My First Million
The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.
“You want to be the second owner of a hotel”
What It Means
Let someone else take the risk and cost of building something, then buy it when they go bankrupt or need to sell
Why It Matters
Avoid the massive costs, risks, and decision fatigue of custom construction by buying existing quality assets
When It's True
When dealing with capital-intensive assets like real estate, hotels, or custom-built businesses
When It's Risky
When existing assets don't meet your specific needs or when timing the market poorly
How to Apply
Look for distressed sales of high-quality assets
Let others take the depreciation hit of new construction
Focus on buying proven assets rather than building custom
Wait for motivated sellers who need liquidity
Example Scenario
“Instead of building custom $5M house and losing 30% on sale, buy existing luxury home that someone else built and took the depreciation hit on”
Related Knowledge
Audience-Accelerated Business Acquisition
Investment strategy where you buy existing profitable businesses and use your audience/influence to dramatically accelerate their growth rather than starting from scratch.
Influencer-Business Synergy Multiplier
Strategic combination where a mediocre-to-good business paired with the right influencer creates exponentially greater value than the sum of parts.
CEO Management Error Classification
Framework for determining when to intervene with hired CEOs by classifying potential errors as either fatal (business-ending) or non-fatal (learning opportunities).
Scale local service business from $13M to $140M revenue
10x revenue growth while maintaining service quality and building systematic training programs
Buy an existing profitable business as career transition from corporate job
First-year profit exceeds highest corporate salary while building long-term sellable asset
Farm vs Market Price Mental Model
When you own a cash-flowing business, ignore daily market price fluctuations and focus on the underlying business fundamentals, like a farmer would ignore random offers for their productive farm.