Episode description

Wade Myers grew up in the Badlands of western North Dakota in a Mennonite home with no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and no telephone. He was selling door to door at age nine. He went on to become an Army Ranger, served in the Gulf War, earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, and built a career as one of the most successful entrepreneurs and investors around.

In this episode of the Texas Titans podcast, Jason Wright and Wade talk about why he left corporate America, how a handshake deal with a mentor launched his career, what he looks for before writing a check, and how he ended up backing the faith-based hit I Can Only Imagine.

In this episode

• Growing up in the “land of extremes” and earning everything he wanted, including the store-bought clothes he paid for as a sixth-grade roofer’s assistant
• Why a Harvard study found entrepreneurs make less money than corporate executives but are far happier
• The investor lunch that tore apart Wade’s first pitch, and the mentor who backed him anyway on an 80/20 handshake deal
• Lessons from his first acquisitions: cash flow, losing the biggest customer in week two, and learning what HBS doesn’t teach
• Why Wade prefers to back serial entrepreneurs, and how the Dunning-Kruger “unconscious incompetence” stage trips up first-timers
• How founders respond to diligence, and why humility and teachability can make or break a deal
• The Ranger knife-fight lesson: go in knowing you will get cut
• Practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs: cut fixed expenses, prepare your family, start on nights and weekends, and “go get one customer”
• Teaching kids gross margin with a whiteboard, a car-wash business, and a SaaS company
• Build vs. buy: seed-stage investing, bolt-on acquisitions, and public equities
• How backing the Erwin brothers led to Mom’s Night Out, Woodlawn, and I Can Only Imagine
• Wade’s daily routine: 4 a.m. prayer and planning, the gym at 5, and 10 to 15 Blinkist summaries a week

Notable quotes

• “Entrepreneurs are the only people who will work 90 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week for somebody else.” (Phil Burks, as quoted by Jason)
• “Go get one customer. Do that for me. Tell me what you learn. Now go get 10.” (Wade Myers)
• “Wisdom comes from experience, and experience comes from making mistakes.” (Wade Myers)

The Jason Wright Show — Jacob Baadsgaard: How to Become (and Hire) the Indispensable Marketer

On the day his new book The Indispensable Marketer launches, Jacob Baadsgaard joins Jason for something closer to a coaching session than an interview. Jacob is the founder and sole owner of Disruptive Advertising. Over 14 years the agency has served 2,000+ companies, managed more than $3 billion in ad spend, and generated a couple hundred million in revenue. Jacob explains why founders and their marketers so often end up pointing fingers at each other. He walks through the math every CEO owes their marketing team, and makes the case that AI is helping a lot of marketers do the wrong work faster. The conversation then gets personal: ambition as addiction, a lizard named Roger, and what happened when Jacob started treating his wife’s dreams the way she had always treated his.

In this episode:

• Why CEOs pick the winning ad headline only about 10% of the time, and what to do with your passion instead
• The 1-to-1-to-1 rule: one target customer, one message, one landing page
• “Green marketing numbers, red bank account”: the business math founders skip
• The 3% rule and the 7-stage customer journey, and why you should build it from the bottom up
• How Jacob nearly hired his seventh head of marketing, and how he and Chad turned it around instead
• Knowledge is commoditized. Experience is what makes your brand human.
• The difference between an addiction and a worthy goal

Chapters

• 00:00 Book launch day and a coaching-style conversation
• 01:13 Jacob’s origin: Omniture/Adobe analytics, then 14 years building Disruptive Advertising
• 04:34 Data vs. founder intuition: meet customers where they are
• 07:41 “It’s for everyone”: competition and the 1-to-1-to-1 rule
• 12:26 How to vet a marketer: business math, LTV, and setting the destination
• 18:12 Only 3% are ready to buy today: building the full funnel
• 22:40 Why he wrote The Indispensable Marketer (and the story of his sixth marketing leader)
• 28:00 AI slop, doing the wrong work faster, and why experience beats knowledge
• 32:50 The outlook: expensive debt, purpose-driven businesses, and “I’ll be happy when…”
• 36:40 Having enough, time with kids, and Roger the lizard
• 41:08 Jacob’s morning routine (and the hand pan)
• 44:46 Becoming your spouse’s biggest fan
• 50:56 Where to find Jacob and the book

Quotable

• “If you’re marketing to everyone, you’re marketing to no one.”
• “They’re doing the wrong work faster with AI.”
• “A worthy goal is something you’d sign up for even if the outcome wasn’t guaranteed.”

