Author: Suresh Dinakaran

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.

Common sense has put in its papers. We can call it the Great Resignation!

We’re living in the age of perpetual dissatisfaction. Your college friend just posted about their “life-changing” move to Bali. Your LinkedIn feed is a never-ending parade of people who “took the leap” and “never looked back.” Your cousin’s startup just got funded. Your ex just got promoted.

And you? You’re standing in your yard, staring at literally everyone else’s grass.

Here’s the reading between the lines though: that grass over there? It’s mostly filter, fertilizer, and fiction.

The job that looks perfect from LinkedIn? It comes with a boss who micromanages breathing patterns. The “digital nomad lifestyle”? It’s glamorous until you’re fighting with customer service in a language you don’t speak because your laptop died and took your livelihood with it. The relationship that seems effortless? They’re just better at hiding the arguments about whose turn it is to unload the dishwasher.

And you still go…the grass is greener…

Time to stop playing victim. The problem isn’t your job, your city, your relationship, or your circumstances. The problem is you’ve been a terrible gardener.

Irrespective of your mailing address, imagine you getting a telegram from your self twenty years into the future. What would the content on it say?

Highly unlikely that it would be saying ” Dude, you should’ve compared yourself to more people on social media.” I am betting that it wouldn’t be saying “Man, I wish we’d jumped ship more often.” It is safe to guess what it would be saying- it would say something like: “That thing you had? It was pretty good. Wish you’d noticed while you were living it.”

The grass isn’t greener on the other side. It’s greener where you point the damn hose.

No sermon here please. So, certainly I am not telling you to stop dreaming, stop wanting more, stop aspiring to better things.

Some grass is dying. Some jobs are toxic. Some relationships are over. Some cities are wrong for you. I’m not suggesting you water dead grass—I’m suggesting you learn the difference between grass that needs water and grass that needs burial.

The question isn’t “Should I stay or should I go?” The question is “Have I actually tried?”

Have you watered this grass? Have you fertilized it? Have you given it morning sunlight and afternoon shade? Have you protected it from pests and pulled the weeds?

Or have you just stood here, looking over the fence, wondering why everyone else’s yard is better?

The moment you start watering, you stop comparing. The moment you stop comparing, you start growing.

And the moment you start growing, you look back and realize the grass was always good enough—you were just too busy staring at fences to notice.

Now put down your phone, pick up your watering can, and tend to what you’ve got.

The grass is waiting. And it’s thirstier than you think.

The question here is a no-brainer. When did we all stop tending our own lawns?

Professionally, personally, emotionally — we’re always peeking over the fence.

The neighbour has a better brand, a shinier title, a more “creative” team, a dog that poses better on Instagram. (Dogs, by the way, never compare lawns. They own every patch.)

Let’s be honest — we’ve outsourced joy to geography.

We tell ourselves that happiness, opportunity, or meaning lives elsewhere. Another company. Another relationship. Another city. Another start-up.
But the truth is brutally simple: greener doesn’t mean better; it means watered.

When you show up every day for your own patch — even with a leaky hose, muddy shoes, and patchy sunshine — something remarkable happens. Grass doesn’t just grow; gratitude grows.

Ideas root deeper. Work feels less like a pilgrimage for applause and more like play. And slowly, your patch stands out — not because it’s smoother, but because it’s real.

So, forget the neighbor’s lawn. Your grass is waiting for a drink. Euphemism NOT intended!

We don’t look for inspiration anymore. We look for irrigation.

It’s not about blind positivity or settling for less. It’s about a strategic shift from coveting to cultivating. Perhaps it’s time to trade your binoculars for a watering can. Stop staring at other people’s gardens. Every minute spent in envy is a minute not spent watering your own plot. Redirect that energy. Inward.

The universe doesn’t hand out green lawns. It hands out seeds, soil, and a whole lot of weather. The greenness—the joy, the success, the peace—is entirely dependent on the gardener. On you.

Stop looking over the fence. Your own patch of earth is right beneath your feet, desperate for a drink. Go on. Water it.

