhausted practitioner standing in the void, I would be doing you a disservice.

It’s true, there are thousands of people who are looking for your particular brand of weird. But when the landscape feels barren, the void endless, and the oasis of shortcuts ever so tempting, it’s easy to forget that the water is bitter.

So instead, let me ask you: what would you ask for if you weren’t afraid of the answer? Who would you reach out to if rejection didn’t sting? What conversation would you start if you didn’t need to control where it went?

Your questions and your invitations are like the moon’s pull. Powerful. Influential. They direct the movement of the water.

This is where your moon begins to rise.

Where you create space for your Majesty to speak.

Where you naturally invite like an artist and influence the conversation.

Where you cease trying to overcome what you lack.

Where responses become information to respond to, not judgments to survive.

Truth is, abundance isn’t a mindset shift; it’s just a reality. And just like your Majesty, it isn’t diminished just because you don’t happen to feel it in any given moment.

The gravity remains.

And where one person responds, another will follow.

You’ll find them on the opposite shore, standing in the rubble of their own story, facing their own void, waiting for the relief of a campfire built by someone who shares their scars.

Before doing anything else, go find the abundance of one.

Slow miracles

In reaching the end of this Movement, you have made a significant investment in your foundations. Not by building them, but by being present to them. And if I’ve served the work correctly, this book should have given you nothing; it should have simply helped you notice what was already there.

Your best work: found, not chosen.

There is no goal to reach, no metric to clear, and no result that will give you meaning. Just a return to who you are, and the decision to do something with it.

It will often feel like absolutely nothing is happening. But the earth spins at about 1,000 miles per hour, and you don’t notice that either. You might feel stuck, but things are changing: the ordinary deeds in the wings, compounding. The moon, rising. The Majesty, revealing.

It all feels excruciatingly slow, until suddenly it isn’t. Until you look up and the landscape has completely changed, the lockdown has ended, and the tide has returned.

Your practice, built on solid stone.

The thing you create, finally worth the cost.

The waves, responding to your presence.

The abundance of one, drawing near.

Tomorrow is a new day. I wonder what unremarkable thing you’ll do with it.

A song to close Movement 1: Presence

Where We Are:

This is Week 13 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant ← You are here

Next we explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

The relentless pursuit of external validation can be exhausting. We’re told to hustle, to scale, to constantly prove our worth in a noisy marketplace. This often leads us to perform for algorithms and metrics, rather than connecting with people. This episode challenges the notion that success is measured by external achievements, urging us to look beyond the endless grind.

We’ve been sold a narrative that our value is tied to our output, our follower count, and our ability to perform for platforms designed to exploit our attention. This episode unpacks this illusion, revealing how we’ve become free labour in a system that quantifies our worth as “human capital.” The solution lies not in more performance, but in a radical act of genuine invitation.

This chapter encourages us to step away from the amateur’s broadcast and embrace the artist’s quiet invitation. It’s about expressing what we’ve found, sharing it without qualification, and connecting with others from a place of inherent worth, not from a need to prove ourselves. The goal is genuine human connection, not just engagement metrics.

00:00 - Welcome to Invite Like an Artist
01:15 - The Cosmic Invitation of Your Life
03:34 - The Art of Attention vs. The Promise of Getting
05:12 - From Performing to Expressing: The Artist’s Posture
09:36 - The Amateur vs. The Artist: A Choice
11:21 - The Productivity Treadmill: A Dark Heritage
12:19 - Your Worth is Not Up For Debate
14:32 - Life of Chuck / Cosmic Calendar

What we cover in this episode:

• The Northern Lights Moment: Experiencing wonder and sharing it naturally, without judgment or comparison.

• The Art of Attention: Shifting from seeking outcomes to noticing opportunities for peace, learning, and resilience.

• The Illusion of the Treadmill: Moving from a need to prove yourself to an expression of who you are.

• The Amateur vs. The Artist: Choosing genuine invitation over performing for algorithms and external validation.

• Human Capital: Understanding the dark heritage of productivity metrics and reclaiming your intrinsic worth.

Notable Quotes:

• “When the world wants you to be an asset, remember the Northern Lights. Your worth is not up for debate.”

• “Make no mistake, we find what we’re looking for.”

• “Instead of performing for an algorithm optimised for velocity and outrage, And worrying about engagement rates, follower counts, or external validation, choose to speak the quiet language of invitation.”

Questions for the Campfire:

• When have you felt your worth melt away against a grand vista and what did you notice about who you are?

• What are you currently seeking, and how might that intention be shaping what you notice and experience?

• What small act of invitation can you extend this week?

Join the conversation: Read the full written version and gather around the campfire on Substack: https://www.unremarkable.co

Start from the beginning:

#Empathy #Authenticity #BusinessMindset #Connection #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

Where We Are:

This is Week 12 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist ← You are here

8. The World is Abundant

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

Generally, the photos weren’t great, the Aurora unspectacular when weighed against the explosion of colour you might see in Norway or Iceland. But here we were, experiencing wonder for the very first time.

To share it, a natural act.

We didn’t ask ourselves, ‘Is the photo good enough?’ or whether it was better or worse than our siblings’. No, separated by hundreds of miles, we simply wanted to say that we saw it too and revel in the moment together.

What we captured was good and enough.

The next morning, I wrote this reflection:

The productivity treadmill can be exhausting. We need to practise looking up sometimes. To look beyond the tasks and goals. To get some perspective. To remember that the world will keep turning regardless of how successful you are. To take a moment and remember that you are unique, a never-to-be-repeated being. You have nothing to prove. You don’t need to earn your place. And there’s a cosmic invitation on your life to help the world turn with a little more goodness in it.

We make contact with our Majesty as the wonder at hand temporarily silences the noise. Against the grand vista of the heavens, the things we usually leverage to measure our worth (job title, social metrics, bank balance, etc.) simply melt into oblivion.

For a moment, only what you are remains.

A never-to-be-repeated being whose worth is not up for debate. It just is, because you are.

For a fleeting moment, we invite like artists. Expressing what we’ve found and sharing it without qualification, without framing the perfect shot, managing how you look, or trying to control what others see. Instinctively, we turn to the people around us and say, ‘Did you see that? Let me show you.’

The rest of the time, the noise returns and so does the grind. Our worth is obscured once again by the things we lack, the titles we don’t have, and the things we believe we deserve and haven’t received.

But that night, without thinking about it, we all just invited.

The heavens made artists of all of us.

Seek and find

I grew up alongside the verse “seek and you shall find.” I understood it as a way to get something. It felt like manifestation, an attempt to call down the mountain’s peak as if by magic. A response to the noise and the things I lack.

I did seek, and I rarely got what I wanted.

Eventually, I realised it wasn’t a promise about getting; it was an art of attention. If I seek contentment, I notice opportunities to practise peace. If I seek knowledge, I notice opportunities to learn. In my case, my losses could be understood as an opportunity to practise resilience.

Not spin. A truth to notice.

There were times, however, when I was defined by what I’d lost versus who I was. It felt like it was me versus the world. There’s a sort of corrupted resilience on offer when we can blame others for not getting what we deserve. I looked for blame, and so I found it.

Of course, no one knowingly seeks a damaging trait. But take a moment to be honest with yourself. If it’s always someone else’s fault, if you’re overly resentful of work, or the need to succeed weighs heavily on your heart, that might reveal a difficult but honest truth about what you’re seeking.

Make no mistake, we find what we’re looking for.

Sometimes, we get lucky. The universe puts on a show, demands our attention, and reveals what we needed to see when we weren’t even looking. Our inner artist steps forward, our willingness to share, a reflex.

But those moments are rare.

The rest of the time, we have to choose that path of awareness and practise the art of invitation.

From summit to rubble

When I started my business, I had something to prove; repeated redundancies will do that to you.

I decorated my website with the logos of previous businesses I’d worked with. I told stories of my scaling impact. I believed that I needed to validate my own voice, so in an effort to prove that I’d been to the mountaintop, I created a treadmill of content that cried out, “See me!”

I was operating from insecurity and missed a profound truth: The market didn’t need to know what I did. People needed to know who I was.

I wasn’t ignoring them; I couldn’t see them.

I was too preoccupied with trying to define my place in the world and fighting for position in the market that I failed, miserably, to notice the person in need and say: “I see you, what do you need?”

Perhaps I still haven’t, but at that point, I hadn’t yet made peace with the rubble of my story. The offer I was making the world was an idol of my effort and the outcomes I wanted, rather than an expression of who I was.

I wasn’t an artist yet, willing to express what I’d found and share it without qualification, managing how I looked, or trying to control what others see.

People didn’t need me to prove another summit story. They needed to know what it cost me to get there.

Broadcast Invitation

For me, starting Culture Crush opened the door to the artist’s posture. In those podcast conversations and live community meetups, my experiences weren’t evidence of failure; they were stories of relatability, points of overlap with members of the forming community.

Slowly, the ways I could help naturally emerged. But it took me a moment to notice.

The shift in awareness started when a few members of Culture Crush asked me to help them with their projects. I became a practice coach, helping them to close the gap between their idea and actually doing something about it.

My confused career became a toolkit. My losses a source of resilience.

