Suresh Dinakaran's Blog

 

This is not meant to sound like ‘ What they didn’t teach you at Harvard Business School “.  Though, worth understanding.

 

When Neil Armstrong planted that flag on the moon in 1969, the world saw one giant leap. What they didn’t see? The 382,000 people who had already failed on paper. NASA didn’t just plan the moon landing. They planned the planning. Then they planned what to plan before planning the planning.

 

Confused? Good. Let’s travel this journey together.

 

So, here’s the formula which is…not a formula. No seven steps to..no reframing..no pyramids..lets respect each others’ intelligence. Thats the least we can do.

 

Because the plan before the plan before the plan isn’t a system—it’s a shift in temporal architecture. It’s learning to see your current actions not as endpoints but as setup sequences. It’s understanding that what you’re doing today isn’t the plot—it’s setting up the character development for a scene that won’t happen until 2027.

 

Throwback time here:-

 

Starbucks’ real innovation wasn’t coffee. It was convincing landlords in the 1990s to give them corner locations with window space, even when they had no track record. The plan before the plan was real estate strategy disguised as a coffee business.

 

WhatsApp’s genius wasn’t the app. Before they wrote a single line of code, Jan Koum and Brian Acton spent years at Yahoo watching what NOT to do with messaging. Their plan before the plan was professional failure that became market intelligence.

 

Spotify didn’t plan to compete with iTunes. Their plan before the plan was securing music licensing deals nobody thought possible by framing themselves as piracy-killers to the music industry, not iTunes-killers. They changed the opponent before the game began.

 

The legendary Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi once arrived at his most famous duel… without his sword.

 

His opponent, Sasaki Kojiro, was already there, blade gleaming, confidence radiating. Musashi showed up late. Casually whittled a wooden sword from an oar on the boat ride over. And won.

 

But here’s what the history books misses the wood for the trees(or oar?): Musashi’s plan wasn’t “fight with wooden sword.” His plan before the plan was “arrive late enough to agitate Kojiro.” The plan before THAT plan was choosing the island location where he’d have access to an oar. The plan before THAT was building a reputation unpredictable enough that showing up swordless would destabilize rather than disqualify him.

 

Most people prepare for battle. Legends prepare the battlefield.

 

In the Kerala backwaters, there’s a 73-year-old boatman named Krishnan who has never, not once in forty years, had an empty boat. Zero marketing. No website. Not even a painted sign.

 

His secret?

 

Twenty years ago, he started learning the names of children in tourist families. Not the parents—the children. He’d remember them year after year. “Is Sophia still playing violin?” “Did Rahul get into that engineering college?”

 

His plan before the plan before the plan wasn’t customer service. It was manufactured nostalgia. He was planting memory trees whose shade he’d enjoy decades later.

 

Now parents plan their Kerala trips around Krishnan’s availability because their kids—now adults—insist on it.

 

Most of us end up seeing the outcomes. That said, it is worth probing into the invisible architecture of everything.

 

You see a bakery. Fresh croissants. The aroma of butter and possibility. You think the plan was: make delicious bread, sell delicious bread.

 

Wrong.

 

The REAL plan—the one nobody sees—started three years earlier when the baker stood in a Paris alley at 4 AM, not learning to bake, but learning which flour supplier delivered before dawn. The plan before the plan before the plan was discovering that the city’s water pH affected yeast behavior. It was befriending the landlord’s mother so he’d hold the property for six extra weeks while permits came through.

 

This is what I call Pre-Strategic Positioning—the invisible scaffolding that makes “overnight success” possible after a decade of darkness.

 

Some people plan their work. Some work their plan. And then there are those who plan the plan before the plan before the plan — the rare breed who see the invisible scaffolding that holds strategy, serendipity, and soul together.

 

The first plan is what you scribble on a napkin. The second is what you polish for the PowerPoint. The third — the one before both — lives in your instinct, your madness, your hunger to make a dent before the world even knows a dent is needed.

 

Some food for torque here if you may:

 

When Steve Jobs was meditating in India, barefoot and unbothered, that was the plan before the plan before the plan. The ashram before the Apple Store. The real estate of the mind entrenched well before retail real estate.

 

Before the Wright brothers built their flying machine, they spent years watching birds over sand dunes. That was the pre-flight manual before the flight manual.

 

Closer home, before Ratan Tata dreamt of the Nano, there was a soaked-in-a-rainy-street moment — him watching a family of four balance precariously on a scooter. That was the human empathy before the corporate blueprint.

 

Your timeline is not your lifeline. If your plan begins in Excel, it’s probably already dead.

 

If it begins in emotion, curiosity, or chaos — you’re in business.

 

The Plan before the Plan before the Plan is the space between intent and invention. The boardroom that exists only in the mind. The audacity to say, “Let’s first feel before we figure.”

 

So before you do your next quarterly forecast, your next rebrand, your next pitch, ask yourself:

What are you not yet seeing that’s quietly forming? What’s the story before the story?

 

That’s your real starting line. Everything after that — the slides, the slogans, the success — is just the sequel.

 

The biggest myth in boardrooms and bedrooms alike? That success begins with the plan. Wrong. Success begins three floors below, in the subterranean basement of thought—the plan before the plan before the plan. That invisible architecture no one ever applauds but everyone benefits from. The scaffolding beneath the blueprint. The warm-up before the overture. The rehearsal before the rehearsal.

 

Da Vinci’s notebooks weren’t sketches for paintings alone. They were pre-sketches of sketches—miniature rehearsals of imagination. That’s why the Mona Lisa doesn’t just smile, she smirks—because behind her lies not a plan, but the plan before the plan before the plan.

 

Most strategy decks are choreographed to death. Logos, numbers, charts. But the companies that stand apart invest not in plans, but in the pre-plans. Apple’s “Think Different” wasn’t just advertising—it was pre-thinking. The ideation before innovation before execution.

 

Contrast that with Kodak. Their plan was solid: keep selling film. Their plan before that? Fuzzy. Their plan before that before that? Nonexistent. And so, they got trapped in their own Polaroid frame.

 

That Michelin star dish? The chef doesn’t begin at the stove. She begins at the market. Correction: she begins at the farm. That TED talk you admired? The rehearsals didn’t begin at the mirror. They began at the “What am I really trying to say?” question. That viral reel? It wasn’t about trending sounds. It was about micro-observations the creator made months earlier, parked quietly in their Notes app.

 

So what would the takeaways be here:-

 

Plans are public. Pre-plans are private. The unseen layers make the seen sparkle. Reverse engineer backwards. Don’t just ask “what’s the plan?” Ask, “what’s the plan before I even knew I needed a plan? Slow is strategic. Think of the un-hurried intention as the ultimate productivity hack. Greatness is fractal. Like Russian dolls, inside every plan lies a smaller one, quieter, truer.

 

The best strategies don’t begin with slides. They begin with silence. Execution is celebrated. Pre-execution is underrated. But that’s where the real game lives. So, forget Plan A, B, C. Ask instead: What was the prelude?

 

Because, clarity isn’t about being right. It’s about being understood.

 

Call it COK(Curse Of Knowledge). We forget what it’s like to not know. The more we know, the more disconnected we become from those who don’t. It’s not arrogance, it’s amnesia. We have all experienced it( as well have been on the giving end of it as well). Imagine the artist describing “negative space” while the buyer merely wonders why she painted only half the cat. Or the engineer explaining compression ratios to a customer who just wants his car not to sound like a pressure cooker. Or the startup founder who sprinkles “synergy, scalability, value proposition” into every sentence as if pitching to aliens fluent in PowerPoint.

 

We mistake articulation for understanding, and conviction for clarity. Clarity is not an IQ test—it’s empathy at work.

 

Here’s a story. In a small town near Coimbatore, a furniture merchant launched a collection called “Neo-Deco Timber Textures.” No one bought it—too fancy, too ambiguous. His competitor across the street just wrote on his hoarding: “Wood so good, your mother-in-law might compliment you.” Guess who sold out by Diwali?

 

Clarity lives where emotion meets simplicity. It doesn’t need perfect grammar or MBA vocabulary—it needs felt understanding.

 

The context in our heads often weighs more than the words on our slides. Maybe it’s time marketers, leaders, and communicators ask the golden question before hitting “send” or “publish”: “Can this be understood by my 10-year-old niece and my 70-year-old uncle—without a glossary?”

 

In workshops, we have seen brilliant strategists crafting pages of positioning statements colder than AI-processed legal contracts. But clarity doesn’t emerge from precision alone—it comes from perspective, context, and connection.

 

We assume others have access to the backstage of our thinking. They don’t.
We’re performing monologues and wondering why the audience won’t clap.

 

If they didn’t get it, you didn’t clarify—it’s still jargon in costume. Because, clarity is not conquest. It’s connection. Understanding is the new intelligence. So, don’t be right. Be read. Make sense. Not noise.

 

In the 1990s, a Stanford psychologist named Elizabeth Newton ran a brilliantly simple experiment. She divided people into “tappers” and “listeners.” Tappers were asked to tap out the rhythm of well-known songs like “Happy Birthday” on a table. Listeners had to guess the song.

 

Before starting, tappers predicted that listeners would guess correctly about 50% of the time.

 

The actual success rate? 2.5%.

 

Here’s why this is devastating: When you’re tapping, you hear the full song in your head—the melody, the harmony, the works. When you’re listening, you hear someone banging randomly on a table like a possessed woodpecker.

 

The tappers couldn’t un-hear the music in their heads. They couldn’t remember what it was like not to know.

