Every bad customer is a loan you took out against your best one. That's Customer Debt. The 6 client types to fire, ranked from annoying to fire on sight.
Every service business has a ceiling. Karen Kaminski hit hers 4 times, then built past it. 5 lessons on scaling from 1 salon suite to 3 businesses.
The 24-Hour Rule Waiting can be expensive... We've watched a lot of owners lose deals. Almost none of them lost because they made the wrong call. They lost because they made the right call too late. The invoice you can't cover, the equipment that would double your output, or the ad you desperately need to run. You knew what to do, but you couldn't move. And each day you sat on it, the decision got heavier. Because waiting can feel like the cautious choice when it's actually holding you back. Don't take our word for it Ask the Fed. In a recent Small Business Survey , managing cash flow and credit access sit right behind rising costs as the thing keeping owners up at night. Here's something else that should grind your gears: that same survey found large-bank applicants wait the longest for a credit decision of any lender type. Not funding, just the decision to move forward or not. Meanwhile, community banks typically take 2 to 4 weeks for funding. And SBA loans? 30 to 90 days. Now, name one good opportunity that waited 90 days to get a yes... Yeah. That's what we thought. TOGETHER WITH SOFI This is why we tell owners to line up their capital access before they need it. Not when. Before. SoFi's Small Business Loan moves at the speed of your business, and you can get your funds within 24 hours after approval^ With loans up to $250K, and terms of 6, 12, 18, or 24 months: you get crystal clear pricing on the amount you need upfront. And if you pay it off early, there's no penalty. SoFi's Small Business Loans were built with small business owners in mind — like those with teams under 10 and annual revenue under $5M. (The exact people that banks often make wait the longest.) Because when your business moves fast, your money should too. Click HERE to apply for a SoFi Small
Most owners don't lose deals by making the wrong call; they lose by deciding too late. The 24-Hour Rule for making faster, better decisions.
Would You Buy This $40K Dessert Catering Business? She Walked Away From This Deal. Three Years Later, She Bought It for 90% Less. Meet Keely Keely McEnery didn't set out to make nitrogen ice cream at weddings and big events. She set out to study business. In 2021, she moved from Chicago to Houston for college. That’s where she first heard the phrase "entrepreneurship through acquisition," the idea that you could buy a business instead of building one from scratch. Like most of the other students though, she filed it away and kept going to class. While she was in school, she worked for a small experiential dessert catering company called Freezing Point Co. that used liquid nitrogen to make desserts and mocktails the star of the show. Working with the owner, she learned the business from the inside, and eventually started thinking bigger than just a part-time job. By 2022, she was ready to make an offer. She ran the numbers with a professor and came in at $90K , but the owner turned her down. Pre-COVID, she'd had offers around $400K, and she wasn't about to accept a fraction of that. So Keely walked. " We're not going to come to an agreement ," she remembers thinking. " This is kind of the end of the road. " She didn't slam the door on her way out, though. And the decision to stay in touch with her old boss is what made her an owner today. Don’t burn your bridges Keely didn't chase the deal after it fell apart. And she didn’t get mad and burn the bridge either. She just stayed in touch without an agenda, keeping the relationship warm for three years. That patience paid off when the owner eventually emailed Keely to say she was shutting the business down after COVID had gutted the events industry. Keely didn't let the email sit. She reached out, grabbed lunch, and asked
Keely walked away from this dessert catering deal, then bought it 3 years later for 90% less. Would you buy this $40K business? The full breakdown.
