Chad R. Brown

About ten months ago, I got an email from someone involved in a veterinary college dean search telling me my background matched what they were looking for. My first reaction was flattery. My second was to wonder whether they had emailed the wrong Chad Brown.

I wasn't looking for another job. I was happy at Iowa State, and on paper I did not look much like the traditional dean candidate. I'm a generalist veterinarian. I'm not board certified. I don't have a major research portfolio. My road into academic veterinary medicine ran through a cattle farm in West Virginia, mixed-animal practice, business ownership, teaching, program leadership, and hospital administration. There is probably less peer-reviewed literature along that road than manure.

Still, two things about the opportunity were hard for me to ignore: rural veterinary medicine and the chance to help shape a brand-new veterinary teaching hospital. Both connected pretty directly to the work I had spent much of my career doing, so I decided to take a chance and apply.

I assumed that would be the end of it. Instead, I got a virtual interview and eventually became one of three finalists invited to campus. That led to three days of meetings with faculty, staff, students, university leaders, donors, alumni, and just about anyone else they could fit onto the calendar. Even the meals were interviews. You are technically fed three times a day, but somehow leave feeling like you haven't eaten. I suspect academic executive searches should count as moderate exercise.

Somewhere during those three days, though, something changed. When I applied, I was mostly trying to convince myself I had enough experience to justify being there. By the time I left, I wasn't wondering nearly as much whether I belonged.

I did not get the job, and I'm genuinely okay with that. The person who did had a background and experience that, from everything I could see, fit what that particular college needed at that particular moment. That is what a good search is supposed to do.

What surprised me was what I brought home. I had spent a lot of years looking first at the things I hadn't done instead of giving enough credit to the things I had. I think a lot of us do that. We read a job description, start counting the qualifications we don't have, and overlook the experience that might actually make us unusually good at the job.

Before anyone else gets the opportunity to tell us no, we sometimes save them the trouble and do it ourselves.

I'll probably always notice the gaps in my résumé first. But I learned something from this one: sometimes you should make them tell you no.

“Let me think on it” can be one of the most useful phrases in leadership. It can also be one of the most convenient ways to avoid making a decision we already know we need to make.

I have used that phrase in clinical settings, academic settings, and hospital leadership. The scenery changes, the stakes change, and the number of people waiting for an answer changes, but the basic moment is the same. Someone needs a call, and eventually, you have to make one.

Over time, I have realized there are really three different things hiding behind that phrase. Sometimes I already know the answer, but I am rehearsing how to say it. Sometimes I genuinely need more information, more perspective, or more time to think through the consequences. And sometimes, if I am being honest, I am hoping the calendar will somehow turn hesitation into clarity.

The phrase itself is not the problem. Good leaders should not rush every decision just to appear decisive. Some issues deserve time, consultation, and a real look at the trade-offs. But when we say, “Let me think on it,” we owe people more than a vague pause. We owe them a timeline, a reason for the delay, and the discipline to actually use the time well.

The danger is that delayed decisions create their own noise. People start filling the silence with assumptions. They wonder if the answer has changed, if they said something wrong, or if the issue still matters. What feels like caution to the leader can feel like uncertainty to everyone else.

I am still learning this. There are still times when I need to pause, and there are still times when I probably use the pause to avoid the cost of clarity. But I am trying to get more honest about which version is happening in the moment.

Because every decision teaches people something about how we lead. Not just the answer itself, but the way we arrive at it, the way we communicate it, and whether people can trust us to come back when we said we would.

So yes, sometimes we should think on it.

But we should know what kind of thinking we mean.

Many of you have been kind enough to read my posts, leave a comment, or send me a message saying you enjoyed something I wrote, and I really appreciate it.

As you know, I have a website where I post longer pieces from time to time. Now I’m starting a weekly newsletter called Mostly Housebroken.

It’ll come out every Sunday and cover a little bit of everything: work, leadership, money, family, getting older, and the everyday stuff that tends to pile up around all of us.

Sometimes serious. Sometimes funny. Rarely fully domesticated.

If you enjoy my writing, I’d love for you to subscribe. And if you know somebody else who might enjoy it, feel free to pass it along.

Mostly Housebroken A Sunday newsletter about work, leadership, money, everyday life, and the things that come with all of it. Sometimes serious. Sometimes funny.

For five years, my dental hygienist politely suggested I buy a Waterpik. For five years, I nodded like a mature adult who fully intended to improve his gum health, then got in my car and forgot about it before the first traffic light.

This happened every six months for five years. I did not disagree with her. I did not have some deeply held philosophical objection to oral irrigation. I simply heard it as optional, and optional advice has a way of disappearing into the same mental drawer where unread books, unused gym plans, and Sunday vegetables go to quietly expire.

Then, at my most recent visit, I mentioned a very specific problem: food getting trapped between two molars after nearly every meal. My dentist looked at it and said, "You absolutely need a Waterpik." Same machine my hygienist had been pitching for five years. The only thing that changed was that "improve your gum health" became "stop the thing that is currently happening to you." Vague advice is easy to file away. A specific problem with your name on it is not.

I walked to my car, opened Amazon, spent $59.99, and became the proud owner of a countertop machine that pressure-washes my mouth every morning like it is restoring an old sidewalk.

