The Unremarkable Entrepreneur

Today we continue our series of short Dispatches from the Workbench: updates on decisions, things I’m trying, and invitations I’m sharing. I’ve found the process of thinking out loud with you really useful because it brings me to a different workbench. It’s not easy to write each week; it costs a lot of time and creative energy. The risk is that I spend so long on the craft that I fail to meaningf...

Each time we finish a section of the book, I’m going to send you a handful of short Dispatches from the Workbench: updates on decisions, things I’m trying, and invitations I’m sharing that I hope will be useful to you and inform how the work evolves. In today’s Dispatch: * The social bait and switch * What you can do about it Bait and switch In the last Dispatch, I told you I was breaking up with...

Each time we finish a section of the book, I’m going to pause and step away from the manuscript and send you a handful of short Dispatches from the workbench. Short updates on decisions, things I’m trying, and invitations I’m sharing that I hope will be useful to you and inform how the work evolves. In today’s Dispatch: * I’m breaking up with marketing and what I’m doing instead * Introducing the...

“The world is abundant. Money, attention, and opportunity are not in short supply.” The world of the entrepreneur or creator can feel like barren void, especially when facing redundancy or a global crisis. This scarcity mindset drives us to scramble for attention and validation, believing success is a finite resource, but it’s not the reality of our creative landscape. This episode challenges the...

“Against the grand vista of the heavens, the things we usually leverage to measure our worth simply melt into oblivion.” The relentless pursuit of external validation can be exhausting. We’re told to hustle, to scale, to constantly prove our worth in a noisy marketplace. This often leads us to perform for algorithms and metrics, rather than connecting with people. This episode challenges the notio...

“The summit wasn’t the lesson; the steps were.” The relentless pursuit of grand achievements can leave us feeling inadequate, paralysed by the chasm between where we are and where we think we should be. This episode dismantles the illusion that success is a sudden, dramatic arrival, revealing how the focus on distant peaks often blinds us to the true engine of progress. We explore the crippling ef...

“I can’t see the view because I’m in the view.” One offhand comment can displace us from our own joy, turning us into critical observers sitting on the sidelines of our own lives. When we feel left behind, the business world often tells us to figure out our “Why”. But we are not reliable witnesses to our own stories. We are too wrapped up in our insecurities and biases to see ourselves clearly. Th...

“We’ve built cathedrals in their honour. But they were building campfires.” The modern business world demands that we work backward from an outcome. It tells us to pick a revenue goal, exploit market friction, and treat people as targets to reach the finish line. We are taught to treat our work as an “identity multiplier,” as if who we already are needs to earn its moment in the sun by accumulatin...

“But how you feel about your worth does not change your worth.” The modern business landscape feeds us a persistent lie. It tells us that our value must be earned, quantified, and constantly justified through metrics, credentials, and external validation. We are taught that overcoming imposter syndrome requires building a perfect personal brand or mastering the latest marketing funnel. This is a p...

“The highest form of freedom is having no desire to be seen, validated or understood by anyone.” We are sold a version of this lie constantly. It comes from mindfulness influencers, alpha-male podcasters, and self-help superstars. It sounds like a deep exhale. It sounds like freedom. But it is just a different cage. In this episode, we dismantle the myth of the lone-wolf practitioner. We explore w...

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

“It’s the language of shared space, not certainty.” 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 attenti...

“As I sat down to write this chapter, I experienced a mix of fear and shame.” 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 d...

“Because in our endless pursuit of outcomes, we failed to become ourselves.” 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 d...

"Remember who you are." 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 wro...

“I wonder what note you’ve heard?” 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 affectio...