Rich Jordan | Strongpoint

SMB lesson: Day after acq. announcement, heard rumblings that our senior plumber felt job-insecure and betrayed by the transaction. Big problem when my largest vulnerability is the skilled trade talent.

@pinpulleddrmf Sign me up.

The time is now for a killer Cessna

@moseskagan @sweatystartup And people think Nick isn't self-aware.

@sweatystartup This is a great post

Bad move. You'll end up moving to NYC, getting purple hair, having no kids by 40, driving a sedan, investing heavily in AI, marrying a woman who has an instagram following and generally failing at life.

@Johnny_Joey A-10s in the USMC would be a beautiful and natural pairing.

For those of you not familiar. The A-10 Warthog is the ugliest, most absurdly beautiful killing machine to ever take flight. A flying chunk of titanium molded around a gatlin gun style cannon; the equally absurd 30mm GAU-8. It commands the adoration of troops on the ground as the sound of its unmistakable mating call the “brrrrrrp” overhead means several enemy fighters have been neutralized. It flies low and slow delivering death more intimately than any other fighter jet could fathom. Cloaked in armor, it’s rumored to be able to take damage to 70% of its airframe and still land with ease. It doesn’t need a long or even paved runway. The uppity nerds running the Air Force have decided to “phase them out” this year… yet here they are continuing to “get some”. I personally think that @USMC should take the them over… they fit perfectly in our “take old shit and make it great” culture.

@MikeBotkin_ @thegeneralmills @Fish_wid_a_V I read on X that I'm not supposed to be working *in* the office, but should be working *on* the office - something like that... I forget.

@StrongpointRich @thegeneralmills @Fish_wid_a_V The better question is, when are you actually IN the office?

When I was at @StrongpointRich shop, I was very impressed by the books that were on his work desk. I started a reading list that is on my work desk so whenever I have a minute I review them & be more intentional about it. Very curious what books my SMB friends are reading today?

@thegeneralmills @Fish_wid_a_V Out of the office today, but that stack is primarily Ogilvy, Ehrenberg Institute (Sharp & Romaniuk), Les Schwab and a few others.

@Fish_wid_a_V @StrongpointRich @StrongpointRich what’s on your desk?

@Camp4 Any time I think "whoa wtf is wrong with this app today - it's like a dopamine hell" I realize I accidentally wandered into the For You feed. Dumpster fire.

@StrongpointRich The problem is 95%+ of people use the default feed.

I love this app and am a huge Elon fan, but the algo is a complete dumpster fire. It exclusively rewards comment velocity (outrage) and creators can no longer even reach their followers. 95% of my feed is slop.

@SMB_Attorney $10bn is insane.

I left Kirkland in 2022 to launch my own firm. Who’s laughing now? If you said them, congratulations, you’d be correct.

@CaryHawkins_ It wasn't clear to me until my brother and I had both left the service that my mom had been living under a simmering stress the entire time.

A friend's son deploys soon. His family will hold their breath until he returns, and won't fully exhale until he leaves service. My Mom did this for over 15 years. We get the awards and are thanked for our service, but the families often pay the greatest price. Remember them.

@markbdelaney *as long as their comp is structured properly

If your salespeople earn more than you as the CEO/GM/President/Owner, you can: 1. Be upset 2. Be excited Choose wisely.

@BowTiedCFI No instruction at all will be interesting. I'm thinking of nuanced things like keeping speed above stall on approach, flaring on landing, over-braking on the landing roll, etc. Decent amount of non-obvious ways to screw it up.

Most men think they can land a plane if something goes wrong I'm going to see how true that is on friday Friend of a former student wants to try to land with zero instruction Let's see if this guy can pull off the impossible

@dmbkparker @zachary_ashburn I'd be watching that stall speed like a hawk.

Paging @zachary_ashburn

@DallasAptGP I had been wondering about the best way to have a markdown knowledge base across a team using multiple machines. Seems like Obsidian was the bridge I was looking for. Thanks.

