Suresh Dinakaran's Blog

Hey CEOs, CXOs, Brand Guardians, Brand Alchemists, Brand Overlords, Aspiring Legends and Branding Nerds:

Your brand’s resume might be flawless, but how is its bedside manner?

 

Story Twist #1:Nobody gives a damn about your brand’s 47 product features

 

Story Twist #2:Your “award-winning customer service” feels like talking to a sociopathic robot

 

Story Twist #3: Your brand personality has the charisma of wet cardboard

 

Smart brands inform. Emotionally intelligent brands transform. Heart trumps mind every time.

 

The million-dollar question: Is your brand solving problems, or is it solving feelings?

 

The savage reality? Brands with high IQ and zero EQ are like that friend who corrects your grammar during your breakup story. Technically right, emotionally bankrupt, and ultimately unforgettable for all the wrong reasons.

 

Here’s what’s actually happening: While you are optimizing conversion rates, emotionally intelligent brands are creating obsession rates.

 

While you are AB testing subject lines, they’re AB testing souls.

 

While you’re measuring click-through rates, they’re measuring cry-through rates.

 

The kicker? Your customers don’t want to buy from you. They want to buy into you.

 

For CEOs: Stop asking “Are we the smartest brand in the room?” Start asking “Are we the most emotionally attuned?”

For Brand Marketers: Your next campaign strategy should begin with “How do we want them to feel?” not “What do we want them to know?”

For Entrepreneurs: Your brand’s emotional intelligence is your unfair advantage in a world drowning in logical sameness.

For Students: Study the brands that make you feel something. That’s your real textbook.

 

SOHB Story Issue #4 will perform surgery on your brand’s emotional blindness. No anesthesia. No mercy. Just the raw truth about why your customers are swiping left on your perfectly logical brand.

 

Because in a world of predominantly emotionally constipated brands, the one with actual feelings wins everything.

 

So, if you’re ready to stop chasing KPIs and start chasing Kisses Per Interaction, this issue is your new best friend.

 

Ready to stop being the brand equivalent of a participation trophy? Read on!

 

SOHB Story: Because brands that feel, sell.

 

What’s the difference between a traditional marketer and a street dog? The street dog eventually stops following you.

 

Marketing is like dating in 2025 – everyone’s desperate, everyone’s swiping frantically, and the hottest person at the party is the one who’s not even trying. Food for Torque: That should be your brand.

 

Here’s a radical thought: maybe your brand doesn’t need to be liked by everyone. Maybe it needs to have the guts to be remembered by someone.

 

Welcome to the slutty truth of modern marketing. Let’s be brutally honest – marketing today has become the equivalent of that friend who posts 47 Instagram stories a day about their morning smoothie. Desperate. Needy. Exhausting.

 

Every brand is basically strip-teasing for attention: “Look at me! Notice me! Love me! Buy from me!” It’s like watching a digital red-light district where everyone’s shouting their rates while the customers walk by with their AirPods in.

 

Let’s not sugarcoat it: most marketing is about as exciting as a Zoom call with your insurance agent. Enter UnMarketing—a glorious middle finger to the tired, the templated, and the totally try-hard. This isn’t about shouting louder; it’s about making people lean in and whisper, “Tell me more.”

 

UnMarketing is the art of seduction, not the science of spam. It’s about being so damn interesting, people want to swipe right on your brand—again and again. It’s for brands that know mediocrity is the most expensive mistake of all. It’s about refusing to be the brand equivalent of elevator music.

UNMarketing is the art of keeping your clothes on while everyone else is naked. And guess what? You’re the one they’re all staring at.

 

Humans are wired to want what they can’t have. One can define it as the scarcity porn phenomenon. It’s the same reason exclusive clubs have velvet ropes and why that restaurant with no menu always has a waiting list. Scarcity is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

 

UNmarketing is the playbook to use because begging is bad for business. Traditional marketing is that drunk guy at the bar shouting, “BUY ME!” UNMarketing is the smooth operator who gets your number before you even realize you gave it. Red Bull’s “Gives You Wings” (But Never Says “Buy Our Crap”): They funded Felix Baumgartner’s space jump instead of running boring ads. Now that’s brand equity. Ryanair’s Troll Marketing: They roast customers, meme their own delays, and still fill flights. Because audacity sells. Swiggy’s Late-Night Hunger Puns: They know you’re drunk-ordering biryani at 2 AM—and they lean in. Fevicol (India): Their ads stick in your head longer than their glue sticks to furniture. Remember the “Fevicol ka jod”? That’s not just adhesive, that’s cultural superglue. Liquid Death’s “Murder Your Thirst” – They’re selling water in a can, but their brand voice? Straight outta a heavy metal festival.

 

Ask: If your ad was a pickup line, would it get a laugh or a restraining order?

 

Silence is Sexier Than a 50% Off Scream – Luxury brands whisper. Beige Ferrari ads don’t say “SALE.” Ditch the Corporate Condoms. Drop the jargon. Speak human. If you wouldn’t say it at a bar, don’t say it in your campaign. Humor Is the Ultimate Aphrodisiac: Want loyalty? Make ‘em laugh.

 

In a world of copy-paste campaigns and soulless slogans, UnMarketing is the rebel with a cause—and a killer sense of humor. So next time you’re about to hit ‘send’ on that bland, beige email blast, ask: Would you want to read this after three drinks? If not, pour yourself another, and UnMarket like you mean it.

 

Because at the end of the day, if you’re not making people laugh, think, or fall a little bit in love, you’re just another noise in the crowd. And who the hell wants to be that?

