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.comFor Partnerships Inquiries → passionfroot.me/strategybreakdowns

Tom Alder

This cheeky ad campaign is a masterclass in making people stop and laugh.

Airport billboards plastered with uncomfortably close faces and... features. 

Imagine touching down after 20hrs of international travel and seeing a 20ft nostril.

You'll probably chuckle, jump in an Uber, and remember that nose for weeks.

This is how you win the attention economy in 2026.

—

📌 P.S. I originally came across this campaign because it was going viral and came up on one of my ‘outlier trend’ dashboards. 

Lots of people asked me how I set this up, so I made a free tutorial teaching you exactly how I spot these trending topics / content / products in a few seconds (using free tools): https://lnkd.in/dnxsxJRm

In 2025 I went from $13k/mo to $24k/mo.

In 2026 I'm chasing $50k.

But honestly, my biggest wins were outside of work:

→ Packed up my cosy life in Australia
→ Donated/sold 90% of my physical possessions
→ One-way flight across the world

I've spent the last few months living in: Manhattan. Brooklyn. Barcelona. A tiny beach town called Torredembarra about an hour south of Barca. Valencia. Granada. Madrid. New York again. And now, East London.

2 years ago this was literally a dream I scribbled in a journal. 

Still feels totally surreal when I stop and think about it.

Thank you for reading this past year.

Let's win in 2026.

Anyone in London - hit me up!

—

👉 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.

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The Xbox website in 2004.

Bring back the weird and wonderful web.

—

👉 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.

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Summer 2009: Airbnb was stuck at $200 per week (!) in revenue… for 8 months straight.

Founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were running out of money and hope.

When they looked at their worst-performing listings, they all had something in common: "The photos sucked."

People were using flip phone cameras or blurry unedited photos. 

Properties were being undervalued because potential guests couldn't properly assess what they were getting.

The solution: doing something that seemed "unscalable".

The founders:

→ Flew from Mountain View to New York
→ Borrowed professional cameras  
→ Personally photographed 24 hosts' apartments

Result: Revenue doubled to $400 in one week.

This wasn't just about prettier pictures. It solved Airbnb's fundamental marketplace trust problem:

• Guests buying an experience they can't return
• From strangers they've never met
• With no way to verify quality beforehand

Professional photos provided instant credibility, visual proof, and increased perceived value.

The strategy didn’t stop there.

It sparked Airbnb's global Photography Program:
→ Network of 2,000+ freelance photographers
→ 35,000 listings shot across 5,000 cities
→ Listings with pro photos earn 2.5x more bookings

The lesson: Sometimes winning means stop coding and start knocking on doors.

—

💡 If you enjoyed this, it originally appeared in my free 3-minute newsletter, 'Strategy Breakdowns'.

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

The value of $1,000 invested 10 years ago:

Amazon (AMZN) → $4,430
Netflix (NFLX) → $5,110
Apple (AAPL) → $8,170
Tesla (TSLA) → $33,630
AMD (AMD) → $123,010
Bitcoin (BTC) → $138,460
Nvidia (NVDA) → $157,870
XRP (Ripple) → $263,160
Dogecoin (DOGE) → $367,590
Ethereum (ETH) → $2,013,020

—

👉 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

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Founder of Strategy Breakdowns

I'm hiring a writer!

But not just a "writer."

A Superwriter.

Here's how to know if that's you:
→ You're subscribed to like 20+ newsletters
→ You compulsively screenshot great emails, ads, charts etc
→ You can write about complex business concepts in a simple and engaging way
→ You use Claude/Perplexity/Deep Research/Zapier/Notion better than anyone you know

The job: Produce the best strategy case studies on the internet.

Start with 1-2 breakdowns per week.

As a Superwriter, a core part of your role *from Day 1* is building systems, templates, automations, and agents for research, curation, creation, editing, visuals etc.

Note: This role is *not* for you if you don’t know how to (or don’t want to) work with AI/automation to improve your output (more engaging writing, more thorough research, faster graphics, etc)

What you'll get:
- Front-row seat to a fast-growing internet media business
- Work directly with me - I'll teach you everything I know about writing, audience building, sponsorships, and anything else you're interested in
- Freedom to follow your curiosity and shape the role over time
- Access to pro versions of best-in-class tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Notion, Canva, Wispr Flow etc)
- Write + build things that reach hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of people in tech
- Fully remote, work from anywhere in the world

If this sounds like you: Job Description + Application in the comments 👇
If this sounds like someone you know: Tag them!

110,803 people read my weekly strategy essays, but I have 2 HUGE problems:

1. They aren't good enough
2. Not enough people read them

So...
✏️ I'm hiring a writer to produce the best strategy case studies on the internet!

→ I don't care about your CV.
→ I care about your screenshots folder.
+ the newsletters / YouTubers / books in your content diet.
+ how many hours you've spent using Deep Research / Claude Code / Nano Banana.

Important note: this isn't an ordinary 'Writer' role.
I'm looking for a 'Superwriter'.

You won't just write. You'll build systems.
AI research workflows. Notion Templates. Infographics. Charts. Surveys.

Exceptionally high quality bar + thinks in leverage.

This starts at 1-2 articles per week. Will grow into much more.
Fully remote. Work from anywhere.
Reach millions of tech founders + leaders each month.

If this sounds like you: Job Description + Application in the comments 👇
If this sounds like someone you know: Tag them!

Steve Jobs tried his best to acquire Dropbox, but couldn’t (and ended up launching a competitor instead).

In 2009, he made them an offer most startups dream about:

9-figure acquisition.
Plug into Apple’s ecosystem.
Direct access to Apple’s users.
Validation from a Silicon Valley icon.

But Dropbox’s founders declined. 

Jobs doubled down, saying it was "a feature, not a product."
He threatened that if they didn’t agree to an acquisition, Apple would “kill” Dropbox by launching their own storage product:
→ iCloud

But he was wrong.

iCloud was a huge success, but wasn’t enough to stop Dropbox’s historic run:

In just 7 months, Dropbox had accumulated 100,000 users.
Within 18 months, 500,000.
By October 2009, they'd crossed 2 million users.

A single mechanism was driving over one-third of all new signups:
→ Their iconic referral program 
(”Invite your friend to receive an extra 10gb of free storage”)

It was so effective that within 6 months, it was generating 2.8 million referral invitations monthly.
1 invitation sent every single second (!)

