We are told to define ourselves, project a consistent persona, and dominate a niche. It is the advice of the shortcut sellers, designed to turn human lives into predictable, marketable assets. But when you squeeze your messy reality into a rigid template, you stop being a person and start being an act. You become the loudest voice in your own cage.

Personal branding is often a lottery disguised as a meritocracy. It demands that you discard your quirks and silence your contradictions to satisfy an algorithm. When the formula fails to deliver the promised salvation, the blame is placed solely on your lack of hustle. It is an exhausting way to exist, trading your humanity for the safety of a professional silhouette.

The alternative is to embrace your life as a mosaic. You are not a static brand to be protected or a monument to be carved. You are a collection of fragments. The failures, the false starts, and the weirdness tell a much deeper and more interesting evolving story. It is time to walk out of the temple and give yourself permission to be a moving target.

00:00 - Congratulations, You’re A Cult Leader
02:30 - The Insidious Invitation of Personal Brand
06:56 - The Geometry of Your Life on Parker’s Piece
09:30 - Brand as Monument vs. You as Mosaic
12:12 - Three Questions to Illuminate the Mosaic

What we cover in this episode:

• The Cult of the Guru: How trending frameworks and aesthetic templates sacrifice your authentic voice for the sake of empty engagement.

• The Lottery of Meritocracy: Why the promise of visibility and revenue is often a rigged game designed to extract your time and security.

• The Myth of the Silhouetted Creator: The danger of carving yourself down to fit an algorithm and the exhaustion of maintaining a curated avatar.

• Life as a Mosaic: Shifting from a fixed, brittle narrative to an evolving interpretation of your history where every fragment finds its place.

• The Three Questions: Moving away from sanitised business labels toward the heart, the history, and the service that define your actual mythos.

Notable Quotes:

• “When the formula inevitably fails to capture the nuance of your actual life, the cult doesn’t take the blame; it simply tells you that you didn’t grind hard enough.”

• “You are not a brand; you’re a mosaic, still placing the pieces.”

• “The full story? The grief, the resilience, the apparent chaos? It’s not a liability. It is the thing.”

Questions for the Campfire:

1. What parts of your own story have you been hiding or silencing because they do not fit into the professional template you think you need to maintain?

2. If you stood on your own version of Parker’s Piece and spoke to your future self, what would that version of you say about the work you are choosing to do today?

3. How would your practice change if you stopped trying to build a ‘monument’ and started treating your life as a living, moving mosaic?

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

Start from the beginning: Watch Chapter 1 of the series here:

#Authenticity #PersonalBrand #CreativePractice #Humanity #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

What did you feel?

If today’s Stanza has helped you name something, resonated in some way, or made you feel like you want to belong, you might be ready to join a fellowship of practice I lead. If you’re curious to know more, drop me a reply and we’ll talk.

Where We Are:

This is Week 20 of a year-long practice.

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

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Congratulations, You’re A Cult Leader ← You are here

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

It happens constantly. Someone asks what the book is about, or what my work is for, and the answer comes out incomplete. Messy. Lacking the polish of a rehearsed line.

The shortcut sellers would say I have a communication problem. They would have it scripted and ready, neatly redacting my past into a definitive promise about my future. And yours too, for a price.

And it’s a tempting solution. Why wouldn’t I want to settle into some certainty?

But this incomplete answer is not a failure of communication. It’s a failure of the question and the constraints it demands as it collides with a mythos it can’t contain.

People expect a clear and definitive answer. It gives them the security of being able to quickly categorise you and whether you are worth their time. They want to scan the bio line and make a split-second decision.

But I’m still mid-paragraph.

The context demands certainty. It wants me to define myself clearly, project a consistent persona, dominate a niche. This book defies all three.

And despite your best efforts, you do too.

There’s no problem with your story, you just don’t fit the template on offer. The beating heart of your practice isn’t out there waiting to be boxed in, wrapped in a sentence, or confined by an elevator pitch. It’s found on a limitless canvas where every fragment of your story can find its place.

But before we forge that path, we need to drop a bomb on the detour. And if you’re out there serving the work, you’ll have been drawn to its insidious invitation.

Personal brand.

Yay! I’m a brand

I’m calling it. Personal brand is a cult.

First, you submit to the gospel of a chosen guru or a trending framework, adopting their aesthetic and sacrificing your voice on the altar of their proven template. The promise of salvation, of visibility, revenue, and relevance? Simply a matter of compliance and relentless hustle.

You can even ascend closer to the founder themselves, for a nice juicy fee.

Here’s what they don’t want you to know (and perhaps can’t admit themselves): this ecosystem is a lottery disguised as a meritocracy.

It requires hundreds to burn up just to produce the handful of glossy testimonials used to recruit the next batch of lost souls. When the formula inevitably fails to capture the nuance of your actual life, the cult doesn’t take the blame. It simply tells you that you didn’t grind hard enough.

And it gets worse. I’ve seen countless creators become evangelists for personal brand. They continue to carve themselves down to a recognisable silhouette, discarding the messy, vibrant pieces of their humanity that didn’t fit the algorithm, and choosing quirks in their story that get clicks. They trade the service they once provided for systems that ‘guarantee’ results, willing hostages to the dogma of their own self-appointed niche.

Congratulations, you’re a cult leader.

And here’s its darkest joke: it doesn’t even matter if anyone actually follows you. Whether you command an audience of ten thousand or speak entirely into the void, the trap snaps shut all the same. You become the undisputed king of your own prison empire: trapped by a story you must maintain, and enslaved by the idea that if you can just cling on long enough, grind hard enough, and be consistent enough, eventually they’ll recognise your magnificence.

This path demands that you trade the wild, unpredictable terrain of a true calling for the sterile, predictable safety of a rigid system and a paint-by-numbers story. And that’s great, assuming you want everyone in your field to feel like a threat (because you all sound the same), to self-censor, and to befriend so you can pitch. It’s the right call if you’re willing to bury the weirdness that makes you compelling because it doesn’t fit your designated content pillars.

You can try, but you can’t dance while chained to the spot.