So I stopped trying to carve out a niche and simply started meeting a need right in front of me. I had finally found my best work and a practice that paid the bills. To extend the invitation became a natural next step.

I asked the Culture Crush community a specific question: “Can I help any of you shape your projects?” Not a broadcast. Not a pitch. A direct question to people I already knew. I didn’t know if anyone would respond. I didn’t know if it would lead to work. I simply trusted that the question itself was worth asking.

What came back was £50,000 worth of enquiries.

Now, in a traditional business book, this is the part where I tell you how I scaled my impact, closed the deals, and unlocked the secret to wealth.

But here is the truth: it was three separate contracts. And none of them worked out.

In one conversation, I was completely ghosted. In another, I realised that they needed me to be someone I wasn’t, so I walked away. In the third, the very questions I asked helped the business owner realise that they were pursuing a path that wasn’t right for them entirely.

In inviting from who I already was, not from what I needed to prove, I could welcome these outcomes as information, not judgement. The ghosting taught me something about timing. Walking away from work helped me find my boundaries. In helping someone reach clarity, I was serving the work; I didn’t get paid for it, but it felt right.

Three invitations. Zero revenue.

And I was far from disappointed.

Once again, The Rhythm was at work. I reflected on what was shifting, took action by extending the invitation, and observed what came back.

Without realising it, I’d stepped away from the amateur: broadcasting, performing, and fighting for attention.

I had become the artist, inviting people into a conversation.

The artist and the amateur

That’s the choice in front of you, too.

To be the amateur who creates and waits, or the artist who expresses and invites.

It is not an easy one to live out because the system we live in is designed to keep you playing the amateur. It needs you on the treadmill, broadcasting your worth, managing your image, and waiting to be picked.

Look at the platforms we use. We were sold on the dream of connecting with others, but our only job in the eyes of the tech oligarchy is to keep the scroll going so they can sell ad space. If you’re not keeping people on the platform, you don’t get seen.

It’s why organic reach is dead and every platform is constantly begging me to ‘boost’ my posts. It’s much more effective to monetise millions of people like me than it is to sell ad placements to mega-corporations.

In the end, you’re not a platform user; you’re free labour, and the platform you use knows your fiscal value to them with terrifying precision.

The system we live in has a name for what you are, and it isn’t a human being. It’s human capital: a phrase popularised in the 1960s as a polite economic term, but the literal practice of turning a human being into a financial asset (quantifying their output, calculating their depreciation, and using them as collateral) was pioneered and perfected during the transatlantic slave trade. Plantation accounting developed the sophisticated practices for optimising “human assets.”

That is the dark heritage of the productivity treadmill.

The system demands a metric. It wants you to broadcast to the void, manage your image, and pray the algorithm picks you.

But you have a choice.

You do not have to delete the platforms, but you can absolutely refuse their posture. You don’t have to leave the marketplace; you just have to refuse to be its inventory.

Instead of performing for an algorithm optimised for velocity and outrage, and worrying about engagement rates, follower counts, or external validation, choose to speak the quiet language of an invitation.

Create your art. Put it into the wild. If just one person responds, that is not a flatlining metric; it’s a genuine human connection.

Take the win.

Invite them and say, “I created space for you, will you sit with me?”

Being takes the throne

When the world wants you to be an asset, remember the Northern Lights: your worth is not up for debate. You are a creative being destined for connection.

The heavens reveal your worth. Your friends help you feel it. The work you serve helps you find it.

And being takes the throne.

When I stopped broadcasting from the summit and started serving the work in front of me through Culture Crush, the frantic, performative doing began to melt away. It was in these very conversations that I first noticed the next chapter of my story, The Unremarkable Entrepreneur.

I didn’t choose what was happening; I chose to notice it.

I wasn’t trying to earn my place anymore. My invitations were no longer fraught with the spectre of rejection, of being ignored, or of simply being overlooked, because I had released the need to control the outcome.

From that solid ground, the true, fearless expression of the artist could finally begin. My best work could be discovered, not decided. My invitation, an act of discovery, not a performance to be judged.

That same ground is waiting for you too. When you notice your worth, only what you are remains. You can finally release your grip, abandon the performance, forgive the part of you that didn’t know enough, and become the person that says, ‘Did you see that? Let me show you.’

And when someone says yes, that’s a thread. Pull it.

When someone says no, that’s information. Adjust.

When someone asks a question you didn’t expect, follow it.

The invitation is not a risk to manage. It’s the art of attention.

Extend the grace. Call out from the rubble. What comes back proves you are no longer climbing alone.

The question is, who’s on the other side?

Look up.

I recently watched a movie called The Life of Chuck, and one scene made me look up.

I wish I could show you the Northern Lights to remind you who you are, but this screenplay adaptation will have to do.

If you took the 15-billion-year lifespan of the universe and compressed it into a single calendar year, the Big Bang happens in the first second of January 1st. And right now, we’re in the final millisecond of the last minute of the last day, December 31st.

The Milky Way didn’t form until May. Our sun and our Earth don’t show up until mid-September. Life appears soon after.

But not us.

We don’t appear until December 31st.

The very first human beings on Earth make their debut around 10:30 pm on the last day.

At 11:46 pm humanity tamed fire. And then we’re out of minutes, we’re into seconds. At 11:59 and 20 seconds, the domestication of plants and animals begins. At 11:59 and 35 seconds, agricultural communities evolve into the first cities.

Our recorded history, everyone we’ve ever heard of, every single thing in any one of our history books, happens in the last 10 seconds.

Never forget that you are. And that is enough.

Where We Are:

This is Week 12 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist ← You are here

8. The World is Abundant

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

The relentless pursuit of grand achievements can leave us feeling inadequate, paralysed by the chasm between where we are and where we think we should be. This episode dismantles the illusion that success is a sudden, dramatic arrival, revealing how the focus on distant peaks often blinds us to the true engine of progress. We explore the crippling effects of comparison and the deceptive allure of shortcuts, urging a shift in perspective towards the quiet power of consistent, daily effort.

This chapter is an invitation to reframe our understanding of success. It’s about embracing the messy, unremarkable middle – the incremental steps that build momentum and competence.

We learn to serve the work, not the outcome, finding relief in the accepting that ‘good and enough’ is the foundation for all meaningful growth, rather than a compromise.

00:17 - The Increment Is The Way: The Mountain Climb Metaphor
01:16 - The Brutal Climb: When The Summit Becomes A Tyrant
03:25 - It’s Okay To Quit: Maturity and Turning Back
04:06 - The Climber’s Identity: Gazing vs. Trudging
05:03 - The Tyranny of The Summit: Comparison and Frozen Feet
07:01 - Panic, Paralysis, Procrastination: The Summit’s Shadow
08:40 - Good and Enough: Celebrating The Baby Steps
10:34 - The Moon Landing: Millions of Unremarkable Learnings
11:35 - Shortcuts vs. Competence: The Risk of Someone Else’s Summit
12:17 - Robert Raikes: The Rhythm of Reflection, Action, Observation

What we cover in this episode:

• The Mountain Climb Metaphor: How focusing on the summit can become a paralysing force, rather than a motivator.

• The Tyranny of The Summit: Why gazing at distant goals can lead to panic, paralysis, or procrastination, stealing our present focus.

• Good and Enough: Releasing perfection and embracing the ‘unvarnished attempt’ as the true standard for growth.

• The Rhythm of Progress: Learning from reflection, action, and observation to discover the path, not just decide on a destination.

• Serving the Work: Why true progress is built on consistent, incremental investment, not just celebrated moments of sudden success.

Notable Quotes:

• “The summit wasn’t the lesson; the steps were.”

• “The mountain isn’t the enemy, but gazing endlessly at the summit while you walk is.”

• “Good enough is a shrug of the shoulders, but good and enough is the choice to balance your effort with the grace to stop.”

Questions for the Campfire:

• Is this task ‘good and enough’ for today, or am I chasing an impossible perfection?

• What does ‘easy’ look like in the context of the next step I need to take?

• How can the rhythm of reflection, action, and observation inform my next move

Join the conversation: read the full written version and gather around the campfire on Substack: https://www.unremarkable.co

Start from the beginning:

#Kilimanjaro #IncrementalProgress #GoodEnough #TheSummitIsALie #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

Where We Are:

This is Week 11 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way ← You are here

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

I should have listened, but I just didn’t know which path to walk if I didn’t walk that one.

Knowing I was hungry for a sense of direction, he handed me a flyer for a charity mountain climb: Mount Kilimanjaro. It was expensive, and sitting with this memory now, I’m not sure how we put the money together. But we did. And we raised £3,000 for charity.

Every day, I would strap on my egregiously heavy walking boots (they were absolutely the wrong boots for this climb) and I would jog around the park. Then I would jog to the hospital for my cleaning shift, and up the nine flights of stairs to the ward.

On the 21st of June 2001, we rose at midnight for a fifteen-hour trek and the final climb. It was -15°C and I had been sick for days. My memory of this is fragmented, but I do remember the moment of collapse, and the absurdity of my request that the group push on without me and pick me up after I had a nice long bath. A hot vitamin C drink snapped me back into the real world. Later, my hands went completely numb; the middle layer of my three-glove system had become damp and turned to ice without me realising.

