Suresh Dinakaran's Blog

 

I am sorry: this might be the slap that was not expected.

 

The Mathematics of Regret

 

Here’s a truth backed by actual research from Cornell University’s Gilovich study on regret:

 

People don’t regret the things they did and failed at. They regret the things they never tried.

 

The business not started. The trip not taken. The conversation not had. The love not declared. The dream deferred until it died of neglect.

 

Your deathbed self won’t think, “I’m so glad I played it safe.”

 

But they might think, “Why didn’t I just try?”

 

The Indian Paradox: Risk-Averse Yet Entrepreneurial

 

India produces more engineers than any country on Earth. We’re brilliant, hardworking, and educated.

 

Yet we’re also the nation where parents plan their children’s lives from conception to retirement. IIT-IIM-MBA-MNC-Marriage-House-Retirement. A conveyor belt existence where deviation is betrayal.

 

But something’s shifting.

 

Vineeta Singh was a topper at IIM Ahmedabad. She had offers from every consulting firm that mattered. Instead, she started SUGAR Cosmetics from her living room, faced rejection from 200+ investors, and kept going.

 

Today, SUGAR is valued at over ₹3,000+ crores.

 

Falguni Nayar left a cushy Managing Director position at Kotak Mahindra after 19 years—at age 50—to start Nykaa.

 

At fifty. When most people are thinking about retirement portfolios, not retail disruption.

 

Nykaa went public at a valuation exceeding $7 billion, making Falguni India’s wealthiest self-made female billionaire.

 

What did these people understand that you don’t?

 

They understood asymmetric risk. They played a game where the downside was bounded but the upside was limitless.

 

A Few Global Wake-Up Calls: When Courage Compounds

 

Sara Blakely cut the feet off her pantyhose, thought “this could be something,” and invested her $5,000 life savings into prototyping Spanx. No business experience. No fashion background. Just an idea and audacity.

 

She’s now worth over $1 billion.

 

Jan Koum was a Ukrainian immigrant living on food stamps in America. He taught himself computer programming, worked at Yahoo, then quit to pursue an idea: a messaging app with no ads. WhatsApp.

 

Investors laughed. Facebook offered him a job. He declined.

 

WhatsApp sold to Facebook for $19 billion.

 

The pattern? None of these people had a safety net made of gold. They had calculated risk tolerance and irrational conviction.

 

They asked themselves: “What’s the worst that could happen?” And the answer was never death. Just discomfort. Embarrassment. Starting over.

 

The Risks You’re Not Taking (And Why You Should Be)

 

Career Risks

• Asking for the promotion you deserve
• Leaving the soul-sucking job for the uncertain venture
• Speaking up in meetings when you have the better idea
• Starting the side project you keep postponing

Worst case? Temporary setback. Ego bruise. Resume gap.
Best case? Career transformation. Financial freedom. Purpose.

 

Relationship Risks

• Telling someone you love them
• Ending the relationship that’s draining your life force
• Setting boundaries with toxic family members
• Apologizing when you’re wrong

Worst case? Rejection. Loneliness for a season. Uncomfortable conversations.
Best case? Deep connection. Self-respect. Peace. Love that actually nourishes you.

 

Creative Risks

• Publishing your writing
• Sharing your art
• Starting that YouTube channel
• Launching that podcast everyone says “is saturated”

Worst case? Crickets. Criticism. “I told you so” from skeptics.
Best case? Impact. Income. A body of work you’re proud of. Legacy.

 

The Action Protocol: How to Take Intelligent Risks

 

Step 1: Define the Worst-Case Scenario
Write it down. Be brutally honest. What’s the actual worst that happens? Not your anxiety-brain version. The real version.

 

Step 2: Ask “Can I Handle This?”
If yes, continue. If no, adjust the risk.

 

Step 3: Define the Best-Case Scenario
Dream big here. What happens if this works?

 

Step 4: Calculate the Asymmetry
If the best case is 10x better than the worst case is bad, you’ve found your Goldilocks risk.

 

Step 5: Set a Deadline
Courage without timeline is just fantasy. Pick a date. Do the thing.

 

The Indian Classical Example: Arjuna’s Dilemma

 

The Bhagavad Gita—our own ancient text—is literally a conversation about taking the right risk at the right time. Most of you would be very aware of this already.

 

Arjuna stands on the battlefield, paralyzed by fear disguised as ethics. Krishna doesn’t tell him to be reckless. He tells him to act according to his dharma, to take the risk that aligns with his purpose.

 

“You have a right to perform your prescribed action, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action.”

 

Translation? Take the intelligent risk. Detach from the outcome. But take the risk.

 

The Question; The Introspection

 

Here it is. The question that will either haunt you or liberate you:

 

“Five years from now, will I regret not trying this?” –If the answer is yes, you already know what to do.

 

In Signing Off

 

You’ve read this far, which means part of you knows you’re playing too small.

 

You know there’s an ask you need to make. A leap you need to take. A conversation you need to have. A business you need to start. A relationship you need to end. A dream you need to chase.

 

You know it.

 

And you’re still here, reading, because some part of you is looking for permission.

 

Here it is: You’re allowed to want more. You’re allowed to try. You’re allowed to fail. You’re allowed to succeed.

 

The world doesn’t need more people playing defense with their one precious life.

 

It needs people who understand that the biggest risk is risking nothing at all.

 

The Risk That Doesn’t Kill You Might Just Make You a Legend

 

Somewhere between the coward who never leaps and the fool who jumps without looking, lives the sweet spot of risk. It’s that rare kind of risk where the worst case scenario is more like a bruise than a breakup, and the best case? A life-flip so dramatic it leaves you blinking in disbelief.

 

Look for risks where you won’t be crushed if it backfires, but you’d be blown away if it pays off.

 

Most people don’t take these manageable risks. Why? Because risk whispers 50/50 but fear shouts 100/0. So, they settle for “safe.” Safe is polite but painfully dull. Safe rarely breaks headlines or molds legends.

 

Go on, ask your crush. Pitch that experiment your gut swears will work. Write that book, start that venture. With a safety net beneath you, the falling isn’t fatal—just a chance to rise smarter, quicker, sharper.

 

The Parting Shot

 

If your heart doesn’t race a little when you consider your next move, you might be standing still on the sidelines of your own life. Don’t be that person.

 

Remember: The best bets are ones where losing doesn’t break you but winning redefines you.

 

Take the shot. Risk the small to win the large. Be the legend who dared where others paused.

 

Put aside everything you are doing for a moment and picture this: The greatest revolutions in history began as whispers—sometimes inaudible, often in trace amounts, like stardust on the office carpet or meaning stitched silently between spreadsheets and sighs. If it moved the dial, no one noticed. Because meaningful work tiptoes behind the curtains: not on the PowerPoint, never in the Weekly Biz Metrics, and usually unfit for a KPI.

 

What if the world’s most soulful change agents, best teachers, and quiet healers had to log their purpose on an Excel sheet? The most meaningful work? Zero columns. Infinite impact.

 

The Unmeasurable Revolution: A Manifesto for Invisible Work

 

This is where the tyranny of the dashboard kicks in. We’ve built a civilization obsessed with counting things that don’t matter while ignoring everything that does.

 

Your step count. Your engagement rate. Your productivity score. Your impact metrics. Your OKRs. Your KPIs. Your bloody everything-measurable-under-the-sun Index.

 

Meanwhile, the work that actually changes lives? It happens in the gaps between Excel cells. In the unmapped territories where dashboards fear to tread.

 

The most meaningful work you’ll ever do probably won’t be measurable. And it might not even be visible.

 

Welcome To The Scoreboard Seduction

 

We’re addicted to metrics like junkies to their next fix. Show us a number, and we’ll move heaven and earth to make it go up. Doesn’t matter if the number means anything. Doesn’t matter if chasing it turns us into soulless automatons.

 

The number went up. We won. Right?

 

Wrong.

 

The greatest con of the modern workplace is this: If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t matter.

 

This is capitalism’s most elegant lie. Simple. Seductive. Completely backward.

 

The truth? The things that matter most are allergic to measurement.

 

The Invisible Architecture of Love

 

A palliative care nurse in Kerala spends twenty minutes holding the hand of a dying woman who has no family. No one’s tracking those minutes. They don’t contribute to “patient throughput.” They’re inefficient as hell.

 

Those twenty minutes are also the most human thing that will happen in that hospital that day.

 

A customer service rep in Bangalore breaks protocol to spend an extra hour on a call with an elderly man who’s not just confused about his bill—he’s lonely. Her manager will flag this call as “excessive handle time.” Her dashboard will show red.

 

But that man will sleep better that night. And the rep will remember why she took this job in the first place—before it became about Average Speed of Answer and First Call Resolution rates.

 

An IT guy in a Pune startup notices a junior developer struggling. Not with code—with confidence. He doesn’t schedule a “mentoring session” that goes into his quarterly goals. He doesn’t create a “development plan” that HR can track.

 

He just starts having chai with her twice a week. Listening. Sharing his own imposter syndrome stories. Laughing about the absurdity of their industry.