The shadow of all this is that these middle managers of the Isolation Economy know you almost certainly won’t make their testimonials board, but they’ll willingly extract wealth, security, and valuable time from you all the same. The good news is that the security of the corporate climb is already waiting with loving arms.

To follow this path is to lose yourself to the exhausting project of remaining “on brand” and convincing others to follow you. It will suffocate your story as you maintain the illusion that you have resolved your past and figured out your future.

To break free you have to walk out of the temple and leave your polished avatar at the altar and give yourself permission to be a moving target: a complex, evolving human being whose best work is found outside the categories the market wants you to choose.

Personal brand can work, for some people, for some of the time, but it demands a brittle kind of certainty that’s destined to shatter as your mythos tries to break free.

The Mosaic Self

In 2011 I was standing on Parker’s Piece in Cambridge with a friend, staring down the barrel of my first redundancy.

Using the geometry of the park, he asked me to think of my life along a line, with the present me standing in the middle. We walked backward to speak to my younger self. What does your unwounded, uncynical self have to say to you? Then we walked forward to meet the future version. What does the one who has made it through have to say?

The present Dan was sitting with grief and dead ends, feeling like a failure. But Dan junior had a wide-eyed reminder: the world is big and full of surprising things to explore. And Dan senior had made it through to the other side. Those experiences were so long ago that he barely thought of the specifics anymore. But he was grateful for them, and for how they had shaped the steward he was to become.

It was the first time I understood that my storyline is not a fixed narrative.

The same story can be true in multiple ways simultaneously. Dan junior, present Dan, and Dan senior were all looking at the same life, and all of them were right.

Life. Viewed as a mosaic. A collection of disparate pieces working together to tell a different and evolving story. Each version of myself holding different fragments that revealed a clearer picture, not of who I was, but who I was becoming.

It’s actually a skill we’ve all practiced. One that personal brand hijacks.

Think about the last time you updated your CV (Resume for my international readers). You read the role specification and tailor your story for a line of best fit. You amplify what is relevant and turn the volume down elsewhere. You tell a curated version of the truth in order to support your ambitions. Applying for a job gives the story of your life permission to become fluid.

A personal brand demands the same thing. But in that world, the context doesn’t end when the business closes its doors at the end of the day. And you can’t just hand in your notice when you’re ready for a new challenge.

And it carries the same risk too: if we are successful (but not careful), that curated version becomes canon. A professional brand with new walls to live within.

Here is the difference. A brand is a monument. You carve it, maintain it, and occasionally update it. The cracks and imperfections that don’t immediately support whatever story we’ve decided to tell are scrubbed from the record.

But you are not a brand, you are a mosaic. Still placing the pieces. Every fragment feels lost: the redundancy, the false start, the career that looked like chaos, until you stand back far enough to see the story unfolding. Where everything finds its place.

The mosaic is your personal mythos: the living interpretation of your story that holds every fragment, true in multiple readings at once, discovered rather than decided, and the antithesis of personal brand. It’s not something you build, project, and protect. A personal mythos is something you find by looking honestly at everything you’ve been.

By now, you know my story. Some would say that I’m a failure. And honestly, from certain angles, it is true. Others see a survivor, someone with extraordinary breadth, and a resilience that only comes from fighting for your feet when the ground has fallen away. Someone with the capacity to sit with people in their difficulty and give their experience a name precise enough that it loses some of its grip.

Two completely different ways to see the same story. Both are true. The question I need to ask, and you do too as you consider the fullness of your story, is: which one do I want to live in?

And if you need a second opinion, what would future you have to say?

Honour Every Fragment

Imagine standing where I stood on Parker’s Piece. The work you’re serving today, a person waiting just ahead of you on life’s line. They are disinterested in who you are today, chained to the moment and all its worries. No, they’re asking something different.

Who are you becoming.

The answer is unlikely to fit on a business card, or be pithy enough to impress the scrollers. Your personal mythos contains too many fragments, too much depth, breadth, and possibility for that, and that’s exactly why it’s something you can build your practice around.

So unlike the certainty sellers, I’m not going to ask you to define anything. Instead I’d like to offer three questions to help illuminate the mosaic. Not to build something new, but to see what’s already there:

A question of your heart: What do you want to do?

Forget should/must/need to do. This is a question of emotional pull and what moves you. The pathos or ‘itch’ of your story.

A question of your history: What have you experienced?

This is not about credentials and what you’ve achieved, it’s about your credibility and the scars you’ve earned. The ethos or ‘stitch’ of your story.

A question of your mind: Where can you serve?

This is about how your experience, skills, and gifts can rise to meet a real problem others are facing. The logos or ‘pitch’ of your story.

Yes, I know, this is begging for a Venn diagram where the answer is revealed in the middle, but that would only serve to stylise and sanitise a searching of the soul that simply cannot be contained by a template. Instead, imagine the endless canvas, notice a few fragments, and consider where you might place the ones you didn’t think had a home in your story.

Ultimately, you do not need to have made a final decision about your past before you can offer something real. You do not need to have sectioned things away into neat, marketable boxes. The full story? The grief, the resilience, the apparent chaos? It’s not a liability.

It is the thing.

Today, you are not a conclusion.

You’re mid-paragraph.

And you can choose the next line.

Where We Are:

This is Week 20 of a year-long practice.

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

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Congratulations, You’re A Cult Leader ← You are here

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

We often spend our lives mourning the versions of ourselves we expected to become. We grieve the power, the clarity, the career path we were promised, believing that unless we can recover some former state, we have nothing left to offer. This obsession with what has been lost acts as a wall, separating us from the reality of the work that is waiting right in front of us.

The business world pressures us to seek external validation and wait for perfect conditions before we take our next step. It tells us that if we cannot fill the cathedral, we should remain silent. This is a lie. When we stop trying to reclaim a past that will not return, we discover that our current circumstances, no matter how rough or broken, have granted us a new, more authoritative voice.

This episode is an invitation to stop waiting for restitution. Your purpose is not found in the rear-view mirror of what you have lost or the hypothetical future you were told to chase. It is found in the simple, honest act of serving the person in front of you. You do not need to be perfect to begin; you only need to notice that you can.