My symptoms on the descent revealed the toll altitude sickness had taken on my body. It had been begging me to turn back. But I just couldn’t face that path either.

For the young man who felt adrift, this summit was symbolic.

And when I reached it, it wasn’t special because the view was out-of-this-world. It was special because of what it cost me to see it.

My group reached the same summit, but experienced a very different view.

What kind of climber are you?

Our journey exploring Presence hasn’t been about discovering which mountain to climb; it has been about noticing what kind of climber you are.

Up to this point, you’ve named the weight you’re carrying. You’ve discovered that your mess is actually your qualification. You’ve orientated yourself as a servant, choosing to look at the people around you rather than the peak above you.

And in the last chapter, you asked the people who know you best to hold up a mirror. To reveal the actual equipment and character you have at hand, alongside your shortcomings and blind spots. That wasn’t just an exercise in self-awareness; it was preparation for the climb. Because knowing exactly where your footing is likely to slip is just as vital as knowing where your footing is sure.

My dad had stood alongside me to say it’s OK to stop. And if I’d had the maturity to notice, I would have quit my A-levels, and I probably would have called time on the climb too. I could have turned back before the top and still taken what I needed from the mountain.

Truth is, I rarely think of the view from the mountaintop, but I often talk about that final ascent: eyes down to the dirt as I begged Jesus to help me take one more step. The only thing I had agency over as my lungs burned, my legs failed, and my hands froze.

The summit wasn’t the lesson. The steps were.

I now understand my identity as a climber is caught in a constant tension between two realities. Part of me still gazes at summits, wondering how to get there, dreaming of sudden success, and feeling jealous of what others have and I don’t. But the other part of me simply focuses on my feet, trudging onward, trusting that the climb itself will reveal the path, good people to climb with, and new peaks that are actually worth what it costs to reach them.

This book exemplifies that tension. I’ve decided it will be a book, and I hope that it is successful. But each chapter is a single step. And as I write, some people unsubscribe, and some people write ‘serve the work, not the outcome’ on their fridge doors.

From time to time I glimpse the vista. The view is worth the cost.

If I just said “goals are bad, never look at the mountain,” you’d rightly reject it. You need to pay your mortgage. You have a project you want to complete. Having a direction is deeply human.

Look, I didn’t accidentally ‘serve the work’ all the way to Kilimanjaro’s summit. I chose the mountain, booked the flight, and packed the stupid boots. The mountain gave me a heading and got me out the door.

But on that final climb, the summit stopped being useful. The sheer scale of the remaining distance would have frozen my feet to the spot. The only way to survive the climb was to stop looking at the mountain and take one… more… step.

The mountain isn’t the enemy, but gazing endlessly at the summit while you walk is. If your attention is up there, you can’t be present right here, noticing how the landscape shifts and responding appropriately.

The mountain gave me my heading. But the increment was the way.

The Tyranny of the Gap

Knowing that, however, doesn’t diminish the summit’s pull. I still look up at the mountain, and then down at my heavy boots. I open my phone and search ‘how to climb’ and the internet does what it does best: it gives me the highlights reel of people who’ve already made it to the top.

The algorithm notes my search and sends me an endless stream of people broadcasting from the highest peaks. Retailers try to sell me boots I don’t need, and influencers offer me shortcuts to the top.

The gap between where I am and where I should be is clearer than ever.

This is where the mountain becomes a tyrant instead of a calling. We take that distant summit and we use it as a way to grade whether today has been a good day.

And measured by someone else’s showreel, it probably hasn’t.

That feeling can create one of three responses: panic, paralysis, or procrastination.

You already know about my panic-mode: the courses, the templates, and the playbooks. But I’ve faced paralysis too. I have left wonderful books unopened because starting would remind me of how much I still need to learn. I didn’t retrain or go back to school because I believed I was already too late.

The belief that I should be ‘up there’ kept me frozen in the dirt.

I stayed busy. It felt like progress, but really it was just procrastination. I found ways to make as much noise as possible whilst going precisely nowhere. I spent 18 months creating content that nobody asked for and forcing audience growth, avoiding the incremental work that actually makes a difference.

Imagine if I’d sent just two messages a day to people I could genuinely help instead.

But I didn’t.

It was easier to create and hope, than invite and experience rejection.

We rarely avoid our true practice out of laziness. Whether we realise it or not, it’s the visceral terror of exposure that stops us. We don’t paint because the canvas proves we haven’t mastered the brush. We don’t press record because the lens captures our awkwardness. We don’t write because the blank page confirms we haven’t figured it all out yet. Even playing a new video game feels fraught, because being a beginner requires us to admit we are bad at something.

So we need to set a new standard for success, because the challenge in front of all of us isn’t the mountain.

It’s the next step. Unsteady and uncertain.

Make it good and enough

Right now, my son is 9 months old. He doesn’t crawl, he sort of rolls around, reverses, sits up, and flops over as his brain desperately tries to coordinate the motor skills for movement. Suddenly he’ll be up, and he’ll get faster and faster. The result of endless incremental learnings that will suddenly look like massive progress. For Laura and me it will feel like he’s taken a giant leap, but for him, it will feel like the summit of a hard-fought climb.

Of course, we don’t wait for the moment of success to celebrate his progress. If he rolls over or pushes himself up, he gets praised for it. We recognise the achievement because he’s a baby. It’s good AND enough.

The path you’re taking today doesn’t demand perfection. It only requires you to reach that standard.

Good enough is a shrug of the shoulders. But good and enough is the choice to balance your effort with the grace to stop. To make the unvarnished attempt. To opt into the exposure we need to grow by observing what we’ve created and being present to the step we’re taking today.

It’s an act of quiet social rebellion. The active choice to silence the summit when the world demands success stories.

A line in the dirt that declares ‘that’s enough for today’.

To the moon and back

Good and enough isn’t a quaint philosophy for small things; it’s how all meaningful progress happens.

From the outside, progress can feel sudden; it can look like a giant leap. However, it’s always the fruit of years of incremental investment that we never see.

In 1969 Armstrong took one small step off a ladder onto the surface of the moon, ‘a giant leap for mankind’. The world witnessed a moment of massive, sudden progress that forever changed our relationship with what was possible.

The moon was NASA’s mountain.

And that single step wasn’t a giant leap at all. It was the evidence of millions of incremental, unremarkable learnings working together. Decades of failed tests, unglamorous mathematics, tiny engineering adjustments, and daily frustrations.

Uncharted territory. No one showed them the way. They learned to climb.

Reading this book may be helping to reveal your moon, your mountain. Something that’s worth working towards that aligns deeply with your Majesty.

Sure, you can find shortcuts: templates, funnels, and playbooks that promise a cable car up the mountainside to bypass the messy, incremental middle. But when you reach someone else’s summit you might find you lack confidence in your own feet.

You risk creating like Canva when we need you to be Picasso.

The world might see a masterpiece. But you know the million brush strokes it cost you to paint it.

The increment is how we learn the art of the climb: where learnings compound. Where each small reflection, action, observation, and each unvarnished attempt becomes the solid ground for the next step.

The altitude builds. Slowly. Until one day you take an ordinary step and realise the landscape has completely changed.

Screw the summit

Think back to Robert Raikes. If he had the tools at hand to search ‘how to educate children’, he would have been shown the summit: how to scale programmes, how to shape an institution. The sheer scale of the gap between the children he felt called to serve and the definition of what success looked like would have either killed the vision, or he would have been lost to building a system instead of meeting an immediate need.

Instead, he reflected on the immediate need (rich kids got an education, poor kids worked). He took action; not by trying to smash the system, but by creating opportunity through teaching them to read. He observed what happened, others did too, and each step became a stride.

That’s The Rhythm: Reflection > Action > Observation.

The summit the movement reached was discovered, not decided. Not through an extraordinary act of sudden progress, but an ordinary act on repeat. He didn’t weigh himself against an imagined, scaling ‘Sunday School’ brand. He just looked at the children around him and took an incremental step. Good and enough.

Simply put, we don’t climb the mountain, we only take the next step.

We don’t build businesses; we choose someone to serve.

We don’t start movements; we choose a need to meet.

We don’t try to go viral; we build trust with one person.

We don’t try to be an artist; we choose a theme to explore.

We don’t aim for a legacy; we do the work right in front of us.

When you reach your summit it won’t be special because of the view.

It will be special because of what it cost you to see it.

A note to my Dad: I hope as you read this that you know deep within your bones how grateful I am for the endless unnoticed hours spent thinking of me, planning what I couldn’t, and the grace to let me resist lots of sound advice.

Practice Note

Three questions to carry into this week.

• Is this good and enough? Release one of today’s tasks from perfection.

• What does easy look like? Ask that question of whatever’s in front of you.

• What can The Rhythm show you? Use Reflection > Action > Observation to inform your next step.

No summits, just small honest steps.

Where We Are:

This is Week 11 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way ← You are here

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

One offhand comment can displace us from our own joy, turning us into critical observers sitting on the sidelines of our own lives. When we feel left behind, the business world often tells us to figure out our “Why”. But we are not reliable witnesses to our own stories. We are too wrapped up in our insecurities and biases to see ourselves clearly.

