Founder of StrategyBreakdowns.com

TLDR: Worked in strategy consulting → Joined strategy team at Atlassian → Started writing strategy case studies → People liked them, so I left my job and went full-timeCheck it out → StrategyBreakdowns.comWe partner with companies like Atlassian, Notion, Intercom, Hubspot, Miro, Vanta, Clay, Mixpanel, and Ahrefs to reach 110k+ tech decision-makers. Click here to explore sponsorships → passionfroot.me/strategybreakdowns

Tom Alder

Apple makes $1 billion+ per year selling adaptors:

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👉 P.S. If you enjoyed this post, you'll love my newsletter - a 3-minute breakdown of the strategy playbooks and growth hacks behind the world’s greatest companies.

Join 110,000+ strategy nerds from companies like Google, Meta, Atlassian, and Netflix: https://lnkd.in/g2FWfXGR

The average enterprise employee spends 31 hours per month in unproductive meetings.

That's almost a full work week. 
Every single month. 
Gone.

And yet - meetings aren't the problem. BAD meetings are the problem.

The best hybrid teams i've seen don't have fewer meetings. 
→ They have better workflows that make every interaction count.

I genuinely think something's shifted in how teams think about productivity.

It used to be about individual output - more hours, more tasks, more hustle.

Now it's about connection quality and output. How seamlessly can 50 people across 12 timezones actually collaborate without losing their minds?

The companies figuring this out are pulling ahead. The ones still optimising for "busy" are falling behind.

--

Zoom is running a free summit on exactly this: how to make collaboration seamless across teams, locations, and timezones.

Feb 24 (EMEA) / Feb 25 (APAC)

If you're leading digital transformation, IT, or workplace strategy at a large org - worth grabbing a spot.

Register here: → https://zm.me/49SCY8r

#ad in partnership with the legends Zoom

Jamming with Rob Hoffman, Lara Acosta, and Tyler Denk 🐝 about our plans for 2026:

A few topics we discussed -

1. The reality of building while traveling the world.
2. Why vlogging is coming back for founders.
3. The timeless psychology of waitlists.
4. The bootstrapped AI SaaS paradigm.
5. Solopreneurship vs small vs big teams.

Honestly so refreshing to get new perspectives on things I’m actively wrestling with.
Also funny to see how the same decisions / problems / strategies resurface in peculiar ways, in such different contexts.

Would highly recommend following what these folks are up to if you haven’t already!

Rob and Lara are building Kleo.
Tyler is building beehiiv.

Incredible businesses powering many of the world's top creators and founders.

Feeling inspired. Let's build.

Every company spent the last 20 years building customer support processes that make people want to hang up.

Press 1 for billing. 
Press 2 for support. 
Press 3 to scream into the void.

Then came the "AI upgrade" - which mostly just replaced the robotic menu with a robotic voice.

Same frustration, different wrapper.

Here's what's actually changing now:
ElevenLabs just shipped Expressive Mode in their Agents platform.

The demo is WILD (video below). 

The agents don't just listen to what you say. 
They detect HOW you say it.

Tone.
Pitch. 
Pacing. 
Humour.
Feelings.

And they respond with the right delivery - using cue cards like [reassuring], [apologetic], and [enthusiastic] to match the moment.

Frustrated caller? The agent shifts to calm de-escalation.
Excited prospect? It matches the energy.
Confused customer? It slows down.

Previously, agent emotion was shaped entirely through voice selection and system prompts. Static. One-size-fits-all.
Now it's dynamic and contextual. Across 70+ languages (up from 32).
The turn-taking is different too. Their new transcription model captures intent and emotional cues so the agent times responses more like a human would.
The result: customers feel helped, not processed.
That's the gap most people miss about voice AI. The technology was never the bottleneck.

The emotional intelligence was.

Link to try below 👇

#ad #ElevenAgentsPartner

Every AI tool you've used in the last 2 years has the same interface:

A text box with a blinking cursor.

Quarterzip threw it away entirely.

Instead of building another chat wrapper, they built an AI that watches your screen share and guides you visually - like having a colleague sit next to you and point at things.

No SDK installation. 
No browser extension. 
No IT approval ticket.

Just a picture-in-picture window that sees everything you see. Any tool, any tab, any workflow.

Picture this:
- You’re onboarding to a new tool
- You brace yourself for a barrage of forgettable tooltips and painful ‘educational’ flows
- Instead, you click ‘Start Onboarding’ and you’re prompted to share your screen
- You share, and you’re placed directly in the app, with a helpful AI assistant in the corner that sees everything you see
- It’s trained on the help docs, all past onboarding calls, and can guide you through the journey whilst answering any question you might have along the way

They launched a week ago. Already running hundreds of AI-powered onboarding sessions a day with Apollo and Grab.

And the growth loop is elegant - every person who gets onboarded through Quarterzip sees the brand sitting inside the PIP window.

Product usage drives distribution.

I broke down the full strategy in this week's newsletter (link in the comments)

On July 7th, 2025, I added another SaaS idea to the pile:
A Chrome extension. SimilarWeb for builders. Traffic, revenue signals, founder socials, ads - all in a sidebar you can trigger when you visit any company's website.

A 9-bullet sketch of something I'd personally use a dozen times a day, if it existed.

Nothing came of it. Got buried under many more (half-baked) ideas.