The trajectory from there went exponential:
→ 50 million users by 2011
→ 100 million users by 2012
→ 500 million users by 2016

In 2017, Dropbox hit a milestone faster than any other software company in the past: $1 billion in ARR.
The referral architecture powering Dropbox's growth combined behavioural psychology, network effects, and incentive design.
There’s something every builder can learn from what is arguably the most successful customer acquisition program in SaaS history, so I've deconstructed the 3x underlying principles into a free guide. 

🎁 Here’s the guide → https://lnkd.in/gc9-ih8J

Happy Monday. I got in a heated debate over the weekend. Help me settle this:

I've been daydreaming about redesigning the Strategy Breakdowns website for at least a year. 

Picture this:
→ An infinite canvas. Every article as a card in a grid. 
→ A new interactive way for readers to explore the archive. 

But it’s always sat in the embarrassingly long “maybe one day” pile.

Recently I came across a tool that let me prototype it in an evening.

It only took about 2 minutes of "aha" moments and "oh damn that's cool" design decisions for me to realise i had to turn my rainy-night-in into a breakdown.

The tool is called Alloy - it captures your existing product and lets you vibe on top of it

Most tools are fighting over hobbyists and side projects, so Alloy carved out its own niche: professional product teams prototyping on existing apps

Lots of clever product-led-growth mechanics and smart user psychology baked into this tool. 

✏️ Check out the full breakdown on your new favourite vibe-coding tool: https://lnkd.in/dudG8b6G  and here’s the interactive prototype I made: https://lnkd.in/dVy8zaX3

i can't stop thinking about how all software looks the same now

in the early 2000s, winamp let users completely redesign the interface

→ alien heads
→ video game themes
→ animated creations

it sparked one of the internet's first user-generated design communities

there's actually a museum preserving 100,000+ skins from that era (link below)

somewhere along the way, we lost something special:
→ the ability to add personality into the tools we use every day

my secret wish is that AI brings back the 'customisation layer'

software that feels yours

—

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

Software looks the same 

40 years of enterprise software in one chart:

Ownership → subscription → consumption → autonomous 

We're entering an unrecognisable era.
The winners of the next decade will be defined by AI GTM, outcome-based pricing, and the merging of software and services.

We hear a lot about the ‘one-person unicorn’.
A single operator building a billion-dollar company with new business models unlocked by AI.

Im curious - what do you think that business actually *looks* like?
Whats the product? How is it marketed? How does the company operate?

Something I’ve been wondering a lot about lately. Keen to hear your thoughts 💭

—

👉 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

Created $250M+ in sustained financial value by rewiring how companies operate.

Cross‑functional operating strategist with a Harvard Economics degree and a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago, helping organizations turn messy growth into repeatable, compounding systems.

I build and rebuild operating systems that let companies scale faster than their headcount by combining commercial strategy, enterprise architecture, and AI‑native workflows. That means clearer decisions, fewer bottlenecks, and growth that shows up in the P&L.

A few outcomes from the last decade:
→ Scaled a B2B inventory management firm from $25M to $75M while opening new international markets and professionalizing operations
→ Negotiated and structured 7–8 figure Fortune 500 agreements that locked in multi‑year, high‑margin revenue
→ Implemented enterprise systems and automated workflows that cut key cycle times 40–60% and reduced error rates below 1%
→ Designed AI‑enhanced workflows (pricing intelligence, talent evaluation, productivity automation) that moved real business metrics, not just demo decks

I work best where the problem spans functions and regions: aligning executives, finance, sales, ops, and product around a shared operating model and the numbers that matter.

Core strengths:
→ Competitive operating & go‑to‑market strategy
→ Cross‑functional team orchestration
→ Enterprise system & workflow automation
→ AI‑driven operational scaling
→ International expansion & P&L growth

I write about these problems in Operating by John Brewton, a newsletter for operators and founders who want companies that can actually keep up with the AI‑enabled future of work. If you care about the future of companies, that’s where to start.

John Brewton

The smaller your screen gets...
The more effectively your agents are working. 

This graphic nails the truth, the leaders with the most influence, are rarely those with dual monitors and 14 tabs open in a spreadsheet. 

Your “work” becomes less about doing and more about building the relationships and understanding the problems that direct the work on your entire team or organization. 

↳ Managing relationships between teams, clients, and suppliers.
↳ Translating high-level strategy into coordinated execution.
↳ Seeing the whole picture and ensuring the right people move in sync.

You become less of an operator inside the system and more of a conductor overseeing the entire system. 

AI is substantively accelerating this shift.

AI agents and automated systems are rapidly taking over:
↳ Data analysis that once required a whole team.
↳ Drafting and testing strategies through simulation.
↳ Tracking KPIs and flagging problems in real time.

Much of the “thinking work” we used to do manually is moving to machines. Which means the work that remains for us will be the deeply human work, work AI can’t replace.

We have ostensibly been doing work that computers simply couldn’t do, yet. 

By 2030, the most valuable professionals won’t be the ones who can crunch the numbers fastest. 

They’ll be the ones who can:
✅ Build relationships that unlock opportunities.
✅ Manage partnerships with trust and influence.
✅ Align people, technology, and vision to move companies forward.

If you want to future-proof your career, start thinking less about “What work can I do?” and more about “What relationships can I build and manage?”

Because the screens may be getting smaller, but the impact and leverage is getting bigger.

♻️Repost & follow John Brewton for content that helps.

Do. Fail. Learn. Grow. Win. 
Repeat. Forever.
____
Are you an Operator or Founder?

✅✅ Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton (🔗 in the comments).

The Operating Advisor | Writer @ Operating by John Brewton | Founder @ 6A East Partners | Husband & Father

Master these 10 rules to ship better work and engineer better outcomes this week. 

You do not need more noise. 

You need rules that raise output, reduce waste, and steady the team. Use this cheat sheet, put it to work Monday.

1️⃣ Parkinson’s Law
↳ Time expands to fill the window. Shrink the window.
↳ Set short, artificial deadlines. Ship v1, then refine.

2️⃣ Murphy’s Law
↳ If it can go wrong, it will. Plan for it.
↳ Add buffers, backups, and checklists for critical work.

3️⃣ The Proximity Rule
↳ You rise or fall to the level around you.
↳ Hire for standards. Pair A players. Protect the culture.

4️⃣ The 80/20 Rule
↳ A few inputs drive most results.
↳ Find the vital few activities. Cut the trivial many.

