I’ve heard a version of this said more times than I can count. A message you’ll find in retreat centres and Reddit threads. In the comment section of a YouTube video you watched at midnight when the loneliness was loudest. In paid communities and seminars that cost more than they should have, delivered by someone whose confidence you briefly mistook for evidence.

It feels like coming up for air, doesn’t it?

It feels true. And in a sense, it is: your worth isn’t contingent on anyone else’s opinion. Your intrinsic value doesn’t require external validation to exist. You don’t need permission to show up. You don’t need credentials to serve the work. You don’t need followers to be enough.

But let me ask you this: who said it?

Was it the mindfulness influencer in between posts about their latest silent retreat and their next product partnership?

Was it the alpha sitting in a dimly lit room smoking a giant cigar just before they tell you how to be a man, share a link to their crypto investment app, and remind you to break free from the Matrix?

Was it the self-help superstar from the arena stage declaring that to live a radically different life you need to make a radically different investment in yourself (which happens to look like investing in their programme)?

All three reach for something real. The loneliness they identify is yours. The philosophy they borrow (Buddhist non-attachment, Stoic discipline, biblical redemption) is legitimate. That’s precisely why it works.

But they share a structure: they tap into the gap and offer an answer that cannot fully close it. Which means you return. Which means you stay in the market. Consciously or not, the business model requires your loneliness to remain just unresolved enough.

Whilst they might come with a ‘paid community’, they cannot offer you a genuine one, grounded in the nuances of trust, not the absolutes of the truth as they see it. Because that kind of community would make you less dependent. And that’s bad for business.

The suggestion that you can rise above the need to be seen is social acid.

It’s not just wrong. It’s dangerous.

It corrodes the architectural foundations we need to build on in order to remain in contact with who we actually are.

The mindfulness influencer and the manosphere alpha appear opposite, one gentle and inward, the other aggressive and impenetrable. But on a clock face they’d be 11 and 1.

Both respond to the same exhaustion. Both identify something real we all know in our bones but don’t experience day-to-day: your worth doesn’t depend on others’ perception.

Both make the identical error: because you don’t need validation, you don’t need others at all.

Then there is the softer, more common version. The one that floats gently across your social feed: want to be happy? Have zero expectations of people.

Same feeling of exhale. Same feeling of freedom. Same acid.

Because we really, really need to be seen by others. To feel the friction of relationship. To experience the tension of accountability.

Because the thing you cannot see (and the reason this chapter exists) is that you are not transparent to yourself.

Not because you’re inadequate. Because you’re human.

I confessed in The Workbench that I’m not a reliable witness to my own why. Years of effort and false starts have confirmed it. Left to my own devices, my strengths, my gifts, and where I come alive will largely go unnoticed, because I’m just being me. The things I don’t want to do, the biases I don’t want to see, the labels I haven’t noticed all quietly decide my next moves. The moments I feel most myself are invisible to me whilst they’re happening.

I don’t need others to applaud what I’ve built, but to reflect back what they can see that I can’t. To help me remain present to who I actually am, not just the parts I can see, or the ones I’d rather not look at.

Not to validate me. To reflect me.

The myth of spiritual self-sufficiency and total independence is one of the most seductive traps in the practitioner’s life. It sounds like freedom, but it’s just a different cage.

So what’s the alternative?

Not isolation. Presence.

What Presence Actually Requires

Presence isn’t a feeling, a stance, or a decision. It’s architecture.

Four specific elements, operating together, that allow you to remain in contact with who you actually are when the world is shouting at you to be someone else.

The Centre

This is your immovable intrinsic worth. What you are before performance. Before credentials. Before Monday morning.

I call it the Majesty. We’ll explore it fully in the next chapter.

Here’s what matters now: it exists. It’s independent. It doesn’t require your belief to be true. You had it before your first sale, your first failure, your first redundancy. You have it now.

You cannot see it clearly from the inside. You’re too close. But that’s not deficiency, it’s what it means to be human.

And it’s why the Centre alone isn’t enough.

The Compass

This is how you orient toward the Centre when everything around you is pulling you elsewhere.

It’s the role of The PEACE Practice: Presence, Empathy, Action, Constraints, Evolution. Not a framework to master. Not steps to complete. Five frequencies you dial up or down depending on what the moment requires.

When the algorithm tells you to optimise, PEACE asks: are you serving the work or chasing the outcome?

When the panic rises and the Founder’s Noose tightens, PEACE asks: what does this moment actually need?

In The Prophecy, I described two familiar failures: faith without works, and works without faith. The Compass holds the tension. It doesn’t tell you what to do. It points you back toward the Centre when the noise is loudest.

The Cadence

This is what keeps you in contact with the Centre. Daily.

It’s the role of The Rhythm: Reflection → Action → Observation.

You met it in The Spark. Reflection is the wood: notice what’s in front of you. Action is the match: bring one choice to life. Observation is the flame: accept what comes back as information, not judgement.

Without Cadence, the Centre becomes abstract. A belief you hold but don’t inhabit. The Rhythm makes Presence a practice instead of a philosophy.

Not an extraordinary act done occasionally. An ordinary act, on repeat.

The Community

This is the who that illuminates everything: the worth you cannot see, the patterns you cannot name, how the work finds its real shape.

And it’s the part most practitioners resist.

Not because they don’t value connection. But because they’ve been burnt by communities that demanded performance, extracted labour, and turned relationships into transactions. Or because they’ve reached the depth of self-awareness described at the opening of this chapter, and they’ve mistaken the discovery of their Centre for the conclusion that they need nothing else.

Both are understandable. Neither is correct.

Your Centre exists. But you cannot fully see it from the inside. The Compass points you toward it, but your own biases bend the needle. The Cadence keeps you moving, but you cannot always tell whether you’re compounding wisdom or compounding blind spots.

Community doesn’t create your worth. It reflects back dimensions of it that introspection alone cannot reach. And it keeps you accountable: not harshly, not transactionally, but in the way that allows the real you to emerge over time.

Here is what I want you to notice: I have not invented this. I’m simply wrapping new language around ancient ideas.

Every society anthropologists have ever studied has used the same architecture. Symbolic systems (beliefs, symbols, rituals) do not sustain themselves in isolation. They require communities of practice to remain alive.

Christian theology describes it as Father (the immovable Centre from which all worth flows), Son (the Compass that orients toward the source), Spirit (the Cadence of daily indwelling practice), and Church (the Community through which the other three are expressed). The Stoics and the Epicureans, who rejected theology entirely, built it anyway: a philosophical identity, a school of thought to orient by, a daily practice of reflection, and a community of discourse. The medieval guild: patron, standards, apprenticeship rhythm, brotherhood. Different material. Same architecture.

And here is the final proof, the one that removes any argument that this is cultural or religious conditioning. Think of someone who has consciously rejected every one of those traditions. No church, no philosophy, no guild: they just took a job.

They still have a Centre: the organisation they work for. A Compass: the organisational values that guide their decisions. A Cadence: the policies and practices that shape their daily behaviour. And Community: the colleagues they work alongside.

They inherited this architecture. But they live within its walls just the same.

In the end, we’re the same mammals who built fires and sat in circles swapping stories ten thousand years ago. Technology has extended our reach, changed our behaviour, and convinced us we can survive without the circle. But it hasn’t changed what we need.

We are more connected, more powerful, and chronically alone.

This is why the spiritual self-sufficiency narrative is so dangerous. It is a modern delusion that tries to out-think our ancient wiring. It breaks the architecture we all need. It feels the pain of isolation and tries to fill it with choices we can make alone, instead of what we need: the company of others.

Otherwise you’re left with a Centre you cannot fully experience. A Compass bent by your own biases. A Cadence compounding blind spots. A shadow of your best self performing for an audience rather than serving the work.

That campfire we named in The Spark, the one where your best work finds people who genuinely need it, is not something you build alone. As people bring their stories, a solitary spark becomes a shared practice.

And they change how the flame rises.

Where We Are:

This is Week 7 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 ← You are here

3. The Majesty

4. Don’t Worship the Outcome

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.

Yes, the work is waiting. But before we begin, we need to pause and feel exactly what it has cost us to get here.

Not the physical exhaustion of a long day, but the deep, chronic weariness of the junk we are carrying: the labels, the judgements, the isolation.