 

Six months later, she’s thriving. She’ll never fully articulate why. He’ll never put it on his self-assessment.

 

This is the invisible work. The unmeasurable magic.

 

A Stellar Example of Japan’s Wisdom

 

After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, when Fukushima was melting down and chaos reigned, there was a group of retired engineers—all over sixty, most over seventy.

 

They called themselves the “Skilled Veterans Corps.” They volunteered to work in the nuclear plant’s most dangerous zones.

 

Why? Because they’d already lived their lives. The radiation would take decades to kill them—decades they likely wouldn’t have anyway. Meanwhile, young workers with families, with futures? They’d bear the cost for fifty years.

 

These old men weren’t heroes in the traditional sense. They weren’t soldiers charging into battle. They were showing up for shifts in protective gear, doing technical work, absorbing radiation into their aging bodies.

 

No glory. No celebration. Just the quiet mathematics of sacrifice.

 

How do you measure that? You can measure the radiation exposure. You can measure the hours worked. You can measure the prevented catastrophe in economic terms.

 

But the essence of what they did—choosing to be the buffer between disaster and the next generation? That’s unmeasurable. That’s the invisible architecture that holds civilization together.

 

The Performance Review Tightrope

 

Here’s what our annual performance review captures:

Projects completed |  Revenue generated |  Deadlines met

 

Here’s what it misses though:

• The time you talked a colleague out of quitting during their mental health crisis
• The moment you let someone else take credit because they needed it more
• The meeting where you said the thing everyone was thinking but afraid to voice
• The junior you protected from a toxic client while taking the heat yourself
• The hour you spent understanding someone’s context before judging their work
• The culture you quietly built by how you treated people when no one was watching

 

Your performance review is a beautifully crafted lie. It tells a story about your productivity while missing the entire story of your impact.

 

The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed: to measure the measurable and ignore the meaningful.

 

The Unspoken Economics of Care

 

Here’s a dataset that doesn’t exist: the economic value of mothers staying up until midnight helping kids with homework they don’t understand, in subjects they’ve forgotten, because the education system has outsourced learning to parents.

 

Here’s another missing metric: the hours of emotional labor women perform in workplaces—smoothing conflicts, remembering birthdays, asking “are you okay?” when everyone else is too busy optimising.

 

The GDP doesn’t count the grandfather who babysits so his daughter can work. The productivity reports don’t include the colleague who notices you’re drowning and redistributes work without being asked.

 

We’ve built an entire economic system that literally cannot see the work that makes the system possible.

 

The invisible subsidizes the visible. The unmeasured enables the measured. The uncounted makes everything countable work.

 

It Will Be A Shame To Dashboard This

 

So what do we do with this?

 

First: Stop apologizing for unmeasurable work.

When someone asks “but what’s the ROI?” on kindness, on patience, on presence—the answer isn’t to calculate some bullshit metric. The answer is: “Not everything that matters can be monetized, and that’s exactly why it matters.”

 

Second: Practice strategic invisibility.

 

Some of your best work should happen where the dashboards can’t see. In the gaps. In the margins. In the moments between meetings when you build trust, or share wisdom, or hold space.

Be excellent where it counts, not where it’s counted.

 

Third: Become a professional storyteller.

 

Since the systems won’t capture this work, you must. Not for credit. For memory. Tell the stories of invisible work. Celebrate it. Make it visible through narrative since data won’t do the job.

 

Fourth: Question the scoreboard.

 

Every time someone shows you a metric, ask: “What does this not measure?” Because what’s missing is usually what matters.

 

Fifth: Do the work anyway.

 

This is the hardest part. The system is rigged against invisible work. You won’t get promoted for it. You might not even get thanked for it.

 

Do it anyway.

 

Because the alternative is a world where nothing matters except what fits in a dashboard. And that world is a dystopia.

 

Where Do We Go From Here?

 

The teacher who stays late. The nurse who holds hands. The old man who lights lamps. The colleague who listens. The parent who shows up. The friend who remembers.

 

This is the work that holds the world together.

 

It won’t trend. It won’t scale. It won’t get you a TED talk.

 

It will make you human. It will change lives. It will echo in ways you’ll never fully know.

 

The most meaningful work you’ll ever do probably won’t be measurable. And it might not even be visible.

 

But it will be real.

 

And in a world drowning in fake metrics and performative productivity, real is the most radical thing you can be.

 

So go be unmeasurable. Go do invisible work. Go change lives in ways that will never show up on a spreadsheet.

 

The revolution won’t be quantified. But it will be worth it.

 

 

We begin in the misty, cedar-filled mountains of Japan, far from the neon of Tokyo. Here, a collective of farmers, calling themselves the “Mushroom Monks of Kyushu,” did something that defies all agricultural logic.

They foresaw a future where the Japanese youth, increasingly urbanized, would feel a deep, aching disconnect from their ancestral land and its culinary heritage. The taste of the forest, the umami of specific wild mushrooms, was becoming a fading memory on the palate of a nation.

So, what did they do? They didn’t just optimize their mushroom yield or improve their supply chain.

They started a “Taste Archive.”

They began deliberately cultivating and preserving the exact taste profiles of mushrooms from specific forests, at specific altitudes, from a specific time. They created a library of flavours, a sensory time capsule. They partnered with high-end kaiseki chefs not to sell a product, but to sell a memory—a memory their customers hadn’t even lost yet.

The Insight:They weren’t selling mushrooms. They were selling a bridge back to a soulful, authentic Japan that was slipping away. They painted a future where taste is a time machine, and they made themselves the chief engineers. They created nostalgia in advance.

 

You see, transformative brands don’t win because they predict the future. They win because they refuse to be guests in it. They don’t wait for invitations. They show up with spray paint and start creating murals on tomorrow’s walls.

 

And the rest? They’re still probably arguing about the color of their logo.

 

Let’s look at some brands that painted their own tomorrow.

 

The Soap Company That Became a Social Movement

 

Dharavi Diary didn’t start as a brand. It started as an uncomfortable question: “What if we stopped talking about marginalized communities and started amplifying from them?”

 

While premium brands were busy with sustainability theater—you know, the kind where they plant one tree for every thousand products sold—this Mumbai-based social enterprise turned leather waste from Dharavi into luxury bags. But here’s the twist: they didn’t position themselves as charity. They positioned themselves as craftsmanship.

 

No pity marketing. No poverty porn. Just world-class design that happens to demolish every assumption about where innovation comes from.

 

The future they painted? One where “made in slums” becomes a badge of honor, not shame. A lot of the brands are probably still running “awareness campaigns.”

 

Dharavi Diary became the awareness.

 

The Funeral Home That Chose Joy Over Grief

Stay with me here. I assure you it is NOT morbid.

 

In Australia, a funeral home called Bare Cremation looked at an industry drowning in Victorian solemnity and asked: “What if death doesn’t have to be depressing?”

 

They stripped away the ornate caskets, the hushed tones, the unnecessary $15,000 price tags. They created affordable, transparent, even—dare I say it—cheerful end-of-life services. Their website doesn’t whisper. It converses. Like you’re planning a celebration, not attending a tragedy.

 

The industry called it disrespectful. Families called it liberating.

 

While legacy funeral homes were polishing mahogany, Bare Cremation was rewriting the emotional contract around mortality itself.

 

Here’s our reality check: If a funeral home can inject radical optimism into death, what’s our excuse for boring our customers to tears with “value propositions”?

 

The Speedbreaker: Where Most Brands Get Stuck

 

Let me tell you where you’re hemorrhaging potential right now.

 

You’re obsessed with adaptation. Reading trend reports. Attending webinars on “future-proofing.” Hiring consultants to tell you what millennials want (spoiler: they’re almost 40 now, and you’re still asking the wrong question). Adaptation is defense. It’s playing not-to-lose.

 

Transformative brands don’t adapt to the future. They implicate themselves in its creation.

 

There’s a difference between asking “How do we stay relevant?” and “What future are we brave enough to demand?”

 

One keeps you in the game. The other changes the game entirely.

 

What is NOT common: Uncommon Courage- The Bank That Became a Lifestyle Before “Fintech” Was Cool: Nubank

 

Brazil’s purple revolution, didn’t launch with better interest rates. They launched with a middle finger to bureaucracy.

 

Traditional banks in Brazil treated customers like supplicants. Nubank treated them like humans who were tired of being patronized. No physical branches. No fine print ambushes. No waiting 45 minutes to talk to someone who’d ultimately say “no.”

 

Just clean design, transparent pricing, and a tone of voice that actually sounded like it was written by humans, not compliance officers.

 

By 2024, they’d become Latin America’s most valuable bank. Not by perfecting banking. By reimagining what banking could feel like.

 

The wake-up call: They didn’t win by being the best bank. They won by being the least bank-like bank.

 

The Bookstore That You Fell For, Book, Line & Sinker

 

To them, books were just the begining. Atta Galatta in Bangalore could have been another independent bookstore losing to Amazon’s algorithms and discounts.

 

Instead, they became Bangalore’s living room.

 

Author events? Sure. But also standup comedy. Political debates. Startup pitch nights. Children’s theater. A café where ideas percolate as much as coffee. They didn’t sell books—they sold belonging to a community that still believes words matter.

