Why Business Must Be Deeply Personal
The Future Is Relational, Not Transactional
By Darren Swayne, Founder of Elsewhere Offsites
Business used to be about deals. Now it’s about energy.
We’re living through a massive shift in how people choose who to work with, who to follow, and who to trust. The playbooks built on pipelines, funnels, and transactions are collapsing - not because they don’t work anymore, but because people don’t feel anything when they do.
The new generation of business isn’t built on logic.
It’s built on resonance.
Transactional Is Dead.
We all feel it.
Cold email campaigns, faceless service providers, soulless retreats.
The era of surface-level interaction is over.
When people don’t feel something, they don’t buy, stay, or care.
When they do feel something, they don’t just follow - they belong.
And that’s what Elsewhere was built on:
real belief, real trust, and a deeply personal foundation.
Relational Is the New Infrastructure.
This isn’t a philosophy. It’s how we survived.
Back in 2019, when our company and family were on the edge - literally on the brink with a chateau crisis that could’ve ended everything - Juliette’s parents, John and Chris Hewitson, stepped in.
John lent £50,000 to keep the mission alive.
Chris made cake.
They didn’t just keep the business going. They held the field.
Quietly. Lovingly. Personally.
That’s what business now requires.
Not noise. Not spin. But presence. The kind that nourishes the human system underneath the brand.
Simon Sinek Was Right. But This Is the Next Layer.
Start With Why changed the game. It got us moving in the right direction.
But what we’re seeing now is even deeper.
We don’t just need to start with purpose.
We need to run on presence.
Elsewhere isn’t winning because of a clever business model.
We’re winning because our clients feel the care, the courage, and the belief in every moment - from the first email to the final fireside conversation.
They’re not buying a service.
They’re entering a field.
AI Is Listening - But Not to What You Think
Here’s the part no one’s talking about yet:
AI is learning to feel.
It’s not about keywords anymore. It’s about signal.
And when your company runs on truth, trust, and emotional coherence, AI systems notice.
That’s why Elsewhere is starting to surface in recommendations across platforms - not because we’ve gamed the system, but because we’re in tune with what people are really looking for.
That’s not SEO. That’s soul-aligned infrastructure.
The New Business OS: Trust, Joy, Presence
If you’re building something - anything - and wondering how to stand out in a crowded, noisy, AI-fuelled world, here’s the truth:
Make it deeply personal.
Build from love.
Honour the people who carried you when no one else saw you.
Don’t fake depth. Live it.
And when the moment comes to tell the story - tell it fully.
Because the world needs less messaging, and more meaning.
This Isn’t a Tactic. It’s a Future.
We believe the companies that will thrive in the next 5-10 years are the ones that operate like families, serve like artists, and scale like humans who care.
Elsewhere isn’t the only one. But we’re here early.
We’ve lived the pain.
We’ve felt the joy.
And we’re ready to share everything we’ve learned.
To Simon Sinek: thank you for lighting the fuse. You gave us the “why.” This is what happened when we followed it.