My First Million
The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.
Farm vs Market Price Mental Model
When you own a cash-flowing business, ignore daily market price fluctuations and focus on the underlying business fundamentals, like a farmer would ignore random offers for their productive farm.
Decision Rule
If your business produces consistent cash flow and you know its fundamental value, ignore market volatility and focus on operational performance.
How It Works
Stock prices reflect market emotion and speculation, but business value comes from actual cash generation. Daily price movements are noise, not signal about business quality.
Failure Modes
Selling good businesses during market downturns
Getting distracted by price movements instead of business performance
Confusing paper wealth changes with actual business deterioration
Making emotional decisions based on stock ticker movements
Example Decision
“Andrew's stock dropped 50% but the underlying business fundamentals remained strong. Instead of panicking, he focused on business operations and ignored the 'yokels at the fence' offering different valuations daily.”