Justin Kan's quotes, sayings

Extrinsic Motivators Never Give You Lasting Happiness

Money doesn't make you happy. Money can help you be secure, which can set the stage for you to be happy, but money alone or any sort of extrinsic motivator - whether it's money or fame - will never give you lasting happiness.
For me, being of service to people around me, being a good friend, a good father, a good family member, that's really what gave me lasting happiness.

Justin Kan

Build Around the Commodity

As AI commoditizes knowledge work, programming, and software, the real opportunity may be in the things that benefit from cheap software. Hardware devices that use software, for example, can become more valuable as the software layer becomes a commodity.

Justin Kan

Commoditize Your Complements

There’s an old business saying: commoditize your complements. You don’t want to be the commodity layer - you want to build something adjacent to it. That’s where you can create real value.

Justin Kan

If Someone Can Talk You Out of It, Don't Do It

If someone can talk you out of your idea for your business, that's a bad sign. As an entrepreneur, you have to have almost that reality distortion field where you say, 'This is how the world is going to be.' And then you are the one convincing investors, employees, customers to sign on for that vision.

Justin Kan

You cannot be desperate. Don't negotiate from a place of weakness.

Justin Kan

Negotiate With Options

There’s a great book called Negotiation Genius, but one principle always stands out: you want to have options. If you can walk away and have multiple alternatives, you’re always in a stronger position.

Justin Kan

Money Can't Buy Happiness

Money will never get you true happiness. You can have security, it can help set you up to learn about yourself so that you can learn what really will give you and drive happiness for yourself, but it is probably not going to be extrinsic things.

Justin Kan

Why I Wanted to Be Famous

I was a shy extrovert. I always wanted to connect with people and be popular. I had this scarcity mindset - I wanted to be rich and famous because, growing up, I felt like I didn’t get the attention I needed from my parents or my peers.

Justin Kan

The Ultimate Test for Finding Meaningful Work

Do what you would do even if no one ever found out and you never made any money from it. If it failed tomorrow, you still wouldn’t feel like you wasted your time.

Justin Kan