Tactic
Read business-for-sale listings to learn how real companies work
Shaan's self-education tactic: browse brokerage sites like Flippa, Empire Flippers, Quiet Light, and FE International. Sellers package full P&Ls, top SKUs, and growth tactics into a book, and the listings don't know if you're a real buyer or a kid just learning.
“You can go on here and it's a great way to get business ideas because you're just going to see a bunch of business you never thought about. Like, oh, these guys sell, you know, you know, it's a D2C diabetes brand. They sell, you know, products for diabetic, diabetic patients and they're doing $8 million a year of revenue, $4 million of profit. And here's their top 3 SKUs and here's how they grow and here's their P&L because they're trying to sell their business.”
Steal thisSign up as a buyer on Flippa / Empire Flippers / Quiet Light and read the deal books to reverse-engineer how profitable niche businesses actually operate.
Number
Friend bought a $300K business off Flippa, now doing $30M a year
Shaan describes a friend who bought a small but profitable e-commerce business for ~$300K on a Flippa-type site; via Facebook ads, new products and SEO fixes the owner never tried, it now does ~$30M/year and is headed toward a $100M+ sale.
$30M
Annual revenue after acquisition (bought for $300K) · USD/year
“I have a friend who bought a business, I think for $300,000, you know, on one of these websites. He was the first guy I knew. I was like, You fucking buy off these random-ass websites?”
Tactic
Browse website marketplaces to find proven, undervalued niches
Ramon scans website brokerages like Quiet Light and Flippa to read P&Ls and summaries, treating them like a real estate broker. A $100K Flippa listing for a soap site validated demand, so he built his own from scratch instead of buying.
“in that same period when I was building those fan pages, I saw a listing on Flippa about soap operas and read the summary and I thought, this is interesting. And, you know, but the price was way too high, was $100,000. So I said, okay, let's just, you know, see and just build it from scratch ourselves, right?”
Steal thisMine website marketplaces for proven niches and P&Ls; if a listing is too pricey, build the same thing yourself.
Tactic
Browse website-for-sale marketplaces to find proven business models
Ramon studies website brokerages like Quiet Light and Flippa, reading listing summaries and P&Ls, to learn what business models are working and find inspiration to build or buy.
“So still to now, I always like to look at these marketplaces where people buy and sell websites. I think you can learn a lot. They write a whole summary and give access to the P&Ls.”
Steal thisRead business-for-sale listings and their P&Ls as free market research on what's actually profitable.
Story
A $100K Flippa listing was the green light to build it himself
Ramon saw a soap opera site listed on Flippa for $100,000. Too broke to buy it, he took the asking price as proof the niche had value and built his own from scratch instead.
“I saw a listing on Flippa about soap operas and read the summary, and I thought, this is interesting. And, you know, but the price was way too high. It was $100,000. So I said, okay, let's just, you know, see and just build it from scratch ourselves.”
Steal thisBrowse website marketplaces; a high asking price for a site in a niche is a signal that the niche is worth entering.