00:00 - The Silence of the Lost Instrument
02:22 - Finding Beauty in the Gravel
03:01 - The Myth of Waiting for Restitution
04:29 - The Fierce Defiance of the Dance
06:41 - The Founder’s Dilemma: Who Am I Now?
12:01 - Three Reflections for the Week

What we cover in this episode:

• The Myth of Recovery: Why waiting for your old confidence or career to return is a trap that keeps you from your actual work.

• The Anatomy of the New Instrument: How your scars and failures provide a unique, gravelly resonance that technical perfection can never replicate.

• The Architecture of Defiance: How to ignore the need for external validation and choose to serve others right in the middle of your mess.

• The Identity Crisis of Success: How to navigate the silence after an exit or a major change, and why your next step is likely something quiet and real.

• The Servant’s Call: A reminder that your best work is found by looking at the person in front of you, rather than the crowd you hope to impress.

Notable Quotes:

• “The tide will not return what’s been washed away. It won’t repair what’s been broken, fulfill the prophecy, or restore lost confidence.”

• “The rougher edge is not your disqualification. It’s your resonance. Your invitation.”

• “You do not need to wait for the old soaring clarity to return. You do not need to claw back what you deserved or make up for what’s been lost before you are allowed to serve.”

Questions for the Campfire:

1. What old version of your career or identity are you still mourning that keeps you from starting today?

2. Looking at your current, imperfect circumstances, what unique texture or depth has your history added to your work?

3. If you stopped looking at the imaginary auditorium, who is the one person right in front of you who needs your help this week?

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

Start from the beginning: Watch Chapter 1 of the series here:

#Purpose #Authenticity #CreativeGrief #Service #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

What did you feel?

If today’s Stanza has helped you name something, resonated in some way, or made you feel like you want to belong, you might be ready to join a fellowship of practice I lead. If you’re curious to know more, drop me a reply and we’ll talk.

Where We Are:

This is Week 19 of a year-long practice.

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

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be ← You are here

4. Personal Brand is a Cult

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

Once, her voice could fill cathedrals.

But it’s been decades since she sang like that.

The reality of what changed matters far less than the profound silence that followed. My mum’s instrument was more than a skill: it was part of her identity, part of the fingerprint she left on the world. The voice that taught my sister and me to harmonise in the back of a Mitsubishi Space Wagon as we rolled through Essex blasting out the latest Amy Grant cassette.

She got to decorate the lives around her with melody, and when words failed, she would sing. When it abandoned her, she didn’t just lose something others admired: she lost part of her ability to grieve, to express joy, and to serve others.

On her 75th birthday, the family gathered to celebrate, and my brother Michael pulled out his phone and played a recording. It was my mum, singing at a friend’s wedding in 1987.

To spend a few minutes with the composer of my childhood was, all at once, a reminder of what’s been lost and a sacred moment.

Recently, my wife, my son, and I went on a cruise with my mum and dad, and one evening I heard singing drifting in from the balcony.

It was soft. Unhurried.

I turned to see my son sat with his Nana, as she sang to him as she once sang to me.

It wasn’t the voice I remembered. The soaring clarity and raw power of the old days hadn’t returned. There was no healing here, this was something new. Rougher. Deeper. It caught on certain notes, carrying a gravelly texture it had never possessed before.

And it was beautiful.

My mum isn’t the singer she wants to be, but in her hands she holds a new instrument. It might not fill cathedrals, but what does that matter? This voice serves a new audience, carrying comfort, joy, love and grief as it always did.

And it can create new, beautiful memories for me and my son.

Instruments old and new

To live under the bitter weight of what we deserved, how things should have turned out, or what we’ve lost, is to raise the wall between who you are and who you’re called to be right now.

To live frozen in a story that has no right to control what you do next.

The tide will not return what’s been washed away: it won’t repair what’s been broken, fulfil the prophecy, or restore lost confidence, energy, or the career you were promised. It’s why your calling isn’t back there. It’s right here, right now, in the very next step. Whatever you’re facing.

If you wait for restitution, you’ll wait forever, and the new instrument you already hold will be left unplayed. And years from now you’ll say ‘I missed it, again’.

My mum sang regardless of the circumstance, the lost gift, and the grief of it. She sang without asking whether she was good enough. She sang to the person in front of her, simply because it felt natural to do so. She sang, not in the absence of the challenges she’d faced, the wounds she carries, or the things she’d lost, but despite them.

And you can too.

Remember, there is nothing to add, no external validation you need, and no flaw that’s deep enough to stop you from beginning.

Lord of the dance

In 1963, the English songwriter Sidney Carter penned a hymn that echoed through damp school halls and village churches for decades: Dance then, wherever you may be.

It sounds simple, almost naive. Yet beneath it sits a fierce, pastoral defiance.

To dance wherever you may be is to reject the idea that your contribution depends on some kind of external validation, permission, or the ideal conditions. It is the refusal to wait for a fair market, a supportive boss, a perfect platform, or an unblemished record before you begin.

You are called to dance wherever you find yourself right now. Not when the grief has stopped burning or the scars have vanished. Right here, in the middle of this mess.

So many of the practitioners I meet are still mourning the instrument they thought they were supposed to play. The corporate climb that ended in redundancy. The specialist career that fractured into a dozen unremarkable jobs. The exit that felt like a summit, but left them with too much time on their hands and not enough money in the bank. The business that built an audience but cost them their peace.

They look at their chequered history and find a verdict that confirms that they were not enough. Their voice too rough, too gravelly, too broken to fill a cathedral.

But nothing is wasted.

And your voice has not been silenced.

The failed climbs, false starts, and quiet years of rebuilding may have lowered your register, but they have also left you with a unique voice. One that catches on the hard notes, that fumbles the poetry, that drifts off key and yet carries a depth and an authority that technical perfection can never fake.

That rougher edge is not your disqualification. It is your resonance. Your invitation.

The right voice, for right now, and the people who need to hear it.

Found, not chosen

Just this week I sat with a founder who had achieved what many spend their careers chasing: an exit. He built something, sold it, and stepped out of the performance.

