Working Backwards

The Hotpot | March 2026 | By Lisanne

31.3

The search for “new” can be a bit of a trap.

While a lot in business has already been done before, we all love the lightning bolt.

We want the original idea, the blue ocean, the thing that’s never been done. But if you look closely at the winners, few of them are inventing a new game. They are just playing the existing one with better math.

When Triangl sent their bikinis to Kendall Jenner’s inner circle of friends in the hope she would pick it up, their strategy wasn’t “unique.” They were being effective. They didn’t wait for a lucky break; they engineered an environment where their brand became the only logical thing for her to notice. It wasn’t a gamble. It was a siege.

The same goes for the “Obama moment.” Steven Bartlett didn’t wake up one day and get a call from the White House. He built a track record. First, he interviewed a lesser-known guest. Then a bigger one. Then Boris Johnson. By the time Obama sat down, the interview wasn’t a surprise—it was the inevitable next step.

Credibility is a modular system. It’s a series of bricks you lay one by one until the wall is high enough to see over.

We often exhaust ourselves trying to be unique before we’ve bothered to be credible. We fear that if we didn’t invent the door ourselves, our entry doesn’t count.

But does the market care about who invented the door? Or does it care that the door is open?

Influence is a staircase, not a stage.

Being effective isn’t a lack of creativity. In fact, it might be the highest form of it. It’s the transition from being a dreamer waiting for a “cold call” to being an architect who makes the result unavoidable.

You can spend your life trying to be the only person who has ever thought of an idea. Or you can spend your life building the hinges, the frame, and the key, until the door has no choice but to swing wide.

What’s more important to you?

Being the first, or being the one who actually arrives?

Let me know in the comments