 

This is the curse of knowledge (COK, and yes, the acronym is unfortunate). Once you know something, you can’t unknow it. You can’t remember what it felt like to be confused. You can’t access your own ignorance. And it’s killing your communication.

 

This is the curse that makes experts terrible teachers. The smarter you get, the worse you become at explaining things.

 

Why? Because you’ve automated so much knowledge that you’ve lost access to the steps.

 

Watch a master chef and they’ll say things like “cook until it looks right” or “add spices to taste.” Completely useless if you’re learning. They’ve internalized ten thousand micro-decisions that they no longer consciously make.

 

Or take our obsession with “common sense.” How many times have you heard “it’s just common sense” used to explain something?

 

Common sense is the most uncommon thing in the world. What’s “obvious” to you took years to become obvious. You just don’t remember the journey.

 

A Bangalore design studio I know has a brilliant rule: Every brief must be explainable to someone’s driver. Not because drivers aren’t smart—because they don’t share your context. If you can’t explain your strategy without using insider language, you don’t understand it well enough.

 

Strip away the COK, and what remains is truth.

 

This will sound hugely contradictory but the fact is that being right can make you wrong.

 

Here’s the tragic irony: You can be 100% correct and 100% ineffective at the same time.

 

An oncologist in Delhi sometime back talked about informing patients they have cancer. Early in his career, he’d dive straight into prognosis, treatment protocols, survival statistics. He was being completely accurate. Completely thorough.

 

Completely useless.

 

Because the patient heard “cancer” and their brain shut down. Everything after that was white noise.

 

Now? He starts differently. He sits. He makes eye contact. He says: “We found something. I’m going to explain what it is, what we’re going to do about it, and why I’m confident we can handle this together.”

 

Same information. Different sequence. Different framing. Infinitely different outcome.

 

Being right is easy. Being understood requires empathy. Clarity is meeting people where they are, not where you wish they were.

 

The most powerful communicators don’t tell you everything they know. They tell you what you need to know, when you need to know it.

 

Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint at Amazon. Instead: six-page memos, written in complete sentences, read silently at the start of meetings. Why? Because bullet points hide fuzzy thinking. Sentences expose it. If you can’t write it clearly, you haven’t thought it clearly.

 

Clarity isn’t about information volume. It’s about information architecture. Less is more. And it is a radical act.

 

Though this is not a state kept secret, not very many tell you this; that clarity is not about them. It is about you. Every time you clarify your thinking for someone else, you clarify it for yourself. The act of explaining reveals the gaps in your own understanding. The questions you can’t answer simply are the questions you don’t actually understand.

 

So that startup founder in Boston? The one who took 40 minutes to say “Amazon for Latin speakers”?

 

The investors didn’t need the explanation. He did.

 

Clarity isn’t charity. It’s construction. You’re not dumbing down. You’re building up—their understanding and your own.

 

The curse of knowledge isn’t knowing too much. It’s forgetting what it’s like not to know. The cure isn’t knowing less. It’s remembering more—about the person in front of you, the context they’re missing, the movie you’re playing that only exists in your head.

 

Lead with the “Why,” Not the “What”: People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. Start with the problem you’re solving for them, the itch you’re scratching. The features (the “what”) are just proof. Context first, content second.

 

Strip away the curse. What remains is connection. And connection? That’s the whole point.

 

The pursuit of being right is a lonely, exhausting game of intellectual one-upmanship. It’s you, shouting into a mirror.

The pursuit of being understood is a generous, impactful act of leadership. It’s you, holding out a hand.

So, the next time you have a brilliant idea, don’t ask, “Is this factually impeccable?” Ask the far more provocative, far more powerful question:

“Is this impossible to misunderstand?”

Drop the mic. Build the bridge. Because, your genius is useless if it’s locked in the vault of your own mind.

 

Steve Jobs once said, “Simple can be harder than complex.” Apple’s marketing isn’t about specs — it’s about the feeling. The story. The clarity of why. That’s why millions queue up for a rectangle with a bitten apple on it. Thats Apple’s genius.

 

A brand that sells furniture with no words in its manuals — yet everyone gets it. That’s the ultimate clarity: understanding beyond language. What can we learn from the IKEA Manuals? 

 

In leadership. In branding. In life. Being Understood Beats Being Right.

 

It’s not about proving you’re the smartest in the room — it’s about being the clearest.

 

The greatest communicators aren’t those who “win” arguments.
They’re the ones who help others see what they see.

 

Clarity is generosity — it’s the gift of making others feel smart.

 

That’s why great brands don’t lecture. They translate.

 

That’s why great leaders don’t declare. They connect.

 

Albert Einstein put it best: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

 

[Caveat Emptor: A long, long post(Pl feel free to say ‘ so long ‘ and move on). And, there is nothing officially or unofficially religious about this].

 

And this Emperor has no marketing budget, mind you.

 

It was when darkness met its match. In the sacred month of Karthik. When Lord Rama returned to Ayodhya after fourteen years—not just as a prince, but as a promise kept—the people didn’t just light lamps. They lit hope itself.

 

Imagine: an entire kingdom holding its breath for 5,110 sunsets, and then finally…finally… exploding into light.

 

That’s what Diwali is. A collective exhale of joy so powerful, it’s been echoing for millennia.

 

But what really intrigues me – It wasn’t just about Rama’s homecoming. It was Sita’s resilience. Hanuman’s devotion. Lakshman’s loyalty. It was about ordinary citizens lighting diyas with trembling hands and extraordinary faith, creating a runway of light for their beloved king. A take off of optimism landing on the tarmac of faith.

 

They didn’t have much. But they had each other. And earthen lamps. And a belief that good must—must—come home.

 

Fast forward to today, and we’re still doing it. Still lighting those same clay lamps. Still believing in the same stubborn, irrational, beautiful idea that light will win.

 

Because let’s be honest—the last few years have tested us. The world’s been heavy. The news has been relentless. There have been days when hope felt like a luxury we couldn’t afford.

 

And yet.

 

And yet here we are, buying sweets we will regret eating, wearing clothes that’ll be too tight by dessert, hugging relatives we only see once a year, and lighting diyas that’ll blow out in the wind—only to light them again. And again.

 

That’s the real miracle of Diwali, isn’t it?

 

Not that darkness ends, but that we refuse to let it win. Not that life is perfect, but that we celebrate it anyway. Not that we’re always together, but that when we are—oh, when we are—it feels like the whole universe is conspiring to make us happy.

 

The curiosity that started this investigation. It’s October 2025. Every brand in India (and increasingly a lot of them around the world) is scrambling to create their “Diwali campaign.” Millions are being spent on celebrity endorsements, elaborate productions, emotional storytelling, and social media blitzes.

 

Meanwhile, Diwali itself—the actual festival—is doing what it’s done for 5,000+ years.

 

No CMO. No agency retainer. No quarterly brand health tracking.

 

Just… winning. Every. Single. Year.

 

Which begs the question I couldn’t ignore:

 

What does Diwali know about branding that the rest of us have forgotten?

 

First things first. What even is a Festival Brand? I am taking the liberty of defining it as something that operates at the intersection of Cultural mythology (the story we tell), Ritual behavior(the actions we repeat), Emotional payoff (the feelings we seek), Social currency (the belonging we crave), Economic activity (the commerce we enable).

 

By this definition, every festival is attempting to be a brand? Christmas. Eid. Holi. Thanksgiving. Passover. Baisakhi.

 

Here’s the question we want to put out there: Most festivals are regional champions. Is Diwali the global emperor?

 

Let me try to rationalise this line of thought( and pl feel free to disagree, debate, diverge):-

a)

-Let’s examine the competitive landscape :

 

Christmas dominates the West but struggles with religious exclusivity. Its origin story (the birth of Christ) is locked into Christian theology.

 

Eid is profound and beautiful but primarily celebrated within Islamic communities. Its brand equity is deep but narrow.

 

Chinese New Year travels well but remains ethnically anchored. You can celebrate it, but you’re always celebrating someone else’s new year.

 

Thanksgiving can’t escape being American (or Canadian). Try exporting that turkey dinner to Tanzania.

 

Now observe Diwali:

 

A Hindu festival, yes. But also a Sikh celebration (Bandi Chhor Divas). Also a Jain observance (Mahavira’s nirvana). Also a Buddhist recognition in some traditions. Also increasingly, a secular celebration of “good over evil” that resonates universally.

 

The enquiry deepens: How did one festival become the mother ship for multiple origin stories without losing coherence?

 

Answer: The brand idea is bigger than any single narrative.

 

Light over darkness. Knowledge over ignorance. Good over evil. Hope over despair.

 

These aren’t Hindu ideas. These aren’t Indian ideas. These are human ideas wrapped in an Indian aesthetic.

 

That’s not cultural appropriation. That’s cultural generosity. And it’s genius branding.

 

In summary, the Emperor just doesn’t cross borders, but erases them.

b)

Here’s something peculiar you would have noticed:

 

Diwali is simultaneously elite and accessible.

 

The Ambani family lights their skyscraper. The street vendor lights his cart. Both are “doing Diwali” correctly. Neither is more authentic than the other.

 

Compare this to most luxury brands (aspirational but exclusive) or mass brands (accessible but pedestrian). Diwali manages to be both aspirational AND inclusive.

 

How?

The core ritual is laughably simple: light a lamp. That’s it. A clay diya costs ₹5(or even lesser). Anyone can participate.

 

But the expression of that ritual? Infinitely scalable.

 

• Gold diyas on Italian marble
• Diamond-encrusted rangolis
• Designer ethnic wear
• Premium gift hampers
• Luxury travel for homecoming

 

The poor participate fully. The rich can elevate endlessly. Same brand, infinite price points.