 

Play it safe, and your brand will be left in the it real, play it raw, and watch how your tribe finds you. Marketing is about faking smiles. UNMarketing is about baring your teeth.If that means you’ll ruffle some feathers? Pluck those damn feathers and wear them like a crown.

 

Ever heard of a brand so forgettable it made tofu seem exciting? Yeah, neither have we—because they vanished faster than our motivation on a Monday morning. Brand awareness isn’t just about slapping a logo on a billboard; it’s about colonizing consumer brains (legally, of course).

 

In a hyper-connected world, where even your toaster’s got an attitude (yes, I’m looking at you, smart home gadgets), brands are forced to up their game—because consumers are woke, wired, and weaponized with infinite choice.

Successful brands—both global and Indian—have cracked the code: a mix of creativity, cultural relevance, and a dash of audacity. Take Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” campaign, which turned every user into a brand ambassador, or Dove’s “Real Beauty” movement that challenged beauty norms and made us all feel a little better about our selfies. These campaigns didn’t just sell products; they sold stories, emotions, and a sense of belonging.

 

Take Nike’s “Just Do It”—three words that turned sneakers into sermons. Or Apple, which made buying a phone feel like joining a cult (minus the questionable robes). Closer home, Amul’s butter-loving moppet has been roasting politicians and trends since 1966—proof that wit + consistency = immortality.

Meanwhile, Indian startups like Zomato and CRED don’t just sell services; they sell personality. Zomato’s savage tweets and CRED’s absurdly elite ads make consumers go, “I don’t need this… but I WANT it.” That’s the magic—when your brand becomes a mood, not just a menu.

 

Consumers today don’t want to be sold to—they want to be swept off their feet, wined, dined, and occasionally meme’d. They’ve got their BS detectors on high alert. And with data privacy watchdogs on speed dial, brands better be careful where they poke!

 

Remember, it’s no longer enough for brands to talk—they need to walk the walk, dance the jig, and maybe even do the floss if the audience demands it.

 

So, dear brands—stop treating your customers like ATMs with trust issues. They’re not here for your products; they’re here for your promises. Keep it real, keep it human, and remember: If you can’t outsmart them, at least outlaugh them!

In a world where attention is the new currency and authenticity is rarer than honest politicians, the brands that survive won’t be the ones with the biggest budgets – they’ll be the ones with the biggest personalities. Because in the end, people don’t buy products; they buy stories, emotions, and the promise that this purchase will make them slightly cooler than their neighbors.

 

It is said that when Boeing was developing the 787 Dreamliner– the project faced massive delays partly because of poor coordination and endless meetings across continents that didn’t lead to clear decisions. The lesson? Meetings without clear objectives and follow-ups are like flying blind — you might end up crashing your project!

 

At the other end, in Andhra Pradesh, political parties like the TDP and YSR Congress hold intense meetings to strategize elections. But it’s not just about talking; they use these gatherings to build alliances, delegate responsibilities, and make decisions that affect millions. The key takeaway? Meetings can be powerful when they’re about action, not just chatter.

 

Imagine meetings as a masala dosa — a crispy, golden-brown exterior with a spicy, flavorful filling. If you get the batter wrong or the filling bland, you end up with a soggy mess nobody wants to touch. Similarly, a meeting without preparation or purpose is just a waste of everyone’s time and energy.

 

There is this famous Amazon’s silent start hack– Jeff Bezos made 6-page memos mandatory before Amazon meetings. The first 30 minutes? Dead silence—everyone reads first, debates later. Result? Informed, high-IQ discussions.

 

Takeaway:Preparation > Improvisation. Ditch the small talk, start smart.

 

The average executive spends 23 hours a week in meetings. That’s more time than most people spend sleeping. No wonder everyone looks dead inside. Not funny. Sleep over it!

The meeting epidemic is a global pandemic nobody talks about. Meetings are the workplace equivalent of that relative who overstays their welcome, eats all your food, and somehow makes everything about themselves. They multiply faster than rabbits on Red Bull, serve no clear purpose, and leave everyone questioning their life choices.

 

Microsoft‘s own research shows that the average worker attends 62 meetings per month. SIXTY-TWO! That’s roughly three meetings every working day. At this rate, we’ll soon need meetings to discuss when to schedule meetings to plan other meetings.

 

Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix had a Keeper Test– he asked managers a simple question: “Which of your people would you fight to keep if they wanted to leave?” Those who didn’t make the cut were shown the door. No endless meetings about “performance improvement plans.” Just decisive action.

 

Before Amazon acquired them, Flipkart pioneered stand-up meetings. Literally. No chairs. Meetings that would have dragged for hours suddenly wrapped up in 15 minutes. Coincidence? I think not.

 

If you want to understand the anatomy of meeting madness, it is important to look at the main characters. We have all seen them in some hue or form. There is The Meeting Hoarder who schedules meetings like they’re collecting Pokemon cards. “Gotta catch ’em all!” Their calendar looks like a Tetris game designed by a sadist. Get ready to welcome the The Agenda Ghost who calls meetings without agendas. It’s like inviting people to dinner but not telling them if they’re eating pizza or performing surgery. Since talk is cheap, put your hands together for The Monologue Monster- yes the one who talks for 47 minutes in a 30-minute meeting. Somehow makes “quick update” sound like a Shakespearean soliloquy. Zoom into the Zoom Zombie– you know the type- Camera off, muted, probably shopping online. Occasionally unmutes to say “Sorry, can you repeat that?” Master of the art of looking busy while being completely checked out.

