Colin

Ecom. Dad. Bitcoin. Win in the AI Age: Moat building ideas inside my free substack.

[Colin @colinstuckert]

I’ve beaten the market since 2018 by a lot… something like 50% YOY growth for about 8 years.

And that is only stock performance, not my BTC performance. I don’t track that, but it’s multiplied many times over since I became a consistent daily buyer in 2018.

I’ve realized something during this time, which has become the core of my investing thesis moving forward. As we’ve entered the meme stocks, crypto, and the Robin Hood-ification of stocks age, the game has changed.

Read rest 🦾 My Market-Beating Investment Strategy, https://t.co/h7ATu1gRud

[Colin @colinstuckert]

Stop starting new things. The skill that pays in the AI age is finishing. One brick, every day, same wall.

You're building the plane while trying to fly it. That's why you're tired and nothing's compounding.

Shiny object syndrome is expensive.

Every new project you start costs you the one you need to take that last 5% to dial
in.

[Colin @colinstuckert]

I can’t tell you enough about the importance of doing one thing in one window at a time.

I’m getting to the point where I am purposely isolating something into a single blank screen and then trying to only work there as much as I can. The more you’re task-jumping and window-jumping, the harder it is to keep a strong context. That means you’re going to have weaker results.

I think they’re going to be writing books about this.

This is a huge problem right now: the sheer overwhelm of what you can build, what you can do, what you can use the tools for…. It’s too much.

The human mind isn’t designed for it.

Some will excel here, and most won’t.

It’s kinda like modern obesity. Most humans today are not adapting to our environment… they get sicker, weaker daily. And mortality rates are skyrocketing.

This next wave of AI and work is going to be like that. We will see a power curve (not a bell curve) where a small percentage of people get outsized results because they are able to utilize these new forms of leverage.

🦾 One Window At A Time, by @SovereignColin https://t.co/Gjji2U6tIj

[Colin @colinstuckert]

Look at today’s headlines.

One OpenAI customer is burning 100 billion tokens a month. Meta wants to charge $200 for an agent who does your job.

The cost of execution is racing to zero.

When anyone can produce anything, the only thing that stays scarce is you. Your name. Your taste. Your reps.

Stop waiting for the perfect plan. Start building your moat today.

[Colin @colinstuckert]

Right now, those building one thing at a time are winning.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t win if you’re doing a lot of things. You’re just going to win slower, and maybe you’ll miss some opportunities or growth as a result.

Everything in life is a trade off.

Personally, I like doing multiple things.

I fought this for years. But I think I’ve finally accepted that I’m simply capable of doing only one thing.

Now, if one thing came along and it was a rocket ship and the demand was there, then yeah, sure, I’d focus. In that case, it would be easy to offload everything else.

Since that’s not (currently) the case, I can do a lot, and in the age of AI for the first time ever, I feel like that’s okay.

You can do a lot, but you have to really get good at your productivity, your systems, your organization.

I use Notion.

I have my own personal CEO Cach connected to Notion and my calendar and things like that.

We have Slack as a company, and man, the ability to move fast on a computer, the ability to remember contacts, and work through multiple tabs and windows, but more importantly, the ability to just pick one thing and actually just have one window open and think deeply on it, that is everything.

🦾 Do a lot or do a little https://t.co/SzU11oaHj6

[Michael Saylor @saylor]

Strategy has completed the repurchase of $1.5 billion of its 2029 Convertible Notes at an ~8% discount to par, generating an incremental 0.7% BTC Yield and lowering aggregate debt to $6.7 billion. $MSTR $STRC https://t.co/cbx4BlpsKV

[Colin @colinstuckert]

Using AI is a sign of intellect, ambition, and forward thinking.

anyone with the attitude," they're using AI," is a Luddite

[Colin @colinstuckert]

We went to see the new Mandalorian movie last night.

Kids loved it.