Fast-forward 6 months.
The Figma team reached out about a partnership.
They wanted me to try their new prompt-to-app AI tool, Figma Make.

I mulled over the angle for a while, then realised I had the perfect test case.
Could I take a 6-month-old idea that had never left the notes app and turn it into a fully interactive, clickable product prototype? Without writing a single line of code? Without opening a design tool?

The pipeline I came up with:
→ 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (raw idea, 9 bullet points) 
→ 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗲 + 𝗪𝗶𝘀𝗽𝗿 𝗙𝗹𝗼𝘄 (interview to flesh it into a full PRD) 
→ 𝗙𝗶𝗴𝗺𝗮 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 (PRD in, interactive prototype out)

One sitting later, I had my answer.
Here’s how it went down (link in the comments 👇)

Most newsletter sponsors get a terrible ROI.

All because they're advertising to the wrong readers.

Here's the thing about audience quality that most marketers miss:

1/ You need readers who make decisions.

This is the #1 mistake I see. Advertising to e.g. 1 million people containing 1k decision-makers, rather than 100k people containing 50k decision-makers.

71% of Strategy Breakdowns readers have meaningful influence over budget and procurement decisions at their company.

You need to get in front of the actual people who sign off on the tools, platforms, and services their teams use.

2/ Open rate is a proxy for trust.

Industry average open-rate is under 40%. Strategy Breakdowns sits at 55%, while earning the trust of 110,000 readers every week. Our sponsors inherit that trust.

3/ Niche is more efficient than broad.

A 110,000-person list of senior strategy and tech leaders doesn’t just contain *more* decision-makers than 500,000-person general business list - it is also costs less to advertise in. The signal-to-noise ratio is what makes our campaigns so efficient for sponsors looking to allocate their marketing budgets strategically.

4/ The seniority and industry breakdown matters.

- 30% Founder / C-level
- 20% VP / Director
- 40% Senior / Manager

Tech, consulting, and finance make up ~80% of our audience. I mean, these are literally the buyers.

5/ One ad isn't a campaign.

The sponsors who see the best results run 4 touchpoints minimum. Decision-makers don't act on first exposure, especially at this seniority level. (Honestly, when was the last time you saw a $100/mo tool for the first time and immediately pulled out a corporate card?) Plus, you need to test, learn, and iterate based on the data from each ad run.

6/ We treat it like a partnership (but actually).

Ad copy collaboration, custom AI tools we’ve built for partners, full 7-day and 14-day performance reports with 100% of the data we have available, ongoing input to optimise the campaign. Nearly every sponsor I work with (Atlassian, Vanta, Clay, Attio, Ahrefs, etc) comes back multiple times. 

Probably the thing I’m most proud of.

We have just 2 slots left before prices go up for Q2.

If your product is built for founders, PMs, engineers, or operators in tech - link to our full media kit in the comments 👇

How many DMs do you send per week on LinkedIn?

Most people building creator businesses and small companies aren't failing because of effort. They're failing because they're using personal productivity advice to solve operating problems. Those are different things.I built Operating by John Brewton to close that gap.Companies are becoming tech stacks. We are all becoming companies. The same AI that is eliminating jobs is giving individuals and small teams the operating leverage that used to require a hundred-person org. The question is whether you have a system to use it.Operating teaches you the system.Three things I publish and teach every week:→ Operating habits: the daily disciplines, workflows, and decision frameworks that let a one-person business compound over time.→ Strategy scaled down: big-company economics, competitive strategy, and AI transformation playbooks resized for solopreneurs and small teams.→ History &amp; economics: how great companies were actually built — and what operators at any scale can steal from them.I run two integrated businesses:Operating by John Brewton — Substack-bestselling newsletter read by 30,000+ founders, creators, and operators. Operating Founders is the cohort: 52 live weekly sessions, monthly expert guests, a private community, and a growing resource library — all for $99/year. First 100 seats sold out in 12 days.6A East Partners — the consulting arm. Company valuation, EBITDA maximization, AI transformation strategy, competitive turnarounds, family business succession, and zero-to-one business-building sprints (3 days, full plan, operating model, and go-to-market from scratch).Before Operating, I spent 14 years inside small and mid-sized companies: scaled a family business from $25M to $75M, completed a successful exit, negotiated 7–8 figure Fortune 500 contracts, and rebuilt operating systems that grew revenue faster than headcount.Three ways to work with me:→ Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton (link in profile) — free to start.→ Join Operating Founders for 52 weeks of structured help turning yourself into a company.→ DM me “OPERATING” for advisory, consulting, or a zero-to-one sprint.

John Brewton

Spotify's bold statement perfectly captures a truth we all know about the future of work.

Trust drives performance. 

Freedom fuels creativity and productivity. 

And the best talent does not want to go back to the office. 

The data is crystal clear:
➡️ 87% of employees embrace flexibility when offered (McKinsey)
➡️ Remote workers show 13% higher productivity with 50% less turnover
➡️ Companies save $11,000 per remote employee annually

But the real story isn't in the numbers; it's in the lives transformed:
✨ Parents present for their children's milestones
✨ Professionals pursuing their best work from dream locations
✨ Teams collaborating across continents
✨ Reduced commute stress and environmental impact
✨ Better mental health and work-life harmony

The most successful companies aren't asking, 'Where are you working?'