 

Query: What other brand has achieved this democratic luxury at scale?

 

We’re still looking.

 

In summary, the Emperor mastered the art of democratic luxury.

c)

 

Here’s where it gets even more interesting.

 

Most festivals have fixed rituals. Christmas: tree, carols, Santa, gifts. Deviate, and it feels wrong.

 

Diwali? Diwali is a brand that says “yes, and…”

 

In Bengal: Yes, light the diyas, AND worship Kali. In Punjab: Yes, celebrate Rama’s return, AND honor Guru Hargobind’s release. In West| South India: Yes, Lakshmi Puja, AND also it’s the day Krishna defeated Narakasura. In Jainism: Yes, the lights, AND it’s Mahavira’s moksha. In modern secular India: Yes, the mythology, AND also it’s family time, shopping season, bonus season, new beginning season.

 

It’s not brand dilution. It’s brand expansion.

 

The question we’re sitting with: Is this what true brand strength looks like—not rigidity, but the confidence to let others add to your story?

 

In summary, the Emperor doesn’t compete, it absorbs.

d)

 

Watch a five-year-old light a diya. Now watch an eighty-year-old do the same.

 

Both feel the same wonder. Both are participating in the same ritual. Both believe they’re doing something important.

 

When was the last time you saw a brand that equally captivated a toddler and their great-grandmother?

 

Disney comes close. Apple tries. But they’re generationally segregated—kids get different products than adults.

 

Diwali gives everyone the same diya and says: “This is for you. Exactly as you are.”

 

The child thinks it’s magic. The teenager thinks it’s tradition. The adult thinks it’s nostalgia. The elder thinks it’s legacy.

 

Same product. Four different value propositions. Zero market segmentation.

 

Enquiry: What if the best branding isn’t about targeting demographics but about creating meaning flexible enough to meet people where they are?

 

In summary, the Emperor has cracked inter-generational marketing.

e)

Here’s the distribution strategy that should make every marketer weep with envy:

 

Diwali doesn’t distribute itself. We distribute it.

 

Every household becomes:

• A manufacturing unit (making sweets, snacks, rangoli)
• A retail store (gifting to others)
• A marketing channel (inviting people over)
• A brand ambassador (teaching children the rituals)
• A content creator (social media posts of celebrations)

 

The festival doesn’t push itself into our lives. We pull it in. We insist on it.

 

Imagine if Coca-Cola didn’t need factories because every family made Coke in their kitchen and gave it to neighbors. And felt proud doing it. And would be devastated if they couldn’t.

 

That’s not a supply chain. That’s a movement.

 

Question: At what point does a brand stop being consumed and start being embodied?

 

In summary, the Emperor’s Supply Chain Is Its Audience.

f)

5,000 years.

 

Five. Thousand. Years.

 

That’s roughly 50,000 Diwalis. 50,000 annual campaigns. Not one of them required a creative brief.

 

But here’s what you notice about longevity:

 

Diwali hasn’t survived by being rigid. It’s survived by having a fixed core with infinite flexibility.

 

The Core (Never Changes):

• Light over darkness
• Good over evil
• The act of lighting a lamp
• Coming together

 

The Flex (Always Changing):

• Clay diyas → electric lights → LED installations → eco-friendly options
• Physical gatherings → phone calls → video calls → WhatsApp forwards
• Handmade sweets → store-bought → gourmet → diet-conscious options
• Local celebrations → national → global diaspora events

 

The brand essence remains. The brand expression evolves.

 

Enquiry: What if brand consistency isn’t about doing the same thing forever, but about staying true to a core idea while allowing infinite interpretation?

 

In summary, the Emperor plays the long game( really long!).

g)

Notice what Diwali doesn’t do:

 

It doesn’t justify itself. It doesn’t explain why you should celebrate. It doesn’t have a mission statement or brand guidelines.

 

It just… invites.

 

“Light a lamp. Make some sweets. Invite people over. Be happy.”

 

There’s no hard sell. No FOMO marketing (though plenty of FOMO exists). No complicated value proposition.

 

The invitation is simple. The experience justifies the invitation.

 

Compare this to modern brands that spend millions explaining why you need them, convincing you of their purpose, proving their authenticity.

 

Diwali proves itself by being itself.

 

Question we’re wrestling with: What if the brands that explain the least are actually the most confident?

 

In summary, the Emperor doesn’t explain, it invites.

 

Now, how does the Emperor expand? Make geography, history!

India: Obviously. 1.4 billion subjects.

Nepal: Tihar festival, essentially Diwali across five days.

Sri Lanka: Deepavali, celebrated by Tamil communities.

Malaysia & Singapore: National holiday in some states. Major commercial event.

Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname: Wherever the Indian diaspora went, Diwali went. And flourished.

UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Netherlands,UAE, Mauritius : Now celebrated in major cities with public events, governmental recognition, even on the stock exchange (NYSE has observed Diwali, Burj Khalifa branding, Diwali in Dubai etc).

 

Notice the pattern: Diwali doesn’t conquer through force. It migrates through people. And then it converts others through experience.

 

You come to your Indian friend’s Diwali party. You light a diya. You taste some mithai. You feel the warmth.

 

Next year, you ask when Diwali is. Because you don’t want to miss it.

 

That’s not marketing. That’s magic. Brand advocacy hitherto never done or seen.

 

Observation: The best brand expansion doesn’t happen through advertising. It happens through advocates who say “come, experience this, you’ll understand.”

 

And, of course, the economics of it. Let’s be brutally commercial for a moment.

 

Diwali is potentially the world’s largest annual economic event tied to a single festival.

 

Consider:

• Retail: $30+ billion in India alone during the Diwali season
• Gold: 40% of annual gold sales happen around Diwali
• Real estate: Major buying season; developers launch specifically for Diwali
• Automobiles: Highest sales month
• Electronics: Rivals Black Friday
• Travel: Busiest travel period in India
• Hospitality: Hotels, restaurants, caterers fully booked
• Staffing: Bonus season, employment spike

 

And here’s the kicker: Diwali isn’t selling any of this. Diwali isn’t taking a cut. Diwali enables commerce without needing commerce to survive.

 

Query: What if the most powerful brand position is to be the occasion for other brands to matter, rather than competing with them?

 

You would have noticed something fascinating in action, in global pop culture:

 

Diwali is increasingly everywhere: Soft Power in action!

• Hollywood celebrities posting Diwali greetings
• Major TV shows (The Office, Mindy Project, Never Have I Ever) featuring Diwali episodes
• Global brands (Apple, Google, Facebook) creating Diwali campaigns
• Cities worldwide (NYC, London, Melbourne, Dubai) hosting Diwali festivals
• Politicians (UK Prime Ministers, US Presidents) issuing Diwali statements

 

This isn’t India pushing Diwali. This is global culture pulling it in.

 

Why? Because in a world that feels increasingly dark—politically, environmentally, socially—a festival that simply says “let’s light lamps and be together” feels less like a cultural export and more like a universal need.

 

Observation: The brands that win globally aren’t the ones that shout the loudest. They’re the ones that fill a void we didn’t know we had.

 

As we come close to this really loooong post, lets get to The Heart of the Enquiry: What Is Diwali Actually Selling?

 

Strip away the mythology, the rituals, the sweets, the fireworks, the gold jewelry, the new clothes, the family gatherings, the religious significance.

 

What’s left?

A promise. A very simple, very profound promise:

 

“Darkness is temporary. Light wins. You are not alone.”

 

That’s it. That’s the whole brand promise.

 

Everything else—every ritual, every tradition, every regional variation—is just a different way of keeping that promise.

 

And here’s why that makes Diwali potentially the emperor:

 

Because that promise never goes out of style. It never gets old. It never becomes irrelevant.

Economic recession? Light a diya; prosperity will come. Personal loss? Light a diya; hope remains. Global pandemic? Light a diya; we’re together in spirit. Climate anxiety? Light a diya; we’ll find solutions. Political division? Light a diya; humanity persists.

 

Observation: The brands that endure aren’t selling products or even experiences. They’re selling promises that resonate with permanent human needs.

Conclusion: What the Emperor Teaches Brand Builders

After this deep enquiry, here’s what we at State Of The Heart Branding(SOHB Story) believe Diwali demonstrates:

 

1. Start with Meaning, Not Marketing Diwali didn’t begin with a positioning statement. It began with a story so meaningful that marketing became unnecessary.

2. Make Your Brand Idea Bigger Than Your Brand Story Rama’s return is one story. Light over darkness is the idea. The idea can hold infinite stories.

3. Design for Participation, Not Consumption People don’t just celebrate Diwali. They make Diwali happen. That’s the difference between customers and co-creators.

4. Build Rituals, Not Just Touchpoints Touchpoints are moments. Rituals are commitments. One is transactional. The other is transformational.

5. Be Confidently Flexible Know your core so well that you can let everything else evolve. Rigidity kills brands. Flexibility sustains them.

6. Cross Boundaries, Don’t Protect Them The brands that hoard their identity eventually lose it. The brands that share it generously find it amplified.

7. Sell Hope, Not Products Products are what people buy. Hope is what they believe in. Sell belief, and product sales follow.

8. Play the Infinite Game Diwali isn’t trying to win this year. It’s trying to still matter in 5,000 more years. That changes everything.

The Final Question: Are We Asking Diwali to Teach Us, or Are We Afraid of What It Might Say?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth this enquiry revealed:

 

Diwali succeeds because it doesn’t think like a brand.