When I was writing The Reader’s Note, it felt like a chiropractor popping a joint. The relief moved through the body of my work, and within hours the logo, the bio, and the socials all changed to carry the new identity that I had been reaching for but had not quite found.

It just clicked.

If you have ever had a back issue, or been to therapy, you will know exactly how this moment feels.

It is the physical relief of finally naming the thing that hurts. Because when we leave our burdens unnamed, they do not disappear. They silently dictate our reactions.

Just yesterday, my wife and I were having a difficult day in the seemingly eternal battle that is raising a seven-month-old son. When Laura is stressed, I get stressed. To be clear: my wife is not doing or expressing anything that should bother me, but somewhere within, I am triggered.

Over the years, I have experienced profound loneliness. It is the root of my personal weariness. We won’t unpack all of that now, but I wonder whether my nervous system is simply too easily primed for rejection, for returning to isolation. When I sense the distance growing between Laura and me, I start to react irrationally.

First, I try to be funny. Then I try to fix it. Then I try to explain. Then I try to defend.

All of which are extraordinarily unhelpful responses in the moment.

I cannot tell you how many times my wife has reminded me simply to express an empathetic response: I hear you, and that must be hard. Unfortunately for her, addressing this underlying conditioning is a work of years: fortunately for me, I’m met with grace and patience.

And here is the thing I realised: the practitioner in me reacts the exact same way. I often overcompensate for uncertainty on sales or coaching calls, flatlining social metrics, or my approach being questioned, with humour, solutions, or explanation. The pattern is identical.

Yet, somehow, when we sit down to work, we expect to operate like rational machines. We forget that we bring our entire nervous system to our professional and creative endeavours. And there is a specific blind spot that I see in my social feeds, in business behaviours, and coaching calls every day.

We’re lonely.

I wonder if you’ve felt it too.

Our nervous system reacts the exact same way it does in our relationships. When we sense the distance growing between where we are and where everyone else seems to be, we panic. We try to fix it. We try to defend our relevance.

We try to perform our way back to safety.

Creating content on an endless treadmill, not to serve, but to prove we exist. Chasing metrics simply to feel seen.

We tell ourselves stories to make sense of the friction, often ‘othering’ people to ease our own pain. When we can’t name the isolation we feel, we project it outward: our boss has favourites, our colleagues lack vision, the people succeeding ahead of us are just shallow or lucky, or simply that people just aren’t listening.

Oftentimes, our harsh opinions of others are simply a mirror reflecting our own unnamed isolation.

And so, we try to outcome our way out of it. We believe that if we could just get the promotion, find the right template, or hit the right metric, the struggle would end.

But the friction is not a personal failure.

It is the cost of performing, choosing, having opinions, deciding, and producing, when we’re social creatures who crave connection, and long to practise alongside others without being judged on what we achieve.

It is not a personal failure: it’s an allergic reaction to a world that insists on measuring your worth.

As we continue, I invite you to consider your own feelings. To sit with yourself, with grace and patience.

Make a genuine enquiry.

Can you name an intrusive thought you have carried this week? Could it be that a sense of isolation sits at its root?

Could the pursuit of your work (your art, your business, your service) come alive as your best, incomplete attempt to break that isolation?

Could that recognition click something into place?

Whatever you are carrying, I invite you to put it down for a moment and offer a benediction to read aloud to yourself. Think of it as a simple blessing, or a short meditation, that draws a boundary.

A moment to reclaim the ground you are already standing on.

As you read, imagine I’m sitting with you around a campfire, as someone who knows what it’s like to fail, to feel lost and to be lonely. Someone who can say from the depths, I hear you, and that must be hard.

These aren’t words I’ve written for you, they are words of invitation I’m speaking over you.

The Benediction

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your being. A life that refuses to be defined by the quality of your content, social metrics, or the size of your audience.

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your feelings. A life that refuses to be defined by performance, KPIs, and the expectations of others.

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your ability. A life that refuses to be defined by achievements, qualifications, and scale.

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your limitations. A life that refuses to be defined by endless pressure, the need to be everywhere, and the fear of missing out.

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your opportunities. A life that refuses to be defined by the fear of failure, the shame of years past, and the fear of what comes next.

May you stand where setbacks become invitations.

Where scars declare: I know your pain.

Where practice reveals your next steps.

Where you trade your podium for a workbench.

Where you tend the ground beneath your feet instead of building an empire.

Where you experience sovereignty, find belonging, and come alive with dignity.

Where you allow what wants to happen to you, through you, and for you, to flow.

If the Benediction resonates, I have created a downloadable version so you can print it and put it somewhere useful.

Where We Are:

This is Week 6 of a year-long practice.

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

1. The Weight We Carry ← You are here

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Don’t Worship the Outcome

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.

Our nervous system reacts the exact same way it does in our relationships. When we sense the distance growing between where we are and where everyone else seems to be, we panic. We try to fix it. We try to defend our relevance.

We try to perform our way back to safety.

Creating content on an endless treadmill, not to serve, but to prove we exist. Chasing metrics simply to feel seen.

We tell ourselves stories to make sense of the friction, often ‘othering’ people to ease our own pain. When we can’t name the isolation we feel, we project it outward: our boss has favourites, our colleagues lack vision, the people succeeding ahead of us are just shallow or lucky, or simply that people just aren’t listening.

This is a reading from The Unremarkable Entrepreneur, a book written with deep affection and released weekly for the exhausted practitioner who is ready to build differently.

Free for everyone at unremarkable.co

Where We Are:

This is Week 6 of a year-long practice.

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

1. The Weight We Carry ← You are here

2. What Presence Requires

3. The Majesty

4. Don’t Worship the Outcome

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.

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.

This is a reading from The Unremarkable Entrepreneur, a book written with deep affection and released weekly for the exhausted practitioner who is ready to build differently.

Free for everyone at unremarkable.co

Where We Are:

This is Week 5. The opening note of a year-long practice.

The Overture (Weeks 1-5): Tuning together before the work begins.

1. The Reader’s Note

2. The Other 1%

3. The Prophecy

4. The Workbench

5. The Spark ← You are here

From there we’ll explore Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks exploring how to show up as yourself.

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.

1. The Reader’s Note

2. The Other 1%

3. The Prophecy

4. The Workbench

5. The Spark ← You are here

From there we’ll explore Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.

The fear and shame I experience don’t make me a fraud. They make me someone others can sit with, someone who knows the stakes, someone who can serve. It is my job to notice how I sometimes feel and welcome those emotions as signals from the soul.

This is a reading from The Unremarkable Entrepreneur, a book written with deep affection and released weekly for the exhausted practitioner who is ready to build differently.

Free for everyone at unremarkable.co

Where We Are:

This is Week 4. The opening note of a year-long practice.

The Overture (Weeks 1-5): Tuning together before the work begins.

1. The Reader’s Note

2. The Other 1%

3. The Prophecy

4. The Workbench ← You are here

5. Field Notes: How to Start a Campfire

From there we’ll explore Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks exploring how to show up as yourself.

Though unplanned, this project served as the foundational research for the philosophy found in The Unremarkable Entrepreneur and concluded in 2025.

For current updates and to recieve The Unremarkable Entrepreneur book as each chapter is released, please visit unremarkable.co.

I don’t mean physically. I mean that I carry personal wounds that sometimes hurt, and sometimes show others that I understand exactly how they might be feeling.

The things we carry are a paradox in that sense. Take my five redundancies in a decade: in a matter of hours I can believe that nothing is ever going to go my way, and then sit with a friend fresh off the firing line, gently reminding them with deep conviction that they will find their footing again.

Just as I sat down to write this chapter, I experienced a mix of fear and shame. Fear that I’m not worth hearing after decades of failed callings, false starts, and firings. Shame that I’m not a stable earner for my family, because our household’s security rests heavily on my wife.

Laura is my champion, but I wish she didn’t have to carry it.

In the end, it’s hard for me not to feel that this body of work is the ultimate act of self-indulgence. An expression of privilege in a world that desperately needs fewer saviours and more servants.

So I write with a limp.

Each of us will experience that tension, where the uncertain work of the practitioner collides with real-world responsibilities. But I invite you to frame those emotions with care.

The fear and shame I experience don’t make me a fraud. They make me someone others can sit with, someone who knows the stakes, someone who can serve. It is my job to notice how I sometimes feel and welcome those emotions as signals from the soul.

They remind me who I am, who others need me to be, and they create an honest dialogue with myself.

