Hi, I'm Justin Jackson. Here, I'm sharing brief thoughts on building a better life, bootstrapping, improving society, growing older in tech, being a dad...
I've been listening to David Senra's podcast lately. He keeps quoting Joshua Kushner:
"If you have to pick between the person who's the smartest, the person with the most experience, or the person who wants it more, you always pick the person who wants it more."
That idea really resonates with me. If you're going after a big goal, like building a product or starting a business, you can't afford to build something average. Why? Because customers don't look for mediocre products; they look for "the best."
So you need to be honest with yourself: can you be in the top 5% in your category? Are you going to be the person who wants it the most?
And then the follow-up question: if you make it, is it going to be worth it? You could be the top restaurant in your town and find out the prize for winning is a business that puts you deeply in debt.
In this episode, I talk about power laws, figuring out what you truly want, why AI is making some rare skills average overnight, and what my friend Ruben Gamez says most marketers are getting wrong about AI. Plus a note from future me: wanting it the most doesn't mean killing yourself working too hard. It means focusing on the stuff that actually moves the needle.
Chapters:
(00:00) - The Power of Wanting It Most
(00:59) - Aiming for the Top 5 Percent
(02:56) - Defining What You Truly Want
(04:28) - Adapting to Changing Skills and AI
(06:01) - Focusing on What Actually Matters
Mentioned in this episode:
David Senra episode of Founders (https://youtu.be/MCbHnlpwZf0?si=aUi0MzYxk1KZRTM2)
Ruben Gamez's marketing advice tweet (https://x.com/earthlingworks/status/2105351938166632734)
29 Sept 2026
You can't be average in an AI economy
I've been scrolling Twitter again. A lot of it is driven by this desire (fear?) to stay current on what's happening with AI.
A lot of people feel the need to capture as much information as possible to get some sort of edge in this new economy that's brewing. Our fear is that if we don't, we're gonna get just bulldozed over.
A lot of folks are worried about losing their careers to AI. I think that feeling is justified. Like, if ChatGPT can edit your videos, you don't need Adobe Premiere or a video editor. In this example, AI eliminates the services side (which many of us depend on) and the tool side (software). It's concerning.
And unfortunately, it feels like the answer (in this new economy) is that you can't be average.
Chapters:
(00:00) - Fear of Missing Out on AI
(00:25) - AI Threat to Economy and Jobs
(01:00) - The End of Average Product Videos
(01:39) - Marketing Must Rise Above Average
(02:26) - The K Shaped Economy Future
28 Aug 2026
Don't over-engineer it; just hit the ball (Golf analogy)
There's a great quote from a 2020 Hacker News thread:
Sales is a lot like golf. You can make it so complicated as to be impossible, or you can simply walk up and hit the ball. I've been leading and building sales orgs for almost twenty years, and my advice is to walk up and hit the ball.
I keep coming back to this quote.
In software, it's so easy to over-engineer things, to ask "what if?", to try to prepare for every eventuality.
But more and more, I'm realizing, for most things, you just need to walk up and hit the ball.
Chapters:
(00:00) - The Golf Quote and Simple Sales
(01:09) - The Michael Zoom Call Experiment
(03:32) - Scaling Through Personal Touch
(05:56) - How Small Actions Create Big Scale
(07:03) - Manual Work for AI SEO Success
Links:
2020 Hacker News thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23285438)
Transistor: podcast hosting and distribution platform (https://transistor.fm/?via=justin)
SavvyCal: scheduling service for booking meetings (https://savvycal.com/)
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