 

When Crossword and Landmark shut their doors, Atta Galatta expanded.

 

The brutal truth you need to hear: Your customers don’t need what you sell. They need what you stand for.

 

The Anatomy of Painting Yourself Into Tomorrow: Let’s get tactical. Because inspiration without implementation is just expensive procrastination.

 

1. Stop Completing Sentences. Start Asking Different Questions.

 

LVMH didn’t ask “How do we make luxury more accessible?” They asked “How do we make inaccessibility even more desirable?”

 

Patagonia didn’t ask “How do we sell more jackets?” They asked “How do we create customers who buy less?”

 

Zomato didn’t ask “How do we improve food delivery?” They asked “What if we turned delivery agents into micro-entrepreneurs?”

 

The quality of your future is determined by the quality of your questions. Right now, you’re probably asking incremental questions and wondering why you’re getting incremental results.

 

2. Embrace Productive Discomfort

 

In 2019, Mahindra launched the Treo electric three-wheeler, targeting last-mile mobility in India. Conventional wisdom said go big or go home. They went small—and strategic.

 

While everyone was obsessing over electric cars for the elite, Mahindra was electrifying the backbone of Indian commerce: the auto-rickshaw. Unglamorous? Absolutely. Transformative? Ask the 25,000+ drivers who now save ₹60,000 annually on fuel.

 

Your uncomfortable question: Are you chasing the spotlight or changing the system?

 

3. Build Mythology, Not Marketing

 

OpenAI didn’t position ChatGPT as “advanced language technology.” They positioned it as the democratization of intelligence itself. They made you feel like you were witnessing history, not buying software.

 

Amul, for 50+ years, hasn’t just sold butter. They’ve sold cheeky commentary on Indian culture, one topical ad at a time. They’re not in your refrigerator; they’re in your national consciousness.

 

The guilt trip you’ve earned: When was the last time your brand made someone feel something other than a commercial transaction?

 

So, Where Do We Go From Here? Here’s what separates transformative brands from those destined for case studies titled “What Went Wrong“:

 

They stopped asking permission.

 

Not from investors. Not from focus groups. Not from industry conventions.

 

They looked at the world as it was, imagined it as it could be, and started painting.

 

While Kodak was perfecting film, Instagram was erasing the need for it.

 

While Blockbuster was negotiating late fees, Netflix was ending the concept of “late.”

 

While your competitors are benchmarking each other, someone is benchmarking a future where you’re all irrelevant.

 

The Takeaways: Mind You- They Are Non-Negotiable

 

1. Stop forecasting. Start authoring.

Trends are what happened. Vision is what could happen if you have the courage to make it so.

 

2. Your competition isn’t another company. It’s inertia.

The reluctance to make your own products obsolete. The comfort of incremental gains. The fear of being misunderstood.

 

3. The future doesn’t need more participants. It needs more protagonists.

 

You either shape the narrative or you become a footnote in someone else’s.

 

In Closing, Truth Be Told

 

Most brands are preparing to survive the future.

 

Transformative brands are too busy creating it to care about survival.

 

The question isn’t whether the future will arrive.

 

It’s whether you’ll be part of the scenery—or part of the story.

 

So pick up that brush.

 

The wall is waiting.

 

And tomorrow doesn’t care about your quarterly review.

 

These Are Not Just For The Journal, But For Action: Three things you can do before your next meeting:

 

The Mortality Test: If your brand disappeared tomorrow, what would your customers actually miss? If the answer is “convenience,” you’re not a brand. You’re a utility awaiting disruption.

 

The 10-Year Reversal: Imagine your industry in 2035. Now work backward. What needs to die today for that future to exist? Are you brave enough to kill it?

 

The Alien Perspective: If someone from another planet read your brand materials, could they tell you apart from your competitors? If not, you’re not painting the future. You’re photocopying the present.

 

Stop waiting for the future to tell you who to be.
Start telling the future who you’ve decided to become.

 

That’s State Of The Heart Branding.

 

 

Introspection(terrifying?)time for every brand custodian:- what if the thing you’re most proud of—your decades of brand recognition—is precisely what’s going to kill you?

 

Let me come back to this. First, a story that reveals everything wrong with how we think about brand value.

 

The 168 year old giant that nobody noticed was dying

 

Indian Railways moves 23 million people daily. That’s the population of Australia. Daily.

 

For nearly two centuries, it WAS travel in India. Not “the best” option—the ONLY option for most of the country.

 

Brand familiarity? Through the stratosphere. Brand value? About to learn a brutal lesson.

 

Then something curious happened around 2015…

 

People stopped saying “I’ll take the train to the airport.”

 

They started saying “I’ll take an Ola.“

 

No fanfare. No dramatic announcement. The switch happened so quietly, most people didn’t consciously realize they’d made it.

 

What changed?

 

Not the trains. Not the brand. Not the recognition.

 

The system changed.

 

And here’s the part that should keep you up at night: The Indian Railways brand is still familiar to 1.4 billion people. It just stopped being necessary for the last mile.

 

This pattern—this quiet assassination of familiar brands—is happening in every category. And most brands won’t see it coming until it’s too late.

 

But, sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me show you how deep this goes.

The Blackberry Believers (Or: How Keyboards Became Gravestones)

 

Steve Jobs demos the iPhone. Blackberry’s CEO watches and literally laughs.

 

“No physical keyboard? Good luck typing emails on that toy.”

 

He had every reason to be confident. Blackberry users were evangelical. “Crackberry addiction” was a medical term. Enterprise adoption was at 100%.

 

Every metric screamed safety:

• Brand recognition
• Customer loyalty
• Market dominance

 

Familiarity was their moat. Or so they thought.

 

Fast forward 36 months.

 

Blackberry’s market share: cliff-diving.

 

Why? Not because iPhone built a better keyboard (it didn’t).

 

Because Apple built a better system:

 

• An App Store that turned phones into infinite tools
• Cloud integration that actually worked
• A developer ecosystem that made every other platform look like a walled prison

 

Current Blackberry market share: 0.01%

 

That’s not a typo. That’s what happens when you defend familiarity instead of building necessity.

 

You’re probably thinking: “But we’re not Blackberry. We’re different.”

 

Are you though? Let me show you something closer to home.

The Purple Signs That Stopped Working (Café Coffee Days Silent Exit)

Remember when CCD was THE coffee brand in India?

 

“A lot can happen over coffee” wasn’t just a tagline—it was embedded in urban India’s DNA.

 

Recognition scores? Off the charts. Locations? Everywhere. Mind share? Owned it.

 

Then what happened?

 

Nothing dramatic. No scandal. No overnight collapse.

 

People just… stopped going.

 

Not all at once. Not angrily. They just quietly found better systems:

 

Starbucks offered WiFi that actually worked (revolutionary!) and baristas who remembered your name

 

Third Wave & Blue Tokai gave them Instagram-worthy spaces (because your latte is now social currency)

 

Chaayos built loyalty programs that didn’t feel like relics from 1987

 

The death by inaction part?

 

Most ex-CCD customers don’t even remember switching. They just realized one day they hadn’t been in months.

 

That’s how familiarity dies. Not with a bang. With a shrug.

 

And here’s where it gets uncomfortable, because this isn’t ancient history. This is/could be happening RIGHT NOW in your category.

The Pattern You Can’t Unsee

 

Let me connect the dots you’ve probably suspected but haven’t voiced:

 

Kodak invented digital photography. Filed patents. Had the technology. Still died because they protected film sales instead of building new systems.

 

Nokia owned 40% of mobile phones globally. Still lost because they defended hardware while Apple built an ecosystem.

 

Blockbuster was Friday night incarnate. More familiar than your front door. Still disappeared because Netflix built a better delivery system.

 

Yahoo was THE internet homepage. Your parents’ first email. Still became irrelevant because Google built a system that got smarter with every search.

 

See the pattern?

 

Every single one of these brands had: Massive recognition | Decades of presence | Customer familiarity | Category dominance

 

What they didn’t have?

 

Systems that became MORE valuable as more people used them.

 

This is where most brand strategies fall apart. And why the next section might be the most important thing you read this month.

Why Network Effects are the New Brand Moat

 

Here’s a framework that changes everything:

 

OLD MOAT:Brand familiarity – Customer loyalty – Market share

 

NEW MOAT: Better system – Network effects – Competitive immunity

 

Let me show you what this looks like in practice:

 

WhatsApp wasn’t the first messenger. SMS was the most familiar communication tool on Earth.

 

But WhatsApp built something different: a system where YOUR value came from EVERYONE ELSE using it.

 

Your mom, your boss, your vegetable vendor, your school group, your society committee—all in one place.

 

By the time you thought about switching to another app, leaving WhatsApp meant leaving your entire social graph.

 

That’s not brand loyalty. That’s structural lock-in.

 

Same playbook, different category:

 

Swiggy/Zomato weren’t first in food delivery. Your local restaurant’s phone number was WAY more familiar.