The 7-step hiring process you can steal to attract top talent The real problem isn’t hiring... I've hired well over 700 people, and honestly I've messed up a good chunk of those. After enough time though, most hires blur together... But it only takes a few disasters to change everything . In fact, my first hire was a HUGE mistake. It was back when I was still in Finance, and this guy must’ve been the worst hire in history. He was: Always late Rude to everyone Lazy as hell Openly disrespectful Talk about a bad fit! I got bamboozled, because he interviewed well enough and I was in a hurry to find someone. Ultimately, I had to sack up and fire him. It was a good lesson, but one that wasted time and could’ve easily been avoided. After one or two big blunders like that, you stop trusting your gut and start building a process. So here's the exact hiring playbook I run every time we bring on new talent, to make sure we’re getting the best of the best. Most founders skip this to hire on “vibes,” or stay out of the process entirely. Both are a mistake. Because if you have high turnover or poor performance, here’s the truth: You don't have a hiring problem. You have a filtering problem. You post a job, get 200 applicants, and by week 3 you're so sick of screening resumes you panic-hire the least terrible one. Then you act shocked when it doesn't work out... The fix isn't a punchier job title, or AI resume readers: it's filtering earlier , before you've even written a description. If you follow my 7-step process, you’ll be able to bring on (and keep) A-players, without wasting a ton of time blind-dating applicants. (Whatever you do though, DON’T skip step 6...) Step 1: Diagnose the problem. "We're overwhelmed" isn't a problem, it's a symptom. Find the actual bottleneck, and put a
The 7-step hiring process you can steal to attract top talent
Own or Be Owned: Build a business so good, it doesn't need you. Maybe I’m the problem... " Please don't tell anyone at the company about this. " I couldn’t believe I’d said that... It didn’t sound like me... But the words definitely came from my mouth... Thirty seconds earlier, my #2 told me he was resigning, making him the THIRD key-person in 30 days I’d lost. I hung up and put my head on the desk. Revenue was sliding, our team was a pile of mismatched parts, and the whole thing was running on duct tape and my own stubbornness. I was terrified that if anyone else saw how bad it was, they'd all walk too. I told myself the others who'd left weren't A-players, that we were better off without them. But this one was good. Really good. That's when it got ugly. Nobody talks to you like that little voice in your head at midnight, while you’re staring at a blinking courser and numbers that haven’t moved anywhere but down in the last 90 days... Maybe it's not the market. Maybe it's not the model. Maybe it's me. An old line kept looping in my brain: the fish rots from the head. That night, it finally landed. I wasn't the indispensable founder holding it all together, I was the bottleneck holding it all back. Worse, I was the bottleneck with a cape , playing hero and trying to do everything myself. Instead of building systems to empower my employees, I built walls preventing them from doing their jobs. We were failing, and it was my fault. So I took a big breath, and did something a little odd. I sat alone in the dark and imagined every single thing that could go wrong : employees gone, customers trashing the product publicly, broke, and me filling out job applications like it was 2009 again. That last one hurt the most. After all, I'd built my whole identity around being
Losing 3 key people in 30 days taught me this: I need to build a business so good it doesn't need me. The Own or Be Owned playbook for real freedom.
The Delusion Premium The Delusion Premium Why being “realistic" is holding you back. The kid sitting across from me couldn't even spell diligence. No joke, I'd seen him misspell it in three separate emails that week. Then the director walked into the Goldman conference room, clapped him on the shoulder, told him he'd earned a promotion, and asked me to be patient. I'd been doing most of his work for six months... That night I went to an expensive restaurant by myself, ordered a bottle of wine I couldn't really afford, and made the decision that ended up building most of my net worth. I was going to start acting delusional. Specifically, I was going to assume I deserved more than what the world was offering me, and I was going to behave that way until reality caught up. Three months later I asked for a raise so absurd my boss laughed in my face. I got half of it, which is to say I got way more than I would've gotten by staying quiet. Ten months after that I was buying into laundromats, car washes, and the kinds of unsexy cash-flowing businesses bankers love to make fun of at dinner parties. Today I own pieces of dozens of them. Those bankers still work for someone else. The delusion had to come first for any of the other skills to matter, and it cost me years to figure that out. And here's the line that really pisses people off: Spare me the manifestation TikToks. I'm describing the kind of belief that lets you walk into a room, ask for the unreasonable thing, and act like the answer was always going to be yes. Most people roll their eyes at that sentence, but that eye roll is part of why their bank account looks the way it does. A guy on the internet said it better than most therapists This was bouncing around X a while back. And I think it's the subconscious line that
Being realistic might be the most expensive habit you have. The Delusion Premium: why irrational self-belief pays, and how to earn yours.
How a Career SBA Underwriter Built a Lending Desk That Makes Banks Compete Meet Jordan: He Can Save You Thousands On Your Loan Jordan has spent his entire career inside the SBA machine. Credit union Loan packager Legacy underwriting team at a bank A CDC doing 504 loans 7(a), 504, express, and even micro loans. If the SBA funds it, Jordan has underwritten it. Then he saw what most SBA veterans never see: a community full of buyers who were serious, educated, and hungry to close. So he joined Contrarian Thinking to build our lending desk from scratch. Most communities point you to a broker and wish you luck. We hired one. He's on a mission to help our Academy and Boardroom members learn how to buy a business with the best terms possible , so you can build your dream without sacrificing your whole paycheck every month. You don't get this anywhere else. If you’re part of the Academy or Boardroom, you automatically get access to a guy who could save you $75K over the life of your loan (more on that later) without you having to do any of the work. Our community loves this guy: 45 days in, he's got 402 applicants in his pipeline, and he's about to start funding deals. Here's what he's learned about helping people secure SBA loans, and what he wants you to know before you ever sign a loan doc. FREE EVENT Wednesday, July 15th at 11am CST , Codie is hosting a FREE webinar to teach you how to scale your business without adding employees or hours. She's walking you through the 5 levers you can pull to accelerate growth without adding more stress. In only 90 minutes, you’ll: 1. Diagnose What's Actually Holding You Back Most owners guess at their bottleneck and fix the wrong thing. We'll show you how to find the real constraint before you waste another quarter on it. 2. Find Your
A career SBA underwriter built a lending desk that makes banks compete for your loan. How Jordan saves business buyers thousands on SBA financing.