They're asking, 'How can we help you succeed?'

This is not a debate about remote work. It's a conversation about:
✅ Trust
✅ Autonomy
✅ Results
✅ Wellbeing
✅ Sustainability

The future belongs to organizations that treat their people like the capable professionals they are.

The data supports remote work, but every company's journey is different. What's working (or not working) in your organization? Leaders and employees - sound off below 👇

➕Follow me, John Brewton, for more content like this. 
♻️ Repost to bring your network into this important conversation.

No alternative text description for this image

The best people are not leaving work.
They are leaving smallness.

They are leaving environments that cannot hold their ambition, creativity, standards, and speed.

And that creates one of the greatest opportunities we have seen in years.

Because top talent is not disappearing. 
They are reallocating.

They are moving toward companies with clear missions, leaders who trust adults to act like owners, cultures where initiative is rewarded, and teams that use technology to expand human capability, not shrink human dignity.

Too many leaders are framing this as a talent crisis. It is a talent marketplace reset.

The people you most want on your team are asking new questions: 

Will I grow here? 
Will I be trusted here? 
Will my work matter here? 
Will leadership tell me the truth?

AI is accelerating this, but not in the tired doomsday way people keep repeating.

AI is forcing organizations to become more honest. 

AI is exposing weak leadership, broken cultures, and roles designed with no imagination. 

But it is also creating space for a better bargain between companies and great people.

Less bureaucracy. 
More output.

Less control theater. 
More trust.

Less performative busyness. 
More meaningful contribution.

The winning companies now will not be the ones that simply offer jobs. 

They will be those that offer leverage, learning, autonomy, mission, and real upside.

Top talent is not running from the future. 
They are running toward companies built for it.

The question for leaders is simple:
When the best people look at your company, do they see a place to survive, or a place to build?

Companies are becoming tech stacks. 
We are all becoming companies.

- j - 

➕ Follow me, John Brewton, for more.
♻️ Repost to help someone today. 
📩Save and send this to a friend. 
📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton, my bestselling Substack via the 🔗 link in my profile.

We are all becoming companies. I help you build yours. | Double Founder at Operating by John Brewton (Substack Bestseller) & 6AEP (An Operating Advisory for the Future of Companies)

When every unique idea is wrapped in an apology, you sound less competent. 

"Sorry to bother you."
"Sorry if this is a dumb question."
"Sorry, I don't get it."
"Sorry, I haven't finished yet."

That language feels polite.

But over time, it trains people to treat 
your presence as an interruption.

Confidence isn't about being loud.
It's about being clear.

Here are 8 shifts that change how people hear you:
"Sorry to bother you" becomes "Is now a good time?"
"Sorry, this may sound silly" becomes 
"You may have already considered this, but..."
"Sorry, I don't get it" becomes "Can you clarify that for me?"
"Sorry, I got that wrong" becomes "Good catch. Thank you."
"Sorry, I haven't done this yet" becomes "Thanks for your patience."
"Sorry, I need the day off" becomes "I'd like to take this date off."
"Sorry, I can't help you" becomes "Let me find someone who can."
"Sorry, it won't happen again" becomes "That's on me. I'll fix it."

The goal is not to dodge accountability.

The goal is to stop diminishing yourself. 

Strong communicators ask directly. 
✅ Clarify directly. 
✅ Own mistakes directly. 
✅ Make requests directly. 
✅ Solve problems directly.

That's what people trust.
That's what leaders do.

People aren't just evaluating your work.
They're evaluating how you carry it.
Your words teach people how to treat you.

Use them with care.

Three things to try this week:
1️⃣ Audit the last 10 apologies you made at work. 
Replace any that were unnecessary with direct language.
2️⃣ Practice three stronger substitute phrases until they're 
automatic in meetings, email, and Slack.
3️⃣ Teach your team or your kids the difference between 
accountability and self-erasure.

- j - 

📥 Save this one to share with your team this week. 
♻️ Repost if this resonates. 
➕ Follow me, John Brewton, for more.

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for deep dives on the history and future of operating companies. Link in profile.

Stop Saying Sorry - 8 Ways to Speak More Confidently

Top performers are not resigning. 
They are escaping. 

They are adjusting. 
The are repricing themselves. 

That distinction matters more than most leaders realize.

What we are watching right now is not a normal talent shift. 

It is a historic reallocation of human capital. 

And it is being driven by a single calculation:

Where can I create the most leverage with what I know how to do?

That question used to have one answer. 

✅ Find the biggest company. 
✅ Climb the ladder. 
✅ Be patient. 
✅ Wait.

That era is ending.

✅ AI is changing execution. 
✅ Media is changing distribution. 
✅ Authenticity in branding is changing trust. 
✅ Small teams are changing scale. 

The cost structure of building has collapsed. 

The best know this already. 

And they are leaving environments defined by burnout, micromanagement, poor leadership, weak compensation, political recognition systems, and cultures that punish the exact initiative they were hired to bring.

They are not leaving because they became disloyal. 
They are leaving because the math and opportunities changed.

Here is the part most leaders still miss. 

Top talent is no longer comparing your company against another company down the street. They are comparing it against starting something themselves. 

✅ Joining a high-agency team of four. 
✅ Building a digital product. 
✅ Developing a personal platform. 
✅ Partnering with an ambitious founder who actually has a leverageable strategy for the future.