 

But they built a network where:

• More restaurants – More choice for users
• More users – More orders for restaurants
• More orders – Better logistics – Faster delivery
• Faster delivery – More users

 

The flywheel spun until ordering any other way felt prehistoric.

 

PhonePe/Google Pay weren’t first in digital payments. CASH was the most familiar payment method in human history.

 

But UPI’s interoperability created network effects so powerful that even your street-side vendor now has a QR code.

 

The brands winning today aren’t the most familiar. They’re the ones that become more necessary with every new user.

 

Now here’s where brand custodians usually make a fatal mistake…

The User Experience Trap (Or: Why Good Enough Became Good Riddance)

 

Brands die when the gap between their UX and a competitor’s reaches escape velocity.

 

Test this yourself:

 

Open BookMyShow right now. Try to book a ticket.

 

Notice:

• The loading times (have a coffee while you wait)
• The mysterious “convenience fees” (that somehow cost more than the ticket)
• The UI that feels designed in the Paleolithic era

 

Now try any modern ticketing app.

 

Smooth. Fast. Transparent pricing. Respects your time.

 

BookMyShow was synonymous with movie tickets. Recognition? Total. Relevance? Eroding with every frustrated user who discovers there’s a better way.

 

The Indian taxi wars proved this brutally:

 

Meru and EasyCabs were first movers. Everyone knew them.

 

But their phone-booking system couldn’t compete with:

• Real-time cab tracking (game-changer for anxiety-prone audiences)
• No meter haggling, no “machine broken” excuses
• No explaining your location for 10 minutes

 

Better UX didn’t just win market share. It CREATED the market.

 

Meru became a verb nobody uses anymore.

 

Still thinking this doesn’t apply to you? Let me show you what’s probably happening in your own business right now.

The Uncomfortable Audit (Six Questions That Reveal Everything)

 

Pause here. Actually answer these:

1. Are people using you because they prefer you or because they’re used to you? (If you can’t tell the difference, it’s the latter)
2. If a funded competitor launched tomorrow with 10x better UX, how fast would you bleed? (Days? Weeks? Months? Be true)
3. Is your brand equity built on nostalgia or necessity? (Heritage is lovely. Utility is survival)
4. When was the last time you timed your critical user journeys? (Anything over 60 seconds is a ticking time bomb)
5. Does your product become MORE valuable as more people use it? (If not, you have zero network effects. Zero moat)
6. If you were founding a startup to kill your company, what would you build? (Someone’s asking this question. Better be you)

 

Here’s what these questions reveal:

 

If you’re uncomfortable with any answer, congratulations—you’re still saveable.

 

If you’re comfortable with all answers, you’re probably already dead; you just haven’t stopped moving yet.Sorry!

 

So what do you actually DO about this? Let me give you the playbook nobody talks about.

The Survival Playbook (Actual Actions, Not Platitudes)

Move 1: Build Systems, Not Just Products

 

Stop asking: “What do we sell?” Start asking: “What ecosystem are we creating?”

 

Example: Amazon didn’t build a better bookstore. They built Prime—a system where the membership itself became the moat. Once you’re paying for it, you default to Amazon for everything.

 

Your action: Map your value chain. Where can you integrate services that create lock-in through utility, not loyalty programs?

Move 2: Design Every Feature for Network Effects

 

Every product decision should answer: “Does this become more valuable as more people use it?”

 

Example: LinkedIn is sticky not because people love it (they don’t). But because your professional network lives there. Leaving means professional isolation.

 

Your action:

• Build features that require other users (sharing, collaboration, marketplaces)
• Make leaving costly through lost connections, not contracts
• Create viral loops where existing users bring new users

Move 3: Treat UX Like Blood Pressure

 

Because one day it’ll kill you if you ignore it.

 

Action items for that dreaded Monday morning meeting:

• Time every critical journey. Kill anything over 60 seconds
• Delete three steps from your checkout process. Today
• Implement one-click for everything possible
• Obsess over load times like they’re existential threats (they are)

 

Reality: Users forgive unfamiliar brands with great UX. They’ll never forgive familiar brands with terrible UX.

Move 4: War-Game Your Own Disruption

 

Quarterly exercise:

• Give a small team budget and permission to design your killer
• Identify your actual vulnerabilities (never what you think)
• Build those improvements before someone else builds them as weapons

 

Cautionary tale: Kodak invented digital photography. Then decided it would cannibalize film sales. So they shelved it.

 

We all know how that ended.

Move 5: Measure What Actually Matters

 

Stop tracking: Brand awareness, familiarity scores; Start tracking:

• Daily active vs. total users (engagement beats awareness)
• NPS with “Why?” (the answers reveal everything)
• Churn rate and actual reasons (your early warning system)
• Time to value (how fast do users get their “aha moment”?)

 

Truth be told: If you’re measuring “top-of-mind awareness” but not “would you defend us to a friend,” you’re measuring nostalgia, not value.

The Part That Nobody Wants to Hear

 

Your brand isn’t what you’ve built.

 

It’s what you’re building.

 

The moment you start trading on familiarity instead of investing in systems, UX, and network effects, you’re writing your obituary.

 

It might take five years. Maybe fifteen.

 

But it’s coming.

 

Think about this:

 

Every powerful brand you admire today disrupted a familiar brand yesterday.

• Netflix killed Blockbuster
• Spotify killed Tower Records
• Ola/Uber killed Meru
• WhatsApp killed SMS
• Amazon killed… (the list is long)

 

The familiar always feel invincible.

 

Right until they become invisible.

So, What Choice Do We Have?

You can defend your familiarity.

 

Or you can build systems that compound, experiences that delight, and networks that strengthen with scale.

 

One makes you a case study. The other makes you a category.

 

Which are you building?

Letting You In On A Little Secret: P.S. — The Real Reason I Wrote This

 

We are all tired of attending funerals for brands that saw it coming.

 

They had the data. They had the warnings. They had time.

 

What they didn’t have was the courage to admit that familiarity without utility is just expensive nostalgia.

 

If this post made you uncomfortable, good.

 

Discomfort is the first signal that you’re still in the game.

 

Share this with someone who needs the wake-up call.

 

And if you’re already building for network effects and superior systems? You’re already ahead.

 

Now go make familiarity earn its keep.

 

As your friendly neighbourhood provocateur, I offer( I know it is unsolicited) you a seditious piece of wisdom that feels like a slap and a caress at the same time. A gem from Liad Shababo that can shatter your chains:

 

“Not Wanting Something Is As Good As Having It.”

Read that again. Slowly. Let its absurd, almost offensive, simplicity wash over you.

It’s not about resignation. This isn’t the pathetic whimper of the defeated. This is the roaring silence of the truly empowered. This is the art of Strategic Indifference.

Think of it as the ultimate cheat code. While everyone else is stuck on the grinding treadmill of acquisition, you’ve just discovered the “Stop” button. And in that cessation, you find a possession more valuable than any object: your freedom.

 

This concept has been around for thousands of years. Supposedly, when Socrates visited a mall, he joyously declared to his friends, “Look at all these things I don’t need!” The truly rich are those who want nothing more than what they already have.

 

Liad Shababo dropped a philosophical grenade when he said, “Not wanting something is as good as having it.” And before you dismiss this as Silicon Valley zen-washing or another Instagram quote to screenshot and forget, let me tell you—this isn’t about settling. This is about sovereignty.

 

Wanting has become an epidemic. We’re drowning in desire. Not the passionate, life-affirming kind. The manufactured, algorithm-fed, influencer-endorsed kind that turns us into perpetual toddlers in a toy store, grabbing at everything, satisfied by nothing.

 

Here are a few wake-up calls for good measure.

 

The Japanese Konbini Paradox– Japan has 56,000 convenience stores. FIFTY-SIX THOUSAND. You’re never more than a few minutes from anything you could possibly want. Yet Japan also pioneered the concept of “Danshari“—the art of refusing, disposing, and separating from material wants. The country with the most access chose the path of least desire. They figured out what Silicon Valley’s optimization obsessives still haven’t: abundance and freedom are not the same thing.

 

The Mumbai Middle-Class Miracle– Middle-class Mumbai families in 600-square-foot apartments often report higher life satisfaction than upper-class Americans in 3,000-square-foot homes drowning in mortgage debt and unused rooms. Why? They’ve unconsciously optimized the denominator. Their wants haven’t inflated with every Instagram reel and every Shark Tank episode. They’re winning the game by not playing it.

 

The Swedish “Lagom” Advantage- Sweden didn’t become one of the world’s happiest countries by wanting more. They invented “Lagom“—not too little, not too much, just right. They’re not Instagramming their moderate-sized homes. They’re not flexing. They’re free. Their contentment doesn’t depend on the next acquisition. It’s baked into the culture of sufficiency.

 

Capitalism runs on manufactured discontent. Every ad is a surgical strike on your satisfaction. You were fine with your phone until they showed you the new one. You were comfortable with your body until they showed you the “after” photo. You were at peace until they showed you what you’re supposedly missing.

 

The game is rigged. The only winning move? Stop playing.

