My First Million
The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.
Wait for Your Pitch Strategy
Like Ted Williams mapping his batting average by strike zone, identify your 'sweet spot' opportunities and only swing at those, passing on everything else
Decision Rule
Only engage when the opportunity falls in your highest-probability success zone, no matter how many other opportunities you pass up
How It Works
Most people overestimate their hit rate across all opportunities. By mapping your actual success rates by opportunity type, you can focus only on areas where you have genuine advantages
Failure Modes
Feeling pressure to be active and swinging at marginal opportunities
Not tracking your actual success rates by opportunity type
Defining your sweet spot too narrowly and missing adjacent opportunities
Letting emotions override data when great opportunities arise
Example Decision
“Trader passes on 50 deals that seem 'pretty good' to wait for the 3 deals per year that fall in their sweet spot, resulting in higher overall returns despite lower activity”
Related Knowledge
People buy value not price
Focus on creating genuine value rather than competing on price
Value vs Uniqueness Business Matrix
A 2x2 matrix plotting business opportunities on axes of total value (y-axis) and uniqueness (x-axis) to determine strate
Light User vs Heavy User Funnel Strategy
Strategic positioning framework where businesses deliberately avoid heavy users who demand low margins and instead focus
Systematically expose yourself to different worldviews to avoid becoming cynical and maintain fresh perspectives
Regularly discovering new business ideas, maintaining curiosity, avoiding the 'old bear' mentality, and finding unexpect
Build a profitable newsletter business from scratch using subject matter expertise
Newsletter generating $10M+ annually with 30k+ subscribers paying $600+ per year, growing organically without paid adver
Transparent vs Opaque Opportunity Assessment
Opportunities are either 'windows' (transparent, can see outcome clearly) or 'doors' (opaque, unknown what's behind).