 

It doesn’t segment markets. It invites everyone. It doesn’t protect IP. It shares freely. It doesn’t maximize this quarter. It thinks in millennia. It doesn’t manufacture scarcity. It creates abundance. It doesn’t demand loyalty. It earns love.

 

And perhaps that’s the real lesson:

 

The moment we try to “brand” something the way Diwali is branded, we’ve already failed. Because Diwali isn’t branded. It’s believed.

 

Which leaves us with one final, humbling enquiry:

 

What if the emperor of festival brands is emperor precisely because it refuses to be a brand at all?

 

What if it’s something bigger? Something older? Something we’ve forgotten in our quarterly earnings calls and market share battles?

 

What if it’s just… true?

 

Studying Diwali has reminded us of something crucial:

The best brands don’t create meaning. They reveal it. They don’t manufacture feelings. They give voice to what we already feel. They don’t tell us what to want. They remind us what we’ve always wanted.

 

Light. Love. Home. Hope.

 

That’s the empire. That’s the emperor. That’s Diwali.

 

And maybe—just maybe—if we build brands with that kind of truth, that kind of heart, that kind of generosity…

 

Maybe we’ll create something that lasts.

Not 5,000 years. (Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)

But longer than a campaign. Deeper than a tagline. More meaningful than a market share.

Maybe we’ll create something that matters.

Happy Diwali To One and All.

 

We have all been through this. It’s an unfortunate but familiar refrain:

 

“Despite your outstanding offering, effort, and intelligence, your team has lost the pitch.”

 

Picture this along with me-  Beethoven pitching to the Royal Court today. Slides immaculate. Sonata re-engineered for brand storytelling.
After the third slide, a senior procurement head clears his throat and says, “Appreciate the passion, Mr. Beethoven. But our strategic direction this quarter is focused on… deliverables.”

 

Cue nodding heads, buzzwords like “alignment,” and minutes later, committee consensus:

— Outstanding effort.
— Brilliant articulation.
— But we’re going with the incumbent.

 

This—dear B2B marketer—is not failure. It’s sociology wearing a suit. The Symphony of Silence. 

 

Take a few steps back and go back a few years. 1961, Bay of Pigs. The CIA’s about to launch an invasion of Cuba that will go down in history as one of the most spectacular face-plants in military planning. In the room? Some of the smartest minds in American governance—Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, the Kennedy brain trust. Outside the room? A plan so obviously flawed that even a moderately caffeinated college sophomore could have poked holes in it.

 

What happened? Irving Janis would later coin the term “groupthink” to describe this beautiful disaster. But here’s what really happened: the group got drunk on its own consensus. Dissent? Uncomfortable. Questions? Disloyal. Alternative viewpoints? We don’t do that here.

 

Sound familiar? Because that’s exactly what happened to your pitch last Tuesday.

 

Not the invasion part. (Hopefully.) But the groupthink part. Absolutely.

 

Here’s what nobody tells you about B2B decisions: they’re not made. They’re negotiated, massaged, compromised, and Frankensteined by a group of people who:

 

1. Have different agendas
2. Report to different bosses
3. Have different KPIs
4. Are covering different asses
5. Remember different grudges from the 2019 holiday party

 

Your contact in procurement? She loved you. The CFO? Impressed by your ROI model. The IT guy? Finally, someone who speaks his language. The VP of Operations? Nodding enthusiastically throughout.

 

So why did you lose?

 

Because Linda(or Lalita) from Legal remembered that one time seven years ago when a vendor remotely similar to you (they also had a website) caused a minor contractual hiccup, and she’s been sitting in that committee room like a sleeper agent, waiting to deploy her veto power.

 

Nobody wants to be the person who approved “another disaster like 2020.”

 

It’s the B2B equivalent of a participation trophy for the intellectually elite. It’s not a rejection of your product. It’s a rejection of your ability to navigate the labyrinth of the collective corporate psyche.

 

Welcome to the world of GROUP.MIND.SET. This isn’t about logic. This is about the dark, beautiful, and utterly chaotic art of group dynamics.

 

In the Serengeti, during the great migration, thousands of wildebeest gather at river crossings. They need to cross. There’s food on the other side. They’re hungry. The river’s right there. But they wait. And wait. And wait.

 

Why? Because no wildebeest wants to be first. First means risk. First means crocodiles. First means being the one who got it wrong.

 

So they stand there, thousands of them, in a Mexican standoff with a river, until finally one brave (or stupid) wildebeest takes the plunge. Then—WHOOSH—everyone follows.

 

Your procurement committee? Wildebeest.

 

Nobody wants to be the first to champion your solution because if it goes south, their name’s on it. Better to wait and see what everyone else thinks. Better to build consensus. Better to form a sub-committee to evaluate the committee’s evaluation.

 

The Japanese call this nemawashi—the informal process of laying groundwork and building consensus before any formal decision. Honda spent THREE YEARS building consensus before deciding to enter Formula 1 racing. Three years. For racecars. By people who build racecars.

 

Now imagine you’re trying to sell them marketing automation software on a six-week sales cycle. Good luck.

 

Forget the org chart. It’s a lie. The real map of your B2B client’s decision-making process looks less like a flowchart and more like a Jackson Pollock painting—a beautiful mess of splattered egos, hidden agendas, and intersecting anxieties.

 

Think of it this way: You’re not selling to a company. You’re selling to a tribe. And every tribe has its shamans, its warriors, its gossips, and its sacred cows.

 

Consider the Emperor Penguin. In the dead of the Antarctic winter, they face an existential threat: -60°C temperatures and 100 mph winds. Their survival depends on the huddle. Thousands of birds, packed together, rotating from the frigid periphery to the warm center.

 

Now, imagine you’re a penguin with a brilliant idea: “Let’s move to that lovely, sunny iceberg half a mile away!” Your logic is impeccable. The iceberg is safer, warmer. But the group doesn’t care about your logic. It cares about the huddle. The move threatens the complex, unspoken social contract that keeps them all alive. The idea is vetoed. Not because it was bad, but because it disrupted the group’s fragile equilibrium.

 

Your B2B client is a penguin huddle. Your “brilliant iceberg” of a solution can be shot down not on its merits, but because it threatens the internal warmth, the established pecking order, or the silent rituals of the corporate huddle.

 

The GROUP.MIND.SET thrives in two environments: the suffocating rigidity of bureaucracy and the fog of ambiguity. Often, both at the same time.

 

Bureaucracy is the group’s immune system. It’s designed to reject foreign bodies (your new, disruptive idea). It creates committees, requires sign-offs from departments that didn’t know they had a say, and invokes “process” like a high priest chanting a dead language.

 

Ambiguity is its camouflage. No one is really sure who the final decision-maker is. The “champion” you cultivated is just a vocal advocate. The silent VP in the last meeting, who only asked one cryptic question, is the real kingmaker. The group avoids clarity because clarity assigns blame. Ambiguity provides collective deniability. “It was a group decision,” they’ll say. A decision made by a ghost.

 

The bureaucracy and ambiguity- the domicile where great ideas and good deals go to die.

 

What can B2B marketers learn from the Soviet Soyuz Space Program?

 

During the Cold War, Soviet engineers, paralyzed by the fear of failure and a labyrinthine bureaucracy, developed a brilliant, low-tech solution for their Soyuz spacecraft. They couldn’t get clear, timely decisions from the politburo on critical design choices. So, they started building modules with multiple docking ports. They created a spacecraft so ambiguously designed it could connect to almost anything, in almost any way, because they didn’t know what the group in Moscow would decide next.

 

Your client’s buying committee is often building a mental Soyuz. They are adding unnecessary features, accommodating internal politics, and creating a Franken-solution that pleases the group but serves no clear master. If you’re selling a sleek, single-purpose Ferrari, you’ll lose to the internal, ambiguously-designed minivan-bicycle-submarine they feel safe with.

 

B2B buying isn’t logical. It’s sociological. Great ideas don’t lose to better ones — they lose to safer ones.

 

Every group has a power structure that’s completely invisible on the org chart. The intern who went to college with the CEO’s daughter? More influential than the VP who’s been there fifteen years.

 

In 1977, Apple tried to sell computers to Xerox PARC—the people who literally invented the graphical user interface. Xerox said no. Why? Because the researchers at PARC had zero political power in a company dominated by the copier division.

 

The best product lost to the worst org chart.

 

Remember: You’re not just selling solutions. You’re selling consensus without compromise. The ability for a team to feel collectively right.

So, heres B2B MARKETING 101 → 401

101: Don’t sell to a company. Sell to a coalition.
201: The real decision-maker often isn’t in the room.
301: Make them look smart for choosing you.
401: Control the narrative before the meeting.

Before what has been suggested above, lets take a look at The Magnificent Seven( who are silently murdering your deal and getting away with homicide in broad daylight):

The Ghost Who Wasn’t There: This person didn’t attend any meetings but will make the final decision. They have “concerns.” Nobody knows what concerns. The concerns are made of vapor and vibes.

 

The Silent Assassin: Sits through every demo nodding. Says nothing. Votes no. You never saw it coming. Neither did anyone else.

 

The Once-Burned Veteran: Had a bad experience with a completely different vendor in 2014. Your product reminds them of that vendor because you both use… computers? They’re a hard no.

 

The Empire Builder: Only cares about whether adopting your solution makes their department more important. If yes: champion. If no: obstacle.

 

The Risk-Averse Bureaucrat: Their entire personality is “what if something goes wrong.” They’ve never said yes to anything. They won’t start now.

 

The Innovation Theater Performer: LOVES your product in meetings. Effusive. Enthusiastic. Will definitely vote against it in private because they’re actually terrified of change.