Deal Reps & Muscle Memory Ask any experienced buyer in our Academy how many deals they looked at before finding the one . The answer is almost always the same. "Probably a couple hundred." Not 10. Not 50. Over a hundred. The first time you hear that, it sounds like a warning... Like maybe this whole "business buying thing" is harder than you thought it would be. But here's the truth: that big, scary number is just your admission ticket. See, a lot of people think the entire goal is to find a business in their price-range. (It’s not.) So they only look at the sell price, ignoring all the dirty details behind the actual business. Weeks go by, and they finally see something they can afford. But when they get into the nitty-gritty, everything falls apart. Because you can't wish your way into dealmaking fluency. You have to do the reps first. And it's not just deals. Expertise in any complex skill comes from shots on goal. If you never actually shoot, what are the chances your first try is going to be a slam dunk? You have to start by doing the thing badly, then less badly, then better, then well. Until the pattern recognition becomes automatic. Don’t believe me? We’ve got the research to prove it. Build Your Deal Muscles (With Science!) In 1993, psychologist K. Anders Ericsson published what would eventually become one of the most influential studies in performance science. He wanted to know what separated elite performers from everyone else. Was it talent? Natural ability? Some innate gift? What he found was far less romantic, but 100% more useful. Expert performance, his research showed, was predominantly the result of prolonged, deliberate effort. You know how Steph Curry basically never misses a shot? That's not an innate gift. He worked his frickin' butt off to be
Experienced buyers review hundreds of deals before finding the one. Why deal reps build the muscle memory that makes buying a business easier.
How This Music Teacher Bought a Locksmithing School After His First Deal Fell Apart “I started picking locks at home, and just fell in love with the business of locksmithing.” Meet Austin Kebely Austin spent 8 years teaching music. Bachelor’s degree, credentials, and 2 years of subbing just to land a permanent classroom right as Covid turned it into a Zoom window. He loved teaching, but the system around it? Not so much. No amount of effort inside the classroom could fix what was broken outside. Then his wife found Codie on YouTube. For a year, they watched ordinary people buy the small, unglamorous businesses that run Main Street. So Austin stopped watching and joined Contrarian Academy . “Because I’m a teacher, I love to learn. That whole process was fun for me. It ignited the light.” The search took over a year, included a dead deal, and a bank that moved like molasses. Finally, on April 7, he closed on a locksmithing school. Let’s dive in... Buy the skill, not the trade Austin searched his lane first: daycares, tutoring centers, music stores, and dog training. But then a locksmithing school crossed his desk. “I don’t know locksmithing. But I’m an educator. I know how I learn. I know how I like to teach.” So before he bought the school, he enrolled in it . He took the courses as a student, studied how the lessons got built, and started picking locks at home for fun. And he saw what the listing couldn’t tell him: this isn’t a locksmithing business. It’s an education business that happens to teach locksmithing. Here’s the lesson : your transferable skill matters more than industry experience. Ask what the business actually does all day, not just what it sells. The bank buys the books, not the business Austin’s first deal looked great on paper. It was a dog training
Austin taught music for 8 years. After his first deal collapsed, he bought a locksmithing school. Why not every deal is the right one to jump on.