We humans practice selective amnesia. It’s a craft that we have mastered.

Lest we forget; Everyone wants greener grass. Almost no one wants to drag the hose.

Everyone wants the bloom. Few are willing to stand through the muddy season.

Everyone wants the “overnight success” but conveniently skips the fact that night is usually 5,000 days long.

The “other side” is a mirage built on maintenance.

Here’s an inspiring example- none other than The Beatles. Before the world screamed, “Beatlemania!”, they were four broke lads sweating it out in Hamburg’s smoky nightclubs, playing 7-hour sets to half-drunk sailors.
Those nights were the watering.

The concerts, the Grammys, the hysteria — just the spring bloom.

We live in a time where people Photoshop even their productivity.
Everything’s curated, cropped, filtered, optimized for engagement. Here’s the much overlooked curveball though- the deeper you water your roots, the less you need to market your leaves. Because authenticity is the only fertilizer that works long-term.

Water, water, everywhere….

Water your curiosity — it grows wisdom.

Water your gratitude — it grows joy.

Water your craft — it grows credibility.

Water your relationships — they grow roots.

Everything else is weather. Period. Because,  every dream dies of dehydration before it dies of doubt.

If you hate the process of watering, you’ll never stick with it. Find a way to love the act of tending to your own life. The satisfaction of getting better, the peace of routine, the quiet pride of building something that is authentically yours. Find the joy in the gardening itself.

So. That pristine grass you’re coveting? It’s probably AstroTurf. And even if it’s real, you’re not seeing the back-breaking labor, the fertilizer (metaphorical and otherwise), and the sheer number of dead patches they’ve carefully cropped out of the frame.

The ancient, overused, and profoundly misunderstood proverb needs a 21st-century upgrade. The grass isn’t greener on the other side. The grass is greener where you water it. And it is hose good as it gets!

Where we trade not goods — but goodwill, wisdom, and what’s next. Welcome to the State of the Heart Business. Welcome to the World’s Town Square. Welcome to LinkedIn.

Here’s the observation that changes everything. LinkedIn is the business world’s town square.

Let that marinate for a moment. Not a marketplace. Not a billboard. Not even a networking event. A town square—that ancient, sacred space where communities gathered, ideas collided, merchants traded, and reputations were forged or shattered before sundown.

But here’s where it gets delicious: This town square has 1 billion citizens, operates 24/7 across every timezone, and remembers every conversation you’ve ever had. Geography didn’t just become irrelevant—it became history. The geography is history. The community is the currency.

Remember when doing business meant being in the right city, at the right club, knowing the right people? LinkedIn looked at that antiquated model and said, “What if we democratized access to everyone, everywhere, all at once?”

And just like that, geography became history.

Today, a startup founder in Bangalore can pitch to a venture capitalist in Boston before breakfast. A freelance designer in Lagos can land a client in London by lunch. A thought leader in Mumbai can influence decision-makers in Manhattan by midnight. The sun never sets on LinkedIn’s town square, because business never sleeps when the entire world is your neighborhood.

LinkedIn didn’t just connect professionals. It obliterated the tyranny of proximity. In the old world, your network was limited by your zip code. In LinkedIn’s world, your network is limited only by your value proposition.

Here’s the mouth-watering paradox- it’s professional enough to be taken seriously, but human enough to be engaging. It’s buttoned-up enough for the C-suite, but accessible enough for the intern.

While other platforms became minefields of controversy, LinkedIn became the Switzerland of social media—neutral ground where business conversations happen without the collateral damage of political rants, conspiracy theories, or cat videos (well, mostly).

This “safe neutral zone” positioning isn’t accidental. It’s strategic genius. By maintaining professional decorum while allowing personality, LinkedIn created a space where:

Trust compounds (unlike virality, which evaporates)

Relationships deepen (not just accumulate)

Reputation builds (brick by brick, post by post)

Revenue follows (because business happens where trust lives)

What is worth mentioning is the Brand Alchemy-how LinkedIn made the migration from utility to loyalty. We know that most platforms are tools. LinkedIn became a tribe.

