Srinivas Rao

Stop trying to beat everyone else. True success is playing by your own rules, creating work that no one can replicate. Don't be the best, be the only. You're on the conventional path, checking off accomplishments. You might be doing okay by normal standards, but you still feel restless, bored, and limited. Srinivas Rao gets it. As a new business school graduate, Srinivas's dreams were crushed by a soulless job that demanded only conformity. Sick of struggling to keep his head above water, Srinivas quit his job and took to the waves, pursuing his dream of learning to surf. He also found the freedom to chart his own course. Interviewing more than five hundred creative people on his Unmistakable Creative podcast was the ultimate education. He heard how guests including Seth Godin, Elle Luna, Tim Ferriss, Simon Sinek, and Danielle LaPorte blazed their own trails. Srinivas blends his own story with theirs to tell you: You can find that courage too. Don't be just one among many--be the only. Be unmistakable. Trying to be the best will chain you to others' definition of success. Unmistakable work, on the other hand, could only have been created by one person, so competition is irrelevant. Like Banksy's art or Tim Burton's films, unmistakable work needs no signature and has no precedent. Whether you're a business owner, an artist, or just someone who wants to leave your mark on the world, Unmistakable will inspire you to create your own path and define your own success.

Why Only Is Better Than Best

Unmistakable

"We live in such a hyper-connected society today flooded with so much talent and so much noise. Talent alone won't cut it. Whether you're an artist, musician, writer or creator of sorts, to stand out in the world you must be unmistakable. It's the only option. To create unmistakable work, you must take risks. You must cross lines, personal and professional. You must go to the point of a no return. On my 34th birthday, I asked myself a question. 'If this had been the last year of my life, would I have been ok with how I'd lived?' When my answer was a resounding NO, I knew that something had to change. So I started to write in a way that was more honest, more transparent and more vulnerable than I ever had. I committed career suicide, one Facebook status update at a time. And in that process I found my voice. This collection of essays is about that journey. I hope it inspires you to find that unmistakable artist in yourself"--Amazon.com.

The Art of Being Unmistakable

The creator of the Unmistakable Creative podcast makes a counterintuitive argument: By focusing your creative work on pleasing yourself, you can increase your productivity, happiness, and (eventually, paradoxically) the size of your audience. Creating for your own pleasure--whether you're writing a novel, composing songs, or painting a landscape--can seem pointless. It's tempting to focus on pursuing money and fame, rather than the process itself. But as Srini Rao warns, creating then turns into a chore that can harm your self-esteem and suck the pleasure out of life, rather than being a source of joy. Rao, host of the podcast The Unmistakable Creative, argues that we should counter this thinking by intentionally creating art for ourselves alone--an audience of one. In this book he shares the fascinating true stories of creatives who took this path, along with actionable tips and the research of creativity experts. You'll learn, for example: • How Oprah's intentional focus on her own work rather than the opinions of everyone else catapulted her into one of the most popular talk shows of all time. • How being process-driven can not only help you produce more work, but can make you happier outside of your creative time. • How to put together a creative "team of rivals" whose feedback can help you hone your craft and filter out useless feedback. By playing to an audience of one, we can find more happiness, increased productivity, and a greater sense of community.

Reclaiming Creativity for Its Own Sake

An Audience of One

In this deluxe edition with one hour of bonus content, listen to author Srinivas Rao and business partner, Brian Koehn, discuss their life-changing journey with Unmistakable Creative—and how they charted their own course to becoming unmistakable. Stop trying to beat everyone else. True success is playing by your own rules, creating work that no one can replicate. Don’t be the best, be the only. You’re on the conventional path, checking off accomplishments. You might be doing okay by normal standards, but you still feel restless, bored, and limited. Srinivas Rao gets it. As a new business school graduate, Srinivas’s dreams were crushed by a soulless job that demanded only conformity. Sick of struggling to keep his head above water, Srinivas quit his job and took to the waves, pursuing his dream of learning to surf. He also found the freedom to chart his own course. Interviewing more than five hundred creative people on his Unmistakable Creative podcast was the ultimate education. He heard how guests including Seth Godin, Elle Luna, Tim Ferriss, Simon Sinek, and Danielle LaPorte blazed their own trails. Srinivas blends his own story with theirs to tell you: You can find that courage too. Don’t be just one among many—be the only. Be unmistakable. Trying to be the best will chain you to others’ definition of success. Unmistakable work, on the other hand, could only have been created by one person, so competition is irrelevant. Like Banksy’s art or Tim Burton’s films, unmistakable work needs no signature and has no precedent. Whether you’re a business owner, an artist, or just someone who wants to leave your mark on the world, Unmistakable will inspire you to create your own path and define your own success.

Srinivas Rao

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