Everybody you admire, found their ‘thing’.

Michael Phelps has a weird body. Double jointed elbows, a torso 8 inches too long, and half the lactic acid production as a normal human.

The dudes built like a flying fish. So he found his thing, swimming.

Joe Rogan liked to get high, have funny conversations with his friends about everything from fighting to aliens.

3 hour conversation with a stranger? I couldn’t do that. But Joe can.

So he found podcasting. He found his thing.

Finding your thing is the only true shortcut to life.

It’s realizing that you actually have a dirt bike, so this little dirt path is perfect for you (but won’t be perfect for others in cars).

But, how do you find your thing?

I read a great quote the other day from Ben Kuhn (the CTO of Anthropic) about finding your thing: “what does it seem like everyone else is mysteriously bad at?”

I love this.

For me, I always wondered why other people are so bad at explanations.

In school, I hated the way my teachers explained things. Too complicated, too boring.

Even as an investor, I was surprised how bad founders are at telling their own story.

It took me 10 years to find my thing. From age 20 to 30, I tried to be a great CEO.

I wanted that to be my thing. But if wanting things made them happen, then Sydney Sweeney would be named Sydney Puri.

(see? I’m good at this writing shit!)

For 10 years, I tried to make being a founder my thing. I was a B+ at it. But in the real world, B+ doesn’t get you jack sh*t.

Then I started podcasting for fun. I started writing. I started doing the thing I thought others were mysteriously bad at (explaining things).

The podcast took off (100m+ streams), my twitter blew up (450k followers), and my newsletter grew fast (sold in 1 year for millions of dollars).

Everyone has a thing, you just have to find it.

Here’s another example. My cofounder Ben Levy.

He finds it very strange why everyone is terrible at keeping in touch.

I’m guilty of this. I forget to reply to texts or emails. I don’t checkin and see how things are going. I’ll have a great lunch meeting, then forget to keep in touch for 2 years.

Ben is the opposite. He always replies. He loves to checkin.

• If you write a blog post, he texts you saying it’s great.
• If you have a baby, he sends a gift.
• He sends useful links that might help you with your project. He knows your favorite sports team, and texts you after every game.

If a Lannister always pays their debts, then the Levy’s always send their texts.

I was shocked when he showed me his phone. He texts ~100 unique people every day. (no agenda, just because he likes to do it).

We’ve directly made millions of dollars just because Ben happened to be staying in touch with someone and they thought of us when an opportunity sprang up.

You may not know your thing today. That’s OK.

But most of us are too humble, or worse too self-critical to even admit what we’re great at.

So instead of asking “what am I great at?” – just start to pay attention to “what does everyone else mysteriously suck at?”

-Uncle Shaan

That’s all folks. Back again next week. Every Friday, with the One Minute Blog.