The genius of LinkedIn’s brand is that it positioned itself not as a job board (though it does that brilliantly) or a networking site (though it excels there too), but as the professional identity platform. Your LinkedIn profile isn’t just a resume—it’s your business card, portfolio, thought leadership platform, and professional legacy rolled into one.

The unique loyalty loop that LinkedIn mastered is worth emulating.

Value Creation You share insights → You gain visibility → You build authority → You attract opportunities

Network Effects Your connections see your value → They engage → Their networks see you → Your influence multiplies

Reciprocity Engine You help others → They remember you → Opportunities boomerang back → Relationships compound

Reputation Stacking Consistent presence → Pattern recognition → Brand building → Market positioning

This isn’t just social media. This is social capital multiplication.

LinkedIn rewards consistency over virality, substance over sensationalism, and value creation over attention extraction. In a world of digital shortcuts, LinkedIn is the long game that actually pays off.

LinkedIn’s audience mix is every brand owner and marketer’s Saturday Night Fever dream. Look at some numbers here:-

Decision-makers: 61 million senior-level influencers

Affluence: Highest household income of any platform ($75K+ median)

Education: 61% have a college degree (platform average)

Purchase power: 4x larger buying power than average web audiences

But, here’s where the rubber hits the road. What makes LinkedIn transcendent: the intentionality.

People come to LinkedIn wanting to:

Learn about your business

Discover new solutions

Evaluate thought leaders

Make purchasing decisions

Advance their careers

Build professional relationships

They’re not mindlessly scrolling. They’re purposefully hunting. That intent transforms marketing from interruption to invitation.

Unabashedly, here is a platform where you can demonstrate expertise to decision-makers who need it, exactly when they need it, regardless of where they were.

That’s not marketing. That’s matchmaking.

If you allow me to state the obvious here: B2B buyers don’t want to be sold to. They want to be educated. LinkedIn is the university where your brand can become the professor everyone wants to learn from.

The future of business belongs to those who build relationships at scale while maintaining authenticity at depth. LinkedIn is the only platform designed for exactly that paradox.

LinkedIn isn’t finished evolving. The platform that made geography history is now making these moves:

AI-Powered Matching: Smarter connections between buyers and sellers

Video-First Evolution: LinkedIn Live and native video gaining traction

Creator Economy Integration: Monetization tools for thought leaders

Enhanced Analytics: Deeper insights into content performance

Newsletter Features: Building owned audiences within the platform

“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed” – William Gibson. And brand LinkedIn is still evolving.

While Twitter became a gladiator arena, Facebook a family reunion gone wrong, and Instagram the vanilla crusader, LinkedIn created the velvet rope experience for business discourse. Demonstrating that safety isn’t boring—it’s bankable. When professionals feel safe to share, they share more. When they share more, trust compounds. When trust compounds, revenue follows like a loyal golden retriever.

What is not lost on anyone here is that on Instagram, your ad interrupts someone’s vacation envy. On LinkedIn, your insight interrupts someone’s quarterly planning. Big difference.

If ever there was a platform that understood compound interest, this is it. LinkedIn mastered something that most social platforms forgot and never learned: that professional reputation is a long game.

Your LinkedIn profile isn’t a mood—it’s a monument. Every post, comment, and connection is a brick in your professional cathedral. This creates unprecedented stickiness.

LinkedIn’s most underestimated asset isn’t its algorithm—it’s its generosity culture. Why giving beats grifting hands down. Some (golden) unwritten rules that I learned over time( 12 + years). Exhibit your scars not just your stars. Vulnerability>Vanity. Endorsements and recommendations are social capital. Lift as you climb( send the elevator down as Kevin Spacey would have said). If you can’t add value, add nothing. Commentary, not criticism. Quality over viral vanity. 500 relevant eyeballs beat 50,000 random robots any day.