But performing for the dashboard, his team, and the company’s valuation, had kept him busy enough to avoid the question waiting on the other side. Who am I without the role?

He’s facing it now.

And in the conversation, almost as an aside, he shared an idea. Not a business plan. Just an instinct. To gather people for a dinner. Not to revel in the mythology of headline exits and catastrophic failures, but to serve those in the unremarkable middle: building something real, without fanfare, who need to know they aren’t alone in it.

He offered the idea as if it belonged to the future. The act of an artist who must wait until he’d found a new way to generate revenue. But the right instrument isn’t somewhere out there ahead of him, it’s already in his hands.

His challenge, and ours too, is to take action with what we’ve got instead of waiting for permission or certainty or what we deserve. When we finally serve the work in front of us we’ll find the next step, even if it’s not the one we expected.

Because our best work is found, not chosen.

Finding your feet

You’ll never find your feet in the story of who you should have become. Your ability to dance is found in accepting who you are. Incomplete, imperfect, and exactly what the work requires. That’s when years past stop feeling like chains, and become harmony lines in the song you’re composing today.

And around that campfire, you’ll notice the audience that needs you now.

It may not look like the life you trained for. It may not win the applause of the crowd or satisfy the people who measure human worth by the size of the bottom line. But it is enough.

You do not need to wait for the old soaring clarity to return. You do not need to claw back what you deserved or make up for what’s been lost before you are allowed to serve.

Take a breath. Feel the weight of who you are beneath your feet.

And dance then, wherever you may be.

Today, my mum gets the final word. This is The Servant Song by Richard Gillard, performed by Heather Dowman in 1987.

Lyrics:

I would love to be your servant
Let me be as Christ to you
Pray that I may have the grace
To let you be my servant too

We are pilgrims on a journey
We are travellers on the road
We are here to help each other
Walk the mile and bear the load

I will hold the Christ-light for you
In the nighttime of your fear
I will hold my hand out to you
Speak the peace you long to hear

I will weep when you are weeping
When you laugh, I’ll laugh with you
I will share your joy and sorrow
Till we’ve seen this journey through

When we sing to God in heaven
We will find such harmony
Born of all we’ve known together
Of Christ’s love and agony

I would love to be your servant
Let me be as Christ to you
Pray that I may have the grace
To let you be my servant too

Practice Note

Three small reflections to carry into your week:

• What are you still mourning? Name the old career path, project, or version of yourself that you are waiting to recover before you allow yourself to begin.

• What is the new instrument to hand? Look at your current circumstances - the scars, the generalist background, the small audience. What unique texture does this give your work today?

• Who is on the balcony with you? Stop looking at the auditorium. Who is the single person right in front of you who needs to know the comfort of your voice this week?

Where We Are:

This is Week 19 of a year-long practice.

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

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be ← You are here

4. Personal Brand is a Cult

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

Many of us carry the weight of broken promises and exploited longings. We are told our scars make us stronger, yet we often find ourselves stuck in their shadow.

When your work becomes an extension of your wounds, you stop creating and start performing. You look for validation in the numbers and the applause, hoping to balance a ledger that never settles. The Isolation Economy thrives on this hunger, pushing you to beat the people who caused your pain, rather than finding the peace that actually sets you free.

The solution is not more effort or greater hustle. It is the quiet, daily, and often difficult decision to forgive. By choosing to put down the need to win and the desire for fair treatment, you stop the cycle of bitterness that drives your behaviour. You reclaim your story from the system and start building something that actually reflects who you are.

00:00 - The Trap of the Evangelist
02:36 - The Failed Experiment and the False Promise
06:29 - Why Bitterness Remains on Standby
09:48 - The Founder’s Noose and Your Lust for Fairness
11:25 - I Forgive, Therefore I Am

What we cover in this episode:

• The System: How your deepest longings are used to keep you compliant and working against your own best interests.

• The Paradox of Scars: Why turning your wounds into symbols of strength is a daily, intentional act of the heart rather than a result of sheer will.

• The Cost of Bitterness: How holding onto the need for justice compromises your creative voice and keeps you trapped in a cycle of competition.

• Redefining Calling: Why a calling is not a missed destination, but a direction of travel that begins exactly where you are standing right now.

• The Practice of Forgiveness: How to move from a place of score-keeping to a posture of freedom, even when the past refuses to offer an apology.

Notable Quotes:

• “When your work is an extension of what you lack, or the wounds you bear, no amount of effort will bring you meaning.”

• “If you’ve spent time, money, and faithfulness in pursuit of an outcome that didn’t arrive, forgive the other person’s role in it, and forgive yourself for choosing it.”

• “Forgiveness isn’t about feeling better, though you will. It’s about accepting that none of us can undo what’s been done, and choosing to tear down the wall between who you are and who the work needs you to become.”

Questions for the Campfire:

1. What is one specific, painful professional experience you are still using to drive your current work, even though it causes you to feel bitter?

2. How does your need for success or validation change if you stop trying to “beat” the people or systems that once let you down?

3. What does it look like for you to adopt forgiveness as a daily posture today, rather than a one-time event?

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

Start from the beginning:
Watch Chapter 1 of the series here:

#Forgiveness #Healing #Authenticity #CareerGrowth #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

What did you feel?

If today’s Stanza has helped you name something, resonated in some way, or made you feel like you want to belong, you might be ready to join a fellowship of practice I lead. If you’re curious to know more, drop me a reply and we’ll talk.

Where We Are:

This is Week 18 of a year-long practice.

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

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am ← You are here

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Personal Brand is a Cult

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

In the other, my professional plan to become a police officer.

And before me was a former police-officer-turned-evangelist speaking at a Christian youth festival.

I asked him how he had balanced the calling with the profession. His response: forget the profession and explore the call. He made it irresistible, asking me to join the gap year programme of the charity he represented, after which I’d become his apprentice and we would travel and preach together.

The prophecy was being fulfilled. Of course I accepted.

Six months into that year, the charity asked me to rise again. They called me and said: Dan, we need an evangelist. The mission was to serve at a major theme park to help lead a sort of interactive Christian art space. Honestly, I’m not going to waste any words trying to make sense of how weird this project was.

