While I Was Writing Today’s Signal // Noise:

Just try not to dance in your herman miller aeron chair, i freakin’ dare ya.

🎧 Want the whole vibe? The running playlist is right here.

From sound to signal, let’s get this baby rolling with what’s on my mind…

One big idea, insight, or take - grounded in the real work, not theory.

Ask ten founders what their growth goal is for next month or next year and you’ll hear a lot of the same vague answers:

Ambition without math. Or worse, just plain ole’ uncertainty.

It’s one of the biggest gaps I see when advising early-stage CEOs. They’re excited, driven, and full of ideas — but haven’t yet built the muscle of turning vision into numbers, and numbers into plans.

Real leadership means starting to build that bridge.

Here’s my process.

I always start with, where are we today?

Let’s say we’re at $1 million in revenue and 10% margin — so $100K in profit.

Next, I find the “run-rate number.” If we just keep doing what we’re doing, growing MoM, the natural evolution of an iterative, improving startup, where would we end up? Let’s pretend its $1.5 million next year. Great.

That’s the “drag the spready” baseline.

Now I ask myself, within reason, what would actually excite me as founder/CEO?

What number, if we nail it, would really pump up the team, investors, key stakeholders?

Maybe that’s $3 million — a 3× year.

And because I assume a 3x means a lot of reinvesting into the business, I assume margin stays flat at 10%. Great.

That’s my stretch goal. Ambitious, but not delusional.

Then I’ll take it to my team leads:

We brainstorm ideas:

I always frame it as “blue-sky, not blank check.”

The team’s job is to imagine possibilities, within reason, and even better if you have profit sharing or incentives that align the team with the idea of keeping things tight.

Then, it’s your job to take their feedback, combine it with your own founder intuition (which should always be heavily weighted), and then you go and model what’s realistic.

Now my favorite part, modeling out the deets:

It’s important to build the model in a way where you can change your variable inputs and see the outputs on the model.

I come up with a plan that helps me achieve the goal: $3M in revenue and $300K in profit, assuming some of our big ideas hit.

Once the math checks out, pressure-test it.

What happens if sales lag? If churn spikes? If one of your “big bets” whiffs?

When the plan survives those scenarios, then you move to focus — building OKRs that tell the team what actually matters most.

1. Wins Need Time to Bake

If you’re banking on a 20% lift from CRO experiments, you’re not getting that in Month 1. Give new ideas 3–6 months to test, learn, and roll out. Don’t let your annual plan depend on instant results.

2. Build Slack for Failure

Out of five major bets, at least one or two won’t hit. Don’t make your entire year hinge on perfection. Model for a couple of misses.

3. Keep H1 Variable, H2 Fixed

Front-load flexibility. Use contractors, pilots, and short-term tools in the first half. If you’re hitting targets, turn the right bets into full-time hires in H2. That way, you can pull back if reality doesn’t meet optimism.

Some founders have simply never done this before, while others might feel like budgeting and forecasting is big-company BS or overly onerous for a startup.

But it’s not corporate, it’s clarity.

It’s how you tell the story of where you are, where you’re going, and what it’ll cost to get there.

Next week, we’ll close the loop — how to turn these forecasts into plans that are ownable, by connecting OKRs and DRIs so that accountability actually sticks.

Dispatches from the field - lessons, stories, interviews, experiments.

In case you missed this in Sunday’s edition, here’s another shot. It’s the full 7 Growth Traps to Avoid deck — straight from the infamous Starboard Value vs. Darden board fight. I pulled out the key takeaways on how to avoid each trap, specifically written for early-stage founders.

Smart reads, sharp tools, or internet gems.

As a lifelong Sixers fan, I’ll never forgive Hinkie for The Process — but tbh, this interview is really outstanding. Smart takes on team-building, long-term bets, and I’ve been using his concept of “digital breadcrumbs” for years (of course I never had a cool name for it).

Simple, timeless, and practical. If you’re trying to build a self-funded product, this is the playbook: start small, earn cash, build leverage, go SaaS, focus on LTV, climb the steps. Tons of smart links inside for the next rung.

The creator of the old 4% retirement rule now says 5% (technically 4.7%) is safe. And I couldn’t agree more. Trust me - when you run the numbers - 4% is crazy conservative. Translation: you can’t take it with you. Enjoy yaself.

Planning’s the easy part. Next week, we’ll talk about getting people to own it.

And until next time, thanks for reading.

Jordan

P.S. Wanna work on something? Got a pod or content idea? → Email me | Need 30–60 min of advice? → Book here | Want a coach in your corner? → More info