In the LinkedIn town square, your reputation is your resume, your personality is your portfolio, and your generosity is your guarantee.

Some vital stats( no, not the one you are thinking of):

LinkedIn generates 277% more leads than Meta and Twitter combined (HubSpot).

B2B marketers report 97% effectiveness for content distribution (Content Marketing Institute).

LinkedIn delivers context, not just clicks. The platform tells you: This person works at a 500+ employee company, in HR, with hiring authority, who just read an article about recruitment automation.

Try getting that from a Google search ad.

LinkedIn isn’t one product—it’s an ecosystem of inevitability, where the four pillars on which you stand tall include:

Profile = Your Digital Handshake
Your always-on, never-sleeping business card that works harder than your sales team.

Network = Your Relationship Rolodex
Not just who you know—who you can reach in two degrees of separation.

Content = Your Thought Leadership Stage
The only platform where posting about “enterprise SaaS governance models” gets engagement.

Premium Tools = Your Competitive Edge
InMail, Sales Navigator, Analytics—the difference between hunting and harvesting.

Food for Torque? : Most people treat LinkedIn like a resume repository. Winners treat it like a revenue engine.

LinkedIn’s brand moat is premised on the domicile of defensibility through dependability. Here’s how:

Why can’t anyone dethrone LinkedIn? Simple: switching costs are existential.

Your LinkedIn presence isn’t portable. Your network isn’t transferable. Your reputation isn’t exportable. After investing years building your professional identity, moving to “NewBusinessNetwork.io” would be like burning your house down because you don’t like the wallpaper. Or the kitchen sink.

The Strategic Implication: LinkedIn doesn’t just have users—it has digital hostages (in the nicest, most mutually beneficial way possible).

LinkedIn isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s not even a should-have. It’s a must-dominate.

Because while you’re debating whether to invest time in “another social platform,” your competitor is:

Building relationships with your prospects

Establishing thought leadership in your space

Creating trust before you get the meeting

Shortening sales cycles while you’re still cold calling

The town square is open. The conversations are happening. The business is flowing. The only question:

Are you in the square, or are you standing outside wondering where everyone went?

In closing: in a world obsessed with hacks, shortcuts, and growth-at-all-costs, LinkedIn rewards something radical: authentic, consistent, value-driven professionalism.

It’s not sexy. It’s not instant. It won’t make you TikTok-famous.

But it will make you business-essential.

And in a world where attention is scattered and trust is scarce, being essential is the only competitive advantage that matters.

The next “brand visibility war” won’t be fought on billboards, hashtags, or even human feeds. It’ll be fought in the quiet backend of the web — in the way your data, content, and credibility converse with machines.

Because in this new world, if machines don’t know you exist, neither will humans.

For years, marketers, brands, and creators obsessed over eyeballs. Reach, engagement, shares. Now, as AI reshapes the flow of online traffic, the first set of eyeballs that see your content aren’t even human — they’re silicon.

Welcome to the new frontier: the Age of Machine Visibility. Your next audience isn’t scrolling — it’s scanning.

Let that sink in.

You’re no longer writing for people. You’re writing for the algorithms that tell people what to read.

Now this seems coming from aeons ago. But it is not. Up until recently, Google search was the main highway. You optimized for keywords, backlinks, meta tags — hoping to make the front page.

Today? That highway’s getting rerouted. AI assistants (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Deep Seek etc) are becoming the new gatekeepers of discovery.

They summarize the web, repackage your ideas, and decide which voices get cited, referenced, or ignored.

In short, your content isn’t just competing for clicks anymore — it’s competing for comprehension.

Visibility now depends on how machine-readable, factually consistent, and contextually rich your brand’s story is.

What if content marketing as you know it is already dead, and you’re just animating the corpse?

What if the future isn’t about creating content humans discover through AI—but creating content for AI to discover humans?

Think about it. You’re not trying to get your blog post in front of a prospect. You’re trying to get your thinking into an AI’s training data, so when your prospect has a conversation with that AI, your framework surfaces as “the way smart people think about this problem.”