 

In India, we’ve elevated meeting dysfunction to an art form. We have meetings before meetings (pre-reads), meetings during meetings (sidebar discussions), and meetings after meetings (debrief sessions). It’s meeting inception(unfortunately not directed by Christopher Nolan) – we need to go deeper!

 

In Indian corporates, the meeting doesn’t start until the most senior person arrives. Let’s call it the hierarchy dance. Even if they’re 45 minutes late. Because apparently, time is a social construct that bends to organizational charts. We love consensus so much that we’ll spend six months agreeing on the color of a PowerPoint template. Democracy is beautiful, but efficiency is sexier. Consensus Paralysis anyone?

 

Here’s a number that’ll make your accountant weep: The average mid-level executive costs an Indian company ₹50,000 per month. If they spend 20 hours a week in useless meetings, that’s ₹25,000 worth of wasted salary. Per person. Per month. Multiply that across your organization, and you’re basically funding a small country’s GDP on talking about work instead of doing work.

 

Harvard Business Review found that 67% of senior managers reported having too many meetings interfered with their deep work. Translation: The people running companies can’t actually run companies because they’re too busy talking about running companies. The Indian Innovation Paradox is where we talk about becoming a global innovation hub while spending more time in meeting rooms than R&D labs. It’s like training for a marathon by attending seminars about running.

 

Well, all is not lost. Some wise people out there have recommended a few fundamental rules.

 

Rule#1– Ask three questions before scheduling any meeting: Can this be an email? (90% of the time, yes); Who actually needs to be here? (Usually 50% fewer people than you think); What’s the specific outcome we need? (If you can’t answer this, cancel the meeting).

 

Rule#2– The 18 Minute Meeting–  Stanford research shows attention spans peak at 18 minutes. Anything longer, and you’re just testing people’s bladder capacity, not their brainpower.

 

Rule#3– The No Device Policy– Laptops closed. Phones face down. Crazy concept: actually pay attention to the meeting you called.

 

Rule#4– The Action Item Accountability– End every meeting with specific action items, owners, and deadlines. Otherwise, you’ve just organized a very expensive group therapy session.

 

If meetings were an Olympic sport, we’d have more gold medals than China’s ping-pong team!

 

Amidst all the meeting related doom and gloom, it is heartening some of the organisations who are getting it right. Shopify’s Meeting Purge: Back in 2023, Shopify canceled all recurring meetings with 3+ people and eliminated most meetings altogether. Result? Productivity skyrocketed. Employee happiness through the roof. Stock price loved it. Patagonia’s Walking Meetings: They literally took meetings outside. Walking while talking increased creativity by 60% and reduced meeting time by 40%. Fresh air: apparently good for business. Indian Success Story – Zerodha: Nithin Kamath runs one of India’s largest brokerages with minimal meetings. Their secret? Asynchronous communication and trusting people to do their jobs without constant supervision. Revolutionary.

 

Meetings aren’t inherently evil. Bad meetings are. The difference? Intentionality, preparation, and the radical idea that people’s time has value.

 

Companies that master meeting efficiency don’t just save money – they save sanity, boost creativity, and actually get stuff done. In a world where everyone’s competing for talent, being the company that respects people’s time is your secret weapon.

 

Meetings, are the Bermuda Triangle of productivity. Here’s what we’ve all seen, heard, and survived: The Indian startup founder with an ear-to-ear grin saying, “Let’s do a quick 15-minute sync-up,” but it’s longer than a Bollywood wedding. The American tech bro bragging, “We’re an agile team – we stand up!”…while discussing the same bullet point for 3 hours. The Japanese executive nodding politely through a 30-slide deck, only to ask one question at the end that derails the entire project.

 

Never under estimate The Power of No: Just because you got a calendar invite doesn’t mean you have to show up. Sometimes, the best contribution is to say no and let others fumble. Stand-Up, Sit-Down, Shut-Up: If you’re doing a stand-up meeting – stand up. It’s amazing how quickly people wrap up when their legs hurt.

 

Let’s Be Real: I’m not saying meetings are the enemy. But most of them are about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. What we need is a meeting mindset shift: Less ‘death by PowerPoint’, more ‘life by action points.’ Less ‘who talks the most’, more ‘who does the most.’

 

So, next time someone says, “Let’s set up a quick call,” ask yourself:
Is this meeting going to be a game-changer – or just another episode of ‘Talking Heads?’ If it’s the latter, do us all a favor: just hit ‘Decline’.

 

 

 

Dear Fellow Brand Alchemists

We live in an age where we worship at the altar of analytics. We chase conversion rates like prophets seeking divine revelation, dissect customer journeys with surgical precision, and genuflect before dashboards that promise to decode the mysteries of human behavior.

 

But here’s the uncomfortable truth that’s been staring us in the face while we’ve been busy counting clicks: We’ve been listening to whispers while ignoring the roar.

 

So, MARKETERS, BRAND BUILDERS & DATA JUNKIES…

If you’re still counting clicks like they’re confessions,
you’re reading the wrong gospel.

 

Emotion is the new data. And it’s LOUDER than your entire Martech stack.It doesn’t show up on your dashboard. It shows up in goosebumps. In lump-in-throat moments.

 

In the pause before someone says, “This brand gets me”.

 

Clicks whisper. Feelings roar. “The most valuable data point is the lump in your customer’s throat.”

 

If your brand doesn’t make people feel…It’s just more noise in the scroll.

 

Ditch the obsession with CTR. Start a Connection Triggered Revolution.

 

In this issue of SOHB Story, we’re torching the false idol of big data worship and revealing why the most powerful analytics tool isn’t in your dashboard—it’s in the human heart.