This episode flips a classic business trope on its head. Instead of reaching for more mental models and internal frameworks, we explore why you actually need a mirror. Through a profound conversation with a barista, the creative rhythm of a stand-up comedian, and a highly practical exercise involving five text messages to your closest friends, we uncover how your community holds the key to your inherent Majesty.

Whether you feel disqualified by a fractured career path or you find yourself dismissing the exact gifts that make you uniquely valuable, this chapter is an invitation to stop deducing your purpose in a vacuum. It’s time to step out into the wild. It’s time to start with WHO.

00:00 - Welcome to Start With WHO
02:38 - The Displacement We All Experience
03:15 - Start With Why vs. Start With Who
04:32 - The Comedian’s Secret: Noticing and Creating
06:39 - Five Questions: The Mirror to Your Majesty
10:33 - The Mirror That Changed Everything (Path vs. Map)

What we cover in this episode:

• The Curse of Comparison: How an offhand comment can rob us of our joy and recast our worth in the shadow of someone else’s success.

• The Problem with “Start with Why”: Why searching internally for your purpose often fails, and why we are ultimately unreliable witnesses to our own stories.

• The Comedian’s Rhythm: How to stop trying to invent brilliant ideas out of thin air and start noticing the friction and joy in your daily life.

• The Five Text Messages: A tactical, highly uncomfortable, and deeply necessary exercise designed to reveal the hidden parts of your map.

• Path vs. Map: How viewing your messy career history as a rigid path creates shame, but viewing it as a map reveals possibility, agency, and resilience.

Notable Quotes: * “I can’t see the view because I’m in the view.”

• “My career wasn’t a path I could fail, it was a map: a landscape of trails, elevation, risk and wonder to experience.”

• “Right now, there are two versions of the truth available to you. One is that you’re broken, incomplete, too far behind to matter. The other is that you are standing on the very edge of something beautiful, waiting to experience it all for the very first time.”

Read the full written version of this chapter and join the campfire over on Substack: unremarkable.co

#SelfWorth #CommunityBuilding #StartWithWho #ImposterSyndrome #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

Where We Are:

This is Week 10 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO ← You are here

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

The barista had a kind spark and we got talking. She told me that she’d worked in the store for 17 years. So I asked if she’d wanted anything else from her career, making it as clear as I could that my question was genuine enquiry, not judgement.

She loved her job. She loved knowing the names and lives of her customers, including Janet sitting alone just opposite the counter.

The balance was right for a life met with challenges and caring responsibilities at home. It’s not the life she would have picked out, and we discussed openly the undercurrent of ‘having been left behind’, but she met the work with an obvious contentment. It reminded me of my own days serving dinners and pushing a mop around Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. Decades of striving have rarely felt as good as that simple rhythm.

Then she told me about her 33rd birthday when she visited the Cotswolds for the first time, a beautiful rural area of rolling hills and old cottages in England’s heartland. Excited, she shared that experience with someone who dismissed it as nothing special; he’d been to the Cotswolds many times. It left her with that familiar feeling.

So I asked her who she’d rather be: the person who was experiencing the beauty of the Cotswolds for the first time, or the person who thought it was nothing special?

Of course, she would rather be the former.

Wouldn’t we all?

Comparison is a curse

One offhand comment displaced her from her own joy. She became a critical observer, sitting on the sidelines of her own life. A storyline of genuine delight, republished as further evidence against her.

Two realities were playing out across the counter. One: a life left behind. A reality that only exists when measured against someone else’s story. The other: contentment flowing despite the challenges. A life standing on the edge of new beauty, able to experience wonder for the very first time.

But she didn’t register the alternative. She just accepted the feeling of being insignificant. She needed someone on hand to notice what she could not.

It’s a displacement we all experience. It happens when we scroll, when we’re jealous of a colleague’s promotion, or when our neighbour pulls up in a new car. Our worth recast by the shadow of someone else’s success.

When was the last time you actually challenged that feeling?

We accept it as a valid observation. We either swallow the judgement, or we treat it as a problem we can solve. We reach for more knowledge when what we really need is a mirror.

The wisdom of a friend who can help us notice what we can’t.

“Start with Why” is a classic reach. It’s a beautiful concept because it touches something we all feel: a universal need for meaning. Like a beautifully simple equation that explains the mysteries of the universe, it feels simple enough to be true.

It’s where many people start, and I completely get it.

But I am not a reliable witness to my own story. Neither are you. We’re too wrapped up in our own insecurities, our thirst for results, our desire to be seen, and too warped by our biases, labels, and baggage.

I can’t see the view because I’m in the view.

The solution isn’t more knowing. The world is overflowing with clever ideas, mental models, and frameworks for understanding, and I still feel incomplete.

We need what the barista had. Someone sitting across from us.

Someone to reveal the wonder at hand, help us make contact with our Majesty, expose the things we don’t want to see, and help us notice where we need to grow. Someone who can look at the rhythm of our lives and say, “I see what you’re doing, and it matters”.

We don’t need to start with Why. We need to start with Who.

The art of noticing

Have you ever listened to a brilliant comedian and wondered how they come up with their material?

We imagine the tortured genius sitting alone in a dark room, frantically sketching out ideas, inventing funny out of thin air. But their best material isn’t found at a desk. It’s found at a dinner table. It’s found in conversation with friends. In the daily friction of bumping into other people.

They don’t try, they notice.

They notice when their friends laugh at an off-hand comment they make. They listen for the absurdities their friends have experienced in life. Only then do they open their notebook and capture the thought.

Then they preview their new material for a small audience and notice again.

They listen for where the punchline lands. For where the energy in the room shifts. They look for the friction where the thing they thought was gold just didn’t translate in the room.

They don’t deduce the joke in a vacuum; it’s The Rhythm at work. They create from what they notice (reflection). They try out the new material (action). Then they observe what worked and what didn’t, and carry that into the next loop. The repeated practice of an artist who’s learnt to notice and then create.

They discover what’s funny in the wild. Your best work is found the exact same way.

So let’s step out into the wild together.

Start with who

This is not a journaling prompt. You can’t do this alone. We’ve spent a lot of important time reflecting on Presence together, now we take action so we can reveal something to observe and notice.

I want you to pick up your phone right now. Choose five people who know you well and send them a message.

It’s important to let them know that you are trying to understand yourself better, that you are trying to notice your own blind spots, and you need their honest reflection. Let them know that you’ll treat any response as something to simply consider, not judgement, so they have the latitude to be honest.

Ask them these questions:

• Is there something I’m good at but don’t notice?
  It illuminates your Majesty. It exposes the exact things that feel so natural and effortless to you that you’ve falsely assumed they have no value to anyone else. It finds the wonder you walk right past.

• What kind of problem would you come to me for?
  It strips away your job title, your marketing copy, and your “Why” statement, revealing your actual, lived utility. It points toward what kind of shelter you naturally provide for the people around you.

• What are we talking about when I come alive?
  It seeks the physical, undeniable evidence of your Majesty in flow. This question bypasses what you think your purpose should be and highlights the frequency that actually brings you joy.

• Do I have any rough edges that I haven’t noticed?
  It invites the kind of loving friction that keeps you grounded in reality. It challenges the performance state and encourages you to face the things that might be getting in your own way.

• What would you like to see me doing more of?
  It gives your community permission to cast a vision for your life, instead of you sitting alone trying to invent a strategic direction out of thin air. They see your strengths more clearly than you do.

Don’t overthink the text. Don’t try to manage their perception. Just provide a light framing, hit send, and wait for the mirror to be held up.

This exercise will likely make you feel fantastic, but it can throw up surprises too. Just remember this: whatever comes back, step into the role of the observer. It’s information, not judgement. If there is a bite of friction, it’s not an emotion to manage or a truth about you; it’s a signal to notice.

Community can feel like optional enrichment, the thing we earn time for after the work is done. But it’s critical to the architecture we explored in What Presence Requires.

Without it, your Majesty remains obscured, and the good things that want to happen to you, through you, and for you are easily missed.

Everything will find its place

Over the last three decades, I’ve worked 23 jobs. I’ve delivered papers, cleaned floors, stacked shelves, served troubled teenagers, preached the gospel, launched agencies, challenged CEOs and seen my work show up at the Oscars just months after being made redundant.

At times it’s been difficult for me to find a job. On paper I’m a risk. A drifter. Someone who’s worth noticing but easily dismissed by a fractured career path.

When I launched my own business, I felt that disqualification. I tried to sanitise the mess, to craft a highlights reel, and impress people with the big names I’d worked with. But my podcast allowed a different storyline to emerge.

I didn’t know it at the time, but those conversations forced me to wrestle with the questions I’ve shared with you today.

In the flow with my guests, I settled into a different personal register. I was less conflicted. My scars weren’t something to hide; they were evidence of relatability, points of shared understanding. My fractured career, no longer a liability.

Several of my guests helped me notice the shift, and have gone on to become great friends. Others spotted it from the audience. Friends who listened in, who’d stood beside me in the rough spots. Together, they pointed out the gifts I took for granted, and they challenged me to integrate the earlier chapters of my story.