As you read this, you might feel a sense of emotional weight, because it asks you to reckon with your past and who you are going to serve at the same time. That is another paradox: as you serve the work, sometimes you will feel there is harmony across your story, and sometimes you won’t. Sometimes you will serve the work only to reveal a new direction.

This is where I have to challenge some conventional wisdom: Start with why.

In the last chapter, we exposed the problem. We are trained from birth to be outcome worshippers. ‘Start with why’ continues that dance with our flawed programming, asking us once again to decide our way forward instead of discovering what wants to happen.

Here is the problem: my biases are too real, my experiences too raw, and my judgement too subjective. Simply put, I am not a reliable witness to my own why. I cannot be trusted to understand my story in a vacuum with true clarity. Without choosing to engage differently, I cannot be trusted to notice the good things that want to happen to me, through me, and for me.

When I read the opening of this chapter to my wife, I cried.

Of course, she doesn’t want me to experience shame. And the temptation is to resolve it, to tidy the narrative and avoid the pain. But our why, our limps, and our emotional signals aren’t questions to resolve. They are tensions to notice.

They are the oboe’s A asking us to tune back in.

How to engage differently

The cornerstone of this book is a way to engage differently. It is called the PEACE Practice. It is not a framework, or a ladder, or a system. It is a set of frequencies to help you improve the dialogue you will have with yourself and others, a way to help you notice more and decide less.

• Presence: serve the work, not the outcome, and treat patience as an action

• Empathy: demonstrate kindness and respect for self, invite genuine connection

• Action: make contact, and learn from friction and success

• Constraints: allow limits to focus energy and amplify action

• Evolution: notice and allow what wants to happen

The book itself is divided into five Movements, and each Movement is built around one frequency. Each Movement has its own arc, and you can read it whole and come away changed.

Take a moment to notice the signal right now. Which frequency feels the most heavy? Which feels the most alive?

Perhaps you should start there.

The Movements are not five separate books. They are five parts of one symphony. The themes cross-pollinate. The callbacks accumulate. Each Movement is complete in itself, but it knows it belongs to something larger. But you don’t have to start at the beginning.

As we travel together, you will find visual meditations, benedictions, parables, song recommendations, resources, and things to try: whatever emerges as I try to balance what I’ve decided to write with what wants to be written. All in service of helping us both connect with a life that is directed by practice, not performance.

A life destined for service.

Let me be as clear and honest as possible: this book is not a source of wisdom written by someone who has it all together. I am writing it because it needs to be written, and because of my baggage, I am the one who can write it.

You are here because something needs making too, and you are the one who can make it.

In whatever ways feel right for you, make a covenant with me now.

When the mornings feel uncertain, when we don’t know what we’re building, when our emotional signals burst into life, let’s show up, serve the work, and trust that the good things that want to happen to us, through us and for us, will emerge.

Let’s step away from the podium and return to the workbench.

Where We Are:

This is Week 4. The fourth chapter of a year-long practice.

The Overture (Weeks 1-5): Tuning together before the work begins.

1. The Reader’s Note

2. The Other 1%

3. The Prophecy

4. The Workbench ← You are here

5. 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.

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.

This is a reading from The Unremarkable Entrepreneur, a book written with deep affection and released weekly for the exhausted practitioner who is ready to build differently.

Free for everyone at unremarkable.co

Where We Are:

This is Week 3. The opening note of a year-long practice.

The Overture (Weeks 1-5): Tuning together before the work begins.

1. The Reader’s Note

2. The Other 1%

3. The Prophecy ← You are here

4. How to Use This Book

5. Field Notes: How to Start a Campfire

From there we’ll explore Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks exploring how to show up as yourself.

Here’s why: you are the product. Your fears and insecurities have been monetised. You’ve been handed a playbook that demands you become someone you’re not, playing a rigged game that penalises anyone who refuses to perform.

The problem isn’t your strategy.

The problem is the system speaks a different language to your soul. And effort without alignment just amplifies the wrong frequency.

This is a reading from The Unremarkable Entrepreneur, a book written with deep affection and released weekly for the exhausted practitioner who is ready to build differently.

Free for everyone at unremarkable.co

Where We Are:

This is Week 1. The opening note of a year-long practice.

The Overture (Weeks 1-5): Tuning together before the work begins.

1. The Reader’s Note

2. The Other 1% ← You are here

3. The Prophecy

4. How to Use This Book

5. Field Notes: How to Start a Campfire

From there we’ll explore Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks exploring how to show up as yourself.

Einstimmung: It’s a word in the German musical tradition.

It means getting into harmony.

It’s the tuning that happens before the conductor arrives, when each musician finds their pitch from the oboe’s A.

That distinctive cacophony isn’t chaos. It’s preparation. It’s presence.

This is a reading from The Unremarkable Entrepreneur, a book written with deep affection and released weekly for the exhausted practitioner who is ready to build differently.

Free for everyone at unremarkable.co

Where We Are:

This is Week 1. The opening note of a year-long practice.

The Overture (Weeks 1-5): Tuning together before the work begins.

1. The Reader’s Note ← You are here

2. The Other 1%

3. The Prophecy

4. How to Use This Book

5. Field Notes: How to Start a Campfire

From there we’ll explore Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks exploring how to show up as yourself.

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.

1. The Reader’s Note

2. The Other 1%

3. The Prophecy ← You are here

4. How to Use This Book

5. 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.

A viral hit won’t make your name.

Better positioning won’t help you feel seen.

One more launch won’t fix your fatigue.

A planning masterclass won’t give you momentum.

A tighter funnel won’t give you confidence.

You’ve tried it all. And here you are, reading this, because something still isn’t working.

Here’s why: you are the product. Your fears and insecurities have been monetised. You’ve been handed a playbook that demands you become someone you’re not, playing a rigged game that penalises anyone who refuses to perform.

The problem isn’t your strategy.

The problem is the system speaks a different language to your soul. And effort without alignment just amplifies the wrong frequency.

Remember who you are.

You have permission to say no.

No to performance. To compliance. To reach. To endless hustle. To a system that wants to categorise you, sell to you, own you, and build its wealth on top of you.

You have permission to say yes.

Yes to the slow craft of practice. To being unique without apology. To resonance over reach. To focus over fear. To serving work that feels like expression, not extraction.

This is what this book offers: a way to build that doesn’t break you.

It exists for the other 1% who’ve found the accepted way to be spiritually bankrupt. You have the skills, the experience, the depth. You just can’t stomach another performance. You’re ready to build differently because you know you’re built differently.

Here’s the line I’m drawing.

If you need certainty before you start, this isn’t for you. If you’re looking for copy-paste templates and guaranteed outcomes in ninety days, close this book now.

There are plenty of people selling that. Go find them.

A life’s work isn’t built in fiscal quarters, it’s built over decades. The Unremarkable way stands in quiet defiance of the demand to be loud and the constant fight for attention. A choice to focus on what actually matters.

Allow who you are to take the lead.

Invite connection instead of attention.

Create from practice, not for performance.

Use limitations to create focus.

Prioritise discovery over decision making.

And trust that if you serve the work, good things will emerge.

If that spirit of defiance resonates, welcome.

What you’re signing up for: A practice you can use for the rest of your career. Not a formula. Not a guarantee. A practice. One that invites you to experiment, to test principles, to unearth what actually works for you.

You may have forgotten this.

Your unfiltered self is your opportunity magnet. And the work that wants to happen through you already exists, waiting to be noticed.

This book will show you how to see it, serve it, and let it set you free.

So step away from the podium.

Let’s return to the workbench.

I invite you to download and print the image below and place it somewhere you’ll see it every day.

Where We Are:

This is Week 2. The second chapter of a year-long practice.

The Overture (Weeks 1-5): Tuning together before the work begins.

1. The Reader’s Note

2. The Other 1% ← You are here

3. Faith Without Works is Dead

4. How to Use This Book

5. 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.

It’s a word in the German musical tradition.

It means getting into harmony.

It’s the tuning that happens before the conductor arrives, when each musician finds their pitch from the oboe’s A.

That distinctive cacophony isn’t chaos. It’s preparation. It’s presence.

I wonder what note you’ve heard?

Every week I meet founders who are exhausted from performing for platforms that don’t care about them. Creators working away in isolation. Employees worn thin by companies who pay them a fraction of what they earn for the business. Success stories where all that success feels hollow.

Each in their own way have heard the oboe’s A.