5️⃣ Diminishing Returns
↳ Past a point, extra effort yields less.
↳ Define “good enough,” stop polishing low-impact work.

6️⃣ Hofstadter’s Law
↳ It always takes longer than you expect, even when you expect that.
↳ Add reality to timelines. Expose hidden dependencies.

7️⃣ Metcalfe’s Law
↳ Network value grows with nodes squared.
↳ Invest in relationships. Create more useful connections.

8️⃣ Hanlon’s Razor
↳ Do not assume malice when error explains it.
↳ Coach first, then correct. Fix systems before blame.

9️⃣ Goodhart’s Law
↳ When a measure becomes a target, it stops measuring.
↳ Manage to outcomes. Use KPIs as guides, not gods.

🔟 Gall’s Law
↳ Great systems evolve from simple ones that work.
↳ Start simple. Iterate in small, reversible steps.

💡 How to apply today
↳ Pick one rule per team per week. Make it habit.
↳ Write the rule on the brief. Tie it to a metric.
↳ Review Friday. Keep rules alive in the work.

🧠 Why this works
↳ Rules compress decisions into defaults your team can use fast.
↳ Shared language reduces meetings, fills gaps, and speeds handoffs.
↳ Focus shifts from opinions to operating principles that survive stress.

💡 Weekly cadence to try
↳ Monday: pick the rule, define one behavior change, set a metric.
↳ Wednesday: remove one blocker, add one enablement.
↳ Friday: 10-minute retro. Keep, change, or drop. Document in the playbook.

Action for you:
✅ Choose two rules to pilot next week, set owners.
✅ Add buffers to your next project plan. Publish the “good enough” bar.
✅ Replace one vanity KPI with an outcome that matters.

♻️➕John Brewton 

✅ We are all becoming companies. 

📬Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton

Micromanaging isn't just a bad habit. It's a trust killer that stifles & burns out your best talent. 

It caps your company’s ability to grow. 

As an operator, founder, or team leader, you've witnessed the issues firsthand: When you're knee-deep in details, you're not leading, you're controlling. And in today's fast-paced world, that EQ blind spot costs you talent, morale, and momentum.

The shift to macro-managing is essential. 

It builds psychological safety, empowers ownership, 
and frees you to focus on vision and strategy. 

High-EQ leaders have learned: Trust your people, delegate the "how," and watch them deliver beyond expectations.

This isn't soft advice, it's essential for the monumentally hard task of scaling. 

Teams under micromanagers churn faster, 
while empowered ones innovate more and stay longer.

Here are a few especially strong swaps that have helped me:

✅ "DO IT EXACTLY LIKE THIS..." 
→ "WHAT APPROACH WORKS BEST FOR YOU?"
(This one flips control to curiosity and instantly signals trust.)
✅ "I NEED TO CHECK EVERY DETAIL." 
→ "I TRUST YOUR JUDGMENT. UPDATE ME ON PROGRESS."
(This replaces hovering with healthy boundaries. Huge for reducing burnout)

✅ "YOU'RE NOT READY FOR THAT YET." 
→ "YOU'RE CAPABLE; RUN WITH IT AND SHARE LEARNINGS."
(This reframes doubt in terms of belief, unlocking growth and ownership.)

Check out the full infographic below for more practical swaps. 
Small changes can create massive impact.
Choose to start changing today. 

Founders: If you're still hovering, ask yourself, 
am I building a team or a task force?

Tag a leader making this shift (or one who needs to 😏). 

What's your biggest micromanaging trap? Share below. 👇 

- j - 

♻️ ➕ John Brewton  for more on human skills that scale companies. 

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the economics and future of operating companies.

Here are the 10 daily habits that transformed my professional life, reduced my personal stress, and significantly increased my productivity and creative output. 

What 20 years of operating companies has taught me about stress management and productivity:
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.

Here's what I've learned:
Productivity isn't about doing more.
It's about designing systems that make the right things easier.

The most prepared professionals don't have more discipline than you. They have better defaults.

They've removed friction from the things that matter and built guardrails against the things that don't.

None of these habits are hard. But all of them require intention.

Pick one. 
Start today. 
Stack another next week.
Small systems compound into unshakeable calm.

Which of these 10 habits would change your week the most? 👇

— john —

♻️➕ John Brewton

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the history, economics, and future of operating companies.

Most people want to grow their career.
Few actually know how to grow it.

Success often comes down to a few timeless rules that quietly govern your daily work.

Here are 5 famous rules and exactly how to apply them:

➊ Parkinson’s Law
Rule: Work expands to fill the time available.
↳ Action: Set shorter deadlines. Artificial constraints force sharper focus and prevent endless overwork.

➋ Murphy’s Law
Rule: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
↳ Action: Build contingency plans. Add buffer time for critical tasks. Expect failure, and you’ll reduce its sting.

➌ The Proximity Rule
Rule: You rise or fall to the level of the people around you.
↳ Action: Surround yourself with people who challenge, support, and model the behaviors you want.

➍ The 80/20 Rule
Rule: A small number of inputs generate the majority of results.
↳ Action: Identify and double down on the top 20% of actions that deliver 80% of your success.

➎ Law of Diminishing Returns
Rule: After a point, each extra effort produces less return.
↳ Action: Track ROI, avoid over-polishing, and know when to stop.

The shift happens when you stop knowing these rules and start living them.

Because:
↳ If you don’t set constraints, your work will consume your life.
↳ If you don’t prepare for failure, you’ll be blindsided.
↳ If you don’t choose your circle wisely, it will choose your ceiling.
↳ If you don’t focus on leverage, you’ll drown in busyness.
↳ If you don’t stop at the right time, you’ll waste effort with no gain.

Career growth isn’t magic. It’s systems.
And the best systems are often hiding 
in plain sight.

Start here: 
✅ Apply one of these rules today, don’t wait until “later.”
✅ Audit where you’re losing time, effort, or energy against these five.
✅ Commit to running your career like you’d run a well-designed system.


♻️ Repost & follow John Brewton.

🟧 Do. Fail. Learn. Grow. Win. 
🟧 Repeat. Forever.

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

No alternative text description for this image

Panicking doesn’t fix problems. 
Clarity does.

It has taken me far too many years, and bungled tries to learn, that thinking about the worst possible outcomes doesn’t get me to the solution any faster. 

How about you? 

