Academics say I’m too practical. Gurus say I’m too rigorous. Prof of Entrepreneurship. I write about what actually works — most of what you’ve heard is wrong.
Revenue is a lagging indicator. By the time it drops, the problem is 3–6 months old. Pipeline velocity, NPS trend, product usage depth, sales cycle length — these move first. Track the windshield, not the rearview mirror. #AskDrBrown
Your best employee isn't leaving suddenly. They've been preparing for months. You just didn't see it. Stay interviews. Real one-on-ones. Visible growth paths. Stop losing the people you can't afford to lose. #AskDrBrown
Word of mouth doesn't just happen. It's engineered. Referred customers arrive pre-sold with higher LTV and lower churn. Most businesses leave this growth lever untouched. Build the system. Run it deliberately. #AskDrBrown
By the time a customer cancels, the decision was already made months ago. Win-back campaigns fix the wrong end. Churn is not a customer service problem — it's a systems problem. Solve it at the source. #AskDrBrown
Customers don't evaluate price in isolation — they compare. If you're not controlling the anchor, someone else is setting it for you. Premium decoy. Competitor anchor. Cost-of-inaction anchor. Lead the pricing conversation. #AskDrBrown
Average sale takes 5–8 touchpoints. Average salesperson quits after 2. The gap between those two numbers is where most of your revenue is hiding. The fortune is in the follow-up. #AskDrBrown
Microsoft won through OEM deals. Google paid Apple billions to be default search. Facebook won on viral mechanics. None of them won purely on product. Distribution beats product every time. #AskDrBrown
The skills that made you exceptional at your craft are often the ones that make you ineffective as a business owner. Leadership requires being willing to be the worst in the room. Most experts never get there. #AskDrBrown
Strategic alliances fail 50–70% of the time. Not because of bad chemistry — because nobody documented what happens when things go wrong. The awkward conversation before you start is the one that saves the relationship. #AskDrBrown
Vanity metrics don't kill businesses slowly. They kill them comfortably. Followers and impressions feel like progress. CAC, LTV, and Net Revenue Retention tell you the truth. #AskDrBrown
Gillette won with a model, not a better razor. Netflix wiped out an industry with a pricing change, not a better product. Most founders copy competitors' pricing and call it strategy. It isn't. #AskDrBrown
Losing 5% of customers monthly means replacing your entire customer base every 20 months just to stay flat. Retention isn't a customer service function. It's a business design problem. #AskDrBrown
Every founder exits — voluntarily or not, on your terms or someone else's. Avoiding the exit conversation doesn't protect you from it. It just removes you from the decision. #AskDrBrown
"Data-driven" has become a way to avoid accountability. Data doesn't decide — people do. Use it to interrogate assumptions, not confirm them. Data is a flashlight, not a compass. #AskDrBrown
Hours in the wrong direction don't compound toward mastery. They compound toward confident mediocrity. The research was never about hours — it was about deliberate practice. #AskDrBrown
Engagement is not a business model. What % of your community actually buys? If you don't know that number, you don't have a distribution channel. You have a hobby. #AskDrBrown
Leaders who can't delegate don't have teams. They have expensive assistants. Real delegation: can the person now teach someone else to do it? That's the bar. #AskDrBrown
No award ever saved a company with weak retention. Your customers don't care about your trophy shelf. Revenue is the only scoreboard that matters. #AskDrBrown
Every growth hack has a half-life. Tactics without a business model are expensive experiments with better branding. Build the business first. Then grow it. #AskDrBrown