HOW TO BE RARE
What does it take to actually be rare? Why even put in the effort? Especially today, when it just seems like everyone's going out of their way to fit in. It's everywhere you look on social media and pop culture, and even in the world of tech, you look at AI. For example. The system scraped the internet, but just countless images and sounds and words have been spit out.
Average, average riding, average art, average skill levels. And if you're not careful, you just end up blending into the background itself. But there's something powerful about chasing the opposite path and not just accepting being rare, but actively chasing it. For me, this journey started with music. I had an itch for the visual side of things as a kid, shooting home videos and skits.
And eventually that curiosity led me to build my own skillset. Around 2010, I started teaching myself After Effects, and I'll be honest, I wasn't good at it at all at first. I was far from it. I'd mess around and try out tutorials here and there, get frustrated and mess up and try again. A few years later, I was able to buy a camera and I wasn't really sure what to do with it, but I just dug into the basics learning the technical stuff, aperture, F-Stop, shutter speed, and over time, as I shot more footage, something clicked.
I started shooting videos of myself making beats and splicing and graphics, and just using this as an opportunity or a playground for learning a place to get better. There were plenty of times where I felt average, but I kept pushing, combining these things that most people wouldn't bother combining. Eventually, that persistence paid off and I landed a job making content for a fortune 500 company, shooting videos and creating instructional content, all while plugging away at After Effects.
In my spare time. I became obsessed with improving my skills, hunting for plug ins, and just making my workflow better and faster. Every small gain I made in my work made me that much more unique. Fast forward to 2020, and right before the pandemic, I was deep into After Effects in my day jobs, and then I started to experiment a little bit more with C40.
I'm always looking for that edge and angle that nobody was quite trying at the time, and then something else clicked. Every time I dug deeper and added another skill, or try something that nobody else around me was doing, it made me just a little bit more rare. My work just looked different. Not because I was the most talented, but because I refused to stop layering skills, chasing curiosity, and showing up when it would have been easy to just settle.
So why chase rarity? Because blending in is easy when you keep stacking skills, exploring new lanes and refusing to box yourself in. Being rare isn't just possible. It's inevitable. And the more you lean into what makes you different, the more you embrace your own combination of skills, the less you look like anyone else. And the same with your work.
That's what truly stands out in any crowd, or maybe especially in a world that's built on average. And if you're watching this, you might be asking yourself, why should I even want to be rare or build unique skills? The answer is very simple. When you choose to build your own path, you unlock opportunities you never find by following a crowd.
The world tends to reward originality. Client collaborators and audiences are all searching for something real, something that stands out. So when you cultivate these skills and no one else is combining, you make yourself irreplaceable, a linchpin. Being rare isn't just about getting attention. It's about crafting a life and a career that actually sites you the place, your strength, that keeps you growing.
If you want to be memorable, to create work that matters and open doors that don't exist for everyone else. Aim for rare. Your uniqueness is your biggest asset. Don't hide it. Make it your advantage.
