It Began with One Email

This is my 350th email!

Yep, three hundred and fifty emails, written over six years.

When I wrote the first one, there were no books, no website, no retreats and no podcast. There was me, a wall covered in Post-it notes, plenty of tea and something I could no longer ignore.

Throughout my life, I had watched good leaders burn out, and organisations struggle to respond to a world that never stopped changing. I did not have a complete answer. I believed another way might be possible.

My big curiosity was then and continues to be today:

Could leaders make a difference without losing themselves? Could organisations respond to change with curiosity and creativity rather than fear?

It felt like a slightly mad idea.

I wrote an email and sent it to a few people who I thought might care. The following week, I wrote another one.

I have always tried to offer an original thought rather than send something simply because a new week has arrived. Sometimes an email takes fifteen minutes (usually the ones with the typos!); others take hours.

I have written them in cafés, my home office, airports, while on holiday and from many different countries. The surroundings have changed, but the rhythm of sitting down, paying attention and writing has remained.

From the beginning, I decided that these emails would not become advertisements. The writing comes first and is offered freely. I believe that when we bring something good into the world through service, without calculating what we might receive in return, trust grows and the work often finds its way to us.

That is what has happened in my life.

Today, I have the privilege of working with wonderful people and organisations across the world. There are books, a website, a podcast and opportunities I could not have imagined when I sent that first email. Most days, I still pinch myself that even one person would value me enough to invite me into their life or organisation.

Every three months, I remove subscribers who have not opened an email in that time. I do not want to add to the noise or build an audience for its own sake. I would rather remain in conversation with people who value hope, creativity and healthier ways of living and leading.

By many measures, the world is a better place than it was a hundred years ago. Yet many of us carry an overwhelming sense of uncertainty and fear.

I hope that we can move from fear towards curiosity and from helplessness towards a determination to make someone else’s life a little better. We may not change everything, but each of us can contribute something good to the world immediately around us.

Perhaps that is the lesson from 350 emails.

You don’t need a website, a concrete plan or all the answers to begin. You need something you care about and the willingness to offer it generously.

If you have a slightly mad idea of your own, perhaps you could begin by writing one honest email to a few people who might care.

I cannot promise where it will lead. But something will begin to change, even if, at first, the thing that changes is you.

Thank you for opening these emails, replying to them and occasionally passing them on. I hope they have been as helpful for you to read as they have been for me to write.

Here’s to the next slightly mad idea, and to all of us becoming dealers of hope wherever we find ourselves.