They were the mirror that changed everything.

My career wasn’t a path I could fail, it was a map: a landscape of trails, elevation, risk and wonder to experience.

When viewed as a rigid path, my history seemed full of uncertainty and turbulence. When viewed as a map, I saw possibility, agency, and resilience. I was no longer a drifter; I was an explorer.

My work found a new heartbeat. My shame, a source of strength. The work began to feel more like a calling, something I’d grieved the loss of for many years. And slowly, I worked my way toward The Unremarkable Entrepreneur.

And where the heart goes, the work flows.

You’ve started some conversations today. And honestly, when the responses come back, some will feel uncomfortable. Not the critical ones. Those are easier to process. The ones that will catch you are the compliments you want to dismiss. That’s just what I do. Anyone could do that. That can’t be worth anything.

Notice that.

Your artist is speaking. Don’t shut them down.

These are the good things that want to happen to you, through you, and for you. The things that feel so natural you’ve never thought to count them. The impact you keep walking past. The Majesty that only you can offer the world. The damage that makes you uniquely qualified to extend the grace.

The good things that are revealed when you start with who. Where every scrap of your story can find its place.

Right now, there are two versions of the truth available to you. One is that you’re broken, incomplete, too far behind to matter. The other is that you are standing on the very edge of something beautiful, waiting to experience it all for the very first time.

Plenty of people are willing to remind you of the first version. It’s not their fault. They’re caught in the same comparison game that haunts us all.

But others see what you’re invited to. Who help you see yourself as you are, not just how you feel. They are the ones who can reveal the hidden parts of the map and lead you over the mountain pass that frightens you. Who remind you that you’re not too late, too old, too stupid, or too small.

They help you lift your eyes.

And step over the edge.

Into the wonder of it all.

To the barista who feels left behind, I say this: there might be a next step for you. But from the hundreds of people whose lives you illuminate each week, mine and Janet’s included, we are glad you’re here.

Where We Are:

This is Week 10 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO ← You are here

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

The modern business world demands that we work backward from an outcome. It tells us to pick a revenue goal, exploit market friction, and treat people as targets to reach the finish line. We are taught to treat our work as an “identity multiplier,” as if who we already are needs to earn its moment in the sun by accumulating enough wealth or scale.

This is the trap of the Saviour. And it is a profound illusion. You cannot solve an existential longing with a metric.

This episode dismantles the exhausting pursuit of playing the hero. When we measure our inherent worth by the magnitude of our impact, we lose the joy of the work itself. Whether you are navigating a career transition, staring at a bookshelf full of unfinished playbooks and panicky purchases, or simply trying to take the next unremarkable step, the invitation is simple: stop trying to change the world.

Start serving the person right in front of you. Because historically, it’s the servants who get shit done.

00:00 - Welcome to the Unremarkable Entrepreneur
01:13 - Bridging the Gap & The Practice of Presence
03:20 - The Identity Multiplier (The Illusion of Outcomes)
05:30 - You Cannot Solve an Existential Longing With a Metric
08:18 - Cathedrals, Campfires, and the Servants of History
10:36 - Robert Raikes & The Birth of Sunday School

What we cover in this episode:

• The Illusion of Outcomes: Why working backward from a financial goal often forces us to treat people as targets and strips the truth from our work.

• The Identity Multiplier: How we use our businesses and content to prove our worth, and why an existential longing can never be solved with a metric.

• Slipping the Founder’s Noose: A personal story of redundancy, the frantic scramble for relevance in the “guru economy,” and finding freedom by leaning into fear.

• Campfires vs. Cathedrals: Why history’s most impactful figures (from the Wright Brothers to MLK Jr.) weren’t trying to be saviours; they were simply servants taking the next right step in the rubble.

Notable Quotes:

• “You cannot solve an existential longing with a metric. No amount of data can deliver the piece you long for, because who you are cannot be measured, contained, or controlled.”

• “We’ve built cathedrals in their honour. But they were building campfires.”

• “It might seem crazy to suggest that your name can exist alongside the heroes of history, but only because we’ve learnt to judge the worth of the person by the magnitude of their impact.”

Questions for the Campfire: Take a moment today and ask yourself these three things:

1. Where is the friction? (Not in the market, but in you)

2. Who can you ask? (Who can hold up the mirror?)

3. What are you actually serving? (Name it, be specific)

Read the full written version of this chapter and join the campfire over on Substack: unremarkable.co

#SelfWorth #AuthenticLeadership #ServeTheWork #CreatorEconomy #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

Where We Are:

This is Week 9 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant ← You are here

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

But it’s hard. My attention is constantly being dragged the other way. The tension is alive right now, as I write these very words.

This chapter has been finished, chewed up, and reimagined several times because when I try and ‘get the job done’ I’m writing for the finish line, to sound smart, to earn your attention.

I tighten up. The ideas get bloated. I lose hours chasing every inflection instead of discovering what the work itself has to say.

You know this dance. You circle something you feel but can’t quite translate onto the page. The easy way out is to work backward from the outcome, but the result rarely has the ring of truth the work was asking for. The feeling left unresolved.

It’s why most work we do, the presentations we give, and the content we create feel endured rather than expressed.

Followed by relief rather than satisfaction.

Then I remember what my work actually is: nothing more than my best attempt to bridge the gap between myself and others, and I cannot control how they interpret it.

The benchmark for whether this chapter is good is whether it goes far enough to reveal the truth I’m reaching for and expresses in words what I feel. Have I managed to ground myself in the work instead of the promise of the finish line?

The problem is that I’m not a clean filter. I can’t help getting in the way of the work. My biases, my incomplete worldview, and my addiction to outcomes bend the words.

It’s a reality we all live with, and why presence must be something we practise, not just something we feel. It requires the architecture we explored in What Presence Requires, the structure that reveals our best work. Found, not chosen.

To serve the work, not the outcome, is to create from the rubble, to weave the threads of our lived experience, to express what we know versus what we think we should do.

The absolute antithesis of performance. An act of raw presence.

Incomplete, imperfect, and exactly what the work requires.

The problem with outcomes

Common wisdom asks us to choose the outcome we want and work backwards.

As a business owner, I’m told that if I want to increase my personal agency and serve the needs of my family, I need more money. To get the money, I need to exploit a market friction, apply pressure to pain points, and treat people like targets.

The path to freedom, paved with collateral damage.

But we can’t outcome our way to who we are.

When we treat our work as an identity multiplier, we convince ourselves that if we just collect enough wealth or reach enough scale, we’ll finally have the breathing room to be the person we’ve always hoped we were. Then we could finally slow down, finally give to charity, finally paint every day, finally volunteer, finally do the thing that has always brought us joy.

As if who we are needs to earn its moment in the sun.

Look, outcomes aren’t the enemy. It’s that we measure our worth against them. But you cannot solve an existential longing with a metric. No amount of data can deliver the peace you long for, because who you are cannot be measured, contained, or controlled.

You can follow someone else’s exact steps. You might make money. You might get seen. For a while, years or even decades, it will feel like progress.

But the moment will come when you question how you’ve managed to travel so far from who you actually are. From your Majesty.

I remember my fifth redundancy with great sadness. I heard my wife release a sound of pain through the closed door. Not for the lost income, but for me.

She knew that I already felt left behind.

Of course, the financial impact was real, but underneath it ran something sharper: five endings in a decade start to feel like evidence. About who I was. That my worth had been measured. That I wasn’t valuable enough.

So I scrambled. I joined courses, downloaded playbooks, spent thousands on training, and published a library’s worth of content. Yes, I needed to achieve financial security, but the outcome I really wanted? Proof that I mattered.

Let me draw a quick line here. These people didn’t convince me to buy anything. I convinced myself. Because, much like the first draft of this very chapter, I hadn’t yet returned to the rubble.

The question of my worth was being forced through the wrong filter: the immediate financial need. I was unknowingly trying to solve an existential question with an outcome. So when they pointed at my panic and named it for me, the resonance felt real enough. Their solution seemed obvious too.

None of it is alive in my practice today, because none of it was built to respond to the longing of my heart. It was built for market friction, not my own. My panic was just a pain point, given a price tag and a promise, and sold back to me.

Then came Culture Crush. It wasn’t about proof, it wasn’t a strategy, it was an experiment in response to a feeling: I can’t be the only one. That was when my work began to feel like a practice, and my audience began to grow in a way that felt closer to my calling. It formed partnerships, unearthed client work, and paid the bills. But more importantly, it killed my fear that I was alone.

And when fear lost its grip, I could finally slip the Founder’s Noose.

I discovered that the pain I was trying to escape wasn’t my weakness. It was my strength.

That feeling of isolation has since become the signature of my work. Found in the rubble, not chosen by an imagined outcome.

And honestly, my audience is shrinking week by week.

But for the first time in years, I feel free.

Look at your bookshelf. The evidence of the Founder’s Noose in your life is probably just a few feet from where you’re sitting. The graveyard of unfinished books and untested wisdom. The repeated decision to buy the next solution before you’ve read past chapter three of the last one. Panic purchases made by someone whose Majesty was silenced when another named their pain and put a price tag on it.

The irony is not lost on me that you’re reading this book right now, a book that could probably exist as a single line: serve the work, not the outcome.