If your organization cannot explain how great people will gain more leverage by staying, your best people will eventually leave. 

Retention conversations that focus only on compensation miss the point entirely. Money matters. But exceptional people are also pricing in trajectory, autonomy, speed, trust, ownership, and whether leadership actually knows where the world is going. 

They want a model that multiplies their effort instead of draining it. 

They do not want to spend the next five years trapped 
inside a culture that was designed for a world that no longer exists.

The companies that win this next era 
will be those that understand one thing: 

The future belongs to organizations 
that help talented people create more leverage. Not less. 

✅ Less control, more trust. 
✅ Less bureaucracy, more ownership. 
✅ Less politics, more merit. 
✅ Less stagnation, more movement.

The best people are already living in the future they want. 

The only question is whether your company 
is giving them a reason to do it with you.

How are you making these decisions for your best future? 👇 

📥 Save and send this to a leader or top performer who you can help. 
♻️ Repost to help your network have this discussion, honestly. 
➕ Follow me, John Brewton. 

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton, my bestselling Substack newsletter ( 🔗 in comments and profile).

The 12 Reasons Top Talent is Resigning 

The fastest way to get passed over is not lack of talent. It is weak communication.

Smart people lose trust in meetings, client calls, hiring conversations, and internal updates for one reason: 

They talk like they need permission to do work they were hired to own (or should be promoted or hired to own). 

This carousel nails the shift. 

It shows 8 simple language changes that move you from tentative to trusted.  

How to speak when making decisions, setting deadlines, changing direction, delegating, pricing your work, pushing back, hiring contractors, and ending meetings. 

Confidence is often not about personality. 
It is about sentence construction.

The difference between being seen as senior 
or uncertain is often just a few words.

"Would it be okay if we tried..." becomes "Here's what we're going to do."

"Do you think you could maybe get this done by Friday?" becomes "I need this by Friday. What do you need from me to make that happen?"

"I was thinking maybe something around $5,000..." becomes "The investment is $5,000."

The approach is not aggressive. 
It's clear. And clarity builds trust.

People do not follow the most qualified speaker. 
They follow the clearest communicator. 

That matters whether you are leading a team, running client work, interviewing for a role, managing vendors, or building your own company.

The goal is not to sound dominant. 
The goal is to remove hesitation. 
Because hesitation creates doubt. 
And doubt costs people opportunities.

The strongest professionals I know do three things well: they state the decision, they define the deadline, and they clarify the next move.

No drama. 
No overexplaining. 
No apology before the point.

If you want to be taken more seriously, 
audit your language. 

Listen for words like maybe, just, hopefully, if that works, sorry to ask, I hate to say this.

Most of the time, those words are not helping you. 

They are weakening your position. 

✅Trade soft language for clean language.
✅Trade permission-seeking for ownership.
✅Trade vagueness for direction.

Audit your last 10 emails and remove hedging language. 

Replace one tentative phrase this week with a clear directive. 
End your next meeting with a decision, an owner, and a next step.

What's your first adjustment? 👇 

- j - 🤓 🙏 

📥 Save and send this to a colleague who this would help. 
♻️ ➕ Repost and follow John Brewton for content that helps.

Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton, my bestselling Substack for deep dives on the history, economics and future of operating companies 
( 🔗 in profile and the comments).

Stop Asking Permission: 8 Ways to Start Taking Ownership

Most of us are not losing because we lack talent.
They are losing because our mindset needs a slight shift. 

I broke down 11 common mistakes that quietly stall progress.

If you see yourself in one of these, good. 
Awareness is the first move.

Here is what is really holding people back:
↳ You are trying to be perfect instead of getting better. 
Perfection delays feedback. 80% shipped beats 100% imagined.
↳ You are avoiding mistakes instead of learning from them. 
Low-cost experiments create high-value lessons.
↳ You are playing someone else's game. 
Different stage. Different resources. Different constraints. Play yours.
↳ You are trying to win big while ignoring unforced errors. 
Cut the small leaks first. Discipline compounds.
↳ You are quitting before the work compounds. 
Most success is hidden inside iteration 47, not iteration 3.
↳ You are over-planning and under-executing. 
Think 10%. Act 90%. Insight follows motion.
↳ You are trying to scale before mastering the basics. 
Document. Simplify. Then optimize.
↳ You are consuming too much advice. 
Filter everything through your stage and your reality.
↳ You are hiring for credentials instead of character. 
Skills can be trained. Attitude and adaptability are rare.
↳ You are measuring outputs instead of inputs. 
Track the actions that produce results, not just the results.
↳ You are waiting for motivation. 
Discipline beats emotion. Systems beat mood.

None of these are intelligence problems. 
They are operating problems. 
And operating problems are fixable.

Small corrections. 
Repeated consistently.

If you are stuck, do not ask, "How do I win?" 
Ask, "Where am I leaking?"

Fix that. 
Then repeat.

What's an adjustment you need to make this week? 

- j - 

✅ We are all becoming companies.
♻️➕ Repost & follow John Brewton
📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the history, economics, and future of operating companies (link in profile).