The invitation to lean in, to notice, to respond, to discover a new melody that will serve them financially, spiritually, and creatively.

This Reader’s Note is about setting the tone. This book won’t give you certainty. It won’t tell you what to do. It won’t make promises about wealth and glory.

But it will show you how to practice, it will reveal a new way of being, so you can reveal your own path in your own time.

Over the last six months, I’ve been collecting fragments from decades of work: articles, posts, notes, reflections. The debris of years of toil and trying to make it.

I didn’t know I was writing a book. I was simply serving what wanted to be written.

Then I started noticing the patterns and the connecting threads. You’ll discover some of them: The Infinite Growth Loop. The PEACE Practice. Artist thinking. It all formed a philosophy I’d been using without naming it.

I was tempted to sit down and write a complete manuscript as an act of pure creative force, as if I could see the end from the beginning.

But our best work is found, not chosen.

It emerges as we pay attention, as we notice.

As we tune in.

So I’m not going to force it. I’m allowing it to emerge week by week, balancing what I’ve decided to write with what wants to be noticed as I write.

A rhythm where intention meets emergence. Where my plan harmonises with what the work itself is asking for.

Weekly. Sustainable. Discovered, not decided.

Each week I’ll publish a new chapter. Not because it’s trendy, but because it embodies the philosophy: serve the work, don’t worship the outcome.

You won’t be reading a finished product, you’ll be joining a practice in progress.

Next, I’ll share the Unremarkable Manifesto: who this is for, what Unremarkable means, what it stands against, and the promise I’m making to the 1% ready to build differently.

But before you read it, I need you here.

Present. Attuned.

Because The Unremarkable Entrepreneur doesn’t matter if you read passively. If you hear the note but don’t respond.

It requires you to show up, not just consume. To practice, not just plan. To serve the work that’s waiting to flow through you.

This isn’t about writing a book. It’s about a practice that happens to create one.

The structure is ready. The first five weeks will bring us in tune with one another. After that, we dive into Movement 1 where we’ll explore Presence: showing up as yourself instead of putting on a performance.

But we begin here. Getting into harmony.

Finding our pitch.

- Dan

Where We Are:

This is Week 1. The opening note of a year-long practice.

The Overture (Weeks 1-5): Tuning together before the work begins.

1. The Reader’s Note ← You are here

2. Unremarkable Manifesto

3. Faith Without Works

4. How to Use This Book

5. Field Notes: How to Start a Campfire

From there we’ll explore Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks exploring how to show up as yourself.

Not because I don’t know what to write about. Not because I lack ideas. Not because the business isn’t there.

Because I’ve fallen into a familiar trap: needing to chart the course before setting sail.

But if life has taught me anything, it’s taught me that things rarely go to plan.

And life has been complex.

A house move. A rebrand. A baby. It’s all been happening all at once. And I began to think that if I could optimise my approach, I could go some way to making the writing feel effortless when I finally got back to it.

Except here’s what actually happened: my remaining time became saturated by thinking about the doing rather than doing it. And the more I planned, the bigger the task felt, and the more confused I became about where to start.

And that confusion? It felt so legitimate. So reasonable. It even has a weird sense of nobility about getting started in the ‘right’ way.

But my confusion wasn’t about where to start. It was the symptom of not starting.

You can’t be an explorer with out exploring, you can’t be a designer without designing, you can’t be an inventor without inventing.

The adjective requires the action.

What words do you use to describe yourself? Writer who doesn’t write? Leader who doesn’t lead? Entrepreneur who never ships?

You’re not the thing if you don’t do the thing.

The Planning Trap Looks Like Progress

A few months ago, I wrote an article diagnosing this exact trap. I called it out clearly, with the confidence of someone who understood the pattern.

Then I walked straight into it anyway.

Planning feels safe. Planning feels like you’re doing something. Planning lets you believe you’re getting closer to launch without risking anything - not your ego, not your reputation, not the possibility that what you create might not work.

It’s why so many of us get stuck in this phase.

And look, I’m not saying ‘don’t plan’. You wouldn’t take a holiday without checking flight times, the weather forecast, etc. But you couldn’t claim to love travelling if you never go anywhere.

I’ve spent the last seven weeks raising new tent-poles to support the canopy of life. My son is now six and a half months old. We’ve moved house. I’ve been present for my family in ways that matter deeply.

Those things are real. Important. Non-negotiable.

But I also stopped working. And confusion rushed in to fill the space it created.

I don’t feel guilty about it. I think we rarely have the capacity to manage multiple big projects simultaneously, a house move, a six-month-old son, and running a business just didn’t all fit. Hats off to those who can make it work - you should come on the podcast and tell me how it’s done.

But I did experience a sense of anxiety about where to re-start from. Should I rebuild the ecosystem first? Redesign the offer? Map out the next six months? Plan the community I’ve been thinking about?

The more questions I asked, the heavier the confusion became.

The Mirror I Needed

So I started with who (not with why) and talked it through with a friend who reflected back some Unremarkable truths I needed to remember:

“You don’t have a capability problem. You have a consistency problem combined with new-parent reality.

The business is there. The offer is solid. The positioning works. The proof is in your own results when you actually show up consistently.

But here’s the harder truth: you can’t serve two masters. Right now you’re trying to be present for your son AND build momentum AND maintain confidence AND not feel desperate about closing deals.

Something has to give. And what should give is the outcome obsession.”

That conversation was the turning point. Not because it gave me a new strategy, but because it named what I already knew: I wasn’t stuck because I lacked clarity. I was stuck because I’d stopped moving.

Crucially, I remembered I’d already been walking a path: I wasn’t about to take my first step, I didn’t need to feel unsteady, I was simply going to take the next one (and I’d quickly rediscover my cadence). So I set myself easy milestones to help me take action and mark my progress:

1. Return to what already works. Re-read the ‘50k Question’ article - I know the path, I just need to walk it again. The answers aren’t new, they’re just waiting to be practised.

2. Reclaim my starter cadence. Monday: write one article. Tuesday: one offer post. Wednesday: publish. That’s it. Not 27 things. Three. Simple enough to sustain with a six-month-old.

3. Make one clear ask every day for 30 days. My own challenge from the article. Time to live it, not just write about it.

4. Schedule five conversations this week. Past clients or people who engaged with my articles. Not to sell. To discover: “What’s actually needed here?” Contact creates clarity.

5. Stop measuring success in deals closed. Measure by: Did I practise today? Did I serve the work? Did I invite someone to the conversation? Those are the metrics that compound.

You Already Know Where to Start

Here’s the uncomfortable truth I had to face: I knew exactly where to start.

I always have.

The same place it always is: write one article. Publish it. Move forward.

But I was deep into a fortress of legitimate reasons not to start there. And as momentum stalled, it became easier and easier to get stuck pontificating on structures that need rebuilding, platforms that need organising, and offers needing refining.

All valid. All reasonable.

All completely beside the point.

Because none of those things actually stop me from writing. I stop me from writing when I spend my limited time, my constraint, on things that I’ve decided (albeit temporarily) matter more than the practice itself.

That’s when I stopped serving the work, and the confusion set in.

Confusion is what happens when you know what to do but don’t want to do it.

It’s the mind’s way of protecting you from the vulnerability of creating something that might not work. From making contact with the market and discovering that maybe no one cares. From risking another lost opportunity after you’ve already lost several.

Confusion feels like a problem to solve. But it might actually be signal that you’re avoiding the work.

I wonder what pressures you’ve wrapped in confusion, or decisions you’ve delayed because really you’re afraid of the mirror it might hold up?

The Ship You Can’t Steer

I’ve written before about the truth that you can’t steer a ship that isn’t moving.

You can plan the perfect route. Study the charts. Wait for ideal conditions. But until you actually push off from the dock and start moving, you have no idea what the water will actually demand of you.

The same is true for any creative work.

You can’t edit a blank page. You can’t refine an offer you haven’t articulated. You can’t discover what wants to happen through you if you never give it space to emerge.

The confusion I was feeling wasn’t about where to start. It was about the gap between what I knew I should do and what I was actually doing.

And the only way to close that gap is to start moving.

Not perfectly. Not with the whole journey mapped. Not when everything feels ready.

Just... start.

What Actually Works

Over the last eighteen months, I’ve built an audience of over 12,000 people and I’ve replaced my income.

None of that happened because I had perfect systems or flawless strategy.