 

The Indian Wedding Industrial Complex- We’ve taken the beautiful ritual of marriage and turned it into a ₹3-lakh-crore anxiety festival. Destination weddings. Choreographed entries. Theme parties. Instagram-worthy mandaps. And after the 30th function, everyone’s exhausted, broke, and the marriage hasn’t even started.

 

Meanwhile, we all know of couples who got married at the local temple, spent ₹50,000, and invested the rest in their future. They don’t have the drone video. They also don’t have the debt, the family drama, and the hollow feeling of performing happiness for strangers.

 

Not wanting the spectacle gave them the substance.

 

The Minimalist Revolution Nobody’s Talking About– In South Korea, a growing movement of young people are practicing “Sohwakhaeng“—small but certain happiness. They’re opting out of the punishing work culture, the luxury aspirations, the status competitions. They’re choosing tiny apartments, simple meals, quiet weekends. The establishment calls them lazy. They call themselves liberated.

 

They’re not failing to want. They’re succeeding at not wanting.

 

Before we imported hustle culture and grind mentality from Silicon Valley, we had our own formula. The Bhagavad Gita’s concept of “Nishkama Karma“—action without attachment to results. Not apathy. Not laziness. Strategic detachment from outcomes.

 

Do the work. Skip the wanting.

 

The late Ratan Tata drove a modest car for decades while building an empire. The late Dr APJ Abdul Kalam lived in a simple home with fewer possessions than a college student. They weren’t pretending to be humble. They genuinely didn’t want the trappings. And that not-wanting became their superpower.

 

We seem to have forgotten the ancient Indian wisdom. And have become deeply invested  in this ‘ Republic of Not Enough ‘ where we never have the time or the flexibility to  look up from our ‘ Ledger Of Want ‘.

 

No, I am not trying to be crude or accusatory here. We are all beggars( well most of us). We sit at the roadside of life, holding out our mental bowl, pleading for the alms of a better job, a bigger house, a faster car, a more impressive title, more likes, more love, more, more, more. The traffic of desire never stops, and we, friends, are perpetually in a state of want.

It’s exhausting, isn’t it? This relentless pursuit. This gnawing feeling that we are just one purchase, one promotion, one holiday away from… what, exactly? Happiness? Contentment? Peace? No clue!

 

For years, the world wondered about the “Happiness Index” topping nations like Denmark and Norway. It’s not their wealth alone; it’s their culture of Lagom (just the right amount) and their social safety net. The profound peace that comes from not wanting for basic security—healthcare, education, a dignified life—is a form of national wealth that makes individual greed seem vulgar. By now, this has become The (Open) Scandinavian Secret.

 

This one quote , from Liad Shababo, is a silent grenade: “Not wanting something is as good as having it.”

 

Pause here. Let that detonate slowly.

 

Because we live in a world where we measure our worth by the things that fill our cart, our feed, and our calendar. We hoard stuff, opportunities, followers, love—anything that screams “more.” And then we wake up, weighed down by abundance, gasping for the oxygen of less.

 

And in a world perpetually zooming into its own hyperventilated wishlist — desire, demand, dopamine, repeat — this one line stated above from Liad Shababo walks in barefoot and turns off the power switch.

 

Desire becomes debt. Disguised as delight.

 

The modern world has turned wanting into wisdom’s opposite. Apple’s new launch pulls us like a tide, Zara tells us “last few pieces left,” and Instagram taunts us with the edited lives of the perpetually happy.

 

But take a deep breath and consider this paradox: the moment you no longer want that upgrade, that applause, that validation—you’re suddenly richer than every billionaire on the Forbes list.

 

In Bhutan, they measure happiness, not GDP. In Japan, monks clean temple floors like they’re polishing the soul. In India, a wandering sadhu needs no bank, no house, no hashtag—and somehow looks freer than those of us queuing for the next big thing.

 

The future might just belong to a new species: Not the Haves; Not the Have-Nots but the Had-Enoughs.

Those who’ve realized the dopamine trap and decided to unsubscribe from the endless scroll.

 

They’re designing brands that don’t seduce but serve, creating art that questions instead of pleases, and building companies that chase meaning, not market share. Wanting less isn’t resignation—it’s rebellion.

 

We might live in a world of Haves and Have-Nots. That said, maybe it’s time to join the Had-Enoughs. Those who know that the real flex isn’t owning more—but wanting less.

 

“The richest are not those with everything, but those who want nothing.”

 

When you no longer crave it, you’ve already conquered it. And that, right there, is the newest form of wealth: Quiet abundance.

 

Take a look at Japan’s Muji philosophy. Muji built a billion-dollar brand on the idea of not wanting more.

No labels. No noise. No screaming brand signatures.

Just purity of form.

They sell less to give people more.

.
A brand built on the virtue of subtraction.

And consumers? They bow.

 

So maybe the real milestone isn’t to “secure the bag,” but to set it down. The freedom lies not in gripping tighter, but in letting go like a monk at peace under a Bodhi tree—or a leader who finally realizes he doesn’t need all the noise to make a point.

 

In closing:

 

What if all the things we think we want are actually the things slowing us down?

 

What if the ultimate luxury is not ownership, but un-ownership?

 

What if your emptiness, handled right, is actually your most potent form of abundance?

 

It sounds counterintuitive. Slippery. Seductive.

But then again, that’s exactly how all truths look when they’re trying to wake you up.

 

 

 

I am not sure whether this is common knowledge but the greatest marketing line ever written wasn’t crafted in a corner office by a suited genius. It was born at a cash register by someone making minimum wage. And it changed capitalism forever.

 

Let’s talk about the line that made McDonald’s more money than their actual burgers. Might be an exaggeration, but you get the drift. How a minimum-wage question became a billion-dollar philosophy.

 

“Would you like fries with that?” . Six words. Infinite revenue.

 

But here’s where it gets juicier than their burgers: This wasn’t a sales pitch. It was a presumption wrapped in politeness. A suggestion masquerading as customer service. The brilliant bastardization of hospitality into commerce.

 

McDonald’s didn’t invent the upsell—they made it inevitable. They turned a transaction into a conversation. A purchase into a performance. And in doing so, they created what we can call The Folklore of the Obvious Add-On. You came for a burger. You left with fries, a drink, and a masterclass in behavioral economics.

 

Let us put our thinking cap on. The question assumes three things:

 

1. You(the customer) came here incomplete
2. They know what you need better than you do
3. Saying no requires effort

 

It’s not manipulation—it’s manufactured momentum. The fries were always the plan. The question just made you feel like it was your idea.

 

We can refer it as the Invisible Nudge. The real genius lies in making the upsell feel like common sense.

 

When someone asks “Would you like fries with that?“, they’re not selling fries. They’re selling completeness. The psychological equivalent of “You wouldn’t leave the house with one sock, would you?”

 

Some questions change destinies. Some, just cholesterol levels. But when McDonald’s asked: ‘Would you like fries with that?’—they didn’t just upsell snacks, they upcycled the art of suggestion into folklore. Brand magic, on a platter.

 

This is how things get contagious.

 

Amazon took the McDonald’s playbook and gave it algorithmic steroids. Remember ‘ frequently bought together ‘ ? They don’t ask if you want something—they show you what people like you have already bought. It’s peer pressure by data. The upsell doesn’t come from a teenager at a register; it comes from the collective behavior of millions. Tribal Bias or Collective Wisdom– call it whatever you might want to.

 

Result? The “bought together” module alone generates billions. Not because people need those items, but because the bundling creates a narrative: This is what smart shoppers do. People like us do things like this. That is culture defined simplistically. 

 

Starbucks weaponized size psychology. A “tall” is actually small. A “grande” is medium. And a “venti” sounds Italian and sophisticated, not just “more coffee.” The upsell is hidden in the nomenclature. You’re not buying more—you’re upgrading your experience.

 

Would you like to make that a venti? The barista’s question isn’t about volume. It’s about identity. Are you a tall person or a venti person?

 

The Spotify– ‘ Upgrade To Premium ‘ story is no different.

 

Every. Single. Time. You. Open. The. App.

 

Spotify doesn’t wait for you to get annoyed by ads. They remind you before the pain hits. It’s pre-emptive upselling. The message? “You know this free thing is temporary, right? Real users pay.”

 

And when you finally cave? It feels like your decision to evolve.

 

Haldiram’s Sauf at the Counter nudge. You pay for your bhujia. The cashier slides a tiny packet of saunf and mishri toward you. Free. Refreshing. Memorable.

 

But here’s the trick—you’re standing there, saunf in mouth, staring at shelves of namkeen you didn’t plan to buy. That free gesture? It’s dwell time strategy. The longer you linger, the higher the chance you grab that ₹50 packet of moong dal.

 

Haldiram’s turned Indian hospitality into a holding pattern for impulse buys.

 

This is a clever strategy used by Wrigley’s | Durex | Marlboro | Kit Kat | Axe etc at most supermarket check out counters. Visible + Accessible = Impulse Buy.

 

The story is similar with Swiggy’s nudge that whispers ‘ Top Rated Items From This Restaurant ‘-

 

Mid-checkout, Swiggy whispers: “People loved the chicken tikka from here.”

 

You came for biryani. You’re leaving with tikka, naan, and gulab jamun. The upsell isn’t pushy—it’s curated. You’re not spending more; you’re avoiding regret.