On the way in, I was tasked by the wife to get some treats from Sprouts… healthier treats, that is.

I grabbed a bunch of sour gummy worms and those little peanut butter cup things, both from the self-serve station.

Then some other stuff.

Overboard.

She still got popcorn.

I ate all of it, too much, too fast.

And sure enough, I woke up today with a headache.

It almost threw off my entire day off. (My head throbbing as I write this.)

I’m powering through because that’s just what I do.

But let me tell you, it made me think of how many people now think about alcohol…

You have fun for a few hours drinking then you lose the entire next day.

F that. Terrible trade.

That’s how I feel today about eating the candy…. it took away from today.

This is especially pronounced because I want (NEED) top mental and physical shape so I can crush the many things I’m building.

So this “trade” feels very lopsided.

AI WORK is not the same as good ol fashioned ‘knowledge work.'

I don’t think they are even close.

This is an entirely new paradigm. It requires new skills, new ways of thinking, operating, and living.

Work is now intense. Hours will shrink but intensity will go up, or at least that’s my prediction for most average ai/knowledge workers.

But for some, like the slightly insane ones like myself, hours go up and so does intensity… and what’s left at the end of each day is a completely depleted tank.

So I need to preserve every space ounce of energy and feel goodness I can get because it’s PURE FUEL.

And that brings me back to health.

Health is the foundation of everything, especially your ability to work.

LeBron spends $1 million a year on food, trainers, recovery, etc.

Pretty low in his line of work tbh, but it’s a good analogy for this new form of AI knowledge work.

The top AI builders are mental athletes and they need to dial their shit in, just like the top athletes.

Health is going to have the closest correlation to success than anytime in human history for non-athletic folk. Thanks to AI.

[Colin @colinstuckert]

Kinda insane. @viktor.com - since getting this and team in slack. We move absurdly fast.

[Colin @colinstuckert]

The 4-to-5-hour workday is about to become normal.

Not because people are getting lazy.

Because AI is compressing decisions so fast that 8 hours is simply unsustainable for the human brain.

Think about what your day actually is now. Meetings. Slack. Decisions stacked on decisions. Now plug agents into that stream. The pace doesn't slow down. It accelerates. You're not typing slower because AI helps you type. You're deciding faster because AI surfaces more decisions for you, real decisions, faster than ever before.

That's the trade. Less hours. More compression. Higher leverage time-to-output ratio.

You sit down at 8am and by 1pm you've moved more than you used to move in three days.

Then you're cooked.

The kind of mental fatigue where one more decision is a bad decision.

My personal goal is 4 to 5 hours. Come in. Make decisions. Motivate and push the team. Build the things.

Then go outside and stop thinking about work. Be with my family. Disconnect 100%.

The people who try to run 10-hour days inside an AI-accelerated workflow are going to burn out fast. The ones who match their hours to the new pace get their life back.

More entrepreneurs and companies are going to do this. AI is the thing that finally makes it possible.

[Colin @colinstuckert]

The simplest way to build a brand in 2026 (Response videos)

[Colin @colinstuckert]

You have to use it.

AI won’t do anything for you until you build it into your thought process.

If you ever have the thought that you can’t do something or be included in something because you don’t know what’s going on.

Kill it.

You can do anything.

Because you can.

And all you have to do is ask questions.

People are still thinking of AI as a more interactive Google search.

Sooooo not the case.

It can guide you through anything.

Build anything.

Learn anything.

Find anything.

Understand anything.

If you just keep at it until you figure it out.

Everything is figurre-out-able.

And that was kinda not really true in the past.

Today it is.

Yet still, most people aren’t thinking this way. And so the vast majority of things they could do, all those opportunities, that entire UNLOCK of infinite abundance is just sitting there, right at their fingertips and completely out of reach.

[Colin @colinstuckert]

🦾 ONE THING AT A TIME https://t.co/irrmRQK2ry

[Colin @colinstuckert]

ONE THING AT A TIME is more important than ever.

