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.

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.

You do not find that on a stage. You find it around a campfire.

A campfire is entirely unremarkable. It requires no blueprints, no funnels, and no masterminds. You serve the work in front of you by gathering the wood, striking a match, and kicking away some of the dirt so people can come and sit with you in the glow.

It’s the language of shared space, not certainty.

Like me, some will find this harder than others because it requires that we reject our addiction to social signals: an algorithm optimised for certainty, outrage, and velocity simply doesn’t understand the language of invitation.

Even as I write these words and tend to a new flame, my own metrics are flatlining. That can be scary as the work I feel called to collides with my real-world needs.

But every day, there’s that one message, that new subscriber, that new comment that signals the new spark is being seen. And a year from now, as this book is written, several hundred people will be sitting alongside me.

You don’t need to reach the world, you need to create space for the few.

The Beat

But if we are going to stop building stages and start lighting fires, we need to make a choice: to slip the Founder’s Noose.

The Founder’s Noose tells you to build a stage immediately and prove your worth to the market. Fear dominates your decisions, you force outcomes, judge yourself against the metrics, panic, and build again. The spiral tightens.

It’s the business model of the guru economy; it’s what makes you a target. It’s the dogma that trains you to make a target of others.

We need to move through the world to a different beat. One that accepts that our best work is found, not chosen. Discovered, not decided.

I call it The Rhythm.

Reflection. Action. Observation: Three beats. One melody on repeat.

If the PEACE Practice is our compass, The Rhythm is our day-to-day cadence.

Reflection is the wood: we notice the reality in front of us. We choose a next step based on how we can best serve the work, not the destination. An act of faith.

Action is the match: we bring that choice to life in the world, we make contact, we allow our spark to be seen. An act of works.

Observation is the flame: we accept that the spark might be accepted, rejected, or simply overlooked. Whether the flame rises or withers, it’s just information, not judgement. An act of discovery.

The observation shows us what the fire needs next. We reflect on what we’ve seen, gather the next piece of wood, and go again. And again. Each repetition compounding. Each flame reaching higher.

Discovery vs Decision

The Rhythm is what brought Culture Crush to life.

I reflected on my own experience of isolation as a solo business owner, and believed I wasn’t the only one, so I took action and hosted a free online gathering and invited a guest to lead a short 10-minute reflection that we’d follow with a time of open discussion. About eight people showed up and I learned a little more about how to host, how the technology worked, and what the attendees needed from me.

At the time, I called this gathering The Common Thread. It was only through that Rhythm of reflection, action, and observation, over and over, that Culture Crush was discovered.

The gatherings looked quite different though they had a similar DNA. The gatherings were still private, there was no ‘watch again’ safety net to capture lost leads, and the focus was still reflection and discussion.

But now attendees were directly helping to fan the flames with me: the guest speaker and I would carry what we’d observed from those live discussions into podcast episodes giving shoutouts to those who had shaped the conversation.

I didn’t build my audience, The Rhythm did.

Each loop revealed what mattered. Each reflection adjusted the next action. Each iteration compounded into something I could never have chosen. I had to discover it.

No algorithm surfaced it. No viral moment unlocked it. No brainwave decided it. I simply showed up to meet the need consistently enough for the spark to become a flame.

When I called time on Culture Crush in the summer of 2025, we had around 50 people attend most sessions, people started asking me to help shape their projects, and I replaced my income.

Not through one massive leap, but through hundreds of unremarkable loops.

And so we begin

Look at your bookshelf. If it is anything like mine, it is a graveyard.

Not of failure, but of potential waiting to be practised. Millions of well-written books are sold each year to people who never read them, but are still searching for certainty.

I promise you, you could take any one of those books, practice what it preaches over and over, and you’d see results. The ideas in the book don’t even need to be good, because access to knowledge does not make us wiser. Practice does.

So before we begin Movement 1, I am asking you to start your practice with The Rhythm.

You may already have a challenge in mind where a new approach could bring some relief, but let me offer you a couple of starting points.

Do you have the ideas, but feel stuck waiting for a certainty that’s just not coming?

• Reflection: forget ‘launching’ and acknowledge you need to test reality.

• Action: send a message to one person who knows your skill. Ask them: “I am thinking of offering X to solve Y. Would that be useful to you?”

• Observation: how did they respond? How does that help you adjust?

Do you feel the Founder’s Noose, trying to force outcomes like I did?

• Reflection: stop striving and remember why you started.