 

The Actual Champion: Genuinely wants to buy. Fights for you. Gets outvoted 6-1.

 

Here’s an inside look at most B2B Buying Committee:

• The CFO wants savings

• The CMO wants sparkle

• The CTO wants sanity

• The CEO wants approval

• Procurement just wants power

End result: Mediocrity, unanimously approved.

One should also be tuned into the IKEA effect in action– which goes thus:-

Companies love their own ideas — even the bad ones.

You may bring brilliance.

But their half-baked version feels safer because they built it.

Sum summarum:

Group decisions aren’t about your product. They’re about group survival. The group’s first priority is remaining a group. Making the “right” decision is a distant second.

 

Your pitch isn’t competing with other vendors. It’s competing with the group’s immune system, which is specifically designed to reject foreign objects—like your proposal.

 

The Takeaway: Pitch to the Collective Soul, Not the Collective Mind

 

• Sell security for the nervous and adventure for the bold.

• Convert meetings into meaning.

• Measure not by applause in the room but by alignment outside it.

 

Great B2B brands don’t just win decisions. They shift comfort zones.

 

So, To B or Not To B?

 

 

 

Every idea is born a rebel—until it becomes a religion. Between the dreamers who dare and the doubters who delay lies a dangerous ditch called the chasm. Brilliant ideas don’t die of bad execution. They die because they never cross the chasm.

 

Bridging the chasm between innovation and mass adoption isn’t just a business model—it’s a thrilling, hair-raising tightrope act performed above a pit of failed apps, shamed gadgets, and ideas that died in beta. At its wildest, “Bridging the Chasm” is a story of human psychology, marketplace skepticism, and the beautiful chaos zones where the bravest—and the most stubborn—play.

 

If the chasm had a gatekeeper, it would be Geoffrey Moore, whose iconic book released in 1991 “Crossing the Chasm” drew blood (and cheers) by telling the truth: most shiny new ideas die right after early adopters play with them but before the masses ever care.

 

Let’s roll back the years. What Moore had done was draw life from sociologist Everett Rogers’ Theory of Diffusion a deceptively simple idea that became the Holy Grail for marketers, innovators, and evangelists alike.

 

His Diffusion of Innovations theory neatly classified is a bell curve that splits your entire potential market into five distinct tribes:

 

1. Innovators – the fearless 2.5% who experiment before anyone else dares.
2. Early Adopters – the influential 13.5% who spot gold before the crowd.
3. Early Majority – the practical 34% who wait until the bugs are fixed.
4. Late Majority – the skeptical 34% who join because they must, not because they want to.
5. Laggards – the last 16% who move only when the old world collapses around them.

 

It wasn’t just a model. It was a mirror—reflecting how ideas, tech, and even mindsets ripple through society.

 

Early adopters buy possibility. The early majority buys proof.

 

In between them lies a credibility canyon—the chasm– wide enough to swallow entire industries.

 

Think Google Glass. Brilliant innovation. Died in the chasm.

 

Think Tesla. Same chasm, different ending—because Elon didn’t sell a car, he sold a cause.

 

Think Clubhouse—exploded, then evaporated.

 

Think Airbnb—laughed off as couch-surfing gone wild, until it bridged the chasm by selling belonging, not beds.

 

The takeaway? Crossing the chasm isn’t about what you sell—it’s about how you translate early believers’ passion into mainstream pragmatism.

 

While we debate this, it is important to understand that when Rogers wrote his theory, those were the days of milkmen and rotary phones.

 

In the era of AI, network effects, and algorithmic amplification, adoption can be instant.

 

What used to take decades can now happen in days.
Think: ChatGPT, Threads, or BeReal.

 

The chasm still exists—but it’s not linear anymore.
It’s dynamic, multi-dimensional, and sometimes… circular.

 

Sometimes laggards become reborn innovators (look at how senior citizens have embraced smartphones post-COVID).

 

Sometimes early adopters become gatekeepers (NFT maximalists, anyone?).

 

Some unusual examples that have broken the mould so to speak:

 

The Electric Guitar: First dismissed as noise pollution; later defined an era.

 

Yoga: From esoteric ritual to global lifestyle—bridged the chasm through cultural storytelling.

 

The QR Code: Born, died, resurrected post-pandemic as the invisible bridge between touch and tech.

 

Crocs: Mocked by fashionistas, now meme-to-mainstream—bridged the chasm by embracing its own absurdity.

 

The Plant-Based Meat Revolution (Beyond Meat/Impossible)- They didn’t start by selling to vegetarians (a small, niche market). They targeted Innovators(foodie techies) and Early Adopters (flexitarians looking for a sustainable, trendy option). Their “bridge” was a specific, high-impact strategy: partner with major burger chains. By placing the product in a familiar context (a burger), they gave the Early Majority a safe, easy way to try it without committing to a lifestyle change.

 

The Rise of Duolingo: Language learning was for specialists or expensive software. Duolingo crossed the chasm by gamifying it. They turned a daunting task into a daily, 5-minute, dopamine-hit game for the Early Majority. Their bridge was making it feel less like education and more like entertainment.

 

The chasm isn’t a flaw in your plan; it’s a feature of the market. It’s the universe’s way of separating fleeting hype from lasting value.

 

Some thoughts for bridge-building can include but not restricted to

 

Find the Analogous Reference: Pragmatists are comforted by familiarity. Frame your innovation in terms they already understand. “It’s like Uber, but for dog-walking.” “It’s like Airbnb, but for commercial kitchen space.” This lowers the perceived risk. Layer the novel on the already familiar. The Creative Curve that Allen Gannet talks about.

 

Shift Your Language: Stop talking about “disruptive blockchain technology.” Start talking about “saving 10 hours a week on paperwork.” Your messaging must evolve from vision to utility. It’s time to rethink how you innovate.

 

Reframe your “weird.” Today’s strange is tomorrow’s standard. Speak two dialects. One for believers, one for skeptics—both must feel heard.

 

Create Your “Whole Product”: The Early Majority doesn’t want a feature; they want a solution. Your “whole product” includes the support, the documentation, the integrations, and the community that makes it foolproof. What does your product need around it to be a no-brainer?

 

Crossing the chasm is not a sprint. It’s a story.

 

 

“Originality consists of returning to the origin.” – Antoni Gaudí

 

I read this quote a few days back and the credit for this blog post must be attributed to the inspiration drawn from this one profound line. So, let that marinate. It’s not a forward command. It’s a homecoming.

 

Antoni Gaudí was told his architecture was ‘impossible.’ Today, 3 million people visit his ‘impossible’ cathedral every year. His secret? Going backward.”

 

We have all been been taught to look out there for inspiration—to competitors, to trends, to what’s “hot” right now. But the great ones? They look in here. Not navel-gazing introspection, but something deeper: the fundamental truths of their craft, their culture, their core.

 

It is not a chicken or egg situation. Let’s ask what came first. Before the complexity, before the layers of “best practices,” before everyone started doing it this way—what was the original impulse? In writing, it’s storytelling around a fire. In business, it’s solving a real human problem. In art, it’s making someone feel something.

 

The lesson possibly here is to look at the masters before the masters. Not just look at competitors. Tracing the lineage back to go upstream. Jazz musicians study Bach. Chefs study grandmothers. Tech visionaries study libraries. Counter intuitive, yes. Effective. Bloody hell YES!

 

Coco Chanel didn’t invent fashion. She returned to the origin of how women wanted to move and feel, liberating them from corsets and excess, giving them back their bodies.

 

Ray Kroc didn’t invent the hamburger. He returned to the origin of what Americans wanted—fast, reliable, consistent—and built an empire(McDonalds) on the fundamentals.

 

And I am sorry to disappoint the K-Pop fans. You think BTS’s “Dynamite” is original? On the surface, it’s a shiny, disposable pop confection. But scrape the gloss. Its origin isn’t in a Seoul recording studio; it’s in the funk and soul of 1970s America. They didn’t copy it; they absorbed its DNA—the origin of feel-good, dance-floor joy—and rebuilt it with Korean precision and a 21st-century heartbeat. They returned to the root of rhythm to create a new branch.

 

Your grandmother’s recipe for that perfect, crispy-laced dosa. It’s not in a cookbook. It’s in the memory of her hands, which learned from her mother, who learned from the origin of fire and flour. The “food blogger” who adds truffle oil and quinoa to it isn’t being original. They’re just decorating a ghost. The true originality is in making it exactly as it was meant to be—a perfect return to the origin of taste and tradition.

 

See the pattern? Originality isn’t addition. It’s subtraction back to essence.

 

The best films are exceptional not because of what we see but because of what we don’t see.

 

Tadao Ando grew up poor in Osaka. Boxing was his first career. Architecture? That came later, self-taught, through books and buildings, with no formal degree cluttering up his vision.

 

When he finally designed his first house, he couldn’t afford furniture. So he embraced the origin of Japanese spatial philosophy—ma, the concept of negative space, the void that gives meaning to presence. His “empty” rooms weren’t lacking; they were full of possibility.

 

Today, Ando is one of the world’s most celebrated architects. His concrete walls, his play of light and shadow, his ruthless elimination of the unnecessary—all of it traces back to that original poverty that forced him to ask: “What do we really need?”

 

The Western world, drowning in excess, now pays millions to experience the “minimalism” that Ando discovered by necessity. He didn’t invent it. He remembered it.

