Operating by John Brewton | Substack

Build a Company of Curators

How to use the time AI saves on the first draft to make the final work worth reading.

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How I Built a $200,000 Newsletter Business From a Substack Nobody Was Reading

Jun 23 • John Brewton

0 to 55,000 - The First 90 Days Playbook - What I’d Do Differently Knowing What I Know Now

Feb 2 • John Brewton

Everything You Need to Build Your Creator Business & Upskill Your Career in 2026: A Massive Thank You Resource Library From Operating by…

Feb 7 • John Brewton

Operating with Claude

Apr 20 • John Brewton

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Operating Stories

RIMOWA’s Aluminum Bet: When the Product IS the Marketing - OPERATING STORIES · No. 14 · June, 10 2026

How a 1950 engineering decision became a €640 million acquisition, a billion-euro business, and the definitive case study in artifact design.

Jun 10 • John Brewton

Why Enterprise AI Pilots Stall, and the 51 That Didn’t

Stanford studied 51 enterprise AI deployments that succeeded. The bottleneck was the organization, not the models.

Jun 7 • John Brewton

Operating Stories: The Star Acquisition Company

How the Los Angeles Lakers turned 80 years of one operating decision into a $10 billion company

May 7 • John Brewton

Operating Stories: Claude and the three decisions that built a $380 billion company

Anthropic's playbook traces three centuries of operating precedent. The Traitorous Eight. Andy Grove. John D. Rockefeller.

Apr 29 • John Brewton

Operating Stories: The $20 Billion Swing - How Uber turned losses into a cash machine.

Operating Stories. The Dara Khosrowshahi era, 2017 through Q1 2026.

Apr 15 • John Brewton

Oper(AI)ting by John Brewton

Build a Company of Curators

How to use the time AI saves on the first draft to make the final work worth reading.

Oct 6 • John Brewton

How To Break Through The AI Adoption Wall

What training hundreds of employees in 2026 has taught me about making AI useful at work and for companies.

Sep 28 • John Brewton

Apparently AI is going to kill us all. Finally, someone figured out how to write a hook.

10 lessons in getting people to care, without giving them a reason to distrust you.

Sep 24 • John Brewton

Pick Your Business Model Like Your Life Depends On It.

MORE FREE DROPS: Oper(AI)te Drop 05 sorts 6 business models against the shape of your expertise and the shape of your life. Then it tells you which one…

Sep 18 • John Brewton

My Biggest Give Away Yet: The Oper(AI)te (Hidden Offer) Drop Library

16 free AI-powered workbooks to help you find the expertise you should sell, prove its value, price it, package it, and put it in front of buyers.

Sep 16 • John Brewton

We Are All Becoming Companies

The Problem With the Creator Economy

How the Creator Industrial Complex Confused Attention With Real Value

Sep 7 • John Brewton

We Are All Becoming Companies.

Why the founder-led brand is becoming the human interface to the company—and why you should define yours before you build the audience + BONUS…

Aug 10 • John Brewton

A Conversation About The Importance of Building Real Human Relationships & Friendships in the Creator Economy w/ Special Guest and Great…

A recording from John Brewton's live video

Aug 7 • John Brewton and Cory Blumenfeld

59:20

I Built Too Much. Here’s What I’m Cutting, and What I’m Scaling Instead

What +100 coaching clients, 400 coaching hours, standing up a community, two cohorts, and a year of building with AI taught me about creating a simpler…

Aug 7 • John Brewton

Why We Business Builders, Writers and Creators Should Want Substack To Become the Next Giant Social Media Platform

Creators are mistaking increased competition for platform decline. The answer is not a smaller Substack. It's a much larger, growing social media…

Aug 2 • John Brewton

Quiet Building > Quiet Quitting

The Quiet Builders Are Coming. Great Companies Will Build Around Them.

Ten ways employers can support entrepreneurial employees, benefit from their growth, and keep the relationship long after the job ends.

Aug 15 • John Brewton

Quiet Quitting or Quiet Building? Our Changing Relationship With Professional Ambition

How to Quietly Build, not Quietly Quit, while the day job still pays, without betraying your employer, your family, your health, or your financial…

Aug 4 • John Brewton

Companies Don’t Want Employees. Employees Don’t Want to Work for Companies.

Jul 8 • John Brewton

Thank you for reading! Become a subscriber to start reading more from the only newsletter you need to become an elite operator.

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