 

Brands, take a look at the unfair competitive advantage of actually caring.

 

We’ve convinced ourselves that bigger data equals better insights. We’re digital hoarders, collecting every scroll, swipe, and hover as if accumulating enough breadcrumbs will somehow lead us to the gingerbread house of perfect understanding. But data without emotion is like trying to understand a symphony by counting the notes—technically accurate, utterly soulless.

 

If data is king, emotion is the revolution. More in this issue of SOHB Story attached above👆.

 

The brands that win won’t just capture attention—they’ll captivate hearts.

 

Stay Maverick ; Stay Human– Read it. Feel it. Share it. Because the future belongs to the brands that make spines tingle. Not just pixels move.

 

It’s my way of encouraging the world to feel, not just click🙏.

 

 

Let’s start with a brutal truth—humanity’s greatest innovations didn’t come from optimization. They came from inefficiency, chaos, and glorious, unapologetic waste.

 

The wheel? Probably invented by some caveman who was sick of dragging his dinner home. The internet? Born because a bunch of nerds wanted to share cat pictures (and, okay, maybe some defense research). Yet here we are, in 2025, worshipping at the altar of optimization like it’s the messiah of progress.

 

Let me paint you a picture. It’s Monday morning in Bangalore, and Rajesh – let’s call him that because every corporate story needs a Rajesh( or feel free to call him Suresh) – is optimizing his commute. He’s calculated that leaving at 8:17 AM (not 8:15, not 8:20, but precisely 8:17) will get him to office in exactly 43 minutes, accounting for traffic patterns, monsoon probability, and the likelihood of his neighbor’s car having an existential crisis in the parking lot.

 

Rajesh has also optimized his breakfast (protein shake in 2.5 minutes), his shower routine (military precision), and even his goodbye kiss to his wife (efficiency over passion, apparently). By the time he reaches office, he’s already mentally exhausted from being optimal.

 

Sounds ridiculous? Of course it does. But we’re all Rajesh in some way. We’ve all drunk the optimization Kool-Aid so deeply that we’ve forgotten a fundamental truth: Life isn’t a machine, and neither are humans. Yet here we are, frantically trying to squeeze every drop of efficiency from our existence like we’re some kind of human juice boxes.

 

Here’s the dirty little secret optimization evangelists don’t want you to know: Peak efficiency is the enemy of breakthrough innovation. When everything is optimized, there’s no room for the beautiful accidents that create magic. Post-it Notes were born from a “failed” attempt to create super-strong adhesive. Penicillin was discovered because Alexander Fleming was messy and left his lab cultures exposed. Twitter emerged from a failing podcasting company. Slack was a byproduct of a failed gaming venture.

 

None of these revolutionary innovations would have survived an optimization audit. They were all “inefficient” uses of resources, time, and talent. Yet they changed the world. As some wise soul remarked ” the best ideas come during periods of slack, not during the tyranny of a hustle “.

 

On a personal level, we’ve optimized ourselves into misery. We track our steps, monitor our sleep cycles, optimize our diets, and schedule our spontaneity. We’ve turned life into a performance metric and wondered why we feel so empty. The corporate obsession with optimization stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what business is about. We’ve confused activity with achievement, busyness with business, and metrics with meaning.

 

The irony is delicious: In trying to eliminate waste, we’ve wasted the very thing that makes businesses human – the capacity for surprise, creativity, and genuine connection.

 

Here’s a radical thought( we can dare to term it ” strategic inefficiency “): What if we deliberately built inefficiency into our systems? What if we optimized for serendipity instead of predictability?

 

Some of the world’s most successful companies already do this. Netflix gives employees unlimited vacation time – completely inefficient from an HR perspective, but it attracts and retains creative talent. Patagonia shuts down on powder days so employees can go skiing – terrible for quarterly metrics, amazing for company culture.

 

In India, Tata Group‘s approach to CSR is strategically inefficient. They could optimize their charitable giving for maximum tax benefits, but instead, they focus on long-term social impact. This “inefficiency” has built them a brand reputation that money can’t buy.

 

Some of history’s greatest achievements came from people who were terrible at optimization. If we were to look at productive procrastination, look no further than Charles Darwin who took twenty years to publish “On the Origin of Species” – imagine the project management nightmare! Gandhi‘s non-violent resistance was spectacularly inefficient compared to armed revolution, yet it proved more powerful.

 

Even in modern times, Lin-Manuel Miranda spent seven years creating “Hamilton” while working on other projects. From an optimization standpoint, it was a disaster. From a creative standpoint, it was genius.

 

The solution isn’t to abandon all efficiency – that would be equally foolish. The answer is to optimize selectively and purposefully. Optimize the stuff that doesn’t matter so you can be gloriously inefficient with the stuff that does. Look around the world, and you’ll find that the most vibrant, creative, and ultimately successful societies aren’t the most optimized ones. Italy‘s “inefficient” lunch culture creates social bonds that fuel business relationships. Japan‘s seemingly wasteful consensus-building process (nemawashi) actually accelerates implementation. Brazil‘s carnival is economically ridiculous and culturally invaluable.

 

The Nordic countries consistently top happiness and innovation indices not because they’re optimized, but because they’ve optimized for the right things – human wellbeing over economic efficiency.

 

Remember that we humans aren’t machines. We’re beautifully inefficient creatures capable of magic precisely because we’re not optimized. Measure what matters, not what’s measurable. The most important things in life – love, creativity, wisdom, joy – resist quantification.

