I’ve exited 5 businesses and built 2 billion-dollar businesses.
I scaled Teles properties from $300M to $3.4B in just 5 years by accidentally adding an extra zero on a spreadsheet.
But I’ve also watched 100s of businesses fail. In fact, I’ve had a business that failed too.
So here are the 7 biggest lessons I’ve learned from building businesses for 30 years:
1. Focus is more important than intelligence.
I believe that to do great things, we must do fewer things.
At acquisition(.)com, we use a formula to create singularity of focus:
More
Better
New
Do more of what’s working, then better, then new.
Most people just start at new, which is why they struggle to focus.
2. Your business moves at the speed of decisions.
I learned this decision-making framework from Richard Branson on Necker Island:
Understand the context
Before engaging with any problem, ask at least one question to get situational awareness.
What is going on here?
Skipping this step causes you to hallucinate the constraint and solve the wrong problem.
Isolate the issue
What is the single constraint that needs to be solved?
Accept the risks
What are the risks of making this decision?
Map where things can go wrong, understand the trade-offs, and then accept the risk.
Map the decision
Two questions must be answered before the decision is complete:
1/ What did we actually decide?
2/ What are the next steps?
If you cannot answer both clearly, you have not finished making the decision.
Because a decision without action is just an opinion.
3. It’s not about the result. It’s about the options.
My dad told me: “If you don’t know your options, you don’t have any.”
This is why it’s not about the exit, it’s about the options. Building your business for an exit isn’t about the exit itself.
It’s the options it gives you, should you ever want to sell.
And remember, not selling is also an option.
4. You only have to get rich once.
I’ve watched the smartest people get rich, lose everything, and spend years rebuilding from zero again. But the skill that gets you rich doesn’t disappear even if the money does.
Because if you can learn it, it’s a skill. If it’s a skill, you can teach it.
5. Package the value into a value proposition.
Let me give you some examples:
Geico’s is: “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance.”
Alpha School’s: “We’ll make you two times smarter in two hours a day.”
Our value proposition at Teles that helped us scale to $3.4B in sales was:
“If you can save one day a week, what would you do with another 52 days a year?”
If you can’t explain your value proposition in one sentence, you don’t understand it.
And if you don’t understand it, your customer won’t understand it either.
6. Finding A-players is a skill.
You only have to pay roughly 20% more to get an A-player, but they deliver 20 times that value.
Now you might be wondering how you can actually find A-players.
Well, there are three things I do in interviews:
I ask: “Can you teach me something?”
I want to see how they think and communicate.
“How did you prepare for this interview?”
The hardest trait to find in people is the give-a-damn factor. It’s the hardest thing to teach and the easiest thing to spot in an interview.
This question helps me see if they have the trait.
And I watch whether they ask about contribution instead of compensation.
Because A-players will always ask questions about how much they can contribute to the organization.
7. A good leader defines what good looks like.
When someone on your team isn’t delivering… take responsibility for them failing, and they will succeed faster.
Show them 3 memos you consider gold standard instead of writing them up.
Show them how to write the email with 3 examples.
Because here’s the thing:
It’s our job as a leader to define what good looks like.
This applies to your team, and even when you’re talking to AI.
If you don’t define good, they’ll only do what they could.
And my biggest lesson of all:
The businesses that win are the losers that tried one more time.
Just keep going. Not giving up is the most heroic thing you can do.
If you enjoyed this post, I talk about how to build a big business with a small brand in this next one:
How to Build a Big Business With a Small Brand in 2026
It’s going to get harder and harder to get social impressions. But it’s not because people will stop using social media…