It happened because I created consistently. Made contact with the market. Invited people into conversation. Served the work instead of worshipping outcomes.

The moment I stopped doing those things - even for legitimate reasons like having a new baby and moving house - the confusion crept back in.

Not because the business stopped working.

But because I stopped practising.

And when you stop practising, your brain starts trying to think its way back to confidence. It convinces you that if you just plan a bit more, structure a bit better, get everything aligned first, then you’ll feel ready.

But confidence doesn’t come from planning.

Confidence comes from doing.

It comes from publishing the imperfect article. Sending the uncertain invitation. Having the conversation you don’t feel ready for. Making contact when you’re not sure what will happen next.

The confusion starts to dissolve the moment you take action. Not because the action answered every question, but because action reveals what actually matters versus what your mind invented to keep you safe.

Action creates contact.

Contact creates friction.

Friction creates learning.

It’s the fulcrum of everything else.

This is what I call Action in The PEACE Practice.

And here’s what I know from lived experience: momentum reveals what planning obscures. The confusion lifts not because the path becomes clear, but because you’re finally in conversation with reality instead of wrestling with your mind’s protective stories about why now isn’t the time.

The Practice Starts Monday

So here’s what I’m re-committing to: a weekly starter cadence that feels doable with a six-month-old.

One article every Monday. One offer post every Tuesday. Publish and move forward.

Not because I’ve figured everything out. Not because the structure is perfect. Not because I feel completely ready.

But because I know (from lived experience, from watching this pattern repeat) that momentum comes from movement, not planning.

Consistent contact. Regular invitation. Showing up weekly to serve the work.

That’s not glamorous. It’s not a breakthrough strategy. It’s not what the quick-fix merchants and system sellers are promising.

But I promise you, it is the secret sauce that everyone’s looking for, but everyone overlooks, and it’s the only thing that’s ever actually worked for me.

Your Invitation

If you’re feeling confused about where to start, on your business, your writing, your next move, I want you to consider something:

What if the confusion isn’t the problem? What if it’s just the signal that you already know what to do, but you’re not doing it yet?

What’s the one thing you could do this week that would create momentum? Not the perfect thing. Not the complete thing. Not the thing that solves everything.

Just the one next thing that moves you forward.

For me, it’s this article.

For you, it might be sending that email. Making that call. Publishing that post. Booking that session.

Whatever it is, I promise you this: the confusion will start to lift the moment you start moving.

You can’t steer a ship that isn’t moving.

So push off from the dock.

And see what the water actually asks of you.

I’m returning to weekly practice. If you want to build differently - with depth over reach, practice over performance, and patience over hustle - subscribe and join the journey. Or if you’re ready for 1:1 work, drop me a message and let’s talk about The Authority Lab.

For many of us, work is a means to an end, and we can make our peace with that. When your life has variety, community, friends, and art, your job might just grease the wheels, and that’s OK.

If it’s not OK, that friction might have nothing to do with your job (though it might feel like it). Instead, it might indicate that you lack variety, movement and meaning elsewhere.

During the pandemic, my wife and I experienced the collapse of variety, and in the giant marquee of life, our jobs became the only tent-pole.

Imagine it. A sweeping canvas and all its massive weight pulling down on a single point of focus.

Without meaning to, we expected too much value from work - value it was never designed to give, could never give. For a time, work felt like an anchor holding the ship down against a rising tide.

But work wasn’t really the anchor, it was just an unwilling victim of the drama playing out elsewhere. A vessel through which our angst could flow.

Now, we’ve moved, our son has been born, we’re meeting new parents, we’ve made new friends at the gym, and I’ve started going back to Church. In short, we’ve raised new tent‑poles that support the grand canopy of life.

Its weight distributed, creating shelter. In its shadow, room to move and breathe. Space for new connections and friendships to form.

And with it, the work lifts too.

Our work exists in service of life - it’s no longer the centre of it.

It’s one of those, ‘yeah, obviously’ ideas. And yet, time and time again I see friends and loved ones try to solve a dissatisfaction with life by changing their work, when the reverse is often required.

Changing what you do might change how you feel. But most of the time we just take our insecurities, frustrations, blind spots, and triggers with us. After the honeymoon period fades, we remain who we always were.

Incomplete, with bigger questions to answer.

The Transaction Truth

For most people, when fairly held, work is a transaction. We exchange time, energy, and brain power for money. That’s it.

And that’s OK.

When the exchange is fair, work promises a great many things, security and stability among them; maternity cover, affording things with ease, weekends that belong to you, etc.

It’s not work’s job to give you purpose, validate your worth, or ease the strain where you’re not raising new tent-poles to support life more broadly.

Where work facilitates warm connections and occasional direction, good - but here’s the hard truth: your life experience is not your employer’s core function. But in the exchange, you do get to put your job down at day’s end. Your weekends are yours to enjoy, or whinge through.

The trouble starts when we expect work to be more than this transaction. When we demand it give us identity, meaning, community, and creative expression all at once.

That’s not a job anymore. That’s a religion.

And most jobs make terrible gods.

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Why Starting a Business Won’t Save You

After five redundancies in a decade, I understand the impulse to escape. To start your own business powered by “earn what I deserve” or “achieve financial freedom.”

But these objectives create an impossible paradox.

When will you have achieved your worth? When you hit six figures? Seven? Will you ever feel financially free, or will your expectations expand to match your new wealth?

And there’s a new world of frustration waiting for those who do take the plunge.

Here’s what nobody tells you: being good at what you’ve been trained to do doesn’t mean you have the adjacent skills to make a business work. You’ll need to sink hundreds, maybe thousands, of uncertain hours into earning almost nothing whilst learning those skills.

New businesses fail within two years. Not because of the official reasons we hear about, but because that skills gap, and the distance between expectation and reality, amplifies every negative feeling about worth you carried into the launch.

If you believe it’s going to be a battle, you’ll approach the work with a warrior’s mindset. If you believe opportunity is scarce, you’ll become cheap. For many entrepreneurship doesn’t set them free, it amplifies their flaws.

Hustle culture is the exemplification of this, a pervasive myth whose conditioning I struggle to break every day. I do my best to remember this piece of Unremarkable thinking: entrepreneurship isn’t designed to make me rich, it’s designed to set me free - financially, spiritually, and creatively.

For most, the friction feels too much. The way too unclear.

Disconnected from colleagues (who may have been your only friends), working in your leisure space, hours longer and earning less, security? What security.

So people give up.

Not because they lacked hustle. Because they started for the wrong reasons. Without respecting the cost. Without understanding themselves.

The Freedom Paradox

The Rolling Stones said it best: you don’t always get what you want, but sometimes, you get what you need.

Think about smiles for a second.

A smile is only a smile because you don’t smile all the time. If you did, that would be creepy, and it would be meaningless - it would just be your face. Wealth without limits is just a new normal. Restaurant Gordon Ramsey might as well be McDonald’s if it doesn’t cost you anything.

Financial freedom is painfully over-rated (hell, it might not even be real) and not recommended for the majority of people who understand that value isn’t a number - it’s a decision born from the tension that not everything is possible. Maybe we should keep it that way.

If you start by pursuing external validation or unattainable metrics about financial freedom, you might get what you’ve chosen - but you won’t get what you want. Peace. Joy. Contentment. Space to enjoy your life.

If you slave yourself to objectives that can never be satisfied, all your actions will have your insecurity, not your power, baked into their DNA.

No truly satisfying business was ever built on such foundations.

Yes, there are wealthy, powerful people who’ve achieved it. But are they happy? Would you want their life?

Do you want to downgrade your Michelin-starred meal to just… food?

Of course not.

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The Unremarkable Path

So what actually works? Whether you stay in your job or start a business, the answer is the same.

Stop asking work to hold up the entire canopy.

Before you change jobs, before you launch a business, before you chase financial freedom - raise the other tent-poles first.

If you do want to start a business, interrogate your motivations. Do you want to start a business to solve a problem or to express who you are and serve?

The difference is crucial: in one world you’ve just chosen a new master to work for, in the other you’re working towards your most realised self.

Here’s what I’ve learned through five redundancies and building my own business: the problem was never the work itself. The problem was that work had become the structure I was relying on to hold up the canopy of everything else.

When I finally raised new poles - moved house, became a father, joined a gym, returned to church - my business didn’t just survive. It breathed. Not because I worked harder, but because work stopped carrying weight it was never designed to bear.