Here’s how to shift from panic to solution:

❌ “This is a disaster.”
✅ “Here’s what went wrong and how we fix it.”

❌ “Everything is falling apart.”
✅ “We have three issues to address.”

❌ “We’re totally screwed.”
✅ “This is serious. Here’s the path forward.”

❌ “This is the worst possible outcome.”
✅ “This is a setback. Here’s what we do next.”

❌ “I can’t believe this is happening.”
✅ “This happened. Now let’s respond.”

❌ “We’ll never recover from this.”
✅ “Recovery will take time. Here’s step one.”

❌ “It’s all my fault, everything’s ruined.”
✅ “I contributed to this. Here’s how I’ll fix it.”

❌ “This changes everything.”
✅ “This changes our approach. Here’s the adjustment.”

❌ “There’s no way out of this.”
✅ “Our options are limited. Here’s what I see.”

Feeling the weight of a crisis? 

✅ Normal.

Letting panic drive your response? 

❌ Stop.

Here’s why this matters for your leadership:

1️⃣ Panic is contagious.
↳ Your team takes cues from you. If you spiral, they spiral.
2️⃣ Catastrophizing clouds judgment.
↳ You can’t see solutions when you’re convinced there are none.
3️⃣ It erodes trust.
↳ Teams follow leaders who stay steady under pressure—not those who amplify chaos.
4️⃣ You waste time on emotion instead of action.
↳ Every minute spent in panic mode is a minute not spent fixing the problem.
5️⃣ It becomes your default.
↳ Catastrophize enough and your brain starts seeing every setback as a disaster.

The best leaders name the problem, then move to the solution.

Acknowledge reality. 
Skip the drama. 
Lead forward.

What’s one panic phrase you’re replacing with a solution? 👇

— john —

♻️➕ John Brewton  Brewton

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the history, economics, and future of operating companies.

Stop OVERCOMMITTING. Start protecting your capacity. 
People-pleasing isn't generous. It's a trap.

I have struggled with this issue for years. So stressful.

Below is a set of adjustments I've made in how I think and communicate to enhance my productivity and maintain focus. 

Hope this helps!

Here's how to shift from people-pleasing to boundary-setting:
❌ "Sure, I can take that on too." 
✅ "Here's what I can realistically deliver."
❌ "I'll figure it out somehow." 
✅ "That timeline doesn't work. Here's what does."
❌ "No problem, I'll make it happen." 
✅ "I can do this if we adjust priorities."
❌ "I don't want to let anyone down." 
✅ "I'd rather commit to less and deliver fully."
❌ "I guess I can squeeze it in." 
✅ "My plate is full. Let's discuss tradeoffs."
❌ "I'll just work late." 
✅ "That's not sustainable. Let's reprioritize."
❌ "I can handle it all." 
✅ "Here's what I can own, and what needs to go elsewhere."
❌ "I hate saying no." 
✅ "Saying no to this means saying yes to what matters."
❌ "I'll sleep when it's done." 
✅ "I need to protect my capacity to do good work."

Stepping up when it counts? ✅ Admirable.
Saying yes to everything until you break? ❌ Stop.

Here's why this matters for your career:
1️⃣ Overcommitting guarantees underdelivering. 
↳ When you say yes to everything, quality suffers on all of it.
2️⃣ You train people to expect the unsustainable. 
↳ Every time you overextend, you reset the baseline for what's "normal."
3️⃣ Burnout isn't a badge of honor. 
↳ Running on empty doesn't make you valuable—it makes you replaceable when you crash.
4️⃣ Boundaries build trust. 
↳ People respect those who are honest about capacity more than those who overpromise and scramble.
5️⃣ Your best work requires margin. 
↳ Creativity, problem-solving, and leadership all require space. Constant overload kills them.

The most respected professionals aren't the ones who say yes to everything.
They're those who protect their ability to deliver excellence each day and week. 

Boundaries aren't selfish. 
They're healthy, productive, and strategic. 

What's one commitment you need to renegotiate? 👇

— j —

♻️➕ John Brewton

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the history, economics, and future of operating companies.

Stop HUSTLING. Start EXECUTING. 
Busy isn't a badge of honor. Results are.

Hustle culture sounds like this:
❌ "I've been slammed all week." 
❌ "I have back-to-back meetings." 
❌ "My inbox is out of control." 
❌ "I'm working 60-hour weeks." 
❌ "I barely have time to breathe." 
❌ "I'm juggling a million things." 
❌ "I haven't had lunch in days." 
❌ "There's never enough time." 
❌ "I'm exhausted but still grinding."

Results culture sounds like this:
✅ "Here's what I shipped this week." 
✅ "I have two hours of protected deep work." 
✅ "I've closed out every open loop." 
✅ "I'm working 45 focused hours." 
✅ "I've prioritized ruthlessly." 
✅ "I'm focused on three things that matter." 
✅ "I protect my energy to perform." 
✅ "I make time for what's important." 
✅ "I'm rested and executing."

Sprinting when it matters? 
✅ Sometimes necessary.

Wearing exhaustion as identity? 
❌ Stop.

Here's why hustle culture is a trap:
1️⃣ Activity isn't achievement. 
↳ Motion feels productive. Output is productive. Know the difference.
2️⃣ Burnout doesn't build empires. 
↳ You can't compound results if you're running on empty.
3️⃣ Busy people get managed. Effective people get promoted. 
↳ Leadership notices who delivers—not who looks overwhelmed.
4️⃣ Your calendar isn't your scoreboard. 
↳ Full days don't mean full impact. What actually shipped?
5️⃣ Exhaustion erodes judgment. 
↳ Your worst decisions come when you're fried. Rest is a strategic asset.

The most effective operators I know aren't the busiest.

✅ They're the most focused.
✅ They protect their time. 
✅ They say no constantly. 
✅ They measure output, not hours.

Hustle culture sells you a story: suffering equals success.
Results culture tells the truth: clarity, energy, and execution win.

Which culture are you building for yourself? 👇

— john —

♻️➕ John Brewton
✅ WE ARE ALL BECOMING COMPANIES
📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the history, economics, and future of operating companies.

Stop SCHEDULING meetings. 
Start deciding. Start creating outcomes. 

A calendar invite is not progress. 
A decision is the dominoe that catalyzes action and outcomes. 