We are all becoming companies. I help you build yours. | Operating by John Brewton (Substack Bestseller) | Operating Founders: 52 weeks of live operating education for $99

Operating by John Brewton

Stop Stalling Start Doing: 11 Must Have Mindset Tweaks 

Most people don't fail because they lack talent.
They fail because of their internal dialogue. 

Language creates identity. 
Identity drives behavior. 
Behavior determines results.

You want new outcomes? 
Start with new internal scripts.

In this carousel, I break down 10 phrases 
that quietly destroy growth:
↳ "I'm just not good at this." 
↳ "I failed, so I should give up." 
↳ "I'm embarrassed, I don't want to talk about it." 
↳ "I'll never be successful." 
↳ "I need to prove myself right away."
↳ "This always happens to me." 
↳ "It's someone else's fault." 
↳ "I wasted my time." 
↳ "I should have played it safe." 
↳ "No one else fails like this."

Every one of these reinforces a fixed mindset. 
And fixed mindsets don't scale.

Operators don't eliminate failure. 
They eliminate victim language and mindset. 

They replace it with:
↳ Curiosity instead of shame 
↳ Ownership instead of blame 
↳ Reflection instead of reaction 
↳ Adjustment instead of despair

The difference between amateurs and professionals isn't smarts.

It's narrative control.

The story you tell yourself after a setback determines 
whether you spiral or compound your learnings to create more success. 

I spent twenty years running operations. 
The best performers I ever managed didn't have fewer failures. 
They had better scripts for processing them.

Which of these phrases have you caught yourself saying recently? 
Drop it below. 👇 

Awareness is the first correction.

Hope this helps. 

- j - 

➕ John Brewton "The Operator" 

♻️ Repost to help someone who needs to hear this.

📌 Subscribe for free to Operating by John Brewton, my bestselling Substack, and join 100+ Operating Founders getting 52 weeks of live cohort sessions for $99 ( 🔗 in profile)

Stop Saying These Ten Things - New Words. New Mindset. 

The best leaders create new leaders. 
The best leaders are teachers. 

They don’t keep knowledge to themselves. 
They don’t lead with fear. 

They teach so their teams can grow.

Charlie Munger said: “The best thing a human being can do is help another human being know more.”

Warren Buffet would agree.  

AI is changing jobs fast. Whole industries are shifting. 

The only way to lead is teach your teams all you’re learning as you go. 

The only path forward is through 
learning and teaching. 

Teach people:
🧠 How to think
🧠 How to decide  
🧠 How to adapt
🧠 How to learn at the pace of change

Don’t try to be the smartest person in the room. Build rooms full of smart people who know why they do what they do.

Build trust. 
Grow companies. 
Scale missions.

Hard truth: Most people want to lead but don’t want to teach. 
That was true for me when I started managing teams. 
And then I realized I had to become a teacher to get the job done. 

Teaching is how you multiply your impact. Every insight you share creates someone who can act with confidence when you’re not there.

Creating autonomous teams should be a value for every company. 
Teaching is the virtue you need to build culturally to create autonomy. 

Start here:

✅ Explain your thinking. Don’t just give answers. Show why you made that choice.

✅ Turn moments into lessons. After wins or losses, stop and talk about what you learned.

✅ Ask good questions. Show your team that questions matter as much as answers.

Leader is not a title. You don’t need a title to teach. You just need to care enough to help someone know more.

Comment “Operator” if you’re helping someone on your team “know more” this week. 

- j - 

♻️ Repost & follow John Brewton for content that helps. 

We are all becoming companies. 

🟧 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for weekly deep dives on the history and future of operating companies.

Most people don’t lack qualifications. 
They lack the confidence to give themselves permission. 

Permission to think. 
Permission to question. 
Permission to build.

Here are 9 traits of people who stop waiting to be chosen and start choosing themselves.

If you see yourself in these, you are not behind. You are early.

1️⃣ You learn from anyone. 
Wisdom can come from anywhere. 
Titles don't impress you. Insight does.

2️⃣ You're relentlessly curious. 
You ask "why" until the room gets uncomfortable. 
Curiosity is your unfair advantage.

3️⃣ You question the status quo. 
Not to rebel. To improve.

4️⃣ You ask the right questions. 
Better questions create better strategy. 
You figured that out before most people in the room.

5️⃣ You embrace being wrong. 
You do not protect your ego. 
You protect the truth. 
Feedback from failure is your best friend. 
6️⃣ You find joy in learning. 
Growth energizes you. 
You don't need external validation to improve.
7️⃣ You know that you don't know everything. 
The more you learn, the more humble you become. 
8️⃣ You look for diverse perspectives. 
You surround yourself with people who challenge you. 
Groupthink does not survive near you.
9️⃣ You push your limits. 
You treat life like a long game of skill development. 
Every rep matters.

Traditional systems reward compliance. 
The future rewards thinkers.

Those who win over the next decade will not be the most credentialed. 
They will be the most adaptable.

If you are curious. 
If you challenge assumptions. 
If you are willing to be wrong publicly. 
You are already operating at a higher level.

The problem is not intelligence based. 
The problem is environmental.

So build a space that uses your full capacity.

Three things you can do today:
✅ Spend more time with people and ideas that stretch your thinking.
✅ Replace one complaint with one hard question about how to improve 
✅ Start one small project where you choose yourself first. 

What will you start adjusting today? 👇 

We are all becoming companies. 