Close the book. Do that. You’ll be fine.

The servant’s posture

If you’re still reading, you are welcome here. But consider this your final warning: there are no answers here.

And look, I know it sounds easy to say ‘serve the work’ and walk away when the world seems to demand saviours, but truly, it’s the servants who get shit done.

They follow what they feel, not what the market told them to want. And history is full of them.

Tim Berners-Lee wasn’t trying to invent the digital economy. The Wright brothers weren’t building a transportation revolution. Marie Curie wasn’t trying to pioneer modern medicine. Alexander Fleming just went on holiday.

The internet, flight, the X-ray, penicillin. They all came from people who weren’t aiming for the outcome and served the work anyway.

Others saw the promised land and marched from the rubble.

Martin Luther King didn’t get out of bed one morning and say, “Today, I’m going to be the most significant voice for civil rights in a generation.” His goal wasn’t to be an icon. His status is the byproduct of his service and the fruit of the unnamed millions who marched with him.

But history has a problem. It gives us the highlight reel and sanitises the daily grind. Like you, they were all just practitioners who got up on a random Tuesday, faced the terrifying friction in front of them, and decided to take the next unremarkable step alongside their friends.

We’ve built cathedrals in their honour. But they were building campfires.

It might seem crazy to suggest that your name can exist alongside the heroes of history, but only because we’ve learnt to judge the worth of the person by the magnitude of their impact.

The hidden footnotes of history are overflowing with people who bent the arc of humanity and were never celebrated for it. They served the work, quietly changed things, and nobody wrote their names down.

What they did mattered anyway.

And I bet they were content.

The servant’s invitation

Sunday School did not begin as a church programme.

It started when a printer in northern England looked at children working six days a week in the mills and decided to teach them to read on their one free day. His name was Robert Raikes.

He wasn’t trying to start a movement. He wasn’t building a platform. He wasn’t thinking about scale. He was serving the work directly in front of him: these children, this Sunday, this room.

Within a decade, 200,000 children across Europe were in Sunday School. Universal children’s education, as we know it today, can trace its lineage back to one printer’s decision.

The outcome was so far beyond anything he could have imagined that imagining it would have been a distraction.

He served the work. The outcome looked after itself.

On the days when my work feels too small, too slow, too unremarkable to matter, I think about Raikes. Not to draw a parallel (this work is inconsequential in comparison), but to remind myself that The Unremarkable Entrepreneur doesn’t need to change the world. It has to serve the person in front of it.

Here’s what I believe, and I hold it carefully: somewhere, someone reading this is standing at the edge of something significant. A practitioner with a specific gift, for a specific group of people, at a specific moment in history. What is holding them back is not lack of talent, or preparation, or permission.

It is the Noose. It is the outcome. It is the quiet conviction that they have to know enough first. Be present enough first. Be perfect enough first.

They do not.

We do not wait to know enough. We do not wait to be present enough. We do not wait to be perfect enough. We serve the work in front of us. Incomplete, imperfect, and as honestly as we can for the people who need it.

The rest we cannot control.

Practice Note

Three questions to carry into this week. Small. Honest. No outcomes required.

• Where is the friction? Not in the market, in you. Find the problem you keep coming back to. Begin there.

• Who can you ask? Speak to someone who knows you, who noticed the moment you came to life or stopped performing. What were you doing? Do more of that.

• What are you actually serving? Not the outcome you want, but the person or the problem in front of you today. Name it. Be specific.

We do not need to know where this leads. We need to take the next step.

Where We Are:

This is Week 9 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant ← You are here

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

The modern business landscape feeds us a persistent lie. It tells us that our value must be earned, quantified, and constantly justified through metrics, credentials, and external validation.

We are taught that overcoming imposter syndrome requires building a perfect personal brand or mastering the latest marketing funnel. This is a profound illusion. Your true value, your intrinsic Majesty, does not require an audience to exist. When we focus purely on authentic content creation or chase engagement rates, we often lose sight of our inherent worth.

This episode dismantles the exhausting pursuit of external permission. Instead of striving to acquire more authority, we must embrace a deep sense of spiritual grounding. Your worth is not a metric to be optimised; it is a constant, immovable force.

Whether you are navigating failure, experiencing a lack of visibility, or simply trying to survive the noise of the creator economy, your Majesty remains entirely intact. It is time to start resting in the sacred ground you already occupy.

00:00 - Welcome to the Next Chapter
00:23 - A Story of Grief and Sacred Ground
01:43 - Two Priests and Two Different Responses
02:30 - Defining Majesty and Inherent Worth
04:32 - The Struggle to Let Our Majesty Lead
06:16 - Escaping the Guru Economy
07:49 - What Will You Do With What You Hold?

What we cover in this episode:

• The Illusion of Credentials: Why acquiring more authority and permission will never cure the feeling of being uninvited or unworthy.

• Defining Majesty: A deep dive into the unbreakable, constant essence of who you are, detached from performance and external metrics.

• The Trap of the Guru Economy: How the constant urge to learn new tactics and build perfect funnels distracts us from our authentic voice.

• Leading From Within: Practical reflections on allowing your true self to guide your work instead of letting market expectations dictate your words.

Notable Quotes:

• “It’s the real you, detached from your performance, your credentials, or any other form of measurement.”

• “But how you feel about your worth does not change your worth. In this very moment, regardless of how you feel, your majesty remains intact, immovable, unbreakable, constant.”

• “The question is not how do you acquire more authority, more permission or more justification. The question is what will you do with what you already hold.”

Read the full written version of this chapter and join the campfire over on Substack: unremarkable.co

#SelfWorth #AuthenticLeadership #ImposterSyndrome #SpiritualGrounding #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

Where We Are:

This is Week 8 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty ← You are here

4. Don’t Worship the Outcome

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

Distraught, they carried him to a quiet local church and asked the priest if he could be buried in the churchyard. On hearing that their friend wasn’t Catholic, the priest said no.

So they did what they could, and buried him just beyond the wall.

Years later they returned for a remembrance event and made the trip to visit their fallen friend. When they couldn’t find his grave, they marched up to the church to demand answers.

A young priest met them at the door. He could feel their sorrow, their fury, their confusion, and asked: will you sit with me?

He explained that the old priest had died years ago, but had often spoken of those soldiers. Unable to live with the shame of turning them away, he had worked through the night, the sound of nearby shelling rolling across the dark.

He hadn’t moved the body. The grave remained untouched.

Instead, stone by stone, he moved the wall. So their friend could rest on sacred ground.

With that, the young priest stood and simply said: It would be my honour to show you.

The first priest knew the rules. He knew who qualified. And when he allowed his position to speak, it built a wall.

But his sense of being had something to say too. And when he gave it room to speak, it showed him what had actually mattered when that group of grieving soldiers stood before him, and what he’d missed.

In that moment, he heard the Oboe’s A.

He fell in tune with something deeper, and in response the person, not the priest, moved the wall. Same man. Same faith. Two completely different responses, depending on which part of him he let lead.

I call this Majesty.

It’s the real you, detached from your performance, your credentials, and any form of measurement. Unmoved by opinion. Not hungry for validation. It doesn’t demand to be seen. It isn’t even affected by whether you understand it. You cannot add to it, and you cannot diminish it.

You already have a relationship with it.

Some days it feels close: you move through your day with a contentment that requires no qualification. Other days it feels distant: you feel uneasy for no reason you can name.

When that happens, the instinct is to reach. For a metric that confirms, a credential that justifies, for someone to tell you you’re allowed, or to compare yourself against.

But its melody is always there, unchanged by your ability to hear it.

Think of the stars. My knowledge of how they burn does nothing to affect their Majesty in any way. Or a diamond, its worth uninterested in whether I see a lump of coal. Or a bird: it soars regardless of my opinion of it.

Like me, you may have hit some rough spots, you may have lost much, your wounds might be fresh. But how you feel about your worth does not change your worth.

In this very moment, regardless of how you feel, your Majesty remains intact: immovable. Unbreakable. Constant. It is not affected by Monday morning, the redundancy, the failed calling, the empty inbox, the metric that did not move.

If you feel powerless, it has power enough for both of you.

The question is whether we let our Majesty lead, and it’s a struggle I wrestle with every time I sit down to write.

Your mess is your qualification

There is a constant temptation to let the market dictate the words, to write for a defined niche, and to create content in a language the platforms understand. To leverage my credentials to justify my voice and prove that I deserve to be heard. To measure the quality of my work by follower counts, engagement rates, and how many people respond, rather than by how true the words actually are.

Maybe then I’d be successful. Maybe I’d create the security I seek for my family. But at what cost?

I’m still reckoning with my history of failed corporate climbs, and callings that seemed to lead nowhere. For a long time, I didn’t feel comfortable telling the whole story. If people knew I’d felt a calling to be an evangelist, would they immediately write me off?

When I look at that history, I can tell myself one of two stories. One is that I’m a failure.

Another is that I’m invited.

My Majesty is asking me to write from the rubble. It’s the only qualification I have. When I don’t, I maintain a wall that excludes the very people that need me to write for them.