And I’m not saying that when my business ‘breathed’ money started pouring in. Not at all. I’m saying that those kind of outcomes became proportionally important.

This is why constraints matter more than ambition. Why practice matters more than outcomes. Why the bottlenecks of your business might have nothing to do with work - they might be resolved by raising other tent-poles in your life that create the stability and space that lets your work find its own rhythm.

And when you do, you might find that work abdicates its throne at the centre of your world and instead becomes a great partner in service of your life.

And for most, that’s the win they’ve been looking for all along.

Activity: Your Tent-Pole Audit

Let’s explore where you might need to raise or reinforce tent-poles to support your grand canopy.

Take five minutes right now. Draw five columns on a piece of paper and label them:

Work - Your job, business, or career. Rate honestly: how much weight is this pole currently carrying?

Purpose - Your long-term sense of direction and contribution. The work that matters beyond the paycheque.

Value - Your grounded sense of self-worth. The relationships and communities where you’re seen and valued for who you are, not what you produce.

Wonder - The interests and experiences that bring you joy. The things you do simply because they delight you.

Relationships - The meaningful connections you actively invest in. The people who know you beyond your job title.

Now rate each column honestly: Is this tent-pole standing firm (5), leaning (3), or collapsed (1)?

If work is your only 5, you’ve found your problem. And the solution isn’t to make work do more - it’s to raise the other poles.

Which one needs attention first? Don’t demand it from work. Design for it elsewhere.

For whichever pole needs attention most, write down two or three specific actions you could take this month. Not someday. This month.

Maybe that’s rejoining the gym you’ve been putting off. Texting three friends to schedule that coffee. Signing up for the pottery class you keep thinking about. The specifics matter less than the commitment - pick one action and put it in your calendar before you close this page.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: when the other tent-poles stand firm, work becomes what it was always meant to be - one support among many, not the whole structure.

The Gardener’s Choice

There was once a gardener who inherited a large plot of land. Overwhelmed by the possibilities, she tried to cultivate every corner at once - vegetables here, flowers there, herbs along the fence, fruit trees in the back.

Within months, she was exhausted. The garden became a burden.

Nothing thrived because nothing received enough attention. She spent her days racing from one failing bed to another, wondering why her neighbours’ smaller gardens flourished whilst hers withered.

One autumn, she made a decision. She would close three of the four gates and focus on a single quarter. She chose constraints.

That winter, she worked that small plot deeply. She learned its soil, its light, its rhythms.

Come spring, something unexpected happened - the concentrated effort created abundance. The vegetables grew strong. The soil improved. And in that focused quarter, the garden finally breathed.

By choosing what she wouldn’t tend, she discovered what could truly flourish.

Your life is that garden.

Work is one quarter, not the whole plot. And the constraint of choosing which gates to close - which demands to decline, which parts of life to nurture and grow - is what creates the space for anything good to grow.

The challenge:

This week, name one thing you’ll stop demanding from work and one tent-pole you’ll raise instead.

Write them down. Make them specific. Then serve that work, not the outcome.

That’s the practice. That’s how constraints create freedom.

It’s not poor products, positioning, personal brand, bad timing, or a lack of hustle and hard work.

It’s simpler. More devastating. And way more stupid.

We never ask.

On Friday I sat down with my son on my knee and a microphone in my hand.

Because time was (and always is) in short supply, I’d decided to dictate my latest update and fix my greatest problem as an entrepreneur: inviting people to work with me.

24 hours later and I had £50,000 worth of enquiries in my inbox.

Most would-be-entrepreneurs are actually privateers. They create offers in private, maybe talk about it once, and hope someone notices. When they don’t, they assume the market has spoken.

But the market can’t speak if you never start the conversation.

I’d spent 18 months building The Authority Lab - first by accident, then by design. Through my podcast and events, people found me. They’d ask me to help bring their business ideas to life, and I’d simply say yes.

The conversations created flow. Ideas emerged. Money followed.

Then I made a mistake.

I decided the offer needed to be “ready” before I could really invite people in. So I rebranded. Refined the methodology. Polished the language. And waited.

For what? Another insight? The perfect positioning? A sign from the universe?

My offer sat there. Complete. Powerful. Gathering mental dust.

Until Friday, when my son settled on my knee and I realised something stupidly simple:

There was nothing left to do except ask.

What I didn’t realise: I wasn’t protecting the work. I was protecting myself from the answer.

Because here’s what asking really means - it means making the world respond to you. And once the world responds, you can no longer hide in the safety of “someday.”

Everything is possible in the planning phase. That’s why we love it. But possibility only becomes real when you ask.

And honestly, there’s an ocean of new possibilities waiting just beyond the horizon for people brave enough to do so.

The artist creates and invites. The amateur creates and waits.

I stumbled on a video of Jim Rohn speaking on the power of asking. He said that asking starts a process you don’t even need to understand. “Push the button and machinery you can’t see begins working. All you need to know is: it works”.

If you want something to happen, you need to invite it to happen. You need to ask for it.

And that simple action could change everything.

But there’s a nuance here: how we ask is a catalyst for transformation.

Because asking isn’t magic. It’s archaeology.

You’re not extracting what you want from the world. You’re discovering what wants to happen through genuine dialogue. And in that discovery, all manner of things can happen - to you, through you, and for you.

This is what it means to think like an artist. To price like an artist. To ask like an artist.

The artist doesn’t pitch. The artist invites.

The artist doesn’t manipulate outcomes. The artist creates space for response.

The artist doesn’t ask “How do I get what I want?” The artist asks “What’s actually possible here?”

When I finally pressed record on Friday, my son wasn’t settled, my voice wasn’t steady, and that didn’t matter. Because I wasn’t selling. I was inviting.

I described The Authority Lab honestly. Who it’s for. Why it matters.

No tactics. No countdown timers. No manufactured urgency.

Just clear invitation: “This exists. If it’s for you, let’s talk.”

Within 24 hours: £50,000 in enquiries.

Not because I finally decided to sell. Because I finally decided to ask.

And asking, it turns out, is the beginning of everything.

Rohn said there are two ways to ask:

First, ask with intelligence. Be clear. Be specific. Don’t mumble. Define what you want.

Second, ask with faith. Believe like a child whilst planning like an adult.

Both are true. But there’s a third way he didn’t mention:

Ask with curiosity.

Ask without predetermined outcomes. Ask to discover, not extract. Ask to start a conversation, not close a transaction.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: the artist’s ask isn’t about getting. It’s about revealing.

You’re not asking the canvas to become what you’ve already decided. You’re asking it to show you what it wants to be.

This isn’t just philosophy. The stakes are real: Around 94% of coaching businesses fail within the first three years. I wonder how many of those people approach each day with a spirit of genuine enquiry versus a need to make what they’d already decided on work.

Me? I’m right at the end of year two, right in the middle of the dead zone. Here’s why I might just make the 6%: because by serving the work I discovered what the world was asking from me.

Anthem led to my podcast, Culture Crush. Culture Crush replaced my income, and as I leant into what my community was telling me, The Unremarkable Entrepreneur became the obvious next step.

My curiosity created dialogue, and dialogue illuminated a path worth following, and so I followed it. I evolved, I allowed, I welcomed. I didn’t shut down the answers I was getting because they didn’t align with things I’d already decided.

I found my best work, I didn’t choose it.

I want X, how do I get it?

Most treat asking like a transaction, but artists treat asking like a conversation: I’m curious about X, what’s actually here?

The difference isn’t semantic. It’s fundamental.

Transaction requires control. You need the outcome you’ve predetermined or you’ve failed.

Conversation requires courage. You need to be willing to be surprised by what emerges.

One keeps you safe and stuck. The other sets you free.

This is the practice: Ask without attachment. Invite without manipulation. Create space for what wants to happen.

The world doesn’t respond to those just working away. It responds to those who speak up, ask questions, and invite answers.

Because genuine dialogue starts with a question.

And dialogue is where discovery lives.

You will find what you’re looking for, the question: what are you asking?

And that’s not some daft platitude, it’s reality. Look at your life. To gossip at work is to ask for gossip, to be impatient with people is to welcome impatience. You won’t be generous when you’re successful if you’re not generous when you’re not.

I am asking for a measure of success in my business. I want options for my son, for me. I’m now getting some of the answers I want because, like any practice, any muscle, becoming a good asker takes time. Learning how to invite and be open is a mental work of years.