Connect with Jacob

• LinkedIn: Jacob Baadsgaard
• Agency: Disruptive Advertising — disruptiveadvertising.com
• Book: The Indispensable Marketer

What if one of the biggest obstacles to happiness isn’t what you’re missing—but what you’re expecting?

In this episode of The Jason Wright Show, Jason shares a simple mindset shift that has had a profound impact on his life: trading expectation for appreciation.

For years, Jason’s high expectations pushed him to achieve more—but they also made it difficult to appreciate the career, relationships, opportunities, and life he already had. At 51, he’s learning that ambition and gratitude don’t have to compete. You can still pursue bigger goals while becoming deeply appreciative of what’s already in front of you.

Jason explores how the fear of losing something can reveal just how valuable it really is—and how that realization can change the way we approach our careers, marriages, children, opportunities, and everyday lives.

In this episode:

• Why high expectations can quietly steal your happiness
• The difference between ambition and constant dissatisfaction
• How fear of loss can create greater appreciation
• Why imagining life without something can make you more grateful for it
• Applying appreciation to your career and difficult work relationships
• Being more present with your spouse, children, and family
• The biblical idea of “working out” your gratitude
• Why appreciation should outweigh expectation
• A simple exercise to discover just how much you already have

The takeaway: Keep your expectations high. Keep pursuing growth. But never allow your expectations for tomorrow to become greater than your appreciation for today.

If this episode resonates with you, subscribe to The Jason Wright Show and share it with someone who might need this reminder.

Mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor: Authentic Health

What happens when you become so good at your craft that the most demanding people in the world come looking for you?

In this episode of The Jason Wright Show, Jason launches a new series inspired by Steve Martin’s famous career advice:

“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

The first profile is legendary graphic designer Paul Rand—a man whose name you may not immediately recognize, but whose work you almost certainly do.

Born Peretz Rosenbaum in Brooklyn in 1914, Rand worked his way from an aspiring young artist to one of the most influential graphic designers of the 20th century. Along the way, he created iconic visual identities for companies including IBM, UPS, ABC, Westinghouse, and Enron.

But perhaps the best example of Rand’s mastery came late in his career.

After being forced out of Apple, Steve Jobs launched a new computer company called NeXT—and when he needed its identity designed, he sought out Paul Rand.

Rand’s terms?

$100,000.

One solution.

No alternatives.

And he got paid whether Jobs used the logo or not.

Jobs agreed.

That’s what happens when decades of study, experimentation, discipline, and exceptional work create something more valuable than a résumé: a reputation.

Jason tells Rand’s story with a twist inspired by Paul Harvey’s The Rest of the Story, using an AI-generated voice to let Rand seemingly tell his own story.

• The Steve Martin advice that inspired So Good They Can’t Ignore You
• Why Cal Newport believes skills and “career capital” matter more than simply following your passion
• How Peretz Rosenbaum became Paul Rand
• Rand’s path from a largely self-taught designer to an American design legend
• The stories behind some of America’s most recognizable corporate identities
• Why Steve Jobs sought Rand out to design the NeXT logo
• The remarkable $100,000, one-logo deal
• What Rand’s career teaches us about mastery, reputation, and leverage
• Why the goal is to eventually stop chasing opportunities—and become good enough that opportunities chase you

Early in your career, you take the opportunities you can get.

You build the portfolio.

You study.

You experiment.

You fail.

You improve.

And you keep doing the work.

But eventually, if you become undeniably good at what you do, the relationship changes.

You stop chasing opportunities. Opportunities start chasing you.

Paul Rand reached the point where one of the most demanding entrepreneurs in history came to him, paid his price, and accepted his rules.

That kind of leverage isn't demanded.

It's earned.

Now go out and become so good they just can’t ignore you.

This is a new format for The Jason Wright Show, and Jason wants your feedback.

Do you like the AI-assisted Paul Harvey-style storytelling? Or would you rather hear Jason narrate these profiles himself?

Send your thoughts to producer@textitans.com

And if you enjoyed the episode, subscribe to The Jason Wright Show and share it with someone who is working to become exceptional at what they do.

Real health starts at the cellular level. Authentic Health is designed to help build a stronger nutritional foundation in a world of stress, processed foods, environmental toxins, and poor sleep.

Visit shopauthentichealth.com and use promo code JASON for 10% off your first order.