The Founding Owners The declaration of independent businesses July 4, 1776. A sweaty room full of rebels sign their names to one of the most important documents in history, committing treason against the most powerful empire on earth. We refer to these brave men as the Founding Fathers. But they were also owners. John Hancock inherited one of the largest shipping and import operations in the colonies. He owned a fleet of ships, a chain of retail stores, and hundreds of employees. As someone dependent on imports, he knew what it meant to operate in an unfair system stacked against the little guy. Especially when it came to that famous refrain, " No taxation without representation. " So when it came time to sign the Declaration, he didn't flinch. He wrote his name so big the King could read it without glasses. Owners aren't afraid to be seen. Benjamin Franklin ran a printing business that disseminated news across the colonies, and sold 10,000 copies of Poor Richard's Almanack a year, every year, for 25 years straight. He also owned 89 rental properties in Philadelphia, and franchised his print shops to other colonies for half the profits. We're not sure what came first, electricity or dividends... But by his early 40s, Franklin was pulling in an income reportedly equivalent to roughly $300,000 a year in today's dollars. As a man who built his fortune brick by brick, he exemplifies what's possible in America's economic system with a little know-how and elbow grease. George Washington ran his 8,000-acre estate at Mount Vernon like a vertically integrated business. Farming, milling, and distilling in one place made his whiskey distillery the largest in the country by 1799. Five copper stills, producing 11,000 gallons a year, were reportedly valued at roughly $120,000 in
The Founding Fathers were also founders: owners, operators, and dealmakers. What July 4, 1776 teaches about the link between ownership and freedom.
How a Weekend Side Hustle Became a 10-Person Firm She Never Meant to Build The accountant who built her firm by accident Meet Heather. "Believe it or not, not all of us went into business to be millionaires." Heather runs an accounting firm in Moore County, North Carolina. 12 years into the profession, she had a comfortable corporate job and zero plans to leave it. Then, about 4 years ago, she started freelancing on weekends. One client wanted Power BI dashboards, and a food truck needed its books done. Nothing she couldn't knock out on a Sunday afternoon. Then one person told two people. Who told two more. Who told two more . Pretty soon the side job outgrew her weekends. So she hired her first employee, Trisha, a semi-retired pro who wanted a part-time remote gig. Trisha did the work, Heather took a small cut, and everybody was happy. The day job stayed put. Then 2 solo accountants in her county passed away right at the start of tax season. Hundreds of local clients suddenly had nowhere to go, in a place already short on accountants. So Heather made a call: take a 3-month leave, do the returns, hire one more person, then head back to corporate. That's not what happened. Those clients told 10 more people, who told 10 more. By the time the dust settled she had "a whole dang firm," and the math on going back stopped making sense. Late last year she joined our Growth Boardroom to get help scaling operations. Here's what happened next. Growth rarely asks permission Heather sat down with her Boardroom coach, Carter, and laid out a goal she thought was ambitious: add about $100K in revenue this year, same as last year. Manageable. Reasonable. Carter told her she was thinking way too small, by a factor of 5. " I believe my exact words were , that sounds exhausting, " she
Heather's weekend freelancing accidentally became a 10-person accounting firm. How saying yes to the right clients built a business she never planned.
I Almost Didn't Tell You I Was Pregnant You don't see the part where I'm on the floor with a syringe. You don't see the part where I miss the window. You don't see the part where I have to ask a Navy SEAL to please just hold me because I cannot do it by myself. You only see the part where I post a video about how to build a business. So this is for all the mothers who had to go through difficulty, all those still trying, and all those who it never worked out for. I see you. So here’s the story. I’m 14 weeks pregnant. My husband and I are having a baby, and we’re thrilled. I want to say that out loud because I’ve spent years unable to. If you’ve spent years not being able to say something, anything , you know what comes next in the body before it happens. The tightening of the chest. The reach for the phone you shouldn’t be reaching for. The moment you almost tell the cashier at the grocery store, of all people, because she doesn’t know you, and you don’t have to perform for her. It’s not just about me though. It’s about us. My husband is a former Navy SEAL and the most capable man I know. He follows through on what he says, he doesn’t forget anything, and he fixes the things that break in our house and most of the things that break in our company. He fixes things for a living. He fixes things on principle. For years, I’ve had to tell him, over and over, that there was nothing he could fix. The thing was inside my body, and the doctors didn’t know yet whether it would work. There was no door he could break down, no plane he could call, no plan he could write that would solve a hormonal cycle that didn’t care about who he was. He had to sit on the edge of the bed and watch. It was damn hard on him too. One night, I had to look at him and say, “ Chris, I am not handling
Codie Sanchez on the part of the story you don't see: IVF, fear, and building businesses while trying to become a mother. A letter to the mothers.