You’re not marketing to humans anymore. You’re seeding the synthetic consciousness layer that mediates all human knowledge work.

That’s not dystopian. It’s just different.

Credibility now is a machine decision. It used to be about perception. It is now about data validation. If your content doesn’t align with verified data points, trusted sources, and interconnected entities across the web, AI systems may quietly ghost you — not out of malice, but mathematics.

Your credibility is being machine-scored in real time. There is a tectonic shift in how reputations are built.

The next influencer isn’t viral — it’s verifiable. The next thought leader isn’t loud — it’s linked. The next authority isn’t famous — it’s fetchable.

Here’s the contrarian lens on this. As AI floods the internet with infinite content, originality will become premium.  Machines can remix what exists — they can’t originate what doesn’t. So the brands that will in the content brand race would be the ones that offer context-rich storytelling that machines can map; create new data (research, experiments, case studies); build trust trails across multiple sources.

It’s no longer “content is king.” It’s “context is kingdom.”

Some real-world examples that can both inspire and educate include:-

IKEA’s AI ready catalogue– They aren’t just uploading product images anymore. IKEA embeds detailed product metadata, 3D object files, and spatial semantics — so that when AI tools like Midjourney or Google’s Scene Viewer generate room designs, IKEA’s products show up by default.
That’s visibility — without a single ad.

The “Linked Data” revolution of the BBC– BBC News quietly restructured its entire archive to be machine-readable — tagging every entity (person, place, event) with contextual metadata. Result? AI assistants now pull BBC references more frequently than competitors. Credibility, engineered.

There are some brave brand builders who have got in on the act. They are designing content for comprehension, not consumption. Because, the machine should understand your brand before it recommends it. They are building digital reputation capital. Your credibility will live in databases, not dashboards. Their brand’s digital footprint is a truth trail. Because data transparency is > marketing fluff. Publish the “how” behind your “wow.” They treat AI Systems as AAA( Asset + Ally + Ammunition)- as new stakeholders. And feed them with verifiable data so that they become amplifiers.

Content writers used to write for clicks. Now they are writing for cognition. The new kid on the block is AEO(AI Engine Optimisation). Move over SEO. Originality is the new scarcity. Brands that create new data will win.

Google has talked about E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) for years. For humans, it was a vague guideline. For machines, it’s a measurable scorecard.

The era of the “blog post as a traffic magnet” is fading ( Yes, I know you must be wondering what am I doing?). The new goal is to create Knowledge Assets—discrete, reusable, data-rich modules of information that machines can easily comprehend, trust, and redeploy.

This isn’t a dystopian future. It’s the present. The flow of traffic is being rerouted through AI concierges. Your job is to make sure your brand is in their good graces.

Stop thinking about “content for humans” and start architecting “truth for machines,” which is then beautifully delivered to humans. The machine is your new editor, your new distributor, and your most influential critic.

Win it over, and it will work for you 24/7/365. Ignore it, and you’re talking to an empty room.

Yes, the shoe is on the other foot now. You’ve spent a decade and more learning to write for humans who think like machines. There is twist in the tale: Now you need to write for machines that are learning to think like humans. The game just flipped.

Welcome to the post-click economy. Where your content isn’t dying. It’s just being read by entities that don’t need to visit your website, don’t click your ads, and definitely aren’t filling out your lead forms.

Your brand’s New Audience (read AI agents retrieving information)–Consume entire corpuses in milliseconds; Extract semantic meaning, not just keywords; Have no emotional attachment or brand loyalty; Never return to your site—they’re always everywhere and nowhere & Leave zero traces you can measure with Google Analytics.

The bitter pill to swallow- Your content’s primary reader is now something that doesn’t need your persuasive copy, doesn’t get influenced by your CTAs, and will cannibalize your expertise to serve someone else’s query.

It might seem as if you are stuck in this bizarre lingo aka: Write for machines to achieve distribution, but embed enough humanity( read Emotional resonance. Storytelling. Brand personality ) that if a person does encounter your work, they’re moved to act.