• Action: delete any tasks, or content production, that feels forced or like something you should do. You just bought a whole load of time back; use it to revisit old notes, read past client feedback, or listen to something that brings you joy.

• Observation: where was your spirit lifted? Did you notice the Oboe’s A rising above the noise?

Do you feel like you have to choose, confused about which path is yours?

• Reflection: consider what you feel is missing, someone shares that pain.

• Action: see if you can find them, offer them a conversation with zero expectation of where it might lead.

• Observation: did you learn anything about how you could serve? Did you add another seat around the campfire?

The ghosts that haunt most practitioners at the end of their careers are not the projects that failed. They are the ones that were never started. The ideas that stayed ideas. The invitations that were never extended.

Movement 1 begins on the next page. Through each stanza we’ll explore Presence, showing up as yourself without the performance.

But remember this: The path does not become clear before you start walking. It becomes clear because you start walking. So however unsteady your cadence might feel, it’s time to begin.

The work is waiting.

Strike the match.

Where We Are:

This is Week 5. The fifth chapter 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, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

The fear and shame I experience don’t make me a fraud. They make me someone others can sit with, someone who knows the stakes, someone who can serve. It is my job to notice how I sometimes feel and welcome those emotions as signals from the soul.

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 4. 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 ← You are here

5. Field Notes: How to Start a Campfire

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

Though unplanned, this project served as the foundational research for the philosophy found in The Unremarkable Entrepreneur and concluded in 2025.

For current updates and to recieve The Unremarkable Entrepreneur book as each chapter is released, please visit unremarkable.co.

I don’t mean physically. I mean that I carry personal wounds that sometimes hurt, and sometimes show others that I understand exactly how they might be feeling.

The things we carry are a paradox in that sense. Take my five redundancies in a decade: in a matter of hours I can believe that nothing is ever going to go my way, and then sit with a friend fresh off the firing line, gently reminding them with deep conviction that they will find their footing again.

Just as I sat down to write this chapter, I experienced a mix of fear and shame. Fear that I’m not worth hearing after decades of failed callings, false starts, and firings. Shame that I’m not a stable earner for my family, because our household’s security rests heavily on my wife.

Laura is my champion, but I wish she didn’t have to carry it.

In the end, it’s hard for me not to feel that this body of work is the ultimate act of self-indulgence. An expression of privilege in a world that desperately needs fewer saviours and more servants.

So I write with a limp.

Each of us will experience that tension, where the uncertain work of the practitioner collides with real-world responsibilities. But I invite you to frame those emotions with care.

The fear and shame I experience don’t make me a fraud. They make me someone others can sit with, someone who knows the stakes, someone who can serve. It is my job to notice how I sometimes feel and welcome those emotions as signals from the soul.

They remind me who I am, who others need me to be, and they create an honest dialogue with myself.

As you read this, you might feel a sense of emotional weight, because it asks you to reckon with your past and who you are going to serve at the same time. That is another paradox: as you serve the work, sometimes you will feel there is harmony across your story, and sometimes you won’t. Sometimes you will serve the work only to reveal a new direction.

This is where I have to challenge some conventional wisdom: Start with why.

In the last chapter, we exposed the problem. We are trained from birth to be outcome worshippers. ‘Start with why’ continues that dance with our flawed programming, asking us once again to decide our way forward instead of discovering what wants to happen.

Here is the problem: my biases are too real, my experiences too raw, and my judgement too subjective. Simply put, I am not a reliable witness to my own why. I cannot be trusted to understand my story in a vacuum with true clarity. Without choosing to engage differently, I cannot be trusted to notice the good things that want to happen to me, through me, and for me.

When I read the opening of this chapter to my wife, I cried.

Of course, she doesn’t want me to experience shame. And the temptation is to resolve it, to tidy the narrative and avoid the pain. But our why, our limps, and our emotional signals aren’t questions to resolve. They are tensions to notice.

They are the oboe’s A asking us to tune back in.

How to engage differently

The cornerstone of this book is a way to engage differently. It is called the PEACE Practice. It is not a framework, or a ladder, or a system. It is a set of frequencies to help you improve the dialogue you will have with yourself and others, a way to help you notice more and decide less.

• Presence: serve the work, not the outcome, and treat patience as an action

• Empathy: demonstrate kindness and respect for self, invite genuine connection

• Action: make contact, and learn from friction and success

• Constraints: allow limits to focus energy and amplify action

• Evolution: notice and allow what wants to happen

The book itself is divided into five Movements, and each Movement is built around one frequency. Each Movement has its own arc, and you can read it whole and come away changed.