 

If you have ever gone jewelry shopping at Tanishq, you would have heard this ‘ Would You Like to See the Matching Earrings? ‘.

 

Indian jewellery retail is the Olympics of upselling. You walk in for a necklace, you walk out with The Full Set. But Tanishq doesn’t pressure—they complete your vision. And you fall neck, line and sinker for it.

 

“These earrings were designed to complement this necklace.”

 

What you heard or felt: Without the earrings, you’re only half-dressed. And nobody wants to be half-dressed at a wedding.

 

That brings me to another masterpiece in nudge marketing a k a IKEA: The Showroom That Never Ends.

 

IKEA doesn’t upsell you verbally. They do it architecturally. The store layout is a maze designed to expose you to everything. You came for a lamp. You’re leaving with a lamp, a rug, throw pillows, and those weird Swedish meatballs.

 

The genius? Every room is staged like a complete life. Walking through IKEA is like scrolling through someone else’s Pinterest board. You don’t want items—you want that feeling.

 

Automotive Marketing: Re-Invented and How! That is Tesla and its ‘ Upgrade Your Auto-Pilot ‘.

 

Tesla sells you a $60,000 car. Then, after you drive it, they offer software upgrades. Not new cars—better versions of the car you already own.

 

It’s the ultimate upsell: No inventory. No manufacturing. Just code. And suddenly, your car isn’t depreciating—it’s evolving.

 

(Up)selling them brick by brick. Lego.

 

Lego doesn’t sell toys. They sell ecosystems. Buy one Star Wars set, and suddenly you need the matching ships, figures, and display cases. Each set whispers: You’re collecting a universe, not a product.

 

Lego turned the upsell into a quest for completeness.

 

So are you Up for it? Here are some takeaways( you can dine in as well!):

 

Don’t pitch—complete. Position your add-on as the thing that makes the original purchase whole. “You bought the course? Here’s the workbook that makes it practical.”- In other words, make the upsell feel like common sense. 

 

Use data, design, and defaults to your advantage. Amazon doesn’t ask—they show. Let behavior patterns do your selling. Lesson: Automate The Nudge. 

 

Design your core offer so the add-on feels obvious. Apple doesn’t sell you an iPhone and leave—they sell you AirPods, cases, AppleCare. Each is positioned as protection or enhancement, not expense. Translates to: Create The Incomplete Purchase. 

 

Starbucks doesn’t sell sizes—they sell personas. What does your premium tier say about your customer? What does it imply? Turn Upsells Into Identity Markers.

 

Haldiram’s gives you saunf. Hotels offer welcome drinks. The generosity disarms you. Then the upsell doesn’t feel like selling—it feels like continuing the care. What do we do:- Use Hospitality as a Trojan Horse.

 

IKEA shows you the complete room. You’re not buying a chair—you’re buying that life. Show the ecosystem, not the item. Learning: Stage the Full Experience.

 

Tesla’s genius: The upsell improves what you already have. Frame your offers as enhancements to existing investments. So, what is the ride all about? : Offer Upgrades, Not Just Add-Ons.

 

Since we are on fries, in closing, here’s some food for thought:

 

Walk into a McDonald’s this week. Order a burger. When they ask “Would you like fries with that?”, pause. Feel the pull. Notice how the question assumes your yes.

 

Then go back to your business and ask: Where’s your fries question?

 

What’s the obvious add-on you’re not offering because you’re too polite, too shy, or too afraid of seeming pushy?

 

McDonald’s built an empire by assuming you wanted more. Maybe it’s time you did too.

 

Because the real folklore isn’t in the fries. It’s in the ask.

 

The humble pencil has been quietly doing thought leadership since before LinkedIn was even a sparkle in Silicon Valley’s binary eyes.

 

Think about it. The pencil doesn’t brag. It doesn’t ping. It doesn’t need Wi-Fi to work.

It just sits there — a stick of potential — until someone decides to make a mark.

 

A pencil doesn’t brag about permanence. It just quietly leaves a mark.
And when it errs, it erases itself with dignity.

 

That alone makes the pencil a better leader than most boardrooms.

 

Every time you pick one up, remember—it’s a complete life lesson disguised as stationery. Inside it sits the lead, soft yet unbending, intimate yet expressive.

That’s your purpose—always hidden, yet silently defining every stroke.

 

And outside? That’s the polish, the woodwork, the grain that seduces the eye.

It gets all the attention. But without the lead, it’s just furniture. Pencil that as vividly as possible in the recesses of your mind.

 

We humans spend a lifetime painting our wood—degrees, LinkedIn posts, designer suits. Very few bother to sharpen their lead.

 

Sharpening hurts. It’s friction. It’s loss. It’s the sound of you scraping identity off yourself so you can write better lines tomorrow.

 

Every cut you endure, every failure you suffer, every mistake you own—they’re your sharpener at work.

 

Want a blunt existence? Avoid discomfort. You’ll stay round, safe, and useless.

 

The eraser on top isn’t for regret. It’s a symbol of humility. You’d be shocked how fast you grow when you allow correction instead of defending creed.

 

Erase. Redraw. Rewrite. Leaders who can re-edit themselves are the ones who craft timeless scripts. What we call ” Persuadable “.

Remember the best films appear exceptional not because of what you see but because of what you don’t see. Sharpening to edit. Re craft. Rewrite.

 

Self-chosen sharpening is called growth. Life-imposed sharpening is called crisis. Pick your pain.

 

Let’s look at some common(and uncommon) examples.

 

When Roger Federer sliced edges of his game to stay relevant at 37—he was sharpening.

Whenthe persian Poet Rumi burned through identities till only his words remained—he was sharpening.

When Annie Leibovitz threw away early fame to rediscover storytelling through stillness—she was sharpening.

 

Even the Porsche designer who left a single imperfection in every model to remind himself it’s man-made, not divine—that’s eraser philosophy in motion.

 

Here’s where pencils get metaphysically brilliant: they put the eraser at the top.

 

Not at the bottom where it’s convenient. Not integrated into the side where it’s hidden. Right at the crown, where you can’t miss it, where it literally stands above everything else.

 

The message? Your ability to admit mistakes, to course-correct, to unwrite your errors—that’s your highest function.

 

That is why the eraser sits on top of the pencil. It is wisdom.

 

The leaders who have sharpened enough times know: the eraser isn’t defeat. It’s weaponized humility.

 

Most people spend their lives defending their first draft. Pencils know better. The eraser says: “I’m powerful enough to create AND wise enough to destroy my own work if it doesn’t serve.”

 

That’s not weakness. That’s mastery.

 

If the below comes across as rebellious or a manifesto for the disabled, it is intentional.

 

So here’s my ode. The love letter. A battle cry.

 

To every pencil masquerading as a decoration: Your wood is lovely, but your silence is deafening.

 

To every person polishing their exterior while their purpose atrophies: Your Instagram looks amazing, but your eulogy will be empty.

 

To everyone afraid of being sharpened: You can stay comfortable and dull, or you can hurt briefly and matter eternally. Choose.

 

The pencil’s genius is its honesty. It doesn’t pretend. It doesn’t posture. It doesn’t confuse looking good with being useful. It exists to mark the world. Everything else is in service of that.

 

In the end, the pencil’s legacy isn’t its beauty.

 

It’s the marks it left behind.

 

The signature on the contract. The love letter that changed everything. The equation that solved the problem. The sketch that became a building. The note that said “I believe in you” at exactly the right moment.

 

You are not your paint job. You are not your packaging. You are not even your potential.

 

You are what you mark on the world when nobody’s watching, when it’s hard, when the only reason to do it is because your graphite demands expression.

 

If, we are too busy pretending our wood is enough, here is some lead for torque( a k a food for thought)…

 

Spend more on lead, less on wood. For every rupee/dollar/hour you invest in appearance, invest three in substance. Read more than you post. Learn more than you perform. Build more than you broadcast. Create more than you consume.

Erase publicly. Next time you’re wrong, say it out loud. “I was wrong about X.” Watch how much power it gives you. The eraser only works when you actually use it. The ability to stand naked in your own truth.

 

Befriend friction. Stop avoiding uncomfortable conversations, challenging projects, and steep learning curves. They’re not obstacles. They’re the sharpener. Lean in. Embrace uncertainty. As they say in latin ” Dubito ergo Creo “- I doubt, therefore I create.

 

Check your pencil case. Look at your inner circle. Are they pencils with purpose, or decorative dowels with impressive LinkedIn bios? You become the average of your pencil case. Choose accordingly.

 

Write something that matters. Today. Not tomorrow. Not when you’re ready. Use your lead while you have it. Every day unwritten is graphite wasted.

 

So here’s the question, the one that matters I reckon:

 

What are you writing?

 

Not what are you displaying. Not what are you curating. Not what are you optimizing for maximum engagement. I repeat:-

 

What. Are. You. Writing?

 

Because one day, sooner than you think, you’ll be too short to sharpen. The eraser will be worn to nothing. The wood will crack and splinter.

 

And all that will remain is the mark you made.