What I do want to share are the living conditions. The charity rented a small house for me and a small team. Every room was filthy, full of damp and mould. The owner threatened us with violence if we ever opened the dining room door. It was a putrid hovel, next to a drug trafficking hotspot with a queue of users waiting at the door.

Bear in mind that I was paying to participate in this gap year, and someone from the charity had viewed the house and deemed it appropriate for three young men. As you can imagine, I had things to say. Their response: we live by faith, and this is sometimes what it looks like. You’re a man of faith, aren’t you, Dan?

Of course I was. So I remained on the frontline. After all, I would soon take my place as a travelling evangelist.

But that didn’t happen. The policeman turned preacher decided to leave the organisation, and my opportunity left with him.

That summer I returned to the same festival. The charity had appointed a new leader who wanted to meet me. Looking back, I realise he was only a few years older than me, but he was a giant of faith in my eyes. He expressed regret about how I’d been left in limbo and apologised that I’d been convinced to participate in what was now widely regarded as a failed experiment.

He knew my story, he knew my calling, he knew what I had endured, and he made me an offer. I was to join him as his apprentice so we could travel and preach together. There was one condition: serve on the gap year programme for another year. I’ll never forget what he said: you need to earn your stripes, Dan.

After six months, all communication ceased. After another five, I finally got a call. He told me I had earned my stripes. He also told me he was too busy to take on an apprentice. I needed a new plan and I had four weeks to find one.

Man of faith.

Earn your stripes.

We need an Evangelist.

These are the words of the Isolation Economy wearing a crucifix. They had stories to craft, money to raise, and a bottom line to satisfy, so they used God-shaped language to guide my emotional response and keep a young man compliant and available.

They didn’t provoke my pain, but they still leveraged the longing of the heart.

For the next few years I tried to make the calling stick. I became a youth ministry intern, led a small community church, and continued to live by faith. I slid into loneliness and debt, eventually moving home and crying in a pub garden with my Dad.

He bailed me out. I landed a youth ministry job in Cambridge and spent the next four years serving the work and paying him back.

Will is not enough

As a 43-year-old, I spend more time in this story than I’d care to admit, and revisiting it reveals a measure of bitterness I still find difficult to process.

Yes, I write from the rubble. My scars are symbols. Without them, I’d have nothing to say.

And that is why this chapter is harder to write than most. Because ‘scars are symbols’ is true and the bitterness remains. Pain and purpose fighting for the same space.

You’ve felt this too. Not just the wound, but the paradox of it. Something that shaped you and still makes you quietly furious. The weaponised performance review. The mentor who moved the goalposts. The leader who claimed their applause based on your work. The promotion that was promised but never honoured. The person who saw your longing and used it for their gain.

The world tells you your scars make you stronger. And it’s true: you can be a better boss, a kinder friend, a more emotive artist because of what you’ve survived. But turning your wounds into symbols isn’t an act of sheer will. It’s a daily decision of the heart.

Otherwise your work amplifies your wounds instead of who you are. When your work is an extension of what you lack, or the wounds you bear, no amount of effort will bring you meaning.

Your output doesn’t balance the ledger or determine your value. It never has.

I needed to forgive

One day, the youth charity leader came to speak in Cambridge. I was there but couldn’t face him and left early. Years later our paths crossed again. In my search for peace I’d convinced myself that I should apologise for any bitterness I’d held against him and the organisation, so I waited for a conversation.

As he approached me, I was stunned by what he said: oh, you’ve decided not to be rude this time, have you?

In the years since, his star has risen and his influence grown. He leads an international charity, writes books, speaks at conferences, and shapes minds. Me? I went on to experience five redundancies in a decade and even today, find it hard to shake the feeling that I’m a failure. The one who doesn’t have enough faith, who’s always too late, and now too old.

Bitterness. All too easy to find if I cared to look.

Though those things often feel true, the Oboe’s A invites me to notice a different reality. I’ve met and worked with people whose stories I understand because of what I’ve lived through. And slowly, forgiveness has been gaining ground on the bitterness that loves to run the show and direct my actions.

Looking back, I didn’t need to seek forgiveness. I needed to forgive.

To this day, it remains the only thing I can control.

You need to forgive

Forgiveness isn’t a one-time thing. It’s a posture, a daily decision of the heart. And it’s required right now.

Forgive the employer who didn’t honour you.

Forgive the coach who didn’t help you.

Forgive yourself for not knowing enough, for not acting enough, for not being wise enough.

Forgive yourself for the bitterness you cling to today, and the narrative walls you choose to live within.

And forgive the system that exploited your longing.

If you’ve spent time, money, and faithfulness in pursuit of an outcome that didn’t arrive, forgive the other person’s role in it and forgive yourself for choosing it.

I’m not just saying let it go. You’re right, you didn’t get what you deserved. But whilst your mind wants to fight for it, your heart longs to put it down.

When you don’t, you lose.

If I hadn’t believed that I was too late in my younger years, I could have gone back to school or trained as a police officer. I could have returned to my cleaning job where I felt content and useful. When I started my business, I could have focused on relationships instead of forcing a sense of scale and parading my success stories in front of others.

But I didn’t. Not because I didn’t know enough, not because I wasn’t aware of my options. But because I hadn’t yet realised that the Founder’s Noose was feeding on my lust for what’s fair, pushing me towards getting what I deserved.

No amount of work could release me from that hunger. Only forgiveness could do that.

Today, you might feel trapped by the walls of your story, but you haven’t missed it. You’re not too old, too late, or too irrelevant. A calling isn’t a destination you miss, it’s a direction of travel that starts right where you’re standing. It’s found in the rubble of the walls by those who choose to tear them down.

The question is whether you choose to continue the story, or write the sequel by forgiving yourself, and those who hurt you.

Therefore I am

You have heard it said: I think, therefore I am.

But my mind wants to show them how stupid they were for letting me go.

My mind wants to become famous so they can experience the shadow of my wisdom.

My mind wants to win, and it overrides the wisdom of my heart every day.

