Posts

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about.

Quitting rarely feels like quitting. Nobody goes: “Yes, I’m quitting today.”

It’s more like: “I’ll skip today. I’m knackered. I’ll get back to it Monday.”

Then Monday becomes next Monday.

You don’t really notice you’ve stopped until enough time has passed that starting again feels awkward. Sometimes all you need is another person noticing you’re not there.

“You’ve gone quiet. Everything alright?” That can be enough.

It’s one of the reasons I’m building a small group of people who want to keep building, keep showing up, and help each other when the momentum starts to slip.

Nothing complicated. Just good people doing the work and supporting each other.

If that sounds like something you’d want to be part of, drop me a message.

I've been seeing a lot of this in my feed lately, and I'm getting sick of it. So here's the unspoken truth: every "here's exactly how I did it" post is a lie told by a survivor.

And I don't mean they're deliberately lying. Most of them probably believe every word they're saying. It's a memory lie. They did the thing, it worked, and now their brain reverse-engineers a clean sequence out of what was actually mostly luck, timing, and a hundred small decisions they can't even remember making.

Then they sell that clean sequence. Nine steps. A framework. A "playbook."

And it sells, because a clean sequence feels safe. It makes the scary part seem knowable, mappable, avoidable if you just follow along.

But that's not the map that got them there. It's the map they drew afterwards, from the finish line, with the fog conveniently erased.

I found Bitcoin early, and I had some success with it. I could have made a course about it and capitalised on it, but if I'm honest, most of the success I had came down to timing and being the specific person I happened to be at that moment: a tech background, an appetite for the latest tech, and the ability to digest the technology in ways most people couldn't.

I could dress that up as a system, but it wasn't one. Luck plays a far bigger role in the lives of successful people than most will ever be willing to admit (they'd rather you believed in the playbook). You can make your own luck, sure, but mostly by being willing to learn, grow, and change enough to be standing where the opportunity lands.

Here's what the survivor never mentions: the ten thousand people who ran the exact same nine steps and got nothing. They're not in the case study. They don't get to write the success post. They quit, moved on, or they're still grinding in the dark, and their silence is doing the survivor's marketing for them.

So when someone tells you their formula works, ask the questions that actually matter. Works for who? Out of how many? And where are the ones it didn't work for?

A system can multiply what you already bring to it. Discipline, taste, experience, curiosity, a real story, the willingness to show up on a bad day. But it can't manufacture those things for you. If you bring nothing, it multiplies nothing.

Zero times a framework is still zero.

But the right people can multiply what each other brings. That's why I'm putting together a small working group for people who work together, challenge each other, learn faster, and make more progress together than they would alone.

If that sounds useful to you, let me know. Send me a DM.

Nobody warns you about the silence you have to explain.

You post something you actually meant. You spend an hour on it, cut it down, sit on it, hit publish with your stomach doing that thing. And then: nothing.

Fine. You've read enough to know that's the deal. You signed up for it. Now, just post consistently, ignore the numbers, blah blah.

Except the numbers aren't the problem.

The problem is the person at the kitchen table who asks what you were doing on your laptop for an hour. And you have to look at them and say, "Writing," and watch it land as, "You've been arsing about on LinkedIn again."

That's the silence that actually kills people off. Not the algorithm. The gap between what it costs you to build something from nothing and what anyone in your life can see.

Because they can't see it. Your partner thinks it's a hobby that makes dinner go cold. Your mate calls it a weird phase. Nobody in the room knows what a decent post takes out of you on a bad day, so the effort goes unwitnessed.

And unwitnessed effort dies quietly, with your full cooperation.

I watched it die in myself for years, refreshing a post nobody clapped for.

So people don't quit because it's hard. They quit because it's lonely, and they've got to keep explaining the loneliness to people who love them and still don't get it.

Being seen by one person who's playing the same game changes everything.

If you can't answer, "What were you doing for an hour?" without flinching, that's something you can actually fix.

I'm here to help you with that. Send me a DM. We'll start from there.

PS. I'm back!

LinkedIn added a button so you can report a post as "AI slop."

Good luck with that.

Because nobody will flag slop, not really. They'll flag polish. Tidy line breaks, a clean structure, em dashes, a sentence that doesn't stumble. Which means the people who got good at writing will get reported, and the people who rough it up on purpose won't.

Not to mention those who'll press it on purpose. Nothing personal, just a competitor having a bad week and a button that costs nothing to tap.

I use AI every day but the words are mine because the life behind them is mine. A report button can't see that. It can only see the surface.

Anyway. It's Friday. If this post gets flagged, at least I'll know somebody read it.

The secret to growing your presence online?

Surround yourself with people laying bricks, sharing tools, and building something of their own. In all honesty, I'm starting to learn this lesson myself.

Builders build better together.

If your goal is to grow online, I want to connect with you. Send me a DM.

I wasn't going to post anything today.

In fact, I had absolutely nothing to say.

But then I just didn’t want to ruin my perfect 14-day posting streak.

Does this count as a real post? Or am I gaming the system?

"Why would I take advice from someone who hasn't made it yet?"

Fair. You shouldn't. Not if what you want is advice.

The whole guru economy runs on one promise: I climbed the mountain, here's the view, pay me and I'll describe it to you. And people love it, because a finished expert feels safe.

Someone who's already done the scary part so you don't have to feel scared alone.

Except the map they're selling you was drawn from the summit. From memory. Years after they crossed the bit you're standing on right now, when the trail looked completely different and the weather was kinder and the path they took don't even exist anymore.

You're not buying a map. You're buying a postcard.

A support group is not that. There's no stage. There's no guru pretending the fog cleared for them and it'll clear for you if you just believe hard enough.

It's a small room of people mid-race. Building on LinkedIn and X, right now, in public, with the same drafts that don't land and the same weeks where nothing moves.

Which means it's a genuinely bad fit for some people. If you want a finished expert to follow, someone with the numbers and the merch and the confident smile, go find one. They're everywhere. They'll take your money and describe the view.

But if you'd rather have someone drawing the map next to you, close enough to notice when you go quiet, then a support group is the right place for you.

I'm building that support group. Founding chairs are free. Entry's by DM.