 

We have fallen hook, line and sinker to the origin myth story we have been sold for aeons. We live in an age drunk on novelty. “Disrupt or die,” they say. “Move fast and break things.” Every startup pitchman promises to reinvent the wheel, reimagine the paradigm, revolutionize the mundane. We’ve confused originality with newness, and therein lies our spectacular error.

 

Antoni Gaudí—is the mad genius who gave us Barcelona’s Sagrada Família—he understood something profound that would make most Silicon Valley prophets weep into their kombucha: True originality isn’t about inventing something from nothing. It’s about rediscovering something we forgot we knew.

 

When Gaudí designed his masterpieces, he didn’t conjure alien geometries. He looked at nature—the original architect. The spirals of nautilus shells. The branching of trees. The hexagonal perfection of honeycombs. He returned to the origin, to the fundamental grammar of the universe itself, and from there, created buildings that had never been seen before.

 

The paradox is perfect: He was utterly original because he wasn’t trying to be.

 

Jorge Luis Borges lost his sight in 1955, right around the time he was appointed Director of Argentina’s National Library. Cruel irony? Perhaps. Or perhaps the universe knew what it was doing. Out of sight, but then look what came out of his mind!

 

Unable to read, Borges returned to the origin of storytelling—oral tradition, memory, the ancient art of weaving tales from the threads of what we carry inside us. He began dictating his stories, drawing from the vast library of his mind, from myths and legends that predated the written word.

 

And what happened? He created some of the most innovative, labyrinthine, mind-bending literature of the 20th century. “The Library of Babel,” “The Aleph,” stories that played with infinity, time, and parallel realities—all because a blind man returned to the oldest way humans ever told stories: one voice, one listener, one shared dream in the dark.

 

The takeaway isn’t subtle: When you can’t move forward, sometimes the universe is telling you to dig deeper.

 

Ando had poverty. Borges had blindness. Gaudí had a client who wanted something “different” and the freedom to experiment. Constraints aren’t obstacles—they’re the fingers of fate pointing you toward your origin. As Ryan Holiday calls it ” The Obstacle Is The Way “.

 

In an age of artificial intelligence and infinite content, the most original thing you can do is be fundamentally human. In a world of shortcuts and hacks, the most disruptive move is to master the fundamentals. In a culture addicted to trends, the most radical act is to be timeless.

 

Gaudí spent 40 years building the Sagrada Família. It’s still not finished. But it’s already immortal.

 

Why? Because he built it on principles as old as creation itself—geometry, light, growth, aspiration. He didn’t chase the zeitgeist. He chased the eternal.

 

Your most original work won’t come from trying to be different. It will come from being so deeply yourself, so rooted in first principles, so committed to the essence of what you do, that imitation becomes impossible.

 

Not because you’re weird. But because you’re true.

 

In closing, sharing something as food for thought. A couple of them. So that we stop chasing originality and start embodying it.

 

–Become a “Why” Archaeologist:Before you create anything—a presentation, a marketing campaign, a sourdough starter—ask not “What’s new?” but “What’s the first principle?” What is the fundamental problem? The primal need? The core emotion? Start there. The answer is your origin.

 

–Embrace “Intelligent Naiveté”:Pretend you’re an alien seeing your field for the first time. Ask the dumb questions. “Why do chairs have four legs?” “Why do meetings have to be an hour?” “Why does a website need a homepage?” You’ll be stunned how many “rules” are just barnacles on the hull of the original ship.

 

–Steal from the Soil, Not the Surface:Don’t copy your competitor’s latest feature. That’s theft from the surface. Instead, ask why it works. What human need does it tap into? Steal that primal need—the origin—and build your own, better solution from that foundation. That’s originality.

 

So, go on. Be a cosmic archaeologist. Dig. The most original version of your work, your art, your life—it’s not a distant star. It’s a seed, buried deep, waiting for you to remember where you planted it.

And when you find it, water it with your own unique weirdness. Watch what grows.

I have a feeling Gaudí would approve.

 

Bill Bernbach, the mad advertising genius( and undoubtedly the original punk rocker of Madison Avenue who blew cigar smoke right into Madison Avenue’s uptight nostrils), the man who gave birth to DDB and revolutionized advertising forever, dropped a missile that still echoes through the corridors of every boardroom, every startup garage, every activist’s midnight planning session:

 

“It is not enough to be right — you must also be compelling.“

 

But here’s where Bernbach went full savage mode, delivering the kind of insight that makes comfortable people squirm:

 

“A dull truth will not be looked at. An exciting lie will. That is what good, sincere people must understand. They must make their truth exciting and new, or their good works will be born dead.”

 

Born dead. Let that phrase marinate in your brain for a moment.

 

This wasn’t cynicism. This was a wake-up call for everyone with something genuine to say. If you want your truth to live, don’t send it out in tattered clothes. Make it sing. Make it strut.

 

We live in an attention-deficit apocalypse. The feed scrolls faster than your brand can blink. The competition isn’t your category—it’s the cat video two thumbs away. If your story isn’t arresting, it isn’t. Period.

 

Being compelling doesn’t mean being dishonest. It means being a storyteller with a backbone. It means showing up with truth in a way that moves the blood, not just the brain. It’s about packaging your principle with some swagger.

 

Look around. The exciting lies are winning. They’re shiny, seductive, and algorithmically amplified. They promise six-pack abs in six days, financial freedom with one crypto coin, and eternal happiness in a scented candle.

And what are we, the “sincere people,” doing? We’re countering with PDFs. With white papers no one will ever white. We’re serving a five-course meal of facts on a dented tray to an audience high on the cocaine of clickbait.

This is not a call to lie. This is a call to war. A war fought with the weapons of story, surprise, soul, and savage simplicity.

 

How many brilliant ideas have you buried in PowerPoint graveyards? How many world-changing solutions have you suffocated with jargon and bullet points? How many times have you watched inferior ideas triumph simply because they knew how to dance?

 

Being right is kindergarten. Being compelling is graduate school. You’ve got to dress your truth in leather jackets, sequins, and a scream that will break the internet. Or anything equivalent.

 

Closer home, rewind to Amul ads. India was hearing “milk is nutritious” in government posters since Nehru’s time. Yawn. Then Amul comes in with “Utterly Butterly Delicious” and that wide-eyed polka dot girl poking fun at everything from politics to cricket. Same truth: milk nourishes. But the delivery was delicious irreverence. Who remembered the poster with cows grazing? AND who remembers Amul topicals decades later? Exactly. They didn’t just sell butter—they sold wit, wisdom, and a wink.

 

Take Apple in the 80s. Personal computers were beige boxes of doom. IBM said, “Work better, compute faster.” Bernbach-esque Apple said, “Here’s to the crazy ones.” They turned truth (a PC on your desk really does change your life) into poetry, rebellion, and theatre. Beige truth vs neon revolution. Guess which one etched itself into retinas.

 

Your brilliant ideas could die a silent death. Unless you do what Archimedes did- they found Archimedes naked in a bathtub, screaming “Eureka!” at the top of his lungs.

 

They didn’t find him sitting quietly in a corner, whispering his discovery to the wall.

 

Think about that for a split second. The man who cracked one of physics’ greatest puzzles didn’t just have his moment of truth—he performed it. He made it impossible to ignore. He turned scientific discovery into street theater.

 

That’s the difference between changing the world and changing nothing at all.

 

Look at Elon Musk. The man could tweet about launching a car into space, and suddenly everyone’s talking about Mars colonization. He doesn’t just build rockets—he builds stories around rockets. He doesn’t just create electric vehicles—he creates a movement around sustainable transport.

 

Meanwhile, thousands of equally brilliant engineers toil in anonymity because they never learned that innovation without communication is just expensive masturbation.

 

In our own backyard, watch how the late APJ Abdul Kalam made rocket science accessible to children. He didn’t dumb down the science—he lit up the imagination. He turned complex aerospace engineering into dreams of flight that every village kid could touch.

 

Even in advertising, remember how Ashutosh Gowariker made “Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola” stick in our collective consciousness? He could have said “Coca-Cola is refreshing.” Instead, he made it a cultural code, a shared language.

 

Closer home again: Swiggy’s Instamart ads—deadpan humour, surreal visuals—turn the very mundane act of grocery delivery into a cultural chuckle. Groceries arrive faster, but the brand arrives first in your mind.

 

Here’s what Bernbach understood that most people miss: Complexity is the enemy of adoption.

 

The most profound truths are often the simplest ones, dressed up in ways that make people want to believe them.

 

Gandhi didn’t just protest British rule—he spun cotton and walked to the sea. He turned political resistance into performance art. He made truth visible.

 

Steve Jobs didn’t just build computers—he built desire. “Think Different” wasn’t about processors and memory. It was about identity and aspiration.

 

Your noble intentions don’t entitle you to anyone’s attention.

 

The world doesn’t owe you an audience just because you’re right. Being right is table stakes. Being heard & seen requires artistry.

 

This isn’t about manipulation—it’s about translation. It’s about taking your beautiful, complex, nuanced truth and making it sing in a language that busy, distracted, overwhelmed humans can actually hear.

 

So, how do we make this work? As the saying goes- sell the sizzle, not the steak. Start with the scar, the Achilles Heel, not the solution. People don’t care about your product—they care about their pain. Nike doesn’t sell shoes; they sell the feeling of victory. Apple doesn’t sell phones; they sell the promise of human connection. Ariel’s “Dad’s Share the Load” campaign didn’t lecture about gender equality—they showed one father realizing his own blindness. Personal story, universal truth. Find the universal in the specific. Patagonia’s “Don’t Buy This Jacket” ad worked because it violated every expectation about what a brand should say. The contrast made the message unforgettable. Use contrast like a weapon. 

