The Spark
How to start a campfire
We need to move through the world to a different beat.
A world that expects you to build a stage, project power, and curate who gets in. A world full of saviours offering certainty to those who can afford the entry fee.
Make no mistake, people are tired of having their insecurities provoked and ambitions monetised. The invasive demand for attention that floods their social feeds, their inboxes, and screams from every headline is sucking the joy out of life.
When all we really want is somewhere to belong, a place to sit, where the currency of relationship is trust.
You do not find that on a stage. You find it around a campfire.
A campfire is entirely unremarkable. It requires no blueprints, no funnels, and no masterminds. You serve the work in front of you by gathering the wood, striking a match, and kicking away some of the dirt so people can come and sit with you in the glow.
It’s the language of shared space, not certainty.
Like me, some will find this harder than others because it requires that we reject our addiction to social signals: an algorithm optimised for certainty, outrage, and velocity simply doesn’t understand the language of invitation.
Even as I write these words and tend to a new flame, my own metrics are flatlining. That can be scary as the work I feel called to collides with my real-world needs.
But every day, there’s that one message, that new subscriber, that new comment that signals the new spark is being seen. And a year from now, as this book is written, several hundred people will be sitting alongside me.
You don’t need to reach the world, you need to create space for the few.
The Beat
But if we are going to stop building stages and start lighting fires, we need to make a choice: to slip the Founder’s Noose.
The Founder’s Noose tells you to build a stage immediately and prove your worth to the market. Fear dominates your decisions, you force outcomes, judge yourself against the metrics, panic, and build again. The spiral tightens.
It’s the business model of the guru economy; it’s what makes you a target. It’s the dogma that trains you to make a target of others.
We need to move through the world to a different beat. One that accepts that our best work is found, not chosen. Discovered, not decided.
I call it The Rhythm.
Reflection. Action. Observation: Three beats. One melody on repeat.
If the PEACE Practice is our compass, The Rhythm is our day-to-day cadence.
Reflection is the wood: we notice the reality in front of us. We choose a next step based on how we can best serve the work, not the destination. An act of faith.
Action is the match: we bring that choice to life in the world, we make contact, we allow our spark to be seen. An act of works.
Observation is the flame: we accept that the spark might be accepted, rejected, or simply overlooked. Whether the flame rises or withers, it’s just information, not judgement. An act of discovery.
The observation shows us what the fire needs next. We reflect on what we’ve seen, gather the next piece of wood, and go again. And again. Each repetition compounding. Each flame reaching higher.
Discovery vs Decision
The Rhythm is what brought Culture Crush to life.
I reflected on my own experience of isolation as a solo business owner, and believed I wasn’t the only one, so I took action and hosted a free online gathering and invited a guest to lead a short 10-minute reflection that we’d follow with a time of open discussion. About eight people showed up and I learned a little more about how to host, how the technology worked, and what the attendees needed from me.
At the time, I called this gathering The Common Thread. It was only through that Rhythm of reflection, action, and observation, over and over, that Culture Crush was discovered.
The gatherings looked quite different though they had a similar DNA. The gatherings were still private, there was no ‘watch again’ safety net to capture lost leads, and the focus was still reflection and discussion.
But now attendees were directly helping to fan the flames with me: the guest speaker and I would carry what we’d observed from those live discussions into podcast episodes giving shoutouts to those who had shaped the conversation.
I didn’t build my audience, The Rhythm did.
Each loop revealed what mattered. Each reflection adjusted the next action. Each iteration compounded into something I could never have chosen. I had to discover it.
No algorithm surfaced it. No viral moment unlocked it. No brainwave decided it. I simply showed up to meet the need consistently enough for the spark to become a flame.
When I called time on Culture Crush in the summer of 2025, we had around 50 people attend most sessions, people started asking me to help shape their projects, and I replaced my income.
Not through one massive leap, but through hundreds of unremarkable loops.
And so we begin
Look at your bookshelf. If it is anything like mine, it is a graveyard.
Not of failure, but of potential waiting to be practised. Millions of well-written books are sold each year to people who never read them, but are still searching for certainty.
I promise you, you could take any one of those books, practice what it preaches over and over, and you’d see results. The ideas in the book don’t even need to be good, because access to knowledge does not make us wiser. Practice does.
So before we begin Movement 1, I am asking you to start your practice with The Rhythm.
You may already have a challenge in mind where a new approach could bring some relief, but let me offer you a couple of starting points.
Do you have the ideas, but feel stuck waiting for a certainty that’s just not coming?
Reflection: forget ‘launching’ and acknowledge you need to test reality.
Action: send a message to one person who knows your skill. Ask them: “I am thinking of offering X to solve Y. Would that be useful to you?”
Observation: how did they respond? How does that help you adjust?
Do you feel the Founder’s Noose, trying to force outcomes like I did?
Reflection: stop striving and remember why you started.
Action: delete any tasks, or content production, that feels forced or like something you should do. You just bought a whole load of time back; use it to revisit old notes, read past client feedback, or listen to something that brings you joy.
Observation: where was your spirit lifted? Did you notice the Oboe’s A rising above the noise?
Do you feel like you have to choose, confused about which path is yours?
Reflection: consider what you feel is missing, someone shares that pain.
Action: see if you can find them, offer them a conversation with zero expectation of where it might lead.
Observation: did you learn anything about how you could serve? Did you add another seat around the campfire?
The ghosts that haunt most practitioners at the end of their careers are not the projects that failed. They are the ones that were never started. The ideas that stayed ideas. The invitations that were never extended.
Movement 1 begins on the next page. Through each stanza we’ll explore Presence, showing up as yourself without the performance.
But remember this: The path does not become clear before you start walking. It becomes clear because you start walking. So however unsteady your cadence might feel, it’s time to begin.
The work is waiting.
Strike the match.
Where We Are:
This is Week 5. The fifth chapter of a year-long practice.
The Overture (Weeks 1-5): Tuning together before the work begins.
The Spark ← You are here
From there we’ll explore Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.