 

You can’t Six Sigma your way to serendipity, buddy. Optimization is the treadmill that convinces you you’re running a marathon—until you collapse… and realize you haven’t moved an inch.

 

Optimization started off as a good thing. Streamline processes. Save time. Improve outcomes. Get that extra per unit margin. But somewhere between the third iteration of a Gantt chart and your CEO quoting The Lean Startup like scripture, it became a disease. A cult. A blindfolded conga line of efficiency junkies chasing illusions of perfection while tripping over their own humanity. A lot of us are trapped in the algorithmic asylum.

 

Airlines are masters of optimization—charging for every inch of legroom, every ounce of baggage, and even for breathing the cabin air (almost). But in their quest to optimize costs, they’ve optimized customer experience into oblivion. Ever tried to get a refund or speak to a human? That’s optimization gone rogue.

 

Look at something closer to the bone, in our own lives- we now try to read books faster (ever heard of Blinkist? It’s like dating the summary of a person). Meditate more efficiently (10x Calm™—because who has 20 minutes to find peace?). Multitask every waking minute (emails on the toilet, Slack on the treadmill, podcasts while sleeping).

 

We’ve optimized life into a series of productivity sprints, all while forgetting that joy, presence, and wonder are gloriously inefficient. Remember that no one ever had a great first kiss that was optimized. Nobody ever reminisces, “That vacation was a Six Sigma success.” Because magic doesn’t scale.

 

Most orgs don’t have culture anymore. They have KPI-infused compliance theatres. We now optimize for meetings- read death by calendar. Optimize for emails -read CC everybody, say nothing. Optimize for “time saved” -read only to fill it with more pointless crap.

 

You’ve turned employees into dashboards. Leaders into data pimps. And customers into conversion rates. Congratulations, you just auto-tuned authenticity out of your brand.

 

Here’s the rub: Efficiency isn’t evil. Obsession with it is. Optimization becomes a trap when it becomes the default lens for every decision. When it overrides spontaneity, slack, intuition, and play. When it treats humans like code to be debugged and accelerated.

 

Gandhi didn’t optimize. He walked. Rumi didn’t A/B test his poems.Van Gogh didn’t use “sprint planning” to slice his ear. They lived in the mess. They mined meaning from the mush. Optimised wisdom anyone?

 

The universe didn’t optimize sunsets. It just made them beautiful. Your child’s giggle. A stolen kiss. A silly mistake that became a lifelong story. None of them were on a Gantt chart.

 

Stop sprinting. Start stumbling into wonder. Stay gloriously unoptimized.

 

Let’s take a stroll through history’s greatest hits of “How the hell did that work out so well?”

 

Amitabh Bachchan was rejected by All India Radio because his voice was deemed “unsuitable for radio.” THE AMITABH BACHCHAN. The man whose voice could make a grocery list sound like poetry. Imagine if he had accepted that verdict and spent his life whispering apologetically. Indian cinema would have collapsed from the sheer absence of baritone brilliance.

 

Sachin Tendulkar was dropped from his school cricket team. The boy who would become the God of Cricket was told he wasn’t good enough for his school team. If he had tattooed “NOT CRICKET MATERIAL” on his forehead and taken up accounting, India would still be crying.

 

J.K. Rowling was a divorced, depressed single mother on welfare when she started writing Harry Potter. Twelve publishers rejected her manuscript. TWELVE. That’s not just rejection; that’s a coordinated effort by the universe to tell you to quit. She didn’t. Today, she’s richer than the Queen of England and has created a fictional world more popular than most real countries.

 

Steve Jobs got fired from Apple – by the board of directors of the company he literally created in his garage. That’s like being kicked out of your own birthday party. But instead of spending the next decade introducing himself as “Steve, the guy who got fired from his own company,” he went off, built Pixar, revolutionized animated movies, came back to Apple, and basically invented the device you’re probably reading this on. His firing wasn’t career suicide; it was career resurrection.

 

Colonel Sanders – Rejected 1,009 times before someone finally said “yes” to his chicken recipe. If he had tattooed “FAILURE” on his forehead after rejection #500, we’d all be eating inferior fried chicken today. The horror!

 

Remember when A.R. Rahman was rejected by multiple music directors in the 90s? One producer literally told him his music was “too Western” for Indian audiences. Fast forward to today – the man has two Oscars and a shelf groaning under the weight of awards. That producer probably tells people at parties, “I discovered Rahman” (which is like saying you discovered the sun).

 

And our beloved APJ Abdul Kalam? Failed to become a fighter pilot. FAILED. Can you imagine if he had spent his life saying, “I’m Abdul, the guy who couldn’t fly planes”? Instead, he became the People’s President and inspired millions to dream of touching the sky.

 

With the above, we just took a world tour of the Museum of Human Stupidity.

You’re reading this because you’ve done something that makes you want to change your identity faster than a witness protection participant. Maybe you sent a love text to your boss. Maybe you invested your life savings in cryptocurrency based on a TikTok tip. Maybe you told your mother-in-law exactly what you thought about her “helpful” parenting advice.

 

Welcome to the club. Population: Everyone who’s ever been human for more than five minutes.

 

But here’s the uncomfortable truth nobody’s brave enough to tell you while you’re busy crafting your apology tour: You are not your mistakes. You’re just really, really committed to the performance.

 

BTW, Your mistakes called. They’re tired of being your full-time identity and want to go back to being part-time teachers. Time to give them notice.

