The Unlikely Intersection Strategy
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- —
The Unlikely Intersection Strategy creates a differentiated niche by combining two skills, identities, or categories that are rarely presented together. Competing inside a familiar single-word category forces a creator to win through greater effort and incremental improvement. Combining categories creates a new subcategory in which direct comparison is harder and creative possibilities are broader. The raw materials can come from seemingly unrelated experiences such as medicine and coding, gaming and ecology, or aviation and explanatory media. The emotional obstacle is the desire to fit in: an intersection may lack existing role models because the creator is among the first to occupy it.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
List your usable identities
Inventory professional skills, hobbies, unusual experiences, and subjects you can explain or explore.
Pro tip Include experiences that seem commercially irrelevant, such as gaming or music.
Watch out Do not restrict the list to formal qualifications.
- 2
Find unlikely pairings
Combine two categories that would not normally be placed together and imagine the resulting content or service.
Pro tip Look for pairings that naturally change the language, examples, or perspective of the work.
Watch out Simply listing multiple unrelated interests does not create a coherent intersection.
- 3
Define the new subcategory
Describe the intersection in a way that makes it distinguishable from either parent category.
Pro tip A concise label such as coder-doctor makes the distinction easier to understand.
Watch out Avoid combining categories solely for novelty when they offer no reader value.
- 4
Create consistently at the intersection
Publish enough work to teach the market to associate you with the new combination.
Pro tip Repetition is what turns a novel pairing into an identifiable niche.
Watch out Constantly changing the combination prevents the association from forming.
- 5
Play the creation game
Use the reduced direct competition to invent formats, products, and opportunities specific to the intersection.
Pro tip Optimize for creativity and expression rather than proving you are marginally better than incumbents.
Watch out The strategy requires tolerating the discomfort of standing apart from peers.
In the wild
Ali described TierZoo as a channel that explains ecology and evolutionary biology through gaming language, including questions about whether animals are overpowered or should be nerfed.
→ The unusual intersection produced a distinctive channel that Ali said had around three million subscribers and a profitable business.
Ali described Wendover Productions as combining an obsession with airplanes and logistics with the ability to write and animate explanatory videos.
→ The combination carved out a niche that Ali said had attracted around four million subscribers.
Common mistakes
Competing in a generic category
Trying to be a better version of every other creator makes work ethic the primary competitive advantage.
Treating yourself as one-dimensional
Ignoring secondary skills and experiences removes potential sources of differentiation.
Wanting distinction without discomfort
A genuinely new intersection can feel unsafe because there may be no established model to follow.
From the transcript
“it's often at unlikely intersections that opportunity hides”
“if you take two things that shouldn't be in the same room and you put them together all of a sudden you've created a new…”
“you combine it with a different category you create a new subcategory and now you're not playing a competition game”
From the episode
5 Ways To Make $1 Million As A Writer - Nicolas Cole
Nicolas Cole