The lesson is that sometimes people are not ignoring advice. Sometimes they are responding exactly to how optional we made it sound. "I recommend" creates room to think about it. "You need" creates a decision. And it works best when you can also point at the exact spot where the problem is hiding, like a dental detective revealing the culprit.

Of course, you cannot diagnose everything as a life-threatening emergency just to get someone to floss. Cry wolf enough times and people start nodding through your "you need" the same way I nodded through five years of "I recommend." Save the spine for the things that actually matter, or the word stops doing any work at all.

Anyway, I now use the Waterpik quite frequently. On setting three. Settings four through seven appear to be for Navy SEALs, pressure-washing contractors, and people with better dental courage than I possess.

Long before most of us had money, we already had a relationship with it.

We learned by watching. We noticed whether things were repaired or replaced, whether money was discussed openly or quietly worried over, and whether spending felt joyful, practical, careless, or dangerous. Nobody had to formally teach us. The lessons worked their way in anyway.

My parents were middle school teachers. We were not wealthy, but I never felt like we lacked anything. They lived below their means, waited for sales, fixed what they could, and quietly helped my brother and me far more than I understood at the time. Their discipline eventually allowed them to retire in their early fifties.

I inherited that discipline, but I also inherited some of the caution that came with it. Even after building a good career, I still sometimes hear a voice reminding me that everything could disappear. I learned how money works years ago. Learning how to feel differently about it has taken much longer.

Now I see two entirely different money stories developing in my daughters. One saves almost everything and would duct-tape her shoes before buying another pair. The other works hard but believes life should also be enjoyed while you are living it. Same home, same parents, completely different relationships with money.

That has convinced me that our families may shape our money stories, but they do not have to write the ending. The real work is deciding what deserves to be carried forward: keep the discipline but loosen the grip, keep the gratitude but lose the guilt, and keep the good lessons without automatically passing along the fear.

We did not choose the money story we were handed. We do, however, get a vote on how it ends.

Most of the trouble I've gotten into, at work or anywhere else, came from opening my mouth about five seconds too soon.

I'm not a think-before-you-speak guy. Never have been. I talk fast, and half the time I'm three words into a sentence before my brain's had a chance to look at it.

I read something once that I try to use. Before you speak, ask yourself three things: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?

People like to credit that one to Socrates, or to Rumi. Truth is nobody really knows who said it first — it's been kicking around for a couple hundred years at least, showing up in old sermons and Victorian poems long before anybody put a famous name on it. Doesn't much matter who said it. It's still right.

Simple as that. But I use it to this day. Is it true, or is it just the story I made up about what happened? Is it necessary, or does it just feel like it needs saying because I'm annoyed? Is it kind — not soft, just controlled, can I say the hard thing without being a jerk about it?

I still mess this up all the time. But on the days I actually stop for five seconds before I talk, the conversation goes somewhere better. People bring me stuff sooner. I show up more like the guy I meant to be that morning instead of whoever stress turns me into by the afternoon.

Three questions. Five seconds. Doesn't sound like much. It's more than it sounds like.

There is a drawer in my office that tells a very honest story about me. Inside it is a beautiful e-ink tablet that promised paper without the limitations. I spent an entire Saturday setting it up, organizing notebooks, syncing calendars, and learning gestures I would forget by Tuesday. Two weeks later, it was in the drawer.

The problem was not the technology. My paper planner was simply easier. It was already open on my desk. No power button, no loading screen, and no decision about which digital notebook contained the thing I needed.

I still use digital tools for calendars, email, shared documents, and anything involving other people. But digital systems are often better at capturing everything than helping us decide what actually matters. A digital task list will politely hold ninety-seven priorities. A sheet of paper makes that kind of self-deception harder.

So before the inbox starts voting on my day, I write down the three things that matter most. The best productivity system is not the smartest or most impressive one. It is the one you actually use. The tablet stays in the drawer, and the paper planner stays open.

That is not nostalgia. That is data.

The people who trust us longest are often the ones we pay attention to least. Here's what that cost me, and what it might be costing you.

The Client I Lost Because I Thought Loyalty Was Permanent A story about the quiet ways trust slips away, and why loyalty is something we keep earning through attention, humility, and follow-through.

I accepted the Teaching Hospital Director role at Iowa State's veterinary hospital in 2024. I had a good job at the time, one I respected, working with people I liked.

What made the decision easy wasn't dissatisfaction. It was the sense that I'd built up enough career capital over the years — enough different rooms, enough hard problems solved — to actually be useful somewhere new and different. Not a bigger version of what I'd already done. A different kind of challenge entirely.

That's usually how the best opportunities present themselves. Not as an escape from something bad, but as a place where what you've accumulated finally has somewhere new to go.

Closing in on two years in, that's still what gets me up in the morning — not proving I made the right call but putting that career capital to use on a genuinely different problem.

Early in my career, I ran a clinic in Huntington, West Virginia, and by any normal measure, I had it made. Good pay, clients who trusted me, a schedule I could set my watch to.

But I wanted more say in the decisions that actually shaped the place — who we hired, what the culture looked like, where we were headed. So I started my own practice.

That decision wasn't about the job being wrong. It was about wanting the kind of responsibility that comes with real ownership, not just the trust that gets loaned to you when you're good at your job. Every hiring choice, every dollar, every hard call — all of it became mine, along with the wins.

I think the best opportunities aren't the ones you take to escape something. They're the ones you take because you want more room to build.