 

Let’s stop treating mistakes like they’re head lice—something to be hidden and whispered about. They’re the reason you’re not still eating Cerelac at 30. Mistakes are your personal trainers—minus the six-pack and the annoying motivational quotes. They slap you, shake you, and force you to level up. In effect, mistakes are the real MVPs of your story.

 

Narayana Murthy was told to stop dreaming. He was rejected by Indian bureaucracy when he tried launching his first venture. So he started Infosys.
And now those same bureaucrats use Infosys software to reject other dreamers faster. Life’s poetic like that.

 

Some mistakes that became classic masterpieces include Post-it Notes which were an accidental failure of a super-strong adhesive. Penicillin came from moldy negligence. India’s Chandrayaan-2 crash paved the way for the successful Chandrayaan-3.

 

Thomas Edison – This guy “failed” over 1,000 times before inventing the light bulb. Today, we don’t call him “Thomas the Guy Who Really Sucked at Making Light Bulbs.” We call him a genius. Imagine if he had given up after attempt #47 and spent the rest of his life introducing himself as “Hi, I’m Tom, the guy who can’t figure out electricity.”

 

Indian families have invented the most sophisticated mistake amplification system known to humanity. We can take a small error and turn it into a multi-generational saga worthy of a Saas-Bahu serial.

 

“Beta, remember when you scored 89% instead of 90% in 7th grade? That’s why you’re still unmarried at 28.”

 

“You chose arts instead of science? That’s why there’s global warming.”

 

But here’s the rebellion we need: Start introducing yourself by your dreams, not your disasters.

 

Instead of “I’m the one who failed CA twice,” try “I’m the one figuring out my path to financial expertise.”

 

Instead of “I’m terrible at relationships,” experiment with “I’m learning what love means to me.”

 

Every mistake is just a poorly marketed learning experience. That startup that crashed? You didn’t fail; you got an MBA in entrepreneurship without the student loan. That relationship that ended? You didn’t lose; you gained a PhD in understanding your own heart. All it needs is a bit of reframing.

 

Mistakes come with expiry dates, but we keep them fresh in our minds like that pickle our mothers insist has “good preservatives.” Time to clean out the mental refrigerator, folks.

 

You are the author of your life story. Mistakes are plot points, not the entire narrative. Would you rather be remembered as “the person who made that error in Chapter 3” or “the person who wrote an amazing comeback in Chapter 15?

 

So, dear beautiful mess of a human being reading this while probably procrastinating on something important: Your mistakes are not your identity. They are your teachers, your redirects, your plot twists, and sometimes, your greatest blessings in disguise. Stop introducing yourself at the court of your own conscience as “the defendant.” You are the judge, the jury, and the person who gets to write the final verdict. And that verdict should always be: “Not guilty of being permanently defined by temporary actions.”

 

Now go mess up something new. Make it spectacular. Make it educational. Make it yours. Because you are not your mistakes. You are what comes after them.

 

If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not living. You’re just rehearsing for a play no one will watch. Start treating your failures like a startup treats a pivot – not as a failure, but as a course correction based on market feedback. Your life is not crashing; it’s iterating. Indulge in some rebranding strategy.

 

Remember that whoever invented autocorrect probably made a few typos first. And look how much joy that invention has brought to group chats worldwide. Stop introducing yourself as your worst decision. You wouldn’t introduce pizza as ‘bread that failed to be bread.’ You’re not failure with a human costume.

 

It is the most expensive subscription service you never signed up for.

 

Without wanting to make it sound like breaking news( while it just might be)- your brain is a slumlord. Here’s the thing nobody mentions in those feel-good Instagram posts – your brain is essentially a slumlord running the shadiest rental operation in town. It charges you premium rates for studio-apartment confidence while promising penthouse self-worth that somehow never gets delivered.

 

And that lease agreement? Written in invisible ink when you were five and someone laughed at your drawing of a horse that looked suspiciously like a deformed table.

 

Every morning, you wake up and your brain slides a bill under your mental door: “Rent due for feeling worthy of existing. Late fees apply for sleeping in. Additional charges for wearing that shirt that makes you look like you’re cosplaying as a depressed accountant.”

 

Translation: Your brain is that landlord who raises rent annually but never fixes the broken self-confidence tap.

 

This psychological rent racket is happening worldwide, but the rates are absolutely bonkers depending on your zip code. Americans pay premium for deluxe confidence packages that come with motivational speeches and vision boards. They’re essentially living in the Beverly Hills of self-esteem – everything’s overpriced, everyone’s fake-happy, and there’s a life coach on every corner. The Japanese have turned self-worth into a group discount plan. Individual confidence? That’s western nonsense. Their self-esteem comes with a family pack and community support system. And us Indians? We’re paying for self-esteem in a rent-controlled nightmare where the rates are determined by your last exam score, your mother’s friend’s son’s achievements, and whether you’ve gained weight since Diwali.

 

From Wall Street to Dharavi, the psychological rent is non-negotiable:
USA:Kanye West (before the meltdowns) built an empire on the audacity of unshakable self-belief. Now? Overdue payments. Japan:Hikikomori—half a million people who let society evict their self-worth. Don’t be them. India: The Sharma ji ka beta syndicate—where comparison steals your confidence before you even get a chance to spend it.

 

Self-esteem isn’t some ancestral bungalow you inherit—it’s a high-stakes rental in a cutthroat city. Stop paying? Congrats, you’re now squatting in your own damn mind, dodging eviction notices from self-doubt. This isn’t motivational fluff. This is survival.

 

Fact is the moment your self-esteem account runs dry, life downgrades you to economy class in your own damn story.

