The Prophecy
Faith, works, and the death of potential
When I was fifteen, someone told me I was called to be an evangelist.
I was at a church conference, barely holding on to passing grades, no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Then this prophecy: you’re anointed, special, chosen.
Problem solved.
For years, I followed that path. It led me into deep loneliness, debt, and distance from family and friends. And it left me with a question I couldn’t shake:
How can I be doing the thing I’m supposed to be doing and be this sad about it?
I now realise that I was chasing the outcome instead of serving the work. I was trying to become something rather than allowing who I already was to emerge.
Mark Twain said there are only two important moments in your life: the day you were born and the day you find out why. In other words, the purpose of your life isn’t to do until you die, it’s to discover and express who you already are in a way that meets your needs: financially, creatively, and spiritually.
Contrast that with how most of us were raised.
Who do you want to be?
What do you want to do when you grow up?
Now pick some qualifications to get you there.
We’re taught from childhood to be doers, then choosers, and then outcome worshippers. We chase the degree, the promotion, the validation, and all the material things that declare ‘we’ve made it’. And when we finally arrive, we are still unsettled.
Still asking: who am I, really?
When that realisation finally hits, we try to break free. We step out to build something of our own. But our baggage and outcome-centred programming? It comes with us. Because of it, we usually crash into one of two walls:
First failure: You believe but never actually start. This is faith without works.
Second failure: You decide and hustle relentlessly toward the outcome. This is works without faith.
Different reasons, same result: the death of potential. One starves it through inaction. The other suffocates it because you are too busy forcing the outcome to notice what actually wants to emerge.
Most advice ‘solves’ the first failure by pushing people into the second, without addressing the underlying problem: our conditioning for outcomes over genuine service. And there is no playbook, tactic, or mastermind, that can resolve that question of the heart: who am I, really?
The Death of Potential
We talk a lot about being an entrepreneur, but I prefer the word practitioner.
It broadens the canvas out to people who are thinking beyond their own gain and I believe you can be entrepreneurial in all sorts of contexts.
But the adjective requires the action: you can’t be an explorer without exploring, you can’t be a designer without designing, you can’t be an inventor without inventing, you can’t be a practitioner without practising, whatever that looks like for you.
Many potential practitioners get sidetracked by their outcome conditioning. Because success looks like big money, a big audience, being an authority, right?
The ghost of predetermined finish lines with the promise of safety and security haunts every exhausted practitioner:
The corporate prophecy: climb the ladder
The creator economy prophecy: monetise your attention
The start-up prophecy: build a unicorn
The artist prophecy: change the conversation.
So we get to work writing vision statements, pitch decks, and creating content, but never actually move. I used to be one of them. I’d get the vision, the branding, and the name down. Then I’d create social content, expecting it to form a bridge between my brand and the people I hoped to work with. A bridge that no one crossed.
Because talking about the thing is not the same as doing the thing.
My time would have been far better spent offering to help a small number of people every day versus trying to force my name into the spotlight. I was once again trying to become something rather than allowing who I already was to emerge.
I see this same paralysis everywhere.
Recently, I moved into a brand new house. We are fighting our way through a million snags. During that process, I met a highly skilled tradeswoman dreaming of starting her own business to shape a better future for her family.
She told me she wasn’t confident about finding a full week’s work even though she had amazing connections with site managers who would only use her.
We crunched the numbers on the spot, and discovered that she only needed two days of work per week from that trusted network to make more money than she was currently making from five as an employee.
With a handful of short conversations, she could launch her business within weeks.
She has faith: believes she could do it.
She has proof: connections, skills, demand.
She has the maths: only needs two days a week to earn more.
But the fear remained: “What if I can’t find enough work?”
This is faith without works in real time: how much more will she make for someone else before she backs herself? Another year? Five? How much potential dies while she waits for certainty that will never come?
How many of us are standing exactly where she is? Resisting the first step because we worship the outcome (a full week of trade) instead of serving the work (calling those site managers).
This is the first failure: believing you’re called but never starting. Not because you lack faith. But because faith without works is dead.
The work won’t serve you until you serve it.
The Founder’s Noose
My fifth redundancy in a decade hit different.
I enjoyed the job, liked the people. But acquisitions always leave casualties, and I was one. A familiar anxiety returned immediately: “I am too late.” Too late to start over. Too late to build something. Too late to matter.
