Hey, it’s Harrison, thanks for checking out my About page.

Here’s me in 10 beliefs

I only make sense in retrospect

Electrician, conceptual artist, SaaS tech founder, writer, writing mentor, career coach. If you’d shown me that list when I was 16, I’d have said it belonged to several different people. It doesn’t look like a plan because it never was a plan. It was a series of moves that each made sense to me at the time for reasons I could rarely explain. And I’ve come to learn that following your inexplicable interests is a principled way to live because it’s the most accurate compass to a life that’s genuinely yours.

I start work before I have permission

When I was a teenager, I bought stencils and spray paint and knocked on doors to number people’s wheelie bins because my mum was sick of her bin getting stolen. I earned £100 a day doing this. I’ve tended to work in this way ever since, pestering London Underground hiring managers every day for three months until they told me to “f*ck off” (I didn’t). Crowdfunding my master’s education when I couldn’t get student finance. I’ve never found “waiting my turn” or “standing in line” to be a particularly effective strategy.

I left a trade to go to the world’s best art school

I was a qualified electrician earning 50 grand a year when I enrolled in a foundation art degree, attending college during the day and working nights on the London Underground to cover the cost. Two years later, I had a place at Central Saint Martins. Two years after that, the Royal College of Art. I’m not telling this story to show off, but because people regularly tell me there’s no way into the thing they want most. But there almost always is. It just rarely looks like the obvious route.

I’ve failed significantly and found it useful

I built a startup, which was the most significant project of my life. It took six years. I raised venture capital, hired a team, and had a genuine shot at changing the working lives of construction workers across the country. Then it didn’t work, and it was a seriously humbling experience in the specific way that only real failure can be. I don’t think you can teach the philosophy of work that I subscribe to without having lost something that mattered to you.

I find overwhelm generative

Right now I’m drowning in dense papers from Positive Psychology as part of my ICF coaching accreditation. The sheer volume of new material and ideas is genuinely staggering, and I have no idea which end is up. But I’m enjoying it enormously. I’ve noticed that the most interesting periods of my life have felt like this: disoriented but alive, not quite sure what I’m doing next. I believe this overwhelm is a positive signal that something important is emerging.

I believe creative work and entrepreneurship are the same instinct

Artists and entrepreneurs are the same people. They make things, break things, question rules, go first, take risks, and have bold visions. The separation between artist and founder has always felt artificial to me, probably because I’ve been both of them, often simultaneously. This is about the artist’s mindset, not aesthetics. The artist’s mindset is a way of operating that can be turned on to any domain. I think it’s one of the most underrated and transferable things a person can develop.

I think silliness and absurdity is a form of wisdom

Me and my wife Corina have been together for over ten years despite being quite different people with needs and values that don’t always overlap. We credit a lot of this to the fact that we spend a big amount of our time together behaving like children being silly. We make weird noises, do pranks, flop around sulking when something goes wrong. It’s super immature. But what it’s actually doing is short-circuiting the heaviness that accumulates in a long relationship and in the seriousness of life. There’s a particular type of wisdom in childishness that the grown-up world overlooks to its detriment.

I believe stuckness is almost always a courage problem

The people I work with are always capable of the things they say they cannot do. What’s actually stopping them is not about talent; it’s not about passion; it’s not about resources of any kind. It’s because there’s something scary they haven’t done, a conversation they haven’t faced, a risk they haven’t taken, a version of themselves they haven’t yet been willing to become. There’s a reason we have the mythological figure of the dragon in our collective imagination, and there’s a reason those dragons guard pots of gold.

I think attention is a moral issue, not a productivity one

The conversations around protecting your focus from technology are usually framed around getting more done. It’s not wrong, but it’s missing something more important. The more insidious effect of attention engineering is that it quietly fills your time with content that makes you feel less than you are, and corrodes your confidence by presenting you with an unrealistic picture of what a creative life looks like. Before you’ve done your own work, you’ve already been told, implicitly, that yours won’t be good enough. Protecting your attention is therefore about protecting your capacity to think and act from your own convictions. And I think it’s one of the most important projects we must face today.

I think freedom requires constraints to mean anything

Freedom and agency are obviously really important to me, but I know that too much freedom produces paralysis, not innovation. The interesting question is not how to get more freedom, or what to do with your freedom; it’s how to configure just the right type and degree of constraints—a constraint “sweet spot”—where progress feels almost inevitable rather than permanently optional. This is one principle among many that I learned from art school, from building a company, and from years of watching what actually helps people move forward.