 

Male your revolution seductive. The future belongs to those who understand this: Truth without theater is just noise.

 

Your breakthrough research? Useless if it dies in academic journals. Your innovative product? Irrelevant if it can’t break through the marketing clutter. Your social cause? Impotent if it can’t inspire action.

 

The revolutionaries who change the world aren’t just the ones with the best ideas—they’re the ones who make their ideas impossible to ignore.

 

In closing, fellow truth-teller, allow me to put out this (Bernbach) Challenge:-

 

Take your most important idea—the one that keeps you up at night, the one you believe could change everything—and ask yourself:

 

Is it compelling enough to compete with cat videos? Is it sexy enough to survive the scroll? Is it magnetic enough to make people stop, think, and act?

 

If not, you don’t have a truth problem. You have a translation problem. And that is the most solvable problem in the world.

 

Because the truth isn’t just out there waiting to be discovered. It’s waiting to be performed.

 

PS: Bill Bernbach was an Advertising Hall of Fame Member. Some of his landmark campaigns included ” Think Small ” for Volkswagen Beetle and ” We Try Harder ” for Avis Rent A Car.

 

The caption of this post comes from a line inspired by Cal Newport’s Deep Work—a book that should be prescribed along with paracetamol in every household.

 

Caveat: This post is a distraction. But hey, at least it’s a distraction that tells you to stop being distracted. Meta, right? (You don’t have to agree).

 

Alright, please lean in. Stop scrolling for a nanosecond. I want you to do a quick audit, if you can.

Right now, as you’re reading this, how many tabs are open on your browser? Be honest ( I checked, I had 18 tabs open). Is your phone buzzing within a 12-inch radius of your dominant hand? Is there a podcast about optimizing your potential playing in one ear while you’re trying to focus on this with the other?

We’re all running a bizarre, self-imposed marathon on a treadmill of distraction. And we think the solution is to… take a break from the treadmill by checking Instagram? That’s like a fish taking a break from water by going for a swim.

 

The truth is this: distraction today isn’t something you fall into.It’s something you live in. Like smog in Delhi winter. Or traffic on Bangalore’s Outer Ring Road. Or cats on the internet—everywhere, all the time, impossible to avoid.

We’ve got it all backwards, haven’t we people? The mantra for the next decade isn’t “don’t get distracted.” That’s a losing battle. The winning move is to flip the script: Don’t take breaks from distraction. Instead, take breaks from FOCUS.

 

Let that sink in. It’s not the distraction that’s the break. The focus is the heavy lifting. The distraction is the default. And your attention? That’s the most valuable, fought-over currency you have. Every ping, every notification, every just one quick look is a tiny withdrawal from your cognitive bank account. In which your deposits are in any case scanty.

 

Your focus is a supermodel. Stop letting every cheap notification catcall it on the street.

 

If we take a quick world tour( we don’t need Expedia or Booking.com for this), we will discover the following including but not restricted to:

 

The Millennial Hustler( aka The Silicon Valley Techie)- They’ve got the triple-monitor setup, the productivity app that blocks productivity apps, and a standing desk. They focus in 25-minute sprints (Pomodoro, baby!). And their break? Checking LinkedIn and Twitter to see how much more successful everyone else is. They’ve swapped one screen for another. The brain stays in the digital doom-scroll vortex. Zero recovery.

 

The Indian Student( aka the NEET | JEE | any other competitive exam aspirant)- They’re on a brutal 14-hour focus grind. Their “break”? Mindlessly scrolling through memes on Instagram. They jump from the intense focus of organic chemistry to the dopamine slot machine of Reels. The brain never gets a chance to reset. It just gets a different, more chaotic master. The result? Burnout. Anxiety. And ironically, worse retention. (Cal Newport author of seminal books like Deep Work, Slow Productivity and Digital Minimalism) would say their deep work sessions are being sabotaged by their shallow breaks).

 

The Corporate Executive (aka The Mid-Life Marathan):Back-to-back Zoom calls. Excel sheets that stretch into eternity. Their break? A quick cigarette or coffee or both while checking office WhatsApp groups. They’ve traded focused stress for distracted stress. The cortisol never drops. This is the antithesis of the productive meditation Newport recommends.

 

Welcome to humanity’s new bloodstream: distraction.

This isn’t about adding more to your plate. It’s about strategically taking things off your plate so you can actually enjoy the meal. Because, you are not a machine. You are a human being with a finite amount of attention. Stop letting the world steal it from you in tiny, digital nibbles.

 

We’ve been sold the take a break from your phone wellness jargon so often, we almost believe it. But here’s the heresy: Don’t take breaks from distraction. Take breaks from focus. Because distraction is the new baseline. Focus is the exotic vacation. And if you don’t schedule it, it never shows up.

 

It’s probably called the currency of the century for a reason. If oil fueled the 20th century, attention is the crude oil of the 21st. Everyone wants a barrel of your eyeballs. Netflix fights YouTube, Instagram fights LinkedIn, Zomato fights Swiggy, your kid fights your boss—and you’re the war zone.

The real luxury now isn’t a Rolex or a Tesla. It’s 45 undisturbed minutes to do deep work. Or read Gulzar. Or just stare at the ceiling fan without checking if your Swiggy order is being prepared.

 

This disease is widespread and has no boundaries. Geography is history. In Japan, kids are being trained in forest bathing to reconnect with nature—because apparently trees don’t have notifications. In Silicon Valley, tech bros are paying $5000 for silent retreats where the main activity is… sitting. (I know you are suppressing a chuckle-your grandmother has been doing this for free on her charpai forever). In Bangalore, teenagers binge-watch K-dramas at 3 AM and then sleepwalk through their JEE coaching. Their parents, meanwhile, binge-watch stock market tips at 3 AM and sleepwalk through their careers. In Kerala, uncles claim they’re working from home while half their energy is spent refreshing India Today’s election exit polls.

 

Different geographies. Same disease. We can brand it Distractivitis. 

 

You have been doing different forms of fasting and abstaining for centuries. Karva Chauth. Ramadan. Ekadashi. Lent. Think of focus as fasting. You don’t fast from food forever. You fast for a period to reboot the system. Likewise, you don’t quit distraction—it’s impossible. But you can fast from it by gifting yourself windows of pure focus.

 

Analog is the new luxury. A paper notebook, a pen, and zero chance of accidentally doom scrolling. And if your neighbor’s dog is in open mic mode, use Noise-canceling headsets. 25 minutes of deep work and then the reward, 5  minutes check memes on Rahul Gandhi or you know who…Pomodoro if you will.

 

Warren Buffett once said he’s successful because he can say No 99 times out of 100. Not to investments, but to being distracted.

 

Focus isn’t default anymore. It’s design. Attention isn’t a resource you spend. It’s a resource you invest. And distraction? That’s just today’s monsoon—perpetual, unpredictable, and wetting everyone equally.

 

Before I conclude, taking the liberty of sharing names of few books for all those who want a bite into the perceived forbidden fruit called focus:

Deep Work by Cal Newport: Culminates in actionable routines for regular, distraction-free work blocks.

Atomic Habits by James Clear: Shows how tiny focus-building habits lead to major change, with hacks for routine and attention.

Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey: Explores balancing ‘hyperfocus’ for productivity and ‘scatterfocus’ for creativity in a world of pings and dings.

Indistractable by Nir Eyal: Offers frameworks to curb both internal and external distractions, reclaiming your attention span.

Essentialism by Greg McKeown: Helps ruthlessly prioritize and say no, freeing up deep-focus time.

Your Brain At Work by David Rock: Unpacks the biology of distraction and how to optimize working smarter, not harder.

 

You ever notice how LinkedIn has only one plot line? Yeah, it’s called: “I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as…” I tell you this line has more reruns than Friends.

 

If you smell a sense of authority in the caption above, let me tell you that I am trepidation personified as I draft this. And if you see this as some kind of forensic investigation, you might be partly right.

 

Caveat Emptor(Reader Beware): This is an honest attempt. And as I experiment with that, thought might as well do a deep dive into the peculiar psychology of professional announcements.

 

So there I was, scrolling through LinkedIn at 2 AM (as one does when one’s life choices need serious examination), when I stumbled upon the 27th “I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as…”post of the day. And suddenly, like a caffeine-fueled anthropologist discovering a new tribal ritual, I found myself asking: What’s really going on here?

 

Let’s get on with it and break down this fascinating specimen( no lab coats required):

 

” I’m happy to share that I am starting in a new position as XXX at XXX “.

 

Translation : “I’m contractually obligated by the unwritten rules of professional networking to appear ecstatic about this career move, regardless of whether I was headhunted by Google or just escaped a toxic workplace that made Chernobyl look like a wellness retreat.”

 

(This one comes from the Republic of Gratitude)- “I want to thank [previous company] for the incredible journey…”

 

Translation: “I will now perform the corporate equivalent of thanking the Academy, even though my previous boss once made me rewrite a two-line email seventeen times because the font wasn’t ‘strategic’ enough.”

 

Yet another one that is competing for The Humble Brag Finale– ” “Excited for this new chapter…”

 

Translation: “I’ve successfully convinced someone else to pay me money. In this economy. Please validate my existence.”

 

This one comes straight from the Valley of Nostalgia Overture- ” My time at [Previous Company] was invaluable. I learned so much, especially how to operate the microwave and which meeting rooms have the best Wi-Fi. I want to thank everyone, especially Brenda from Accounts Payable who once smiled at me in the elevator.”

