How Preston Brown Flipped the Script on Business Growth

Are you chasing money, or is money chasing you? In this fast-paced era of startups and business ventures, it’s important to reconsider your approach to business and understand if you’re on the right track. Our guest today has some valuable insights to help you out!

Meet Preston Brown. Preston is a speaker, serial entrepreneur, and multiple 8-figure business owner. His entrepreneurship journey started very early on when he dropped out of college to focus on building profitable companies and pursuing his dreams. 19 flourishing businesses under his belt later, it’s safe to say Preston made the right call. His companies have generated $200 million or more each year in gross revenues, leaving Preston time to dedicate himself to advising CEOs and entrepreneurs on how to grow and scale their companies. He’s now a trusted advisor and expert in finance, business, and real estate.

Preston is passionate about disruptive innovation and scaling companies for profit. As you’ll soon hear in this episode, his enthusiasm for business is contagious and will inspire you to take bold steps toward your own entrepreneurial dreams.

In this episode of the Think Business with Tyler podcast, we talk about how to stop chasing the money and make the money chase you, why it’s important to see problems as opportunities, why customer feedback is a good thing, and the importance of learning how to learn.

If you want to learn more about building, optimizing, and scaling businesses, make sure you tune into this episode to hear what Preston has to say.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Preston Brown

💡 What he does: Preston is a sought-after serial entrepreneur, multiple 8-figure business owner, and a speaker.

💡 Noteworthy: Preston launched his first business while he was still in college. Recognizing his potential, he dropped out to focus on building profitable companies and built 19 thriving businesses with $200 million+ annual gross revenues.

💡 Key Quote: “If a company makes a sale, it’s a solution to somebody’s problem. That’s why they buy it. People only buy things to improve their life or get out of pain, which improves their life. So, every sale is a solution, which means every lack of sales, there’s a problem that still exists.”

💡 Where to find Preston: LinkedIn

Key Insights

Don’t chase the money, but make the money chase you. Some business owners get so caught up in the everyday hustle that they forget to live their lives. They even forget why they got into entrepreneurship in the first place. In those moments, it’s important to ask yourself if you’re just chasing the money and, if so, how you can turn things around for yourself. As Preston says, automation may be the solution for your business. He explains, “Lost dad after chasing money, chasing business, getting rich in 2019 and regretted it massively. Wished I’d spent my times with him rather than chasing money. Completely curbed my focuses around, shifted, went away from scaling, went away from building, went away from structuring, and moved into automating, which involves all those things but is not just all those things. There’s other steps to it. And what was really funny is I’d been chasing money the entire time, and as soon as I went to automation, which is kind of this magic step where the money starts chasing you, and it’s a way better process.”

Every problem is an opportunity. The most successful business owners are the best problem-solvers. They see problems as opportunities. Then, they seize those opportunities and find solutions for their customers. That’s what entrepreneurship is all about – bringing solutions to the market and making customers’ lives easier. Preston says, “I think problems are gifts. I think a sale if a company makes a sale, it’s a solution to somebody’s problem. That’s why they buy it. People only buy things to improve their life or get out of pain, which improves their life. So, every sale is a solution, which means every lack of sales, there’s a problem that still exists.”

Customer feedback is a great chance to improve your product. Despite what some people think, customer feedback is always a good thing and a valuable lesson. It’s also your company’s time to shine as it gives you an opportunity to improve your product and, ultimately, win over customers’ hearts. Preston says, “Most people are scared of feedback. I love reviews. If you give me a negative review on one of my companies today, you will have somebody reach out. They will find out. And look, maybe we deserve an apology. Maybe you’re a narcissistic asshole. I don’t know what the situation is, but you gave me a review. You gave me feedback. You paid; you spent your attention on that computer screen and that cell phone screen to let me know how I did. Well, scaling your brand is getting and acting on feedback, whether it’s good feedback, whether it’s bad feedback, and more than that, putting a regenerative growth process into it.”

Learn how to learn. One of the most critical skills you can develop as an entrepreneur is your ability to learn. Let’s face it: the only thing that’s constant in business is change, so if you want to stay ahead of the curve, you need to be willing to learn and constantly improve. Preston says, “I think everyone in life, if you want to automate anything, the single greatest thing you need to learn is how to learn because, in every business, you’re going to learn different things from different folks, and it’s going to be this process and this journey and this kind of conundrum of, ‘Oh, my gosh, what happened now? What? You’re telling me what?’ And somebody will do something stupid. It’s Murphy’s law. Murphy’s real. He’s awesome. And you learn, you get problems, and then you dive in, and you solve them, and you become more valuable. It’s not what you’re building. It’s who you’re becoming.”

Top Quotes

“I built wealth. I built riches, but I was unhappy. I was a shit father. I was a crap husband. I had everything. And then, he passed away, and it was the worst day of my life, but it was also the best day of my life because there was a lesson in it, and that’s most of the time, I think if you can find a beautiful lesson in your worst moment, that’s true responsibility, which gets you true power.”

“This is a game. There’s always a game. And if you play by the rules and you learn the patterns, you can not just learn the patterns and do well, but eventually, you can start creating the patterns. Everybody’s heard, think outside the box, right? Well, the presupposition there is if you’re inside the box, you’re a little dumber than the guy that thinks outside of the box. Well, there’s another level. What if you could build boxes for other people to think in?”

“There’s this whole secret to automation when you start diving into this, that becomes this clarity and this power and also a huge, I’m just going to say value-added for everybody around you. When you’re creating better products, and you’re creating great cultures where people just absolutely love their work, love what they’re doing, that’s going to emanate out. The customers are going to love the product because they love working with the people. They love the results of the product and the service.”

“I look at earning money as slavery and creating wealth because that’s what I think God did as the way that we should all try to find a way to be in, not necessarily just wealth. Some people need to go create happiness. Some people create art. Some people create music. You’re a business guy, create wealth.”

“Efficiency is the single greatest goal in a business. There’s no such thing as a recession if you are efficient. And so my companies all grow during recessions. I love recessions. When everybody else is held down, I rise up because I don’t have to deal with all the loud competition that doesn’t understand that it’s called a firm. A business is called a firm. […] Warren Buffett, I think, said it best, ‘When the tide goes out, you find out who’s wearing swimsuits or not.’ And so, efficiency is the key, but efficiency is different in every stage.”

“Automation is when your business becomes an asset. So those steps are the staircase to automation because your C-suite executives are your replacements. I now have a CEO. A CEO replaces me. Now, it doesn’t mean I’m gone. I’m still a co-CEO because I have certain gifts. My CEO has certain gifts, but I have bought back my time. I can pay that person hundreds of thousands a year plus bonuses of up to millions a year, and they run everything, and I don’t have to do it, but they have C suite executives under them, management teams under them, teams under them, measurable KPIs every week and every month that they’re looking.”

“It’s what every billionaire I’ve ever talked to talks about. It’s what every radically successful, whether it’s money, faith, whatever, they all talk about the same thing. And this is where 99 percent of your listeners and, frankly, earth fails. Everyone thinks ownership is about possession. It’s not. Ownership is about responsibility. The moment you have responsibility, you have power. The moment you give away your responsibility, and you start thinking it’s about possession, you’ve lost power, and somebody else is about to own what you have.”

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