Delaying sounds like this:
❌ “Let’s get everyone in a room.”
❌ “Can we sync on this next week?”
❌ “We need to align as a team.”
❌ “Let me set up a call.”
❌ “This needs a working session.”
❌ “Can we find 30 minutes?”
❌ “I’ll send a calendar invite.”
❌ “We should workshop this.”
❌ “Let’s schedule a follow-up.”

Deciding sounds like this:
✅ “Here’s the decision. Object by Friday.”
✅ “I’ll send my recommendation today.”
✅ “I’ve aligned with everyone. We’re moving.”
✅ “Let me send you a memo.”
✅ “This needs a decision owner.”
✅ “Can you review this async?”
✅ “I’ll send a proposal.”
✅ “I’ll draft options and decide.”
✅ “Let’s close this now.”

Using meetings for complex collaboration? 
✅ Necessary.

Using meetings to avoid making a call? 
❌ Stop.


1️⃣ Most meetings are procrastination in disguise.
↳ Scheduling a meeting feels like action. It’s not. It’s deferral with a time stamp.

2️⃣ Every meeting is a tax on everyone’s calendar.
↳ Your 30-minute “quick sync” with 6 people just cost the company 3 hours of productivity.

3️⃣ Decisions don’t need consensus—they need ownership.
↳ One person decides. Others input. Stop waiting for a room to agree.

4️⃣ Async is faster than you think.
↳ A clear memo with a deadline beats a scattered discussion every time.

5️⃣ The best operators collapse cycle time.
↳ They decide today what others would schedule a meeting about next week.

Ask yourself before every invite:
✅Can this be a memo?
✅Can this be a Slack thread?
✅Can this be a decision I make and communicate?

Bias to action. 
Bias to ownership. 
Bias to now.

Meetings should be the last resort. 
Not the first instinct.

What’s one meeting you’re canceling and replacing with a decision? 👇

— john —

♻️➕ John Brewton

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the history, economics, and future of operating companies.

Stop OVER-EXPLAINING. 
Start CONFIDENTLY STATING your perspective. 

You don't need to justify every request.

Here's how to shift from justifying to stating:

❌ "The reason I'm asking is because..." 
✅ "I need this by Friday."
❌ "I know you're busy, but..." 
✅ "When you have 10 minutes, I'd like to discuss X."
❌ "I don't mean to bother you, it's just that..." 
✅ "Quick question for you."
❌ "Sorry for the long email, but I wanted to give context..." 
✅ "Here's the situation and what I need."
❌ "I wasn't sure if I should bring this up, but..." 
✅ "I want to raise something."
❌ "I hope this isn't overstepping, but..." 
✅ "Here's my input."
❌ "I just wanted to check in because I was worried that..." 
✅ "Checking in on status."
❌ "I know this might not be the right time, but..." 
✅ "I have something to discuss."
❌ "There's a lot of background here, so let me explain..." 
✅ "Here's what you need to know."

Providing necessary context? ✅ Helpful.

Burying your point in disclaimers? ❌ Stop.

Here's why this matters for your career:

1️⃣ You dilute your message. 
↳ The more you explain, the harder it is to find your actual point.
2️⃣ You signal insecurity. 
↳ Over-justifying tells people you're not sure you deserve their time.
3️⃣ You waste everyone's time. 
↳ People are busy. Get to the point and let them ask if they need more.
4️⃣ You invite pushback. 
↳ The more reasons you give, the more reasons they have to say no.
5️⃣ You undermine your authority. 
↳ Leaders make requests. They don't apologize for having them.

Your ask is valid. Your input matters. Your time counts.

State what you need. Skip the preamble. Trust your standing.

What's one over-explanation you're cutting to start 2026? 👇

— john —

♻️➕ John Brewton

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the history, economics, and future of operating companies.

These seven traits are not just about “bad leadership.”
They are signals that it's time to build something better. 

They are signals that your future is being capped 
by someone else’s behavior, moods, and incentives. 

If you see yourself in this infographic, it’s not a motivation problem.
It’s a control and decision-making problem.
↳ Micromanaged at every step
↳ Emotionally unpredictable leadership
↳ Credit taken, blame shifted
↳ Favorites rewarded over performance
↳ Fear used as a management tool
↳ Dissent quietly punished
↳ Independent thinking discouraged

Individually, each one slows you down.

Together, they do something worse.

They teach you to play small.
They reward compliance over competence.
They condition you to wait instead of build.

And over time, they convince capable people to lower their ceiling.
Culture doesn’t just shape performance.

It shapes and expands or limits ambition.

That’s why more professionals are choosing a different path. 💡

Not because entrepreneurship is easy.
But because ownership restores agency.

When you build something you control:
↳ Your effort compounds for you
↳ Your thinking is an asset, not a threat
↳ Your values shape the environment
↳ Your upside is not capped by someone else’s fear

This isn’t about quitting a job.

It’s about refusing to outsource your future to a system that does not reward your best work. If any of these seven feel familiar, take that seriously.

These are reasons to build something better.
✅ Audit which of these traits show up in your current environment
✅ Start a small, controllable project outside your job
✅ Design work where accountability and upside align

What better option do you want to build? 
Share your perspective in the comments. 👇 
___

♻️ ➕ John Brewton
📥 Message me if you'd like help figuring out what comes next for you. 

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton
✅ We are all becoming companies.

I know it's hard and seems monumentally counterintuitive...
But to move forward, we need to stop obsessing over "job loss."

We're asking the wrong question.

Here's a framework that actually matters from Marc Andreessen: 
The atomic unit of change in the workplace isn't the job, it's the task.

A job is just a bundle of tasks.

When we talk about AI disruption, we shouldn't be counting jobs eliminated.
We should be tracking task loss and task recomposition.

This distinction is critical.
Your "coder" job doesn't disappear, it transforms.

The task bundle evolves:
❌ Yesterday's developer: writes code
✅ Tomorrow's developer: writes code + designs interfaces + manages product decisions
✅ Or skips code entirely and orchestrates what the AI builds

An insight: 
Whoever masters task recomposition in the AI era becomes invaluable.

We're all becoming companies.
The world is moving away from jobs.
It's moving toward function-based expertise and ability to build.
1️⃣ Your value isn't your title anymore. 
↳ It's the outcomes you can deliver.
2️⃣ Your security isn't your employer. 
↳ It's your capability stack.
3️⃣ Your career isn't a ladder. 
↳ It's a portfolio of skills, relationships, and leverage.

Ten years from now, job titles become almost meaningless.

