My First Million

The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.

Audience-Accelerated Business Acquisition

Reusability

Investment strategy where you buy existing profitable businesses and use your audience/influence to dramatically accelerate their growth rather than starting from scratch.

How It Works

Your audience acts as a free marketing budget. Instead of paying for customer acquisition, you leverage existing trust and reach to drive leads directly to the acquired business.

Components

Find businesses you personally use and believe in

Ensure business is already profitable and working

Buy minority or majority stake at fair valuation

Use audience to drive qualified leads to business

Track attribution to measure impact

Reinvest profits into next acquisition

When to Use

When you have significant audience trust, the business model aligns with your audience needs, and the business is already fundamentally sound and profitable.

When Not to Use

When you lack audience trust, the product is poor quality (audience will quickly abandon), or when the business model doesn't match your audience demographics.

Anti-Patterns to Avoid

Buying businesses solely because they're cheap without audience fitPromoting products you don't personally use or believe inFocusing on valuation over business fundamentalsTrying to fix broken business models instead of accelerating working ones

Example

“Sean bought minority stake in Shepherd, a remote hiring platform. Using his podcast audience and newsletter, he drove 50%+ of new leads. Business tripled in value within 6-9 months, adding $35M+ in valuation.”