- j - 

♻️ Repost if this hit home. 
➕ Follow John Brewton for more.

→ Subscribe for free to my Substack Bestseller: Operating by John Brewton https://lnkd.in/eSGKmvT2

Want to go deeper? Join 150+ Operating Founders in our live weekly cohort, for all those building their brands into scalable companies -  52 sessions, real data, real strategy, nothing off-limits. $99/year.

→ Become an Operating Founder: 
https://lnkd.in/eSGKmvT2

The 9 Traits of People Who Stop Waiting and Start Building

Quiet quitting isn’t an employee problem.
It’s a leadership diagnosis.

I spent 20 years in B2B industrial distribution managing teams across multiple facilities. 

Every single sign on the left side of this chart? 
I saw it. 

And every single time, the root cause traced back to something on the right side.

The pattern is predictable:

→ You stop investing in your people’s growth, they stop investing in your mission. 

→ You let culture rot, discretionary effort disappears.

→ You underpay and under-recognize, you get exactly what you paid for.

Here’s what most leaders miss: quiet quitting doesn’t show up on a P&L line item. 

It shows up in the margins. 

Slower throughput. 

More rework. 

Missed handoffs. 

Death by a thousand small failures that compound over quarters.

The infographic below breaks down 7 signs and 7 causes. 

But here’s the real framework:

Signs are lagging indicators.

Causes are leading indicators.

If you’re only watching for the signs, you’re already behind. 

The operators who win are diagnosing the causes before the symptoms ever appear.

Three things I learned running a $75M operation:
1️⃣ Exit interviews are too late. Stay interviews are the move.
2️⃣ “Quiet quitting” often starts the day someone’s manager stops listening.
3️⃣ The cheapest retention tool in business is making people feel like their work matters, and meaning it.

Your people aren’t lazy. 
Your system might be broken.

Fix the causes. 
The signs take care of themselves.

What’s one sign or cause you’ve experienced?👇


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Most people think intelligence is fixed.
It isn’t. You can become smarter. 

It’s a set of behaviors. 
Practiced over time. 
Compounded like interest.

The smartest people I’ve worked with 
don’t have the highest IQs. 

They weren’t the fastest in the room. 

They weren’t the loudest either.

But they had something most people don’t.

They stayed curious when everyone else got comfortable. They asked the question the group was afraid to ask. They sat in rooms where they knew the least and treated it like a gift instead of a threat.

That’s not genius. 
That’s a humble discipline.

Here’s what I’ve noticed across 20 years of operating businesses, advising founders, and studying how high performers actually think:

Intelligence isn’t about what you already know. 
It’s about how aggressively you close the gap between what you know and what you don’t.

The smartest operators I’ve met share a few things in common. They learn from anyone. 

The warehouse associate. 
The intern. 
The vendor rep. 

They don’t rank the source 
before absorbing the lesson.

They embrace failure without drama. Because they’ve decided the learning is worth more than the ego protection.

They know how much they don’t know. 

And that awareness makes them sharper, 
not more hesitant.

They never stop chasing the next hard thing. Not out of restlessness. 

Out of genuine love for the pursuit.

These aren’t personality traits you’re born with. 

They’re operating habits. 

And habits can be built.

If you recognize yourself in this list, you’re already further along than you think.

What’s one trait you need to start developing today? Drop it in the comments. 👇

- j - 🤓🙏🏼

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Knowing when to leave is so important. The party. The job. The ladder you’ve been climbing. 

You need to know when it’s time to start building your own ladder. 

Garry Tan nailed it:
“At every job, you should either learn or earn. Either is fine. Both are best. But if it’s neither, quit.”

I’d take it one step further.
There’s a third option that gets less coverage.

Build.

I spent 20 years learning and earning inside a B2B industrial distribution company. Fortune 500 clients. Scaled from $27M to $75M. 

I got my reps in.

But here’s what I realized after the exit:

Every skill I built for someone else’s system was actually inventory for my own.

The Excel models. 
The pricing frameworks. 
The customer conversations. 
The hard lessons about people, margins, and timing. None of it was wasted. 

All of it was preparation.

The inflection point isn’t 
when the job gets bad. 

That’s obvious. 

Garry’s right, if you’re not 
learning or earning, leave. 

The real inflection point is quieter.

It’s when you realize you’ve been solving other people’s problems long enough to know exactly which problems are yours to solve.

It’s when the learning compounds past the point of needing a boss.

It’s when the earning potential 
shifts from salary to leverage.

That’s when “company of one” stops being a fantasy and starts being a math problem.

Here’s the framework I wish someone gave me:

Learn → so you can earn.
Earn → so you can build.
Build → so you can own.

Most people get stuck in the first two forever. 

Not because they’re not ready. 

Because nobody told them 
the third option existed.

You don’t need permission to graduate from employee to operator.

You just need to recognize the moment when staying is costing you more than leaving.

And then go.

Comment “Operating” below if you’ve made the jump or need to. 👇

- j - 

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Perfection is procrastination wearing a blazer.


I spent years chasing perfect.

Perfect pitch deck. 
Perfect strategy. 
Perfect timing. 
Perfect hire.

I was Slow. 
I was Cautious. 
I was about two years behind 
where I should have been.

Here is what nobody tells you about perfection. 

It is not a high standard. 
It is a hiding spot. 