As we come towards the end of this post, lets look at the ethical minefield that brands will find themselves in. The permission Vs extraction tug-of-war. Where you are between a rock and a hard place which looks something like this:

Option A: Let AI consume everything and hope attribution trickles back

Option B: Block AI and become irrelevant as human discovery shifts to AI interfaces

Option C: Architect a hybrid approach that feeds AI strategically while protecting core IP

That said, there’s no clean answer. Just calculated bets.

In closing, the internet isn’t becoming less human because AI is taking over. It’s becoming less human because humans are increasingly experiencing the internet through AI intermediaries.

Your audience hasn’t disappeared. They’re just behind a one-way mirror, talking to a machine that talks to your content on their behalf.

So the question isn’t “How do I get visibility in a world of AI?”

The question is: “What part of my value can survive being summarized, and what part requires human connection to unlock?”

Figure that out, and you’re not just future-ready. You’re future-proof.

In fact, in the case of the former, the results are more assured.

Well. I have put it out there and it is no attempt at sacrilege. On the other hand, dare I call it sanity?

We stand at the altar of modern life, heads bowed, hands outstretched. Our prayers are a litany of wants: a bigger bonus, a faster car, a quieter mind. We beseech the universe for possessions, believing they are the vessels of our happiness.

But what if we’ve been praying to the wrong gods?

Question time folks: when was the last time you truly played? Not watched, not scrolled, not supervised kids from a park bench, but actually played—ran, sweated, laughed till your lungs burnt. If it takes divine intervention to remember, well, Durant already settled the score long ago.

Will Durant( Source Fallen Leaves) was not telling us to ask the gods for shiny trinkets or manifest material upgrades. He asked us to plead for things to do—to make, to create, to build. That’s the real Tesla stock. Happiness is not in consuming the unboxing videos of others but in making things with our two hands, two legs, or even two left feet.

In Henry David Thoreau’s utopia, each would build his own home. Not Ikea-ed from flat packs, not ordered with one-day delivery, but hand-built. There’s dignity in sweat, melody in muscle. He believed that from that effort, song would flow back to the human heart just as naturally as birds break into chirping when they build their nests. True story: Nature always hums when it works, never when it lazes.

We have outsourced our ‘building.’ Our homes are bought, our food is delivered, our entertainment is streamed. We have become expert consumers and novice creators. And we wonder why the song has left our hearts.

Now, not all of us can build homes. Some of us can’t even assemble a bookshelf without losing half the screws and our full temper. Thats the reality. But here’s what we can do— walk, run, throw, jump, play.

Simple verbs, divine outcomes.

Yet what do we do instead? We…watch. We spectate. We prefer shouting at a screen as 22 men chase a ball across green turf. We livestream dopamine. Somewhere along the way, we mistook being entertained for actually living. That’s like confusing food delivery with farming your own field.

When the applause dies, what endures? Not the possessions. Not your Netflix queue. What endures is the memory of doing. That late-night gully cricket that ended with broken windows. That dance in the rain. That amateur football match where nobody kept score but everybody kept joy.

Maybe that’s the code: prayer keeps hope alive. Play keeps life alive.

And maybe life doesn’t really need to balance faith against fun—it needs us to realize they’re the same damn thing. Playing is another form of praying, only with sneakers on. And while prayer asks, play gives. It gives you back to yourself.

Possessions rust. Experiences, sweat, and laughter? They resuscitate the spirit.

Worry can never be the substitute for activity. But action can be.

We live in an age of spectacular consumption and spectacular sadness. Our shopping carts overflow while our souls remain empty. We collect experiences like trophies, yet feel increasingly hollow. We’ve confused having with being, acquiring with becoming.

But there’s an ancient secret hiding in plain sight: The hands that create are never empty, even when they hold nothing.