We built a system where Claude knows our entire company before I type a word. Three operating companies. 50+ properties. Full context on every session. Three tools. Any small business can build this. Most business owners use AI the same way every time. Open Claude. Re-explain the business. Re-explain the team. Re-explain the numbers. Then ask the question. You're onboarding the same employee every morning. We fixed this. Claude now knows the full operation before I type a word. Start with your most important company knowledge. Turn each topic into its own markdown file. Markdown is simple text that AI reads clean. Think about what you re-explain over and over. How your business makes money. Your org chart and who owns what. Your pricing. Key metrics for each team member. Your sales process. Your brand voice. One topic per file. Keep them short. Put everything in Obsidian. It's free. Files stay on your computer. Nothing goes to the cloud. Think of it as a filing cabinet on your own hard drive that AI can search in milliseconds. Here's what makes it work. Every file connects to related files through tagged links called wikilinks. When you ask Claude about a specific client, it doesn't just find the client file. It pulls every project, contract, invoice, and note tied to that client. One question. Full picture. Then connect Claude Code. It works like the regular Claude desktop app with one difference. It has the keys to your filing cabinet. Claude Code reads files right off your computer. No uploads. No cloud. No file size limits. Your financials, client data, and internal strategy never leave your machine. For business owners who won't put sensitive data on someone else's server, this solves the problem. Most people I know spend $100 to $200 a month on Claude. If you're already paying that, you should be getting more out of it than a chatbot that forgets who you are every session. Some of you already use Claude Projects. Good. That puts you ahead of most people. Projects let you upload files and give Claude a custom instruction set. For small tasks, it works. If you have a handful of documents and a clear use case, Projects is the right starting point. But it has a ceiling. Upload limits cap how much context you can load. Your files live on Anthropic's servers. And every project is its own silo. Your sales project doesn't talk to your ops project. Your finance files don't connect to your team files. The Obsidian setup removes all three limits. No upload cap. Files stay on your machine. And every file links to every related file across your whole company. The last piece is one instruction file. It tells Claude how your company works, what role it plays, and how to navigate the knowledge base. Think of it as the onboarding doc you'd hand a senior executive on day one. Except this executive never forgets it. Once it's built, every session starts with full context. Claude knows your team. Your numbers. Your processes. You skip the setup. You go straight to the work. Three tools. Obsidian (free). Claude Code (you're already paying for it). One instruction file. If you run a business and you're still re-explaining yourself to AI every session, you're leaving speed on the table.

@ConnorShowler If you're watching GSC, it quickly becomes clear that Ahrefs data can't be trusted.

Its unforetunate AHREFS data has become more and more laughable.. Too little too late?

@therobertbrooks Vividly remember my first paycheck hitting my account and thinking, "I can't believe they pay me to do this."

@StrongpointRich Jokes on them. We didn't get sign on bonuses in my generation and we had to buy some of our own gear before going to Iraq. I got paid back in national pride and good stories.

I could see how if you had a complete lack of courage and national pride, you might believe that those who serve must only do it because they had no other choice. Don't be this guy.

@StrongpointRich I joined the Marines for the sign-on bonus

@Lawyer4Deals To assume that ~all servicemembers are poor and had no other career options available says more about the author than anyone else.

Troll I’m sure but I’ll take the bait: 99% of the Marines referenced below are foaming at the mouth and ready to rumble. I also posit that, controlling for injuries resulting in Purple Hearts, their disability claims will be lower than military average.

@farrowhardy1 Gotta make yourself hard to kill.

@StrongpointRich I think it's also important to think about overhead/office staff this way too. You don't need as much office staff as you think and you should be staffed to still do ok even in your worst demand months.

Many owners in the trades learn the hard way that field labor isn't truly variable. Yeah, it falls in COGS so it looks variable on paper. But you're paying those guys whether the phones ring or not. It's fixed. Staff for peak and you'll hit your margin targets all summer. Then September comes, revenue drops, and your labor bill doesn't move. You get hit on both sides at once - a compressed gross margin on reduced revenue. Over-staff and you get crushed on your bottom line most of the year. Under-staff and you'll struggle to serve demand when it shows up. Have to find a middle ground, which can be hard to do when demand is constantly shifting and you operate on a 4-day schedule. After being thumped over the head a few too many times, I'd now rather have to get creative to meet surging demand than be stressed that my team is idle without work.

@TheKingdomdad @TheNolanGore DMs open 👊🏻

@StrongpointRich @TheNolanGore I’d like to connect