It’s a burden I’ve hauled around for all of my adult life.
I lost faith. Not faith that I could succeed, but faith in the process itself. Faith that if I served the work, good things would emerge.
“I am too late” meant I couldn’t wait for the slow reveal. Like the tradeswoman, I needed results. So I went all in on control: I bought courses. Adopted frameworks. Every tactic promised the financial security I desperately needed.
I took massive action. More hours than I’d ever worked as an employee. But none of it was in service of discovery. I was attempting to manufacture certainty through sheer force.
This is works without faith: action disconnected from trust, hustle divorced from openness. And this kills our potential, because our emotional grounding shapes everything that happens next.
If you believe it’s going to be a battle, you’ll fight when you don’t need to. If you believe opportunity is scarce, you’ll become cheap. If you don’t believe you’ll be heard, you’ll compromise your message. For many, entrepreneurship doesn’t set them free, it just amplifies their flaws.
I wonder what burden is working against you?
“No one listens to me” → Can’t trust that good work will be seen. Must perform and manipulate.
“I’m not paid fairly” → Can’t trust that value will be recognised. Must compete and hoard.
“I need to prove myself” → Can’t trust that presence is enough. Must force validation.
When these anxieties take over, you stop believing that serving the work will reveal anything good. I call this the Founder’s Noose: Fear → action → outcome → fear → action → outcome → fear.
When fear leads, our actions become distorted. We jump on the next tactic. Results falter. The spiral tightens. This isn’t sustainable. Because force, without faith, destroys what it is trying to build. You cannot force what wants to emerge. You can only create space for it.
This is the second failure: works without faith. Where action disconnected from belief actively prevents good things from finding you!
It’s why so many burnt-out entrepreneurs and creators are still showing up, still working hard, still miserable.
Because in our endless pursuit of outcomes, we failed to become ourselves.
The Third Way: Faith As Practice
The alternative is to bring yourself back to the practitioner you’re called to be.
To have faith that the process will reveal what matters AND commit to works that serve what is emerging. Not blind works pursuing what you’ve decided at all costs, or actions shaped by fear and insecurity. But faith that if you serve the work, the path will reveal itself.
This is what Mark Twain meant: you don’t choose your why, you find it. You can’t decide your way to who you are, you can only discover it through practice.
I didn’t figure this out through clever strategy. I stumbled into it.
It wasn’t until I launched Culture Crush that my audience began to grow. Running a series of free events and building community was something I just wanted to do, and it was my first step in addressing the isolation that I felt as a business of one. I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt alone.
The Unremarkable Entrepreneur is a continuation of that journey.
I wasn’t trying to, but I accidentally built the client discovery process my business needed. People started to ask if I could help them shape their projects and I said yes.
I was serving what felt right: it wasn’t an outcome I chose, it was a discovery I found in the process.
Faith: I believed serving the isolation I felt might help others.
Works: I ran events and made contact.
Discovery: People asked for help.
Result: The business revealed itself.
Compare that to my evangelist years or my post-redundancy launch. The evangelist path led to a profound grief, because my actions were driven by the outcome. My post-redundancy launch led to a sustained sense of panic, because actions were driven by fear and insecurity.
Culture Crush wasn’t different because I tried harder. It was different because I trusted differently. When I paid attention to what wanted to happen instead of forcing what I’d decided should happen, everything changed.
Looking back now, I can see the oboe’s A was playing decades earlier. At sixteen, I was working as a Ward Assistant on the cancer unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, serving meals, cleaning floors, talking with patients. I loved simply meeting the need in front of me. Serving people in their healing and grief felt unremarkable but deeply right.
If I’d had the maturity to notice, maybe I’d be a deeply contented cleaner today.
It took thirty years to learn: your best work isn’t chosen, it’s found. And you find it by serving what’s in front of you with enough faith to notice when something feels true.
That’s the practice. That’s the third way. We don’t need another playbook or a louder microphone. We just need the courage to serve the work in front of us.
And the patience to let the path reveal itself.
Where We Are:
This is Week 3. The third chapter of a year-long practice.
The Overture (Weeks 1-5): Tuning together before the work begins.
The Prophecy ← You are here
How to Use This Book
Field Notes: How to Start a Campfire
From there we’ll explore Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.
Really impressed with this piece of thoughtful writing. You might just be more remarkable than the title suggests!