 

Make it deep. Make it true. Make it matter.

 

Be the pencil.

 

Hit reply. What’s your pencil story?

 

 

 

 

“ Sadness isn’t always a sign that something went wrong- Sometimes it’s a sign that something went right “.

 

At the cost of becoming unpopular, let me assert that if you’re not sad sometimes, you’re not actually living. Here’s the neuroscience, philosophy, and poetry that proves it.

 

We’ve been sold a lie, a glossy, Instagram-filtered falsehood that happiness is the default setting. That sadness is a system error, a glitch in the matrix of a well-lived life. We treat it like an unwanted guest, frantically spraying the emotional equivalent of air freshener to mask its scent.

But what if I told you that the scent isn’t something rotting? It’s the aroma of a deeply lived-in life. That sadness isn’t always a sign that something went wrong. Sometimes, my dear, it’s a roaring, tear-streaked, heart-clutching sign that something went profoundly right.

Let’s reframe the narrative, shall we?

 

The Persian poet Rumi wrote: “Don’t turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”

 

Maybe sadness is the soul’s way of genuflecting before what was holy. Maybe tears are just love that doesn’t know where else to go. Maybe the ache in your chest isn’t a malfunction—it’s your heart’s way of saying, ” This mattered. This mattered so much that I will never be the same.”

 

And isn’t that exactly the sign that something went magnificently, devastatingly, beautifully right?

 

So the next time sadness visits—not the clinical kind, but the sacred kind—don’t slam the door. Ask it: “What are you protecting? What are you honoring? What truth are you trying to tell me?“

 

There are days when the heart feels like a rain‑drenched street — reflective, quiet, cluttered with yesterday’s footprints. And yet, somewhere in that puddle of melancholy, lies a shimmer of truth: sadness doesn’t always mean a collapse; sometimes it signals a completion. A season ended because it was meant to.

 

What if you felt sad not because you lost something, but because you truly experienced it? Fully. Fiercely. Finally.

 

Because sometimes, sadness isn’t the problem. Sometimes, it’s the proof.

 

We have all been through it. Close encounters of the soul kind.

 

Sometimes sadness is gratitude’s quieter cousin. The lump in your throat when your child steps onto a flight to college. The silence after the applause fades at a performance you nailed. That odd stillness after a breakup you both knew was inevitable—not because you failed, but because you finally learned.

 

Pain here isn’t punishment. It’s punctuation. The period after a beautiful, honest sentence.

 

Because to feel sadness means you cared. It means you dared to invest emotion in something ephemeral. It means you participated. The numb don’t feel sad—they just exist like unbothered mannequins in an air‑conditioned showroom. But you—you lived, loved, listened, risked. And that’s why the soul sends you that saline invoice. It’s the tax of having tasted meaning.

 

So the next time sadness tiptoes in uninvited, don’t slam the door. Offer it tea. Let it sit. Listen to what it’s saying—it’s often whispering, “You’ve grown.”

 

An astronaut once said he felt the deepest ache…not when he left Earth,
but when he saw it from above— knowing he may never see it that way again. That’s not loss. That’s awe masquerading as a tear.

 

A teacher smiles, watery-eyed, as her last batch graduates. Her sadness isn’t about endings. It’s about impact. It’s the exquisite pain of having mattered.

 

A tree that sheds its leaves isn’t dying—it’s evolving. Sadness often signals the same: growth completing its cycle.

 

It’s the emotional interest you’re earning on an investment of love. The pain of separation is directly proportional to the beauty of the connection. If it didn’t hurt to say goodbye, what would that say about your hellos? This sadness is the shadow cast by a very large, very real monument of affection in your life. Cherish the ache; it means you built something magnificent.

 

Sadness isn’t a failure—it’s emotional evidence that you showed up fully.

 

Ever listened to a piece of music—a raga, a flamenco piece, a blues song—that is so heartbreakingly beautiful it brings tears to your eyes? Or read a poem that feels like it’s speaking the secret language of your soul?

That is not depression. That is elevation.

You are feeling the profound gap between the mundane and the magnificent. The artist held up a mirror to a depth of human experience you recognize but rarely touch. The sadness you feel is a form of resonance, a tuning fork in your soul vibrating at a frequency of sublime truth. It’s a sign that your humanity is fully operational, that you haven’t been numbed by the drone of the daily grind.

 

The first step to emotional intelligence is to stop seeing sadness as the enemy. Greet it. Ask it, “What are you here to teach me?” You’ll be amazed at the answers. Net net: let’s stop pathologising our pain.

 

Sadness means you showed up. You loved deeply. You risked greatly. You felt profoundly. That’s a high score in the game of life, not a low one. Thats the Credit Score for your Courage.

 

Don’t build a shrine for your sadness. Acknowledge it, learn from it, offer it a cup of tea, and then let it be on its way. It’s a visitor, not a tenant. Let it move through you, not into you. 

 

So the next time you feel that familiar tug of sorrow, don’t reach for the panic button. Reach for your perspective. Look that feeling in the eye and say, “Ah, I see. Something here mattered. Something was right.”

Your heart isn’t breaking. It’s just stretching, making more room for the incredible, complex, and breathtaking tapestry of your one, wild life.

 

 

We love to be noticed—but preferably without being caught trying. We want to look humble. Loudly.

 

We’re not wired to reject applause. But we can choose what we applaud ourselves for.

 

Watch a traveller at a boarding gate. The guy who elbowed his way into “priority boarding” for a two-hour flight will later complain about legroom to the universe on Instagram. In the same lifetime, he’ll tiptoe into a church, looking for the safest pew at the very back—somewhere humility can be faked from a holy distance.

 

Then, once the lights dim and the spotlight swivels to “open mic night,” he clears his throat and steps right into the beam—hoping the applause wipes off his contradictions.

 

That’s us: human beings in perpetual tug-of-war between status and substance, being seen and being meaningful.

 

We crave visibility like plants crave sunlight—but we forget that too much sun burns.

 

We are all, in our own ways, scrambling for the front seat, the back seat, and the spotlight. It’s not a character flaw. It’s a human operating system that’s about 200,000 years old, screaming for tribal validation.

But what if we’re measuring the wrong damn things?

 

The other day I watched a man at Starbucks spend seven minutes explaining to the barista—and anyone within earshot—how he likes his coffee. Not just extra hot or light foam. A full treatise. Temperature specifications. Milk-to-espresso ratios. The philosophical underpinnings of his relationship with caffeine.

 

The barista’s name tag said “Trainee.” And I thought: We’ve all been this guy.

 

Maybe not about coffee. Maybe about our LinkedIn headline. Or how we angle ourselves in the Zoom grid. Or the exact moment we drop our college name into conversations (IIT/IIM/Harvard—deployed like a surgical strike, maximum impact, minimal context).

 

There’s that old line that nails us all: “Everyone wants the front seat of a plane, the back seat of a Church, and the centre of attention.”

 

Attention: Yes, we need it. Because,  the human brain is literally wired for social recognition. When someone validates us, our ventral striatum lights up like Diwali in Delhi. Same neural pathway as cocaine, by the way. (No wonder Instagram feels the way it does).

 

Lets understand the flip side of it though- it’s both essential and toxic. Like salt. Like sunlight. Like your cousin’s unsolicited life advice.

 

The sweet spot isn’t in renouncing attention, nor in bingeing on it.
It’s in earning gravity. When gravity replaces vanity, your presence wins even when you’re not on stage.

 

Find that patch of ground where silence commands more respect than spectacle. Where your work speaks louder than your home theatre.

 

You can be visible—for the right verbs. Strive to be significant, not seen. Impact is the only spotlight that doesn’t flicker. Don’t chase applause; engineer aftermath.

 

Everyone wants the spotlight. Few realise it melts wax.

 

We’re a curious species, aren’t we?

We crave comfort, but also sanctity. We want spotlight, but with a dimmer switch — just enough glow to make our halo visible.

 

Everyone wants the front seat of the plane.
The one with legroom, priority boarding, and champagne on tap. But when turbulence hits, even the pilot wishes for the aisle near the exit.

 

Everyone wants the back seat of the Church.
Close enough to salvation, far enough from the sermon.
It’s the spiritual equivalent of “seen attending.”
God, yes. Guilt, no thanks.

 

And everyone — oh everyone — wants the centre of attention.
That magnetic midpoint between relevance and reverence.
Where eyes turn, heads nod, hearts double-tap.

 

But here’s the body blow — you can’t be in all three places at once. Not on any map that matters.

 

What if the real centre of attention is attention itself? Not the kind you get, but the kind you give.

 

When you walk into a meeting — and actually listen.
When you show up to serve, not just to be seen.
When you build something that outlasts your LinkedIn headline.

 

Because here’s the truth no algorithm tells you:
Applause fades. Attention shifts. Algorithms forget.
But impact compounds. Quietly.

 

Some inspiring examples to count on:-

 

The janitor at NASA who, when asked what he did, said, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.” He wasn’t in the front seat of the rocket, but history remembers his purpose.

 

The sound engineer who made Freddie Mercury’s voice echo through eternity. No camera, all craft.

