Welcome to Signal // Noise — the newsletter read by CEOs, founders, and scrappy builders every Thursday. Each week, what I’m listening to, one deep dive, three links worth your time. Zero bullshit.
While I Was Writing Today’s Signal // Noise:
From sound to signal—let’s get this baby rolling with what’s on my mind…
// The Signal
One big idea, insight, or take — grounded in real work, not theory.
You Make Money During the Day
There’s a story Jerry Seinfeld tells about Chris Rock.
They were hanging out, talking to a younger comic. Rock asked the comic what he did that day, and the guy said, “I didn’t do much today, but I’ve got a set tonight.” And Rock said to him:
“You make money during the day. You collect it at night. During the day is where the money is made.”
That line really resonated with me - because it’s not just true of comedy. It’s true of writing. It’s true of building. Of Leadership. Creativity. Strategy. Parenting. Company-building.
We tend to glorify the moment something ships — the big product launch, the LinkedIn post that goes viral, the big meeting, the funding round.
But you don’t become a great comic by doing more sets. You become one by living a life worth laughing at.
You don’t become a great writer by hitting a daily word count. You become one by collecting stories worth telling.
You don’t become a great leader by managing a pristine calendar. You become one by screwing things up, making hard calls, and learning what actually moves people.
You don’t create great shit by grinding harder at the keyboard. You create it by living upstream from the keyboard.
Writer David Perell has made a similar point:
“Even writers who work full-time spend most of their hours away from the keyboard. Full-time authors, for example, don’t actually type for 40 hours per week because they’d have little to say if they did. Instead, they spend most of their time collecting experiences. By the time they sit down to write, they’ve already experienced what they plan to write about, even if they aren’t entirely sure about what they’re going to say.”
That’s been true for me too.
My best ideas don’t come from Slack threads or deep focus blocks or back-to-backs.
My best ideas have come from:
→ Going to events and talking live to customers
→ Getting burned by something I thought I had figured out
→ Missing a number or trying to tackle a huge challenge
→ Reading a book that made me feel something
Experience is the engine, reflection is the editing — and then, only then, comes the output.
It doesn’t always look productive. It doesn’t always live inside your Notion dashboard or your fancy workspace.
You’ve got to have experiences, observe the world, make a ton of fucking mistakes, cry about them, get angry, eff up some more, then you’ve got to live your material and come back with something to prove.
That’s where ya money gets made.
📔 Field Notes
Dispatches from the field — lessons, stories, interviews, experiments.
I rounded up 25 business books that have actually stuck with me — not just the trendy ones, but the ones that have really impacted what I’ve learned & what has stuck with me.
Split into memoirs and strategy books, with quick blurbs for each.
👀 A few Jawns to Check Out
Smart reads, sharp tools, or internet gems.
📰 Fresh POV | Big Platforms Are Out. Niche Networks Are In. The next wave of social apps is all about depth — building tighter, more obsessive communities around specific passions. Think:
Letterboxd for movie lovers
Goodreads for bookworms
Beli for food-obsessed Gen Z
Vivino for wine people
VSCO for visual-first creators
This recent LinkedIn post maps it out: the future of social is smaller, smarter, and deeply vertical. If you’re building or investing, don’t ignore the niches — that’s where culture is coalescing.
🧰 Try this | Don't Sleep on This Audience Goldmine. Answer the Public has been around for years, but I swear half of us forgot it exists. Type in a keyword, and it spits out every question people are actually asking around that topic — real search data, mapped visually. Perfect for writing content, designing products, or just figuring out what your customers care about. Check It Out Here.
🔥 Hot take | Gambling, Gamification, & No Chill. I threw a high school grad party for my nephew last week. Every guy there? On their phones. Not texting — checking parlays. One kid was live-streaming a random baseball game just to see if he hit a +475 stolen base. Didn't look up once.
Kyla’s piece breaks it down: sports betting apps aren’t about sports. They’re dopamine machines — boosts, micro-bets, fake wins — designed for nonstop taps. It’s TikTok meets Robinhood, but with your money. Check It Out Here.
You’re welcome to email me and tell me how great this newsletter was, but I’m on vacation on Isle of Palms, Chucktown, baby.
What’s your favorite beach in the world? Hit reply and lmk. I’m always curious.
Have a good weekend, you animals.
Love yous.
Jordan
