Be a Category of One
[Music]
are you
vanilla
are you vanilla
when i was a little kid i used to play
soccer and our head coach professor
pierrot would say
every simultaneous
i would freeze
i was afraid of attacking
i was afraid of winning
are you ready to win
are you really ready to win
our deepest fear is not failure our
deepest fear
is that we are impactful beyond measure
our deepest fear is that our wildest
dreams come true and we don’t know what
happens
what happens when your wildest dream
comes true
and how does it feel
most people never wrote down their
wildest dreams so they know they don’t
know what it is
and they fear it because we fear what we
don’t face
as soon as you face something fear
disappears
when you are in a social situation and
you are the strange one
and it’s awkward and it feels irritating
this is your uniqueness this is your
superpower
you might not like it
but this is your main asset
your strategic advantage
nobody else has this it’s yours
if you embrace it you will win
if you let other people define your work
they will say
make a little bit more of this make less
of this and at the end it becomes
vanilla it becomes like
everybody else’s work your uniqueness
so if you want to create something
remarkable
something really relevant then you have
to inoculate
against the wishes from the outside
world
you have to protect your genius
so stop hiding
please stop hiding
were you ever invited to a pitch
where you have to compare your work to
three other people’s work
why did you go there
there is only one you so there is
nothing to compare
today my boys were playing playful
blissful joyful limitless
and then i came in not so fast not so
loud
not so dangerous and then i realized
this is how i try to make them vanilla
this is how society tries to make
everybody vanilla
because we want people to be all the
same when they are all the same
we are in our comfort zone we don’t need
to look at us
we don’t need to change anything we can
keep doing what we do
without questioning are we doing the
right thing
the right way
we can keep in our default position so
we try to make everybody vanilla
and we start when they are young
but this is not good for us as a society
we don’t need more vanilla people we
have enough
vanilla people
we need to solve problems like climate
change like how to build an
open society and this will not be done
by vanilla people
so please stop hiding
because we need your superpowers
your superpowers your superpowers in
order to solve these big questions
every day i hear excuses
yeah i know remote working would be
better but in my industry this is how
things are done
yes i know i should build more but you
know in my industry this is how
things are done so we take something
like the industry and we use it to hide
behind it
but there is no such thing as an
industry you know in the 1980s
industries have lost their clear
boundaries
in what industry is apple in what
industry
is siemens
i share with you now if you’re ready to
win
a powerful tool the equalizer
it will help you break free from
competition and be
uncomparable this is how you can coach
yourself
step one you write down eight
things that you created and are proud of
and then you write down for each one
what people in that field
are currently investing in for example
it’s photography
everybody is investing in more precision
which
different edge can you bring in with
your superpower
so when they zig you zag for example
they go for more precision
you go for more emotion
so the next step is you
try and implement your zack daisy
yousek based on your uniqueness
and then you group these eight things
based on where you are super weak
on the left side where you’re okay in
the middle and where you are
excellent and you win you put them on
the right side your superpowers
and now you act upon it
left side you stop doing that
middle you do less of it and on the
right side
now you put in all the time all the
money
that you saved on the left side you put
them on the right side on your super
powers where you are
already winning and you double down on
that
that’s the equalizer stop annealing
yourself
you are something special and while
there is nothing special about being
special because everybody’s special
there is magic in
showing up with your uniqueness
because as you stop hiding
you give others power
as we liberate ourselves we give
others permission to liberate themselves
and this is what we need break free
from vanilla keep rolling
[Music]
you