It’s easy to do a bunch of things at the same time.

Or to do things that are step 4 in a process while ignoring steps 1-2-3.

It often feels good to build something further down the line, but until the steps before steps are done, step 4 or 5 or 9 don’t do anything except look good in a chat thread.

I’m guilty of this.

When you are running a team or working on a team, this is SOO apparent.

Most of the time, we’re just trying to figure out who/what is blocking this thing.

That’s it.

Now with AI, 99.99% of the time, humans can do what’s needed.

This wasn’t always true, of course.

But that’s what AI unlocks → The ability to do almost anything if you have the right mental framework and put in the correct effort to get there.

You are no longer blocked by not knowing how to edit, copyright, do research, or understand physics or math.

All you need to know is how to ASK questions and TYPE or SPEAK to the prompt.

That’s it.

So the actual thing to focus on now is how to train/help/coach/coax people into thinking and asking correctly so they can GUIDE themselves to the outcome.

And in many cases, the first thing you can do is make sure you go ONE STEP AT A TIME.

This is where thinking and judgment come in. It’s where tenacity and desire come in as well… those soft skills that, unfortunately, im not so sure you can program.

Then there’s the issue that most were never taught how to think.

So they easily get caught up in rabbit holes.

They don’t ask the actual questions needed to clarify.

They go off on tangents.

This makes it hard for them to answer DIRECT, SIMPLE questions.

It’s why they end up spinning their wheels.

And this is why the power of AI is not fully available to them.

On the flip side, for those who are willing to figure out the absolutely essential and strip away everything else, AI is like literal pure rocket fuel.

[Colin @colinstuckert]

🦾 The AGENTS Myth, https://t.co/qiQ7bTJT3M

[Colin @colinstuckert]

40 agents running my business

Complete nonsense.

Like all hype cycles, there’s a bit of truth and mostly lies making up a line like that.

The thing is, for the hype/content guys, the 40 agents are running their business because their business is just making videos about 40 agents running their business.

So, to their credit, historically, that’s true.

For actual business owners, founders, and people using AI and agents to get more done, this just ain’t true.

Now. I need to disclaim all of this.

Agents are insanely useful.

And they are going to get even more useful as every day ticks on, as models get better and the agent infrastructure does as well.

[Rob Henderson @robkhenderson]

"Add up the tax and the philanthropy, and the citizenry gets 59% of what billionaires earn, or 73% if you follow their fortunes into death. Estimates that billionaires pay lower tax rates than everyone else rest on distortions, tricks and lies." https://t.co/MUSAY2WiW2

[Colin @colinstuckert]

Busy means nothing.

Results are the only currency.

AI is removing the ability to hide in pointless work.

If you aren’t producing value, you will be found out.

Your best bet is to get in front of it.

[Colin @colinstuckert]

@MonetSupply @brian_armstrong @moo9000 this is a very 2024 take.

[Colin @colinstuckert]

🦾 The Slight Edge https://t.co/rF8pnEQcrT

[Colin @colinstuckert]

Fellow human,

I built a habit tracker app for myself a month ago. Then I mostly left it untouched.

Used it, but didn’t improve it.

Then I finally decided to get it launched and sellable.

Took me an hour.

Yes, I didn’t expect that.

And it made me think of The Slight Edge, a book I read years ago. A little bit daily goes A LONG LONG way. And when it comes to AI and projects you’re building, you have to keep investing, or entropy takes over.

I was excited about the project at first, then I moved on to other things I needed to do.

So I became less excited (entropy) about it anytime I thought about it.

It took a reengagement/reinvestment to get me excited again. That energy investment of enthusiasm and actual energy is everything. And maintaining it on a daily basis is everything.

In a world where anyone can build anything, your edge comes from focusing and daily investment.

Never ever ever miss a day.

Even if it’s only 10 mins, keep investing.

That’s the Slight Edge for the AI Age.