Being self-reliant is usually considered a strength. But what happens when independence becomes so deeply ingrained that you stop asking for help, stop expressing what you want, and convince yourself that you don't need anyone?

In this episode of The Jason Wright Show, Jason reacts to performance coach Joe Hudson's discussion of self-reliance and gets unusually personal about how the pattern has shown up throughout his own life.

Hudson describes self-reliance as the belief that you have to handle everything yourself—a pattern that can develop when, as a child, you learn that your needs may not be met or that you're responsible for managing the emotions of the adults around you.

For Jason, that explanation hits close to home.

He reflects on his parents' divorce, growing up feeling responsible for the emotions of the adults around him, his difficulty asking for things, his reluctance to admit when he's hurt, and the way those childhood patterns followed him into leadership, business, marriage, and adulthood.

Jason and Hudson explore five behaviors that can emerge from this mindset:

1. Difficulty identifying and asking for what you want
2. A complicated relationship with authority
3. Difficulty recognizing and meeting your own needs
4. An inability or unwillingness to admit when you're hurt
5. Taking responsibility for other people's happiness

Jason shares examples of each—from automatically trying to determine what everyone else wants instead of expressing his own preferences, to struggling as a business owner with asking employees to do things because leadership can feel like imposing on someone else.

The paradox is that extreme self-reliance can actually create the very reality it fears.

When you don't tell people what you need, they can't meet those needs. When you never admit you're hurting, people assume you're fine. When you refuse to fully own your authority as a leader, you can create confusion and power vacuums. Eventually, those outcomes become "proof" that you really can't depend on anyone.

This isn't just a conversation about childhood or relationships. It's also about leadership.

Jason discusses how leaders who are uncomfortable exercising authority can unintentionally create dysfunctional organizations. Employees need clarity. Teams need to understand what success looks like. And leadership doesn't have to mean dominating people—it can mean clearly defining expectations while allowing other people to exercise their own authority and autonomy.

Extreme self-reliance can also turn leaders into control freaks. When you believe everything ultimately depends on you, delegation and decentralization become difficult—and that can dramatically limit what you and your organization are capable of accomplishing.

Jason's conclusion is simple: real self-improvement requires understanding what you're improving from.

It's not enough to identify a behavior you want to change. Sometimes you need to understand where that behavior originated, pull it up by the root, and consciously replace it with new thoughts, behaviors, and actions.

Self-reliance can be a tremendous strength.

But when "I can handle this" becomes "I can't depend on anyone," the thing that once protected you may eventually become the thing holding you back.

• Why extreme self-reliance can become self-sabotage
• How childhood experiences can shape adult independence
• Why some people struggle to identify what they actually want
• The connection between self-reliance and authority
• Why leaders sometimes feel guilty telling people what to do
• How refusing to acknowledge hurt prevents others from supporting you
• Why taking responsibility for everyone's happiness creates resentment
• How extreme independence can turn into controlling behavior
• Why vulnerability and asking for help can actually increase your effectiveness
• How understanding the origin of a behavior can make changing it easier

This episode of The Jason Wright Show is sponsored by Authentic Health.

Real health starts at the cellular level. Visit shopauthentichealth.com and use promo code JASON to save 10% on your first order.

In this episode of The Jason Wright Show, Jason continues his digital detox series with a practical strategy for breaking the doom-scrolling habit.

Simply deleting Instagram, putting down your phone, or promising yourself you’ll scroll less usually isn’t enough. When you remove a habit, you create a vacuum—and something will eventually fill it.

The question is: Will you deliberately choose what replaces it, or will your brain choose the easiest source of stimulation available?

Jason explores the idea of replacing the “empty calories” of digital consumption with what he calls intellectual nutrition—activities that stimulate your mind, improve your performance, and still satisfy your need for engagement.

He shares the strategies he’s personally using to reduce mindless digital consumption, including:

• Replacing scrolling with reading—even if it’s only a few paragraphs at a time
• Using a dedicated Kindle to eliminate digital distractions
• Removing high-distraction apps from his phone and intentionally adding friction
• Reading the news instead of consuming endless clips and commentary
• Choosing challenging books that require deeper concentration
• Using educational YouTube videos and podcasts instead of algorithm-driven entertainment
• Connecting what you consume to goals you’re actively pursuing
• Using exercise, hobbies, and physical training to keep your mind and body engaged
• Spending time with people who generate stimulating, productive conversation
• Creating something when boredom strikes instead of automatically reaching for your phone

Jason also explores the relationship between challenge, attention, and flow, and why pushing through the initial resistance of a difficult book or mentally demanding activity can eventually become far more rewarding than passive scrolling.