I meet endless people with similar limiting beliefs. Perhaps not around a spiritual calling, but around feeling too old, too unclear, too unqualified, too ashamed, or too nervous to put themselves out there.

So we try to clean up our story, buy a library of business books, and allow internet ‘experts’ to teach us how to post and build the perfect funnels. I’ve done it. The algorithm rewards it. The industry teaches it. The guru economy depends on it.

We follow all the steps to justify our voice in the world and to help us feel more qualified to show up. The problem is we show up as someone else. And we can’t move the wall, because we can’t even find it.

The further we travel away from our Majesty, the more our limp begins to feel like a liability. The things that make us distinctive begin to feel unworthy, and the mess feels like evidence against us.

But let’s be real with one another: none of us are really qualified. The priest wasn’t qualified to turn those soldiers away, and he wasn’t qualified to move the wall either. He was just a person with a conscience and the willingness to act on it.

In a world that expects you to build a stage, project power, and curate who gets in, hear this: You are everything you need. There is nothing to add, no external validation you need, and no flaw that’s deep enough to stop you from beginning.

In fact, those very flaws are the raw materials of your practice.

As my wife Laura reminds me: nothing is wasted. So the question is not how you acquire more authority, more permission, or more justification. The question is what you will do with what you already hold.

Some of you have decades of corporate scars.

Some of you ‘don’t fit in’ because of how deeply you feel.

Some of you are generalists surviving a world that demands specialists.

Some of you live the grinding isolation of being an artist.

Some of you carry the quiet grief of a success that feels entirely hollow.

The wounds you bear don’t qualify you to declare things over the lives of others, but they do make you uniquely qualified to extend an invitation.

To move the wall. To create a campfire, not a cathedral.

They give you the strength to speak as a servant, not a saviour. And shift the tone from “Sit at my feet so I can teach you” to: “I created space for you, will you sit with me?”

“It would be my honour to show you”.

Where We Are:

This is Week 8 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty ← You are here

4. Don’t Worship the Outcome

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

We are sold a version of this lie constantly. It comes from mindfulness influencers, alpha-male podcasters, and self-help superstars. It sounds like a deep exhale. It sounds like freedom. But it is just a different cage.

In this episode, we dismantle the myth of the lone-wolf practitioner. We explore why the narrative of total spiritual self-sufficiency is actually “social acid”, and how the market exploits our ancient wiring to keep us isolated and eternally busy.

More importantly, we outline the alternative. Presence is not a feeling, a stance, or a decision. It is architecture.

What we cover in this episode:

• The Isolation Trap: Why the spaces promising freedom actually require your loneliness to remain unresolved.

• The Mirror: Why simply placing yourself in a room isn’t enough, and why you cannot fully see yourself without others.

• The Four-Part Architecture of Presence: The specific structure that allows you to remain in contact with who you actually are when the market is shouting at you to be someone else.

  • The Centre: Your immovable intrinsic worth (The Majesty).

  • The Compass: How to orient yourself when the panic rises (The PEACE Practice).

  • The Cadence: The daily rhythm that makes presence a practice rather than a philosophy (The Rhythm).

  • The Community: Why the people who gather around your work do not just consume it: they change how the flame rises.

Notable Quotes:

• “The suggestion that you can rise above the need to be seen is social acid. It’s not just wrong. It’s dangerous.”

• “Without Community, you’re left with a Centre you cannot fully experience. A Compass bent by your own biases. A Cadence compounding blind spots.”

• “A campfire requires someone to sit down beside it. And they change how the flame rises.”

Read the essay and join the conversation: Read the full written version of this chapter and join the campfire over on Substack: unremarkable.co

Where We Are:

This is Week 7 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires ← You are here

3. The Majesty

4. Don’t Worship the Outcome

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

I’ve heard a version of this said more times than I can count. A message you’ll find in retreat centres and Reddit threads. In the comment section of a YouTube video you watched at midnight when the loneliness was loudest. In paid communities and seminars that cost more than they should have, delivered by someone whose confidence you briefly mistook for evidence.

It feels like coming up for air, doesn’t it?

It feels true. And in a sense, it is: your worth isn’t contingent on anyone else’s opinion. Your intrinsic value doesn’t require external validation to exist. You don’t need permission to show up. You don’t need credentials to serve the work. You don’t need followers to be enough.

But let me ask you this: who said it?

Was it the mindfulness influencer in between posts about their latest silent retreat and their next product partnership?

Was it the alpha sitting in a dimly lit room smoking a giant cigar just before they tell you how to be a man, share a link to their crypto investment app, and remind you to break free from the Matrix?

Was it the self-help superstar from the arena stage declaring that to live a radically different life you need to make a radically different investment in yourself (which happens to look like investing in their programme)?

All three reach for something real. The loneliness they identify is yours. The philosophy they borrow (Buddhist non-attachment, Stoic discipline, biblical redemption) is legitimate. That’s precisely why it works.

But they share a structure: they tap into the gap and offer an answer that cannot fully close it. Which means you return. Which means you stay in the market. Consciously or not, the business model requires your loneliness to remain just unresolved enough.

Whilst they might come with a ‘paid community’, they cannot offer you a genuine one, grounded in the nuances of trust, not the absolutes of the truth as they see it. Because that kind of community would make you less dependent. And that’s bad for business.

The suggestion that you can rise above the need to be seen is social acid.

It’s not just wrong. It’s dangerous.

It corrodes the architectural foundations we need to build on in order to remain in contact with who we actually are.

The mindfulness influencer and the manosphere alpha appear opposite, one gentle and inward, the other aggressive and impenetrable. But on a clock face they’d be 11 and 1.

Both respond to the same exhaustion. Both identify something real we all know in our bones but don’t experience day-to-day: your worth doesn’t depend on others’ perception.

Both make the identical error: because you don’t need validation, you don’t need others at all.

Then there is the softer, more common version. The one that floats gently across your social feed: want to be happy? Have zero expectations of people.

Same feeling of exhale. Same feeling of freedom. Same acid.

Because we really, really need to be seen by others. To feel the friction of relationship. To experience the tension of accountability.

Because the thing you cannot see (and the reason this chapter exists) is that you are not transparent to yourself.

Not because you’re inadequate. Because you’re human.

I confessed in The Workbench that I’m not a reliable witness to my own why. Years of effort and false starts have confirmed it. Left to my own devices, my strengths, my gifts, and where I come alive will largely go unnoticed, because I’m just being me. The things I don’t want to do, the biases I don’t want to see, the labels I haven’t noticed all quietly decide my next moves. The moments I feel most myself are invisible to me whilst they’re happening.

I don’t need others to applaud what I’ve built, but to reflect back what they can see that I can’t. To help me remain present to who I actually am, not just the parts I can see, or the ones I’d rather not look at.

Not to validate me. To reflect me.

The myth of spiritual self-sufficiency and total independence is one of the most seductive traps in the practitioner’s life. It sounds like freedom, but it’s just a different cage.

So what’s the alternative?

Not isolation. Presence.

What Presence Actually Requires

Presence isn’t a feeling, a stance, or a decision. It’s architecture.

Four specific elements, operating together, that allow you to remain in contact with who you actually are when the world is shouting at you to be someone else.

The Centre

This is your immovable intrinsic worth. What you are before performance. Before credentials. Before Monday morning.

I call it the Majesty. We’ll explore it fully in the next chapter.

Here’s what matters now: it exists. It’s independent. It doesn’t require your belief to be true. You had it before your first sale, your first failure, your first redundancy. You have it now.

You cannot see it clearly from the inside. You’re too close. But that’s not deficiency, it’s what it means to be human.

And it’s why the Centre alone isn’t enough.

The Compass

This is how you orient toward the Centre when everything around you is pulling you elsewhere.

It’s the role of The PEACE Practice: Presence, Empathy, Action, Constraints, Evolution. Not a framework to master. Not steps to complete. Five frequencies you dial up or down depending on what the moment requires.

When the algorithm tells you to optimise, PEACE asks: are you serving the work or chasing the outcome?

When the panic rises and the Founder’s Noose tightens, PEACE asks: what does this moment actually need?

In The Prophecy, I described two familiar failures: faith without works, and works without faith. The Compass holds the tension. It doesn’t tell you what to do. It points you back toward the Centre when the noise is loudest.

The Cadence

This is what keeps you in contact with the Centre. Daily.

It’s the role of The Rhythm: Reflection → Action → Observation.

You met it in The Spark. Reflection is the wood: notice what’s in front of you. Action is the match: bring one choice to life. Observation is the flame: accept what comes back as information, not judgement.

Without Cadence, the Centre becomes abstract. A belief you hold but don’t inhabit. The Rhythm makes Presence a practice instead of a philosophy.

Not an extraordinary act done occasionally. An ordinary act, on repeat.

The Community

This is the who that illuminates everything: the worth you cannot see, the patterns you cannot name, how the work finds its real shape.

And it’s the part most practitioners resist.

Not because they don’t value connection. But because they’ve been burnt by communities that demanded performance, extracted labour, and turned relationships into transactions. Or because they’ve reached the depth of self-awareness described at the opening of this chapter, and they’ve mistaken the discovery of their Centre for the conclusion that they need nothing else.

Both are understandable. Neither is correct.

