The Book

The Constrained Founder is for people building under constraint. That includes parents, carers, side-hustlers, introverts, neurodivergent people, people dealing with health stuff, and people who are simply tired of being told that a business only "counts" if you sacrifice the rest of your life to it. It's also for anyone who has realised that the advice they are being given is not universal, it's just loud.

This book does two jobs. First, it says the quiet bit out loud: most mainstream advice assumes uninterrupted capacity, then it turns your inevitable interruptions into a character flaw. It does not call it that, of course. It calls it "mindset" and "discipline" and "consistency". Same trick, nicer packaging.

Second, it replaces that whole setup with a method that is built for reality. Not in a "be kind to yourself" way, and not in a "try harder" way. In a structural way. It expects friction. It expects stops and starts. It expects the fact that you might get two good hours and then lose three days. It expects that your brain might be brilliant and still refuse to co-operate on command.

I wrote this because I got tired of watching the same thing happen. Good people, decent ideas, and plans that collapse the moment real life shows up. I've been building businesses for forty years, I've got six kids, and my brain has never once done what it was told. The book exists because I needed the method written down properly, and it didn't exist anywhere else.

The book is not there to inspire you. You can get inspiration anywhere. It's there to stop you wasting years blaming yourself for a mismatch that was never yours to carry.