All of this—finding unconventional solutions to conventional problems, being willing to start without permission, seeing everything as workable—is what my coaching is built on.

I work with capable creatives who are trying to figure out what comes next. Some are navigating career transitions, others are launching podcasts or delivering commencement speeches or building lifestyle businesses with their passions.

In 2026 I launched Screw the Job Boards: a small group programme for experienced creative professionals who are done with the conventional job search and want to design their own strategic, dignified way into their dream job. Learn more here.

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Here’s my timeline for more context:

• 1986: born in Sheffield, England

• Early childhood: developed a severe stammer, creating a frustrating barrier to self-expression. But I was artistically gifted. Our neighbour, an art teacher, noticed my drawings and told my mum they were years ahead of children my age — an early recognition of creative ability that would go dormant for years.

• 1999: after hearing my mum repeatedly complain about her bin being stolen, I spotted an opportunity. I bought stencils and spray paint, and started a door-to-door bin numbering business, earning £100 a day. A customer called me “very enterprising,” and gave me more than I asked for — the first time I connected creativity and initiative with outsized outcomes.

• 2003: without clear direction and seeing friends in trades earning steady income, I followed my uncle Gary’s suggestion and began an apprenticeship as an electrician. It was a practical decision that wasn’t aligned with my creative instincts but would provide valuable skills.

• 2006: imported winter coats from China to sell on construction sites.

• 2007: started a garden lighting company alongside my full time electrical job, finally discovering a way to combine technical skills with creative expression. I secured King’s Trust funding, bought tools, and landed my first customer, only for the 2008 financial crash to halt my momentum 😤

• 2009: discovered Tony Robbins tapes and completed his Personal Power course. Robbins’ ideas and self-belief were game changing for me. I felt he was the inspiring father figure I’d never had.

• 2011: read that “90 pence in every pound spent in the UK is spent in London” so I decided to move to London. Landed a job building the London Olympic Village.

• 2011: worked part-time in the film industry as an electrician on productions including The Inbetweeners Movie, Now Is Good, and music videos for Wretch 32.

• 2011: landed a coveted electrical job on the London Underground after pestering the hiring manager every day for 3 months straight even though he said, “STOP F**CKING RINGING ME!” I was then promoted to Supervisor within 6 months.

• 2011-2012: ready to reconnect with my creative instincts, I enrolled in a foundation art degree, working nights on the Underground while attending college during the day to cover expenses.

• 2012: secured a place to study Fine Art (BA) at Central Saint Martins London. This is my life-defining achievement (CSM is like the Oxford or Cambridge of the art world). I finally began pursuing my creative dreams while maintaining income through weekend electrical work.

• 2014-2015: lived and studied in Turkey and Thailand during my BA.

• 2015: invited to create site-specific sculpture in Norway and presented my work to the Norwegian Queen.

• 2016: secured a place to study Contemporary Art Practice (MA) at the Royal College of Art, the world’s top art school, funding it through a crowdfunding campaign where I made original artworks for all contributors.

• 2016: won a commission to create award trophies for the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival and had my first solo exhibition in Sheffield.

• 2017: by now my work had appeared in over 20 international exhibitions.

• 2017: worked as assistant to Turner Prize-nominated painter Hurvin Anderson.

• 2017: won a national competition with my concept for a Slack-like digital platform for construction sites, combining my creative skills with industry experience. I became the first artist granted a place at the RCA’s prestigious entrepreneurship centre.

• 2017-2022: built the company, raising venture capital and hiring a team. The company combined my practical knowledge with creative vision in a way few others could attempt but ultimately failed — a humbling and devastating experience that forced reassessment.

• 2022: me and Corina left England to travel full time.

• 2022: created this publication knowing that I wanted to write, create interesting projects, and help others do the same.

• 2022: began learning structured coaching skills using the GROW™ model.

• 2023: won an O’Shaughnessy Scholarship to participate in David Perell’s renowned Write of Passage (WoP) writing school, a transformative writing course that connected me with a community of exciting writers.

• 2023-2024: became a crew editor and workshop facilitator for WoP.

• 2024: joined full-time as WoP’s Dedicated Writing Mentor — professionally integrating my creative and coaching skills.

• 2024-present: started professionally coaching creative people to make significant life transformations: new career pathways, identity-shifting creative projects, and personal reinvention.

• 2025-present: joined creative ‘passion project’ accelerator Act Two as the Resident Coach.

• 2026: undertaking my ICF accreditation in Applied Positive Psychology Coaching under the supervision of Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener.

• 2026: launched Screw the Job Boards - a group programme helping creative professionals design their own way into their dream job.

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