How She Built a Multi-Million Dollar Wellness Practice After Going Bankrupt From Bankrupt to Multiple Millions Meet Dr. Mollie James She’s a former trauma surgeon and ICU doctor, and having spent the worst months of the pandemic in a Brooklyn ICU, she's the real deal. She’s also a kick-butt owner who’s grown James Clinic into a multimillion-dollar integrative and concierge wellness practice , doubled revenue every year since 2021, and grew a team from two people to 54. All of that AFTER she went bankrupt in 2018. Stud. She joined The Growth Boardroom last August, and the year since has been a masterclass in what separates a business babysitter from an elite operator. Let’s dive in... Being good at your job doesn’t make you an owner Dr. James opened her first two practices on a belief a lot of skilled operators share. “I'm excellent at what I do, so people will find me. We'll figure the rest out.” So she opened her doors without any marketing, sales, or SOPs... And went bankrupt. Most business owners would’ve thrown in the towel right there. Not her. Undeterred and passionate about helping people, she rebuilt. James Clinic opened in September 2021 with her as the care provider, one nurse, a laptop, a website, and a cell phone. When Delta hit the clinic scaled fast: 25 staff, 100 new patient consults a day, and roughly 4,000 patients treated in four months as a brand-new business. Then Omicron swept in, and revenue dropped 90% overnight. She had to cut the team down and rebuild again , this time centered around concierge and integrative care. That version has doubled every year since. Here’s the lesson: your skill is the product, but it’s not the business. The business is the vehicle that gets the product to the right people, prices it correctly, and keeps the lights on
Dr. Mollie James went from bankruptcy to a multimillion-dollar wellness practice, doubling revenue every year since 2021. Here's her comeback playbook.
The ONE Regret That Haunts You Forever Bill Perkins always knows exactly what to say to get you thinking. We were at a Main Street Over Wall Street event, surrounded by people who had already built businesses, bet on themselves, and done “hard” things. And Perkins, hedge fund manager and author of Die With Zero , stood up and said something that’s still clanging around in my head: "All of my regrets basically come down to one thing: whenever I didn't do my best . Whatever period of life you're in, if you've chosen a dream, do your fucking best to pursue it. " -Bill Perkins In a world where it feels like everyone’s looking at you and you’re one wrong move away from being memed, it’s easy to phone it in and play it safe. But you shouldn’t. Because that’s how you die with regrets. The Avoidance Trap Most people spend their lives afraid of the wrong kind of regret. They're terrified of failing, of looking stupid, or of putting real effort into something and having it not work out. So they hedge. They keep 1 foot in and 1 foot out, "think about it" for another year, and then try a half-assed version of the thing they actually want to do. And here's the painful irony: that avoidance is exactly what creates the regret they were trying to avoid. You won't regret trying and failing, but you WILL regret trying halfway. How To Minimize Regret Jeff Bezos figured this out in 1994. (You’ve heard of him, right?) As the story goes, he had a secure, well-paid job at a Wall Street hedge fund, when he had this crazy idea for an online bookstore. His boss warned him to think carefully before throwing it all away, so Bezos gave himself 48 hours and built what he called the Regret Minimization Framework . Here’s how it works: project yourself forward to age 80, look back, and ask 1
The ONE Regret That Haunts You Forever
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How She Beat Out An Industry Vet and Bought Her Dream Business for $65K "I'm a clean freak. I love laundry. I just didn't know that was a business plan." Meet Erin, Owner of Crossway Laundromat: Erin is a mom of three who taught elementary school for 15 years in Naples, Florida making about $70,000 a year. After beating cancer, the way she thought about time shifted dramatically, and she wanted to figure out a way to spend more of her life with family. So Erin spent a year searching, considered almost every business category imaginable, and even lost about $15,000 on a bad deal. Juuuust when it looked like it might not happen, she closed on a Tallahassee laundromat for $65,000. One month in: Tracking $250K in revenue Saved $8,000 a year on insurance, renegotiated immediately Projected $8,000+ from the vending machine (it was empty at closing) Found evidence of ~$30K in skimmed revenue she didn't know was missing Here's how she got there, and what it can teach anyone who thinks they have to go big to get going. The Year of False Starts. "Every other month I'd say, okay, now I'm looking at this one. My family thought I was the girl who cried wolf." Here's what Erin did before she bought anything: spun her wheels for a full year. (She also lost about $15,000 along the way.) On one deal, Erin put a deposit down, paid the attorney to review the lease, and then watched it all fall apart. Her husband was practically ready to stage an intervention. Which is why we tell every single member on day one: figure out what you want before you go shopping. I’ve talked about it before, but you absolutely MUST fill out your Deal Box. If you don't, you're gonna end up with a cart full of shiny bullshit that can't sustain you. And I know it can be tough to go through the process
Erin, a teacher and cancer survivor, beat an industry vet to buy her dream laundromat for $65K. How she won the deal and her advice for first-timers.
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