How I found my uniqueness

It took me 7 years to discover my talent, and my zone of genius.

Ideally, you want to get paid for doing the things that only you can uniquely do well. Because capitalism rewards rarity. You want to be the only, not the best —in a valuable area.

In this post, I'll explain what I uniquely do well – how I discovered my uniqueness – and how I've applied it across different 'business' and non-business contexts.

The things that we uniquely do well, are things that we know not how we do them. It comes from a different source altogether. It is not "us" that does it. It - just - happens through us. And although this may sound like some voodoo BS, I promise you it's not.

My first hypothesis about what I uniquely do well was — I understand people better than others —> I use this understanding to engage with them authentically —> this authentic engagement leads to emotional resonance —> this emotional resonance leads to influence.

Let's break it down:

I understand people better than others — what does this mean?

it means I see through people. I'm able to accurately understand what's true about them, and what's false – in a jiffy! I'm able to understand what they want, what they care about, and what moves their heart. And when I say I understand, I'm not referring to an intellectual understanding. This happens automatically — at a subconscious level — with no effort involved. It happens without my conscious involvement – whenever I'm meeting someone, or going through someone's online profile, or doing audience research, and so on. (unrelated but this is why one of my life goals is to keep refining my understanding of people)

I got the first hint at this from Dr. Sakshi's testimonial video (ex Senior Manager at Tata 1mg – valued at $1.25B). We worked together to grow 1mg's youtube channel from 2k to over 1M subscribers in about 18 months.

the most popular videos on their channel are all produced by me.
100% organic – no ads.

click on the "popular" tab to see their most popular videos

Cumulatively, 1mg's videos reached over 150M people organically over a span of 1.5 years. The secret? I understood their audience better than them. And, I could use that understanding to story-tell in a way that resonated with their audience at scale. This resonance led to them being influenced by 1mg.

Later, I repeated the same for Nintee, on a brand new channel - Instagram

All of the videos on nintee's instagram page are produced by me.

Cumulatively, Nintee reached over 60M people organically - no ads. Our engagement rate was 28% (benchmark is 3-5%). In user interviews, our users said that they were more inclined to use our app because of our instagram content.

Some of these videos were even liked by Bollywood and Hollywood celebrities.

But that's not even the most interesting part; I was able to predict (for both 1mg and Nintee) which of these videos would go viral before taking them live – and this totally blew the mind of my colleagues – because I wasn't using any "tool" or "automation" or black magic; I was using my gut-level intuition.

There was no "script" or "checklist" or "technique" that I could hand over to them; in short, I was irreplaceable.

Later, when we cracked the code for making instagram videos go viral, Paras (the founder/CEO) asked me to delegate this to someone else.

I went through several applications and trial assignments, but couldn't find anyone who could accurately understand the pulse of the audience and emotional resonance in scriptwriting.
It, therefore, became very clear to me, that my uniqueness lied in emotional resonance and accurate understanding of people.

I've verified this in several other "non business" contexts -

1.) on Bumble

2.) Cold emails to founders/CEOs

he read that email 30 times! and yes, i tracked it:

funny, i wrote that email subconsciously, in a flow state. it took me ZERO effort to write it.

3.) Public speaking

I wrote about my public speaking experience in detail here. In short, I was inspired by my fellow batchmate to learn public speaking – he was a flawless public speaker in college.

However, during our final college event, Rukhsat, we both spoke on stage separately; he had prepared a poem, while I decided to speak spontaneously - pitching the student-alumni portal that we'd built.

During his poem, everyone shunned him – they didn't let him speak. Whereas, when I pitched – they clapped. He was a far far greater speaker than me in colg. He was also way more popular; yet, I could get my message across but he couldn't – why? because I understood the audience in that crowd, better than him. And so, I could tailor my message instinctively, as per the sentiment of the crowd.

There are many more examples. But for the purposes of maintaining brevity, let's stick to some more "business" examples and contexts -

4.) At nintee, I built relationships on Reddit that got us word-of-mouth and free traffic


5.) Acquired the first 1000 users by engaging authentically with users on Reddit


6.) Candidates thanked me for rejecting them with empathy


7.) Created a campaign that triggered social sharing on Instagram


8.) Founder/CEO ghostwriting

Most recently, i've been leading marketing efforts at STOQ, and the founder/CEO of the company (sandesh) kept telling me how he wants to increase his visibility but has little to no time to sit and create content himself.

So, we started looking for a "leadership ghostwriter" who can help take our ideas from our head and create engaging content in our own authentic voice across different platforms, starting with Linkedin. (sandesh is already active on X)

we shortlisted some 8-9 candidates and trialed one of them for an entire month. Not only was he not able to extract ideas from our head, his posts lacked our unique, authentic voice – and felt like generic AI-generated fluff that lacked emotional resonance and substance.

So, I decided to take a stab at it myself (given I knew that emotional resonance is my forte.)

I wasn't surprised to find that my post was approved in 1 go! (post link for ref)

just like Nintee, here too, I was unable to replace myself. This reinforced my confidence in my discovered specific knowledge - talent - zone of genius – whatever you may want to call it.

All of my experiences above have a common theme -

  1. I understood people deeply (tells me who i'm speaking to)
  2. I used that understanding to engage them authentically
  3. This authentic engagement resonated with them at an emotional level
  4. This emotional resonance led to influence

I'm going to "double down" on my uniqueness of authentically creating emotional resonance, both at scale, and 1-1.

My bold bet is that AI is going to increase noise, and decrease trust. As a result, authenticity and 'emotional resonance' will become a scarce resource. Those who can make people feel – will stand out – with, or without AI.