17x founder. 9 exits (3 to Berkshire). I build companies worth owning. Matthew 22:37 • Weekly newsletter ↓
Dallas, TX + Los Cabos, MX
Joined July 2009
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You can’t judge a business from the driveway.
The car, the plane, and the house don’t tell you whether the company works without its owner.
Give me 12 minutes, and I’ll show you how to build one that can.
Vic Keller retweeted
His friends made less money than him and drove Ferraris. He kept living on a budget.
@vickeller on why rich is loud and wealth is quiet:
“If you go from making 10,000 a month to 100,000 a month, man, don't take a big distribution. Pour every dollar back into the company.”
The money wasn't for him to get richer. It was to build wealth in the business.
(Via The Grant Owen Podcast)
His first product left a car dealership with 1,600 flat tires.
He sold 3 companies to Warren Buffett and then became a business partner with him.
I asked @vickeller to walk me through every level of building a business.
Level 1 - $0 - $10k
Level 2 - $10k - $100k
Level 3 - $1m - $10m
Level 4 - $10m+
Chapters:
00:00:00 What You Must Unlearn to Make Your First Dollar
00:01:31 How to Find Your First Customers
00:05:11 From $10K to $100K: Build a Real Business
00:06:07 Rich Is Loud, Wealth Is Quiet
00:10:18 The Founder-Dependence Trap
00:11:42 How to Build a Business You Can Sell
00:15:05 Build an Opportunity Top Talent Wants
00:17:54 How Vic Made His First Million
00:20:21 A Product Failure That Left 1,600 Tires Flat
00:22:32 How One Industry Led to Ten Companies
00:23:15 Train Your Customers, Not Just Your Team
00:26:28 The Skill That Scales Every Business
00:28:22 The Character, Competency, Chemistry Framework
00:31:54 The Flywheel From Seven to Eight Figures
00:33:32 Why AI Makes Eight Figures More Attainable
00:35:51 What Separates Seven-Figure and Eight-Figure Founders
00:38:01 What Vic Learned From Billionaire Partners
00:41:29 What Real Wealth and Generosity Look Like
00:46:40 The Secret to Retaining Exceptional Talent
You got good at AI. Really good.
But you don’t want to build a “tech” company.
Good. You don’t need to.
There are 36 million small businesses in America. Most of them haven’t touched AI and don’t have time to learn it.
Distributors. Manufacturers. Machine shops. Trucking companies. Commercial printers. Food processors. Roofers. Plumbers. HVAC. Pest control.
Real businesses run by real people. And a lot of them are getting punched in the face right now.
Costs are up. Margins are thin. Good people are hard to find. Invoices aren’t getting paid.
They don’t need a course. They need someone to walk in and fix something.
So go.
Sit with the owner. Ask questions. Find what’s costing them money or time. Then use what you know to solve it.
Solve a $10,000 problem for 100 businesses and you’ve built a $1 million company.
No app. No funding round. No code.
And if you’ve got the advanced AI skills but don’t know how to turn them into a business, my DMs are open.
I’ll put you in business.
Get out of your home/office. Go meet the people who run this country’s economy. They need you, now!
Move fast.
Vic Keller retweeted
His first product left a car dealership with 1,600 flat tires.
He sold 3 companies to Warren Buffett and then became a business partner with him.
I asked @vickeller to walk me through every level of building a business.
Level 1 - $0 - $10k
Level 2 - $10k - $100k
Level 3 - $1m - $10m
Level 4 - $10m+
Chapters:
00:00:00 What You Must Unlearn to Make Your First Dollar
00:01:31 How to Find Your First Customers
00:05:11 From $10K to $100K: Build a Real Business
00:06:07 Rich Is Loud, Wealth Is Quiet
00:10:18 The Founder-Dependence Trap
00:11:42 How to Build a Business You Can Sell
00:15:05 Build an Opportunity Top Talent Wants
00:17:54 How Vic Made His First Million
00:20:21 A Product Failure That Left 1,600 Tires Flat
00:22:32 How One Industry Led to Ten Companies
00:23:15 Train Your Customers, Not Just Your Team
00:26:28 The Skill That Scales Every Business
00:28:22 The Character, Competency, Chemistry Framework
00:31:54 The Flywheel From Seven to Eight Figures
00:33:32 Why AI Makes Eight Figures More Attainable
00:35:51 What Separates Seven-Figure and Eight-Figure Founders
00:38:01 What Vic Learned From Billionaire Partners
00:41:29 What Real Wealth and Generosity Look Like
00:46:40 The Secret to Retaining Exceptional Talent
A fun conversation! Thank you for having me @iamgrantowen
Full episode: youtu.be/cxbTW0hTw70
7/8
In 2024, five years after buying the company, I finally made that decision.
It completely transformed the business.
What aggravates me is how long I waited. I knew it needed to happen, and I still spent years trying to make everything else work first.
As a business owner with teams across several companies, I want people around me who can tell me I’m about to do something stupid.
The hard part is making sure they’ll do it a second time.
If I argue with every concern, interrupt the explanation, then go looking for somebody who agrees with me, I’m teaching the team exactly how to handle me.
Eventually I’ll have a room full of smart people waiting to hear what I think.
That’s an expensive way to talk to yourself.
Everybody says raise your prices.
One of the things I like to look at in my companies is favors.
The special report. The custom invoice. The rush order. The weekly call that somehow needs four of your best people.
Each one sounds reasonable. Put them all together and you’ve got a whole lot of work nobody’s charging for.
You can charge full price and still give the business away.
Before calling someone a great customer, ask the people who actually take care of them.
One trap for ambitious people: confusing access with responsibility.
You get invited to the meeting. Sit next to the founder. Hear how every big decision gets made.
But you never get to make one.
Five years later, you’re very experienced at watching somebody else lead.
Find people who’ll teach you, then trust you with something that matters.
I used AI this week to compare suppliers, packaging costs and shipping estimates for a launch.
Here’s a business model I’d be nervous about: charging a premium because the customer hasn’t had time to shop around.
I’ll still pay for someone who can fix the wrong shipment, protect the deadline and own the problem.
But the customer being too busy to get a second quote?
That’s a fragile business plan.
I spent summers working HVAC and electrical with my dad.
Hanging air handlers. Setting condensing units. Running wire.
I love these businesses. So I’d like more acquisition pitches to answer one question:
Why would the people doing the work want you as their new owner?
Better tools? A better manager? A chance to grow?
“We got a good multiple” doesn’t do much for the person you need showing up Monday.
Before you ask “Who missed this?” ask “What would have caught it sooner?”
A bad hire. A wrong invoice. A missed customer promise.
Accountability should improve the next result. If all it produces is a nervous meeting, you bought fear and called it management.
If every hire has to arrive fully trained, your company is depending on somebody else to develop talent.
Before the next hire, name the person who will teach them. Define what they should be able to do in 90 days.
“We hire great people” is only half a strategy.
“We’ll improve operations after we buy it.”
Great. Who is “we”?
Which person can fix the problem? What will they need? What has already been tried?
A spreadsheet can show the upside. It can’t do the work.
Underwrite the operator as hard as the opportunity.
Stating the obvious here, but the dopamine hit I get from using AI to actually accomplish something is unreal. I find myself looking for more things to do just to experience it again.
Want to build massive enterprise value? Try spending 90% of your time on people.
Recruiting exceptional talent. Developing the people you have. Putting them in a position to win.
“But who handles everything else?”
That’s who you’re developing or hiring.
Talent is how your ambition gets bigger than your calendar.