Martock Pride and the Launch of Insight2Excellence
June 21st, 2025, will see the South Somerset village of Martock hold its first Pride. This is the day, and the event, that I have chosen to launch Insight2Excellence—an organisation that seeks to support individuals, leaders, teams, and organisations reach their full potential through expert coaching, consultation, and training.
The obvious question arising from this is: why launch Insight2Excellence at Martock Pride? And why launch at an event in a small village? Is this really the way to promote a new organisation?
The answers to these questions reveal our values and demonstrate why Insight2Excellence exists.
Our tagline is People | Purpose | Passion. Let’s look at that.
We are all beautifully unique. We have unique gifts, attributes, experiences, skills, knowledge, and ideas that we bring to the world. We also have our own story—a story unlike that of anyone else. We leave our own unique footprint, our unique impression on the world, and this is true no matter what labels may have been attributed to us by others over the years. Labels limit, but our human potential has no glass ceiling.
Human beings are wonderfully and beautifully unique! Organisations and services may try to pigeonhole us, but the truth is, no one can be put in a box. None of us need to conform to labels. Every human being is bigger—much bigger—than any label given to them.
I am an older man. I’ve lived a while. I’ve made mistakes, and I have had many successes. Over the years, I’ve been given many and varied labels. “Gay” is one of them, “disabled” is another. But there have been others—for example “weird,” “different,” “campaigner,” “troublemaker,” and so on.
We label because we are too lazy to look deeply at who is before us. We see the labels and not the human being. We don’t ask the right questions. We don’t listen effectively. We don’t see the strengths the person has—we only see the things that possibly challenge us. When we do this, we fail to understand. And when we fail to understand, we cannot move in compassion. We build walls, not bridges.
The very challenge that makes us uncomfortable is the key to our transformation and growth. If we could sit with that—allow that challenge to be our teacher for a while—we will change, as will everything we do.
People is the first word of our tagline because I believe in people. All people. LGBTQIA+ people, disabled people, neurodiverse people, minority ethnic people—whatever label society has given you, I choose to see the human being, and I choose to see strengths, potential, and gifts.
It is your uniqueness that makes this world a brighter and happier place to live.
Connecting people with their purpose is central to why Insight2Excellence exists.
What is it that really matters to you? What is your deepest intention? What change do you wish to see in yourself, in your wider community, in the world? What’s stopping you?
People come alive when they truly connect with their purpose energy. In many coaching sessions, I’ve had the joy of witnessing people become energised and animated as they talk of the things closest to their heart—and begin to see a pathway toward realising that.
Very often, it’s the very barriers we experience that we think prohibit and restrict us that become our inspiration for change. That dynamic, exciting, pioneering, revolutionary, change-making spirit is alive in you—simply because you are a unique human being.
Embracing who you really are is part of connecting with your purpose energy—because authenticity is key to unlocking your potential. The world needs to see the real you. It’s your very difference that’s the missing part of the jigsaw.
As a friend said to me recently:
“You are a very special kind of human being. I’ve lived with neurodivergence for 70 years and am only now learning to accept my differences and special abilities. Shine on, you crazy diamond.”
Yet the truth is, we are all very special human beings. We just need to embrace our true selves through growing self-awareness. That allows us to drop our masking and step into authenticity.
“Why is equality so important to you?” a manager once asked me. I could see she was asking from a place of non-understanding. She simply didn’t get it. And looking back, maybe I didn’t fully understand it myself either.
I was a Service Manager, living with undiagnosed ADHD. I knew that social justice was important to me. It mattered because I couldn’t stand idly by whilst others—perceived as “different”—were afforded fewer opportunities, were being “othered”, treated unfairly, or denied their basic human rights.
My passion has always been that diversity should not only be welcomed, but celebrated.
One of my earliest working memories comes from my foray into the world of horticulture upon leaving school. My boss had purchased all-weather clothing for the staff. We had a group of people working on the nursery who were on the Youth Training Scheme (YTS—that really ages me!), and as I walked by, in my waterproof gear, I saw this group working outside, in the pouring rain, with no coats at all.
I was all of 16 years old, and I walked into my boss’s office and asked why the YTS cohort didn’t have waterproof clothing. He mumbled something about cost, and I said: “People on the YTS scheme get wet too, you know!” The next day, they all had waterproof clothing.
I see now that my passion for social justice isn’t only informed by my own experiences of injustice (and there have been many), or even just from what I’ve seen in society, but from my Justice Sensitivity—something that comes as part of my ADHD.
Researchers have discovered that people with ADHD Justice Sensitivity have such strong emotional, cognitive, and behavioural responses to injustice that they will do all in their power to restore justice, even if they hurt themselves as a result.
I look back on my career—and I look forward to working with Insight2Excellence—and I am proud of how my difference has, is, and will continue to make life easier for others.
So this is why I am launching Insight2Excellence at Martock Pride.
It’s because I’m all about connecting people with their purpose, and seeing them energised and passionate about the individual and wider change they wish to make.
It’s because I sit alongside the other so-called “freaks” and “misfits” with pride, with confidence, and with love—because I know we are unstoppable. And because I want to support others to continue being the changemakers.
It’s because this is my tribe.
But I don’t sit apart, segregated, or on the periphery. I take my place in the very heart of my community, and my aim—through Insight2Excellence—is to empower and enable others to do the same.
