Just finished @ryanckulp’s new course “How to Buy, Grow, and Sell Small Companies”

https://t.co/wcX0zFXHgL

Here are some main takeaways + my verdict 👇

(1) Acquisition is the easiest path to entrepreneurship

Don’t have an idea? You don’t have to have one. Buy one.

Don’t know how to code? You don’t have to. Use revenue to outsource development.
Don’t have money? You don’t have to have any. Bring in an equity partner. Leverage a debt from family/friends, tech lender, or even the seller.

Capital is not an excuse.
(2) Acquiring has a few distinct advantages to building

Namely:
- Validated demand
- Leverage debt/equity partners
- Focus on going from 1-10, not 0-1
Validate demand:

Acquiring a business that has paying customers saves you the time and energy you would have spent trying to figure out if there was demand for it in the first place.

Acquiring skips that step altogether.
Don’t waste time building something no one wants to pay for.

It’s easy to be blinded by your infatuation with your idea.

Acquiring forces you to take a truly unbiased and logical look at a business.
Leverage debt/equity partners:

Buying a business doesn’t mean you have to fork over a big pile of cash or empty out your savings to buy outright.

In fact, it’s probably best if you don’t.
Leveraging debt and/or equity partners means you can buy a business 2-10x larger than you would have been able to just paying cash.

Use the profits to pay down debt and float until you can pay yourself and/or pay off your debt.
Focus on going from 1-10, not 0-1:

Going from 0 to 1 — building, validating, and launching something from scratch — isn’t everyone’s forte.

If maintaining, optimizing, and growing is though, acquiring might be a better option for you.
(3) Process is king

Maintaining, optimizing, and growing a business requires tried and true processes.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” — James Clear

https://t.co/AJhvBIHkvX

Managing multiple businesses makes this ring even truer.
Something that really stood out to me was *making your business ready to sell at any time.*

Getting ready to sell can act as a forcing function to optimizing your business in ways it should have before.
That churn? Yeah, it needs to be dealt with.

Who knows the passwords? Yeah, that needs to be stored somewhere safer.

Spaghetti code? Yeah, that’s a liability.
And when you buy a business, it’s go time. What’s your plan? Where do you start?

I love the approach outlined in the course.
Verdict?

100% worth it. I follow the rule that I don’t have a budget for books — I buy whatever book looks interesting because if there’s ever something to overspend on, it’s on enabling and bettering yourself.

And that applies to courses too.

Get it: https://t.co/wcX0zFXHgL
I’d also recommend @NathanLatka’s “How to be a capitalist without capital”

https://t.co/IsUWmgq5qh
Full blog post review coming soon :)
Btw I wrote this all from memory — good test to see how much is retained.

Also excited to join the Rainmakers Club: https://t.co/hUy8DgUl5x

More from Startups

The Beatles wrote “Yesterday” in less than a minute.

Led Zeppelin wrote “Rock And Roll” in 30 minutes.

The White Stripes, “Seven Nation Army”, 10 min during a soundcheck.

The Rolling Stones, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”, 40min.

Making a startup in 24 hours is perfectly fine.


I worked on my first startup for 2.5years. It was an events app. Sunk in cost and expectations were so high, that I had to close it, despite getting consistent revenue.

In comparison, I wrote @CryptoJobsList in 2 days. And it's way more meaningful than what I've been doing in my events startup for 2.5 years.

When I let go of my engineering ego and let go of expectations that I need to raise capital and hustle for 4+ years — I started lauching fast and interating fast without any expectations — then I started coming up with something truly meaningful and useful ✨

12 startups in 12 months by @levelsio
24 hour startup by @thepatwalls
— are great challenges that make you focus on the end product value, iterate fast and see what sticks and ruthlessly kill what does not work.
5 Micro Skills That Will Improve Your Life Drastically

// A THREAD //


Even the small things compound over time... and become huge.

And they become HUGE.

This is the list of small skills that will improve your life A LOT over time, you can't even imagine how much... before you give it a try.

I'll present the skills in form of mini challenges.


1. Type with all ten fingers 10 days - 10 mins in the morning.

Most of us spend a lot of our time behind the computer typing.

Yet, not many people know how to write with all ten fingers —> drastically faster.

You can learn it for free here:
https://t.co/ow2WTHrXBJ


2. Make at least one Zap

Zappier allows you to make micro workflows between the applications you use.

Let's say you have to calendars (work and normal) and you want to sync them all the time —> Zappier


2b. You send an email every month remind your customers to pay the maintenance fee + reminder them if they won't —> Zappier

You want an email notification every time someone edits a Google sheet —> Zappier

Basic version is free. @zapier

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