Take a moment to notice the signal right now. Which frequency feels the most heavy? Which feels the most alive?

Perhaps you should start there.

The Movements are not five separate books. They are five parts of one symphony. The themes cross-pollinate. The callbacks accumulate. Each Movement is complete in itself, but it knows it belongs to something larger. But you don’t have to start at the beginning.

As we travel together, you will find visual meditations, benedictions, parables, song recommendations, resources, and things to try: whatever emerges as I try to balance what I’ve decided to write with what wants to be written. All in service of helping us both connect with a life that is directed by practice, not performance.

A life destined for service.

Let me be as clear and honest as possible: this book is not a source of wisdom written by someone who has it all together. I am writing it because it needs to be written, and because of my baggage, I am the one who can write it.

You are here because something needs making too, and you are the one who can make it.

In whatever ways feel right for you, make a covenant with me now.

When the mornings feel uncertain, when we don’t know what we’re building, when our emotional signals burst into life, let’s show up, serve the work, and trust that the good things that want to happen to us, through us and for us, will emerge.

Let’s step away from the podium and return to the workbench.

Where We Are:

This is Week 4. The fourth chapter 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 ← You are here

5. Field Notes: How to Start a Campfire

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

This is the second failure: works without faith. Where action disconnected from belief actively prevents good things from finding you! It's why so many burnt-out entrepreneurs and creators are still showing up, still working hard, still miserable.

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 3. 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 ← You are here

4. How to Use This Book

5. Field Notes: How to Start a Campfire

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

Here’s why: you are the product. Your fears and insecurities have been monetised. You’ve been handed a playbook that demands you become someone you’re not, playing a rigged game that penalises anyone who refuses to perform.

The problem isn’t your strategy.

The problem is the system speaks a different language to your soul. And effort without alignment just amplifies the wrong frequency.

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 1. 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% ← You are here

3. The Prophecy

4. How to Use This Book

5. Field Notes: How to Start a Campfire

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

Einstimmung: It’s a word in the German musical tradition.

It means getting into harmony.

It’s the tuning that happens before the conductor arrives, when each musician finds their pitch from the oboe’s A.

That distinctive cacophony isn’t chaos. It’s preparation. It’s presence.

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 1. The opening note of a year-long practice.

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

1. The Reader’s Note ← You are here

2. The Other 1%

3. The Prophecy

4. How to Use This Book

5. Field Notes: How to Start a Campfire

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

I was at a church conference, barely holding on to passing grades, no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Then this prophecy: you’re anointed, special, chosen.

Problem solved.

For years, I followed that path. It led me into deep loneliness, debt, and distance from family and friends. And it left me with a question I couldn’t shake:

How can I be doing the thing I’m supposed to be doing and be this sad about it?

I now realise that I was chasing the outcome instead of serving the work. I was trying to become something rather than allowing who I already was to emerge.

Mark Twain said there are only two important moments in your life: the day you were born and the day you find out why. In other words, the purpose of your life isn’t to do until you die, it’s to discover and express who you already are in a way that meets your needs: financially, creatively, and spiritually.

Contrast that with how most of us were raised.

Who do you want to be?

What do you want to do when you grow up?

Now pick some qualifications to get you there.

We’re taught from childhood to be doers, then choosers, and then outcome worshippers. We chase the degree, the promotion, the validation, and all the material things that declare ‘we’ve made it’. And when we finally arrive, we are still unsettled.

Still asking: who am I, really?

When that realisation finally hits, we try to break free. We step out to build something of our own. But our baggage and outcome-centred programming? It comes with us. Because of it, we usually crash into one of two walls:

• First failure: You believe but never actually start. This is faith without works.

• Second failure: You decide and hustle relentlessly toward the outcome. This is works without faith.

Different reasons, same result: the death of potential. One starves it through inaction. The other suffocates it because you are too busy forcing the outcome to notice what actually wants to emerge.

Most advice ‘solves’ the first failure by pushing people into the second, without addressing the underlying problem: our conditioning for outcomes over genuine service. And there is no playbook, tactic, or mastermind, that can resolve that question of the heart: who am I, really?

The Death of Potential

We talk a lot about being an entrepreneur, but I prefer the word practitioner.

It broadens the canvas out to people who are thinking beyond their own gain and I believe you can be entrepreneurial in all sorts of contexts.

