When Praise Becomes a Trap
People have a habit of explaining new things through old references. When they admire your work, they reach for whatever familiar success story comes to mind, as if comparing it to something recognizable makes it easier to understand. It’s well-intentioned, but it reduces what you’re creating into a template that already exists. With Meri Podcast, I hear it often. Someone will say, “You guys are like Stephen Bartlett, amazing,” referring to the host of Diary of a CEO, or “You should try what Joe Rogan does, like Googling things while interviewing.” They mean it as a compliment, but it misunderstands what we’re building. We are not shaped by their philosophies. We do not operate like them. And the truth is, we don’t model my thinking or my craft around either of them.
When people compare you to someone they know, they’re not describing your identity. They’re describing the limits of their imagination. If you’re not careful, praise can turn into quiet misdirection. If enough people tell you “You’re like X,” you begin adjusting your instincts and your decisions to fit a mold that doesn’t belong to you. What starts as admiration gradually becomes imitation. Your originality gets diluted by someone else’s reference point.
Learn Without Becoming
There is value in studying great creators. You can learn from how Joe Rogan holds conversations or how Stephen Bartlett positions his brand. You can study the structure of the All-In Podcast or analyze how different creators build engagement. But learning is not the same as becoming. The real danger begins when influence turns into identity. The question creators rarely ask themselves is the most important one: “Am I studying this person to improve my craft, or am I unconsciously attempting to become them?”
Learning sharpens you. Imitation erases you. The moment your creative decisions start echoing someone else’s instincts, you stop building something original and you start replicating something that already exists.
Why Replication Fails
Nowhere is this more obvious than people trying to copy the All-In Podcast. Four CEOs with decades of shared history, mutual trust, and deep competence sit together and speak freely. The chemistry didn’t appear overnight. It grew through years of conflict, friendship, and building. People look at the final output and assume the magic lives in the format, four friends with microphones. So they gather four smart people, set up the table, and wonder why it feels flat. They forget that chemistry is not content. It’s context. It’s history. It’s the invisible structure behind what happens on camera.
Trying to recreate the All-In Podcast without understanding the foundation behind it is like trying to recreate a twenty-year friendship by taking a picture together. You can copy the surface, but not the substance. And when creators chase the shape instead of the soul, the result is always the same: something that looks familiar but feels empty.
The Problem With “The Next Uber of X”
This imitation instinct shows up in startups too. Founders pitch their ideas by saying, “We’re the Uber for this,” or “the Airbnb of that.” Investors might understand faster, but what they really hear is that the founders haven’t fully understood their own identity. Borrowed clarity is the first sign of shallow thinking. If your idea is genuinely original, you should be able to describe it without leaning on someone else’s language. Your communication should be simple because you are clear, not because you’re hiding behind a familiar brand.
Every time a founder pitches their company through another company’s identity, they shrink their originality. They signal that their innovation is not strong enough to stand on its own.
Creators Owe the World Originality
This is why thinkers and builders must protect their identity. The world does not need another version of a successful creator. It needs the next original. Someone has to set the pattern others reference later. Someone has to become the comparison point, not the comparison. And that person is never the one who diluted themselves to fit what already existed.
Being original is not comfortable. Originality always arrives with its own shortcomings. When you do something new, it won’t feel complete, it won’t feel polished, and it won’t fit neatly into people’s expectations. But that is precisely why it stands out. People pay attention to what breaks the pattern. They notice what doesn’t resemble anything they already know. Newness attracts curiosity before it attracts approval.
When you imitate someone else, you shrink your own power twice, once when you suppress your uniqueness, and again when the world magnifies that suppression. You become a lesser version of something already available, and people sense it immediately. Over time, this destroys creators. They burn out, lose identity, lose inspiration, and eventually abandon the work because they were never building from their own center.
Go after being the one person who is unmistakably themselves, even if it looks strange, different, or insane to others. That friction is a signal you are creating something real. Originality might not feel safe, but imitation guarantees irrelevance.
Originality Also Means Letting the Work Decide Its Own Shape
One of the strangest pieces of feedback creators hear today is, “Make it short. People won’t watch three or four hours. Everything now is TikTok, Reels, and Shorts.” It’s the same imitation instinct in a different costume. People assume the market’s current trend must dictate the shape of your craft. But length should follow content, not the other way around. When the conversation is deep and the subject demands space, shortening it to chase attention kills the very thing that makes it valuable.
Starting with the audience instead of the work is how creators lose their voice. When you frame the container before the creation exists, the creation becomes a hostage to format. Great content is not defined by minutes but by meaning. If it deserves four hours, let it be four. If it deserves twenty minutes, let it be twenty. The moment you design for the algorithm first, you stop creating and start performing. People can sense that instantly.
Identity as Strategy
Thinking for yourself is not an aesthetic choice; it’s strategic. It builds longevity. It shapes reputation. It creates a category. When you filter influence through your own worldview, you refine your craft instead of distorting it. You take what is useful and leave the rest. The copies disappear. The originals define the next era.
Someone has to be the first version. Someone has to create the new standard. Someone has to step away from existing molds to build something worth referencing. That burden belongs to the creator bold enough to trust their own mind.
Why not you?