TLDR:
- “Sharing art is the price of making it, exposing your vulnerability is the fee.” ~Rick Rubin
- “The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away.” Picasso
- Both of these quotes are intertwined in molding one’s personal brand. Namely, there can be nothing better than to share your gift to the world.
- That’s what all the founders of Hotmail, Apple, Microsoft, and Instagram essentially did. We’re all still beneficiaries of it to this day.
- All of this is underlined by sharing your gift, coming at the price of making it, for how else can you share your gift without even making it?
- To expose one’s vulnerability is essentially a measure of how desperate they are to bring it to life. Specifically speaking, what is the problem you have in life that isn’t just one you can only solve, but you must.
- It’s just as meaningful if not more for your gift to only serve a specific niche. Alex Hormozi doesn’t emphasize “category-of-one” and that “the riches are in the niches” in his Acquistion.com course for no good reason. It is still the best personal brand you could ask for.
Finding the meaning and purpose of life deep within yourself
Just now, I went back and relistened a segment of The Creative Act episode on the Vinh & Ali Show to find the first part of the quote Ali quotes of Rick Rubin from his book.
The full quote was, “Sharing art is the price of making it, exposing your vulnerability is the fee.”
Before this, Vinh quotes Picasso on the topic of integrating art into the essence of your being, “The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away.”
Immediately, it got me thinking about how both these quotes are intertwined in molding one’s personal brand, specifically that there can be no better variation than sharing your gift to the world.
It doesn’t have to be explicitly advertised either.
If you think about it, be it the advent of Hotmail, Apple, Microsoft, and Instagram, they were all born out of some form of necessity the founders had, and the entire world ended up being beneficiaries of it as well to this day.
Underlining all of this is the sharing of your gift, which as Rubin says comes at the price of making it, for it’s obvious: how else can you share your gift without even making it?
One way I look at exposing your vulnerability is the desperation of bringing it to life, the strenuous lengths one goes to out of sincerity, rather than as a sole means of convenience for oneself.
To reach that capability, one must conduct deep soul searching within oneself, asking whether or not “must you do it.” If all relevant checkboxes are ticked, only then can one transcend to such a level for the sake of the gift they know is truly innate within themselves, honoring the words of Picasso by finding the problem they experience in life that only they can solve.
But of course, it doesn’t mean that the gift must be something that the entire world would benefit from, for there’s a reason why Alex Hormozi stresses about competing at a “category of one” and that the riches are in the niches throughout his Acquisiton.com course: it’s just as meaningful.
In some cases, your gift could mean the world to one individual for the rest of their life, a sentiment that could very well be equivalent to thousands of people given how it is echoed.
So if that’s the gift you find within yourself to give away as your purpose in life, that’s perfectly alright, irrespective of how much of a money-making venture it may turn out to be.
It’d be way more fruitful to serve a niche specifically tailored to what it is you want to bestow upon them than what you may initially think, for after all, that is your gift; the best personal brand you could ask for.