I’m a business artisan. I didn’t read about this way in a book, but I created it unknowingly, and lived it, with my very first business: Utterly Horses.

For the first time in my working life, I took two whole weeks off.
No Zoom calls. No client deadlines. No squeezing in emails while my daughter wasn’t looking.

Fiction has a quiet magic. It doesn’t just entertain but it helps us feel, reflect, and reimagine who we are. This summer, alongside the dreaming and doing of The Quiet Reset, I’m turning to stories that celebrate the quiet heroes.

Dreams are like shadows. Everyone has at least dream tucked inside their heart, one that often stays there for years waiting to breathe life in the outside world.

For me, summer is the perfect time to reset, to step back, reflect, and realign with what really matters. That’s the heart of The Quiet Reset, and it’s also the spirit behind this reading list.

I used to be obsessed with business advice. At 16 I was reading business books at bedtime, pages written during the dotcom bubble, laced with hustle, scale, and "think big" energy.

That first bite says it all — salty, smooth, creamy butter, piled high on a thick slice of crusty bread or melting into a freshly baked croissant.

You never realise how creativity fuels everything you do until you feel utterly disconnected from what you do.

A fluffy flatbread, filled with crispy bacon, smooth cream cheese, coriander, and a spoonful of sweet, spicy chilli jam. Bacon sandwiches are already a thing of beauty, but this recipe takes the classic bacon sarnie to the next level.

When I made one of the biggest decisions of my life, there was no grand announcement or dramatic Instagram post. It was just the quiet click of “send” on an email and the whoosh that followed.

Summer especially lends itself to this kind of eating. When the heat makes full-on cooking feel like a bit much, having a few flavour-packed bites to graze on is ideal.

The antidote to the rushing, the forcing, the spreadsheets and targets and to-do lists that grow magically overnight like mushrooms.

It’s zingy, fizzy, and wonderfully easy. The kind of drink that makes everything feel just a little bit more like summer.

There’s a story we’ve all been told, in that your work and your life are two separate things. It’s totally wrong…

A raw reflection on pushing too hard, people-pleasing, and what I changed after the crash.