 

The tea seller outside the Supreme Court, who knows every lawyer by name, but never interrupts a client call. His EQ > any MBA.

 

The teacher who didn’t have an Instagram, but whose students now run the world.

 

These aren’t front seats. They’re foundations.

 

So, what do we take away?

 

Redefine applause. Let it come from the mirror, not the crowd.

 

Curate your noise. Speak less, mean more.

 

Trade seats. Sit where contribution feels most uncomfortable—that’s where growth is boarding.

 

Don’t chase the centre of attention. Become the axis of impact.

 

Be so relevant, you don’t need to trend.

 

Brand USA: Do you think the Land Of The Free Has A Branding Problem?

 

What happens when the world’s most powerful brand starts looking unsure of its own tagline? When The Land of the Free starts sounding like The Land of the Frayed?

 

America, the ultimate brand story, wasn’t built on clever copy or viral campaigns. It was built on four timeless values — Freedom, Opportunity, Dignity, Rights. Imperfectly practiced, yes. Fiercely believed, absolutely. The founding script, inked not for profit but for posterity, turned an idea into identity. And that identity became export-grade — from Coca-Cola to NASA, Disneyland to Apple, Levi’s to Lady Liberty herself.

 

It had all the hallmarks of a great brand- a brilliant story of origin, the quintessential stars and stripes, the landmarks(both architectural and historical), a national anthem that reverberates both in mind and soul and the incredible gravitas to sell a dream to the rest of the world for decades.

 

Where are we now? I need not stick my neck out to say that Brand USA has a severe identity crisis today.

 

Pop icon Bruce Springsteen immortalised it when he said, “We are lost. We’ve lost so much in so short a time.”

 

Here’s the thing about great brands—they don’t fail because they run out of money. They fail because they run out of meaning. And right now, Brand USA is hemorrhaging meaning faster than a Super Bowl ad budget.

 

Let’s talk about what happens when iconic brands lose their way. Not collapse. Not disappear. Just… drift.

 

Nike did it in the ’90s when it became more about stock prices than soul. Apple did it in the wilderness years when it forgot computers were supposed to delight people, not just compute. Starbucks did it when “third place” became “forty-seventh identical location.”

 

And Brand USA? It’s doing it right now.

 

But here’s the twist that should fill all of us with hope rather than dread: Every single one of those brands came roaring back. Not by shouting louder. Not by spending more. By remembering who they were supposed to be in the first place.

 

Lets go back in time to the brand promise of Brand USA: Strip away the mythology, the flag-waving, the foam fingers, and what you have is one of history’s most audacious brand propositions:

 

Freedom. Opportunity. Dignity. Rights.

 

Not perfect. Not even close. Flawed and complicated and riddled with contradictions from day one. But revolutionary nonetheless. The founding documents read less like governance manuals and more like the world’s first purpose-driven brand manifesto.

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”

 

That’s not policy. That’s poetry. That’s a brand promise that made people cross oceans, risk everything, believe in something bigger than themselves.

 

The product hasn’t changed. The promise is still there, carved in marble and parchment. What’s changed is the trust. And trust, as any brand strategist will tell you, is the only currency that actually matters.

 

It might seem like a magic potion but it is not. Iconic brands have won back lost glory.

 

Brand resurrection stories that nobody wants to hear: It doesn’t happen in boardrooms. It happens in living rooms. In town halls. In coffee shops and comment sections and conversations between strangers who decide to stop treating each other like enemies.

 

Brand USA’s problem isn’t messaging. It’s listening.

 

The greatest brand turnarounds in history share one thing: they stopped marketing at people and started hearing from them. They got radically honest about the gap between promise and reality. They admitted the emperor’s new clothes were actually a torn T-shirt.

 

Consider this: When Domino’s admitted their pizza tasted like cardboard and rebuilt from scratch—sales soared. When Tylenol faced a crisis and chose transparency over spin—they became more trusted than before. When LEGO almost went bankrupt and rediscovered their core purpose—they became the world’s most valuable toy brand.

 

The pattern? Honesty. Consistency. Humanity.

 

Contrary to the understanding that the majority might have, and which no marketing playbook would be ready to articulate, BrandUSA is NOT owned by politicians or pundits or talking heads on screens. It’s owned by 330 million brand custodians who wake up every day and decide what this brand actually means.

 

Want examples? They’re everywhere.

 

The teacher in Oklahoma who spends her own money on school supplies because she believes in the promise of equal opportunity. The entrepreneur in Detroit turning urban blight into urban farms. The programmer in Austin creating tools to make government more transparent. The volunteers in North Carolina rebuilding after hurricanes, not because they were told to, but because that’s what neighbors do.

 

The Marine who served three tours and now mentors at-risk kids. The immigrant who opened a restaurant and employed thirty people. The teenager organizing voter registration drives. The retired couple fostering their seventh child.

 

These people aren’t marketing Brand USA. They’re being Brand USA.

 

They’re not perfect either. None of us are. But they’re showing up, doing the work, living the values that made this brand matter in the first place. They’re the proof of concept. The walking testimonials. The reason this brand is worth saving.

 

Let’s introspect(and be uncomfortable for a moment). Great brands in crisis don’t just slap on a new coat of paint and call it transformation. They do the hard work of self-examination. They ask questions that have no easy answers:

 

Where did we compromise our values?
Who did we leave behind?
When did we start believing our own hype instead of delivering on our promise?
What would it look like to actually mean what we say?

 

This isn’t about left or right. This isn’t about red or blue. This is about a brand that promised freedom and opportunity realizing that those words ring hollow when massive chunks of the customer base feel neither free nor full of opportunity.

 

It’s about a brand that wrote “all men and women are created equal” and is still, centuries later, trying to figure out if it actually meant “all.”

 

The reflection isn’t weakness. It’s the prerequisite for strength. You can’t fix what you won’t face.

 

Story first, slogans second. ALWAYS.

 

Perhaps this is where most brands get it backwards. They think a clever tagline will save them. A viral campaign. A celebrity endorsement. A Super Bowl spot.

 

Brand USA doesn’t need a new slogan. It needs new stories. True ones.

 

The story of the Sikh community in California feeding wildfire victims. The story of Republicans and Democrats working together to fix crumbling infrastructure in their county because potholes don’t have party affiliations. The story of the church and the mosque sharing a parking lot and organizing joint food drives.

 

The story of the conservative farmer and the liberal professor discovering they both want their kids to inherit a livable planet. The story of the cop and the protester having coffee and realizing they both want the same thing: safe communities where everyone belongs.

 

These aren’t Hallmark movies. These are happening right now. They’re just drowned out by the noise machine that profits from division.

 

Great brands amplify the stories that matter. They don’t manufacture sentiment. They surface truth.

 

The turning point for Brand USA won’t come from Washington. It won’t come from Silicon Valley or Wall Street or Hollywood.

 

It’ll come when enough citizens decide they’re tired of being marketed to and start demanding something real. When they stop outsourcing their citizenship to politicians and reclaim it for themselves. When they realize that democracy isn’t a spectator sport and brand stewardship isn’t someone else’s job.

 

It’ll happen when we stop talking at each other through screens and start talking with each other as human beings. When we treat disagreement not as betrayal but as the natural friction of people who care about different aspects of the same shared brand.

 

When we remember that we’re not customers of Brand USA. We’re not even just citizens.

 

We’re co-creators. Stakeholders. The brand itself.

 

When the needle moves from marketing to movement.

 

If you permit me to state the obvious here- Cut through all the complexity and you find that iconic brands, the ones that endure, share a few simple truths:

 

They’re honest. They admit mistakes. They close the gap between what they say and what they do. They understand that credibility is built in millimeters and destroyed in miles.

 

They’re consistent. Not static—consistent. They evolve without abandoning their core. They adapt without betraying their essence. They know that trust is built through repeated proof.

 

They’re human. They remember that behind every transaction, every interaction, every touchpoint is a person with fears and dreams and a desire to belong to something meaningful.

 

Brand USA has been all three at its best. It can be again.

 

The path forward isn’t easy. Yet, it is simple.

 

Because citizenry is a two way contact sport, not a spectator sport.

 

Because, Brand USA isn’t broken beyond repair. It’s battered, bruised, trust-depleted, and desperately in need of a reality check. But the fundamentals are still there. The infrastructure. The talent. The diversity of thought and background and experience that is, ironically, both the challenge and the competitive advantage.

 

When success is measured not by how well one group is doing but by how well all groups can thrive. When “freedom” is understood not as freedom from each other but freedom for each other to pursue their version of the American dream.

 

The question isn’t whether Brand USA can make a comeback.

 

The question is: Are the citizens there willing to be a part of it?

 

Not by posting. Not by arguing. Not by waiting for someone else to fix it.

 

By being the brand you want to see. By embodying the values you claim to cherish. By treating fellow citizens not as enemies in a zero-sum war but as stakeholders in a shared future.

 

The land of the free has a branding problem. But every great branding problem is really a people problem. And people, when they decide to, can change anything.

 

The eagle is still flying. It’s just waiting for us to remember where we’re supposed to be going.

 

And that, my friends, is how iconic brands come back.