My First Million
The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.
Correct Lesson Learning Framework
A systematic approach to evaluate whether someone is drawing the correct conclusions from their experiences, rather than just having experiences.
How It Works
Most people experience events but learn incorrect lessons due to cognitive biases, self-serving narratives, or misattributing causation. Success comes from accurate pattern recognition.
Components
Listen for the lesson someone claims to have learned
Ask: 'Do you think that's the right lesson to learn from that?'
Evaluate if their conclusion follows logically from the facts
Check if they're attributing success/failure to controllable vs. random factors
Look for patterns across multiple experiences
When to Use
Evaluating potential hires, partners, or investments. Assessing your own learning patterns. Post-mortem analysis of successes and failures.
When Not to Use
Early in relationships before you have enough data points. When emotions are too high for objective analysis.
Anti-Patterns to Avoid
Example
“Someone says they learned to 'fail fast' from their startup failure, but the real lesson might be 'validate demand before building' - the speed wasn't the issue.”
Related Knowledge
Acquire and turn around distressed luxury brands
Transformed brand with luxury margins (75%+), global distribution, and sustainable competitive moat
Build trusted business relationships entirely through digital interactions
Trusted business partnerships conducting significant transactions without ever meeting in person
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Brand as Moat Strategy
Using brand power as a primary competitive moat instead of technology or network effects, particularly effective in luxury goods where perception drives value.
Service-to-Product Acquisition Strategy
Using profits from a service business to systematically acquire better businesses with recurring revenue and product characteristics.
Diagnostic Authority Model
When you can diagnose a problem for someone, you gain more authority and sales leverage than if they already know they h