But you could start today by simply noticing what you want, and asking for it.

My invitation to 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?

Here’s what I know: Success isn’t rationed. Authority isn’t in short supply. The people who need your work are already looking for it.

It’s like the tide, sometimes it rolls in, sometimes it rolls out. But the ocean is always there.

Abundant. Endless.

And your questions are like the moon’s gravity.

Powerful. Influential. They direct the ocean’s movement.

When most start building, the tide is out. Distant. They see others playing in the surf and that’s where they get stuck, voyeurs of other people’s success. They don’t realise that they have power over the tides, can bring the ocean near, and accept its abundance.

Not because they lack ambition, but because they lack practice asking.

The amateur? They mumble. They hedge. They qualify. They plan what to say instead of using their voice.

The artist? They rise in the night’s sky. They influence the waves. They challenge the ocean to respond.

They create, articulate, and invite, without fear.

The artist trusts that asking - real asking, honest asking, curious asking - starts a process that doesn’t need their understanding to work.

All you need to do is push the button.

Your 30 day challenge

Make one clear ask every day. Not a sales pitch. An invitation.

Ask a question you’re genuinely curious about.

Ask for feedback on something you’ve created.

Ask someone if they’d like to work together.

Ask what’s actually needed here.

Don’t predetermine the outcome. Don’t measure success by whether you “got” what you wanted.

Measure it by what you discovered.

Document what actually happens - not what you hoped would happen, but what emerged from the conversation.

Watch what reveals itself when you stop trying to extract and start trying to discover.

Because asking isn’t about getting whatever you want.

It’s about learning what wants to happen through you.

And once you start that conversation, all manner of things become possible as the tide rolls in.

The question isn’t whether the work is ready.

The question is whether you’re ready to ask.

I’m trying something new. I’m dictating this entire weekly roundup whilst holding my 4-month-old son, Sonny, who’s in fine voice today. So forgive me if this feels a bit rough around the edges!

I can’t promise these weekly roundups will be every week, but I wanted to share what I’ve been working on, what’s been causing me friction, and what’s been bringing me freedom.

What I’ve Been Working On

Earlier this week, I launched a new content rhythm for myself. I’m breaking free from the hamster wheel of believing I need to create-create-create: if you’re running your own show, you know exactly how that can feel!

Instead, I’m writing one really good article a week and using that long-form piece to set the tone for everything else.

I’ve written about this approach in my latest article, The Planning Trap - which is a bit meta, because I’m simultaneously planning, doing, and writing about the planning and doing. It’s been a fascinating exploration.

As part of this new cadence, I’m also recording article read-throughs and publishing them to both Substack and the podcast. You’ll find that linked below as well.

The Authority Lab: My New Offer

The other thing I’ve been working hard on is redefining my signature offer. Over the past year, I’ve been working one-to-one with clients through what I called the Authority Building Pathway - a few months of intensive work to help people bring their businesses and ideas to life.

Here’s what most people don’t realise: when you step out of corporate, start consulting, or launch as a freelancer, you think you can just “turn your expertise into an offer” and people will start paying you.

But running your own business involves so much more than that.

Most people think, “I’ve got six months’ runway, I’ll be fine.” But almost no one I’ve met has launched from a standing start and been profitable in six months. That’s why most businesses fail - people run out of road before they’ve had time to learn all the adjacent skills they actually need.

What I do is help people leap over those boundaries: branding, tone of voice, how they show up in the world, what that first offer looks like, the system for guiding people from social media into your own database. All the foundational pieces that actually make a business work.

I’ve been refining this work, and it’s now called The Authority Lab.

The Authority Lab is about turning your expertise into a practice that will free you financially, creatively, and spiritually for the rest of your career.

It’s about redefining who you are and why you’re here in 60 days, so you can scale without limits.

I believe that your unfiltered self is a one-of-a-kind opportunity magnet and my hustle-defying business methodology will help you become your most effective self - designed for the 1% who have the conviction to build for the long term, not just chase the next trend.

In short: I’ll help you know who you are and why you’re here in 60 days.

I only take on two clients each month. That’s partly because, as a new dad, I want to spend loads of time with Sonny. We’re also moving house. Life is full. I know I can only give two partners a month the attention they need, and that’s a choice I’m making for now.

But if you know anyone who’s ready to build a practice, not just a business - who’s ready to break away from the gurus, the tactics, the noise of social media - I’m ready to have that conversation. Drop me an email at dan@unremarkable.co or send me a message.

You can’t tell, but Sonny’s agreeing by screeching like a baby dinosaur in my ears.

This Week’s Friction

The friction this week has been around that tension between planning and doing. I’ve been stuck in planning mode when what I really want is to get on with the practice of serving my community, working with my clients, and just doing the work in front of me.

Serving the work instead of worrying about the outcome.

Lots more to come on these themes soon. But for now, I’ve named it. I’ve done the work. It’s Friday and Sonny keeps grabbing the microphone.

So I’m gonna go!

Be well,

Dan

Sound familiar?

After rebranding to The Unremarkable Entrepreneur, I stopped the events I was running. The podcast recordings dried up. The content and client pipeline went quiet.

Not because I don’t know what to do - I’ve built audiences, closed clients, generated revenue doing this exact work. But because I needed to spend some time behind the scenes, reimagining the structure behind the business you all get to see. Creating space for what works, and closing off energy sink holes.

But over the last few weeks I’ve grown restless.

I’m making energetic down payments in my future, but I’ve felt increasingly stuck in planning mode. Stuck thinking about the work, instead of doing it.

And that’s the trap, isn’t it? Because planning can feel enough like progress without actually moving anything forward.

So, writing this article is an act of rebellion.

It’s my attempt to stop spinning around my ideas and do something with them. Even if that doing is simply an act of open reflection.

In short, I need to remind myself that no structure will bring momentum. I cannot plan my way to clarity. There’s no ecosystem I can shape that brings life if I don’t fill it with life.

And that goes for you too.

The Messy Middle

When a peer asked me what was going on, I had to be honest: “I think I just need to lock in a weekly starter cadence so it feels like I’m living the work instead of feeling stuck planning it.”

They didn’t let me off easy. “You’ve just diagnosed yourself perfectly. You’re stuck in planner mode. How about you just get on with the work instead.”

It was like looking in a mirror. This is EXACTLY the kind of stuff I say to my clients. I’ve built a business around the act of closing the gap between planning and practice.

I’ve been acting like a strategist, when I was born to be a practitioner.

And the first casualty has been my content. I’ve stopped saying stuff about what I do. The truth? It doesn’t need a complex system, cleverness, or crisp editing. What it actually needs is consistent practice and contact with the world.

In other words: say the stuff and make it clear what people do with the stuff.

And when I close the tabs, resist the LinkedIn scroll, ignore the Substack clickbait, and tune out the gurus, what I want to talk about is crystal clear:

• The Authority Lab: my 1:1 programme for those ready to build a practice, not a business

• The Unremarkable Entrepreneur: weekly articles about how to build with intention and scale without limits

• The Unremarkable Entrepreneur Podcast: interviews with Unremarkable clients and creators who’ve been there and made it happen

Here’s my challenge to myself: if what you’re about to create doesn’t directly serve one of those, DON’T DO IT!

I believe in the power of constraints - time being the most sacred. Before I chase any shiny idea, I ask: will this cost me an hour with my son? Does this help build the future I want to own? If the answer to either is no, it doesn’t matter how clever the idea feels.

So I know what I want to say, but actually saying it? Well that’s a different practice entirely.

The Unemployable Reality

Here’s what I know about myself: having experienced five redundancies in a decade, the idea of going back into a full-time role feels like I wouldn’t be living my potential. But I still get tempted by the benefits: the security, the freedom of someone else’s to-do list, the team camaraderie. It’s catnip to a lonely entrepreneur.

But honestly, I’m unemployable now. Not because I lack skills - I have real depth across everything needed to succeed. But because the promise of working in alignment with who I actually am is like catnip for the soul!

My bills are paid, and there’s food on the table. But I still carry stress about whether this will work, especially with a 4-month-old son and a house purchase that’s running behind schedule. There’s pressure. Plus those redundancies have done my nervous system no good: I’m hard-wired now to expect that the rug will be pulled.

Despite this, my normal state is pretty confident.

