alt-J, Noah Kahan, and The Pill Slingers

Hi - and happy August {{first_name}}. I had another conversation ready, but wasn’t able to give enough lead time to my guest to review it before today. What I’ve got are some thoughts triggered by music and metaphor (what else is new). As I approach 20 total newsletters this month, I’ll be reaching out soon with a question or two for you about where my thoughts are for the future. Enjoy!

Last week I was driving to pick up our son from a friend's house one night. Most of the time when walking or in the car lately, I've got a podcast in the rotation. But this evening, I turned to my music library instead and picked out An Awesome Wave by alt-J. Having been released almost 15 years ago, it's still fantastically creative and timeless. In a world craving uniqueness, they’re one of a kind. I cranked it up loud the way it's meant to be.

During that 20 minute drive, a few realizations hit me. First was how little I listen to music these days. When we lived in Chicago (pre-pandemic), my commute was an hour each way, including the train ride and the 3 total miles of walking. I had (what now feels like) all the time in the world for it. I also used to listen a lot more when doing work. Designing, prototyping, editing, writing. There was a metric I started to observe involving the correlation between how much time I had my earbuds in with how much I was in my zone and creating something valuable. Music equaled energy and fulfillment.

Over time, the amount of headphone use remained the same, but the joy of music was slowly replaced by meetings and calls. And then the past few years I got to point where I didn't even want them in my ears anymore because that had become my only use case. Eight to ten Microsoft Teams encounters a day and a handful more spontaneous Slack calls. Zero tunes. The point is, my relationship with music has shifted significantly and I realized on that drive how much I miss it.

The other realization was nothing new, but still palpable. Musicians, especially these unique risk takers and taste makers are fulled to the brim with their own artistic confidence. Consummate creators. They're composing out of nothing but their own energy and creativity and coming up with gold. Not with a metric in mind. Not with a revenue goal. Not with a review process a committee has to circle back on next week. They make what they believe in and then let it resonate with the people who value it and ultimately fund it with their activity or purchase. We can all immediately think of the artists who fit that bill for us personally and are grateful for it.

There's another type of creating that's been absorbing more of my attention the past number of years, however. Completely counter to what I just described. It’s the kind whose ultimate purpose is to solve a problem. In a sense, it's the root of entrepreneurship and business (hence, there are very real metrics and revenue in mind). One particular way I've had it framed the past 15 years is this... When you're selling a solution to something, you can think about it as either a vitamin or a painkiller. Vitamins are nice and they can help people feel good. But pain killers are the thing they really can't live without. When push comes to shove if they have to pick one with their wallet - the painkillers win every time.

It's pervasive in B2B SaaS and venture backed companies where I've been most recently. Investors want you making pain killers. At a practical level, it makes sense. Good business is about solving problems, and the solutions that do it best and most effectively will be the ones that thrive. Nothing wrong with it.

Except that as a creator, I personally have not yet found a problem that I know how to create the pain killer cure for.

I started creating art and content on consciousness and spirituality earlier this year. I worked within mental health space alongside some therapists. I've invested in writing this newsletter and having the conversations with other builders. But these aren’t endeavors that have people queuing up for prescriptions.

A few months ago, I was introduced to Noah Kahan by my wife and daughter. I'd put him in a class far more popular than alt-J, with an attraction that reaches more broadly. While not my go-to style of music typically, I've grown to like him. The musical gift is there, obviously. But he also writes from a place of deep authenticity and relatability. His songs are unapologetically about relationships, family, trauma, failure, love, and belonging. He's sold out arenas and baseball stadiums with fans hanging on an harmonizing every word.

I watched his Netflix documentary and learned more of his story. His origin accelerated during Covid as a result of putting his music on TikTok where it took off. As an individual, he's got his own doubt, insecurity, and things that would otherwise hold him back. But instead he gave him self to the creation process and has found wild success as a result.

Are he and alt-J selling vitamins or pain killers?

I do recognize we as humans have desires that entertainment, art, and beauty fulfill. (How much of it is innate vs the result of needing to distract ourselves could be a debate.) Our culture has many examples of what on the surface seem like vitamins—things people can live without. But the people behind them are earning unimaginable sums as a result. Musicians are just a sliver. Actors, directors, producers. Professional athletes. Comedians. Infl.. influe...gulp—Influencers. High luxury brands. Authors. Podcasters. Fancy architects. Fine art painters, sculptors, photographers.

As I've been further out on the path since leaving B2B SaaS, I've started thinking about this a lot more. Thus far in life, I'm not naturally wired to identify a problem and see a solution that translates to demand. It’s too bad—because pick a direction to point and you’ll find mountains of problems. The one I personally keep coming back to most often is fear. Society has a major fear problem right now. If I could pick any one to go after, it would be helping people overcome it. But I missed my window to be a therapist, and I’m battling a near constant state of worry myself. That’s the story I grew up with and it still lives in my body and psyche. I’m working like hell on it from the inside, but creating a solution for it feels light years away. (Beth made the observation a few weeks ago that we had the approach of worry = care modeled for us growing up. The way to solve something is through concern, fretting, and obsessing. That’s incredibly hard to untangle when it’s still how our subconscious operates.)

What I am wired to create are things for the joy and satisfaction of it. Something that can just be put out in the world and have its fate decided by the the response. But I'm always caught in a cognitive battle between these two types that manifests as hyper-responsibility, logic, and risk avoidance. While I dream of spending my time purely in the artistic side, I've only ever made a living from creating a solution that solves a problem and justifies my existence. And I think all that's made me a terrible pharmacist.

As I've been cycling through iterations of my personal projects and website, this has been a daily reckoning. But for right now, here's what I'm settling on: I'm not out hunting the big hairy problem myself. That's OK. I'm looking for the people who have already found them. Those solutions need creativity, collaboration, intention, and care. And I'm someone who's been doing it for a while and am good at service and relationships.

What I'm offering then, becomes unique based on the problem hunter. If they want to throw something together asap with Claud Code or Cursor, I probably look like a vitamin. If they want human-centered reasoning, empathy, creativity, and relationship (or they've already tried AI), then I’m more compelling. Like an Advil liquigel, maybe.

For the record, I would love to move beyond analyzing everything in terms of this pill vs. that pill. I just found it helpful as a through line here. Maybe you were already familiar with the metaphor. Maybe it was new. I'd love to hear about your own experience and what you've learned about yourself in this way.

-Justin