Keep the vehicle and stretch the timeline

1. The question owners bring

One of the questions owners raise most is this: "I do not know whether my vehicle, the business I am in, is enough for the goal I am trying to reach." Put the other way round: "With the skills I already have, how big a peak can I climb?"

2. The bigger the goal, the fewer the paths

The picture. The number of ways up shrinks as the climb gets bigger:

• A foothill. There are literally unlimited ways up.
• A larger hill. There will be fewer ways, potentially, depending on how jagged the hill is.
• The highest mountain in the world. Knowledge of that mountain is admittedly thin here, but there are, it is said, probably one or two paths that actually reach the summit.

The same picture in money. Set against goals, it runs like this:

The goal	The paths, as stated here
$1 million a year	Basically unlimited: you can get there whatever way you want
$10 million a year	Called still pretty limited; and yet almost every business is said to be able to reach it
$100 million	Slightly less so, with the qualifier "if it's enterprise value, yes"; but there is usually an adjacent version of your business
A trillion-dollar company	You would pretty much have to build a global technology product; there is really no other way

What an adjacent version looks like. Take a brick-and-mortar store. You say you cannot get to a $100 million business. With one store, no; with 20 you could. That is the idea: probably just a tiny variation on the existing business could get you there.

A second adjacent version: buy up the market. If your market is split among many small players, and many of their owners are getting old and retiring, there might be chances to buy competitors or their distribution, and that route is probably where the most leverage lies for reaching ten times your current sales. First check how reliably your business buyers keep buying, since the plan leans on them. Consolidating brings economies of scale and room to undercut on price, and the larger company becomes an attractive target for a buyer in its turn. Buying a whole customer base from owners who are retiring is SOP 180 — Decide whether to buy or build the next product, section 7.

So, depending on the size of your goal, the path can vary.

3. Most goals fit the vehicle you have

For most people, the goal is not a trillion dollars. What most want is more like this: enough to be free, enough to have the time they want, and so on. So, unless your goal is the trillion, almost all of what the method goes on to offer will work in your existing vehicle.

Years lost by being half in. The warning that goes with it: so many owners waste years on the business they are already in because they do not commit to it. They keep it on the side, half in and half out, like a relationship they are only half in, instead of going all in. Go all in, it is said, and you would reach where you want to go far faster. Instead people spend years not going all in, when, had they gone all in from day one, they would already be there.

4. When the owner is not sure it is worth it

The model question is framed on SOP 184, section 7.4. What it sounds like, briefly: you cannot do more, and the reason is doubt. You are not sure it is worth it, or not sure it will get you to your bigger goals. You started the business a few years ago, it is not what you thought it would be, and you are not in love with it anymore. Stories are offered to reframe that.

An early client. He was one of the first ten or so people to sign on as a client. At the time of the conversation, he said he would do it, but he had just paid $10,000 to someone else to help him start an online fitness business. Something was doing $4,000 a month (section 9); they were losing money every month. He had a one- or two-year-old and another child on the way. He worked a job from nine to five, and worked at the gym from 5 a.m. to 9 and again from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.: all the hours he was awake.

The question put to him: if what you are about to be shown made you the money you want, would you even do this online fitness thing? His answer: no, he would quit it in a second.

What the story is for. Sometimes there is nothing wrong with the model at all. Model here means the kind of business you are in: moving from insurance into wealth management, say, or from making content to starting a social media marketing agency. A switch of that kind is called a gigantic risk, and it is judged extremely likely that you would level off right where you are now, with the skill you have now.

So ask instead: if your current business could make the money you want, would you like it more? A lot of times the answer to that is yes. Then that is the thing to solve.

5. The limits are real

There will, for sure, be limits to how big one specific business can get. Local businesses are typically the examples used, the reason given being that anything online can pretty much reach so much more. Online there is more complexity and more skill to learn, but, proportionally, you have the whole internet and the whole world.

Build a restaurant and you will not make as much money as you would with a global AI company. If what you want is to be a trillionaire, a restaurant is not going to be the path. In that case, it is said, if not doing it would leave you really sad, you might as well not be sad, and be happy instead.

6. Built wrong, not in the wrong business

A perspective offered for some of you: sometimes the reason the business you have cannot grow is that you built it wrong. There is nothing inherently wrong with the industry you are in, as such.

The pasta tower. A small exercise: build a building out of pasta, as fast as you can, with, reportedly, 10 minutes to do it. People team up, and the towers come out at different heights. Then come the questions:

The question	The answer offered
Had you had a full day, would you build it differently?	Usually yes
With a full day, could you build a bigger building?	Yes
Could you triple your 10-minute tower?	Usually no

The reason: building things fast at the start does not mean you built them for scale. You have to build things differently.

The foundation. A hundred-story building needs stories dug below ground for its foundation: the deeper the foundation, the higher the building can go. Now compare a two-story house with that hundred-story building. The house is two stories above the ground before the big building has finished its foundation, five stories down. Early on, the house's builder brags to the one down in the pit, going negative to lay the foundation: "Look how much faster I grew." Then the big building blows past. The early lead leaves out how long something big takes to build.

The line to write down. The route that gets you to $10 million a year fastest is not the route that gets you to $100 million fastest.

Built only to get by. In one case, a business hit a wall. It had not been built to get to 100; it had been built only to not be poor. It worked for the one who built it, but it was not built with any strategy. Had the aim from the start been a $100 million business, it would have been built differently, but that was not known when it started.

7. Stretch the timeline

The extreme case. Take the restaurant against the AI company again, at its far end. The owner of a restaurant chain owns all of its locations, and the real estate under many of them, and has been selling the same food for 45 years. Most people looking at that business would say they are not sure it is the best opportunity vehicle. But do anything long enough and you get pretty good; he got pretty darn good: one of the best anywhere, it is said, at his own dishes. He started from a brick-and-mortar restaurant, arguably the hardest kind of business to scale, and still became what is called a deca-billionaire. It took him 45 years.

The point. Most of the times, the goals you already have can be reached if you simply stretch the timeline. The worth of steady progress toward a goal, made by laying the right foundation, is wildly underestimated. Your business might have no flaw except for the timelines and expectations you have set for it.

Most owners are not out to build the next AI company worth a trillion dollars. A business of $10 million, or of $100 million, would do for most people. If that is you, then everything the method goes on to offer would apply to you and work for you. What you need to change is the expectations around it.

8. Where this sits

• Testing whether the market really is the limit, the question before this one: SOP 190 — Check whether the market is really too small.
• The early stages, where laying the foundation is called crucial even when it feels slow: SOP 183 — Find your stage by headcount and see what graduates it.
• Choosing the market before you build anything at all: SOP 1 — Pick the market before the offer.

9. What this page does not decide for you

• What was doing $4,000 a month in the early client's case. Not established on this page.
• What "if it's enterprise value" changes for a $100 million goal. Not established on this page.
• How long a timeline is long enough. This page gives no figure for how far to stretch one.
• How to build for scale from the start. Not established on this page.

10. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	Name your goal in money, and see what size of climb it is; look for an adjacent version, such as more locations or buying up a fragmented market
2	Unless the goal is the trillion, almost all of the method is said to work in the vehicle you have
3	Check whether you are half in; years are said to be lost that way
4	Ask: if this business could make the money you want, would you like it more?
5	Before changing businesses, weigh the gigantic risk, and how extremely likely a plateau at the same spot is
6	Ask whether the business was built fast rather than built for scale
7	Look at your timelines and expectations before you call the vehicle wrong

11. What this page does not cover

Compounding is set out on SOP 199 — Build a compounding vehicle. Keeping customers is not covered on this page.