In other words, what I think is not a reliable steward of what my soul needs and what my best work requires.

So instead, I say this: I forgive, therefore I am.

Forgiveness isn’t about feeling better (though you will). It’s about accepting that none of us can undo what’s been done and choosing to tear down the wall between who you are and who the work needs you to become. It’s the daily decision to stop keeping score, to resist the temptation to live according to what we’ve lost and how we’ve been mistreated.

It’s the only thing we can control.

Without it, bitterness remains on standby, ready to flood the space where forgiveness should be, ready to do our thinking for us: driving the desire to win, to overwhelm the past, to finally take what we deserve.

Being unable to forgive (or not realising that you could) is the silent curse that manipulates your message, compromises your content, and makes you a target of the Isolation Economy: forcing you to outperform your past, the system that made you feel alone, and the people who caused you pain. They are your competition and your job is to beat them.

It’s the reason you remain at the centre of your story asking ‘how do I get seen?’ versus ‘how can I see others?’

For me, it makes me think I need reach, when I simply need relationships. To revel in the abundance of one, instead of the dopamine hit of a social graph moving up and to the right.

Honestly, I’m not some zen master writing from a position of inner peace, nor have I satisfied my programming for success. Some days I’ve forgiven the people who wounded me, and some days I haven’t. But I know the days when I feel content, when I feel like I count, when I write with a fire in my heart instead of a chip on my shoulder. On those days, the walls of these stories don’t exist, and so I aim for more of those.

And ultimately, the actions of old enemies were just expressions of the system they were stuck in too. If there were justice to seek, how would I ever find it?

In the end, the deepest, truest, most magnetic version of your story isn’t found in victory.

So today, don’t try to win. Don’t try to be seen. Operate from something new:

Forgiveness.

Practice Note:

One action to carry into this week.

When a troubling memory replays without permission, or when you feel diminished or jealous because of someone else’s success, note it down and remember, that’s not your story.

With a deep breath, say or whisper aloud this short mantra: I forgive, therefore I am.

Where We Are:

This is Week 18 of a year-long practice.

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

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am ← You are here

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Personal Brand is a Cult

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

We open our phones expecting connection, yet we are met with a digital landscape designed to keep us exhausted. The system does not want you content; it wants you searching for shortcuts to satisfy the feeling of being incomplete. One that it manufactured and then monetised. By keeping us anxious and disconnected, the modern economy turns human beings into predictable consumers of its own cures.

This episode explores the mechanics of Isolation Economics. We look at how gurus, monopolies, and even civic discourse leverage your feelings of scarcity to sell you status and belonging. You are being nudged to view your neighbours as competition and your own life as a metric to be improved, all while the system profits from the very wounds it keeps open

The way out is not another digital strategy or life hack. It is a quiet rebellion. By reclaiming your presence and refusing to participate in the game of scarcity, you find that the world is abundant. It is time to move past the marketing noise and recognise that your value is not a commodity to be traded, sold, or exploited.

00:00 - Welcome to the Loneliness Economy
01:52 - The Architecture of Presence vs. The Enemy
02:40 - The True Cost of Isolation Economics
04:04 - From Guru Playbooks to Algorithmic Battlegrounds
06:11 - Practising Abundance in a Scarcity Climate
07:15 - A Rebellion of the Other 1%

What we cover in this episode:

• The Myth of Being Incomplete: How systems profit by convincing you that you are falling behind so they can sell you the solution.

• The Mechanics of Isolation: Why the current economy requires you to feel disconnected from your neighbours to ensure you remain a predictable consumer.

• The Erosion of Shared Spaces: How hobbies, quiet moments, and human interactions are mined for return on investment.

• Iron Empathy: Learning to see the system for what it is and refusing to participate in the cycle of competition.

• Civic Rebellion: Why simply noticing the person across from you is a radical act in a world designed to keep you staring at a screen.

Notable Quotes:

• “The planet-size superstore we’ve built requires your isolation to fuel its growth.”

• “Not soft empathy that finds excuses; iron empathy that sees the system, refuses to participate in it, and helps others climb out of it.”

• “You can be the rebel in a world that settled for less.”

Questions for the Campfire:

1. When you pick up your phone and feel an immediate sense of anxiety or inadequacy, whose agenda are you currently serving?

2. In what ways have you been treating your own creative work as a commodity rather than a form of human connection?

3. What is one way you can commit to a “civic rebellion” this week by choosing human presence over digital performance?

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

Start from the beginning:
Watch Chapter 1 of the series here:

#IsolationEconomy #DigitalBurnout #HumanConnection #RebelPractice #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

What did you feel?

If today’s Stanza has helped you name something, resonated in some way, or made you feel like you want to belong, you might be ready to join a fellowship of practice I lead. If you’re curious to know more, drop me a reply and we’ll talk.

Where We Are:

This is Week 17 of a year-long practice.

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

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model ← You are here

2. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

3. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

4. Personal Brand is a Cult

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

Mine rarely brings me joy, relief, or contentment. Mostly it’s just exhausting.

An endless stream of admin, unread messages, little red icons demanding my attention, promotional notifications promising the latest shortcut to optimising life, and social feeds filled with people shouting about their latest breakthrough. And the ads, the ads, the endless provocation of my emotional wellbeing.

I feel like I’m already behind before the day has even begun.

Not because it’s true, but because the system insists that it is so. Humanity decided not to build a home for itself but a superstore, and its chosen language is sales.

It has become popular to talk about digital burn-out and sure, we can blame the algorithm, point fingers at the guru economy, get frustrated with the endless funnels and the manufactured urgency and tell ourselves that if we just find a better way to filter the noise, we will finally find some peace.

But these are just weather patterns of a hostile global climate.

A rising damp that seeps through your pocket, leaks from the mouths of politicians and tech titans, and drips daily through your inbox, shaping the way you feel, giving it a name, and then selling its own solution to you.

Your enemy has a name

In the last Movement, you explored the architecture of presence. Now we face the enemy that obscures it and ask what makes it so hard to stay in contact with who you actually are.

