What up animals —

This week’s been crazy busy - and I’ve been having a blast writing this newsletter.

Let’s jump in.

// The Signal

Build the Net Before You Leap

Austin, 1981. A 100‑year flood tears through the brand‑new Whole Foods, leaving $400k in soggy jasmine rice and rotten apples. Co‑founder John Mackey figures it’s curtains—until employees, customers, and even friends swing by to haul buckets side‑by‑side. Thirty days later the store reopens, on a path that ends with Amazon writing a $13.7 billion check in 2017.

Bart Houlihan told me an almost carbon‑copy survival story from AND1: company should’ve died, employees kept the lights on. Those chats lit the fuse for my new post, “You Will Fail. So Hire People Who’ll Build the Net.”

The gist: resilience isn’t about being solo—it’s about who’s standing next to you when the walls cave start to cave in.

Here’s the TLDR so you don’t have to click if you’re pressed for time:

Three Quick Hiring Filters:

• Tell me about your last face‑plant. Great candidates can tell you when they’ve failed, bombed, or blown it. They can own the mess and spotlight the crew who helped them bounce back. Duck‑and‑cover answers = hard pass.

• Back‑Channel Loyalty Check – Quietly ask a couple of ex‑colleagues one question: “Would you drop what you’re doing to work with this person again?” A fast yes = keeper.

• One‑Week Project Sprint– Hand them a real, bite‑size project on Friday and review it the next Friday. You’ll see how they scope, communicate, and ship when no one’s holding their hand.

Ink those three into your interview flow and you’ll filter for Ride‑or‑Dies, Feelers, and Resilients—the trifecta that kept Whole Foods afloat alive.

If you want the whole breakdown, read the post linked above. Want Mackey’s unfiltered flood story, conscious‑capitalism riffs, and billion‑dollar exit war‑stories? 📻️ Queue up his two‑hour sit‑down with Shane Parrish on The Knowledge Project (Ep. 206).

🔖 The Blog Round

I started a new series: The Operator’s Guide to Leadership — these are funny, personal stories of being in the trenches: A menthol-smoking boss. A marketing campaign that flopped. And a public launch gone sideways.

The first 3 posts are live if you wanna give them a read:

🥨 A few Jawns to Check Out

Andrew Chen’s “Every Marketing Channel Sucks Right Now”. SEO (AI one-boxes you out), paid (CPCs rising), influencers (24-hour sugar highs), PR (never works), email (spam folder hell) —it’s plateau city. The fix? When the classics plateau, the edge goes to founders who bake distribution into the product itself—invites, referrals, shared workspaces—so every new user drags a friend along. Treat Chen’s rant as a quarterly gut‑check: kill one zombie channel, spin up one fresh experiment, and keep the growth loop in‑house where no algorithm can yank it. 📑 Check it.

Why Your Best Startup Years Might Begin at 50. Steven Kotler dismantles the “long‑slow‑rot” cliché and shows that brain plasticity, VO₂‑max, and even creativity can all peak well past 50. One study he cites found that a positive mindset toward aging is worth eight extra healthy years—the same longevity boost as quitting smoking. For founders plotting a second (or third) act, that’s a reminder that your best compounding asset might be time plus experience. Quick read, big reframe. 📑 Check it.

The SCOTUS Shark & the King of Instagram (I couldn’t resist this story). Tommy boy Goldstein argued 44 cases before the Supreme Court and was revered in D.C. legal circles—until a federal indictment laid out the fact that he was also a degenerate poker maniac who partied with Dan Bilzerian, lost millions, and allegedly funneled law firm cash to bankroll it. He drag-raced Bilzerian for $300K, ripped bong hits, and still showed up in front of the Black Robes to argue landmark cases. He’s now facing 22 criminal counts - tell me this isn’t a Netflix doc waiting to happen? 📑 Check it [email required].

Hit ‘reply’ and LMK what you liked - or didn’t.

And for god’s sake people, forward to a friend and get them to sign-up.

Love yous.

-Jordan