Consider the street musician in Chennai who owns nothing but an old violin, yet radiates more joy than the businessman driving past in his luxury car. The musician is playing—literally and metaphorically. He is engaged in the sacred act of creation, of bringing something beautiful into existence. The businessman is consuming—music through his car speakers, comfort through his seat, status through his vehicle.

This could sound contrarian, so be it. What if your life is not a test to be passed, but a playground to be explored?

Have you watched a six-year-old build an elaborate fort with cardboard boxes ? For hours, she is completely absorbed—architect, engineer, interior designer, and proud resident all at once. No smartphone can pull her away. No worry can touch her. She is in the zone we adults spend thousands on meditation retreats to find.

She isn’t consuming entertainment; she is creating it. She isn’t seeking happiness; she is actively manufacturing it with her hands and imagination.

“But I’m too old for cardboard forts,” you might say. Are you? Or have you simply forgotten that age is just a number, but play is a state of mind?

You don’t have to dig deep. The most successful people have one thing in common: they’ve turned their work into play and their play into creation. They don’t watch games; they create them. They don’t just consume content; they produce meaning.

Take late Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who played with rockets and missiles the way children play with building blocks. His “work” was indistinguishable from his passion because he had discovered the secret: when you’re truly playing, you’re praying with your actions.

Every scientist who stays up all night in a lab, every artist who loses track of time while painting, every programmer who debugs code until dawn—they’re all engaged in a form of worship. They’re honoring the creative force within them.

We humans are great at missing the wood for the trees.

Every hour spent consuming someone else’s creation is an hour not spent on your own. Netflix doesn’t make you Netflix-worthy. Instagram doesn’t make you instantly remarkable. Creation does. Suffice to say that the consumption trap is real.

In an AI-driven world, the ability to create with our hands becomes more valuable, not less. Learn to cook, garden, build, craft. These aren’t hobbies; they’re hedges against helplessness. Our hands are our first tools and last hope.

The word “recreation” literally means “to create again.” When you play, you’re not wasting time; you’re investing in renewal. The executive who plays tennis doesn’t just get exercise; she gets perspective. Play is the ultimate performance enhancer( or productivity hack if thats the preferred coinage).

Your birthdate doesn’t determine your ability to build, only your excuse to avoid building. The youngest billionaire is still learning. The oldest craftsman is still creating. Age is NOT a barrier to play.

Next time you see children playing in a park, don’t just smile and move on. Stop. Watch. Learn. Notice how completely absorbed they are, how unselfconscious, how innovative with simple materials.

They’re not just playing; they’re praying—offering their complete attention to the moment, creating something from nothing, finding joy in the process rather than the outcome.

This is the spiritual technology we’ve (probably) forgotten: Creation is prayer in action. Play is meditation in motion.

In this simple shift—from passive consumption to active creation—lies a secret so profound, it can redefine a lifetime. It leads us to an irresistible conclusion: ‘Let us play’ is as good as ‘Let us pray.’ And often, the results are far more assured.

The treasure buried in this philosophy isn’t a secret. It’s hidden in plain sight, waiting for us to shift our gaze from the prize to the process.

Happiness is a Verb:We chase happiness as if it were a destination. It is not. It is a byproduct of meaningful action. Stop seeking joy and start constructing it, brick by intentional brick.

The greatest antidote to fatigue, boredom, or despair is not rest, but a different kind of effort. The fatigue of consumption is draining; the vitality of creation is invigorating. A walk is better than watching a walkathon. Energy creates energy.

Never be so old, so senior, so important that you merely watch the games. The one who throws the ball, runs the lap, codes the line, or writes the first draft owns the experience. The spectator owns only a memory. As Durant warns, we should “never be so old as merely to watch games instead of playing them. Own your game.

So, today, let us replace a plea with a plan.

Instead of whispering, “Let me have,” let us declare, “Let me do.”

The invitation is simple but radical: stop only praying for a good life. Play one.

Stop only yearning for meaning. Make it.

Life’s true wealth is not in what we own but in what we’re alive enough to do.

And the gods, if they are listening, may just smile more on that than on any prayer.

Let us play.

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?