Delphi for CEOs

“Don't hire a VP of Sales until two of your reps are already hitting quota; before that, you are the VP of Sales. When you do hire, find someone who has built a team at the ARR you'll be at in 12 months, sold deals your size, and can bring 2–3 great reps with them. Ask them to demo your product, and if you wouldn't buy from them, don't make the offer.”

“The products that fit are services around the edges, not features locked behind a different license. Akismet, our first one, worked because it made WordPress better without making WordPress itself worse. Hosting, security, support, anti-spam, payments: those are natural complements.”

“It means the data doesn't have to leave the chip. We keep compute and memory on one piece of silicon, so inference runs an order of 70 times faster and uses a fraction of the power, which is what makes a chat or search feel instant.”

“I don't believe in work-life balance, I believe in compromise. I love my kids, my wife Li, my franchisees, my research, and the business, so the things I should do are mostly the things I want to do anyway. My phone goes to 5,700 franchisees and I still answer complaints daily, but I also make sure I'm home for what matters and keep half an hour of hard exercise in most days.”

“Brules are bullshit rules, inherited from family, school, culture, or politics, that we mistake for absolute truth. They hold you back because your mind turns belief into behavior, so a rule like success requires suffering or I'm not worthy becomes a cage you build around your own potential.”

“Most accountability problems are not people problems, they are system problems. I have seen teams that look unmotivated transform once ownership becomes public, progress becomes visible weekly, and missed targets trigger root-cause countermeasures instead of excuses.”

“Workera is a skills intelligence platform I founded to measure what people can actually do, not what they say they can do. We use AI-driven, adaptive assessments to give enterprises a verified, granular picture of workforce skills, then turn that data into personalized learning, smarter hiring, and better internal mobility.”

“I treat the email list as a depreciating asset that has to be refilled constantly, because unsubscribes, spam reports, and disengagement will drain it no matter how good your content is.”

“Build the thing they cannot easily build themselves, then make sure the right commercial leaders at three to five strategics already know you before you need a term sheet. Randy Pritchard, who spent 18 years inside a strategic, told me great companies get bought; companies built to sell rarely do.”

“The biggest mistake is treating the gift card as the program. I’ve seen companies buy thousands of cards, then hand them out with no clear behavior tied to delivery, no verification, and no reporting. The result is a budget line that feels good for a week and proves nothing. The programs that actually move the needle define the action first, verify it, deliver the reward fast, and measure the outcome.”

“Before you chase the next deal, run a portfolio audit. In this rate environment, the hidden cash flow is often inside what you already own, not in a new acquisition.”