Your Centre exists. But you cannot fully see it from the inside. The Compass points you toward it, but your own biases bend the needle. The Cadence keeps you moving, but you cannot always tell whether you’re compounding wisdom or compounding blind spots.

Community doesn’t create your worth. It reflects back dimensions of it that introspection alone cannot reach. And it keeps you accountable: not harshly, not transactionally, but in the way that allows the real you to emerge over time.

Here is what I want you to notice: I have not invented this. I’m simply wrapping new language around ancient ideas.

Every society anthropologists have ever studied has used the same architecture. Symbolic systems (beliefs, symbols, rituals) do not sustain themselves in isolation. They require communities of practice to remain alive.

Christian theology describes it as Father (the immovable Centre from which all worth flows), Son (the Compass that orients toward the source), Spirit (the Cadence of daily indwelling practice), and Church (the Community through which the other three are expressed). The Stoics and the Epicureans, who rejected theology entirely, built it anyway: a philosophical identity, a school of thought to orient by, a daily practice of reflection, and a community of discourse. The medieval guild: patron, standards, apprenticeship rhythm, brotherhood. Different material. Same architecture.

And here is the final proof, the one that removes any argument that this is cultural or religious conditioning. Think of someone who has consciously rejected every one of those traditions. No church, no philosophy, no guild: they just took a job.

They still have a Centre: the organisation they work for. A Compass: the organisational values that guide their decisions. A Cadence: the policies and practices that shape their daily behaviour. And Community: the colleagues they work alongside.

They inherited this architecture. But they live within its walls just the same.

In the end, we’re the same mammals who built fires and sat in circles swapping stories ten thousand years ago. Technology has extended our reach, changed our behaviour, and convinced us we can survive without the circle. But it hasn’t changed what we need.

We are more connected, more powerful, and chronically alone.

This is why the spiritual self-sufficiency narrative is so dangerous. It is a modern delusion that tries to out-think our ancient wiring. It breaks the architecture we all need. It feels the pain of isolation and tries to fill it with choices we can make alone, instead of what we need: the company of others.

Otherwise you’re left with a Centre you cannot fully experience. A Compass bent by your own biases. A Cadence compounding blind spots. A shadow of your best self performing for an audience rather than serving the work.

That campfire we named in The Spark, the one where your best work finds people who genuinely need it, is not something you build alone. As people bring their stories, a solitary spark becomes a shared practice.

And they change how the flame rises.

Where We Are:

This is Week 7 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires ← You are here

3. The Majesty

4. Don’t Worship the Outcome

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

Yes, the work is waiting. But before we begin, we need to pause and feel exactly what it has cost us to get here.

Not the physical exhaustion of a long day, but the deep, chronic weariness of the junk we are carrying: the labels, the judgements, the isolation.

When I was writing The Reader’s Note, it felt like a chiropractor popping a joint. The relief moved through the body of my work, and within hours the logo, the bio, and the socials all changed to carry the new identity that I had been reaching for but had not quite found.

It just clicked.

If you have ever had a back issue, or been to therapy, you will know exactly how this moment feels.

It is the physical relief of finally naming the thing that hurts. Because when we leave our burdens unnamed, they do not disappear. They silently dictate our reactions.

Just yesterday, my wife and I were having a difficult day in the seemingly eternal battle that is raising a seven-month-old son. When Laura is stressed, I get stressed. To be clear: my wife is not doing or expressing anything that should bother me, but somewhere within, I am triggered.

Over the years, I have experienced profound loneliness. It is the root of my personal weariness. We won’t unpack all of that now, but I wonder whether my nervous system is simply too easily primed for rejection, for returning to isolation. When I sense the distance growing between Laura and me, I start to react irrationally.

First, I try to be funny. Then I try to fix it. Then I try to explain. Then I try to defend.

All of which are extraordinarily unhelpful responses in the moment.

I cannot tell you how many times my wife has reminded me simply to express an empathetic response: I hear you, and that must be hard. Unfortunately for her, addressing this underlying conditioning is a work of years: fortunately for me, I’m met with grace and patience.

And here is the thing I realised: the practitioner in me reacts the exact same way. I often overcompensate for uncertainty on sales or coaching calls, flatlining social metrics, or my approach being questioned, with humour, solutions, or explanation. The pattern is identical.

Yet, somehow, when we sit down to work, we expect to operate like rational machines. We forget that we bring our entire nervous system to our professional and creative endeavours. And there is a specific blind spot that I see in my social feeds, in business behaviours, and coaching calls every day.

We’re lonely.

I wonder if you’ve felt it too.

Our nervous system reacts the exact same way it does in our relationships. When we sense the distance growing between where we are and where everyone else seems to be, we panic. We try to fix it. We try to defend our relevance.

We try to perform our way back to safety.

Creating content on an endless treadmill, not to serve, but to prove we exist. Chasing metrics simply to feel seen.

We tell ourselves stories to make sense of the friction, often ‘othering’ people to ease our own pain. When we can’t name the isolation we feel, we project it outward: our boss has favourites, our colleagues lack vision, the people succeeding ahead of us are just shallow or lucky, or simply that people just aren’t listening.

Oftentimes, our harsh opinions of others are simply a mirror reflecting our own unnamed isolation.

And so, we try to outcome our way out of it. We believe that if we could just get the promotion, find the right template, or hit the right metric, the struggle would end.

But the friction is not a personal failure.

It is the cost of performing, choosing, having opinions, deciding, and producing, when we’re social creatures who crave connection, and long to practise alongside others without being judged on what we achieve.

It is not a personal failure: it’s an allergic reaction to a world that insists on measuring your worth.

As we continue, I invite you to consider your own feelings. To sit with yourself, with grace and patience.

Make a genuine enquiry.

Can you name an intrusive thought you have carried this week? Could it be that a sense of isolation sits at its root?

Could the pursuit of your work (your art, your business, your service) come alive as your best, incomplete attempt to break that isolation?

Could that recognition click something into place?

Whatever you are carrying, I invite you to put it down for a moment and offer a benediction to read aloud to yourself. Think of it as a simple blessing, or a short meditation, that draws a boundary.

A moment to reclaim the ground you are already standing on.

As you read, imagine I’m sitting with you around a campfire, as someone who knows what it’s like to fail, to feel lost and to be lonely. Someone who can say from the depths, I hear you, and that must be hard.

These aren’t words I’ve written for you, they are words of invitation I’m speaking over you.

The Benediction

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your being. A life that refuses to be defined by the quality of your content, social metrics, or the size of your audience.

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your feelings. A life that refuses to be defined by performance, KPIs, and the expectations of others.

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your ability. A life that refuses to be defined by achievements, qualifications, and scale.

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your limitations. A life that refuses to be defined by endless pressure, the need to be everywhere, and the fear of missing out.

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your opportunities. A life that refuses to be defined by the fear of failure, the shame of years past, and the fear of what comes next.

May you stand where setbacks become invitations.

Where scars declare: I know your pain.

Where practice reveals your next steps.

Where you trade your podium for a workbench.

Where you tend the ground beneath your feet instead of building an empire.

Where you experience sovereignty, find belonging, and come alive with dignity.

Where you allow what wants to happen to you, through you, and for you, to flow.

If the Benediction resonates, I have created a downloadable version so you can print it and put it somewhere useful.

Where We Are:

This is Week 6 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry ← You are here

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Don’t Worship the Outcome

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

Our nervous system reacts the exact same way it does in our relationships. When we sense the distance growing between where we are and where everyone else seems to be, we panic. We try to fix it. We try to defend our relevance.

We try to perform our way back to safety.

Creating content on an endless treadmill, not to serve, but to prove we exist. Chasing metrics simply to feel seen.

We tell ourselves stories to make sense of the friction, often ‘othering’ people to ease our own pain. When we can’t name the isolation we feel, we project it outward: our boss has favourites, our colleagues lack vision, the people succeeding ahead of us are just shallow or lucky, or simply that people just aren’t listening.

This is a reading from The Unremarkable Entrepreneur, a book written with deep affection and released weekly for the exhausted practitioner who is ready to build differently.

Free for everyone at unremarkable.co

Where We Are:

This is Week 6 of a year-long practice.

Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

1. The Weight We Carry ← You are here

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Don’t Worship the Outcome

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

We need to move through the world to a different beat.

A world that expects you to build a stage, project power, and curate who gets in. A world full of saviours offering certainty to those who can afford the entry fee.

Make no mistake, people are tired of having their insecurities provoked and ambitions monetised. The invasive demand for attention that floods their social feeds, their inboxes, and screams from every headline is sucking the joy out of life.

When all we really want is somewhere to belong, a place to sit, where the currency of relationship is trust.

This is a reading from The Unremarkable Entrepreneur, a book written with deep affection and released weekly for the exhausted practitioner who is ready to build differently.

Free for everyone at unremarkable.co

Where We Are:

This is Week 5. The opening note of a year-long practice.

The Overture (Weeks 1-5): Tuning together before the work begins.

1. The Reader’s Note

2. The Other 1%

3. The Prophecy

4. The Workbench

5. The Spark ← You are here

From there we’ll explore Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks exploring how to show up as yourself.