 

Some seem to seeking validation like an Insecurity Vanquisher– This post is a cry for help wrapped in corporate jargon. They’ve just left the comfort of a job they knew how to do, where they knew which coffee mug was theirs. Now, they’re adrift in a sea of new acronyms. The LinkedIn post is a life raft. Every “Congratulations!” comment is a flare of validation, a tiny hit of dopamine that whispers, “You didn’t make a catastrophic error. Probably.”

 

The subtext here isn’t arrogance; it’s vulnerability masquerading as confidence. They’re not telling you they’re great; they’re asking you to tell them they’ll be okay.

 

Then there are these bunch of corporate hostages. Which is why we must consider and rope in the unwilling participant. You can almost taste the coercion in the text. It’s too polished, too full of branded hashtags (#GrowWithUsAtSynergisticDynamics #OneTeamOneDreamOneCult).

 

This post was clearly drafted by Marcia in Marketing, who cornered them by the printer and said, “We need you to post this. Gary in Sales only got 12 likes on his, and we need to beat that. It’s for the brand.” The employee’s own personality has been surgically removed and replaced with key messaging points. They’d rather be anywhere else than writing this post. Probably updating their actual, private, anonymous Twitter account with: “First day at the new gig. Help.”

 

Welcome to the post that is a philosophical take-letting go of a previous self. Every exit is an entry somewhere. Perhaps the most beautiful interpretation is that this post is a funeral for a former version of oneself. They are publicly closing a chapter. It’s a ritualistic shedding of skin. The “thank you” to the old company is genuine—it’s an acknowledgment of the person that job helped them become, for better or worse.

They are announcing the death of the “Senior Executive, Operations” and the birth of the “Head of Delivering Awesome.” It’s a rebirth. With slightly better health insurance.

 

There it is. We have enough evidence, don’t we? The most crowded temple of modern worship. Not Tirupati. Not Mecca. Not the Vatican. You guessed it- LinkedIn.

 

And the loudest chant in this holy shrine of professional self-expression?
“I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as…”

 

A line so standardised it deserves its own ISO certification. And the coveted blue tick.

 

But what is it, really? A declaration? A confession? Therapy disguised as gratitude? Corporate Horlicks for the soul? Or a notice to ex-colleagues: “Guess who moved on first?”

 

The jury is still out on why the unflinching emphasis on “happy”? Nobody says “I’m moderately okay to announce a new position.” Or “I’m borderline depressed to let you know I’ve accepted employment.”

 

It’s always “happy.” As if happiness is written into the KPI of the announcement. Maybe HR slips it into the offer letter:

Position: Vice President, Market Expansion

CTC: Respectably above cousin’s salary

Condition: Must announce with happiness on LinkedIn

 

I shouldn’t miss out on telling you that there is one variety that stands out, hands down. The master tagger. Ten mentors, three previous managers, the chaiwala from the parking lot—everyone is name-dropped, because gratitude is LinkedIn’s legal tender.

 

And of course the poets in residence: “Thrilled to begin a new journey, turning pages in my life’s career novel.” Gulzar, watch out!

 

Which is when you notice unabashed neutrality which goes something like this, a stoic monk if you will: ” Starting a new role. That’s all.” (This guy is fried but refuses to admit it.)

 

You would have already seen the paradox here. On one hand, it’s insecurity covered in confetti. On the other, it’s a coded hug. A way of saying: “I survived. I still matter. Clap for me.”

 

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Because for every roll-eye inducing “I’m happy to share…”, there’s someone reading it at 2 a.m. thinking, maybe I’ll get out too.

 

So next time you see that familiar phrase, resist the snark for a second. Click the like. Clap along. Comment positively. Because in its own awkward, templated way, it’s just humanity leaking through LinkedIn’s algorithm.

 

And if you really want to shake things up? Post this instead:
“I’m happy to share that I’m still unemployed. Please endorse me for resilience.”

 

So, the next time you see that post, don’t roll your eyes. Hit like. Because behind every “I’m happy to share…” is one brave soul battling FOMO, EMIs, and imposter syndrome—armed with nothing but Canva graphics and hashtags.

 

And yes, one day you’ll see me post it too. “I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as… The World’s First Chief Officer of Pretending To Look Busy On Zoom.”

 

Thank you, good day, and don’t forget to endorse me for Strategic Sarcasm!

 

PS: Human beings are rough drafts that continually mistake themselves for the final story, then gasp as the plot changes on the page of living.

 

 

 

 

 

This one’s for every dream that got RSVP’d “Not Happening” by the Ministry of Mediocrity.

 

They said Van Gogh was mentally unstable. They said Einstein was a patent clerk who’d never amount to anything. They said Kalpana Chawla should stick to mechanical engineering instead of chasing space fantasies. And guess what? The gatekeepers were spectacularly, gloriously, magnificently wrong. Every. Single. Time.

 

But here’s the nuclear truth bomb that’ll make your morning coffee taste a little more bitter: For every Van Gogh who painted through the ridicule, there are ten thousand dreamers who never picked up the brush because some gatekeeper convinced them their hands weren’t steady enough.

 

Welcome to the graveyard of dreams, where gatekeepers are the gravediggers and your potential is the corpse they’re burying six feet under.

 

You(or someone you know) would have experienced this: You are seven years old, scribbling rockets in your notebook margin during math class. Teacher spots you, snatches the paper, and declares with the authority of someone who peaked in teacher’s college, “Stop wasting time on silly drawings and focus on real subjects.”

 

Congratulations. You’ve just met your first gatekeeper.

 

These aren’t necessarily evil people plotting your downfall from their ivory towers. No, that would be too dramatic, too Hollywood. Real gatekeepers are far more insidious. They’re your well-meaning uncle who says “engineering is safer than art,” your guidance counselor who steers you toward “practical careers,” your friends who roll their eyes when you mention your startup idea for the fifteenth time.

 

They’re armed with the most dangerous weapon known to dreamers: the phrase “be realistic.”

Akio Morita pitched his idea for a personal stereo to focus groups who said, “Why would anyone want to listen to music through headphones?” Sony’s Walkman went on to sell over 400 million units. Those focus group gatekeepers probably still use boom boxes.

 

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw started Biocon in her garage in 1978 when biotechnology was as foreign to India as snow in Rajasthan. Banks refused her loans because they thought biotech was too risky, too complex, too advanced for an Indian woman. Today, Biocon is a $10 billion company, and those bankers are probably still explaining to their grandchildren what biotechnology means.

 

Wright Brothers—Two cycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, told they were “unqualified dreamers” by experts in flight. Today, we eat stale peanuts at 35,000 feet because of their delusions.

 

Narayana Murthy, before he was Godfather of Indian IT, was rejected by his future father-in-law because he had “no future.” (Imagine if he listened. Infosys would be an unfulfilled Google Doc.)

 

Stan Lee, told by his publisher that superhero comics would never work. Enter Spider-Man. The rest, like Peter Parker’s love life, is complicated history.

 

Surround yourself with dream amplifiers, not dream killers. The Bharat Matrimony founder Murugavel Janakiraman found his tribe of believers who helped him build a platform that’s  connected millions of hearts. Your dreams need cheerleaders, not critics in the stands.

 

Sometimes, not knowing something is impossible(Strategic Ignorance) is your greatest advantage. The Wright Brothers didn’t have aeronautical engineering degrees. They had bicycle repair experience and an unshakeable belief that humans could fly.

 

The gatekeepers aren’t going anywhere. They’re a permanent feature of the landscape, like taxes and traffic jams. But here’s what they don’t want you to know: they only have the power you give them.

 

Every time you water down your dream to make it “more acceptable,” you’re not being realistic – you’re being complicit in your own creative murder.

 

Dhirubhai Ambani was a petrol pump attendant who dreamed of building an industrial empire. Gatekeepers laughed at his ambition, questioned his methods, doubted his vision. Today, Reliance is one of India’s largest companies. The gatekeepers are still explaining to their children why they didn’t invest in his dreams.

 

Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper for “lacking imagination and having no good ideas.” The same guy who created Mickey Mouse was told he had no creativity. Somewhere, that editor’s descendants are still trying to live down the family shame.

 

The choice is yours: Will you be the dreamer who broke through, or the cautionary tale who gave up?

 

Because in the end, the world doesn’t remember the gatekeepers. It remembers the dreamers who refused to let them win.

 

The “right way” is often the well-trodden path to mediocrity. Elon Musk built rockets reading textbooks, not waiting for NASA’s permission.

 

Gatekeepers, I am afraid do not have the same range as Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and they come mostly in three flavours:

 

The Riskophobics – “What’s your fallback plan?” (As if dreams need mattresses.)

 

The Degree Dealers – “Are you even qualified to do this?”

 

The Has-Beens & Never-Was-es – “When I was your age…”(Yeah? And look how that turned out.)

 

They are gatekeepers to nothing but their own boredom.

 

Dreams are allergic to committees. Don’t crowdsource your courage. Because we weren’t born to behave. We were born to build.

 

The most dangerous gatekeeper isn’t your boss, your parents, or some industry expert. It’s the voice in your head that sounds suspiciously like all of them combined.

 

This internal gatekeeper is sophisticated. It doesn’t just say “you can’t do it.” It says “you can’t do it YET” and “you can’t do it WITHOUT proper preparation” and “you can’t do it UNLESS you have a backup plan.” It’s rejection with good manners and a safety net.

 

A.R. Rahman could have listened to his internal gatekeeper that said “you’re just a keyboard player, not a composer.” Instead, he composed music that won Oscars and revolutionized Indian cinema. That internal voice is now probably his biggest fan.

 

Remember, if everyone gets it, it’s not a dream. It’s a brochure.