 

Social media has basically turned self-esteem into Venezuela’s economy – hyper inflated, constantly crashing, and somehow everyone else seems to have access to foreign currency while you’re bartering with buttons.

 

Every Instagram story is like receiving an eviction notice from your own confidence. “Your self-worth has been downgraded because Karen from college is apparently running marathons while making artisanal soap and raising bilingual children who paint watercolor masterpieces in their spare time.”

 

LinkedIn is even worse. It’s like a luxury apartment complex where everyone’s posting about their “humble journey” while subtly flexing about their corner office and company car. “Thrilled to announce my promotion to CEO! #blessed #humbled #stilldrivingmyFerraritowork“.

 

Social media turned self-esteem into cryptocurrency – everybody’s talking about it, nobody understands it, and most of us are broke.

 

Indian families invented dynamic pricing for self-esteem before surge pricing was even a thing. Your worth fluctuates based on factors including but not restricted to- Current market rate of engineering admissions; Your weight compared to your wedding photos; How much money your cousin is making in America; Whether you remembered to call your grandmother this week.

 

We’re the only culture where self-esteem comes with a live customer service team (your relatives) who are available 24/7( beats the hell out of the customer service helpline that most utilities and banks have) to inform you about rate changes, performance reviews, and comparison charts with other tenants in the family building.

 

Another lens you might want to wear( I strongly encourage you to do that) is earning compound interest by not caring a damn. Confidence compounds like interest, but so does not giving a damn. The people who seem to have cracked the code aren’t paying more rent; they’ve just realized the whole system is a bit of a pyramid scheme. Take Ratan Tata buying Jaguar Land Rover after Ford humiliated him. That’s not just business revenge; that’s psychological compound interest with a side of “I’ll show you who’s economically viable now, mother truckers.” Or Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw getting rejected by breweries for being a woman and responding by building a billion-dollar biotech empire in her garage. Sometimes the best response to society’s appraisal of your worth is to become your own damn appraiser.

 

Time to beard the lion in its own den. Aka– dive head deep into the negotiation you have been avoiding. Time for some real talk, shall we. That voice in your head charging you psychological rent? It’s not an impartial landlord. It’s more like that friend who borrows money and then acts like they’re doing YOU a favor by eventually paying it back. Your inner critic is basically running a protection racket inside your own head. “Nice confidence you got there… would be a shame if something happened to it. Pay up or we’ll remind you about that time you tripped in front of your crush in 8th grade.”

 

Your inner critic is like a mafia boss who’s forgotten they work for you, not the other way around.

 

Low self-esteem is the ultimate poverty. With it? You walk into a room like it’s your goddamn throne.Without it? You apologize for existing before anyone even notices you. Cases in point: Elon Musk got laughed out of Russia while buying rockets. Paid his confidence dues, now he owns space.  Kangana Ranaut didn’t beg for Bollywood’s approval—she sent the industry an invoice for her talent.   That underpaid genius in your office? Still waiting for a “permission slip” from the universe to demand more.

 

Moral of the story? The world doesn’t grant respect. You confiscate it.

 

Comparison is the thief of joy. Validation addiction? Emotional nicotine.
Perfectionism? The serial killer of bold moves. Your vibe attracts your tribe—only when your self-esteem isn’t in ICU. Say ‘No’ like it’s a full sentence. Because it is. You are not too much. They’re just too little. So stop making yourself small for people who can’t handle your full screen mode.

 

Look, my apologies- I’m not here to give you a group hug. I’m here to slap some swagger into your spine. With your permission, of course.  Self-esteem ain’t your Instagram bio or your fancy LinkedIn headline.
It’s your soul’s credit score. And most people? Running on overdraft.

 

Take Muhammad Ali. He didn’t wait for likes or retweets. He declared himself the greatest. Way before the world caught up. Advance booking on confidence, ladies and gentlemen. Oprah Winfrey? They said she wasn’t TV material. Well, she flipped that script so hard, now she owns the damn teleprompter. In India, we’ve got Bhuvan Bam—started as a singing waiter.
Now? He’s got more subscribers than most folks have brain cells.
Why? Because he didn’t lease his self-worth to trolls. Or Falguni Nayar.
Middle-aged. No VC bro backing. She built Nykaa and painted a billion-dollar lipstick across India’s startup scene.

 

This is not about being famous. It’s about being fearless. You want self-esteem? Get up. Show up. Speak up. Say “no” to what insults your vibe, your value, your vision.

 

Remember- You are expensive. Start charging rent in self-respect. Confidence is quiet. And insecurity has the loudest podcast.

 

If your brand doesn’t create a feeling, it’ll be replaced by one that does.

 

Let’s be honest:

• Nobody gets teary-eyed over a product feature.
• Nobody tattoos a “30% more absorbent” claim on their bicep.
• But people do swear by Nike’s “Just Do It”, not because of sneakers—but because it feels like a personal challenge.

 

In India, people don’t buy a Royal Enfield for mileage.

They buy the thump. The beard. The rebellion.

That’s emotional equity.

 

 

Let’s get this out of the way—

Your USP(Unique Selling Proposition) is like your gym membership in January: well-intentioned but largely ignored.

 

Because people don’t love brands for what they do.

 

They love brands for how they make them feel.

 

Here’s a bold idea:If you really want your people to get to where they’re going…get out of their bloody way.

 

You’re not Gandalf. You’re not a life coach. You’re just another well-meaning roadblock in Timberland fleece. You don’t need to lead every meeting, approve every idea, or be tagged on every Google Doc like an insecure influencer.

 

Your people don’t want hand-holding. They want you to unclench.