What will matter is this:
✅ Are you the person orchestrating AI?
✅ Are you the one deciding what gets built—and how the AI builds it?
✅ That's the role of the future.

The space where human judgment, strategy, and vision become irreplaceable is where you want and need to be building towards. 

The companies that win won't be those that eliminate jobs.
They'll be those that help their best people shed commoditized tasks and own the orchestration layer.

The individuals who win will stop thinking like employees and start thinking like company builders, operators and market distributors of their own capabilities. 

You are becoming the company. 
Your skills are becoming the product. 
Your network is becoming the distribution channel. 

So ask yourself:
Are your tasks being recomposed, or are you being replaced?
What company of one are you going to build? 👇

— john —

♻️➕ John Brewton

WE ARE ALL BECOMING COMPANIES. 
📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the history, economics, and future of operating companies.

The Changing Job - We Are All Becoming Companies

“In a bureaucracy, they shoot the bull, pass the buck, and make seven copies of everything.”
Charles McKenzie 

Stop PASSING THE BUCK. 
Start deciding. 

Deflection isn’t caution. 
It’s avoidance wearing a professional costume.

Here’s how to shift from deflecting to deciding:
❌ “Let me check with my manager.”
✅ “Here’s what I recommend.”
❌ “That’s above my pay grade.”
✅ “I’ll own this.”
❌ “We need more data first.”
✅ “Here’s what we know and my call.”
❌ “Let’s form a committee.”
✅ “I’ll decide and report back.”
❌ “I don’t want to step on toes.”
✅ “This falls in my lane. I’ve got it.”
❌ “Can someone else weigh in?”
✅ “Here’s my position.”
❌ “Let’s table this for now.”
✅ “Let’s resolve this today.”
❌ “I’m not sure that’s my call.”
✅ “I’m making the call.”
❌ “I’ll defer to the team.”
✅ “Here’s what we’re doing.”

Escalating when genuinely needed? 
✅ Appropriate.

Deflecting to avoid accountability? 
❌ Stop.

Here’s why this matters for your career:
1️⃣ Decision-makers get promoted.
↳ Leadership notices who moves things forward—and who keeps kicking the can.
2️⃣ Deflection is a bottleneck.
↳ Every time you pass the buck, you slow the whole system down.
3️⃣ Waiting for perfect information is a decision to do nothing.
↳ The best operators decide with 70% of the data. The rest figure it out never.
4️⃣ Ownership builds trust.
↳ People want to work with—and for—people who take responsibility, not people who scatter it.
5️⃣ Your lane is bigger than you think.
↳ Most “not my call” moments are actually yours to make. You’re just not claiming them.
The professionals who rise fastest aren’t the ones with the best ideas.

They’re those willing to make the call when everyone else is looking around the room.

Decide. 
Own it. 
Adjust if you’re wrong.
That’s leadership. 

What’s one decision you’ve been deflecting that you’re ready to own? 👇

— john —

♻️➕ John Brewton

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the history, economics, and future of operating companies.

The best careers offer both: 
EARNING and LEARNING. 💡

A paycheck alone won’t fulfill you. 
Growth without reward won’t sustain you.

You need both. 
Here’s why:

What matters for you:
➤ Financial Security
↳ You can focus on your work—not survival.
➤ Motivation Through Merit
↳ Your effort and outcomes are visibly rewarded.
➤ Career Advancement
↳ You have clear paths to level up and grow your income.
➤ Retention and Loyalty
↳ You don’t have to leave when you’re valued and compensated fairly.
➤ Shared Success
↳ You feel invested in the wins you help create.
➤ Dignity in Contribution
↳ Your work feels meaningful when it leads to real reward.
➤ Stability for Family
↳ You feel proud providing for the people you love.
➤ Pride in Work
↳ You bring your best when it pays to do so.
Why learning matters for you:
➤ Skill Building
↳ You gain tools to solve harder problems.
➤ Confidence Boost
↳ Learning reduces your fear, increases your action.
➤ Adaptability
↳ You can evolve as roles and industries change.
➤ Creativity and Innovation
↳ New knowledge sparks better ideas.
➤ Future Leadership
↳ Training today makes you tomorrow’s leader.
➤ Personal Growth
↳ You feel like you’re becoming more, professionally and personally.
➤ Cultural Curiosity
↳ A learning environment encourages you to ask, try, and share.
➤ Increased Autonomy
↳ Learning enables you to own more and need less oversight.

Getting paid well? 
✅ You can stay.

Getting opportunities to grow? 
✅ You can thrive.

Getting both? 
✅ You can build a career worth having.

Here’s what to watch for:
1️⃣ If you’re underpaid, you’ll always be looking.
↳ No mission statement erases financial stress.
2️⃣ If you’re overpaid but not growing, you’ll stagnate.
↳ Golden handcuffs feel comfortable until you realize you’ve stopped developing.
3️⃣ If you’re learning but not earning, you’re subsidizing someone else’s business.
↳ Growth without compensation means you’re being trained for your next employer.
4️⃣ If you have both, protect it.
↳ Earning and learning together is rare. Don’t take it for granted.

When evaluating your job, or your next one, ask both questions:

Am I being compensated fairly for what I contribute?

Am I becoming more capable, more valuable, more prepared for what’s next?

Earning creates stability. 
Learning creates possibility.

Together, they create a career.

Which matters more to you right now, earning or learning and why? 👇

— j —

♻️➕ John Brewton

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the history, economics, and future of operating companies.

Soft skills have become the new hard skills. 
In times of change, your mindset determines your success. 

Skills get you hired. 
Mindset determines how far you go.

Here's what to develop this year:

1️⃣ Responsibility Shift 
↳ Practice taking radical accountability to become the leader your team needs. 
↳ Focus on what is within your control. 
↳ Blame is comfortable. Ownership is powerful.

2️⃣ Become the Growth Generator 
↳ Every failure is an opportunity to learn how to improve. 
↳ Teach your team how to learn from failing. 
↳ Every wall is a door.

3️⃣ Master Your Control Center 
↳ You might have been treated unfairly, but blaming others only holds you back. 
↳ Address the root cause of your issues and grow beyond the mindset. 
↳ What happened to you is real. What you do next is yours.

4️⃣ Create a Win-Win Mindset 
↳ Learn to celebrate others' victories. 
↳ Learn to be kinder to yourself. 
↳ Play a positive-sum, not a zero-sum game.

