Justin's brain

Years ago, I wrote an essay called The Calm Company. It came out of watching startups burn people out with 80-hour weeks while quietly running out of money. That essay ended up shaping a lot of how we built Transistor. Transistor has given me a foundation for calm. We don’t track hours, we pay well, and if your kid’s home sick, you go take care of them. But getting Transistor off the ground was incredibly hard, and staying competitive is still hard. So lately, I’ve been wondering if the essay needs a revision. I reached out to my friend Jesse Hanley (Bento, PostShiba) and he sent back a voice memo that reframed the whole thing for me: "A calm company isn’t a destination. It’s a side effect of running a company whose revenue isn’t under threat." In this episode I play Jesse’s memo, then think out loud about competition, the pace of work in the AI era, and why I still feel grateful to work in software. This is also the first video I’m publishing to Spotify using Transistor’s new video publishing feature, so you should be able to leave a comment right there on Spotify. I’d love to hear what you think. Timestamps 00:00 Why I’m revisiting The Calm Company 00:50 Calm vs. working on the hardest thing 01:10 What I asked Jesse Hanley 02:15 Transistor is still hard to compete with 02:55 Jesse’s take: calm is a side effect, not a destination 03:45 When your market gets squeezed (Bento + launching PostShiba) 05:00 Calm as a “passive buff” 05:50 Don’t forget, you’re running a business 06:30 Some perspective: plumbing, retail, and digging ditches 07:40 Rereading the original Calm Company essay 08:45 The pace of work in the AI era 09:35 First video published to Spotify with Transistor Links The Calm Company essay Jesse Hanley on X Bento PostShiba Transistor video podcasting Leave a comment on: 📺 YouTube 🟢 Spotify This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

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 Ruben Gamez's marketing advice tweet This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

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 This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

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: Links: 2020 Hacker News thread Transistor: podcast hosting and distribution platform SavvyCal: scheduling service for booking meetings This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm

Last episode I recorded a voice memo on my walk home, dropped the file into Claude Code on my laptop, and said "publish this episode." It normalized the audio, made a transcript, wrote the show notes, uploaded it to Transistor, and published it. Easiest podcast publishing I've ever done. So now I want to know if I can do the whole thing without the laptop. Just the phone. This one is attempt two: recorded in the Dolby On app, which normalizes right on the iPhone, then handed off to Claude on my phone. [00:00] One command on my laptop did the entire publishing workflow [00:53] Attempt two: can I do all of this from my phone? [01:56] Why Caleb records several episodes back to back. Once you take away the friction, you can feel the inspiration happen. You have a thought, you get it out, you move on. An hour later you have another one. [02:33] Steven Robles has some magical iPhone shortcut that does a lot of this. I want to try it. [03:10] Auphonic stripped out the trucks and airplanes behind me, which is impressive because it was loud. What it couldn't strip out is me wheezing up a steep hill in wildfire smoke. Next time I'm recording in the car. This podcast is hosted and distributed by Transistor.fm