But the adjective requires the action: you can’t be an explorer without exploring, you can’t be a designer without designing, you can’t be an inventor without inventing, you can’t be a practitioner without practising, whatever that looks like for you.

Many potential practitioners get sidetracked by their outcome conditioning. Because success looks like big money, a big audience, being an authority, right?

The ghost of predetermined finish lines with the promise of safety and security haunts every exhausted practitioner:

• The corporate prophecy: climb the ladder

• The creator economy prophecy: monetise your attention

• The start-up prophecy: build a unicorn

• The artist prophecy: change the conversation.

So we get to work writing vision statements, pitch decks, and creating content, but never actually move. I used to be one of them. I’d get the vision, the branding, and the name down. Then I’d create social content, expecting it to form a bridge between my brand and the people I hoped to work with. A bridge that no one crossed.

Because talking about the thing is not the same as doing the thing.

My time would have been far better spent offering to help a small number of people every day versus trying to force my name into the spotlight. I was once again trying to become something rather than allowing who I already was to emerge.

I see this same paralysis everywhere.

Recently, I moved into a brand new house. We are fighting our way through a million snags. During that process, I met a highly skilled tradeswoman dreaming of starting her own business to shape a better future for her family.

She told me she wasn’t confident about finding a full week’s work even though she had amazing connections with site managers who would only use her.

We crunched the numbers on the spot, and discovered that she only needed two days of work per week from that trusted network to make more money than she was currently making from five as an employee.

With a handful of short conversations, she could launch her business within weeks.

• She has faith: believes she could do it.

• She has proof: connections, skills, demand.

• She has the maths: only needs two days a week to earn more.

But the fear remained: “What if I can’t find enough work?”

This is faith without works in real time: how much more will she make for someone else before she backs herself? Another year? Five? How much potential dies while she waits for certainty that will never come?

How many of us are standing exactly where she is? Resisting the first step because we worship the outcome (a full week of trade) instead of serving the work (calling those site managers).

This is the first failure: believing you’re called but never starting. Not because you lack faith. But because faith without works is dead.

The work won’t serve you until you serve it.

The Founder’s Noose

My fifth redundancy in a decade hit different.

I enjoyed the job, liked the people. But acquisitions always leave casualties, and I was one. A familiar anxiety returned immediately: “I am too late.” Too late to start over. Too late to build something. Too late to matter.

It’s a burden I’ve hauled around for all of my adult life.

I lost faith. Not faith that I could succeed, but faith in the process itself. Faith that if I served the work, good things would emerge.

“I am too late” meant I couldn’t wait for the slow reveal. Like the tradeswoman, I needed results. So I went all in on control: I bought courses. Adopted frameworks. Every tactic promised the financial security I desperately needed.

I took massive action. More hours than I’d ever worked as an employee. But none of it was in service of discovery. I was attempting to manufacture certainty through sheer force.

This is works without faith: action disconnected from trust, hustle divorced from openness. And this kills our potential, because our emotional grounding shapes everything that happens next.

If you believe it’s going to be a battle, you’ll fight when you don’t need to. If you believe opportunity is scarce, you’ll become cheap. If you don’t believe you’ll be heard, you’ll compromise your message. For many, entrepreneurship doesn’t set them free, it just amplifies their flaws.

I wonder what burden is working against you?

• “No one listens to me” → Can’t trust that good work will be seen. Must perform and manipulate.

• “I’m not paid fairly” → Can’t trust that value will be recognised. Must compete and hoard.

• “I need to prove myself” → Can’t trust that presence is enough. Must force validation.

When these anxieties take over, you stop believing that serving the work will reveal anything good. I call this the Founder’s Noose: Fear → action → outcome → fear → action → outcome → fear.

When fear leads, our actions become distorted. We jump on the next tactic. Results falter. The spiral tightens. This isn’t sustainable. Because force, without faith, destroys what it is trying to build. You cannot force what wants to emerge. You can only create space for it.

This is the second failure: works without faith. Where action disconnected from belief actively prevents good things from finding you!

It’s why so many burnt-out entrepreneurs and creators are still showing up, still working hard, still miserable.

Because in our endless pursuit of outcomes, we failed to become ourselves.

The Third Way: Faith As Practice

The alternative is to bring yourself back to the practitioner you’re called to be.

To have faith that the process will reveal what matters AND commit to works that serve what is emerging. Not blind works pursuing what you’ve decided at all costs, or actions shaped by fear and insecurity. But faith that if you serve the work, the path will reveal itself.