5️⃣ Get Into Your Stretch Zone 
↳ Step outside your comfort zone and learn how liberating experiencing the unknown can be. 
↳ Prepare for the hurdles proactively so you're prepared for setbacks. 
↳ Growth lives on the other side of discomfort.

6️⃣ Master the Future Frame 
↳ Stop dwelling on minor setbacks. 
↳ Build the discipline of perseverance. 
↳ Every setback is an opportunity to grow into how you will achieve your ultimate goal.

7️⃣ Create a Winning Self-Standard 
↳ Stop allowing the actions and behaviors of others to throw you off your game. 
↳ You are only competing against the version of yourself you're trying to improve. 
↳ Their race is not your race.

8️⃣ Allow Yourself a Clean Slate 
↳ Take the time to do the work you need to do to move forward with a clear heart and mind. 
↳ Give yourself the gift of therapy, journaling, meditation, or working out. 
↳ You can't build forward while carrying everything backward.

9️⃣ Earn the Difficulty Dividend 
↳ Go after the biggest challenges. 
↳ Learning to do hard things builds your grit, makes you resilient, and develops your ability to lead. 
↳ Easy doesn't compound. Hard does.

Here's what I've learned after 20 years of operating:

✅ The people who rise aren't always the most talented.
✅ They're those who've built the mindset to stay in the game, through failure, through unfairness, through uncertainty.

Mindset isn't soft. It determines how you respond when things break, how you lead when it's hard, and how you grow when no one's watching.

✅ Pick one. 
✅ Work it for 90 days. 
✅ Then stack another.

These aren't built overnight. 
They're built in the reps.

Which of these 9 do you need most right now? 👇

— john —

♻️➕ John Brewton

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the history, economics, and future of operating companies.

9 Mindset Super Skills to Build in 2026

It's time to discard old language and choose something new. 
It's time to compound your odds of success as we start 2026. 

I'm opening 2026 with something that sits at the intersection of operational clarity and business reality: the words your team uses become the decisions you make, multiplied across thousands of moments.

This carousel walks through ten phrases that talented, ambitious leaders still use, phrases that sound human and self-aware but actually lock teams into reactive, victim-oriented thinking. 

These small linguistic shifts preserve agency, accelerate learning loops, and keep people in problem-solving mode when pressure is highest.

Why does this matter right now?

Because 2026 is arriving in a world that BCG describes as fundamentally multipolar and unstable. You've got geopolitical fragmentation, trade rule rewrites, emerging tech races, expanding supply chain dependencies, and talent scrambles happening simultaneously. 

Your competitors aren't just other companies anymore, they're navigating tariffs, regional power shifts, and shifting climate policies that change the game weekly.

In that environment, the teams that win are the ones that:
✅  Learn faster (which requires extracting lessons from failure, not hiding it)
✅  Reallocate resources without bureaucratic friction (which requires people to stay curious, not defensive)
✅  Adapt to changing information without losing psychological safety (which requires language that implies control, not helplessness)

The mechanism is simple but compounding.

When a team member says "I failed—I should give up," they're shutting down the learning loop right when you need it most. 

When they say "What did I learn?"
they're staying in problem-solving mode. 

Multiply that across a 500-person organization making thousands of decisions per quarter, and the compounding effect on execution speed is massive.

This is an operational architecture that is becoming more essential as our AI-first world expands into a new year. 

The strongest CEOs I've worked with treat language discipline the same way they treat financial controls, as a measurable lever of execution. 

They do it because it works.

So start here: pick one phrase from this carousel that resonates with how your team talks. Make it a teaching moment. Show the alternative. Repeat it. Watch what happens to decision-making speed, to psychological safety, to how quickly projects restart after setbacks.

2026 will reward leaders who upgrade their operating model and their organizational language. 

Better operating creates efficiency. 
Better language creates resilience.

What phrase from your team's vocabulary would you change first? 
Drop it below, I'd like to know what's holding back execution in your world. 

Also, welcome to 2026! 

- j - 

♻️➕ John Brewton

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the history, economics, and future of operating companies.

Stop Saying These 10 Phrases to Succeed in 2026

Learning to think like an economist can 10X your strategic impact. 

Here are Five Economic Laws that will 10x your strategic thinking. 
Economics can become an operating system for better decisions.

1️⃣ Opportunity Cost → Every "yes" costs a "better yes."
That project you said yes to? It's not free—even if it's profitable.
The real cost is what you couldn't pursue because your time, capital, and attention were locked up. Before you commit, ask: 
What am I not doing by doing this?

2️⃣ Marginal Utility → Stop where ROI flattens.
The first hour of work on a problem is worth more than the tenth.
The first hire in a function delivers more impact than the fifth.
Diminishing returns are everywhere. The smartest operators know when to stop optimizing and move on.

3️⃣ Comparative Advantage → Delegate what's not your edge.
You might be good at everything. That's irrelevant.
What matters is what you're relatively best at—the thing that costs the most when you don't do it.

4️⃣ Incentives Matter → Total comp drives outcomes.
People respond to how they're paid, promoted, and recognized. Full stop.
If your incentives point one direction and you're frustrated the team is going another—check the incentives first. Culture is what you reward. 
Everything else is a poster on the wall.

5️⃣ Bounded Rationality → Build for humans, not models.
People don't optimize. They satisfice. 
They get tired, distracted, and overwhelmed.

Your systems, processes, and strategies need to work for real humans with limited attention, not spreadsheet-perfect rational actors.

Simple beats sophisticated when humans are in the loop.
These aren't abstract principles.

They're lenses that change how you see every decision:
✅ What to pursue. 
✅ When to stop. 
✅ Who should do what. 
✅ How to align a team. 
✅ How to design for reality.

Economics trained me to think in tradeoffs, systems, and incentives.
Twenty years of operating taught me how right it was.

Which of these five shapes your thinking the most? 👇

— john —

♻️➕ John Brewton

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the history, economics, and future of operating companies.

Five Economic Laws to 10X Your Strategic Thinking

My newsletter, Operating by John Brewton, 
made $2.8 million on Substack last week. 

Or at lease that’s what my dashboard incorrectly told me for about five minutes.

It was a wonderful, momentary glitch in the coded matrix. 

While reflecting since this momentary lapse, I’ve realized that a number as big as $2.8 M misses the larger, more important point. 