I close most of my sales calls. I’ve grown an audience to nearly 10,000 on LinkedIn without ads or viral tactics. I’ve made this work before by simply serving the work instead of worrying about the outcome.

So why have I been feeling stuck?

The Forward-Thinking Curse

My friend nailed it: “One of your greatest strengths is that you are a forward thinker. You can see the entire process and all the potential before you start. But that can lead to overthinking every possible option, which feels overwhelming.”

And they’re right. I can see all the potential paths. I understand frameworks before I implement them. I’m intelligent enough to spot the whole journey from the starting line.

But that same intelligence can paralyse. When you can see everything that could work, choosing one path feels like closing doors. And when you’re carrying stress about whether this will actually provide for your family, that weight gets heavier.

The irony? I’ve watched people I’d consider less capable than me succeed by taking what might be considered dumb action. They just get on with things with the full belief that it will work, and often it does. Imperfect action is still action, and action creates opportunity.

They’re not smarter. They’re just not stuck in the planning trap.

The Starter Cadence

What I teach people is this: Your unfiltered self is your opportunity magnet. Don’t worship the outcome. Serve the work and take action. When you do, you’ll discover what wants to happen to you, through you, and for you.

And right now, I’m deciding to take action.

Here’s what I’m committing to in order to liberate myself: a weekly starter cadence that feels doable with a 4-month-old.

• Monday: Write one Unremarkable Entrepreneur article. Just write what wants to be written and let it rest

• Tuesday: Release one post about my 1:1 offer, The Authority Lab

• Wednesday: Publish the article and record a video read-through. Post it to the podcast

• Thursday: Reserved for business tasks and admin

• Friday: Write x5 short posts linking back to the article and schedule them for the following week

Of course, I’ll be working on guest podcast episodes, and let inspiration lead from time to time, but otherwise, that’s it!

One content pillar and one offer post. The long form drives almost everything, and one offer post solves my greatest weakness as an entrepreneur - telling people how I can actually help them.

Everything else - podcast recordings, events, social posts - orbits around this core practice. They’re not separate content pillars to manage. They’re extensions of the writing.

And if they can’t justify their existence, they’ll get cut. Without mercy.

Why this cadence and not another? Because I tried the ‘post daily’ approach. I tried the ‘batch everything monthly’ method. Both made me feel like I was performing rather than practising. This rhythm gives me space to think on Monday, take action on Tuesday, share on Wednesday, breathe on Thursday, and prepare for the next cycle on Friday. It’s not the perfect system - it’s simply the one that fits my life right now.

I Give Myself Permission

I have lived the experience of starting a business from absolute zero. Most people think they need to know the outcome, to understand where they’ll land.

But here’s what I know: things rarely go to plan. So whilst I’ve designed a rhythm, now it’s time to learn to dance. To establish the practice that generates the raw material.

I don’t need to know ‘what’s next’ beyond next Monday’s article. I’m going to write consistently until Christmas, and let what wants to happen to me, through me, and for me, reveal itself. The writing will deepen, the themes will compound, and what I can offer the world will sharpen through articulation and start cutting through the noise.

And here’s the thing I keep forgetting: I already have proof this works. I built 10,000 followers by running events, recording podcasts, and reaching out to people. One or two leads would always emerge naturally.

Not because I had perfect positioning, but because I was doing the work in public and people could see themselves in it.

The Path Forward

So I’m done planning. I’m done trying to see the whole journey before I take the next step.

Starting this week: One article. One offer post. One video. Repeat.

Starting from tomorrow: THIS article. Published. Recorded.

And it will work. Not because I’ve architected the perfect system, but because I’m serving the work consistently enough for patterns to emerge and in public enough for the right people - the 1% who are ready to build differently - to find me.

That’s the practice. That’s serving the work instead of worshipping the outcome.

And if you’re stuck in the same trap - overthinking, over-planning, waiting for the perfect structure - this is your permission slip: You already know enough. Start Monday. See what emerges by Friday. Do it again the next week.

The universe will show you what it wants from you. But only if you’re actually in conversation with it.

The question hung in the air during a recent coaching call, heavy with the weight of current events. My client, someone with a natural gift for creating joy and building community, was wrestling with a familiar tension: How to honour their nature while ICE agents conduct raids in Chicago, whilst families are torn apart by politics, whilst every headline brings fresh despair?

It’s a question I hear often in different forms. The creatives, the community builders, the joy-makers wondering if their work matters against the backdrop of global crisis. There’s a shame in it too - a sense that focusing on these things reveals our privilege, marks us as somehow separate from the real struggles of our time.

And perhaps it does; my ability to write this article is an expression of the liberty I get to enjoy. I need to recognise, integrate and remain sensitive to the reality of others: the truth, from my perspective, isn’t universal. I must be gentle.

The ideas I present as The Unremarkable Entrepreneur can’t and won’t work for everyone.

But play has always been important. A shared language. It endures amidst the psycho-drama (and its horrifying real-world consequences) that’s unfolding around the world, and will always be found in the rubble.

In fact, history shows us that play often emerges most powerfully in our darkest moments. Perhaps no example illustrates this better than a remarkable Christmas morning over a century ago.

The Game That Stopped a War

In the midst of World War I’s grinding horror, something extraordinary happened.

British and German soldiers, hearing familiar carols drifting across no man’s land, began to emerge from their trenches. What followed wasn’t a tactical manoeuvre or diplomatic initiative – it was a football match.

These men, who hours before had been trying to kill each other, found common ground in play. They traded cigarettes, shared photos and, for a brief, luminous moment, remembered their shared humanity. The game didn’t end the war, but it revealed something profound about trust that would echo through generations.

From Trenches to Twitter Threads

A century later, our trenches look different. They’re carved by social media algorithms, political ideologies and economic divides. But the principle remains: whilst everyone shouts their version of truth across these digital no-man’s-lands, very few are building trust.

As this insight emerged during our coaching conversation, my client’s struggle took on new meaning. Here was someone with a gift for creating joy and building community, yet feeling the pressure to abandon play for political commentary. But what if, like those soldiers in 1914, the path to connection isn’t through more debate, but through rediscovering our shared capacity for play?

What emerged was something powerful: Play isn’t a distraction from serious work – it’s often the only way to do it effectively.

The Language We Already Share

“You’re not building a brand,” I found myself saying, “you’re building a campfire.” Think about what happens around a campfire - stories are shared, guards come down, connections form naturally.

Play works the same way. Whether it’s a board game at a tense family gathering, impromptu sports in a refugee camp, or icebreakers in a divided community meeting, play creates a space where people can drop their defences and remember their shared humanity.

This insight visibly shifted something for my client.

Suddenly, their work wasn’t about choosing between play and purpose - it was about using play as a bridge. The question became more practical: What if their work wasn’t another voice in the chaos, but an invitation to remember how to trust? An invitation to heal across idological fault lines?

From Battleground to Playground

These aren’t just nice ideas. In a world drowning in hot takes and political commentary, what it needs are practical tools for rebuilding trust in our homes, our communities and our conversations. This is where play becomes revolutionary – not as an escape from reality, but as a strategy for engaging it more effectively.

What struck me most was watching my client realise that being “the play guy” wasn’t limiting – it was liberating. By embracing play as a trust-building tool, they could move beyond commentary to creation. Instead of adding another voice to the chaos, they could design experiences that help families navigate political divides at the dinner table, help communities build coalitions across difference, help people remember how to trust.

We can never argue people out of entrenched ideological positions. No well-written source or convincing video will break through those walls. But in play, we find another way.

When we create spaces where trust can grow, where wonder can return, where relationships can heal - that’s when real change becomes possible.

The Unremarkable Path Forward

Those soldiers in 1914 didn’t end the war with their football match. But they showed us something timeless about human nature: that in play, we find our common ground. That finding trust, not fighting for truth, can bridge our deepest divides.

This is the kind of unremarkable wisdom that changes everything. While others are shouting into the void, trying to win arguments, we can choose a different path. We can create spaces where trust can grow, where wonder can return, where relationships can heal.

This is the work I do with unremarkable entrepreneurs - helping them find their authentic way to serve, build trust and create meaningful change without adding to the noise. If you’re wrestling with similar tensions between creativity and responsibility, between joy and justice, between play and purpose, let’s explore how you can make your unique contribution.

Because the question isn’t whether what you do is serious enough for serious times. The question is: What becomes possible when we let who we are, not what we believe, shape what we do?