The goal isn’t to eliminate stimulation.

It’s to upgrade the quality of the stimulation you consume.

If you want to spend less time scrolling, don’t just take something away.

Give your brain something better to do.

00:00 Why quitting doom scrolling cold turkey often fails

02:00 The problem with creating a digital vacuum

03:00 Intellectual nutrition vs. digital empty calories

04:00 Why reading is one of the best replacements for scrolling

07:00 Why Jason uses a dedicated Kindle

09:00 Adding friction between yourself and social media

11:00 Reading challenging material and entering flow

15:00 Turning YouTube into an educational tool

18:00 Connecting your content consumption to your goals

21:00 Physical activity as an antidote to passive consumption

23:00 Why stimulating conversations matter

26:00 Doom scrolling, rumination, and escaping your own thoughts

28:00 Creating instead of consuming

30:00 The biggest takeaway: deliberately fill the vacuum

Your brain will fill empty space one way or another. If you want to break your doom-scrolling habit, don't rely solely on discipline or willpower.

Replace low-quality digital stimulation with reading, learning, movement, relationships, challenging ideas, and creation.

Stop feeding your brain empty calories. Give it something nutritious instead.

This episode of The Jason Wright Show is sponsored by Authentic Health.

Real health starts at the cellular level. Stress, processed foods, environmental toxins, and poor sleep are working against your body every day.

Visit shopauthentichealth.com and use promo code JASON for 10% off your first order.

Improve always, in all ways.

What if the biggest thing standing between you and your potential isn’t a lack of talent, discipline, or motivation—but your own brain?

In this episode of The Jason Wright Show, Jason explores the idea that the human brain is designed to conserve energy, manage risk, and keep us from pushing too far. That protective mechanism may be useful for survival, but it can also become an internal governor that convinces us we’ve reached our limit long before we actually have.

Drawing on his own experiences with hard Peloton rides, VO₂ max training, and the infamous FTP test, Jason examines what happens when the mind starts screaming, “Stop.” Is that really the limit—or simply the point where deliberate effort has to take over?

Jason connects the idea to David Goggins’ “40% Rule,” Michael Easter’s The Comfort Crisis, and Roger Bannister’s historic breaking of the four-minute mile to make the case that exceptional performance often requires consciously overriding the instinct to retreat toward comfort.

• Why the brain may encourage us to stop before we've reached our true physical limits
• The difference between feeling finished and actually being finished
• David Goggins’ famous idea that when you think you're done, you may still have much more available
• Why motivation and mood aren't reliable tools for achieving difficult goals
• What brutal workouts like FTP tests and Norwegian 4x4 intervals can teach us about mental limits
• Lessons from Michael Easter’s The Comfort Crisis about voluntarily choosing difficult challenges
• Why setting a goal beyond what feels comfortable can change what you believe you're capable of
• Roger Bannister and the psychological barrier surrounding the four-minute mile
• Why excellence sometimes requires making a conscious decision to continue when your instincts are telling you to stop

Your default setting isn't necessarily designed to make you exceptional. It's designed to protect you.

That means there will be moments when pursuing something meaningful—whether in fitness, business, relationships, or personal growth—requires you to consciously override the desire to back off.

You can't always wait until you feel motivated.

You can't assume discomfort means you've reached your limit.

And you can't expect your default settings to automatically carry you toward excellence.

Sometimes you have to make the deliberate decision to go further.

If you want to achieve something beyond the ordinary, you have to become willing to go beyond what your mind initially tells you you're capable of.

Excellence isn't always found where things feel good. Sometimes it's found immediately beyond the point where your brain starts negotiating with you to stop.

David Goggins — The “40% Rule” and the concept of perceived limitations

Michael Easter — The Comfort Crisis — Deliberately seeking discomfort and undertaking challenges that stretch perceived capabilities

Roger Bannister — The first person to run a mile in under four minutes, demonstrating how supposedly impossible barriers can fall once someone proves they can be broken

Norwegian 4x4 Training — High-intensity intervals commonly used to improve cardiovascular fitness and VO₂ max

Peloton FTP Test — A demanding test used to estimate functional threshold power

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to The Jason Wright Show on YouTube and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Please consider leaving a five-star rating and sharing this episode with someone who is pursuing something difficult.

The Jason Wright Show

Go beyond what's expected.