About
You're in good hands.
I've launched and landed successful businesses, played on stages around the world, overcome life-changing injuries, co-founded with Airbnb and run my own award-winning design consultancy. All by becoming more of my true self.
In my life I've had cause to rediscover myself several times when the old me wasn't aligned with my new goals and situation. I left school at 16 believing I'd failed at life before it had properly begun. Years later, I returned to education and discovered I could excel when I stopped carrying the identity I'd built around failure.
I expanded my identity as I navigated moves from artist manager to world touring bass player to start-up entrepreneur to award winning design leader, through divorce and single fatherhood (not to mention wrestling with a life-changing brain injury and ADHD). Each required me to imagine, design and step into the new version I was becoming - a new relationship to myself, to other people and to what mattered.
A big insight came in 2008. I'd been playing bass for Mark Lanegan, touring the world, when I was involved in a cycling accident that caused two brain haemorrhages and permanent damage.
From the outside, my life had looked extraordinary. Inside, I was deeply disconnected, wracked with imposter syndrome and profoundly lonely.
And then something strange happened.
During recovery, I experienced a level of clarity, connection and emotional openness I'd never known before. I could feel my relationships differently. I felt present in my own life in a way I hadn't previously thought possible.
I'd seen how much of our suffering and life blockers come not from achievement or failure themselves, but from disconnection — from ourselves, from others and from the lives we're actually living. To step into connection is to step into flow.
This insight influenced my work in design and leadership. It informed the creation of each of my companies and the Beholding practice. And it became the foundation of the work I do today: helping people navigate identity expansion, relational complexity and meaningful change in times of personal, professional and cultural transformation.
The work
My timeline.
2003
Artist management
Managed bands including St Etienne and The Duke Spirit. Travelled the world.
2006
Session bass
Played session bass for various artists.
2008
Touring with Mark Lanegan
Bass player for Mark Lanegan - my musical highpoint, the loneliest period of my life - and the cycling accident that changed everything.
2012
Echo (Economy of Hours)
A two-way marketplace connecting freelancers, corporates and NGOs including Google and government departments. Attained numerous awards. Exited 2016.
2015
Sharing Economy UK
Co-founded the national trade body representing the UK's sharing economy, alongside Airbnb, Hassle.com and Love Home Swap.
2016
Clore Leadership Fellowship
Awarded a fellowship to research the designed erosion of everyday human connection. Published a widely-cited white paper and developed the Deepr methodology.
2016
On Hand (via The Good Lab)
Designed the service proposition and business model for a care platform connecting people with local community support. Pitched successfully to investors. On Hand joined the inaugural Facebook Accelerator and secured investment from all five Dragons' Den investors on BBC television.
2018
Deepr
Founded award-winning relational design consultancy. Clients include Google, British Red Cross, YMCA, TrueLayer, ClientEarth and Grosvenor UK. Trained hundreds of CEOs globally in my methods.
2021
Human Connection Design suite
Awarded Judges' Pick, London Design Biennale and developed a range of leadership development programmes based on this for clients.
2023
ADHD diagnosis
Diagnosed with ADHD at 48. Finally understood the shape of a mind that had been running different software all along. No wonder I'd developed hyper-organisation skills to become a high-functioning human.
2025
Beholding
A synthesis of relational design, Zen Buddhism and connection practices - distilled into a learnable, repeatable method for human expansion and leadership development.
Not theory
What this looks like in practice.
- The client
Senior leader at a 400-person scale-up. Newly promoted to the executive team. From the outside: the success story everyone wanted to be. Inside: insomnia, performance anxiety and a quiet certainty he was about to be found out.
- The presenting problem
"My team hits every target. Hardly anyone speaks in meetings. I'm running the function and I feel like a ghost in my own company. I don't know who I am at work any more."
- The real problem
The identity that won him the promotion - relentless competence, never visibly uncertain, always one step ahead - was the same identity making him unreachable to his team and unrecognisable to himself. The strategy that worked was now the thing blocking the next chapter.
- The work
- - Eight months of weekly 75-minute 1:1 sessions.
- - Voice memo support between sessions - real time, not theory.
- - Small, repeatable relational practices tested inside his actual team.
- - Sustained attention to identity at the root, not just behaviour at the surface.
- The shift
"I stopped faking confidence. The team started talking - real disagreement, real ideas, real ownership. We didn't miss a single target. The difference is I actually want to be there now. So do they."
- What changed underneath
- - A leadership identity that can hold uncertainty without collapsing into it.
- - Relational capacity inside his team that didn't exist before.
- - A clear, repeatable sense of who he is at work - and who he isn't.
- - Sleep returned within the first three months.
Briefly
The practical part.
- Coach for identity expansion, relational intelligence and meaning.
- Accredited Executive Coach. Relational Zen practitioner. Design expert.
- 5-7 clients at a time. 3/6-month minimum.
- Based in the UK, working internationally.