The World is Abundant

And you are the moon

May 30, 2026

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It was 2020.

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.