Let me ask you this: how is it possible that you don’t wake each day filled with awe and wonder that you get to participate in the unfathomable story of the universe and instead pick up your phone to anxiously manage your place within it?

Because the climate we live in profits from replacing that natural awe with a quiet, chronic anxiety.

It tells us we are incomplete, and then sells us the very things it claims will make us whole again: status, reach, luxury, and certainty.

It’s called Isolation Economics.

The inevitable by-product of unchecked systemic greed which feeds on lonely, frightened, and disconnected people: the most profitable demographic on earth.

When we are disconnected from our Majesty, we buy the course to prove we matter.

When we are disconnected from our neighbours, we buy the brand to signal our belonging.

When we are disconnected from our own story, we buy someone else’s version of what our lives should look like and call it aspiration.

This is not an accident. It is the system working exactly as designed.

The planet-sized superstore we’ve built requires your isolation to fuel its growth. To turn human beings into predictable, malleable consumers, it must first sever our deep connections. It isolates us. It convinces us that we are in constant competition for scarce resources.

It needs us to feel like victims so it can direct our anxieties and sell us the solution to wounds it opened.

The Three Scales of Isolation

Nobody wrote the manifesto. They just found that lonely people convert. The by-product became the method, the method became the brief, and the brief became normal.

Today, Isolation Economists are everywhere. People who see permission, perhaps even instruction, to bait, manipulate and manoeuvre, because in their eyes, that’s just how the world works.

At the everyday level, it looks like internet gurus naming your fears and using them to persuade you to buy their playbook. They package your insecurity and sell it back to you as a twelve-week programme. It’s not their fault. They are unknowing middle management of the Isolation Economy. Genuinely trying to help, and genuine victims of the same system.

At the commercial level, it looks like monopolies and relentless marketing. It is the steady erosion of shared spaces. Sports hydration breaks sold as premium ad slots. It is the complete commoditisation of being. Every hobby, every quiet moment, and every human interaction is mined for its potential to generate a return. Every data-driven marketing message selling you water to quench the fire it started.

At the political level, it looks like outrage sold as civic life. Instead of town halls and physical communities, we get algorithmic battlegrounds where neighbours are reduced to bitter caricatures in a comments section. Citizens are kept so busy fighting each other that they cannot see the civic infrastructure quietly being disassembled around them. A fractured, frightened population is not an accident. It’s a decision. Freshly tilled soil in which ideological seeds can grow.

Everywhere we turn, we are smashed by scarcity, FOMO, failure narratives, and unrealistic success stories. Our value distilled into metrics, KPIs, and ROI. Our lives judged by our follower counts, revenue streams, and the power of title.

The rising damp has soaked us through, and somehow we’ve been convinced to be thankful for it.

Because there’s not enough to go around, right?

But the PEACE Practice reminds us of something different: the world is abundant. Money, attention, and opportunity are not in short supply. Success is not rationed. And the people who need your specific work are already looking for it.

Isolation Economics doesn’t want you to believe that. It needs to replace abundance with scarcity, your Majesty with performance, and connection with competition.

It needs to make sure you feel alone, have someone to blame, and a product to purchase or a vote to cast.

But when you become present to yourself, and understand the hostile climate, empathy can start to flow. Not soft empathy that finds excuses. Iron empathy that sees the system, refuses to participate in it, and helps others climb out of it.

You can stop blaming yourself for the exhaustion.

You can stop treating other practitioners as threats and recognise them as allies, trapped by the same conditions.

So what do we do?

Remember that you are a social creature who craves connection, not endless consumption. Say it plainly: my value cannot be determined, described, or contained by a title, an audience, or the size of my bank balance.

Refuse to treat those around you as prospects or competition and forsake the podium where you declare “I’m here!”. Instead, notice the person across the workbench and say “You’re here.”

In the current climate, that’s not an act of wellbeing, it’s an act of civic rebellion.

The Quiet Rebellion

If you felt alone, stressed, incomplete, angry, agitated, lost, or simply nothing when you picked up your phone this morning, ask yourself: whose story am I living in?

Without question, you are part of a better story than the Isolation Economy would have you believe, and the choice to be an active participant in it is one that’s waiting to be made.

When you do, you’ll take your place in a rising tide that resists the rising damp. You’ll join a slow rebellion of people who refuse to be categorised, commoditised and manipulated.

That’s where the other 1% belong.

It won’t feel fair. You’ll certainly face the silence of an algorithm that does not know how to monetise your peace.

But you can know pride in a world of shame. You can be the rebel in a world that’s settled for less. You can be the mystic in a world that’s forgotten wonder.

Whilst they’re busy building rockets, we’ll be moving mountains.

Your name might not make the history books. But enough will get to experience the view you created.

What did you feel?

If today’s Stanza has helped you name something, resonated in some way, or made you feel like you want to belong, you might be ready to join a fellowship of practice I lead. If you’re curious to know more, drop me a reply and we’ll talk.

Following the thread: the evidence

If Isolation Economics feels like an abstract theory, look at the market data. Your isolation is not an accident. It is the product.

1. The attention economy’s revenue

The major attention platforms (Meta, Google, TikTok) generate over half a trillion dollars annually. All of it funded by selling access to users’ emotional attention to advertisers.

Meta investor report Q4 2024; Reuters / Financial Times (ByteDance); Statista / Google (YouTube)

2. The mechanism is intentional

Peer-reviewed research confirms that engagement-based algorithms specifically amplify “partisan, emotional, out-group hostile” content. The stated reason: platforms are incentivised to keep users on their platform for longer. Anxiety and outrage are not side effects. They are the product.

Engagement, user satisfaction, and the amplification of divisive content on social media — PNAS, 2025

3. Loneliness sold back as a subscription

Replika, an AI companionship app, has surpassed 40 million registered users. The AI companion market is projected to generate tens of billions in revenue within this decade. These companies build business models that depend on users not finding connection elsewhere. As one analysis put it: “A person who heals and leaves is a lost subscriber.”

Replika (Wikipedia / company data, 2025); callyourgirlfriend.com, 2026

4. The search for connection, monetised

Match Group (Tinder, Hinge, and others) generated $3.48 billion in revenue in 2024. Its busiest periods are in winter, when the absence of a partner is felt most acutely. The product’s commercial success depends on you remaining in search of connection, not finding it.