A very elegant, very convincing hiding spot. 
But a hiding spot all the same.

I scaled a B2B distribution company from $27M to over $75M and sold it. 

I did not have the perfect plan. 
I had Tuesday morning and a 
willingness to be wrong by Wednesday.

The best operators I know don’t think about the smartest person in the room. 

They ship something ugly on Monday, learn something painful by Thursday, and ship something better by Friday.

Meanwhile the “I need to research more” crowd is still on version zero of a Google Doc 
they started nine months ago.

Perfection is procrastination wearing a blazer.
The trap is thinking you need to be ready. The jump is knowing you never will be. And starting anyway.

Every failure I have had carried the
DNA of the next win. 

Every ugly first draft became the foundation of something that actually worked. 

Every “what will people think” moment I ignored bought me six months of progress 
the worriers never got.

The reps build the credential. 
Not the other way around.

Stop polishing. 
Start publishing. 
The learning is in the doing. 
Always has been.
Always will be. 

Have how have you learned to move past perfection and toward getting the job done? 👇

- j - 🤓🙏🏼

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The words we choose and the cadence we select are what determine how seriously we are taken in our professional environments. 

Your language, habits and default behaviors...
Are costing you credibility. 

Here's an uncomfortable truth most professionals never hear:
The thing costing you credibility isn't intelligence, effort, or even results.

🛑 It's language. 
🛑 Habits. 
🛑 Default behaviors.

Small, socially accepted patterns that quietly signal 
uncertainty, avoidance, and low ownership.

Not in dramatic ways. In subtle communications. 

The carousel breaks down what these look like:
→ Over-apologizing instead of stating 
→ Explaining instead of deciding 
→ Emailing instead of resolving 
→ Talking instead of listening 
→ Hedging instead of owning 
→ Scheduling instead of closing 
→ Passing the buck instead of taking responsibility 
→ Hustling instead of executing

None of these look bad in isolation.
Together, they erode trust.

Credibility at work is about clarity, ownership, and forward motion.

People don't trust you because you sound smart.
They trust you because you are:
→ Clear about what matters 
→ Decisive when ambiguity exists 
→ Calm when things go wrong 
→ Direct without being careless 
→ Accountable without being defensive

This is what strong operators do differently: 
🛑 They don't add more words. 
✅ They remove friction.
🛑They don't wait for permission. 
✅ They own their lane.
🛑They don't catastrophize. 
✅ They move to solutions.
🛑 They don't confuse motion with progress. 
✅ They ship.

If you want to advance faster, lead better, and reduce unnecessary stress
start by changing how you show up in small moments.

That's where reputations are built. In the Tuesday afternoon email. 
The hallway response. The moment you could defer but choose to decide.

Which of these patterns do you recognize in yourself? 👇

— john —

♻️➕ John Brewton
✅ We are all becoming companies. 
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STOP DOING THIS AT WORK

Most people want “confidence.”
Top 1% operators build something better.

They build a mindset that keeps working when motivation disappears, 
when the plan breaks, and when the week punches back.

Here are the 11 mindset traits of top 1% operators, 
and how to apply each one this week: 
↳ Act on feedback
Ask for it, implement it, repeat. Feedback is free leverage.
↳ Use “yet”
“I can’t do this” becomes “I can’t do this… yet.” 
↳ Set learning goals
Don’t only chase outcomes, chase skill acquisition. 
↳ Embrace failure
Failure is data. The only expensive failure is the one you refuse to study.
↳ Be patient
Think long-term. Growth takes time, and consistency beats intensity.
↳ Build persistence
Train yourself to keep going when it’s boring, hard, or unclear.
↳ Chase progress
Aim to get better each rep. Perfection is a delay tactic.
↳ Reflect
Look back often. Extract lessons. Turn experience into wisdom.
↳ Take risks
Try new things on purpose. Small risks build big capability.
↳ Be curious
Ask better questions. Curiosity is the engine of improvement.
↳ Celebrate effort
Be proud of the work, not just the result. Effort is what you control.

If you want a simple operator challenge for this week, do this:
✅  Pick one trait
✅  Write one action you will take daily
✅  Track it for 7 days
✅  Report back in the comments with what changed

Which do you need most right now, persistence or patience? 👇 

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✅ We are all becoming companies.

AI can write code. Analyze data. Run reports.
But it can't be the human in the room. 

It can't be you. 

It can't do Grit. 
Push through failure when quitting feels rational.

It doesn't have your Integrity. 
Make the right call when no one's watching. 

It does not have Empathy. 
Actually listen. Actually care. 

It doesn't have human Curiosity. 
Stay in the question when the answer isn't obvious. 

It lacks our Adaptability. 
Rebuild when the strategy blows up.

These aren't soft skills.
They're your competitive moat in an AI-first world.

IQ gets you in the room. 
EQ keeps you at the table.

Here are 9 EQ traits that supercharge your value , 
and the daily habits to build each one.
Swipe through the carousel.

Which of the 9 is hardest for you to build? 
Drop it in the comments. 👇 

- j - 🤓 🙏 

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How to Build Emotional Intelligence Across 9 Key Traits

Most companies measure efficiency via cost reduction and headcount cuts. That’s a mistake. 

Real efficiency is not about doing less with less. 

It is about producing more with what you got. 

