Start With WHO
How to notice what you can’t
I just ordered coffee in my local Costa.
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.
Start with WHO ← You are here
The Increment is the Way
Invite Like an Artist
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.