Get to Know Sir Phil o’Sophy

Meet The Happy Hustle Co’s self-appointed concierge and resident ponderer .. with a fondness for questions, possibilities and looking at things from a different angle.

Every good place needs a resident ponderer - someone who delves deeper into ideas and thoughts.

A person who notices the things that are easy to pass by, and who asks the question that makes you look at an idea from a slightly different angle.

And ultimately, someone who is perfectly happy to sit with a thought for a while rather than rushing to turn it into a five-step formula.

At The Happy Hustle Co, that someone is Sir Phil o’Sophy.

So .. Who Exactly Is Sir Phil o’Sophy?

Sir Phil actually came into existence in a normal Happy Hustle Co kinda way .. from playing around with the word philosophy itself.

If you say it slowly enough (go on, I dare you) phil-os-ophy begins to sound suspiciously like Phil o’Sophy. And then I added a little imagination because it sounded like someone real, so I gave Phil the title I clearly felt he deserved, and Sir Phil o’Sophy emerged.

And once he had a name, he naturally needed a job.

Philosophy, after all, is about questioning, thinking, wondering and looking at ideas from different perspectives .. which made Sir Phil a perfect fit for The Freedom Edit.

He quickly became its self-appointed concierge .. rather like Rodin's The Thinker .. appearing whenever there is a thought worth mulling over, an idea worth turning around or something that might deserve a second look.

He is particularly fond of those moments when an ordinary thought suddenly becomes much more interesting.

The kind of moment when you find yourself wondering whether there might be another way of looking at something, or who decided that was the rule anyway.

These are very much Sir Phil's territory.

He isn’t here to hand down instructions from a pedestal.

He would much rather pull up a chair.

Preferably somewhere with a decent view.

He Likes A Good Question

There is a lot to be said for having answers.

But there is also something wonderful about asking a really good question.

A good question can open a door, introduce one idea to another, or take something you have known for years and suddenly allow you to see it with fresh eyes.

And sometimes it can lead you down a completely unexpected route or rabbit hole [post link].

Sir Phil is particularly partial to those.

One thought can spark another, which can spark another, and before you know it, what began as a passing curiosity has become an idea worth paying more attention to.

That is one of the reasons Sir Phil has taken up residence here as part of The Happy Hustle Co, as it is full of ideas that begin exactly that way.

Experience Gives You Quite A Lot To Think On

By the time you have spent a few decades living, working, creating, learning, changing direction, meeting people, solving problems and discovering what you enjoy, you have accumulated an extraordinary amount of knowledge.

Some of it might have come from work, hobbies or businesses. Some from things you taught yourself simply because you were curious, and plenty from the hundreds of little things you have worked out along the way.

And because much of it has become completely normal to you, it can be surprisingly easy to forget just how much value is there.

Sir Phil finds this especially interesting - because what feels ordinary to you may be fascinating, useful or valuable to someone else.

The "thing" you can do with your eyes shut today may once have taken you years to learn.

The question you can answer in five minutes may be the exact question somebody else has been trying to work out for weeks.

And when you look back across all those different experiences, you may begin to notice possibilities that only really become visible when you look at them together.

There is plenty there for Sir Phil to get his philosophical teeth into.

He Is Fond Of The Scenic Route

Sir Phil isn’t especially interested in straight lines.

There is nothing wrong with them, of course.

They simply aren’t the only way to get somewhere.

Careers wander. Interests become businesses. Hobbies create knowledge. One opportunity introduces you to another. A random curiosity can eventually become the beginning of an idea.

Things that once seemed entirely unrelated can suddenly fit together rather beautifully.

That is the sort of thing Sir Phil notices.

He is interested not only in where you have arrived, but in everything you gathered on the way there.

And as we shall discover elsewhere in The Freedom Edit, the scenic route has rather a lot going for it [post link].

You Will Probably Find Him Asking “What If?”

“What if?” is probably one of Sir Phil’s favourite questions.

What if something you already know could become a digital product? What if the experience you have collected over the years contains ideas you simply haven’t looked at in that way before? What if your expertise lives in more places than your job title?

Perhaps taking the scenic route has given you more possibilities than you first realised.

Perhaps you might even make a rule for yourself .. and then decide to break it.

You can now see why we needed a philosopher around here.

There is a shed load to think about.

Sir Phil Will Pop Up From Time To Time.

You won’t find him in every article.

But whenever there is a thought worth spending a little more time on, a familiar idea worth turning around or a question that deserves more than a quick answer, you may find Sir Phil lingering somewhere nearby.

He might show up when we are talking about experience, expertise, digital products, passive income or why the route you took to get here might prove considerably more useful than you realised.

And occasionally he may simply appear because a particular thought has caught his attention.

Which is, after all, what philosophers do.

You might already have come across Sir Phil o’Sophy.

If not, consider this your introduction.

He has a habit of noticing things and looking at them in ways you might not have considered before.