And the highest-value output any organization can produce is not a lower expense line. 

It is a better idea.

Efficiency as creative output looks different. 

✅ It looks like new diverse thinking. 
✅ New cross-disciplinary collaboration that did not exist before. 
✅ Time carved out for deep work instead of deep meetings. 
✅ Teams solving problems together instead of optimizing spreadsheets alone. 
✅ Constraints that force invention rather than compliance.
✅ Process innovation. Not process elimination.

The companies that treat efficiency as a creative function will outperform the ones still counting heads. Every time. 

Because cutting your way to growth is not a strategy. It is a press release disguised as one.

When you reduce headcount, you reduce surface area for ideas. 

When you only measure cost, you only see cost. 

You miss the compounding value of what a well-structured team actually produces when given room to think.

The best operators and company builders I have worked with understood this intuitively. 

They did not ask “how do we spend less?”

They asked “how do we get more from what we have?” 

Those are not the same question. 

One shrinks the pie. 
The other changes the recipe.
Efficiency is not a line item. 
It is an operating philosophy. 

And the organizations that figure this out first will have a structural advantage that no amount of cutting can replicate.

Stop measuring efficiency by what you remove. Start measuring it by what you create.

How are you getting creative with your approach to efficiency in your organization and work? 👇

- j - 

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The threat isn't that AI replaces you. 
The threat is that you never learn what makes you irreplaceable.

The Economist nailed it.
And you can nail it, too. 

Here's the thing most people miss about AI.

I've been saying this for a while now. 

Our companies are becoming tech stacks. 
And we are all becoming companies.

Every person reading this is already running a one-person operation. 
You have a brand. You have inputs and outputs. 
You have a P&L whether you track it or not.

So the question isn't "how do I learn AI."
The question is "do I know how to build a business."

Because AI can write the copy. 
AI can build the deck. 
AI can analyze the data.

But AI cannot decide what matters. 
AI cannot read the room. 
AI cannot sit across from a client and know when to push and when to listen. 
AI cannot build trust over a handshake.

Empathy. 
Judgment. 
Taste (this is so important).
Conviction.

These are not soft skills. 
These are operating skills. 
These are hard skills. 

And they are now the highest leverage skills in the economy.

The people who win in an AI first world won't be the best prompters. 
They'll be those  who actually know how to operate.

That's the whole thesis.

How are you learning to operating and win in our Ai-first world?  
Sound-off below. 👇

- j - 🤓 🙏 

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Most people aren't unproductive. 
They're unprepared.

Big difference.
Productivity isn't about doing more. 

It's about removing the friction that keeps you from doing what matters.

I built a list of 10 daily habits that separate prepared professionals from everyone else. 

Not hacks. Not tricks. 

Habits.

Here's the short version:
1️⃣ Prep the night before. Lay out clothes, pack your bag, write your list. 
Start ahead. Don't play catch-up.
2️⃣ Always arrive early. Be 10 minutes early, always. 
Calm becomes your norm, not your luck.
3️⃣ Schedule what matters. If it matters, it gets a time slot. 
Stop relying on memory or "free time."
4️⃣ Automate the repeats. Auto-pay, reminders, saved prefs. 
Don't rethink the same stuff twice.
5️⃣ One list, one brain. Track everything in one place. Fewer lists, fewer misses.
6️⃣ Capture, then forget. Write down thoughts as they come. 
Free your brain for better things.
7️⃣ Leave white space. Block open time. 
Think clearer. Flex easier. Breathe deeper.
8️⃣ Build buffers. Add 15 min between meetings. 
Room to breathe means less stress.
9️⃣ Sync weekly. Align calendars with your team or family. 
Fewer surprises. Fewer fire drills.
🔟 Protect deep work. Guard 1 focused block daily. 
Real work > busy work.

None of this is complicated. Yet, all  of it is rare.

Most people optimize for busy. 
Not for ready.

The best operators I know don't have more hours. 
They have fewer decisions to make before 9am. 

They've already handled the small stuff 
so they can show up and do the real work.

Build your day like you'd build a system. 

Inputs -> Outputs -> Margins for error.

Then watch what happens when preparation becomes automatic.

Save this. 
Send it to someone on LinkedIn who needs it.

What habit are you changing this week? 👇 

- j - 🤓 🙏 

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Most people want to grow their career.
Very few step back and study how growth actually works.

Career success is not random. 
It tends to follow a handful of simple rules 
that quietly shape how we work every day.

Here are five that matter: 
1️⃣ Parkinson’s Law says that work expands to fill the time available. 
2️⃣ Murphy’s Law says that what can go wrong will go wrong. 
3️⃣ The Proximity Rule says you rise or fall to the level of the people around you. 
4️⃣ The 80/20 Rule says a small number of actions drive most results. 
5️⃣ The Law of Diminishing Returns reminds you that effort is not linear. 

If you do not set constraints, your work will take over your life.

If you do not prepare for failure, small issues become crises.

If you do not choose your environment carefully, it will quietly choose for you.

If you do not focus on leverage, you will stay busy but not advance.

If you do not know when to stop, you will waste energy 
that could be invested elsewhere.

Career growth is less about motivation and more about systems.

The people who advance consistently are those who treat 
their careers like well-designed operations.

What are you designing for right now? 👇 

- j - 

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✅ We are all becoming companies.

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