This is what Mark Twain meant: you don’t choose your why, you find it. You can’t decide your way to who you are, you can only discover it through practice.

I didn’t figure this out through clever strategy. I stumbled into it.

It wasn’t until I launched Culture Crush that my audience began to grow. Running a series of free events and building community was something I just wanted to do, and it was my first step in addressing the isolation that I felt as a business of one. I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt alone.

The Unremarkable Entrepreneur is a continuation of that journey.

I wasn’t trying to, but I accidentally built the client discovery process my business needed. People started to ask if I could help them shape their projects and I said yes.

I was serving what felt right: it wasn’t an outcome I chose, it was a discovery I found in the process.

• Faith: I believed serving the isolation I felt might help others.

• Works: I ran events and made contact.

• Discovery: People asked for help.

• Result: The business revealed itself.

Compare that to my evangelist years or my post-redundancy launch. The evangelist path led to a profound grief, because my actions were driven by the outcome. My post-redundancy launch led to a sustained sense of panic, because actions were driven by fear and insecurity.

Culture Crush wasn’t different because I tried harder. It was different because I trusted differently. When I paid attention to what wanted to happen instead of forcing what I’d decided should happen, everything changed.

Looking back now, I can see the oboe’s A was playing decades earlier. At sixteen, I was working as a Ward Assistant on the cancer unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, serving meals, cleaning floors, talking with patients. I loved simply meeting the need in front of me. Serving people in their healing and grief felt unremarkable but deeply right.

If I’d had the maturity to notice, maybe I’d be a deeply contented cleaner today.

It took thirty years to learn: your best work isn’t chosen, it’s found. And you find it by serving what’s in front of you with enough faith to notice when something feels true.

That’s the practice. That’s the third way. We don’t need another playbook or a louder microphone. We just need the courage to serve the work in front of us.

And the patience to let the path reveal itself.

Where We Are:

This is Week 3. The third chapter 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 ← You are here

4. How to Use This Book

5. Field Notes: How to Start a Campfire

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

A viral hit won’t make your name.

Better positioning won’t help you feel seen.

One more launch won’t fix your fatigue.

A planning masterclass won’t give you momentum.

A tighter funnel won’t give you confidence.

You’ve tried it all. And here you are, reading this, because something still isn’t working.

Here’s why: you are the product. Your fears and insecurities have been monetised. You’ve been handed a playbook that demands you become someone you’re not, playing a rigged game that penalises anyone who refuses to perform.

The problem isn’t your strategy.

The problem is the system speaks a different language to your soul. And effort without alignment just amplifies the wrong frequency.

Remember who you are.

You have permission to say no.

No to performance. To compliance. To reach. To endless hustle. To a system that wants to categorise you, sell to you, own you, and build its wealth on top of you.

You have permission to say yes.

Yes to the slow craft of practice. To being unique without apology. To resonance over reach. To focus over fear. To serving work that feels like expression, not extraction.

This is what this book offers: a way to build that doesn’t break you.

It exists for the other 1% who’ve found the accepted way to be spiritually bankrupt. You have the skills, the experience, the depth. You just can’t stomach another performance. You’re ready to build differently because you know you’re built differently.

Here’s the line I’m drawing.

If you need certainty before you start, this isn’t for you. If you’re looking for copy-paste templates and guaranteed outcomes in ninety days, close this book now.

There are plenty of people selling that. Go find them.

A life’s work isn’t built in fiscal quarters, it’s built over decades. The Unremarkable way stands in quiet defiance of the demand to be loud and the constant fight for attention. A choice to focus on what actually matters.

Allow who you are to take the lead.

Invite connection instead of attention.

Create from practice, not for performance.

Use limitations to create focus.

Prioritise discovery over decision making.

And trust that if you serve the work, good things will emerge.

If that spirit of defiance resonates, welcome.

What you’re signing up for: A practice you can use for the rest of your career. Not a formula. Not a guarantee. A practice. One that invites you to experiment, to test principles, to unearth what actually works for you.

You may have forgotten this.

Your unfiltered self is your opportunity magnet. And the work that wants to happen through you already exists, waiting to be noticed.

This book will show you how to see it, serve it, and let it set you free.

So step away from the podium.

Let’s return to the workbench.

I invite you to download and print the image below and place it somewhere you’ll see it every day.

Where We Are:

This is Week 2. The second chapter 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% ← You are here

3. Faith Without Works is Dead

4. How to Use This Book

5. Field Notes: How to Start a Campfire

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