Jackson was arguing with his co-hosts that founders do better focusing on one product than running a portfolio. He had just read out someone's post saying AI marketing fails when people skip the manual work, and that once everyone does a thing it stops working. Podcast hosting is the business he runs himself.
I would maybe put Grockbot in that category too. I think that's another like really interesting, well-done execution of a product. Yeah, I mean, like, we can get into that stuff too, but I don't know if you wanted to keep going down the what you brought up.
Yeah, Justin, last week we talked about Taylor Otwell's post about like being clearly the best in the market as like the primary point of your strategy in general is to be the absolute best in your category. And we had some conversation around what that means. So what you're talking about now sounds adjacent to that. Can you just explain a little bit more the perspective it's coming from? Is that like for a new product? Like, can I be the best in this new product before I walk into it? Walk into the market or more general.
I mean, the two feel related. So, you know, the quote from David Senra, who's quoting someone else, is: if you're going to pick between the person who's the smartest, the most experienced, or the person who wants it the most, you always pick the person who wants it the most. And generally, what I'm trying to tap into is this focus, desire, energy on usually one thing. This is why I think we might have a disagreement about whether you should be focusing on multiple products and a portfolio of products or just one thing. I think I disagree with you guys. I think focusing on one thing or fewer things is actually going to be the advantage because there's just all of this stuff that you have to do as a founder to win. And most of it is about whether you want it more than the next person. There's just like all of this boring stuff that I have to do every day that moves the ball forward that most people aren't willing to do. And that's why I shared this Ruben Gamma's tweet. You know, he goes, way too many people are approaching marketing with AI in the wrong way. Three main problems. Everyone wants to jump to automation and skip the manual grindy work that makes it effective. Yeah. And you can't automate your way out of that. You can't just get your bots on it. It doesn't work that way. And number two, they don't know their customers and the buying process well enough. Like, can we just highlight both of these? Like, just throw away your MBA, just meditate on these two points every single day. And then the third point is: if everyone else is doing it, then it doesn't work anymore. That's become average. And in my mind, the whole goal is to be above average. Nobody wakes up and says, Hey, hey, ChatGPT, show me the most average podcast hosting platform. They don't search for that. They search, what is the best podcast hosting platform? So if that's true, then you've got to want it more than everybody else. Because by definition, if you don't, you're average.
I want to hear more specifics or examples, whether it's things that you're talking about, or I don't really know what Ruben was pointing to with that kind of tweet, to be honest. Sure.
I mean, I think in Ruben's case, you can look at what he's.
How would you define like quote-unquote AI marketing or jumping to automation? Because to me, there's a much larger spectrum than people are giving other builders credit for here. Like, because I think that a marketer, a builder, a founder can put a whole lot of real mental effort and legwork and talking to customers and analyzing the market and use AI tools to assist in that process and streamline and scale that process to a more effective level than they would have been able to three years ago. Like, is that AI automation or is that AI-assisted marketing and learning much faster? Like,