 

Today’s talent doesn’t want a “manager.” They want a frigging enabler.
Someone who can give them oxygen, not checklists. They want: Less “What’s your bandwidth like this week?” More “What’s lighting you up right now?” Less “Update me by EOD.” More “Surprise me.”

 

So, leaders, please stop cosplaying as gods of guidance.

 

Real leadership has a few obvious giveaways. Where you are the architect, not the gatekeeper. You design the arena. Set the rules. Then disappear like a magician mid-trick. Where psychological safety actually means unfiltered group or Slack messages. If your people still say “Just my 2 cents ” before every idea, you’ve already lost. Where Growth is recognised as a Mood NOT a KPI. If your workplace still feels like an arranged marriage between compliance and confusion, no one’s staying for dessert. Where you kill your org chart before it kills you. Careers today are jungle gyms, not ladders.
Let people swing, skip, jump tracks. Or risk losing them to a startup with beanbags and zero BS.  Where your job is to design friction less flow. Not performance reviews written like obituaries. Not town halls with clapping seals. Not fake “open-door policies” when your calendar’s booked till Christmas 2026.

 

Some Red Flags that most of us would have experienced from a country mile away- where..You’re still celebrating “attendance” like it’s an achievement.
Your idea of culture is Friday Pizza and passive-aggressive birthday emails.
Where you measure productivity in hours, not impact. You say “fail fast” but punish the first bruise. Where selecting the ‘ best vendor ‘ is based on the RFP document drafted in 1998.

 

Leadership is not a guided tour. It’s crowd control at a rave. Keep the lights on. Turn the music up. Let people lose themselves in the rhythm of what makes them feel alive. Because people aren’t headed somewhere. They’re heading to themselves. All you have to do… is stop being the detour.

 

If you are in India, then we are complicit to what can be termed as The Great Indian Control Fetish. Look, we Indians have an orgasmic relationship with control. From arranged marriages to career choices, we’ve turned interfering into a competitive sport. Our management style is basically helicopter parenting with spreadsheets.

 

When TCS launched their “Think Without Your Boss Breathing Down Your Neck” program (officially called something much duller), senior leadership nearly needed cardiac intervention. The thought of employees making decisions without seventeen approval signatures triggered corporate PTSD across the board. The results? Seventeen patents and a platform that saved more money than a Gujarati wedding planner. Yet most companies still treat autonomy like it’s unprotected corporate sex—too risky to try without multiple layers of protection.

 

As my whiskey-loving friend from Goa says: “Control is like underwear. Necessary for support, but if it’s too tight, your best parts can’t function.”

 

Forget the old-school boss who thinks leadership means barking orders from a throne. The best leaders are like shadowy puppeteers—pulling just enough strings to keep the show on, but letting the performers steal the spotlight. Lao Tzu said it best: “When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” Translation? Your ego’s gotta take a back seat, or you’re just a glorified roadblock.

 

Don’t be a control freak. Let your people wander, get lost, and find their own damn way. Innovation loves a little chaos. So stop GPSing. Hand out the compasses. If you’re not failing, you’re boring. Create spaces where people can screw up big and learn bigger. Make learning into a blood sport. One-size-fits-all is for Walmart socks. Customize freedom, resources, and growth paths like you’re tailoring a badass suit. Personalise or perish. Fake listening is worse than no listening. Act on feedback or prepare for mutiny. Listen as if you are being audited. Normal is overrated. Reward the risk-takers, the misfits, the wildcards. That’s where the magic hides. Translation: Celebrate the weirdos.

 

Let’s take a look at some global and desi disruptors who are doing it right. Google’s 20% Rule: Birthplace of Gmail, Google Maps and many other WTF inventions. Spotify’s Squads: High Autonomy, High Alignment Zoho: Building villages, not just companies. Swiggy Moonlighting Policy: Trust over Tyranny. Netflix’s Culture Memo:Brutally honest. Brutally effective.

 

One can equate Leadership with Architecture. Where you build Psychological safety, Ownership, Permission to play, Breathing room and then step aside. Not Announcements. Not Airtime. Not Authority.

 

As I conclude, here’s an imaginary roast memo for all those who want to read the lines(not just between them).

 

Subject Line: This is an Intervention

 

To: The Leaders Who Think They’re Leading

From: Your People Who Are Pretending to Be Impressed

 

Let’s get real. We’re not underperforming. You’re overcompensating. We don’t need your motivational quotes, team offsites with cold sandwiches, or your “synergizing the roadmap forward” gibberish.

 

We need: Permission to try without begging. Space to breathe without reporting every breath. Trust that isn’t conditional on CC-ing you on every goddamn mail.

 

The Unspoken Truth: We do more learning on Instagram than in your L&D program. We lie on feedback forms so we don’t get dragged into “coaching conversations.”We turn off our cameras because your monologues drain our souls.

 

Stop it already: Stop scheduling meetings about meetings. Stop measuring hours like it’s 2003. Stop calling us “resources” like we’re printer paper.

 

What we actually want? : Let us say “I don’t know” without fear. Let us build stuff, break stuff, and not be crucified for it. Let us grow in directions that aren’t pre-approved by HR flowcharts. We don’t want a “career path.”
We want a jungle gym, a trampoline, and sometimes a quiet corner to rethink everything.

 

Here’s the new creed: Don’t lead us. Unleash us. Give us clarity, not control. Freedom, not feedback loops. Conditions, not constraints. Then sit back.
And watch us surprise you.

 

Signed,
Your Team
(Still Here. Still Hopeful. Still Waiting for You to Evolve.)