Your Next Business Breakthrough Is Hiding in Plain Sight

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“Whoa, this actually really fits what we already know how to do.”

Most people go looking far and wide for their next big opportunity.

They’ll spend hours researching a hotter industry or listening to whatever strategy the newest marketing guru swears by on a podcast. But the owners who make real moves usually find it closer to home.

I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been able to help an owner scale by taking a second look at their bank statements, customer lists, or businesses they’ve already written off.

In fact, there’s usually a pattern connecting some of the biggest breakthroughs we’ve seen in the Academy and Boardroom. Let’s see if you can find it for yourself…

Tihana and her husband both work remotely for a fitness company, but they knew they wanted to own something for themselves. That’s when they found us.

When they started searching, their deal box (the criteria every deal has to clear) began with an industry: pet businesses. Grooming, boarding, anything in that world. The trouble was, those deals barely showed up. And when they did, they moved fast and often went to PE at prices they couldn’t swing.

Then a mobile swim school in Los Angeles came across their screen.

It failed the box on sight. Wrong industry, slightly below the revenue target.

A few weeks later, they did something most people don’t. They took another look. And this time they ran it against a different question: what are we already good at? She and her husband spend their workdays managing independent contractors remotely, and the swim school ran on independent contractors, managed remotely.

“Whoa, this actually really fits what we already know how to do.”

The schedule fit too.

The business does the most revenue in the warm months and slows down after, which lines up with the months they spend in Europe with family each year. A business with a storefront or a year-round grind would’ve been a dealbreaker.

The lesson: Fit first, industry second. Build your deal box around what you already know how to run, and the right business can show up in an industry you never would’ve searched.

Alex Ramon has been a successful magician for 25+ years.

During that time, he’d built up investments in real estate, stocks, even crypto. But something bugged him. Those assets could grow his net worth, he said, but “they don’t necessarily put cash in my pocket.”

When he joined the Contrarian Academy, he had no idea what to buy. And while he initially started looking at service businesses, nothing stood out. After all, he was a magician. And there’s not a lot of overlap between magic and plumbing…

So Codie gave him what we call the Venmo Challenge: open your bank statements, find what you spend the most money on, and look to buy something in that space.

For Alex, the answer jumped right off the page.

Every year he spent a chunk stocking branded merch to sell after his shows. Shirts, hats, beanies, totes. That led him to a custom branding and merch company just 35 minutes from his house.

This is the Satellite Acquisition Model. It’s where you start with 1 core business, then buy the businesses around it. The stuff you used to pay for becomes something you own.

With Alex, magic was the core and merch was the satellite. And satellites don’t just serve the core. Alex now uses his entertainment network to land merch drops for influencers and touring artists, something the shop never chased before.

“It’s pretty cool to not only learn from the community but to have them support the business I bought because of them.”

The lesson: Your bank statement doubles as a deal list. The thing you keep paying for could become the first satellite around the business you already have.

Ian Mayer started his home inspection company after his employer relocated out of state with no real package for him. He had a wife, 2 kids, and a mortgage.

His reason for going out on his own? So “nobody can lay me off again.”

For 5 years he ran it solo, before eventually building a team of inspectors. Then he hit a wall. The same revenue ceiling of about $1M, 4 years in a row.

“I could see where I wanted to go. But it felt like there was a bridge with missing pieces.”

At our Growth Accelerator Workshop, the missing piece clicked. Ian had built a business optimized for activity, not value.

He’d always ranked customers by number of inspections, because that’s just what his software spit out. So his time and marketing went to the agents who sent the most jobs, which usually meant smaller, lower-margin deals.

So after attending the workshop and getting advice, he sorted the list by revenue instead.

“And I went, oh.”

A small group of luxury real estate agents jumped to the top. Fewer jobs, but bigger homes with pools, guest houses, and add-ons stacked on every booking.

“I always thought luxury was the icing. But it was actually the cake all along.”

And he already had something those clients wanted. Because Ian had built a team, he could send 5 or 6 inspectors to one property and finish in a few hours.

That’s convenience, one of the 5 levels of what we call the Rich Desire Pyramid. Wealthy customers buy for scarcity, privacy, exclusivity, convenience, or status. Ian’s offer hit one of them, and it was enough.

He stopped marketing to the wrong crowd and pointed his whole team at the agents who brought in the most, leading to a record month and 40% YoY growth.

The lesson: Volume feels like progress. Revenue per customer tells you the truth. Re-sort your list, find who’s carrying you, and ask which level of the pyramid you’re already giving them.

We’re hosting a monthly Growth Accelerator Workshop in Austin, Texas so you can gather together with our advisors and get a custom action plan for your next 90 days.

Over 2 days, you’ll learn:

And while it’s too late for October’s workshop, you can still snag a spot for November and December HERE.

We’re only taking businesses already doing $500K or more in revenue, but if you think you’re a good fit, hit the link above to apply.

In 2023, Erik Swift bought a concrete restoration business that had barely changed since the 1990s.

Unfortunately, that means it ran without systems or documentation. “Everything was in their heads,” he told us.

Erik had a hidden superpower though. He’d spent his whole career developing a Zone of Genius in project management, construction ops, and software. Which meant instead of trying to hire out ops, he could do it himself.

He spent his first year deep in the weeds, doing the estimating and the books so he could fully understand the business. Then he got to work streamlining.

He developed a plan to pull three 3 critical levers we talk about all the time:

Lever 1: Focus. He removed roughly half of their scope of work from active focus. The goal wasn’t to shrink the business. It was to concentrate effort where it mattered most and scale those segments up.

“I wanted to focus on higher margin items.”

This had 3 effects:

The goal was to grow revenue while doing fewer jobs, better.

Lever 2: Pricing. Next, with some encouragement and reassurance from our advisors, he raised prices by about 40%.

The extra margin paid for better materials and better work. So when a job went sideways, he could eat the cost of having them redone instead of patched.

“I try to think of every customer as the first and the last.”

His Google reviews went from about 20 to 85, at 4.9 stars.

Lever 3: Systems. This is where his Zone of Genius really paid off. The business had previously run on paper, so Erik used his software background to digitize how jobs got estimated, scheduled, and invoiced.

Then he handed decisions to his team. “If there’s a tool that they can buy for $100 or less, they don’t have to ask me. Just go do it.”

Good systems build a team that always knows what to do, so they don’t have to run every little decision through you. That’s how a company can run smoothly without chaining the owner to a desk 100 hours a week.

The lesson: Order matters. Simplify the business before you systematize it, and start with the levers your Zone of Genius already knows how to pull.

Tihana had already passed on the swim school. Once they reframed their deal box, the same listing looked completely different.

Alex had been looking at his bank statements for years, but it took Codie’s Venmo Challenge for him to see a deal in them.

Ian’s software had been spitting out the same customer list for years, until one workshop got him to sort it by revenue instead of volume.

And Erik? He was already sitting on his Zone of Genius when he bought. He just needed some guidance on which levers to pull first.

None of these owners had to reinvent the wheel. They just needed someone to shed light on what was hiding in front of them all along.

Most people are just a second look away from the thing they’ve spent years searching for.

Your next growth step might be staring you right in the face. So before you go on an epic quest to find your “big” move, look at your P&L. And if you need help, we’re right here.

- Team Contrarian

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