Match Group annual report; loneliness economy analysis, 2024–25

Where We Are:

This is Week 17 of a year-long practice.

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

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model ← You are here

2. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

3. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

4. Personal Brand is a Cult

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

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

Anyway, in today’s Dispatch:

• Are you a creative tourist?

• Five questions to ask yourself.

• An invitation to practitioners.

Are You a Creative Tourist?

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

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

I became a creative tourist.

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

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

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

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

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

Five Questions to Ask Yourself

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unpacking Your Bags

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

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

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

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

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

Be well my friends, speak again soon.

Dan

Explore the Order

In today’s Dispatch:

• The social bait and switch

• What you can do about it

Bait and switch

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

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

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

Here’s why:

• Platforms are now pay-to-play

• They demand absolute clarity

• Or they demand ‘attention slop’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Honest Tension

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

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

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

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

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

So what can you do about it?

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

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

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

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

I’m always here if you need me.

Dan

Explore the Order

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

In today’s Dispatch:

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

• Introducing the Order of Unremarkable Creators

Marketing is so over

I’m done with traditional marketing and social platforms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It boils down to this statement:

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

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

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

The Order of Unremarkable Creators

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

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

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

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

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

Have You Seen This Person?

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

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

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

• Forward this Dispatch to them

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

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

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

Dan

Explore the Order

My commitments

What I’m against

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

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

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

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

What I refuse to do

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

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

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

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

What I actually do

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

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

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

What I talk about

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What we cover in this episode:

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

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

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

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

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

Notable Quotes:

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

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

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

Questions for the Campfire:

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

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

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

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

Start from the beginning:

#Abundance #ScarcityMindset #CreativePractice #InnerWorth #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

Where We Are:

This is Week 13 of a year-long practice.

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

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant ← You are here

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

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

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

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

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

Fast forward four years.

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

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

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

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

People were ready to talk and share their ideas.

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

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

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

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

Wise and foolish

There’s a famous parable about two builders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s not an oasis, it’s an ocean

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Look, I face my fair share of silence.

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

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

When did we decide otherwise?

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

The Moon

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

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

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

But like you, I am the moon.

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

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

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

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

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

This is where your moon begins to rise.

Where you create space for your Majesty to speak.

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

Where you cease trying to overcome what you lack.

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

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

The gravity remains.

And where one person responds, another will follow.

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

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

Slow miracles

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

Your best work: found, not chosen.

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

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

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

Your practice, built on solid stone.

The thing you create, finally worth the cost.

The waves, responding to your presence.

The abundance of one, drawing near.

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

A song to close Movement 1: Presence

Where We Are:

This is Week 13 of a year-long practice.

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

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant ← You are here

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

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

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

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

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

What we cover in this episode:

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

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

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

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

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

Notable Quotes:

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

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

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

Questions for the Campfire:

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

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

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

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

Start from the beginning:

#Empathy #Authenticity #BusinessMindset #Connection #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

Where We Are:

This is Week 12 of a year-long practice.

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

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist ← You are here

8. The World is Abundant

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

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

To share it, a natural act.

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

What we captured was good and enough.

The next morning, I wrote this reflection:

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

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

For a moment, only what you are remains.

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

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

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

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

The heavens made artists of all of us.

Seek and find

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

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

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

Not spin. A truth to notice.

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

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

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

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

But those moments are rare.

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

From summit to rubble

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broadcast Invitation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three invitations. Zero revenue.

And I was far from disappointed.

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

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

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

The artist and the amateur

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is the dark heritage of the productivity treadmill.

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

But you have a choice.

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

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

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

Take the win.

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

Being takes the throne

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

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

And being takes the throne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Look up.

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

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

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

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

But not us.

We don’t appear until December 31st.

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

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

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

Never forget that you are. And that is enough.

Where We Are:

This is Week 12 of a year-long practice.

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

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist ← You are here

8. The World is Abundant

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

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

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

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

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

What we cover in this episode:

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

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

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

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

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

Notable Quotes:

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

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

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

Questions for the Campfire:

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

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

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

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

Start from the beginning:

#Kilimanjaro #IncrementalProgress #GoodEnough #TheSummitIsALie #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

Where We Are:

This is Week 11 of a year-long practice.

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

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way ← You are here

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What kind of climber are you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Tyranny of the Gap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I didn’t.

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

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

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

It’s the next step. Unsteady and uncertain.

Make it good and enough

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

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

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

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

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

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

To the moon and back

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

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

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

The moon was NASA’s mountain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Screw the summit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Practice Note

Three questions to carry into this week.

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

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

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

No summits, just small honest steps.

Where We Are:

This is Week 11 of a year-long practice.

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

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way ← You are here

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

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

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

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

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

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

What we cover in this episode:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#SelfWorth #CommunityBuilding #StartWithWho #ImposterSyndrome #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

Where We Are:

This is Week 10 of a year-long practice.

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

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO ← You are here

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course, she would rather be the former.

Wouldn’t we all?

Comparison is a curse

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

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

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

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

When was the last time you actually challenged that feeling?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The art of noticing

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

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

They don’t try, they notice.

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

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

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

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

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

So let’s step out into the wild together.

Start with who

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

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

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

Ask them these questions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything will find its place

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

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

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

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

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

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

They were the mirror that changed everything.

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

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

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

And where the heart goes, the work flows.

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

Notice that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

They help you lift your eyes.

And step over the edge.

Into the wonder of it all.

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

Where We Are:

This is Week 10 of a year-long practice.

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

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant

5. Start with WHO ← You are here

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

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

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

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

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

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

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

What we cover in this episode:

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

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

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

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

Notable Quotes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#SelfWorth #AuthenticLeadership #ServeTheWork #CreatorEconomy #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

Where We Are:

This is Week 9 of a year-long practice.

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

1. The Weight We Carry

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Saviour / Servant ← You are here

5. Start with WHO

6. The Increment is the Way

7. Invite Like an Artist

8. The World is Abundant

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