In the last six months, I’ve built a newsletter from zero to a publication that will generate $2,802.06 in ARR solely for the value my readers have come to find in the articles I painstakingly construct each week. 

David Foster Wallace said: "I submit that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is and also the most demanding. It requires body control, hand-eye coordination, quickness, flat-out speed, endurance, and that weird mix of caution and abandon we call courage."

I submit that building a company is the most beautiful profession there is and is also the most demanding. It requires mind control, emotion-to-execution coordination, decisiveness, patience, quickness, and that weird mix of collaborative and communicative capacity we call leadership. 

In tennis parlance, I’ve been learning to win the loser’s game. 

I’ve been at this creator game for a hot minute, about 18 months. 

✅ I’ve grown a following across all channels of +50,000 people. 
✅ I’ve personally created well over 1,000 pieces of content and become an amateur designer. 
✅I’ve made dozens of new friends and built a handful of relationships that have become profitable partnerships. 
✅I’ve built a small, niche, money making newsletter. 

But I’ve not cracked the code. 

And that’s because building a company is hard. 

It requires extraordinary perseverance, extraordinary capacity to learn from what hasn’t worked, and the ability to listen deeply to what the market and your customers are telling you they want and need. 

I’m not there, yet. 

But I believe I’m getting closer. 

And one thing is for sure, I won’t stop until the breakthrough happens. 

I will get to that $2.8 million some day and I’m so thankful for the glitch that made me think about what’s possible. 

Are you on a similar journey? 

What are you learning? 

Share your perspective in the comments. Message me if you’d like to chat. If you’re building a creator business, I’d love to help. 

- j - 

♻️➕ John Brewton 

📬Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton. We are all becoming companies.

Stop EMAILING. Start RESOLVING.
Email is for confirmation, not conversation.
 
Here's how to escape inbox loops and take direct action:
❌ "Just following up on my last email..." 
✅ Pick up the phone and get an answer.
❌ "Wanted to check if you saw my message..." 
✅ Walk to their desk or send a text.
❌ "Per our email thread below..." 
✅ Summarize the data in a doc and share.
❌ "Adding a few more people to this chain..." 
✅ Call a 15-minute stand-up with decision-makers only.
❌ "Circling back on this from last month..." 
✅ Set a deadline and escalate if it's missed.
❌ "See my notes in red below..." 
✅ Edit the document directly and resolve.
❌ "Let me know your thoughts when you get a chance..." 
✅ Propose a decision with a response deadline.
❌ "Copying leadership for visibility..." 
✅ Make the decision, then inform leadership it's done.
❌ "Sending this to keep a paper trail..." 
✅ Have the conversation first, then document the outcome.

Using email for documentation? ✅ Smart.
Using email to avoid real conversation? ❌ Stop.

Here's why inbox loops kill your effectiveness:
1️⃣ Email creates the illusion of progress. 
↳ You feel productive sending it. Nothing actually moves.
2️⃣ Every CC multiplies complexity. 
↳ More people on the thread means more opinions, more delays, less ownership.
3️⃣ Tone gets lost, conflict festers. 
↳ What takes 12 emails to misunderstand takes 5 minutes to resolve in person.
4️⃣ Decisions die in reply chains. 
↳ No one owns the outcome when everyone's just "weighing in."
5️⃣ You train people to ignore you. 
↳ The more follow-ups you send, the easier it is for you to be deprioritized.
6️⃣ The "paper trail" excuse is outdated. 
↳ Modern workflow tools (Notion, Asana, Monday, Slack, Google Docs) automatically capture every comment, edit, decision, and timestamp. Your CYA email chain isn't documentation. It's clutter. The systems you're already using are the paper trail.

The most effective professionals don't have the longest email threads.
They have the shortest time-to-resolution.

✅ Pick up the phone. 
✅ Walk over. 
✅ Schedule the call. 
✅ Make the decision.

Let your workflow systems handle the record. 
Let your conversations handle the work.

Email is for confirmation, not conversation.

What's one email loop you're breaking this week? 👇

— j —

♻️➕ John Brewton

📬 Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for daily perspective on the history, economics, and future of operating companies ( 🔗 in the comments)

Stop COMPARING. 
Start learning. 

Comparison steals your power, unless you leverage its potential. 

Here's how to shift from powerless comparison to powerful growth:
❌ "I'll never be as good as them." 
✅ "What can I learn from their approach?"
❌ "They got lucky." 
✅ "What did they do that I haven't tried?"
❌ "Must be nice to have those connections." 
✅ "How can I build relationships like that?"
❌ "They don't deserve that success." 
✅ "What are they doing that's working?"
❌ "I should be further along by now." 
✅ "What's my next milestone?"
❌ "Everyone else is ahead of me." 
✅ "I'm on my own timeline."
❌ "Why does everything come easy to them?" 
✅ "What's their system I'm not seeing?"
❌ "I can't compete with that." 
✅ "What's my unique angle?"
❌ "They're just more talented." 
✅ "Talent is one factor. What else can I control?"

Noticing what others achieve? 
✅ Natural.
Using it to tear yourself down? 
❌ Stop.

Here's what the research explains about why this matters:
1️⃣ Social comparison theory shows upward comparison lowers self-regard. 
↳ Psychologist Leon Festinger's foundational research found that comparing yourself to those you perceive as "better" tends to damage self-esteem—unless you reframe it as learning.
2️⃣ Your mindset determines whether comparison helps or hurts. 
↳ Carol Dweck's research at Stanford shows people with a growth mindset see others' success as evidence that improvement is possible. Fixed mindset sees it as proof of their own limitations.
3️⃣ "Benign envy" outperforms admiration for motivation. 
↳ Niels van de Ven's research found that when you believe self-improvement is attainable, seeing someone succeed triggers motivation to act. When you think it's out of reach, you just admire from afar and stay stuck.
4️⃣ Attribution matters: luck vs. effort. 
↳ Bernard Weiner's attribution theory shows that high achievers attribute success to effort and strategy (controllable factors), while low achievers attribute it to luck or talent (uncontrollable). The questions you ask determine what you can change.
5️⃣ You're comparing to a highlight reel. 
↳ Research on social media comparison shows we consistently overestimate others' advantages while discounting their effort, setbacks, and struggles.

Comparison isn't the problem. 
Powerless thinking is.

Turn "they have something I don't" into "they know something I can learn."

What's one comparison you're reframing into a question? 👇

— john —

♻️➕ John Brewton

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